My mother had Tupperware.

I think that every mother in the 1950s and 1960s had Tupperware. In fact, they had these get-togethers that they called “Tupperware parties”.

And there they would play Stepford Wives and talk about the products.

It was a “thing” that apparently all the mothers did back in the day. Now long forgotten, this event or fad was a staple at that time in our lives and it affected everyone. And certainly affected me.

So I must ask…

… [1] what “things” that you all experience today, will be forgotten but will [2] produce lasting impressions on the youth?

Today…

What happens if America wakes up one morning and has no other countries friendship?

It’s Lord Palmerston or someone else who once said, “Countries don’t have friends or enemies, only interests.”

As much as I hate Trump’s moronic foreign policies, the man had behaved very much in line with how America had conducted itself since WWII. America has always been a bully. The only difference is that Trump just doesn’t bother with the pretenses of civility anymore. Do you really think South American countries are our friends? No. America had staged coups, disrupted their government, and forced them to structure their entire economy on exporting one or two natural resources to us, so they would have no choice but to be economically dependent on America.

And if that doesn’t work, America will fabricate some weapon of mass destruction, invade a country, and start a decade-long war to force American interests on countries.

So think about your typical street gang. They send their members to a bodega and say, “Hey, your store looks nice, it would be bad if someone smashes it, you know.” And they started smashing the bodega. After they were done, they came to the store owner and said, “How about you pay me 10% of your income, so we’ll make sure your store doesn’t get smashed again? Also from now on, we control all your cigarette sales, you buy from our sources, and we share the profit, eh? good business for everyone.”

America doesn’t protect the world; it runs a global protection racket. All those overseas military bases and fleets roaming the seven seas are not to preserve world peace. They are to protect and advance American interests. And no, those two things are not the same.

If you think “the only way for the world to have peace is to uphold American dominance and cultural hegemony,” there lies the problem. America does not want friends, or partners, or allies. America wants subordinants.

That had never changed since the colonial era.

Does America ever respect Canada, the UK, France, Germany, or any of her supposed allies in Europe or the rest of the world? LOL. Honestly, I think the only country that ever received a shred of grudging respect from America is the USSR.

Why would America respect anyone? America has enough nuclear warheads to destroy every single country in the fucking world.

So what happens if America wakes up in the morning and has no friendship with other countries?

Nothing. We’ve been waking up every morning without a single friend in the world for the past century or so. You just now see it. It’ll be fine. Nobody will dare have an open confrontation with America. America has the biggest economy in the world, and it has the biggest army in the world, and running the biggest protection racket in the world.

And you see in real-time how the world caved to a dictator. Trump threatened tariffs with Canada and Mexico, but both countries relented despite initial strong posturing. You could argue that Trump is too dumb to realize Canada and Mexico didn’t really make any concessions. They simply repackaged what they had already promised Biden and fed it to Trump. But they relented all the same.

J.D. Vance made a speech at the European Union security conference. I’m pretty sure after some panicked side conversations, European leaders realized how fucked they are, living under the “protect” of America. Zelenskyy called for a European army. Too late for that. A European army? With what money? With what people? Fighting against both Russia and the US? LOL… no.

We are fucked, in the US. You guys are also fucked. We’re all fucked because you thought the US is your ally.

The US does not have friends or allies.

Have you ever stopped along the road to pick up a lost item lying in the ditch? What was it?

On my way to church one Sunday I noticed a nice backpack alongside the street. Upon inspection, I found a nice PC, personal papers including a wallet with ID and quite a bit of cash, a passport and other personal items. The only local ( USA) phone number I could find was somewhere in California. I called that number and left a message, letting them know what was going on and leaving my number. We then continued on to church with me constantly

checking my phone. About an hour later I got a call from a guy (kid) who said he had lost his backpack and his relative had forwarded my message to him. I told him we’d be out of church soon and give me the address, I’d drop it by. When I delivered it to him, he was so thankful that everything was still there. He was just ending his visit to America staying with his cousin and was heading out on a road trip to the Grand Tetons, in Wyoming. Hopefully he had a great rest of his trip.

Had I not heard from someone by the end of service I was planning on dropping it by the local police station, as that would be the most logical place for someone to contact.

I joked he’s still a virgin at 35 in front of everyone, he got his revenge days later

Jesus H Christ. What a story!

https://youtu.be/LEtdk_qYieQ

What is the most favorite sport of Chinese people?

Favorite? There’s many ways to derive happiness out of a game, so this is a very subjective question. The sport pretty much everyone has played is ping pong, but these days you will find more young people at the basketball courts than at the ping pong tables (maybe they are more noticeable simply because basketballs are noisier on impact). Each of the general age groups have their own preferred sports, whether we are talking about the square dancing/qigong of people at the retirement line, or the people watching of the wrinkled old ones who have nothing better to do at the neighborhood gate. We might be stretching the definition of sport here, but quite frankly I wouldn’t want to put an 80 year old into a physically intensive match, so the elders win this one by default.

During the Olympics, the favorite sport of the Chinese people is whatever is winning all the gold medals. Diving is in particular quite seasonal. Football has always been there in the background as a heavily watched sport, but the consistent awfulness of men’s football continues to keep this one below basketball. The other big league sports such as American football, baseball, or cricket are terribly niche, which says a lot about the lack of Anglosphere invasion. Winter sports are even more niche, even if most of China experiences freezing winters; if you are that far north, you are more liable to pick up something related to horses or wrestling.

If you ask me though, there is one sport that seems to jump all the generational and geographic barriers.

I’m sure you can find a healthy quantity of Chinese who will treat mahjong as a sport.

Thanks for the A2A!

English Beef Pot Pie

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

Filling

2 pounds beef round steak, cut into 1 inch cubes
3 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
2 carrots, pared and sliced
3 potatoes, peeled and sliced
1 large onion, thinly sliced
1 (16 ounce) can whole tomatoes

Biscuit Topping

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 cup shortening
1/4 cup milk

Instructions

Filling

Place steak cubes in slow cooker.
Combine flour, salt and pepper, toss with steak to coat thoroughly.
Stir in remaining ingredients except Biscuit Topping and mix thoroughly.
Cover and cook on LOW for 7 to 10 hours.
One hour before serving, remove meat and vegetables from slow cooker and pour into shallow 2 1/2 quart baking dish.
Heat oven to 425 degrees F. Cover meat mixture with Biscuit Topping. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes.

Biscuit Topping

Mix dry ingredients. Cut in shortening until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Add milk all at one time; stir well. Pat out on floured board; roll out to cover baking dish.

Does Google have what it takes to hold the AI lead over China’s DeepSeek? What lessons can Google glean from DeepSeek’s success as the company trains future models?

Recently, many media have reported that OpenAI’s reasoning models, such as o1 and o3-mini-high, began to think in Chinese when outputting thought chains. At first, everyone thought that this phenomenon only occurred when questions were asked in Chinese, but after using it more, it was found that even when questions were asked in English or other languages, the model used Chinese in the reasoning process, and the user did not intervene in this process at all.

The thinking logic of OpenAI o1 is as follows: after receiving a question, it first translates part of the content of the question into Chinese, processes it in Chinese, and then translates the content into English and outputs it after reaching a conclusion.

Therefore, many people suspected that OpenAI secretly used DeepSeek’s database, causing its own thinking logic to be influenced by Chinese. But this incident did not happen recently.

Recently, the University of Alberta in the United States gave its own research conclusion:

The model does not really “understand” language. All languages are symbol sequences to it.

The choice of Chinese is probably because Chinese is more efficient than other language tasks in performing logical reasoning tasks.

Chinese numbers have only one syllable per character and are more efficient in mathematical reasoning.

In terms of textual expression, Chinese also has the shortest logical chain. It is also the most efficient in generating articles.

In addition, Chinese has a huge advantage that other languages do not have, that is, semantic connection.

Let’s take the English word 羊 as an example. The English word for 羊 is ‘sheep’, the English word for 羊肉 is ‘mutton’, and the English word for 羔羊 is ‘lamb’. There is basically no connection between the three words.

However, Chinese is different. ‘羊肉’ means ‘羊身上的肉’, and ‘羔羊’ means ‘幼年的羊’.

As the saying goes ‘take the words too literally’, even someone who has not systematically studied Chinese can understand from the word ‘羊’ that ‘羊肉’ and ‘羔羊’ are both derivatives of ‘羊’.

In addition, when facing some new things, English needs to invent new nouns.

Chinese does not need to add new characters! Just use existing Chinese characters to form a new word, and most people can understand it.

This semantic connection can effectively shorten the time AI spends on logical reasoning.

In fact, many expressions in Chinese are very concise. The most typical example is United Nations documents. For the same content, the Chinese version is always the shortest.

In the past, this was considered meaningless, but it is different in the AI era.

The essence of large model training is to compress human knowledge and compress the results into hundreds of billions of weight coefficients.

And now AI large models have the ability to think. They are different from humans. They do not have a natural tendency to their mother tongue. Thinking efficiency is what they value most.

So for AI that regards efficiency as life, the most efficient Chinese is their mother tongue in a sense.

There are enough characters, and they can master Chinese characters to solve any problem. And when they think clearly, the expression is simple and the number of characters is short.

A major advantage of short characters is that AI can think more clearly.

Let’s go back to the original question:

Does Google have the ability to surpass China’s DeepSeek and maintain its leading position in the field of artificial intelligence? No.

Contrary to what everyone imagines, China did not ban Google back then, but Google took the initiative to withdraw from the Chinese market.

Why did Google take the initiative to withdraw from the Chinese market? Because it failed in the competition with Baidu. Google’s Chinese search is not as accurate as Baidu’s Chinese search.

Why is Google’s Chinese search not as accurate as Baidu’s Chinese search? Because Chinese is not the native language of Americans, Google’s Chinese search function is naturally not as good as Baidu, which was developed by the Chinese.

The high-level language used by AI for internal thinking is Chinese characters, because Chinese characters are the most efficient. It is only when it is output that it becomes a foreign language to cater to people with other languages.

When it comes to how to use Chinese, the Chinese are the dominant ones as Chinese is their mother tongue.

Chinese character classification – Wikipedia

Chinese characters are generally logographs , but can be further categorized based on the manner of their creation or derivation. Some characters may be analysed structurally as compounds created from smaller components, while some are not decomposable in this way. A small number of characters originate as pictographs and ideographs , but the vast majority are what are called phono-semantic compounds , which involve an element of pronunciation in their meaning. A traditional six-fold classification scheme was originally popularized in the 2nd century CE, and remained the dominant lens for analysis for almost two millennia, but with the benefit of a greater body of historical evidence, recent scholarship has variously challenged and discarded those categories. In older literature, Chinese characters are often referred to as “ideographs”, inheriting a historical misconception of Egyptian hieroglyphs . [ 1 ] Chinese characters have been used in several different writing systems throughout history. The concept of a writing system includes both the written symbols themselves, called graphemes —which may include characters, numerals, or punctuation—as well as the rules by which they are used to record language. [ 2 ] Chinese characters are logographs , which are graphemes that represent units of meaning in a language. Specifically, characters represent the smallest units of meaning in a language, which are referred to as morphemes . Morphemes in Chinese—and therefore the characters used to write them—are nearly always a single syllable in length. In some special cases, characters may denote non-morphemic syllables as well; due to this, written Chinese is often characterised as morphosyllabic . [ 3 ] [ a ] Logographs may be contrasted with letters in an alphabet , which generally represent phonemes , the distinct units of sound used by speakers of a language. [ 5 ] Despite their origins in picture-writing, Chinese characters are no longer ideographs capable of representing ideas directly; their comprehension relies on the reader’s knowledge of the particular language being written. [ 6 ] The areas where Chinese characters were historically used—sometimes collectively termed the Sinosphere —have a long tradition of lexicography attempting to explain and refine their use; for most of history, analysis revolved around a model first popularized in the 2nd-century Shuowen Jiezi dictionary. [ 7 ] More recent models have analysed the methods used to create characters, how characters are structured, and how they function in a given writing system. [ 8 ] Structural analysis [ edit ] Most characters can be analysed structurally as compounds made of smaller components ( 部件 ; bùjiàn ), which are often independent characters in their own right, adjusted to occupy a given position in the compound. [ 9 ] Components within a character may serve a specific function: phonetic components provide a hint for the character’s pronunciation, and semantic components indicate so

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classification

After we were done being intimate, i nervously confessed my mistake from the night before but then..

https://youtu.be/eT2_3o3Lb30

What is the most satisfying passive-aggressive thing you have ever done to a really mean or rude person?

