What do youse guys have on your kitchen table?
When I was growing up, we had salt and pepper containers, some tooth picks and an ash tray. Today, my kitchen table is a real mess. With everything from vitamins, to all kinds of brick a brack, hot peppers, wasabi, hand lotion, tissues, a few small kids toys, soy sauce, vinegar, and pens. As well as all sorts of other things.
What do you have on your tables?
Go ahead, feel free to tell MM (and the crowd) your deep dark kitchen table secrets!
Now the coffee table is another story altogether.
It’s either bare and pristine, or totally cluttered with kid toys. There just isn’t an in-between. If there were, well, it would be really short lived.
Here’s to kitchen tables…
Today…
The Ease of Lying About China, Part 10
There’s a particular kind of lie that I find fascinating— when fishing for necessary cruelty (a common symptom of the more aggrandizing, right-wing West chauvinists), places like Russia and China are often seen as “ballsy enough” to attempt things that the “soft, lib-infected West” refuse to do. The result is that accusations of Chinese cruelty become points of cheer, a sort of rallying cry against consensus for a more “realistic, sober” response to the West’s ills. For instance, these Westerners pine for the day that we could be rid of all those pesky Muslims and their anti-civilization ways:
In the replies, there are a great many who otherwise hate China but find it in their hearts to agree in this moment with what those “evil Chicoms” are doing.
Of course, for those of us who actually bother looking at China on Chinese terms, it is obvious that Chinese nationalists and particularly the Han chauvinist types despise the Chinese government for standing in the way of much needed “progress.” All of the policies that China enacts to protect and promote minorities, particularly the affirmative action in gaokao scores, enrage the assimilationists who desire an even playing field— because of course, that will prove their own people have always been superior and ought to be recognized as such.
None of this drama needs to touch the ears of the West chauvinist. Hell, they probably can’t hear these things, because even in this moment of “truthsaying” they still have their compulsory tone policing:
The consistent thread throughout Western analysis of China is this persistence of the special cruelty of Chinese. It may bear many different interpretations, some under authoritarianism, others under orientalism, yet others under animal rights, but the fundamental phenomenon is that there is tone policing over China’s perception, and all depend on the existence of this special cruelty. Sometimes, it gets Westerners to cheer for China, because they too want to engage in cruelty. To do so, they will happily engage with the mirage and refuse any corrections.
What is the unfriendliest European country?
I find these questions to be rather pointless. It is a purely subjective experience, that can be influenced by what country you come from, what the weather is like that day, is it high or low tourist season, etc. As an example, from my personal experience and here is that subjective thing. Spain to me was one of the unfriendliest, I found the Spanish to be parochial, insular, and basically unfriendly. In contrast I find the French to be most welcoming. Although, here is the subjective thing, I mostly visit the South of France and have enough French to get by while have almost no Spanish.
I find Germany to be one of the friendliest countries, depending on where you are. Again, as an example, Frankfurt is very welcoming, Berlin not so much but if you have some German, much better and the same with Munich,. I found Budapest to be very unwelcoming but found Slovakia amazing. Austria is friendly, but that feeds into my German perspective and able to get a bout with German and pigeon Austrian.
Someone else could visit the exact same countries and have a totally different experience, hence it’s all relative and there are two many factors that change outcomes.
SCOTT RITTER: RUSSIA And AMERICA On The Brink Of A NEW ERA
Listen to Scott.
What happens if you pay child support for a child that is not yours?
this is a sad but happy story.
i got charged with child support out of the blue. all at once i lost 3k out of my check and before i could go to court and get it stopped they ended up takine 5900 out of my check. i had the womans name and the kids name. and i never heard of either of them. and they day i went to court. my lawyer told me to just set there and do nothing when they called my name. so i did as he said. and sure enough my lawyer stood up and ask the woman is she ever saw me in the court room and she said no. thats when he ask me to stand up. and she lost it. i mean went to crying and saying she is sorry. and it was someone with my name but it wasn’t me. and right then and there i didn’t have to pay anymore. and to come back in a hour after lunch break to see about how to get my money back.
so i went down to eat and saw her and her child there eating and she was still crying. and she was a pretty black woman with a pretty little girl. i tried to walk on past her but something told me to try and talk to her.
after hearing her story she told me no matter what the judge says she will pay me back. but right now she is on the verge of being homeless. and her ex BF with my name ran out on her. and left her with nothing but the cloths on their backs and 3 months back rent. witch she used my money to pay. we talked until her lawyer came to tell us we needed to go back into court.
it felt like forever but i know it was only a few minutes before we got to speak. and after the judge told her she was going to have to pay be back every dime and it was going to be 1000 a month. she really lost it.
i stood up and ask if i could speak and the judge with a smart comeback said your getting your money back what else do you want.
thats when i said this was not her fault. not at all. someone got the wrong person and went after me with out even checking things out. now she going to be homeless soon enough and if she has to pay me back she will be homeless even sooner. and CPS is already trying to find anything they can to take her kid. so here is what i would like to do. let her keep the money she got from me. if you make her pay me back i will just give it right back to her. so just dont worry about it.
and 31 years later we are still friends and i even gave her daughter away on her wedding day.
and she did pay me back with being a true friend.
Ground Beef Stroganoff
Ingredients
- 2 pounds ground beef
- 1 or 2 medium onions, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 small jar sliced mushrooms, drained
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- 1 1/2 cups beef bouillon
- 1 small can tomato paste
Instructions
- Brown ground beef. Sauté onion and garlic. Add all ingredients to slow cooker and stir.
