You don’t really hear much about this. But, almost every grandparent that I have, and my friends had… all possessed a large painting.
The painting could be in the dining room, in the living room, or in the hallway, but they all possessed it.
Typically, the most common was “The Last Supper”, and it often graced either the kitchen or dining room. But there were others. Often some kind of scenery.
The Kadels (the German family that I lived with when I attended university) had a scene of a young boy meeting a young girl at a well, and country road.
My grandparents had both “The Last Supper”, and a nice landscape that hung in the living room, and another that hung in the hallway.
My first wife’s grand parents had “The Last Supper”, as did my maternal grandmother.
These were all large paintings. That tended to dominate the rooms that they were placed in.
So…
Guys. Why doesn’t anyone buy or hang oil paintings on walls anymore in the homes? Any ideas?
Today…
Why has China repeatedly clarified that there is indeed no negotiation between China and the United States, while the United States always hints that there is a negotiation? What does the United States want to achieve by doing this?
The US is in a more precarious position than China
As you can see 45% of Small Businesses have China as their largest importing partner and 41% of the Service & Logistics workforce in the US (Almost 800,000 workers) depend on Chinese imports
Not to mention the fact that Chinese rare earths and magnet embargoes are causing backlogs in US Defense Industries by as much as 15 months now that the stockpiles are getting depleted
Soon there will be $ 8 Trillion of Bonds that need renewal and China has $ 389 Billion of Bonds that will come due and China may likely refuse to renew the bonds and may demand to cash out
Add to this 10 Yr Yields are 4.52% now and this means a whopping annual Interest of almost $ 330 Billion a year instead of $ 159 Billion a year that US was paying, an extra $ 161 Billion a year
If China decides to renew it’s $ 389 Billion debt with US, then yields could reduce by almost 0.25% and if US decides to get a deal with China, potential inflation predicted to be 6.07% could reduce to 3.82% in a flash and Powell may be leaned on to cut rates
It all depends on China, China and China 😁
Meanwhile China has pretty much nothing to lose
Their CPC playbook forces them not to involve themselves in foreign policy of any other country, unless Chinese interests are threatened
However this is one place where Chairman Xi feels , short term pain for China could bring a far more stronger and resilient long term benefits and prosperity
China is likely to lose 8% of its Export workforce or around 900,000 workers and 1,100 Small Businesses which sell to US but at least 50% will find alternate markets or transship their goods
China has a lot less to lose than USA
Trump needs to SAVE FACE
He is the one who took a stand against China and now he is likely forced to take a stand
To save his face, the US claims and the Western Media claims China is talking to him
It’s absolutely false
China always RECORDS when they talk to any foreign leader and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs always gives a readout of the conversation
So it’s impossible that anyone like Wang Yi, his deputies or even Ambassadors talked to their US Counterparts
Maybe Unofficial sources may have begun the conversation (Intermediaries)
For instance South African President Rhamposa spoke to Trump and Xi recently so maybe they used him as an intermediary but I highly doubt it
My Chinese pal claims that the best way to quickly become a billionnaire in China is to get involved in China’s endless construction projects that use cheap, substandard materials. If true, can China’s construction projects stand the test of time?
I don’t know how to explain this kind of thing. It’s like all those “clever” drug dealers around the world know that China has a huge population.
As long as the “product” of this “business” can be sold to one ten-thousandth of the people in China, then drug dealers will “make a lot of money.”
However, the problem is: “Drug dealers” are not fools. They only want to “make money” and don’t want to be “shot to death”!
In fact, only “corrupt government officials”/”cult terrorists”/”fraudsters and slanderers” have the “qualification” to be granted “political asylum” by Americans.
As an ordinary engineer who is a “corrupt criminal”, he had better pray that during his lifetime, there will be no “accidents” in the project he is responsible for. Otherwise, the “dirty money” he exchanged with his “life” will eventually become the “dowry” given by his “widowed wife” to her “lover”.
This is an arrowhead from 2,200 years ago, used by soldiers of Qin Shi Huang’s army during the Qin Kingdom’s conquest of all China. Even today, when measured with modern calipers, these millions of arrowheads still demonstrate an astonishing level of consistency.
Each batch of weapons bore an inscription: “This batch of weapons was supervised by the official (official’s name) from the XX regional government, manufactured at the XX arsenal (arsenal director’s name) by the craftsman XX (craftsman’s name).” Of course, there was always a risk of someone attempting to take dangerous risks, but the consequences were severe. Unless they could take their “dirty money” to the United States and obtain American “political asylum,” it was extremely risky
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As we all know, I am keen on mocking Americans. Here, I will, as always, “mock” American-style corruption.
Have you seen those two “unlucky” astronauts?
Yes, they are the two who are trapped in space and cannot return.
I simply can’t believe that the quality inspectors of Boeing Company can’t tell the difference between “Indian aluminum alloy valves” and “Chinese titanium alloy valves”.
Even more incredibly, in this accident that almost killed two American “space elites”, why haven’t the people responsible been brought to trial?
I’m 30, broke, unemployed, and homeless. Can I join the Marines for food and shelter?
Much better off joining the Army. If you can pass the tests, they could set you off on a whole new career without taking you to hell and back. Basic was tough (I was just shy of 26 years old) but it wasn’t life threatening. I had been riding a desk for a few years before joining so it took a while to get in shape.
If you can handle being told what to do, you could really turn your life around in a matter of days. Just treat it like a game. Play by their rules and you win. Screw up and buck the established rules, and you will be royally screwed. I did it. You can do it. I played the game they wanted me to play and I actually enjoyed part of basic training.
I loved the hell out of Advanced Individual Training. They gave me a place to sleep, three square meals a day, and they made everybody keep quiet while I ate my snacks and studied a subject I had always wanted to study (Electronics).
I was 6′3″ tall and only 166 pounds when I enlisted. I was allowed to eat all I wanted and more. I gained 19 pounds during basic and AIT. All muscle because my waist size didn’t change until I had been in a few years, having ingested more than my share of German beer.
How do you think the Chinese government will react to so many Americans and other netizens around the world registering on RedNote/Xiaohongshu en masse?
The US need to reflect on itself and change its way soon ways before its nation totally collapse! Its lies are now exposed and day by day it gets worst for America! Its young population know the truth and it wants an America that is honest and sincere to its people and care for them. It dont want a nation that bullies the world yet lie about its attrocities.
The lie that was so well told it is now a knife that cuts both sides. It raise its people’s high expectation yet it could not hide the truth from coming out that loses all credibility of their government and politicians. In so doing their media will lose relevance day by day. That is precisely what is happening to the US government and media.
The Tik Tok refugee were in for a massive surprise to see that real standard of living in China is indeed higher and its people eat better, cloths better, live long, live healthier, tax less, live in bigger and better homes at a fraction of US cost and are prosperous and happy! A fra cry from Chinese have no freedom, hounded by their government cannot afford the basic necessities portrayed by CNN and Fox News!
I’ve Never Shared My Near Death Experience!
Canadian regime issued a warning to Canadians that there are many fake Canada-made fake Chinese currencies in Canada. Why is Canada a fake currency making country in the world? Remember, there is no cash flowing in China, all are paid through phones.
We don’t even use cash anymore in China. What kind of stupid trick are the US lapdogs playing now?
How The Chinese Beat Trump And OpenAI
The hype around Artificial Intelligence, the now failed U.S. attempt to monopolize it, and the recent counter from China are a lesson in how to innovate. They also show that the U.S. is losing the capability to do so.
In mid 2023, when the Artificial Intelligence hype gained headlines, I wrote:
‘Artificial Intelligence’ Is (Mostly) Glorified Pattern Recognition
Currently there is some hype about a family of large language models like ChatGPT. The program reads natural language input and processes it into some related natural language content output. That is not new. The first Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity (Alice) was developed by Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT in the early 1960s. I had funny chats with ELIZA in the 1980s on a mainframe terminal. ChatGPT is a bit niftier and its iterative results, i.e. the ‘conversations’ it creates, may well astonish some people. But the hype around it is unwarranted.
…
Currently the factual correctness of the output of the best large language models is an estimated 80%. They process symbols and pattern but have no understanding of what those symbols or pattern represent. They can not solve mathematical and logical problems, not even very basic ones.There are niche applications, like translating written languages, where AI or pattern recognition has amazing results. But one still can not trust them to get every word right. The models can be assistants but one will always have to double check their results.Overall the correctness of current AI models is still way too low to allow them to decide any real world situation. More data or more computing power will not change that. If one wants to overcome their limitations one will need to find some fundamentally new ideas.