Very similar. Years ago, I needed a new vehicle for my work and ranch and went with friends to their dealership, Chevy. They insisted I needed an S10 when I needed a full sized truck that could haul my 4 horse trailer or a half ton of hay. They didn’t have what I needed. My friend’s hubby pointed at a truck he had been looking at and the salesman said “For you?”, “No, for her?”, ”Sorry already sold. We left and went to the Ford dealership across the street. They tried the same trick, wanting to sell me a Ranger. I told the salesman I needed a work truck, not a toy and he insisted the gutless 4 cylinder Ranger would pull my 4 horse trailer. We went home and I never even test drove a truck. On Monday, I went to a different town the the Dodge dealership and the salesman said they had several trucks that would fit my needs and I drove 2 and immediately decided on one. Went in, signed all the papers and gave them a check for the full amount. The next day, I took my mom for a ride and we swung into both the Chevy and Ford places and I spotted each salesman. When one came out, I said “Too bad you didn’t realize I was paying cash and you lost you commission. I’ll be going back to the same place when I need a new truck”. Bought 3 more from them before moving out of the area. The second salesman actually teared up when he saw me in my Ram. Best part was 3 months later when the Chevy salesman saw me hauling my 4 horse trailer with a full load and I grinned and waved at him.

74% of Canada exports come to America. So they depend 74% on us for their survival as a country. If we stopped buying anything from Canada, 74% of their economy would be gone. They are living off our goodwill. Why do they not join America?

Your assertion is wrong. And now I mean to show you why it’s wrong.

Let’s say we have a country called “Coldland”. Its economy is quite good – its GDP is $100 billion per annum. $1 billion of that comes from exports, meaning that $99 billion of its GDP comes from home-grown industry and sales within Coldland itself.

Now imagine that 74% of Coldland’s exports are to the USA. That would amount to $740 million. Compared to its GDP as a whole, that’s 0.74% of its GDP.

And now imagine the USA stops importing from Coldland. Coldland would lose just $740 million worth of its GDP (0.74%). Not the 74% of its GDP, as you will now notice. Your claim that 74% of Coldland’s economy would be gone is clearly wrong – out by two orders of magnitude. Indeed, I doubt that Coldland would even notice that you stopped buying from it.

Canada is not living off your (USA’s) good will. You’d like to think that’s the case, but it ain’t.

Why don’t Canada join America? Because they’re already part of [North] America. And they certainly don’t want to be part of the USA. Why would they? There’s no benefit to them at all.

Back in your box, MAGAt.

EDIT: Yes, I know that Canada’s exports make up more than 1% of its GDP. Yes, I know that the example given above isn’t representative of Canada in reality. That’s why I chose a mythical country called Coldland (note – it’s not Canada). And it’s also why I deliberately chose to provide an example in which that mythical country is one where only a very small amount of its GDP comes from exports. It’s called “exaggeration for effect” (aka hyperbole).

You might note that I also deliberately chose a simple round number for the total GDP of Coldland.

It’s far easier to make a point by using such a simplified and exaggerated example, especially to someone who clearly has no understanding of how economies work, and whose grasp of mathematics is … er … rudimentary at best.

The West’s Three Blind Spots when Dealing with China’s Tech – Pascal Coppens, China Expert

How are Democrats enjoying Elon Musk taking over?

It’s great!!

I always wondered what it would be like living in a fascist dictatorship, and now I’m finding out.

As a student of history who is also Jewish, I have found it infinitely fascinating and disturbing how the citizens of the most civilized country on earth (Germany 1933) could allow a madman to bring their country to ruin in just a few short years, not to mention igniting a world war, and not do anything to stop him.

I discovered that by the time people found out who and what he really was, it was too late.

He had seized total control of all government agencies, then made any criticism of him illegal.

His supporters didn’t care that he was perpetuating horrible actions against other Germans, they were “different” and were destroying the country, so they deserved whatever was happening to them. The ones who opposed him were afraid to speak up.

And the same exact thing is happening here, and I have a front row seat for it!!

In 1933, Germany had

Ein Volk

Ein Reich

Ein Fuhrer

In 2025, America has

Rin Volk

Ein Reich

Ein Trump

Collision

Submitted into Contest #210 in response to: Set your story after aliens have officially arrived on Earth.… view prompt

Amanda Vivilacqua

This story contains themes or mentions of physical violence, gore, or abuse.

Dysus drove west, obeying the speed limit, and he trembled as he tried to light his seventh cigarette of the morning. His lips tingled around the filter. He smelled his own stale breath, captured in the palm he cupped around the lighter’s weak flame. He swallowed against the sticky thudding of the pulse that beat too high in his throat.

The cigarette caught the flame and smoldered. Dysus cracked his window, and the smoke that drifted up to burn his eyes was sucked away into the cold morning. He coasted under yet another green light. He’d encountered only green lights; insistent go, go, go signals from the universe.

Heavy slugs crept in his bowels. He sucked greedily at his cigarette, crossing his eyes to watch the ember glow. Flecks of ash dusted his lap.

Another green light. Dysus flicked a quick gaze to the dashboard clock, cursing his good luck, slowing down, willing the minutes to move.

He was running early for his appointment, so many factors having contributed to the unwelcome streamlining of his journey. He still hadn’t gotten used to the lack of traffic on the Rue – everyone took the new Magway now. The perimeter gates of his settlebloc had been open already, and he hadn’t needed to wait for security to buzz him through. The sobriety checkpoint had been unmanned. His trip had taken ten minutes fewer than he’d planned.

Another green light. The car’s rusted axle scraped a deep pothole in the middle of the intersection. Dysus thought about pulling over to kill time, but he knew if he stopped the car he would not be able to start it again.

He inhaled a huge, head-spinning drag of smoke and opened the window a bit more. His hand shook as he poked the tip of the cigarette out the window to tap its growing column of ash onto the street.

A nervous tremor rippled through him, and the stick fell from his nicotine-stained fingers. He fumbled instinctively, knocking his knuckles against the glass, and the drafting air pressure caught the cigarette and blew it back at him.

He didn’t see where it landed. The car was full of kindling: fast food wrappers flammable with grease, sun-brittled paper, dirty clothes. He imagined the backseat catching fire and tried to reach behind him, patting, feeling for the errant ember, grimacing at the green light visible above the next empty intersection.

Dysus felt a huge, hot bug bite his left elbow and reacted by slamming his foot against the gas pedal. He yelped and smacked the sleeve his cigarette had fallen into. It burned as he ground it into his skin. The car veered. He shook his sleeve out, flinging the still-smoldering cigarette out of his cuff and made to stamp it out on the floor mat, wincing and checking the time and still accelerating under the last green light, and when the flustered panic retreated beneath his original anxiety he finally looked back at the road just in time to watch a man disappear under the front of his car.

He braked, far too late, long after being gently jostled by two soft thumps below him.

Dysus never got to find out if he possessed enough cowardice to pull off a hit and run.

The pitchy squeal of badly maintained brakes and the crash of chassis on curb alerted supplicants of the Tor Vah’Gaar. They streamed out of their temple to investigate, their white ceremonial robes billowing in the morning wind.

Dysus sat still, his hands locked in grip around the wheel as if he meant to strangle it. He wished he could let go and light a cigarette, but that would mean he’d next have to open the door, step into the morning, and face the red squeezed-tube of a body on the road behind him. Would it be wet, steaming in the frigid air? Was his car heavy enough to squelch organs from orifice, or would he find less messy blunt force trauma? He pictured dirty tire tracks on a crushed throat. Might the man still be alive?

It was that thought that loosened his grip and allowed him to move, sludgy slow, on shock-cocooning autopilot. He reached for his cigarettes and felt a flood of relief when he found that two smokes remained in the worry-crumpled package. His hands were steady when he lit one.

He got out of the car and watched the white robes flock to the stillness in the street.

A woman stood over the body and cried, while another tapped off a message on her handheld. A man knelt, the pristine hem of his robe drawing road dust up through fabric capillaries. He reached for the body with tentative, gentle fingers.

They all saw the gun at the same time.

It had been knocked several feet from the dead man. A scratched-up bootleg particle cannon. Tech from an old empire, illegal and devastating, primed and still pointing at the temple of Tor Vah’Gaar. Dysus thought ridiculously of that old game, spin the bottle.

He sat on the curb and smoked, not wanting to bother the Vah’Gaarans with his stink, not wanting to yellow their robes with his residue. Sirens wailed, melancholy and distant, approaching via the Magway.

The crying woman ran back toward the temple, calling a name in an alien language as she flitted inside. “Baaraana!”

Realization of their narrowly-escaped victimhood widened the eyes of the Vah’Gaarans on the street. Shock ran through them like a contagion, vulnerability dawning like a weak sunrise. They stepped away from the body, their eyes on the gun as if it might come to life and shoot them on its own.

More Vah’Gaarans exited the temple, joining the congregation that formed in the road, keeping a safe distance from the downed would-be gunman. They discussed in hushed voices, asked shrill questions of each other, and gradually their attentions diverted to the silent, smoking man sitting on the curb by his ruined car.

The man with the dirty hem approached Dysus and crouched.

“Sir,” the Vah’Gaaran said. “Sir, are you alright? Are you injured?”

Dysus blew smoke away from the man’s intent, searching face. “Don’t think so.”

“Don’t think you’re alright, or don’t think you’re injured?”

Dysus blinked. “Both, I guess.” He wanted to laugh. He’d killed a man. He would not be making his appointment.

“He saved us!” A woman rushed over, the one with her handheld out, the one who’d presumably summoned the emergency vehicles that were now speeding down the Magway’s off-ramp onto the Rue. Blue and red lights spun halos in the morning fog around them. Sirens muffled the increasingly frantic voices of the Vah’Gaarans as their attentions closed in on Dysus.

He stubbed his cigarette out on the concrete and pocketed the butt. He didn’t want to litter in front of these pristine, holy people. Saviors have to keep up appearances, he thought.

Admiration was foreign to Dysus and at first he mistook it for suspicion.

When the responding officers were finally able to pry him away from the Vah’Gaarans, the media, and the tangle of emergency vehicles, they took him to the police station and parked him in an interrogation room. They gave him a cup of hot chocolate. They shook his hand. Short, neatly groomed Officer Kayata led him outside to smoke when he requested it, though she wrinkled her nose while she waited for him to finish.

He caught a glint at her throat, noticing the stylized Tor Vah’Gaaran saucer pendant she wore on a delicate chain. An icon of worship, veneration of the alien hands that cradled Earth, mending it from its human-inflicted wounds.

“You should really stop that,” she said, squinting her eyes against the smoke as he exhaled. “It stinks.”

They’re my lungs and I’ll ruin them if I want to, he thought. He narrowed his eyes at her pendant. Not that you’d understand.