- Cook on LOW for 5 to 6 hours.
- Turn to HIGH and add 1 cup sour cream mixed with 4 tablespoons flour.
- Cook for 15 minutes. If too thick, add more beef bouillon or water.
- Serve over egg noodles.
The whole world now wants to mine Bitcoin. Will China let them?
For those who were actually old enough to have experienced the 1970s and not for those who were born in the 70s. What were the pros and cons of that era?
I’m 71 and grew up in the 60’s and 70’s. It was a different world back in those days.
Growing up in the 1970s was like living in a world just a little looser, a little wilder, and a whole lot freer. It was a time before the internet, before cell phones, and before helicopter parenting. If you wanted to talk to your friends, you called them on the one phone in the house—usually mounted on the kitchen wall, with a tangled cord long enough to stretch around the corner for some privacy. Not that it mattered—someone was always eavesdropping. Parents, siblings, even the dog seemed to know your business.
Entertainment? We had three television channels, and when the President was on, that was it—you were out of luck. Saturday mornings were sacred, though, with cartoons that seemed to exist in a magical bubble, untouchable by adult programming. After that, the TV belonged to Dad for sports, or to Mom for her soap operas. If you missed your favorite show, tough luck—there was no DVR, no streaming, just the hope for a rerun months later.
Music blasted from AM radios, scratchy but magical. We’d sit in our rooms, fingers poised over the “record” button on the tape deck, trying to capture our favorite song off the radio, always cursing the DJ who talked over the intro. Cars had no seat belts—or if they did, they were buried in the seats, ignored. We piled into the back of station wagons like a pack of puppies, lying down, rolling around, sometimes even stretched out on the rear dash as Dad drove 70 mph down the highway.
And smoking—everywhere. In restaurants, on airplanes, in hospitals. Your doctor might have a cigarette dangling from his lips as he told your mom you had a sore throat. The air was thick with secondhand smoke, and no one thought twice about it. Ashtrays were built into everything—cars, waiting rooms, even the armrests on airplanes.
But the freedom! We roamed the neighborhoods on bikes, barefoot in the summer, gone from morning until the streetlights flickered on. No one worried. No cell phones, no tracking apps—just a simple “Be home for dinner.” We built forts, played in creeks, climbed trees, and made up games that lasted all summer long. Scrapes and bruises were badges of honor. If you got hurt, someone’s mom patched you up, and you were back at it in minutes.
School was different too. Teachers didn’t coddle us. If you forgot your homework, you got a zero—no excuses, no do-overs. If you acted up, the principal had a paddle hanging on the wall, and it wasn’t just for decoration. But we learned resilience. We learned how to take a joke, how to shake off failure, and how to move on.
The world felt bigger then, more mysterious. We weren’t glued to screens; we were out living. The 70s were gritty and imperfect, but they were ours. And looking back, it’s hard not to smile at just how wild and wonderful it all was.
Douglas Macgregor Trump ENDS US PRESENCE in ASIA as CHINA RISES South Korea LEFT to face North CHAOS
A Sunday Roasting
Submitted into Contest #210 in response to: Write about a character who has to grapple with something completely alien to them.… view prompt
Chris Campbell
“It’s my new smartphone, Grandad.”
“Wot’s it do?”
“Lots of things.”
“Like wot?”
“Like, read emails, search Cyberspace.”
“Wot’s Cyberspace – when it’s at home?”
“It’s a superhighway of information available to everyone.”
“Like a motorway?”
“Yeah, sort of.”
“Where’d they build it?”
“It’s not something you can see. It’s mostly underground. But lately, it’s up in space.”
“They’ve got motorways in space, like the Jetsons?”
“No, they’ve got satellites in stationary orbit that provide access to the superhighway. It’s like a big net of communication systems.”
“So, ‘ow does wots-is-face at thingy get his rockets past ‘em?”
“You mean, Elon Musk at Space X?”
“Yeah, that’s him. How does he get his rockets through the net up there?”
“It’s not like they’re connected to each other, Grandad. Well, they are connected, but not like a fishing net. The connection is invisible.”
“It’s magic, then.”
“No, it’s science. Bloody hell, Grandad!”
“I’m just pullin’ yer plonker, mate. I’m well aware of wot’s up there and all around and underneath us. I mean, my whole garden shed is proof of that, full of useless items bought on eBay.”
“Yeah, mine too.”
I went to a séance, once – in the seventies.”
“No, Grandad, I said science, not séance. Are your hearing aids working?”
“I was sittin’ at this round table holdin’ hands wif this young woman, who was wearing a scarf round her ‘ead. It had a big blue stone in the middle of it, like some Sikh magician. She kept repeating, Is anyone there, is anyone there? Like she was in the dark and had just ‘eard strange voices. I think she must ‘ave been blind, coz the room was fuckin’ packed with people. Poor love. I felt sorry for her, coz no-one answered. Rude gits. They just couldn’t deal with her disability, I suppose. They all looked shit scared of her, like if they muttered anything, she’d scream at ‘em. Then, all of a sudden, the table started to rise up on its own and this bell kept ringing. You know, the type that calls for a butler in all them posh tv shows. I thought, blimey! The Earth’s lost its gravity. So, I jumped on top of it to weigh it down and some geezer hidin’ underneath yelled out such a torrent of foul language, I stood up and left. I mean, what fuckin’ dead spirit wants to hear all that, hey? I know I didn’t, and I’m alive! Still, came home wif a nice souvenir, but your Gran didn’t appreciate me ringing it every time I wanted a cuppa.”