But the hype continued. One big AI model, ChatGPT, was provided by a non-profit organization, OpenAI. But its CEO, Sam Altman, soon smelled the big amount of dollars he potentially could make. A year after defending the the non-profit structure of OpenAI Altman effectively raided the board and took the organization private:
ChatGPT-maker OpenAI is working on a plan to restructure its core business into a for-profit benefit corporation that will no longer be controlled by its non-profit board, people familiar with the matter told Reuters, in a move that will make the company more attractive to investors.
…
Chief executive Sam Altman will also receive equity for the first time in the for-profit company, which could be worth $150 billion after the restructuring as it also tries to remove the cap on returns for investors, sources added.
The ChatGTP large language model OpenAI provided was closed source. A black-box, running in the cloud, that one could pay to chat with or use for translating, content generation or analyzing certain problems.
The training and maintaining of ChatGTP took large amounts of computing power and money. It was somewhat expensive but there was no new technology in it. The algorithms it used were well known and the training data needed to ‘program’ it were freely available internet content.
For all the hype about AI is is not a secret or even new technology. The barriers to entry for any competition is low.
That is the reason why Yves at Naked Capitalism, pointing to Edward Zitron, asked: “How Does OpenAI Survive?” It doesn’t. Or has little chance to do so. Discussions in the U.S. never acknowledged those facts.
Politicians thought of AI as the next big thing that would further U.S. control of the world. They attempted to prevent any potential competition to the lead the U.S. thought it had in that field. Nvidea, the last leading U.S. chip maker, lost billion when it was prohibited from selling in latest AI-specialized models to China.
Two days ago Trump announced Stargate, a $500 billion AI infrastructure investment in the US:
Three top tech firms on Tuesday announced that they will create a new company, called Stargate, to grow artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States.OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison appeared at the White House Tuesday afternoon alongside President Donald Trump to announce the company, which Trump called the “largest AI infrastructure project in history.”
The companies will invest $100 billion in the project to start, with plans to pour up to $500 billion into Stargate in the coming years. The project is expected to create 100,000 US jobs, Trump said.
Stargate will build “the physical and virtual infrastructure to power the next generation of AI,” including data centers around the country, Trump said. Ellison said the group’s first, 1 million-square foot data project is already under construction in Texas.
On the very same day, but with much less noise, a Chinese company published another AI model:
We introduce our first-generation reasoning models, DeepSeek-R1-Zero and DeepSeek-R1. DeepSeek-R1-Zero, a model trained via large-scale reinforcement learning (RL) without supervised fine-tuning (SFT) as a preliminary step, demonstrated remarkable performance on reasoning. With RL, DeepSeek-R1-Zero naturally emerged with numerous powerful and interesting reasoning behaviors.
The new DeepSeek models have better benchmarks than any other available model. They use a different combination of technics, less training data and much less computing power to achieve that. They are cheap to use and, in contrast to OpenAI, real open source.
U.S. export controls on advanced semiconductors were intended to slow China’s AI progress, but they may have inadvertently spurred innovation. Unable to rely solely on the latest hardware, companies like Hangzhou-based DeepSeek have been forced to find creative solutions to do more with less.
…
This month, DeepSeek released its R1 model, using advanced techniques such as pure reinforcement learning to create a model that’s not only among the most formidable in the world, but is fully open source, making it available for anyone in the world to examine, modify, and build upon.
…
DeepSeek-R1’s performance is comparable to OpenAI’s top reasoning models across a range of tasks, including mathematics, coding, and complex reasoning. For example, on the AIME 2024 mathematics benchmark, DeepSeek-R1 scored 79.8% compared to OpenAI-o1’s 79.2%. On the MATH-500 benchmark, DeepSeek-R1 achieved 97.3% versus o1’s 96.4%. In coding tasks, DeepSeek-R1 reached the 96.3rd percentile on Codeforces, while o1 reached the 96.6th percentile – although it’s important to note that benchmark results can be imperfect and should not be overinterpreted.But what’s most remarkable is that DeepSeek was able to achieve this largely through innovation rather than relying on the latest computer chips.
Nature is likewise impressed:
A Chinese-built large language model called DeepSeek-R1 is thrilling scientists as an affordable and open rival to ‘reasoning’ models such as OpenAI’s o1.
…
“This is wild and totally unexpected,” Elvis Saravia, an AI researcher and co-founder of the UK-based AI consulting firm DAIR.AI, wrote on X.R1 stands out for another reason. DeepSeek, the start-up in Hangzhou that built the model, has released it as ‘open-weight’, meaning that researchers can study and build on the algorithm. Published under an MIT licence, the model can be freely reused but is not considered fully open source, because its training data has not been made available.“The openness of DeepSeek is quite remarkable,” says Mario Krenn, leader of the Artificial Scientist Lab at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, Germany. By comparison, o1 and other models built by OpenAI in San Francisco, California, including its latest effort o3 are “essentially black boxes”, he says.
Even long term Internet investors, who have seen it all, are impressed:
Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca – 9:19 UTC · Jan 24, 2025Deepseek R1 is one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs I’ve ever seen — and as open source, a profound gift to the world. 🤖🫡
Nature adds:
DeepSeek hasn’t released the full cost of training R1, but it is charging people using its interface around one-thirtieth of what o1 costs to run. The firm has also created mini ‘distilled’ versions of R1 to allow researchers with limited computing power to play with the model.
That does in fact work!
Brian Roemmele @BrianRoemmele – 14:34 UTC · Jan 23, 2025Folks, I think we have done it!
If overnight tests are confirmed we have OPEN SOURCE DeepSeek R1 running at 200 tokens per second on a NON-INTERNET connected Raspberry Pi.
A full frontier AI better than “OpenAI” owned fully by you in your pocket free to use!
I will make the Pi image available as soon as all tests are complete.
You just pop it into a Raspberry Pi and you have AI!
This is just the start of the power that takes place when you TRULY Open Source an AI Model.
The latest Rasberry Pi hardware starts at $50. The software is free.
This is a death call for OpenAI:
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand – 14:23 UTC · Jan 21, 2025Most people probably don’t realize how bad news China’s Deepseek is for OpenAI.
They’ve come up with a model that matches and even exceeds OpenAI’s latest model o1 on various benchmarks, and they’re charging just 3% of the price.
It’s essentially as if someone had released a mobile on par with the iPhone but was selling it for $30 instead of $1000. It’s this dramatic.
What’s more, they’re releasing it open-source so you even have the option – which OpenAI doesn’t offer – of not using their API at all and running the model for “free” yourself. …
The backstory of DeepSeek is also amazing.
In 2007 three Chinese engineers set out to build a quant (financial speculation) fund using AI. They hired hungry people fresh from the universities. Their High-Flyer fund was somewhat successful but throughout the last years the Chinese government started to crack down on financial engineering, quant trading and speculation.
With time on their hand and unused computing power in their back room the engineers started to build the DeepSeek models. The costs were minimal. While OpenAI, Meta and Google spent billions to build their AI’s the training costs for the published DeepSeek models were mere $5 to 6 million.
Henry Shi @henrythe9ths – 23:20 PM · Jan 20, 20257. The lesson?
Sometimes having less means innovating more. DeepSeek proves you don’t need:
– Billions in funding
– Hundreds of PhDs
– A famous pedigree
Just brilliant young minds, the courage to think differently and the grit to never give up
Another lesson is that brilliant young minds should not be wasted to optimize financial speculation but to make stuff one can use.
DeepSeek demonstrates how it is impossible to use trade and technology barriers to keep technology away from competitors. They can, with decent resources, simply innovate around those.
Even billions of dollars, loud marketeers like Trump and self promoting grifters like Sam Altman can not successfully compete with a deep bench of well trained engineers.
As an author at Guancha remarks (machine translation):
In the Sino-US science and technology war, China’s unique advantage comes precisely from the US ban. It can be said that our strong will to survive was forced out by Washington, and maximizing our limited resources is the secret to breaking through. In history, this kind of story is not new, that is, the weak prevail over the strong, and the small fight against the big.The U.S. side will fall into a Vietnam-style dilemma-relying too much on its own absolute advantage, thus wasting a lot of resources and losing itself to internal consumption.
How long for the U.S. to (re-)learn that lesson?
Posted by b on January 24, 2025 at 15:46 UTC | Permalink
What kind of China-U.S. relationship would best serve the interests of both nations, and the world at large?
The world is in the midst of its worst economic slowdown in three decades. According to the World Bank, global growth stagnated at an estimated 2.7% last year and is expected to remain at the same level in 2025. That’s a full 0.4 percentage points below the average of the decade before the pandemic—hardly a sign of recovery.
However, this is not the end of the story. The global economy can turn around, but only if the fundamental drivers of growth are restored—and that starts with global trade.