Officer Kayata took a call on her handheld, walking a few yards away as Dysus blew smoke into the still-cold early afternoon sky.

“This is about to get a lot bigger,” she warned him as she strode back to him, her call concluded. “A Tor Vah’Gaar ambassador was supposed to be at that temple today.” She maintained her professional demeanor, but Dysus didn’t miss the sparkling hint of tears at the corners of her eyes.

Back in the interrogation room, Dysus sat on his hands to both hide their trembling and warm them up. Officer Kayata brought him another hot chocolate and sat primly in the metal chair across the table from Dysus. Fluorescent lights clicked above, probing and harshly bright, the better to scrutinize you with.

“This is just a formality.” Officer Bosqov, gruff and bushily mustached, shuffled incident reports and witness statements on the metal table. “You’re not in any trouble, we just want to get our facts straight. As you can imagine, the entire Vah’Gaaran community stands behind you. You told him about the ambassador?” Officer Kayata nodded. “They’ve offered their best lawyers but I don’t think you’ll need them. They’ve also set up a donation hotline.”

Dysus clenched his stomach against the tide of bile that threatened to rise. He wanted a cigarette, but his pack was empty. He felt the deprived addict’s headache peeking around the corner, waiting to ambush.

Officer Bosqov’s voice took on a serious tone, and he asked the question Dysus had been dreading.

“Where were you headed when you saw the gunman?”

Dysus swallowed, pausing for a moment too long.

“Going to the doctor. My lungs,” he said, freeing a hand unconsciously to reach for the empty pack of cigarettes in his pocket. He thumped a tightly closed fist on his chest. He thought a cough might be too much, too performative.

“Will your doctor verify that?” Bosqov clicked a pen, made a note.

“I was hoping they’d see me as a walk-in. I was coughing up blood last night.”

“I see,” Bosqov said. He leaned back in his chair, running a hand over his mustache as he regarded Dysus. “Now, I know this might be hard to talk about and you’re probably still in a bit of shock. But I need you to describe what happened again, with all the detail you can remember. Start with when you first saw the man on the street, what caught your attention, and what made you act. Again,” he said, his eyebrows raised with kind concern, “you aren’t in trouble. Fact is, you’re a hero whether you see yourself as one or not yet. You prevented what could have been an absolute massacre. That gun was modded and energized to Gaar and back. You saved a lot of lives. But we need to get everything on record.”

Officer Kayata twisted the Tor Vah’Gaar pendant she wore, her expression thoughtful, thankful. Dysus tried to keep from hyperventilating.

He cleared his throat. He spun his tale. He’d seen a furtive, suspicious man crossing the street, with hunters’ eyes narrowed and predatory, a gun hefted and steady, striding with obvious, murderous intent toward the temple. Dysus told the officers how he’d accelerated without hesitation, careening for the terrorist without fear for his own life, steering to kill and damn the consequences, it was the right thing to do! He had been out of his body, righteous instinct taking over, and all he’d felt was relief when the man’s rampage was aborted under his balding tires.

He’d almost convinced himself the story was true, until he found himself absentmindedly scratching the blister on his left elbow.

Vivette, the Vah’Gaaran PR representative, was a harried woman with two briefcases and a shaved head. She wore glasses and chewed gum like it fueled her, and her frantic productivity agitated and exhausted Dysus. He tried to pay attention to the several trains of thought she conducted.

“Tor’Baaraana will want to join you for some press conferences,” she said, typing a proposed media circuit schedule on a shiny laptop. She checked the official Vah’Gaaran forums. “Four independent congregations set up charity pools to cover any legal expenses. Gifts are coming in from all over the place. Is there any weird stuff about you online that I should know about?”

“I don’t think so,” Dysus said. He sipped tepid coffee and forced himself to take a bite of his rubbery omelet.

Vivette had wanted to meet him at his home, “to make you feel more comfortable, and for privacy”, she’d said, but he suspected she’d really wanted to scope out his situation and avert any potential PR crises before publicly canonizing him into the Vah’Gaaran sainthood. He’d refused, citing embarrassment about his messy bachelor’s apartment. She’d looked at him suspiciously, but had caved and met him at a cafe downtown. Time was of the essence for a story like this, she said. Already his face was plastered across screens and papers, his full name emblazoned in impact font under epithets like ‘The Hero of New Hartford’ and ‘A Savior’s Savior’.

Vivette checked a text message on her handheld, an email on her laptop, a notification on her watch. Information about Dysus assaulted her while he watched, tapping a nicotine-withdrawal beat on the table with his fingertips.

“Oh look, the Massippi branch got you a new car.” She turned the laptop around and showed Dysus a photo of grateful, white-robed zealots smiling next to a state-of-the-art Magcar. Dysus sneered. He hated those identity-stripped husks of bland futurism.

“You don’t like it?” She asked, catching his expression before looking down to respond to another text message.

“If I’d had one of those today, I wouldn’t have been there to run down Corsican.”

Trent Corsican, the other face of the day, the lone terrorist with a grudge against the benevolent aliens and their worshipers. A Regressivist with a raided apartment full of heretical literature and Macgyvered weapons. Dysus couldn’t picture the man’s face as having belonged to the body he’d smeared on the road. The visage and the corpse felt like two different men. Dysus felt like two men as well: the one who’d been anxious about an appointment earlier, and the paragon of righteous bravery he’d become.

He needed to get home. He had to clean his apartment.

“It is a bit ironic, isn’t it. The Tor Vah’Gaar give us MagTech and then you go and save them with that pollution machine relic. Oh, your ‘Reward a Hero’ fund is up to seventeen million credits,” Vivette said with an uncharacteristic awe.

“Wow.”

“I’ll say.” She narrowed her eyes. “How do you feel about joining a Vah’Gaaran chapter? It’s a great organization. And it would look great.”

Dysus clenched his teeth.

“I guess I could do that,” he said, thinking of seventeen million credits. He felt a piece of his principles snap off inside him.

“Great. A conversion might seem pandering if we do it too soon…” She checked her calendar for a good baptism date.

“Okay.” He really needed to get home to clean.

“And you’re going to need to stop smoking.” Vivette gave him a disappointed mother’s face. “It’s terrible optics and it smells awful.”

And it’s bad for me, I know, Dysus thought, and he’d never wanted a cigarette more.

He pictured himself smoking in his new Magcar. The two versions of himself, collided. The rebel and the hypocrite.

Is there anything so sacred as a being’s right to self destruct? Dysus wondered as he finally lit a cigarette. The smoke collected in the dark room, his comforting blanket of reckless autonomy.

Dysus had waited for the MagCab to pull away before unlocking the door of his apartment. He’d wondered how many more times he’d go through that familiar motion; he was now the owner of sixty million credits and could already taste the fresh air of a new settlebloc, a skyscraping penthouse with windows that opened to let in the cleanest clouds.

It was dark, the grimy settlebloc quiet, secured for the night against the scavenger sects. Dysus had slipped inside the apartment already feeling estranged from it, a trespasser, and he’d locked the door behind him quickly. He’d gone straight for his stash of smokes, navigating the clutter without needing to turn on a light.

He sat now on a ratty couch full of cigarette burns. He touched the circle on his elbow. “We match,” he said out loud, and laughed. He thought of the new couch he’d buy. Something soft, pillowy, something not pulled from a dumpster, something he might try to fall asleep on without a lit cigarette between his fingers.

Maybe it would be nice to live in the world the Tor Vah’Gaar race was trying to build.

Dysus exhaled, and he couldn’t see the smoke in the darkness. He never felt the drags as effectively when he couldn’t see the evidence of them; he saw emissions as proof of life. Was a sterile world a lived-in world? He’d believed destruction was inevitable, and more insidious if hidden.

He coughed. It was too dark to see any blood.

Maybe it was good he’d missed his appointment.

He imagined his beautiful, freshly painted penthouse again, then he thought of its opposite: a run-down safe house in a derelict settlebloc across town, sitting empty. He hadn’t had a chance to give the houses’ rusted key to Corsican; it was still nestled in his pocket alongside a pamphlet containing encrypted contact numbers, meeting coordinates, and credit stash codes. He’d lusted after the assassination bounty before, but now it seemed pathetic, an insult. Hardly enough to rise from ashes with.

A getaway driver was supposed to provide a new life, but not for themselves. He wondered if the Tor Vah’Gaar ever felt that way, rerouting a civilization from its path of shit, finding themselves Gods when they finished.

“Sorry, brother-in-cause.” Dysus raised a fresh cigarette in salut. “To new lives.”

He lit the cigarette, wondering if it would be his last, and used the same flame to burn the Regressivist pamphlet.

What’s something you can’t believe you had to explain to another adult?

I was home on leave from the US Navy sitting in my mom’s kitchen with my 13yo sister. Sis was doing homework and asked “who won the civil war”.

I was kinda surprised and said some smart ass remark and tried some history to make her realize who won. She knew none of it. Finally my mom said “well I don’t know either”. I was floored. I finally said “well we’re not whistling Dixie”. That didn’t sit well with mom who said “just tell us the answer”. So I told them and went back to reading the paper.

Watch How the US AI Bubble Is Crashing And Burning

Its becoming a bloodbath.

Energy companies in the West are crashing down too…

As US markets are opening today, this is transforming into a full blown panic:

https://www.zerohedge.com/market-recaps/deepsink-global-markets-crash-cheap-china-ai-panic

How do wealthy people’s eating habits change during famines?

I’d a professor who told me about going through a famine that killed millions.

He’d the tremendous fortune of being born to a well-off family. During the good times, although wealthy, his father and other adult males in the family worked even harder. A great rice harvest took place and he remembered the men in the family scrambling to get anything long-term storage like many forms of pickles, smoked meat, oil and long-term storage grains, at bargain prices. He remembers his father telling a farmer with a big family that this was the time to put away food, the farmer laughed at him, as rice and other food was so cheap. He’d buy nice things instead They also bought firearms, ammunition and fuel for cooking and heating. The professor, as a boy thought it odd that his father did things counter to what the others did. They lived more meagerly during the good times to buy items when cheap, they also put away gold and foreign currency.

When the famine began, prices creeped up then shot up.

The same people who didn’t put away food, were hungry and now accused men like his father and his relatives of hoarding. He reminded them that they were warned but that didn’t matter. His father and the other men, including servants, closed the gates, armed themselves and guarded for thieves and prepared for problems. For what they ate, it included more pickled veg and other items than usual, lower grade buns, noodles, and essentially grains. Thinner than usual slices of meat. Non laying ducks and chickens went as they always did, but then ones not as productive, then fewer and fewer layers. One rooster escaped the pot.

Outside the famine ravaged the countryside. The gate was not opened for MONTHS.

Hungry people are dangerous.

Starving people aren’t.

They finally opened the gates and saw the dead laying in the streets and fields, the few trees still standing were stripped of bark, no birds other than the ones in their compound. Not a cat in sight.

As the Communists were coming, it became time to roll out with food, firearms, ammo, and fuel aboard, gold and gems hidden.

What qualifies you to give advice about jail culture?

I worked in every prison level or jail during my 27 year career. During that time, I worked my way up to supervising other staff, who handled the day to day activities in the prison.

I then went into investigations and that is where things became interesting. I learned to profile inmates, how to identify gang members and worked on hundreds of investigations, from murder, assaults, gang activity or fraud.

Working investigations, talking to the gang and individual “Car” leaders gave me insight to how things worked among the inmates. You hear people talk about “snitching” all the time, but the truth is these guys want things steady so they can make money, so cooperating with staff to keep violence down is as important to them as it is to us.

Additionally, you develope a reputation inside the prison. If inmates see you as fair, keep your word and treat them as individuals they are more inclined to confide in you about what is going on.