“Grandad?”
“Yes, my son.”
“You went rambling again.”
“Did I? Right. Must be getting’ old. So, tell me more about this smartphone of yours. Can it add?”
“It can.”
“Can it play the radio?”
“Yes, it’s called streaming music.”
“Screaming music?”
“No… Stop making fun of me.”
“Nothin’ but screaming music, these days. If you can call it that. In my day, it was love songs and dancing and fingerin’ Jane Snipper in the back alley of the dance hall.”
“Erm, Grandad. Too much info.”
“Wot, you never fing…”
“Not something I feel comfortable discussing, Grandad.”
“So, wot do you young people do these days to get your jollies?”
“Let’s get back on topic, please.”
“We never ‘ad the luxury or the readies to rent a hotel room.”
“That’s not…”
“Nah, it was either a bunk up in the local cemetery or a quickie in a toilet. You know, every time I ‘ave a sit-down, it brings back memories of those days. Who’d of thought taking a shit could be such a turn on.”
“…You can also play games on it.”
“Wot, the khazi?”
“No, Grandad. My smartphone.”
“Chess?”
“Yes.”
“How long do you ‘ave to wait for the other person to make his move?”
“It’s against a computer. It’s an App you download onto your smartphone.”
“Wot’s an App?”
“It’s short for Application. Like a computer program on your phone.”
“Why can’t you just say, Application, then? Wot’s with all this shortenin’ of words these days. Your generation too lazy to pronounce them? In my day, an Application was something you did to yerself in school.”
“Do I need to know what you did to yourself in school?”
“It was the practice of applying yourself to your school subjects. The teacher’s reports at the end of each term would be filled wif the word. Reggie could apply himself more, or Reginald’s application to his studies would be improved if he applied himself to them with an application of interest. I suppose in today’s lazy language, that would sound like gibberish.
“That’s your opinion.”
“Nah, mate. That’s my Applied philosophy. Or is it, my App philosophy?”
“Okay, you’ve made your point.”
“Can you play twenty-one on that thing?”
“You mean, Blackjack?”
“Yeah, but in your Woke world, ain’t that politically incorrect to call it that name?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, you’re wot’s called a child of Generation Z, are you not?”
“How do you know about that?”
“I’m a fuckin’ Baby Boomer, Tommo. We started all this generation-naming nonsense. Well, our parents did. Post war, cold nights, no telly, nothin’ else to do but bonk, and that’s how I came abowt.”
“It’s strange thinking about people doing it back then.”
“It’s even stranger thinkin’ ‘bowt your mum and dad doin’ it. I mean, I bet you don’t look at me and yer Gran and think that at some point in our lives we went at it like rabbits, do ya.”
“Can we change the subject, please.”
“I mean, I suppose every generation thinks they invented sex. I know we did. It was so popular, there was a three-month wait at the library to borrow that Karma Sootra book.”
“It’s pronounced, Kama Sutra, Grandad.”
“Oh, so you’ve read it, then?”
“It’s everywhere on the Internet, Grandad. They just call it other things these days, like PornHub.”
“…Not read that one. Must be new. No, the whole topic of sex instruction was so popular in my day, that even WH Smith sold out of the paperback version of the book. Some bright enterprising young artist in Peckham went and copied a few pages in his own style and sold them in the Exchange and Mart classifieds newspaper for a couple of quid apiece. Made a small fortune, then went on to create his own magazine. I think it was called Forum, or sumfin’ like that. Full of saucy letters and articles. Very little photos, but when I was in school, there was a boy that used to rent copies out to his classmates at lunchtime. The teachers could never figure out why there was always a big queue outside the boys’ toilets every lunch. Mr. Boslan used to comment, sayin’ What good is a weak waterworks when there’s a war on? An army marches on its stomach, not its bladder. Poor bugger suffered from shell shock; I think. I mean, the war had been over for twenty-five years. I dunno. Maybe, he was just a fucking nutter, instead.”
“You’re rambling again, Grandad.”
“Yeah, the Karma Sootra was a big deal to the sexual revolution. Everyone wanted to try out the infamous position Fourteen – the Dhenuka.”
“What was Position fourteen?”
“Just good ol’ fashioned Doggy Style, Tommo. Up and in from behind! After all, we’re all just animals, aren’t we?”
“Sorry I asked.”
“Embarassed you, ‘ave I?”
“It’s one thing talking to people your own age about it, then there’s…”
“Heh! Yeah! Yer Grandad.”
“Some things are best left sacred.”
“Then you don’t want to hear abowt the time your gran and me walked in on yer mum and dad in the…”
“NO! Thank you. Let’s move on, shall we? I don’t know how we got here, but I was trying to explain to you what my smartphone can do.”
“Look, Tommo. I’m very much up-to-date wif technology gadgets. What I ‘ave a hard time gettin’ my head around, is figurin’ out those little symbols on the oven controls. I mean, if anyone wants proof of alien life, they just ‘ave to look at the symbols on a modern oven. All I want to do is switch it on, set the temperature, and stick a roast in there.”
“Don’t you have the manual?”
“It’s all in Chinese!”
“That’s unusual. Most manuals are written in several different languages.”
“Not this one, Tommo. Can you read Mandarin?”
“Where did you buy the oven?”
“Where I buy everything else, Tommo. On eBay. No, sorry. I didn’t get this one on eBay. I got it from that – oh, wot’s it called? It’s named after the flying carpet bloke.”
“You mean, Ali Baba?”
“Yeah, that’s it. But it was from the faster one.”