As the world’s two largest economies, China and the United States bear a unique responsibility to lead these efforts. China has embraced a development-first strategy and is tackling global challenges with increased openness and collaboration.
But the U.S. seems to be doing the opposite. Instead of fostering collaboration, the U.S. has chosen to weaponize tariffs and escalate its decoupling from the rest of the world. One of the clearest examples of this can be found in AI development, where the U.S. has made it a point to take an isolationist stance that could have severe consequences.
Moving beyond sanctions: healthy China-U.S. competition fuels development
On January 13th, the U.S. dropped a new round of AI chip export restrictions, breaking the world into three tiers and labeling over 200 countries and regions as either partners and allies or rivals. The objective is to consolidate AI development within the so-called “safe” zones and deny advanced chips to those deemed adversaries, all while setting U.S. standards for the global AI race.
This round of sanctions has been heavily directed at China—now placed in the third tier, with a complete ban on importing American AI chips and “closed” AI models whose underlying architectures are not released to the public.
But the real question is: Is this move that’s aimed at shutting down China ultimately harming the U.S. itself?
U.S. semiconductor giants have already voiced their concerns, urging the government to halt the sanctions. Nvidia, for example, protested that the White House has effectively banned technology used in mainstream consumer products like gaming computers.
Even more concerning for American businesses is that China possesses vast application scenarios that the U.S. lacks, which are crucial for training and enhancing AI performance. By isolating itself, isn’t the U.S. pushing the world to choose China instead? As Oracle has stated, this move by the U.S. is effectively handing “most of the global AI and GPU market to our Chinese competitors.”
The fallout from these sanctions is already clear. American businesses are furious, and the foundation of U.S. technological supremacy is crumbling. Since the U.S. initiated its trade war with China in 2018, the landscape has shifted dramatically. By 2019, China had already surpassed the U.S. in the number of internationally granted patents, signaling the rise of its innovation ecosystem. China’s chip exports, valued at 78 billion US dollars in 2018, is expected to exceed 150 billion—achieving a remarkable doubling despite the roadblocks.
This growth tells us something critical: the sanctions are not working as intended. In fact, they may be pushing China to innovate faster and become more independent than ever before. Even U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo has acknowledged this reality, calling the effort to block China’s technological progress “a fool’s errand.”
The sense of crisis is a crucial driving force for progress, and this is a view shared by both Chinese and American businesses. What the U.S. needs to realize is that healthy, organized competition benefits everyone. By isolating itself and pushing the world to pick sides, the U.S. risks squandering its leadership in the high-tech industry. The global AI race shouldn’t be about forcing others to fall in line with American ideals—it should be about unlocking the full potential of global innovation. Only then will the world, and the U.S., truly reap the rewards.
Global AI development: the potential for China-U.S. cooperation
The development of high-tech industries between China and the U.S. should not be viewed as a zero-sum game. Instead, it offers a wealth of opportunities for collaboration that could benefit both nations and the world at large.
For example, China’s startup DeepSeek recently introduced its large language model, DeepSeek-V3. Despite the chip bans, the model has earned international acclaim for its exceptional technical performance and impressively low training cost—just one-twentieth of those associated with GPT-4o. Just days before this release, OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, made an intriguing statement in an interview: the U.S. and China must avoid an AI arms race and seek cooperation wherever possible. While it may seem ironic coming from OpenAI—an organization that enforces strict IP bans on the Chinese mainland—Altman’s words signal a growing realization within the U.S. tech community that collaboration with China is not only necessary but beneficial.
This sentiment is echoed in the actions of U.S. companies. Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, made headlines with his appearance at China International Supply Chain Expo last year, where he reaffirmed Apple’s long-term commitment to the Chinese market. Cook’s words are a clear signal that U.S. companies recognize the value of engaging in mutually beneficial partnerships with China—despite the political and trade tensions that continue to simmer.
Even in the face of those tensions, China and the U.S. have kept dialogue in AI governance under the United Nations framework. In March, the U.S. proposed an AI technology resolution, co-signed by China. In July, China put forward a resolution on international AI cooperation, with the U.S. as a signatory. By December, China had initiated an AI capacity-building cooperation group, with 80 countries—including the U.S.—participating.
These collaborative steps point to a shared recognition that the future of AI hinges on international cooperation, not isolation. An AI arms race will ultimately benefit no one. History has proven this time and again. Genuine cooperation, when possible, is the way forward.
With Donald Trump’s return, the world is bracing for four more years of uncertainty, volatility, and, no doubt, unpredictability.
Yet amid this tumult, one thing remains steadfast—China’s belief that the core of the China-U.S. trade relationship lies in mutual benefit and win-win cooperation, not endless confrontation and conflict. In this era of hyperconnected economies, where technology drives everything from national security to economic power, an open and collaborative approach to technology is a necessity.
It’s time for the U.S. to put aside its isolationist impulses and recognize the stakes. Innovation cannot—and should not—be stifled by egos or outdated ideologies. The clock is ticking. Let’s hope the Trump administration understands this before it’s too late.
Hotel employees. What is the most insane thing a guest has asked you for?
She wasn’t exactly a hotel employee but my (English) niece was studying in Paris. She got a post which got her a free room at an amazing, historic Parisian building, a stone’s throw from the Eiffel Tower. She had to check in and check out guests who were booked in the apartments. It was an pretty expensive place to stay and had a lot of very valuable artworks on the walls. We’re talking 20.000–100.000 euros worth. Every picture was screwed to the wall with an alarm system fitted.
To the day in question. A very nice American couple booked in, mid 30s, seemed pretty normal, around 9pm.
My niece did her bit, took them up to their apartment, showed them where everything was and how it all worked. Old building, it needed a bit of instruction.
A short while later they called down to say they had a problem.
She went up and they said they couldn’t stay in the place due to the pornographic art and it needed to go. The picture in question was the Virgin Mary breastfeeding a naked baby Jesus. About 300 years old and worth a fortune. They were appalled such disgusting things were on show.
Niece pointed out that it was fixed to the wall and could they just put a towel over if for the night. They refused point blank.
She phoned the owners, who at 11.30pm got a workman in to disconnect the alarm, unscrew the painting and take it into safe keeping. The next day my niece advised them not to go to the Louvre.
Pineapple Upside-Down Cake
Yield: 12 servings
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup butter or margarine
- 1 cup packed brown sugar
- 1 (20 ounce) can pineapple slices, undrained
- 5 maraschino cherries, drained and halved
- 1/2 cup chopped nuts
- 1 (18.25 ounce) package yellow cake mix
- 3 eggs
- 1/3 cup vegetable oil
- 1 cup thawed, frozen whipped topping
Instructions
- Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
- Melt butter in Family (12-inch) Skillet over low heat. Remove from heat; stir in brown sugar until well blended.
- Drain pineapple, reserving juice; set aside.
- Arrange pineapple slices over brown sugar mixture in skillet. Place a cherry half in center of each pineapple slice. Sprinkle with nuts.
- Add enough water to pineapple juice to measure 1 1/3 cups liquid. In Classic Batter Bowl, combine cake mix, pineapple juice, eggs and oil; whisk until well blended and smooth. Pour over fruit mixture in skillet.
- Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until Cake Tester inserted in center comes out clean.
- Remove from oven; cool for 5 minutes.
- Carefully loosen edges of cake. Invert onto large serving plate. Cool slightly; garnish with whipped topping.
Nutrition
Per serving: Calories 453, Total Fat 24g
Attribution
Pampered Chef
Have you ever known someone who was insulted for being poor even though he was rich?
Yes, my friend. The illustration is like the photo above.
So, my friend is a successful palm oil farmer, his land is vast, he already has his own palm oil transport car. When he goes anywhere, he always wears flip-flops, a t-shirt. Even when watching movies, he only wears shorts.
When he was in high school, he only had a few close friends, and that included me, the person wasn’t academically smart so he didn’t get enough attention from friends and teachers. We became close because of one fate, being looked down on by other people.
He likes to travel out of town, but never posts on social media, so people don’t know his financial condition.
His photos on social media, mostly he is in the palm oil plantation wearing flip-flops, boxer shorts and a tank top, people think he is a driver because he can drive a big car.
At the reunion because we haven’t met for 13 years, only successful people were invited.
My friend and I who are oil palm farmers, and several other people were not invited, please tell us the story, while laughing.
When my friend was on vacation in Singapore, my friend asked what I wanted to bring? I answered, just send your photo, my friend asked why? I said I wanted to send it to their reunion group.
My friend didn’t want to, but I persuaded him, finally he agreed, and got the photo. It didn’t take long, I immediately sent it to my friend who was invited there. My friend put me in the group.