American Tiktok Refugees Sharing Their Experience With The RedNote App.

Sir Whiskerton and the Lesson of Mary Hoppins

Ah, dear reader, prepare yourself for another hare-raising adventure in the life of Sir Whiskerton, the farm’s most brilliant (and modest) detective. Today’s tale introduces a new character, a rabbit named Mary Hoppins, who has taken it upon herself to teach the farm’s young ones the ways of life. What follows is a story filled with laughs, chaos, and a moral that will leave you grinning like a bunny who just discovered a carrot patch. So grab your sense of humor and let’s hop into The Lesson of Mary Hoppins.

Mary Hoppins Arrives

It all began on a sunny morning when Sir Whiskerton was enjoying his usual spot on the barn roof, sipping Earl Grey tea with a dash of cream. The peace was shattered by the sound of tiny hooves and paws scurrying across the yard.

“Children, children! Gather round!” a voice called out, crisp and cheerful. Sir Whiskerton peered over the edge of the roof to see a rabbit in a prim little bonnet, holding a parasol in one paw and a chalkboard in the other.

“Who on earth is that?” Sir Whiskerton muttered to himself.

“That,” said Cluckadia the chicken, who had appeared beside him, “is Mary Hoppins. She’s the new teacher for the farm’s young ones. She’s here to teach them the ways of life.”

“The ways of life?” Sir Whiskerton raised an eyebrow. “This ought to be interesting.”

The First Lesson: Manners and Mayhem

Mary Hoppins wasted no time gathering her students—a motley crew of kittens, kids (the goat variety), piglets, and even a few ducklings. She stood before them, her parasol twirling.

“Now, children,” she began, “the first lesson is manners. Manners are the key to a harmonious farm. For example, when you greet someone, you say, ‘Good day!’ not ‘What’s for dinner?’”

The piglets snickered. “What’s for dinner?” one of them oinked.

Mary Hoppins sighed but remained undeterred. “Let’s practice. When I say ‘Good day,’ you say ‘Good day!’ Ready? Good day!”

“Good day!” the children chorused—except for one kitten, who yelled, “Fish!”

Sir Whiskerton, watching from the roof, chuckled. “This is going to be a long day.”

The Second Lesson: Gardening Gone Wrong

Next, Mary Hoppins decided to teach the children about gardening. “A well-tended garden is the pride of any farm,” she declared, leading the group to a patch of soil. “Today, we’ll plant carrots!”

The ducklings quacked excitedly, the piglets dug holes with their snouts, and the kittens batted at the seeds like they were toys. Within minutes, the garden was a disaster.

“No, no, no!” Mary Hoppins cried, waving her parasol. “You plant the seeds in the soil, not on top of the goat!”

Sir Whiskerton, who had come down to investigate the commotion, couldn’t help but laugh. “I think you’ve got your work cut out for you, Miss Hoppins.”

Mary Hoppins shot him a glare. “A little help would be appreciated, Sir Whiskerton.”

The Third Lesson: The Great Escape

For her final lesson, Mary Hoppins decided to teach the children about responsibility. “Each of you will be tasked with watching over a part of the farm,” she said, handing out assignments.

The piglets were put in charge of the mud pit (a job they took very seriously), the ducklings were tasked with guarding the pond, and the kittens were assigned to keep an eye on the milk jug.

Everything seemed to be going well—until the goat kids decided to stage a “Great Escape.” Led by Billy, the most mischievous of the bunch, they chewed through the fence and made a break for the vegetable patch.

“Oh no!” Mary Hoppins cried, chasing after them. “Children, come back!”

Sir Whiskerton, seeing the chaos unfold, sprang into action. Using his detective skills, he herded the kids back to the yard with a well-timed “Moo!” from a nearby cow.

A Happy Ending

With the children safely back in the yard, Mary Hoppins sighed in relief. “Well, that was… eventful.”

Sir Whiskerton smirked. “Teaching is harder than it looks, isn’t it?”

Mary Hoppins nodded. “But it’s also rewarding. Look at them—they’re learning, even if it’s in their own way.”

The moral of the story, dear reader, is this: Teaching is about patience, adaptability, and a good sense of humor. And while the lessons may not always go as planned, the journey is just as important as the destination.

As for Sir Whiskerton? He returned to his sunbeam, content in the knowledge that he had once again saved the day—and spared the farm from further bunny-related chaos.

Until next time, my friends.

The End.

Why is the US shocked and stunned that Chinese artificial intelligence firm ‘DeepSeek’ (at a fraction of the cost) recently leapfrogged the U.S. dominance in AI development ?

People who don’t understand what happened were shocked. Microsoft stock, for example, had just dropped from 443 to 427 at the time this question was asked. As I write this, one day later, people understand better, and MSFT is at 447.

I think it’s a mistake to say that deepseek “leapfrogged the U.S. dominance in AI development.” They claim to have leapfrogged the biggest names in AI in training efficiency, but that’s just one element of AI development.

They are clearly very close to the cutting edge of model performance, but from what I’ve heard so far they are not dramatically better.

We all knew about the claimed reduction in training cost last month when they released Deepseek v3. I’m using the term “claimed” here because there is still some skepticism. I expect that their claims will be mostly validated,* but until a third party replicates their results, we have claims, not proof.

They are not claiming to have a unique capability. They described their techniques, and there is nothing too extraordinary in there – just great engineering and refinement of ideas that have been circulating for some time (training with mixed precision arithmetic, for example).

But it does demonstrate that US firms have been focusing too much on research like “what can we do with massive budgets and data centers full of cutting edge hardware?” And not enough on engineering like “how much more efficient could this process be?”

The big splash this week was mostly that they had something in the same league as OpenAI’s reasoning model. They are a serious competitor to OpenAI, but that is not the same thing as leapfrogging.

Also note that they explained how they achieved that feat as well, using a technique called “distillation” that basically lets you use one model to train another model. It seems likely that they violated OpenAI’s terms of service in doing so, but the cat is out of the bag now.

The biggest issue here is that the leaders in AI development appeared to have a significant advantage (due to their massive capital investment and proprietary models) and now there’s evidence that they don’t.

Nvidia stock sunk on the news too, and presumably that’s because Deepseek claims to have done with $5.5M of GPU time what cost Meta $100M. So that does look like an impending drop in demand for Nvidia’s GPUs.

But I think that is a mistake to look at it that way. Companies that have the budget to spend $100M or more on a training run are still going to spend $100M or more on their training runs. But knowing what we know now, they’re doing to get much more out of those training runs than they did before Deepseek showed how inefficient the old approach has been.

Finally, it’s widely known that the Deepseek model is absurdly biased toward Chinese propaganda. Ask it about the events in Tienanmen Square in 1989, for example, and you’ll get bullshit. If they’re willing to tell those blatant lies, what else is it lying about? AI shouldn’t be trusted in general, and this one should be trusted less than most.

* The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if Deepseek really did use cutting edge hardware imported through grey market channels. It’s possible that the whole thing is a stunt to make export controls appear to be pointless. But I think it’s more likely that they really just focused on efficiency, and it paid off just as well as they claim.

WHY I CREATED THE SPACE, “THE PRISON AND JAIL FORUM – DECADES.” PLEASE READ BEFORE CHECKING OUT THE ANSWERS ON THE SPACE OR IN MY PROFILE!

First, I want to thank all those that have supported the space with their posts, views, and commentary.

I created the space with the goal to gain credibility to launch much loftier goals I have of preventing juvenile delinquents from making the decisions I made and ending up in prison. Incarceration and recidivism rates are way too high in our country. The devastating consequences affect everybody that live here in the United States. The majority of the people in our country that are in prison will be going home someday. I believe that the way our current criminal justice system is set up that the goal of rehabilitation is not being realized. I would like to think if I asked anybody that lived here in the United States if they want a person that is in prison or jail to come out of prison or jail a better person than they were when they went in that their answer would be yes. That is my goal here. That, and preventing them from being in prison in jail in the first place.

The reason that’s DECADES is in the title of the space is because I only solicit contributors that have at least 10 or more years experience in the criminal justice system. I made this decision because I want the answers on the space to be as accurate as possible and come from real experience. You’ll see some posts are from people that do not have 10 or more years in the system because I allow anybody to request to post something, and after reviewing it, I post it if it is appropriate. I solicit contributors that are not only male and female ex-convicts but also police officers, parole officers, correctional officers, probation officers, defense attorneys, prosecutors, judges, human rights advocates/activates,family of incarcerated, and even sex offenders; in the hope the space will not be biased. I encourage those that meet these prerequisites to apply to be a contributor. I also encourage anybody that would like to collaborate with me, with the goal of preventing juvenile delinquents from ending up in prison, to message me.

Also, far too many people are in prison that are innocent in the first place. You can see evidence of this through the fact that more than 300 people have been exonerated and found to be innocent of the crimes that a jury had found them guilty of, due to the development of DNA technology. That is more than 300 people that the sperm or blood, that was found in heinous rape and murder cases, was found not to be the perpetrator’s blood. Imagine all the people on death row right now that don’t have DNA in their case to prove their innocence, many of which will be executed by our government. The average law abiding citizen believes in our criminal justice system; that it is fair and just, that we don’t put innocent people in prison here in the United States. It isn’t until you have a real encounter with the system that you come to realize that it is broken. The jury pool is pulled from voters. Voters believe in the system or they wouldn’t vote. When the accused sits at the defense table, it is only natural for the person serving on the jury to form an opinion, before any anything is ever said, by their appearance. A large percentage of those jurors are automatically biased because they believe in the system and believe policeman wouldn’t arrest someone for nothing, so there’s already a presumption of guilt even though the accused is supposed to be assumed innocent until proven guilty. Public defenders don’t have adequate resources to protect their clients from injustice due to the high cost. The focus is on plea bargaining when the focus should be on coming to the truth. Prosecutors will fight to keep someone in prison even after they have been shown to be innocent from DNA evidence, contrary to their oath office they swore to uphold.

I watched a 2020 special one time where they took mock jurors and held jury trials. They used the same witnesses, asked the same questions, the same prosecutors, the same defense attorneys, with the only different factor being the person sitting at the defense table. A clean cut individual was often found not guilty, whereas someone who did not have the quintessential look of an innocent person was found guilty. I also watched another 20/20 special where they would have someone, with the stores permission, go into to a store, snatch something and run out the door. Then they would show mugshots to the people in the store that were shopping at the time. People would pick photos in the mugshot lineups and say that that was the person they saw snatch the item that was snatched and it wasn’t even the person. This is literally within 20 minutes of seeing the person that snatched the item. Many of these people said they were certain it was the person when it was not. This also shows how eye witness testimony, which is often taken as fact by jurors is flawed. I hope if you’re reading this, and you serve on a jury, that you will remember this blog and it will lead you to have an unbiased opinion of the accused and will prevent innocent people from going to prison.

I think of all the tens of thousands of juveniles in the system today. I believe if someone just took an interest, an actual sincere one on one interest, in each and every one of them, that a significant percentage of them will never make the choices that will ultimately land them in prison one day.

Incarcerating people has a high social and financial cost to our society and is devastating. Our inner cities are being destroyed. Children are growing up without their fathers. People are leaving prison angry, lost, and worse off than when they went in. Many don’t realize that it is not the prisoner alone that is serving the prison sentence but also their children, their parents, and other loved ones that count each and every day with them, suffering , to the day of their release only to be disappointed to find many of them broken and damaged, instead of rehabilitated. Many, myself included, as well as correctional officers, and others that work in the prison, suffer from PTSD due to the violence. Upon release from prison I thought I was going insane until I found out that everybody that did a lengthy period of time like me suffered from the same symptoms and that it was a normal result and consequence of the environment I lived in. There’s actually a mental health label for it called Post Incarceration Syndrome (PICS). PICS, not only affects the person that is suffering from it but all those in society that that person comes into contact with due to the behavior they exhibit is a direct result.