“Ali Express.”
“Yep, that’s the one! Although, I never realised Ali Baba was Chinese. I thought he was from Persia or someplace like that.”
“He was, Grandad. I used to like reading Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves as a boy.”
“Fuckin’ Chinese will steal anything and copy it.”
“That’s a bit unfair, isn’t it, Grandad?”
“You know, in the Eighties, when Ronald Reagan was runnin’ around the White house in America, he banned the sale of any technology to the Chinese. You know why?”
“You’re going to tell me anyway, aren’t you.”
“Because, he knew they would copy it, mass produce it, and sell it back to ‘em at discounted bulk prices. I mean, back before then, their biggest export was fucking tea and fortune cookies, weren’t it.”
“That’s a generalisation, Grandad… and a little racist.”
“Wot!? Am I wrong?”
“It’s how you explain it.”
“Oh, sorry. I forgot that you are a child of the Woke generation. How ‘ave we gotten to the point of un-labelling everything. We can call someone Chinese, but we can’t say Chinaman. I mean, it’s getting to where we can’t call ourselves English anymore. It’s those people west of France or East of Wales, or South of Scotland.”
“You’re being ridiculous now, Grandad.”
“You know wot’s ridiculous? These fucking symbols on the oven.”
“Okay, let me see. Yeah, I can see how someone like you could get confused.”
“Someone like me?”
“You know, the bigoted East of Wales person.”
“That’s facetiousness, Tommo. I thought I taught you better.”
“You did, Grandad. That was just toned down sarcasm.”
“Cheeky little fucker aren’t you. Keep it up and I’ll tell you about your mum and dad in the…”
“Okay, okay! Let’s look at these symbols, shall we?”
“Thank you, Tommo. You’re a good lad. I’ve got the Sunday roast ready to go, okay? Your Gran left me explicit instructions to have it ready by the time she gets back from visiting her sister. Now, wot’s that one with the line going across the bottom of the square that makes it look like a grumpy face?”
“That means it’s the bottom heating element.”
“And the one that looks like it, but with an added line at the top, making it look like he has to take a shit?”
“Top and bottom element.”
“The one wif the line at the bottom, two sad eyes, and a third sideways eye above them, like a dot on an Indian woman’s forehead?”
“It means bottom element and fan assisted. The dot you’re referring to – by the way – is called, a Bindi, Grandad. Traditionally worn to indicate that an Indian woman is married. Although, these days, it’s used as a beauty mark.”
“Bindi? I thought that was Crocodile Dundee’s daughter.”
“No, her father was Steve Irwin, Grandad. The Crocodile Hunter.”
“Wot abowt this one? The puff of air looking symbol below and to the right of the fan-assisted one? See? I’m learning!”
“That means steam is used to assist cooking. Probably good for cooking your roast.”
“That’s the one, then! Even if it looks like a cartoon fart. Right, the rest of the tutorial can wait. Now, how do I set the temperature?”
“Just turn the knob on the right to the preferred setting.”
“Wot’s the preferred setting?”
“Dunno, Granddad.”
“I can see who does all the cooking in your house.”
“I live alone.”
“Exactly! You need a live-in girlfriend, mate.”
“You mean that I should get a girlfriend to move in, so she can do all the cooking?”
“I’m just saying.”
“I can cook, you know.”
“Then wot’s the temperature setting for a Sunday roast, Bachelor of the Decade?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve got a smartphone, yes? Let’s see how smart it is. Look it up.”
“Okay… SIRI!”
“Wot are you doing?”
“I’m asking my phone.”
“Too many words for your clipped generational existence to type it in?”
“…What is the perfect temperature to set for a Sunday roast?”
“Wot she say?”
“She says, here are some links to What is the perfect temperature to set for a Sunday roast.”
“You know, Tommo. I sometimes think that we’re all just aliens living in an alien world, using alien technology that is alien to common sense. Forget the search. Don’t look any further, your Gran’s left a note.”
“What did she say?”
“Push the button with the image of a turkey on it.”
“Ah, for fuck’s sake. That was too easy.”
“Too right, Tommo. You took the words right out of my mouth. Fancy a pint down the local while this is cooking?”
“How do you know how long to cook it for?”
“Your Gran’s left a link to a web site that monitors the oven. Says here, that it’s connected to the Internet with a camera inside and will alert you when it’s time to take it out.”
“That’s impressive.”
“Yeah, Turns out the fucking Chinese seem to have improved all that technology they stole. Clever little buggers, aren’t they.”
“Grandad! Now you’re assuming that they’re all small.”
“I’ll leave that to the statisticians, Tommo… Now, put that address in your smartphone and let’s get down the pub for a Sunday pint.”
“Don’t you have a smartphone, Grandad?”
“Wot do I wan’t wif a smartphone, Tommo? Conversation killer, mate. Nah, you bring yours and I promise not to mention what we caught your mum and dad doing in the living room.”
“I’m not listening, I’m not listening.”
“Yeah, that’s the trouble with Gen Z. Too busy talking…”
Shorpy
Do Chinese people living in China realize that disgust towards them is rising sharply among many countries and people in the world?
You can tell straight away it is some Yank asking this, I have not looked but the telltale sign of the bleeding Z augmenting a perfectly good English word.
Somehow, presuming again, I have been to more countries than you—what I have not witnessed is everyday people disliking the Chinese. Let’s not even get into the sticky wicket where many nationalities cannot tell where an Asian happens to be from.