It didn’t take long, several friends immediately asked for my friend’s number to invite him directly.
After being invited, my friend didn’t immediately leave the group, but he just said.
“I only have two friends, the others are trash, I’m leaving the group now!
My friend screenshotted the conversation, and we just laughed.
It’s crazy, just to see the uniforms at the reunion, the vegetable seller wasn’t invited..
So, this is a lesson, so that you don’t look down on other people because of their jobs.
No One Here Gets Out Alive
Submitted into Contest #281 in response to: Write a story from the POV of a non-human character.… view prompt
James Barrett
How does the size of China’s High-Speed Rail Network compare to other countries’ networks, such as the UK, USA, and Japan?
China boasts the world’s largest and most extensive high-speed rail network, dwarfing the combined size of other countries’ systems – extending over 40,000 km making it roughly two-thirds of the global high-speed rail network in commercial service.
China accomplished this just as it did with EV – they started without any HSR technology, solicited joint venture partners from the 4 global leaders in high-speed rail for IP transfer for the initial installations and then proceeded to build the rest in record time while developing ifs own technology.
How does China’s compare the UK, USA, and Japan?
Here’s the answer to the first two: We don’t have any in the U.S. and the UK? They’re really a laughing stock and its a miracle that they’re still trying.
As for Japan, their’s had been the standard for high speed rail since two decades ago but they just can’t translate any of this to the international market. Take all the failed attempt in India, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. China took over to complete Indonesia’s and doing the same in Thailand and Vietnam.
And China is building on its track record to win more international contracts.
Why is Portugal losing people?
18 year old Portuguese answering here. I’ll be straight and hide nothing in my answer. I turned 18 two weeks ago. I’ve always lived in Portugal and it was a really good country to grow up in. I will always feel grateful for having been raised with no security problems, having had access to school, medical care, food, good history & culture (part of it) and very good weather the majority of the year.
But the truth is (and I started confronting myself with that reality 4 years ago when I first went abroad) that nowadays Portugal is really in the ‘back’ compared to other countries. There’s so many things that need to be updated, so many conflicts to be solved, and the government’s priorities (not only the current one, but all the governments I was alive to see at work) are not well defined.
In September, I will start my last year of high school. But I will also start my university applications to the United Kingdom and to Denmark. And once I go, I don’t intend, right now, to go back after I conclude my studies. I don’t feel that Portugal can give me a future. At least a future where I can be financially independent from my parents while I’m still working or where I’ll have a chance to get a good job once I finish my university degree.
It’s sad to see my own country losing the young people everyday to other countries, seeing the population getting older in the stats and the newborn stats also decaying more and more every year and seeing the government doing nothing or useless measures about it.
I’m really grateful for the childhood Portugal offered me but it can’t give me a future and I have to be the one fighting for it, somewhere else.
Maybe I’ll be back someday. When I’m older, have a good job, my life organised and some stability.
But for now, I will probably (and unfortunately)belong to the stats section of young people who went to get further education in another country and probably will end up staying there.
UPDATE as of Dec 2022: I almost forgot about this post. It’s my 3rd year living and studying in Nottingham (UK). I am working part-time alongside my degree and am currently completing a placement year at a law firm. I was also lucky enough to secure an academic scholarship and UK Student Finance (before Brexit was officialised on 31 December 2020) to cover my course’s tuition fees.
I will not romanticise it because it is not always easy. The culture shock is very real and I miss my country, my family and my friends a lot. Sometimes all I want is to just hug my parents, have 5 minutes of Portuguese sun, or just a bite of my grandma’s food. But I am learning every day and getting opportunities that I would not get back in Portugal. I know I have made the right decision for me and my future.
Unfortunately, everytime I go back and see how my friends are doing, I know they will also end up moving once they finish their studies, since employment prospects for young graduates in Portugal isn’t looking promising.
With the escalating arms race in the Asia-Pacific, how will China react and what will be the consequences?
China is the world’s factory. It can outproduce anyone. It’s also not expansionist so the enemy will have to bring the fight to China, giving China a home advantage. So unless China suffers a generational disadvantage in equipment, China will always win.
That’s why China is now focused on tech. Because it’s the only area where the enemy can have a chance. And China doesn’t want to give the other side a chance.
Trump Considering Invading Greenland & Panama!
Why is Hitler universally condemned to hell when King Leopold II who did roughly the same thing on a smaller scale is not even heard of by a lot of people, not to mention proportionally condemned for what he did?
First, I think that Leopold II is pretty roundly condemned by anyone who knows about what he did. It’s just the whole “knowing about” thing.
Why don’t people know? Several reasons, I think.
- Bad timing, part 1. This was in an era before TV, before radio, and just at the very beginning of the motion pictures. The media environment just wasn’t there yet.
- Bad timing, part 2. Ten years later, WW1 happened, and that basically changed everything, and cast Belgium as part of the “good guys”.
- It’s just not taught. At least in US schools, this atrocity receives zero class time. (Generally, US schools teach very little about post 1776 foreign affairs unless the US played an active role, and even then, it’s limited)
- It was just enough of a “slow burn” to avoid serious public inquiry, until very late.
- Lack of clarity. The death toll is unclear, Leopold did much to destroy the details, etc.
- Africa. The sad fact is that atrocities in Africa rarely get much attention in the west. Even contemporaneously, getting attention to the atrocities was difficult for activists. Several missionarios spend years desperately trying to get the situation some publicity.
- Leopold had a fairly effective propaganda campaign.
Do you think “RedNote” is a good name choice for ByteDance’s push into the US, given the company’s Chinese origin?
“RedNote” does not appear to have plans to enter the US market, and its data is not stored in the US.
ByteDance boss Zhang Yiming is only 41 years old this year, only the Chinese market has already let him make a lot of money, get a lifetime of inexhaustible wealth, so there is no U.S. market is not important to him.
Zhang Yiming’s mother is a nurse and his father is an ordinary employee of the local science association. Zhang Yiming is a technology nerd, he is not good at talking, very low-key, no socialization, does not smoke, does not drink, does not love to play IT games, does not love to watch movies, does not love luxury cars, does not love to play golf, he only has three hobbies: writing program code, reading books, and repairing computers.
He spends most of his time at home and seldom goes to the office, he left all the company’s business to Shou Zi Chew, CEO of Tiktok, who is more adept at corporate management, and his college roommate, Liang Rubo, CEO of ByteDance, and retired completely, not even attending the company’s anniversary celebration.
But Zhang Yiming has the final decision-making power over ByteDance and Tiktok, so if the US government lets Tiktok stay in the US, he’ll let stay there; if the US government doesn’t let Tiktok stay in the US, he’ll take it out of the US market, and he won’t sell Tiktok’s Core code.
We advise the U.S. government to respect corporate intellectual property rights and not attempt to plunder them.
Holiday Time
Submitted into Contest #281 in response to: Write a story from the POV of a non-human character.… view prompt
Ellen Talboom
“Welcome. Come to the tree lighting anyway, okay”?
“Yes”. Keith turned and ran up the stairs, two steps at a time.
Come over and see the tree lighting. Love to hear the caroling. Shower, dress, scarf down food, rush to the bus. I have no programing to respond to those comments. Something to write down and submit to John.
“Good afternoon, Laura”.
“Good afternoon, Tanner”.
“What a day. chillness in the air. Feels like snow. You can almost breathe it”.
“This is a great day”, Laura said.
“It certainty is. You have a great day”.
“Thank you, Tanner”. Laura watched him walk up the stairs. “Oh, you are invited to the holiday tree lighting bash tomorrow, around 6p”, Tanner yelled from the stairs, “Hope to see you there”.
“Ok”, Laura replied. Tanner continued up the stairs, singing. Laura listened to the song, jingle bells, jingle bells. Laura wrote this on the sheet of paper for John.
“Mr. and Mrs. George, welcome”, Laura said.
“Greetings to you Laura. Happy holidays”, Mrs. George said.
“Same to you”, replied Laura.
“Tell Laura to have a happy holiday”, Mr. George told his 5-year-old twin sons.
“Happy holidays”, the twins said together. Laura smiled.
“Are you going to the holiday party tomorrow? My mom is going to sing”, one twin said.
“Yes I am. After work”.
“Cool”. The twins bolted to the stairs.
“Gotta go. Last minute stuff to do”, Mrs. George said, laughing.
“Indeed, see you tomorrow then”.
“Ok”. Laura watched the twins jump up each stair while their parents walked, one foot on each stair. Laura added to the list.
6pm. Laura’s shift was finished for the day. A couple of late guests rushed in before she locked the doors.