Post Incarceration Syndrome (PICS)

Post Incarceration Syndrome (PICS) Post Incarceration Syndrome (PICS) is a disorder that affects many currently incarcerated and recently released prisoners and is caused by being subjected to prolonged incarceration in environments of punishment with few opportunities for education, job training, or rehabilitation. While all incarcerated people are at risk of this disorder, the symptoms are…

https://barnoneidaho.org/resources/post-incarceration-syndrome/?amp=1

I’m happy to announce that in just 5 short weeks of the creation of the space there are more than 5 million views and 538 folllowers. Again, thank you all for your support!

Update

Hello everyone. Thank you for supporting my space. In the next 72 hours I will be making a 10 month commitment to a treatment facility. I made this decision because I am having a difficult time readjusting to society after nearly 2 decades in prison. I definitely have PTSD due to all the violence. I find myself reacting violently when I am hurt emotionally. Growing up in the system I have only ever learned one reaction to being hurt to protect myself and that is violence. I need to learn a rational way to deal with people and get past this PTSD and that is why I’m making this commitment. I have asked Wayne, Vernie, and Vito, to manage the space in my absence.

Upon my return, I will begin working on my goal of preventing juvenile delinquents from making the choices I made and ending up in prison.

Thank you for supporting the space!

May 27th update:

Hello everyone. It has been a journey since my above update. I’m still working on me. I’m headed to a different treatment facility. I was “kicked out” of the place I was at in Fort Lauderdale. They have a Zero tolerance for being late for curfew. I had taken up running with an organization called http://backonyourfeet.org. where 3 days a week (at 5:30 a.m.) we would do a run, jog, or walk together. I would choose the run option (between 1–5 miles). I signed up with them to compete in two races. I to going on runs to train. Well, I decided to go on a 10 mile run to Dania Beach (oldest part of Fort Lauderdale). I planned to take the city bus back. The bus I planned to take back would have gotten me back to the facility one hour before curfew. The bus never showed up, nor did the following bus on the same route. I called the facility and told him I was going to be 20 minutes late due to the bus is not showing up. I was told a zero-tolerance policy and then I would not be allowed to return to the facility for 30 days, and that I would have to start program over. At the time, my cousin was going to fly down from because you needed to file a medical malpractice lawsuit for him. He was actually going to fly down to Florida and stay in a hotel while I worked on it on the weekends and my spare time. Due to me being kicked out, it’s saved him the trip. He flew me up to his place in Brown Deer, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee. While there I was hospitalized for a bowel obstruction due to all the scarring in my intestines from Crohn’s disease. The past five years I’ve been hospitalized for bowel instructions probably three to four times a year. I made the decision to allow them to do surgery on me every move a foot of my intestines.

The surgery went well and I finished the lawsuit.

Out of all the years I’ve been in prison, I can count on one hand the men that I would want to see again. A really, really, good friend of mine that I was in maximum security federal prison with, in Terre Haute, Indiana, was just released last November 7th, after doing 29 years (on a 34 year sentence and is now doing 3 years of supervised release) for being a getaway driver in a bank robbery. He was 22 when he went in. The “career criminal” that actually did the robbery received a reduction in his sentence and only got 20 years because he cooperated with the government and turned in “Pizza” Mike (his hustle in prison was making and selling homemade pizzas). The judge, at his sentencing, told him he didn’t want to give him more than five years (I read his transcripts) but he was bound by the Federal United States Sentencing Guidelines (this is prior to United States versus Booker, 543 US 220 (2005) where the U.S. Supreme Court held the making the United States Sentencing guidelines mandatory nature was unconstitutional; unfortunately the decision was not retroactive so Mike was not able to go back in front of the judge to get resentenced) and had no choice but to give him the mandatory 34 year guideline sentence.

Anyways, Pizza Mike really wanted me to come visit, and I was concerned after so much time he may be struggling, so I’m writing you from the couch in his living room in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I’m happy to report he’s doing much better than I was when I got out.

My insurance kicked in while I was at the place I got kicked out of so I decided to go to a different facility that has some state-of-the-art new treatments for post-traumatic stress- disorder. I will be making a 3-month commitment there. It is an impatient program and I don’t believe I’m allowed electronics while there because it is a drug treatment facility as well. I will be entering the program on the June 6th at 10 a.m..

FINAL UPDATE: July 19, 2023

Well, mission accomplished:

I feel I am where I want to be on the issues I was trying to address. I will be continuing in therapy but am doing much better.

Since starting this journey on January 9th I have went from Hot Springs, Arkansas to Tunica, Mississippi, to Tampa, Florida, to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Brown Deer, Wisconsin, to Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Fort Smith, Arkansas. Now I have been offered a very well paying job based out of Fargo, North Dakota. I will be traveling for work throughout North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. I was hired over the phone, by a guy that has never seen or met me or anyone I know, with no experience, and I’m going to be making six figures with them paying for all my expenses (hotels, etc..). An obvious answer to prayer!!

By the beginning of next year I will be ready to start bringing my vision for the successful intervention of juvenile delinquents and saving them from the criminal justice system. I will post with more specifics as progress is made. For now, I will just say that I have one heck of a capable and influential group of people willing to join me on the endeavor.

God bless everyone and thank you for supporting the space!

I have a confession….

In 48 Hours, Canada Might Pay a Heavy Price for Nixing Free Trade Talks with China

As you probably know, Trump has been threatening Canada with catastrophic 25% tariffs since November of last year. He promised to hammer them out on his first day in office, which was January 20th; now he has generously postponed them until February 1st, which is in two days.

Devastating tariffs could not possibly come at a worse time for Canada. While not technically in a recession, the Canadian economy has been “struggling” to grow by even 1% per year.

Its troubles are vast: a “sky-high” cost of living crisis, 6.7% unemployment, high interest rates, stagnant real wages whose purchasing power has changed little since 2017, low consumer spending, low productivity, declining GDP per person, the highest household debt to disposable income ratio in the G7, the highest house price to income ratio in the world, and “explosive” hyper-immigration-fuelled population growth that is 5 times the OECD average.

How Badly Would the Tariffs Hurt Canada?

As badly as the Global Financial Crisis, and probably worse.

A blanket tariff of 25% on all US-bound Canadian exports would shrink our economy by 2–2.6% per year and destroy over 1 million jobs (which is about 5% of all jobs in the country), according to economists cited by the New York Times. Losing a million jobs would skyrocket unemployment to 11.5%.

The NYT is probably being optimistic — because 2 million Canadian jobs depend on US trade, not only one.

Market research firm ICIS Analytics expects 1.1% shrinkage in the first year, 4.3% in the second, and 3.5% in the third.

A separate projection by Oxford Economics is even more optimistic than the NYT, assuming job losses of a mere 150,000. In this bright case, the tariffs would quadruple inflation (currently at 1.8%) to 7.2% in the first 6 months. By the end of 2025, unemployment would stand at 7.9%.

LEFT-HAND GRAPH: Analysis from Oxford Economics shows Canada suffering a sharp, severe economic contraction after the imposition of Trump tariffs, needing until early 2027 to recover.
RIGHT-HAND GRAPH: Inflation would initially surge to 8% because of collapsed US demand for artificially expensive Canadian goods weakening the Canadian dollar, and because of retaliatory Canadian tariffs making imports inflating the prices of imports from the US. Inflation would then plunge to as low as -2% because of depressed consumer spending and business hiring, before returning to baseline by late 2027.
This projection is optimistic because it wishfully assumes only 150,000 layoffs in the first 12 months of the tariffs.

The Financial Post calls the tariffs an “economic earthquake” and “absolute disaster” that “could take years to recover from — if a recovery is even possible.”

These numbers are similar or worse than what Canada suffered during the Global Financial Crisis. During the GFC, economic shrinkage peaked at 2.5% and unemployment peaked at 8.5%, both in 2009.

How Badly Would the Tariffs Hurt America?

The US would suffer too, of course — but much, much less.

Oxford Economics expects a “shallow” (i.e. mild) recession for the US in the short term. Nationwide Insurance expects inflation to rise by 0.5 percentage points, which is relatively insignificant.

The Peterson Institute for International Economics believes the US would lose around $200 billion in total by 2029, out of a current $29 trillion economy . The Tax Foundation estimates that the US would lose just 286,000 jobs (0.18% of a current 160 million jobs) and that GDP growth would lose only 0.4 percentage points in the long run.

Overall, US economic losses would be 10–20% those of Canada.

Analysis by the Peterson Institute of International Economics predicts Canada taking a horrific beating from the Trump tariffs compared to the United States. Canada will experience real GDP growth rates 5 to 9 times lower, and inflation rates 4 times higher. Source

Do I Expect the Tariffs to Happen?

No, I do not expect the tariffs to take place.

The total value of all goods traded between the US and Canada was $963 billion in 2022. All these goods would be on the line. Some 1.5 million households in the American Northeast and Midwest import their electricity from the Canadian province of Ontario, and Ontario has threatened to switch it off. The all-important US and Canadian auto industries are tightly integrated, with Americans buying 92% of vehicles manufactured in Canada.

Tariffs would throw a monkey wrench into this entire system which has taken decades to construct. They would create too much of a political mess for the Trump regime. Goldman Sachs doesn’t think they’ll happen either.

Moreover, the reasons behind the tariffs are extremely silly. Trump claims Canada is flooding the United States with “massive” amounts of fentanyl and “millions” of illegal migrants.

Yet according to data from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), less than 1% of fentanyl seized in the entire United States over the last 3 years got there through the Canadian border. (It was 14 pounds in 2022, 2 pounds in 2023, and 43 pounds in 2024.)

Also according to data from the CBP [1] [2] [3], illegal migrants entering the US through Canada have made up 0.56% of all border apprehensions over the last 3 years. (It was 2,238 migrants in 2022, 10,021 migrants in 2023, and 23,721 migrants in 2024, out of 1.6–2.2 million border apprehensions per year.)

Visualized data from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) shows that almost no seized fentanyl or apprehended illegal migrants entered the United States through the Canadian (northern) border. Source

Thus, the tariff threat is based on garbage, which I’m used to from the American president’s mouth.

When Trump’s schizophrenic border czar Howard Lutnick used essentially zero fentanyl and zero migrants entering from Canada to demand that Canada “shut your border and stop allowing fentanyl into our country, killing our people” and “stop disrespecting us” in order to avoid devastating tariffs “for now,” he showed that the drugs and migrants are a nonexistent excuse for the United States to threaten and humiliate its neighbors and enjoy a thrilling power rush.

It’s a power rush that our leaders like Trudeau, Poilievre, Joly, and Ford are working slavishly to satisfy. They’ve vowed to waste billions of Canada’s dollars on additional border security and drug policing, to show Americans how serious we are about fixing a nonexistent problem they invented, and to convince them not to ravage our economy for shits and giggles.

Can the Tariffs Still Hurt Canada Even If They Don’t Happen?

Of course they can, and they already have.

As noted by TVOntario, the mere threat of US tariffs has been enough to spread “massive economic panic” throughout our country. The federal and all provincial governments are “scrambling” to figure out how to alleviate certain economic collapse in the event these tariffs go through.

The already deeply indebted and overspending federal government is now preparing a huge financial relief package for workers and businesses. The stimulus package is described as “pandemic-level,” meaning it might be hundreds of billions of dollars.