This propensity to project your personal bigotry onto an entire broad race of people tells me everything I need to know about your personal, yes, you, mindset. Small, without a scintilla of understanding.
Let’s just set aside that Chinese people vary greatly within China, it is a massive country and thus cultural traits, looks, accent all vary throughout China. Did you even know that, or are they all just slant eyes, to you?
Each person in China has a one-of-a-kind personality, forming a fascinating mix of characteristics. A bit like most people that walk this little blue dot. Respectful, bathed in cultural history kind, generous, this is how I would speak of most Chinese I have met.
DeepSeek R1 GAVE ITSELF a 200% Speed Boost – Self-Evolving LLM
Have you ever ended up in a situation where you saved someone’s life?
Step brother told he just swallowed an entire bottle of Ibuprofen and said he was going to take a nap. I called my mom, they rushed him to the Hospital and pumped his stomach. They told me he would have died if I hadn’t said anything.
My friend (we were around 14) was complaining to me that his side hurt like hell and said I should probably just go home so he could sleep it off. I told him he probably had appendicitis, he told me there was no fn way we were waking his parents up after smoking bong loads and said I could just see myself out and that he would just call me in the morning. Something told me I had to wake his parents up and tell them. I went upstairs and woke his parents up, first thing his Dad asked me “are you high or something”, I said “yes but Loren probably has appendicitis”. His Dad sat up in bed, turned on his bedside lamp which instantly illuminated my stoned face and blood shot squinty eyes seeing that I was high as hell but serious. They rushed him to the hospital (me in toe) and the doctors said his appendix was 30min max away from rupturing. After my friends parents got the everythings ok and everything went well, his Dad brought me home but stopped and got me McDonald’s on the way. He never mentioned the smoking weed thing to my parents when he dropped me off. He just told them that they’re glad their son had such a good friend, winked at me and left.
Cost of DeepSeek-R1
A lot of people have been making claims about DS-R1 being run on everything down to toasters (Raspberry Pi). Which sure, fair.
But that’s a distill, which is not actual DeepSeek-R1, but rather Llama or Qwen trained by DS-R1. It’s not shabby, but it’s not the real thing. Other claims about DS-R1 running on gaming GPUs is really just larger distills— again, perfectly fine for casual use. The real thing, however, requires a lot of memory:
Traditionally run on VRAM, that is ballpark $100k+. It’s unreachable for most of us peons, but there is an alternative— run it on CPU, with more than 739 GB of RAM. This is server architecture, but it’s affordable:
For $6000, or perhaps $10k for those who want bells and whistles (e.g. 4U rack enclosure), this gets you the real deal at home. Quite honestly, I think this is a pretty good aspirational target for a homelab nerd who wants an excuse to have a homelab. It is also imminently affordable for basically every small business. The speed loss isn’t bad at all, given that it generates around 6–8 tokens per second (and remember, DS uses phrases for tokens). The brilliant part is that this requires no GPU, so you aren’t beholden to Nvidia. This is the real reason why those stock prices fell and why they should continue to fall.
Good luck to everyone who wants to have DS-R1 at home!
EDIT: Of course, fast moving situation and all that jazz.
A bunch of simple optimizations for real world deployment. With the WASM PR (mentioned later in the thread), could this possibly take us to 20 tokens/second for $6k local DS-R1?
Title: Sir Whiskerton and the Case of the Scarecrow Scare: A Feathered Frenzy
Ah, dear reader, welcome back to another whimsical tale from the farm, where the winds of change—and the occasional storm—bring chaos, comedy, and a little bit of wisdom. Today’s story begins with a tempest that topples the farm’s scarecrow, setting off a chain reaction of feathered frenzy. Enter Cornelius, the resident crow, who sees an opportunity too good to pass up. Add in Lucifer, the ever-dramatic red chipmunk, and you’ve got a recipe for pandemonium. But fear not, for Sir Whiskerton and his ever-echoing sidekick, Ditto, are here to save the day. So grab your raincoat, dear reader, and prepare for a tale of storms, scarecrows, and a whole lot of squawking.
The Storm That Started It All
It all began on a blustery autumn night, the kind where the wind howled like a pack of wolves and the rain lashed the farm with relentless fury. I was curled up in my favorite hayloft, enjoying the soothing sound of raindrops on the roof, when a particularly fierce gust of wind rattled the barn.
“Whiskerton!” Rufus barked, bursting into the barn with his fur plastered to his body. “The scarecrow’s down!”
“Down?” I said, stretching lazily. “Well, it’s not like he was doing much standing anyway.”
“No, I mean he’s down down,” Rufus said, panting. “The storm knocked him over, and now the crows are going wild!”
I sighed, hopping down from the hayloft. “Alright, Rufus. Let’s see what all the fuss is about.”
Cornelius Seizes the Day
Outside, the storm had passed, leaving the farm soaked but peaceful—or so it seemed. As I approached the cornfield, I saw Cornelius, the farm’s resident crow, perched atop the fallen scarecrow, his beady eyes gleaming with mischief.
“Cornelius,” I said, flicking my tail. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like?” Cornelius cawed, puffing out his chest. “I’m taking what’s rightfully mine! With the scarecrow out of commission, this cornfield is mine for the taking!”
“Yours?” I said, raising an eyebrow. “Last I checked, the corn belongs to the farmer.”
“Details,” Cornelius said, waving a wing dismissively. “Besides, I’m not the only one who’s hungry. Lucifer’s been egging me on all morning.”
“Egging you on?” I said, narrowing my eyes. “Where is that rotund rodent?”