Doors locked. Now only those with key cards were able to gain access to the building.
“Have a good evening, Laura”, Craig, the night security human said while walking over to the information desk. “How was the day”?
“A lot of movement”.
“I bet. Getting close to the big day now”.
“Yes. Are you going to the event tomorrow”?
“Which one”? Craig laughed. “There are enough parties to keep me in food and drink for a week”. He winked.
Laura put her notebook and pen into her shoulder bag, rose from the chair and pushed the chair under the desk.
“Ready. Have a safe evening Craig”.
“Thank you, Laura. Say hi to John for me”.
“I will”. Laura walked to the elevator, pressed the up button. She entered when the doors opened. She pressed #6. Doors closed. Laura let herself into the operations room. John was sitting at the control panels. Many TV monitors that light up the room. He turned.
“Craig says hi”.
“Tell him hi from me. How was your day, Laura”?
“I have a list of comments that have no meaning to me. It was a day, light then dark”. John smiled.
“Ok, phase 4 now. You are ready”.
Laura smiled.
Laura was at her desk 5 minutes early; she is every day.
“Good morning, Laura”.
“Good morning, Nate. How are you doing today”?
“Great. Getting closer to the big day, food-fun-drink, especially the drink”, Nate said, then laughed.
“No over doing it, ok”, Laura said.
“Oh no. Can’t do that anymore. Ok, you have a fun day”.
“I will, thank you”.
Humans with dogs coming in and out. Humans without dogs coming in and out. Some walking up the stairs to the shops. Some using the elevators to the business offices.
More decorations were hung. A huge wreath is to be hung over the front door. A forklift was needed to put it on the hook, only to see that there was no hook. After the wreath was hung, the lights were turned on. They twinkled white. Silver and gold ribbons and bobbles hung on the wreath. It was a sight.
The tree, decorated with all the holiday colors. There was a large star placed on the top of the tree. It was a large tree, off to the side by the windows. It was 20 feet tall. Neatly wrapped packages were underneath. The tree lighting will be at 6p. Laura watched all the movement, the fussing around the tree. More decorations were added.
The caterers were setting up the food and drink tables. There were plates of different foods. So much food.
6p. Laura watched at the clock hands make a straight up and down line. Groups of Humans were walking down the stairs and right over to the food and drink festively decorated tables. Nate was the first to the wine bar.
Laura completed her closing chores, put her bag over her shoulder, rose up and pushed the chair under the desk. She walked over to the tree. John and Craig walked through the elevator doors and toward the tree, talking.
Everyone was silent. The twins had the honor of lighting the holiday tree. The crowd let out a whoosh of excitement, ooooo’s and ahhhhh’s.
Laura stepped up in front of the tree, placed her purse on the floor next to her. She turned to face the group. John watched with the others. Silence. Laura smiled.
“Happy holidays all”, and she began to sing, “Oh Christmas tree, Oh Christmas tree, your branches green delight us”…
Shorpy
Virginia Giuffre ‘Quiteted’
Jeffrey Epstein was an Israeli agent tasked with blackmailing U.S. politicians and business people by providing them with under-age girls. Virginia Giuffre, then 17, was on of those victims.
Epstein was jailed and, on August 10 2019, found dead in his cell. I headlined:
Unsurprisingly Jeffrey Epstein was found dead, presumably by suicide, as that is what ‘officials’ claim:
Jailed multimillionaire financier and accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein has died by suicide, according to two law enforcement sources. …
Just yesterday a court released the first 2,000 pages of a civil case against Epstein’s madame, Ghislaine Maxwell:
[Epstein victim Virginia Roberts Giuffre], who turned 36 on Friday, names a number of other men in politics, academia and business that she says she was directed to have sex with. In a 2017 interview with the Miami Herald, Giuffre said that Epstein wanted her to please various influential people then so that he could learn about their sexual peccadilloes and use them as leverage if he needed to.While there’s no direct evidence contained in the court record substantiating her accounts with prominent men, Giuffre did provide testimony and evidence to corroborate her claims of exploitation at the hands of Epstein and Maxwell through photographs, plane logs and even a medical record from Presbyterian Hospital in New York where Giuffre was taken by Epstein after a particularly abusive sex episode.
I concluded the post with this:
Some of those influential people who Epstein, or the organization behind him, blackmailed, will be quite happy that he is gone. They will now try to bury the rest of the case. Giuffre and other witnesses better watch their backs.
Today we learn that Virginia Giuffre is dead (archived):
Ms. Giuffre (pronounced JIFF-ree) died by suicide, according to a statement by the family. She wrote in an Instagram post in March that she was days away from dying of renal failure after being injured in an automobile crash with a school bus that she said was traveling at nearly 70 miles per hour.
This is curious.
Potential renal failure in March is supposed to be the cause for a suicide in late April? Why is the NY Times insinuating this?
We have dialysis to counter renal failure and hundreds of thousands survive with it. Then there are kidney transplants. Giuffre was 40 years old. One does not die of kidney failure at that age. It is not a reason to suicide oneself.
Consider this:
Virginia Giuffre @VRSVirginia – 3:32 UTC · Dec 11, 2019I am making it publicy known that in no way, shape or form am I sucidal. I have made this known to my therapist and GP- If something happens to me- in the sake of my family do not let this go away and help me to protect them. Too many evil people want to see me quiteted
Posted by b on April 26, 2025 at 15:42 UTC | Permalink
Not a month ago she was rammed by a school-bus doing over 110 km/h
Bad things happen to those that dare disturb TPTB
Posted by: Newbie | Apr 26 2025 16:01 utc | 2
Posted by: Exile | Apr 26 2025 16:03 utc | 3
since when did the powerful and wealthy ever call the shots?? lol.. hopefully we continue to challenge this on a regular basis.. those with a vested interest in hiding things are really the unsavory characters they are.. the truth will eventually come out..
Posted by: james | Apr 26 2025 16:04 utc | 4
Posted by: silverfoxes | Apr 26 2025 16:07 utc | 5
Why doesn’t the Irish defence force buy advanced weapons like fighters, tanks, helicopters and etc ? Ireland Republic is an independent country.
There are 5 million Irishman.
If they recruited one percent of the population to be under arms, which is quite a lot, they would have 50 000 troops.
Ireland has basically no natural defensive features and they do not have the money to build a navy that could defend them.
That is why Ireland is neutral:
They cannot hope to defend themselves, if it comes to it, all that they can do is let themselves be occupied and return to an Irish staple: Guerrilla warfare and resistance.
Since that is the case, there is not much of a point to splurging on jets or tanks. They cannot buy and man enough to offer deterence, just enough to waste money.
That is why the Fórsaí Cosanta is what it is: Basically an armed constabulary that participates in UN missions.
Even if Ireland felt severely threatened investing in fighters, helicopters and tanks would not be the way to go.
Instead build a magazine with rifles, semtex and mines at the end of every block and when they enemy attacks, disperse the arms among the population and burn the lists.
Censorship
Rob Urie put up an important piece in Naked Capitalism: On Being Censored For The Last Four Years
This should be read by anyone who still thinks Biden is anything but the warmongering, corrupt, power-mad senile old man that he is, and his presidential administration was.
Some key excepts:
In December, 2024, a Federal entity called the Global Engagement Center (GEC)— an offshoot of the US State Department tasked with censoring legal political speech on the internet, was closed after Congress stopped funding it. Within a day or two of this occurring, the internet as I haven’t seen it in four years suddenly reappeared. Hundreds of my articles that couldn’t be found under any arrangement of search terms over the prior four years have since reappeared….
Within hours of Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021, 99% of the 200+ essays that I had written over the prior decade disappeared from the internet, along with 99% of the digital evidence that I ever existed. Little of what I had written, and none of what I was then writing, could be found via searches no matter how precise and / or detailed the search terms. For what I imagine were political reasons, after a decade of writing near-weekly essays, I had been disappeared.
The alleged rationale for this censorship was ‘to combat disinformation.’ Having followed Joe Biden’s political career since the early 1980s, the man was never known for having a firm grasp on the reality that most of the rest of us share. Much of what Biden said regarding the Covid-19 pandemic was not only untrue, but deeply harmful. Telling people that the mRNA vaccines prevented both illness and transmission— both untrue, put millions of lives at risk.
…
Having done quite a bit of mathematical programming over the years, I sensed quickly that I was being censored as the GEC was firing up. What surprised me, but shouldn’t have, is that the American and world history that I had linked to as source material was also being systematically disappeared from the internet. At one point in 2021 – 2022, the only way that I could re-find relevant history was to already have the links. Using the same search terms as used before never yielded the same, or even useful, results no matter how many times I tried.