And the tariff threat was the main reason why Trudeau had to resign as Prime Minister of Canada and Leader of the Liberal Party. Despite his serious unpopularity, what sealed his fate was the departure of Chrystia Freeland, who was his finance minister, deputy prime minister, and crucial political ally, and a dominant figure in the Liberal Party. Freeland’s departure sent shock waves through the party and caused legions of MPs, including Trudeau’s closest supporters, to demand the Prime Minister’s resignation. [1] [2]

Why did Freeland quit the Trudeau government? Because she was frustrated with the PM’s expensive social welfare spending, especially the $250 cheques he mailed to 19 million Canadians to help with the rising cost of groceries. Freeland wrote on X that Canada needed to take the tariff threat “extremely seriously,” which meant saving money “so we have the reserves we may need for a coming tariff war.”

But this dire situation is Canada’s own doing. Because…

Canada Put All Its Eggs in One Nasty Basket

As exemplified by 2023, Canada depends on the US for over 77% of its exports and 50% of its imports. On the other hand, the US only needs Canada for 17.3% of its exports and 13.6% of its imports.

Canada has no other trade partner that it does major business with. In 2019, trade with the US represented 63% of Canada’s total trade with all nations. Canada’s trade with the EU was only 17% of its trade with the US. Trade with China was 13% of that level, and trade with Mexico was 6%.

On the other hand, the US has many trade partners with whom it does almost as much business as it does with Canada. In 2021, US trade with Canada formed only 14.2% of US international trade overall. America’s trade with Mexico equalled 99% of its trade with Canada. Trade with China equalled 98% of that level; with the EU, 95%; with the ASEAN nations, 55%; with Japan, 31%; with Germany 30%, and so on.

Thus, the US is Canada’s biggest trade partner by an enormous, staggering, life-and-death margin. But Canada is America’s biggest trade partner only by a tiny margin. The United States can easily take its business from Canada to somebody else, if it’s willing to be inconvenienced for a little while. That was why Trump confidently said the US doesn’t need Canadian cars, oil, gas, or lumber.

If desired, the US could certainly reroute 14.2% (one-seventh) of its international trade; but Canada would lose 63% (two-thirds) of its own international trade.

The Consequences Have Been Clear for Decades

Two decades ago in 2002, the late Jewish Canadian historian Mel Hurtig, who described himself as a “Canadian nationalist,” wrote a book titled The Vanishing Country. In it he argued, among many other things, that Canada had become much too dependent on free trade with the United States.

This dependence, Hurtig observed, had already dangerously eroded Canada’s sovereignty. It had led to alarmingly high US ownership of Canadian companies and profit-taking from Canadian industry. It had delivered much less economic growth to Canada than it had to the US (at Canada’s expense). It had greatly reduced Canada’s control over its own natural resources, and greatly reduced the government’s ability to resist US pressure and demands on a wide range of issues.

Hurtig lamented that by 1999, Canada’s real GDP per capita had decreased to 80% of the US level. It had been 90% of the US level in 1990. Free trade with the US came into force on January 1st, 1994. Hurtig was appalled by how quickly Canada’s standard of living had fallen behind that of the US after the beginning of trade dependence. Now (as of last year) our real GDP per capita has sunk to 70% of the US level [1] [2]. It hasn’t been this bad since 1939.

Without saying as much, former Governor of the Bank of Canada David Allison Doge stated in a 2007 lecture that Canada had to start looking beyond North America — meaning, beyond the United States — for its economic future.

The late Canadian economists Sylvia Ostry and Gilbert Winham agreed. They “perceived a crisis of vulnerability from trade dependence [on the United States]” and advocated for a new policy of diversifying trade to other nations.

Even the veteran US public official Robert Zoellick smugly declared in a May 2003 speech that free trade with the US was a “privilege.” To earn and keep this “privilege,” he explained, “countries must cooperate with the United States on its foreign policy and national security goals… beyond trade.” At the time, Zoellick was the head of America’s foreign trade agency, the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR).

Now this perfectly explains why Canada has lost all sovereignty in foreign policy; why our relations with the other 191 countries of the world now bizarrely consist of our leaders mindlessly repeating US decrees and fake news.

The following November 2024 statement from Ontario Premier Doug Ford says things best.

First, like the most faithful puppy, he beams with pride at how servile he has been.

“For months, Ontario has been pushing the federal government [Ottawa] to show that Canada understands, cares and is responsive to US security and economic concerns, including by urging them to match US tariffs on China, ban Chinese software in cars on Canadian roads, delay the implementation of the digital services tax and present a credible plan to meet our NATO defence spending commitments [i.e., a credible plan to squander 5 percent of our GDP on our military because Trump has commanded us to, even though our only neighbors are the United States and fish].

Ford then assures his master that any problems in the house are not his fault, but the fault of the other dog. The other dog shouldn’t even be in the house. Nobody’s a better mutt than Ford.

It’s also why I called out Mexico for allowing itself to become a backdoor for cheap Chinese transshipment and am urging Canada to negotiate a bilateral trade agreement directly with the US [i.e., let’s kick Mexico out of NAFTA because they are not as obedient as we are, and they’re the ones who deserve to be punished instead of us].

For the rest of the statement, Ford begs the federal Canadian government to do everything it can to stop fentanyl and illegal migrants from entering the US, so we don’t “risk the economic chaos of Trump tariffs.”

As we’ve seen, last year the fentanyl was 43 pounds and the migrants were 23,721 people (who can fit in 5 really crowded GO trains).

And we’re supposed to reduce these pathetically small numbers to zero, across a 9,000-kilometer land border (the longest in the world) how, exactly?

And if we fail to meet this impossible condition, we get economically executed?

Is this what we get for being such good dogs?

The Trudeau government cancelled free trade talks with China in September 2020. These were free trade talks that would have given us another superpower to do business with, just in case the first one became completely insane. Trudeau cancelled them because according to him, China was being “unreasonable.” It was practicing “assertive, coercive diplomacy.”

If “our closest ally” who already owns our foreign policy, most of our companies and industrial profits, and 63% of our trade started threatening us with gigantic and devastating tariffs because we couldn’t keep a 9,000-kilometer land border impenetrable to 43 pounds of drugs and 5 trainloads of migrants, that would be pretty assertive, coercive, and unreasonable, right?

Asking for a friend. ∎

You have just finished reading “In 48 Hours, Canada Might Pay a Heavy Price for Nixing Free Trade Talks with China.” My second serious article, from my desk in Toronto at 7:00 AM on Thursday the 30th of January 2025.

Dedicated to my friends in China, my mother and father, and “The Ghost of Galdámez.” HR.

Can you describe what it’s like to live in a Canadian forest?

I can indeed describe what it’s like to live in a forest. I live on the edge of the wilderness. You could fly 500 km north , or NW of me, and not see a light.

About 5 years ago they put in a cell phone tower close enough to give me coverage. It’s a 24 km round trip to my mailbox. It’s a 44 km round trip to the nearest store.

I have all the amenities, plus a large wood fireplace that is used often. It was minus 30 when I woke up this morning.

A 4×4 with 4 low is essential to make sure that I get to town in the winter. Even though the roads are plowed regularly, when a bad storm hits, we are quite away down on the priority list.

I had had to chain saw trees, to clear the road after a storm.

Oh, but the joy of living in the woods makes it all worth it.

It’s so quiet. My neighbors are fantastic, the best people in the world. We regularly do favors for each other. We regularly sit around a firepit telling tall tales.

Everytime we get a heavy snow, or it drops below minus 30, we start up a fire in our wood fireplace, and drink red wine, hot rum toddies, hot chocolate and peppermint schnaps, and play board games.

We could have satellite TV, or stream from the cell phone tower. But we made a conscious decision when we retired, to not have a TV. We wanted to make sure we didn’t just sit on our butts, and not communicate.

My wife watched a lot of TV, me not so much, and I thought it would be hard on her. But we always have good books, if we don’t have something to talk about. We haven’t missed TV at all. Which tells you how unimportant it is.

We go snowmobiling, white water rafting, ATVing, snowshoeing, hiking, fishing, canoeing, from our door.

The first picture is taken from inside the house, then 6 yard pictures and then back to pictures from inside the house. I don’t know why they aren’t in the order I selected.

These pictures were taken in our yard, except the mountain picture, which was about an hour away by snowmobile.

Shorpy

Pilot Dies And Is Shown The Truth About Destiny And Letting Go (Amazing NDE)

One Night Out on the Lake

Submitted into Contest #210 in response to: Set your story after aliens have officially arrived on Earth.… view prompt

Murray Burns

One Night Out on the Lake

The best time to fish for walleyes is the last half-hour of sunlight. Every fisherman worth his weight in nightcrawlers knows that. It is also the best time to be out on the lake for any reason, or even better, for no reason- the wind dies down, the temperature drops, the sky presents a tapestry of extraordinary colors, all is quiet and still, and it is enough to just be there. Marty knew this better than any man alive, and he took full advantage. He was there so often even the fish recognized his boat. The occasional cherry on top was a full moon rising above the pines, and on this memorable, spectacular night, Marty had it all.

The hum of his 10 HP Merc broke the silence and floated across the lake as he cruised toward his favorite spot. Marty shut down the motor and glided another 30 feet before he dropped anchor. He sent his minnow to an inglorious fate at the lake bottom, pulled it up a few feet, opened a beer, and took a few puffs of his cigar. Heaven on earth. Why not?

The sun set, the moon took center stage, and the cloudless sky was splashed with a spectacular umbrella of stars. It was as quiet as an empty church at night.

Marty didn’t notice the slight tugging on his line. His eyes and full attention were on the approaching light steadily moving across the lake’s surface. It was just a few feet above the water, but it didn’t appear to be a boat as he saw no red and green running lights, just a single bright white light with a hint of a diffuse glow around it. Marty heard no sound, and there was no sail, only the bright white light heading straight for him. Curiosity and fear were vying for top billing in Marty’s brain as the object drew closer.

The light of the full moon revealed something that appeared to be more earthly, but just as strange. Marty saw the silhouette of a person standing on the bow of an old wooden boat. The fact he wasn’t paddling or rowing added to the mystery.

The old man’s boat stopped just feet from Marty’s boat and held in place despite a slight breeze from the north. Fear dissipated into the warm night air as Marty sensed no threat from the man, and he was now consumed only by the who and why.

It was an old man with a full beard, dressed in a long white robe. He was holding a lantern that emitted a perfect circle of bright, white light around both boats, and Marty felt a shudder run from head to toe.

“Are you Marty?”

“Uh…yes, I’m Marty.”

The old man looked at a crumpled piece of paper.

“Yeah, they told me I’d find you here. I guess you like to fish. It says that right here.”

‘They’, thought Marty, who are ‘they’? Marty was too puzzled to think and uttered a mindless response.

“Yes…I think this is the best time for fishing.”

“Couldn’t agree more. Fewer worldly distractions. It’s easier to focus on what matters in life, so yes, it’s a good time to be out fishing.”

The mystery of the man grew as Marty had no idea what the old man was talking about.

“I don’t believe I’ve seen you out here before. Are you from around here?”

The old man laughed.

“Oh, that’s a good one. No, I’m not from anywhere.”

Marty of course found this to be an odd response and thought the old man might have “issues”. And as the watercraft appeared to be only borderline seaworthy, the old man standing on the bow of a rickety wooden boat riding low in the water made him nervous.

“Your boat is a little… different. I didn’t hear a motor, there’s no sail, and…”

Marty peered at the inside of the unusual stranger’s boat.

“…and I don’t see any kind of a battery or electrical device. How the heck is that thing powered?”

“That’s a good question. I don’t know. Not my department. He doesn’t always tell us everything.”

“He? Who is he?”

“If you don’t know who ‘he’ is, you’re in bigger trouble than I thought.”