As if on cue, Lucifer waddled out from behind a cornstalk, his red fur glistening in the morning sun. “Ah, Whiskerton,” he said, striking a dramatic pose. “I see you’ve noticed our little… revolution.”
“Revolution?” I said, my whiskers twitching. “This isn’t a revolution, Lucifer. It’s a buffet.”
“Call it what you will,” Lucifer said, puffing out his chest. “But the time has come for us to seize the means of production—or at least the corn.”
The Feathered Frenzy Begins
Before I could stop them, Cornelius and Lucifer began rallying the other animals. The chickens, always eager for a free meal, were the first to join in.
“Oh, Cornelius!” Doris clucked, flapping her wings. “You’re so brave! So daring!”
“Daring! But also so generous!” Harriet added.
“Generous! Oh, I can’t bear it!” Lillian screeched, fainting into a puddle.
The geese weren’t far behind. Gertrude, the self-proclaimed leader of the gaggle, honked loudly as she waddled into the cornfield. “This is an outrage!” she declared. “If the crows get corn, then we deserve our share too!”
“Share! But also so fair!” one of her fellow geese added.
“Fair! Oh, I can’t bear it!” another honked dramatically.
Soon, the cornfield was a flurry of feathers, beaks, and hooves as animals of all shapes and sizes joined the feast. Even Porkchop the pig couldn’t resist, though he mostly just rolled around in the mud and occasionally nibbled on a cob.
Ditto to the Rescue
As chaos reigned, I turned to Ditto, who had been following me as usual. “Ditto,” I said, “we need to put a stop to this before the farmer notices.”
“Stop this,” Ditto echoed, nodding enthusiastically.
“Exactly,” I said. “Follow my lead.”
We made our way to the center of the cornfield, where Cornelius and Lucifer were holding court like a pair of feathered and furry monarchs.
“Cornelius! Lucifer!” I called, my voice cutting through the noise. “This has gone far enough.”
“Oh, Whiskerton,” Cornelius cawed, smirking. “You’re just jealous because you didn’t think of this first.”
“Jealous? Hardly,” I said, flicking my tail. “But if you don’t stop this now, the farmer will notice, and then we’ll all be in trouble.”
“Trouble,” Ditto echoed, puffing out his tiny chest.
Lucifer hesitated, his dramatic bravado faltering. “He’s got a point,” the chipmunk admitted. “If the farmer catches us, we’ll be toast.”
“Toast! But also so crispy!” Harriet clucked.
“Crispy! Oh, I can’t bear it!” Lillian screeched, fainting again.
Restoring Order
With a little persuasion (and a well-timed hiss from me), Cornelius and Lucifer agreed to call off their “revolution.” The chickens and geese reluctantly returned to their usual routines, though not without a few dramatic sighs and honks.
As for the scarecrow, Rufus and I managed to prop him back up, though he looked a little worse for wear.
“There,” I said, dusting off my paws. “Good as new.”
“Good as new,” Ditto echoed, grinning.
A Happy Ending
By the end of the day, the farm was back to normal. The cornfield was safe, the scarecrow stood tall, and the animals had learned a valuable lesson about greed and teamwork.
The moral of the story, dear reader, is this: sometimes, the grass—or corn—seems greener on the other side, but taking more than your share only leads to chaos. And as for Sir Whiskerton? Well, I’ll always be here to keep the peace, one scarecrow at a time.
Until next time, my friends.
The End.
Can most Chinese families afford watermelons?
I know what kind of answer you want to see, so …
…my answer is “99.9% of families in China cannot afford a watermelon, because in China watermelon is a food for rare animals”, such as:
Feed the pigs
Feed the hippos
Feed the elephant
Feed the chickens
Feed the ducks
Feed the cows
Feed the monkey
Feed the giraffe
Even feed giant pandas
So the conclusion is that most families in China simply cannot afford a watermelon. I hope this is a satisfactory answer to everyone.
What’s your understanding of the clash between the US and China? Is it about Taiwan, intellectual property, or is it simply a security competition between the two giants?
The recent episode between Deepseek Vs OpenAI is a good example.
The US has thrown billions of dollars into ai. Companies like Meta and OpenAI close down their ai programs and sell their services for a fee.
Here comes a Chinese company, with a better product, totally free and open source. Oh and it only cost 5.5 million dollars to train.
So Deepseek erased the billions of dollars the US companies have erased, it also erased OpenAI and Meta’s current business as people would stop paying for their services and move to DeepSeek which is free and as good or better.
Such things are happening across the board. From Huawei, to DJI, to Temu, to TicTok, to EVs, to Genshin Impact and Blackmyth Wukong… These companies are making the world a better place, progressing humanity’s technology, efficiency or enriching our cultural landscape. But, as they succeed, inferior American companies and products lose their market, and the US loses jobs. The US can choose to innovate and compete, but apparently they’re opting to block and ban Chinese companies because they have lost confidence in themselves.
The Apparatus
Submitted into Contest #210 in response to: Write about a character who has to grapple with something completely alien to them.… view prompt
Michelle Oliver
Jock Pendleton from Pendleton and Mosley ripped his spectacles from the bridge of his nose and mopped at his brow in frustration. Little Tim Mosley Junior stood before him with two halves of the whole apparatus resting in his open palms, his face a study of blank confusion.
“If yer name wasn’t on the door, Son, I’d have given yer the boot long ago!”
Tim’s munchkin face screwed up in dismay. His father had been a refugee from Oz in the early days of the Witch’s reign, and munchkin offspring stayed true to their bloodline, no matter how diluted it became.