…
The Times reporter/disinformation censor worldview that only what they believe is true is widely prevalent amongst the American PMC. The logic of this view was put to me by a friend. My friend gets his news from CNN, NPR, and the New York Times. In discussing events in Ukraine, his standard response was ‘I never heard of that.’ The obvious reply: if I got my information from those sources alone, I wouldn’t know much that is true about the world either.
This ‘incredible sunshine of the spotless mind’ view, whereby the less that someone knows, the more power they are given to determine public policy, is the corporate model applied to government. CEOs fancy themselves as managers and deal makers, not content experts. Marketing ‘truth’ is a constrained optimization problem around what will best sell a product. American political discourse follows this corporate model as low-quality rhetoric.
…
As one who was called a communist for opposing the US war in Vietnam, a Saddam sympathizer (and a terrorist) for opposing two US wars in Iraq, a Putin puppet for opposing the current US war against Russia in Ukraine, and an antisemite for opposing the Israeli genocide in Gaza, the trail of official lies points to the US government being the most prolific purveyor of lies related to US foreign policy. This would seem fertile territory for actual inquiry into ‘disinformation.’
While ‘enshittification’ is a good general descriptor for what doesn’t work in the modern world, intention to enshittify hasn’t tended to be the explanation for it. Prior to 2016 or thereabouts, the internet yielded results that, taken together, provided reasonable approximations of the facts. Particularly after 2021, the internet search results that I got seemed increasingly intended to mislead.
…
As best I can tell, I had made it through the Trump years without being censored. The censorship that I encountered was conducted by the Biden administration.
…
I have no idea if the changes that I am seeing are visible to others. The tech ‘model’ of customization has produced a dystopian hellscape whereby critical comparison is impossible because there is no common basis by which to compare. This is reification of the individualist ontology of Western commerce. Good luck fixing the effect without first addressing the cause.
Posted by: c1ue | Jan 23 2025 16:55 utc | 40
After HEAD-ON Collision, She Crossed OVER & Begged God To Stay
What’s something a flight attendant did to you that you will never forget?
Not a flight attendant but a gate agent. My daughter and I were on a long awaited trip to Germany and Poland. We were in Krakow when I got the news that my beloved husband of 30 years had died unexpectedly. We rebooked immediately but couldn’t leave until the next day. In Frankfurt I told a cranky man at the gate what happened and that I wanted to pay to upgrade to premium economy so we would have more privacy. He told me to wait. Then a woman appeared and scolded him in German. She looked at me and said there is no charge. I thanked her and we sat down to wait. In a few minutes the same woman came over and asked to see our tickets for a moment. I thought nothing of it. She came back a little while later and said “tonight you fly business”. We burst into tears and she grabbed my shoulders and said “ I don’t have all the words in English but bless you”. Because of her I was able to sleep a bit and have the privacy I needed to grieve. I am still recovering emotionally but I have never forgotten you…my angel of Lufthansa ❤️
Why is it that although China is already the second largest economy in the world, most Chinese people have no food to eat and can only survive by eating rats and chewing tree bark?
?
Typically you get an Unlimited Chinese Buffet consisting of
- Unlimited Rice
- Roast Beef with Ginger
- Eggplant and Mushrooms Stir Fry
- Tofu
- Sweet and Sour Pork
- Braised Duck Breast
Total Price is 24.90 Yuan ($ 3.40)
You can dine in a Decent Restaurant with your family , order 5 -6 Dishes and pay 176 Yuan ($ 24)
You can dine out and eat in a French patisserie where a Danish and Donut and a Cup of Coffee costs you 76 Yuan ($ 10.40)
You can have a 2 Chicken Quesadilla, 1 Chicken Burrito, 1 Lemon Sprite Tea, 1 Coke and 1 Corona Beer for 93 Yuan ($ 10.21)
Food for the whole family
Neapolitan Pizza?
Cheese Garlic Bread?
Carpacchio?
Ice Lemon Tea?
For 2 Adults and a Kid it costs 106 Yuan ($ 14.46)
Quality Seafood Buffet?
89 Yuan per Adult and 59 Yuan per Child ($ 12.14 & $ 8.05)
Add another 50 Yuan and 25 Yuan if you want to include the Lobster!!
Does this look like a Country that is starving? This is a country that has food for every category of people
A Huge Bowl of Beef Noodles at a Sichuan Noodle Shop for 16 Yuan all the way to a 349 Yuan per person Buffet at an expensive five star restaurant
Praline Cheesecake
Yield: 16 servings or 20 sample servings
Ingredients
- 16 (2 1/2 inch) Graham cracker squares (about 1 1/4 cups crushed)
- 1/4 cup butter or margarine, melted
- 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
- 16 ounce cream cheese, softened
- 1 (12 ounce) jar caramel ice cream topping, divided
- 1 (8 ounce) container frozen whipped topping, thawed, divided
- 1 (8 ounce) container sour cream
- 1/2 cup pecan halves, divided
- 2 (3.4 ounce) boxes cheesecake flavored instant pudding and pie filling
Instructions
- For crust, place Graham crackers in resealable plastic bag; crush into fine crumbs using Dough and Pizza Roller. Melt butter in Small Micro-Cooker on HIGH 30 seconds; mix in cracker crumbs and brown sugar using Classic Scraper. Press crumb mixture firmly onto bottom of Springform Pan; place in freezer until ready to use.
- In Classic Batter Bowl, microwave cream cheese on HIGH 60 seconds; whisk until smooth using Stainless Steel Whisk. Measure 1/3 cup caramel sauce in Measure-All Cup; set aside for garnish.
- Fill Easy Accent Decorator with 1 cup of the whipped topping; set aside for garnish.
- Add remaining whipped topping, remaining caramel sauce and sour cream to cream cheese; whisk until smooth.
- Reserve 16 pecan halves for garnish. Chop remaining pecans using Food Chopper; add to cream cheese mixture. Add pudding mix and whisk vigorously until mixture is blended and very thick. Immediately spoon filling onto crust; spread evenly using Large Spreader.
- Pipe 16 rosettes, each touching the next, to form a continuous border 1/2 inch from edge of cake. Pour reserved caramel sauce into center over top of cake; spread carefully using Skinny Scraper. Garnish each rosette with pecan half. Using Paring Knife, loosen cake from edge of pan; carefully remove collar.
- Serve using Slice ‘N Serve.
Notes
For a colder serving temperature and easier slicing, chill 30 minutes before removing collar.
Nutrition
Per serving: Calories 370, Total Fat 22g, Saturated Fat 13g, Cholesterol 45mg, Carbohydrate 40g, Sodium 390mg, Fiber 0g
Attribution
Pampered Chef
What do you think of Trump requesting Greenland from Denmark?
Remember this?
That was the husband of a prominent American neocon, Mrs. Anne Applebaum, and a member of an infamous neocon think-thank, the American Enterprise institute, thanking Americans for blowing up a critical piece of Germany’s and Europe’s energy infrastructure in – the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline – mere months after the now outgoing American president announced – and right in front of German chancellor at the time – how he will have the said pipeline blown up should there be a war between Russia and Ukraine.
And how did Germany, its neighboring countries around the Baltic Sea, the entirety of EU and rest of the rules-based world order react to such a blatant act of state-sponsored terrorism – indeed, what could be considered an outright casus belli under international law – against them by the USA? Crickets chirping in the dead of the night! Awkward silence, playing dumb, cover-ups and secretive investigations leading nowhere. “It might be in no one’s interest to find out more!”
mafia-style statements in media, just in case anyone amongst the Western elites didn’t get the memo about omerta imposed upon this whole issue. And of course, Germany’s and Europe’s economies tanking down fast ever since, as the supplies of gas dwindle while the prices of energy and everything else soar.
And I find it darkly amusing how more-less the same people who twiddled their thumbs in silence as Nord Stream 2 went up with a bang right under their noses, are now publically shocked (shocked, I say!) how the incoming American president is announcing he’ll take Greenland away from Denmark, by hook or crook if need be. US threatening, bullying or outright attacking an obedient EU and NATO ally? Nooo, say it ain’t so!!! What’s a poor little Denmark to do now – other than, perhaps, raise its defense spending to 5% as US now demands, to buy more of its old F-16s and send them as military aid to Ukraine?
And speaking of Ukraine, another thing I find darkly amusing is that, again, the very same people who insist that USA has a God-given mission to fight for freedom and democracy on plains of Donbass, or islands of South China sea, or mountains of Afghanistan, or cities of Syria, Libya, Iraq and so forth, are now shocked (shocked, I say!) that USA is interested in management of a huge and strategically important island in its close neighborhood – because, apparently, that’s another white people’s colony, and it would be gauche to deprive them of their imperial legacy. Much as I dislike US imperialism in any of its myriad forms, the fact that Trump is now basically drawing a circle around North American continent and saying “These are our national strategic interests, back off!” seems to me as in improvement over these past 25+ years of Neocon/Neoliberal globalist policy, which insisted that the entire planet Earth is a US-exclusive sphere of influence, and Americans get to intervene in everyone’s else countries and business as they damn please.