Marty had little time to digest the comment as the tip of his fishing pole was suddenly yanked downward. He grabbed the pole, and pulled hard to set the hook, but felt no resistance.

“God dammit! I lost it.”

“Watch your language! One more of those, and I might lose you!”

“Listen, nice meeting you whoever you are, but I came out here to fish, so…”

“Same here.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m out here fishing too.”

Marty took another quick look at the old man’s boat.

“Uh…you don’t have a fishing pole. How do you expect to catch a fish if you don’t have a fishing pole?”

“I’m a fisher of men.”

Now Marty knew he was dealing with someone not quite right in the head.

“How nice. Look, you should go back to town. You’ll find a lot of them there.”

“You’re telling me? I’ve been there. We’ve all been there, but tonight’s assignment puts me right here. You should feel special. We do a lot of group therapy with regular visits to this world, but this is a very targeted mission. Not everyone gets a one-on-one. You must show promise.”

“Uh…you visit this world? Like you’re not of this world…like an alien or something?”

“Well, we’re normally not called aliens, but I guess you could say that. Yes, I am not of this world.”

Marty thought the guy was nuts, but the boat…the boat that moved without power and seemed to move effortlessly over the water…made him wonder.

“I’m sure this will all seem a little odd to you, Marty, but I hope this turns your life around.”

“Turn my life around? What do you…and by the way, how do you know my name?”

The old man again looked at his notes.

“It’s all right here, Marty…name, tracking, sightings, sins, wandering off the path… I’d show you, but that’s a no-no.”

“My sins, tracking…who are you?”

“Peter.”

“Peter? Peter who?”

“Just Peter. You know, the way they do for really famous people like Elvis or Madonna. Or you could throw in a Simon if you wanted to, Simon Peter. There’s also a nickname I was quite fond of- ‘Rock’. Did you know I was the Rock before the Rock was the Rock?”

A boat that moves without power, sins, a long white robe, Simon Peter, a fisher of men…the light bulb went off. Marty laughed.

“Hey, I went to Catholic grade school. I’ve read the Bible. I get it. You’re supposed to be St. Peter, but you’re a little early for Halloween. It’s only September. The boat’s a nice touch. You’ll have to tell me how you do that. And why practice on me?”

“That’s not funny, Marty. This is serious stuff. Do you want to catch fish or save your soul?”

“Wait a minute. Is this something like those Jehova Witness people coming to your house to preach the Bible? Man, you are really going that extra mile…the outfit, the boat, coming out on a lake in the middle of the night. I got to hand it to you, but I’m all set with the religious stuff, so you can move on to the next house…or boat. Thanks for coming.”

The old man shook his head in frustration.

“They told me you’d be one of those more difficult cases.”

Curiosity made a comeback; Marty had to ask.

“More difficult? What do you mean?”

“Well, take the really evil ones, the bad people. It’s easy to point out how they need to shape up and change their lives. Even they know they shouldn’t be doing what they’ve been doing. The ‘Tweeners’ are more challenging.”

“Tweeners?”

“Yes, you line up like a lot of people, not doing bad things, but not really doing good things. You’re just sort of here. And that’s not acceptable, Marty.”

Marty was getting drawn in.

“And the challenging part?”

“It’s harder to get people to do good things than it is to get them to stop doing bad things.”

As strange as it was for an old man to show up in the middle of a lake in a boat that seemed to move on its own, Marty’s mind was now contemplating the man’s words. Good things, bad things…how did it all fit into his own life? The message sufficiently piqued his interest that he wanted to know more about the messenger.

“Alright, all very good, but you’ve got to tell me who you are and what you’re doing out here.”

“It’s true that I’m not of this world, but I’m not your typical run-of-the-mill alien; I’m not even of this Universe. I am St. Peter.”

The seriousness of the moment slipped a bit as a wry smile appeared on Marty’s face.

“Right.”

“Fine, I run into this all the time. What do you want for proof?”

Marty thought for a moment.

“Well, since we’re out on a lake, how about you do the walk-on-water thing?”

“That wasn’t me, you ninny. And you said you read the Bible. Oh, my goodness, you should have been paying more attention to Sister Martin’s religious instruction in 7^th Grade rather than harboring those impure thoughts about Susie Parker.”

Marty’s eyes popped wide open, and he almost fell out of the boat. Sister Martin, 7^th Grade, Susie Parker…impure thoughts. The old man nailed it!

“How…how do you know about any of that?”

And as an afterthought to defend himself…

“And I never had impure thoughts about Susie Parker.”

“Right.”

Marty struggled to figure out how the old man knew such things.

“You must know my family or someone who went to school with me.”

“Sure I know them. I know everyone and everything about them. I know everything about you, Marty. Maybe that will convince you. Try me.”

Marty accepted the challenge.

“My favorite color?”

“Blue.”

“Food?”

“Pizza. Come on, Marty, you can do better than that.”

“Ok, my pet turtle’s name when I was a little boy?”

“Speedy.”

“First girl I kissed?”

The old man laughed.

“Well, we know it wasn’t Susie Parker. Angela Jones, ninth grade, in the alley behind Billy Johnson’s house.”

Marty was running out of ways to not believe. He gave it one final shot.

“Biggest walleye I ever caught?”

“Seven pounds, four ounces, and twenty-nine inches. You caught it right here on a red and white silver spoon. It rained that night.”

Marty had no words as he stared at the old man in disbelief.

“Could you maybe do a miracle or two, you know, just to make it more believable?”

“Oh ye of little faith, sorry, I don’t do tricks. I just know things, like the day you copied off Bobby Carlson’s paper on that 5^th Grade math test, or how you lied to your Dad about eating all your navy beans, or the times you tried to peek down Susie Parker’s…”

“Ok, ok! That’s enough. I believe.”

“I’m sure this must come as a complete shock to you, Marty, but I am St. Peter, the first disciple, a fisher of men.”

Marty’s head had fogged up. None of this seemed possible.

“Alright, let’s say you are St. Peter. What are you doing out here, and why now?”

“Why not here? Why not now?”

“Ok, then just why?”

“Even if you mistook me for the one walking on water, I have to believe you’ve heard the words, ‘Many are called, but few are chosen.’ Well, Marty, you’ve been called, but you’ve not been chosen.”

“What?! I’ve led a good life. I…”

“Let me stop you there. You’ve led a ‘not bad life’, Marty, not a ‘good life’. A lot of people make that mistake. A ‘not bad life’ does not equal a ‘good life’. There’s quite a gap between the two. But fortunately for you, we’re strong believers in second chances. I mean, Mary Magdeline, the Penitent Thief, Jean Valjean…”

“Jean Valjean? He wasn’t a real person.”

“We cast a wide net. But that’s beside the point. I know I’m going out on a limb here, but do you know this one? ‘Whatever you do to the least of my brothers, you do to me. Whatever you did not do for the least of my brothers, you did not do for me.’ You scored pretty high on the scale of not doing bad things to people, Marty, but you kind of washed out when we looked for the good things you’ve done for people.”

“Wait a Catholic grade school minute. I’ve avoided sin my whole life…well, at least the big ones, the mortal sins I think you’d call them. That’s all they ever said I need to do.”

“That only gets you halfway there, Marty.”

“Well, I’ve done lots of good things, too, like I’ve worked hard and provided for my family. We have a nice house, good cars…”

“I need to stop you again, Marty. Those are things you had to do, the bare minimum. You are obligated to support your family. And the house and cars? Those are for you too, Marty. Let me help you out here.”

St. Peter again looked at his notes.

“I see here…you play softball twice a week in the summer and bowl once a week in the winter.”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever coached one of your kids’ T-Ball, baseball, or basketball teams?”

“No.”

“Bingo! Have you always had a nice Thanksgiving feast with your family?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever volunteered to serve Thanksgiving meals at a homeless shelter?”

“No.”

“Bingo!”

“I kind of see where you’re going with this, but could you maybe please stop saying bingo?”

“Certainly. Do you keep your sidewalks clear of ice and snow in the winter?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever shoveled the snow in front of the widow Jenkins’ house?”

“No.”

“Gottcha’!”

Marty lowered his head.

“I guess I’d rather go with ‘bingo’ if that’s alright.”

“Certainly….”

And so it went. St. Peter went through a long list of volunteer activities that would qualify as doing something for the least among us: checking in on sick or elderly neighbors, foster parenting, tutoring a child, adopting a child, Big Brothers, fundraising for charities, pen pal for a prison inmate, Scout Troop leader, pro bono professional services, volunteering at animal shelters, Feed America, blood donor, help out at kids’ sports events, Habitat for Humanity, neighborhood litter cleanup, visiting lonely souls in nursing homes, mow your neighbor’s lawn, and so on. Anyone within earshot might have thought a rapid-fire Church Bingo tournament was going on out on the lake, with a sheepish ‘no’ from Marty followed by a near celebratory response from St. Peter: “no- Bingo!; no- Bingo!; no- Bingo!” When St. Peter set down his list, the score was a disturbing 99 Bingos, 1 Gottcha’, and zero “Attaboys”.

A dejected Marty spoke in a barely audible tone.

“I guess I could have done more.”

“More?! You haven’t done diddly-squat! With your big score on the ‘Don’t-Bee’ table, even the bare minimum on the ‘Do-Bee’ scale would have put you over the top. What have you been doing with your life?!”

“I’m sorry. I wish you…or someone…would have showed up and told me all this a long time ago.”

“Marty, we’ve been here all along. We’ve been talking to you every day. You just weren’t listening. Take heed of the message, Marty. You have time.”

St. Peter’s boat slowly started to turn.

“I have to go. I’m really booked up. We all are. You earth people are keeping us busy.”

“I’m curious. If you’re not of this world, not even of this Universe, where do you go?”

“It would be hard to explain. It’s a place that you could not imagine, but you’d like it there. That’s the best I can do.”

“Will I see you again?”

“See me? No, but I will be able to hear you. And you’ll hear me, Marty, if you’re listening. I’ll be rooting for you.”

St. Peter looked at Marty with a sympathetic eye.

“This is critical stuff, Marty. Do you understand what I’ve been telling you?”

“I do.”

“It’s a big part of why you were put here, Marty, to help others. I’m sure you remember hearing these things as a child- ‘Love thy Neighbor’ and ‘It is better to give than to receive’. Those words still apply, Marty. They will always apply.”

Marty looked at St. Peter, then at the awesome, humbling canopy of stars above, and a hint of a tear formed in the corner of his eye as he measured his place in this world and thought of all the things he had not done in his life.

“I think your heart’s in the right place, Marty. I’m confident you’ll turn it around. Just be more aware of where you may be needed, what you can do for others, how you can fulfill your purpose.”

“I’ll try.”

Marty saw a bright white light in the distance, slowly moving across the lake’s surface.

“Look, Peter, there’s another light out here.”

“That’s my brother Andrew. Like I said, you folks are keeping us busy. Everyone gets a second chance at receiving the message. Do you know anyone who needs a visit?”

Why has China, as a developing country, continued to produce major scientific and technological achievements in recent years, such as the sixth-generation aircraft and Deepseek?

Because there is a very good environment for research and practice in China.

A colleague of mine planted a few acres of fruit trees in his hometown, and he has a WeChat group of more than two hundred people on his cell phone, most of whom are farmers who plant fruit trees, and the group leader is a professor at Northwest A&F University.

They don’t care who’s tree encountered problems, pests and diseases, take a picture and send it to the group, They enthusiastically discuss how to deal with it.

The professor is busy and may not always reply at the first time.

But he would take a look and comment when he was free after teaching a class:

“Xiao Zhang you say the way not work, Lao Su you say the way feasible but the cost is too high, Xiao Wang’s way is quite good ……”

A few years down the road, people in the group have become experts in planting fruit trees.