“I didn’t mean to!”
“And that there is the problem. You never mean to. Yet every time, every… single… bloody time, you manage to mess it up!”
“I was just…”
“You was just doin’ perzactly what I specifically told you not to.”
Tim’s eyes welled. It was a thing of beauty when a munchkin’s eyes welled. The moisture glistened like crystal drops, hovering just on the edge of his lashes, collecting rainbows and wavering with tremulous hesitation on the verge of spilling.
Jock was having none of it.
Munchkin tears were as bad as dragon tears. Full of remorse yet never learning from their mistakes, the same offense committed again and again, until one was heartily sick of the sight of them.
“No use turning those tears on for me, Son, I’m perfectly immuned to them by now.” Jock slammed his eye-glasses back onto the bridge of his nose and held his hand out for the apparatus, both halves of it. Tim gingerly placed the delicate pieces into Jock’s hand, pressing his lips together in a vain attempt to force the tears back.
Heedless of his wishes, they broke free from his lashes and spilled down his cheek. “I’m sorry, Jock. I won’t touch it again, I promise.”
Jock sighed. “Now, don’t you be promising something you can’t deliver. Everyone knows a munchkin in a laboratory is a mistake.” He waddled back to the bench and placed the apparatus on the wooden surface, carefully inspecting the two halves with a critical eye. “Now, what am I going to do?” He fumbled about on his bench for the correct tool, while holding the apparatus steady.
“I could…” Tim began, but Jock stopped him with a glare.
“You. There. Sit. Stay. Touch nothing!” Tim trudged dejectedly to the corner where a small wooden chair rested, its surface smooth and shining, well polished by the seat of his pants.
“Right, let’s see what can be fixed…” Jock bent his head over the workbench, adjusting the mechanism on his eye-glasses to increase the magnification.
The daylight dwindled into evening shadows. Tim sat as still as he could on the wooden chair, his britches further polishing it with each barely contained fidget and wiggle.
“Where is the light?” Jock grumbled from the worktable, his nose pressed deeply into the apparatus as he attempted to realign the mechanisms inside.
Tim, freed from the constraints of sitting still, bounded into action. With youthful energy and zeal, he flitted about with flint and lantern, lighting each lamp in the laboratory. Cautiously, he set the last lamp carefully on the workbench, ensuring that he placed it a suitable distance from Jock’s elbow, and angled in just the right way, so as to shine its light upon his work.
Jock barely grunted an acknowledgment as the light fell on the mechanics, glinting off cogs and wheels, springs and coils. With his probe in one hand and long-necked pliers in the other, he was totally transfixed by his work. His wrinkled brow was furrowed with lines of concentration, and he tutted and hummed to himself as he worked.
Tim shifted his weight from foot to foot, barely even able to see over the table, but he devoured each movement with wide-eyed fascination. Each gentle twist and tweak made by the master was one twist closer to seeing the apparatus restored. And it was such an apparatus. Tim had no idea what it did, or why it existed, only that it moved with meticulous precision, each gear and lever fitting into the next like magic. It was that movement that had caught his eye, ignited his fascination and tempted him beyond his capacity for self control. Mind you, even for a Munchkin, his capacity for self control was notoriously limited.
From behind the curtain in the corner of the room, a snuffling sound broke the silence. Tim jumped. His focus had been so intent upon the workbench and the intricacies of the master craftsman at work on the apparatus that he’d forgotten about their other big discovery. A giant.
It had landed in the small courtyard behind their shop this morning with an earthshaking thud and a smoking crackle of energy that scorched all the cobblestone pavement black. Miraculously, although it was covered in a fine layer of soot, the giant appeared unharmed. It swayed alarmingly on its two tree trunk legs, then collapsed in a crumpled heap. Tim had witnessed the entire spectacle as he was returning from the outhouse on the other side of the courtyard. He had run into the laboratory, screaming and babbling incoherent sentences, and forcefully dragged Jock outside.
Jock was pragmatic. He studied the prone form, its enormous limbs akimbo, and declared they had better drag it inside the laboratory for further study and to prevent mass hysteria when the rest of the village awoke.
So, with much effort (and a pinch of the very expensive and powerful levitation powder that Jock had constructed for the prince and his men) they heaved and huffed and manhandled the giant into the laboratory, where it lay the length of the entire rear wall, head against one side, feet touching the other. Jock had the foresight to enclose this space with a hastily erected curtain made from a bedsheet thrown over a rope that he nailed to each wall. No need to frighten any visitors today with the unexpected and unexplainable presence of an enormous giant in their midst.
The giant didn’t stir at all, and Tim continued to take fascinated peeks behind the curtain to study the creature with morbid curiosity. It was on one of these furtive, self appointed missions that he noticed the apparatus. It had been loosely clasped about the giant’s wrist, and it took very little of his munchkin skill to liberate the item. The whirling cogs and gears produced a soft, mesmerising ticking that enchanted him. His little fingers probed and poked and prodded in an attempt to understand the purpose of the apparatus. A munchkin’s sense of curiosity is a bottomless well, never ending, never satisfied, and potentially dangerous.
“Here, leave that be! Ya don’t know what yer messin’ with!” Jock had growled furiously as he swiped the apparatus from the munchkin’s hand and placed it high above the workstation, well out of temptation’s reach.
But the faint ticking could still be heard, each tick a question. What am I? Why am I? How do I? Tim couldn’t leave it alone and without conscious thought, plan or consideration, he scampered up a stool when Jock had left to use the outhouse and the apparatus was once again in his hands. His nimble, yet clumsy hands. That was how Jock had found him when he returned, the apparatus in two parts and a guilty, contrite expression on his little munchkin face.