This Neocon “Grand strategy” (now there’s a misnomer!) has been nothing but an abject failure, bringing about decades of war, ruin, loss and one crisis after another to both US and world at large; and has now (as was entirely predictable) smashed itself against the Russian wall in eastern Ukraine. So for the time being at least, it looks like US policymakers have decided to cut their losses, re-entrench themselves inside proverbial “Fortress America”, and focus more on issues in their immediate neighborhood, which truth be told really are in their geopolitical interests, much more than whatever happens in Ukraine, Middle East or Taiwan. That us Europeans will bear the full brunt of this “strategic realignment” was likewise entirely predictable outcome, and is wholly our own fault; the idea that we could ride the tiger of American imperialism without it eventually devouring us because we kept quiet and obedient to its every whim is just about as idiotic as it sounds.
I recall an old sketch from that superb 1980s British sitcom, “Yes Prime Minister”, which I think illustrates well the kind of reasoning that lead to this probable shift in American foreign policy; from the old-school Neocon ideologues, to the younger realpolitikers which Trump is presumably now bringing with him.
Prime Minister Hacker: “Humphrey, are you saying that Britain should not support law and justice?”
Cabinet Secretary Humphrey: “No, of course we should, Prime Minister. We just shouldn’t let it affect our foreign policy, that’s all.”
Prime Minister: “We should always fight for the weak against the strong!”
Cabinet Secretary: “Well, then why don’t we send troops to Afghanistan to fight the Russians?”
Prime Minister: “The Russians are too strong.
Have you ever been ignored by the staff in a store because you didn’t look wealthy enough?
Years ago I worked for a company selling high end log homes. There is an area in Victor, Montana that has quite a few manufacturers along the highway. We had an older woman drop in to look over our show home. She drove up in a very old beat up pickup truck and was wearing well worn dirty coveralls. One of my fellow sales people was happy to walk her around and show her our details. It was his turn up. He took her through a detailed run through as she seemed to be enjoying the attention and was asking a lot of detailed questions. She sounded like she did some research, but then again, a lot of dreamers did go into a lot of detail.
We were working for a family operation and were always taught that everyone was important. Our homes were very expensive but also the top of the line in quality. We all understood that not everyone purchased, but they might know someone that wanted to purchase in the future.
The woman said that she really liked the show home and that she was thrilled at my fellow salesman taking the time to help her with her questions. She further mentioned that she was killing time that morning going from manufacturer to manufacturer because she had always dreamed of living in a log home. But everybody else gave her a small pamphlet and pretty much showed her the door out. No one gave her any help except us.
She asked, “Just for fun, what would complete set up for a home like this go for?”.
My fellow worker said, “In the neighborhood of $2.1 to $2.4 million, depending on building location, some options and other details.”
The older woman pulled out a worn checkbook and asked if it would be ok to start with a two million dollar deposit.
You just never know who has money, and it should never matter with how you treat people.
What is the worst thing someone has said to you about yourself?
Last summer my little sister died. I don’t even think that heartbroken can sum up my feelings. I was completely devastated, not only for my sister, but for my nieces and nephews that don’t deserve to grow up without a mother (or a father, since he was killed in a drug deal gone wrong).
I was attending my little sister’s funeral, which no one should ever have to do. Afterwards we had a dinner at my twin sister’s place. A family friend, let’s call her Shirley, was present.
Another young family friend was present, let’s call him Paul.
Shirley came up to me and said “you have traveled the world and done a lot of things in life. But you’re not like Paul. He has traveled the world too. The difference is that he never forgot where he came from!”
I felt judged, humiliated, and frankly, like a piece of shit. I had no mental defenses ready for someone to speak to me like this on the day of my sister’s funeral. Honestly, it fucked me up. I wondered what I had done to receive such judgment. I have always answered the call when my family needed help. It made me think that not only did Shirley feel that way, but secretly, my family did too. Where else would she have gotten that idea from?
On a day when I already felt awful, it made me feel even worse.
Title: Sir Whiskerton and the Mystery of the Cursed Wheelbarrow
Ah, dear reader, welcome to another charmingly absurd installment of my adventures. Today’s tale involves one of the strangest cases I’ve ever encountered. It wasn’t a missing apple, a misplaced bed, or even a quacking sensation—no, this time, it was a wheelbarrow. A seemingly ordinary, rickety old wheelbarrow. But let me assure you, there was nothing ordinary about it. It appeared in the most improbable places at the most improbable times, causing quite the ruckus on the farm. What followed was a mystery that tested my patience, my deductive skills, and, at one point, my ability to climb a roof. Prepare yourself for the hilarity-filled tale of The Mystery of the Cursed Wheelbarrow.
The First Sighting
It all began one misty morning as I was making my usual rounds. The sun was just beginning to rise, casting a golden glow over the barnyard, and everything seemed peaceful. That was, until I heard the unmistakable sound of clucking in distress.
“Help! Oh, someone help!” Doris the hen squawked.
“Help! There’s something outside the coop!” Harriet clucked.
“Outside! Oh, it’s dreadful!” Lillian screeched.
“Dreadful! I can’t bear it!” Doris wailed.
I sighed and padded over to the chicken coop, where the hens were huddled together, their feathers ruffled.
“What is it this time, ladies?” I asked, my tail flicking impatiently.
“It’s… it’s… that!” Doris said, pointing a trembling wing toward the fence.
I turned to look and saw… a wheelbarrow. An old, rusty wheelbarrow, leaning casually against the fence as if it had been there for years.
“That?” I said, raising an eyebrow. “It’s just a wheelbarrow.”
“Just a wheelbarrow?! Oh, how naïve!” Doris squawked.
“Naïve! But what is it doing there?!” Harriet clucked.
“There! Oh, I can’t bear it!” Lillian cried.
I sighed. “It’s probably just the farmer. He must have left it there.”
“But it wasn’t there last night!” Doris insisted. “And none of us saw him move it!”
“Move it! Oh, it’s cursed!” Harriet clucked.
“Cursed! Oh, I can’t bear the thought!” Lillian screeched.
“Cursed? Really?” I said, rolling my eyes. “Ladies, it’s a wheelbarrow, not a ghost. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have more important matters to attend to.”
Little did I know, the wheelbarrow was just getting started.
The Second Sighting
Later that day, I decided to visit Porkchop the pig, who was lounging happily near his favorite mud puddle.
“Morning, Whiskerton,” Porkchop said, munching on an apple. “What brings you out here?”
“Just checking in,” I said. “The hens are in a tizzy over some wheelbarrow they think is cursed.”
“Oh, that thing?” Porkchop said, chuckling. “Yeah, I saw it this morning by the coop. Weird, though—it’s in the barn now.”
“The barn?” I said, my ears perking up. “Are you sure?”
“Sure as mud,” Porkchop said, pointing toward the barn.
Curious, I made my way to the barn. Sure enough, there it was: the same rusty old wheelbarrow, now sitting in the middle of the barn as if it owned the place.
“Hmm,” I said, circling the wheelbarrow. “Strange. Very strange.”
The Plot Thickens
Word of the “cursed” wheelbarrow spread across the farm like wildfire. By the following morning, everyone was talking about it.
“Did you hear?!” Doris squawked. “The wheelbarrow showed up near the farmhouse last night!”
“Near the farmhouse! Oh, how terrifying!” Harriet clucked.
“Terrifying! I can’t bear it!” Lillian screeched.
Even Rufus the dog was spooked. “I saw it too,” he said, his tail tucked between his legs. “One minute it wasn’t there, and the next minute—bam! Right by the kitchen door.”
“Interesting,” I said, stroking my whiskers. “It seems the wheelbarrow has a mind of its own.”
“Maybe it’s haunted,” Rufus said, shivering.
“Haunted? Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “There’s a logical explanation for this. There has to be.”
The Rooftop Revelation
The mystery reached its peak (quite literally) the next morning when we woke up to find the wheelbarrow… on the roof of the barn.
“Yes, you heard me correctly, dear reader. The roof. Of the barn. A place no wheelbarrow has any business being.”
“How did it get up there?!” Doris squawked.
“Up there! Oh, it’s definitely cursed!” Harriet clucked.
“Cursed! I can’t bear it!” Lillian screeched.