This kind of thing is very common in China. Professors from the Academy of Agricultural Sciences often go to the countryside to be with farmers, and Yuan Longping, the father of hybrid rice, is a typical example.

Let me talk about it from another angle.

There has been a change in the global mobility of talent, and a large number of top scientists have come to China.

In the last two years, there has been a very obvious trend, that is, a large number of foreign scientists have flocked to China, including not only scientists of Chinese descent, but also many white Americans, Japanese, and Europeans, who have left their home countries to work for China, as if China has become a safe haven for global talents overnight.

Many people can’t understand this phenomenon when they see it, and they don’t know why it happened, so today I’ll talk about it.

First of all, let me tell you a conclusion that will overturn everyone’s cognition – the scientific research environment in Europe and the United States has become so bad that many scientists can no longer stay there.

Most of us grew up with the message that China’s research environment is bad and the West is more liberal, so many top talents are willing to go to the United States to engage in scientific and technological research, indeed, this was an objective fact in the past.

This was an objective fact in the past. Especially in the last century, the phenomenon of the loss of top talents in China was very serious, and the reasons were very complicated:

The United States has all kinds of advanced equipment and laboratories to carry out cutting-edge research.
American research institutions are willing to pay high salaries, even 10 or even 100 times what they would pay in China.
China’s review and assessment process for research projects is cumbersome, and many scientists can’t accept it.

In short, the brain drain is caused by many reasons.

However, this is now beginning to change as the scientific environment in the United States has deteriorated dramatically and many leading scientists no longer see the United States as their ideal place to work. Let me give you three cases:

Daniel Povey – Wikipedia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia British speech recognition researcher Daniel Povey is a British researcher in the fields of speech recognition and artificial intelligence . After graduating from Cambridge University , he held research positions at Microsoft and IBM from 2003 to 2012. [ 1 ] He worked at Johns Hopkins University as a nontenured associate research professor in the Whiting School of Engineering prior to being fired in August 2019. Later in August 2019, after being fired by Johns Hopkins, Povey was slated to begin working for Facebook , but he rejected Facebook's conditions of employment just days before he would have begun working for them. [ 2 ] He was appointed the chief speech scientist at Xiaomi in November 2019, and continued to hold this position as of October 2020. He is also the primary architect and maintainer of Kaldi . [ 3 ] Johns Hopkins protest [ edit ] By 8 May 2019, protestors at Johns Hopkins University had reached day 35 of a sit-in protest of campus militarization and local police agencies in Garland Hall, restricting access to all faculty and students. Garland Hall, Johns Hopkins University's main administrative hall, was the home location of servers Povey was expected to maintain. According to the university, Povey was denied permission into the building several times prior to 8 May. Led by Povey, counter-protestors entered the building and Povey began removing chains from the doors with a set of bolt cutters . During the chain-removal process, cell-phone footage from the sit-in protestors features a melee between Povey and protestors, as they eventually carry Povey out of the building. Although Povey was adamant that he was the one being attacked in the videos, the university stated that a multitude of Povey's actions, such as leading a group of counter-protestors around campus at 12 am with a set of bolt cutters, threatened the safety of the students and university. Povey would be suspended and ultimately terminated from the university by August 2019. [ 4 ] [ 5 ]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Povey

One is the top expert in the field of global speech recognition Daniel Povey, this name may not be familiar to you, but what he does is clear to everyone, like Xiaomi’s Little Love Classmates, Apple’s Siri, and Tmall Elf, are all technical support provided by him, and in the field of speech recognition, he is a famous global technology guru.

But it is such a top talent, in the United States are excluded.

Specifically because of what things? It’s funny to say, originally he was in Johns Hopkins University to concentrate on research and not ask the world, the result is that in 2019 his school broke out in the “anti-racism” march, the angry students surrounded the teaching building to prevent him from going in to do research.

Daniel Povey is also a straight man, in his eyes only research and nothing else, so even though the building was surrounded by a huge crowd, he still insisted on going back to the laboratory to get his own data, and then when he broke the lock of the building and was about to enter the laboratory, he was caught by the people around him, and they labeled him a “racist”.

They labeled him as a “racist”, which directly led to his expulsion from the Johns Hopkins University.

Although he was expelled from the Johns Hopkins University, Facebook still extended an olive branch to him. But just when he was about to join Facebook, American netizens began to criticize Facebook for hosting a “racist” and demanded that Facebook expel him and that Facebook and Daniel Povey apologize together. Finally, Daniel Povey was furious and left the United States and came to China. After arriving in China, he specially posted on social media:

Chinese people do not have American-style “political correctness”, and it is easier to get along with Chinese people.

His comments have caused countless Americans to crack their defenses.

Of course, in addition to Daniel Povey, who was persecuted by “political correctness” in the U.S., there is another category of U.S. scientists who were forced to leave the U.S. because of political persecution.

For example, Charles M. Lieber, the world leader in nanomaterials, who is one of the world’s top talents in this field, has also left the United States to settle in China.

The reason why he left the United States is also very funny, just because he conducted a scientific research collaboration with an organization in Wuhan, China, and then he was caught by the FBI, which said that he was a Chinese spy and was suspected of betraying his country, and wanted to sentence him to death.

Although he avoided the death penalty after several lawsuits, the incident gave him a huge psychological shock.

He knew that if he stayed in the United States any longer, he might lose his life one day, so he decisively fled to Hong Kong, China, and became a naturalized citizen of Hong Kong, China.

In addition to the above two situations, there is a third type of situation, that is, in the United States as long as it is a little bit of relationship with China, will be the U.S. government all kinds of discrimination.

For example, if you have Chinese ancestry, you will be doing scientific research by the Americans to find all kinds of reasons to card your project, resulting in you completely unable to do a coherent project.
For example, even if you are an American but have worked on projects with China in the past, you will be dug up by the U.S. Department of Justice for a lawsuit.
Even more dramatically some Chinese who have been naturalized in the US for decades can be considered spies. If you have any grant that you don’t have an invoice to prove is related to research, it’s possible to end up in federal prison.

Even during Nazi Germany in 1936, Hitler didn’t persecute Jewish scientists to such an extent, so this shows how far the research environment has deteriorated in the US!!!!

Scientist Refugees and the Manhattan Project – Nuclear Museum

The United Nations has designated January 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Countries around the world remember and honor the victims of the Nazi genocide. The Nazis murdered six million Jews in the Holocaust, and tens of thousands of Roma and Sinti, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the mentally and physically disabled, homosexuals, political prisoners,…

https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/scientist-refugees-and-manhattan-project/

With the strengthening of China’s national strength, now also have sufficient funds for scientific research, many scientific research equipment is also in the world’s leading level, in such a case, it will attract scientists from all over the world to settle in China.

According to statistics, there are probably more than 100,000 foreign scientists who are currently engaged in scientific research in China, and they have brought a strong boost to China’s scientific and technological development.

The Australian Institute of Strategic Studies has released a report in which it states:

China is already ahead of the United States in 37 out of 44 advanced technologies.

For example, space, robotics, energy, environment, defense, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, advanced materials, quantum and so on, these areas China is the global leader.

China’s ability to make these achievements is ultimately due to the accumulation of talent.

China’s domestic accumulation of 70 years of talent coupled with the influx of foreign top scientists, which appeared in today’s Chinese science and technology blowout situation.

Americans ate the benefits of World War II, so that a large number of European scientists flocked to the United States to avoid danger, thus helping the United States to leap into the world’s first power. Now the plot is repeating itself, except that talent is flowing into China from the United States.

When such a situation occurs, you know that the critical turning point in the Sino-American competition has indeed arrived.

Why is Australia still selling iron ore to China? Why not cut the exports totally so that China will be squeezed?

Why would Australia cut off it largest trading partner?

Why would Australia want to do that to China in the first place?

Why is there anti China sentiment in the media? Could it be to do with America?

Let me tell you something sunshine, China is a fantastic country and the Australian economy is built upon that fantastic country. It has a long and interesting history, when Europe was burning witches at the stake, China was inventing a smallpox vaccine.

Have you been to China? It is one of the most fascinating technology advanced countries I have ever visited. Maybe this is one of the reasons there is anti-China propaganda, could it be America is paranoid about its place in the world?

Little Edit – 20th Jan – I am not sure how I missed this, and thank you to a commenter. Walk around your house, look at that little “made in” tag – How many things in your home are made in China. I’m sitting here on a MacPro mostly assembled in China. My Sony A7 IV Camera, (Japan) no, little made in China on many of its components. My ID4 VW sitting in the driveway, half of it is Chinese made. From clothes to electronics to the tools in my shed; it’s all made in China.

It has issues like any country, but it has also pulled more people out of poverty than any other country. It has an emerging Middle Class that is keeping many of your stores and brands afloat.

It is one of the most diverse and beautiful countries in the world with a continuous culture for some 6000 years. It should be on your bucket list.

Fabulous Fajitas

Ingredients

1 (1 1/2 pound) boneless sirloin steak, cut thin strips
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 garlic clove, minced
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon season salt
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 large green bell pepper, julienned
1 large onion, julienned
6 to 8 (7 inch) flour tortillas
Shredded Cheddar cheese
Salsa, lettuce and tomatoes (optional)

Instructions

In a skillet over medium heat, brown the steak in oil. Place steak and drippings in a slow cooker. Add lemon juice, garlic, cumin, salt, chili powder and red pepper flakes; mix well.
Cover and cook on HIGH for 2 1/2 to 3 hours or until meat is tender.
Add green pepper and onion; cover and cook for 1 hour or until vegetables are tender.
Warm tortillas according to package directions; spoon beef and vegetables down the center of tortillas. Top each with cheese, salsa, sour cream, lettuce and tomatoes, if desired. Fold in sides of tortillas and serve immediately.

How does an NCO “reprimand” an officer?

I was a young butterbar in command of one of our convoy elements returning to SC from PA in the early 90s. We didn’t have comms, and my element got separated from the other elements. We arrived home first. The CO had given a directive that all elements were to wait until EVERYONE had arrived home before we were released.

As time passed waiting on the other elements, the younger NCO’s were working on me to release them. “The old man surely didn’t mean for us to wait THIS long sir” etc etc. They finally had me convinced and I ask the senior NCO to form up the troops for dismissal. He pulled me aside and said these words that saved my career- “Are you really sure you want to do that sir?”. When a senior NCO says that to a junior officer, the only correct answer is “Why, no, Sergeant, what would you suggest?”

A few minutes later, part of the CO’s element rolled up with news that one of the vehicles in his element had broken down, and we needed to send our wrecker team to come recover it. That NCO averted a disaster and saved my career. I’m forever grateful to him, and he did it with respect.

What did your mother say that made your jaw drop?

My mother lived in a time when women kept their place. She took care of the house and the family and rarely even expressed an opinion. As a result, I’m sorry to say that we all took her for granted.

One day when my sister and I were in our teens, the three of us were listening to a call-in song request show on the radio, and my sister started to change the station.

My mother said “don’t change the station.”

My sister and I stared at each other.

It was so out of character for my mother to speak up like that, we were shocked.

But we also were used to following orders without question, so my sister left the station where it was.

There followed an awkward few moments. We were so accustomed to my mother not having an opinion, we hardly knew what to do.

Then suddenly our names were called out over the radio announcing a song to be played for us. My mother had called in and requested a song.

That’s why she didn’t want us to change the station.

I began to see what my mother’s life must have been like. What must it have been like to never speak up, never voice an opinion, to have people shocked when you made a simple request.

I looked at my mother with new eyes that day, and I gained a new respect for her and all that she did for us.

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