“Enough!” I said, my patience wearing thin. “This has gone too far. I am going to solve this mystery once and for all.”
With the help of Rufus, Porkchop, and a very long ladder, I climbed up to the roof to inspect the wheelbarrow. As I examined it, a faint scent caught my attention: straw. Fresh straw.
“Straw?” I muttered to myself. “Interesting.”
The Culprit Revealed
I followed the scent of straw down from the roof and into the loft, where I found… Ferdinand the duck, lounging among the hay and looking far too pleased with himself.
“Ferdinand,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “Do you know anything about the wheelbarrow?”
“Quack, quack! Who, me?” Ferdinand said, feigning innocence. “Why would I know anything about that old thing?”
“Because,” I said, pointing to the pulley system hanging from the loft, “it seems someone’s been using this to hoist the wheelbarrow into strange places. Care to explain?”
Ferdinand sighed dramatically. “Oh, fine. You caught me. But can you blame me? I was just trying to spice things up around here. This farm needed a little excitement!”
“Excitement?!” Doris squawked. “Oh, how dreadful!”
“Dreadful! But also clever!” Harriet clucked.
“Clever! I can’t bear it!” Lillian screeched.
The Moral of the Story
In the end, Ferdinand apologized for his antics, and the wheelbarrow was returned to its rightful place in the shed. The farm returned to its usual peaceful rhythm, though Ferdinand’s “cursed” wheelbarrow prank became the stuff of farmyard legend.
The moral of the story, dear reader, is this: sometimes, the strangest mysteries have the simplest explanations. And while a little mischief can be fun, it’s important to remember that not everyone enjoys surprises—especially when they involve rooftops and wheelbarrows.
As for me? I’ve since added “prank detection” to my list of skills. Until next time, dear reader.
The End.
What is life like for an average Chinese person in modern China?
I’m a normal person. This year, my family welcomed a new baby, and the total cost of childbirth was about 12,000 yuan. We chose some additional paid services, but after insurance reimbursement, we paid 3,000 yuan.
My wife and mother stayed at home to take care of the children. In Beijing, we rented a two-bedroom apartment for 6,000 yuan a month.
The baby is mixed fed, consuming two cans of formula a month, which costs about 800 yuan.
I bought a house in my hometown, now the monthly mortgage is 1800 yuan (before 2300 yuan, now the interest rate has dropped).
There is a wholesale market near our home, 120 yuan of food ingredients can sustain my mother and wife for a week, so the monthly food cost is about 500 yuan.
My company provides free dinner, while breakfast and lunch together cost about 30 yuan a day. I also smoke. In general, my personal expenses are around 1200 yuan per month.
Electricity is $200 a month and water is $100 a month.
We estimate other miscellaneous expenses at 1000 yuan per month.
Total annual cost: (6000 + 800 + 1800 + 500 + 1200 + 1000)* 12 = 140,400 yuan. Our expenses are quite high. My wife can’t work now and only receives about 2,000 yuan a month in unemployment insurance. As a result, our year-end savings will be relatively low over the next few years.
What is the norm for husbands living with their wives?
FUN FACT: (not really) guys that leave the toilet seat up after they go pee, tend to be married the longest. This is based off a statement of a Quora user (always factual) that said he did and he’s been married a long time.
Now that I got your attention, about me. I’ve been married for 19 years and have two school aged boys. My wife stays home has always stayed home with them. Since I’m a morning person, I wake up at 3:20 M-F, drink tea before I start making the kids breakfast and lunch. Once done, then I eat. When my wife wakes up, I’ll have made her a cup of coffee. I do the dishes and clean the kitchen when I’m done. I’ll take both kids to school.
We both clean the house
I tried to do the laundry but got fired from that.
I tried putting away the laundry but got fired from that.
In summary, be the each others crutch, however that means to you. For example, yesterday my wife was upstairs tired and I was downstairs also tired but I knew she was hungry so I made her a sandwich and brought it up so she didn’t have to go downstairs. I’m amazed that we’ve been together for so long when some of our friends and even people here in this subdivision have gotten divorced.
Do you guys hate black people?
I wouldn’t say I “hate” black people. However, after working at jobs trying to service high percentages and numbers of blacks, I’m in no rush to be friends with them, either. I see nothing wrong with “segregation,” not necessarily forced segregation as much as “de facto” segregation. When I worked with blacks as coworkers and the population I served, I felt as though I was walking thru a minefield. When one walks thru a minefield, there’s no guarantee they’ll step on a land mine. However, those mines are still there. With large numbers of blacks, I didn’t know if I was gonna have a conversation with an average person like myself and most people, who have goals, bills to pay, etc, or if I was gonna have a conversation with a person with a chip on their shoulder. A person who lived in the past. The recent past, since archaeological discoveries of human existence goes back at least 2, 024 years. That past being slavery in the United States. The attitude that many blacks have is that because they’re ancestors came over here in chains, and that I owe, or other whites, owe them is pathetically ridiculous. Should I expect business owners to pay me reparations since my grandfather did back breaking labor loading and unloading freight from ships that were owned by large companies? I think not.
So, as a result of the guessing game, and I don’t play guessing games with people, I really have no desire to be around blacks. That doesn’t mean that I hate ALL black people It means that I wonder if they’re the ones who are prejudiced and they’re gonna give me an attitude or worse. I’ve had blacks attempt to rob me, only to back off because they stopped and wonder if I was an undercover cop or just some crazy mother #$#er, or both. I’ve also met blacks who were as nice as anyone I’ve ever met. However, that’s a 50/50 chance of the person being decent. In addition, if I point out that a black person has done something wrong, I get accused of being racist by a person who is very prejudiced, themselves. So, why live with that inconsistent element if I don’t want or need it.
I wouldn’t want to be stuck in the middle of the Russian-Ukraine War, or any war for that matter. That doesn’t mean that I hate all Russians and Ukrainians. It just means it’s a situation that I’d rather live without.
As I get closer to the age of 60, and having enjoyed most of my early retirement, I have no objection with my life being relatively uneventful, with some surprises here and there. And I’d rather not live or be around a population that claims to be oppressed and should receive special treatment while receiving free housing, food and medical care, and many even driving nice cars. In addition to getting an attitude from such persons, or worse, I really have no desire to be around such situations and people.
After my car broke down, and I was traveling on that particular city’s buses, I was getting some attitude from a black male who was probably no older than 25. I was about 57 at the time and used a cane, after knee surgery, 1/2 the time. For no reason whatsoever, this younger man was Hell bent on being completely disrespectful with me. They’re not lying, when there’s the realistic image of young criminals robbing old ladies. With my knee in that situation, and being 55 plus years old, I was just as easy a target for a criminal as an old lady might be. So, no, if there is the chance of me coming across ONE person like that, than I’d rather not live among such people, if they can described as people. Enough people within my race are assholes. At least if I lose my patience and temper with someone within my own race, I won’t be accused of being a racist.
So, no I don’t hate all blacks. I simply have no desire to live with them or to be around them…
Change the Channel…
American TikTok Refugees Joining Chinese Social Media App REDnote
Virginia Giuffre, the woman who was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein when she was a child and raped by rich and powerful men who have never been brought to justice, has died.
Giuffre predicted her own death weeks ago when the intelligence agent running her Instagram announced she was in a car crash and had days to live, thanks to kidney failure. When the internet said they’d heard this story before, another cause of death was chosen: suicide.
Prince Andrew is delighted that a woman he has never met has generously left him £12 million in his will. In a bizarre coincidence, Giuffre was one of 250 victims of Andrew’s best friend, Jeffrey Epstein.
If you’ve forgotten, Epstein was the sex trafficker who switched off the cameras in his prison before taking his own life and getting his body whisked away by unknown individuals in a manner which defied protocol and was non-suspicious.
Epstein’s relationship to Mossad had nothing to do with his “suicide”. The people named in Epstein’s little black book definitely weren’t massively relieved. Just know that if you link Epstein and Giuffre with Prince Andrew, you will be sent to the Tower of London.
Predictably, the internet is already rife with conspiracy theories. One popular theory is that Giuffre did not commit suicide and was, in fact, whisked away to a tropical island to live out her days with Princess Diana.
The conspiracy theorists are pointing to a social media post where Giuffre insisted she was not suicidal, and that if she was ever found dead, it was not suicide. Honestly, these conspiracy theorists will put two and two together and make 12.
A spokesperson for the royal family said: “Prince Andrew is saddened by Giuffre’s death, but confident her suicide means no more witnesses will dare come forward”. I trust you find this satisfactory and agree there is definitely nothing to see here. You can get on with your day now x
Posted by: Peter b | Apr 26 2025 15:55 utc | 1