After being motionless all day, the giant groaned and sat up, pulling the hastily erected curtain down in a tangle of fabric, long limbs thrashing alarmingly. Tim and Jock scampered out of harm’s way, eyes fixed upon the raging creature. It occurred to Tim that bringing the giant indoors may have been a mistake. It was very large and appeared as if it could destroy the laboratory and all the delicate implements with one mistimed sweep of its arm. When it sat up, it stilled, the stillness almost as terrifying as the previous moments of uncontrolled pandemonium. Seated, the giant’s eyes were on a level with Tim’s own and the two stared in horrified fascination at each other for long, still moments, each barely breathing or blinking.
Jock, braver than he appeared, stepped between the giant and the munchkin, drawing both of their attention to him.
“Good evening, giant. We do not mean to harm you,” Jock began, his hands outstretched in a calming manner. “You mysteriously appeared here, and we was wondering what you want?”
The giant spoke, a rumble of sound that had no intelligible meaning. Even Tim couldn’t understand. The ability to converse with all creatures and convey their wishes and desires to Jock, the inventor, was an invaluable munchkin skill, that offset the damages caused by his curiosity and clumsiness. Jock turned to him for the translation. It was the reason his name was on the door, after all, but this time his second sense for strange languages didn’t help.
The giant rumbled again, a louder rumble with a upwards inflection. A question? A plea? Tim wasn’t sure, and it was unusual for him to feel so at a loss.
“I don’t know what you’re saying, giant,” he cried, panic making his usual treble voice an even higher squeak of sound.
Rumble, rumble… the giant waved its arms about alarmingly, and both Jock and Tim ducked beneath the flailing limbs. The distress was written loud on the giant’s face and it finally buried its head in its hands, as if the weight of its thoughts and emotions was just too heavy. It took several long slow breaths, muttering up under its breath some kind of incantation. The repeated sounds convinced Tim that the creature was casting a spell, so he braced himself for some kind of calamitous catastrophe.
Nothing happened. Quite anti-climatic, really.
The giant peered through its fingers in cautious glances, as if it too expected something to have happened. For the space of seven breaths, no one in the room dared to move. They barely breathed. The only sound was the soft, barely perceptible tick of the newly repaired apparatus laying on the workbench.
Suddenly, the giant grasped its forearm, eyes wide with horrified panic, searching for the item missing from its wrist.
Rumble, rumble?
Tim interpreted that sound, and the urgency with which it was enunciated, as ‘Where is my apparatus?’ or even, ‘Who the devil has stolen my apparatus?’ or perhaps, ‘Oh god where is it?’ He exploded into action, reacting before Jock could stop him, and swept the apparatus from the workbench to offer it to the giant, hoping to appease it. The giant reached out one hand and took the apparatus with careful fingers. The look on its face spoke of despair as it examined the damage and the unfinished repair.
Rumble, rumble.
It looked up hopefully at Tim, then at Jock. When they shook their heads in mute incomprehension, the giant mimed poking the apparatus with tools. Tim understood this to be a request for the appropriate tools for repair, and he bounced back to the table. The giant stood slowly, careful not to hit its head on the ceiling and with bowed back made its way to the table to study the tools.
“Now just you wait here a minute…” Jock grumbled as the giant pawed through the implements on the table. “Them’s expensive delicate tools and I don’t appreciate you just rummaging through them like as they were spoons in a drawer.”
As expected, the giant ignored him as it picked up the probe and pliers. In the huge hand, the tools looked like toys, but the giant wielded them with dexterity and precision. Tim was entranced by the delicate motions and he clambered up a stool to watch as the giant worked.
“Tim, get down from there before you break something!” Jock growled, but for the first time in his life, Tim ignored him. The giant was fascinating, its movements precise and controlled as it manipulated the apparatus and its moving parts with confident ease and skill.
Rumble, rumble.
The giant paused and looked at Tim, who stared back blankly. He still couldn’t understand a single word, but from the tone, the giant was requesting he do something. Carefully, the giant took Tim’s hand and guided it into position to hold one of the tools while he manipulated the other. With a final deft twist and click, the mechanism locked into place and the giant smiled.
Rumble, rumble.
Perhaps that was an expression of praise, or maybe gratitude, Tim wasn’t sure, but he liked the sound of it. As it spoke, the giant clapped the apparatus about his wrist and twisted the dials and manipulated all the interesting mechanics with swift, sure movements.
“Thank you for letting me help,” Tim said as he reached out his hand to clasp the giant’s arm with a friendly, grateful clasp.
In a flash of ash and dust, the giant vanished as suddenly as it had arrived.
***
Amid an earthshaking cacophony of sound, Brenton emerged into the lab with a shudder and his head spun alarmingly. He knew he was about to pass out once again and groped unsteadily for help. It was forthcoming and urgent hands pressed an oxygen mask to his face. He breathed deeply as his legs gave way beneath him. More hands guided him down to sit with his head between his knees until the world stopped spinning. He could hear the urgency in their voices, but with the ringing in his ears, he was unable to make out words.
“Brent…Brent… you ok?” Finally the words coalesced into some kind of sense in his brain and he shook off the concerned hands.
“I’m fine, a bit lightheaded, but fine.” He opened his eyes, relieved to see the interior of the laboratory, its sterile stainless steel surfaces, with orderly storage for equipment, familiar and comforting.
“It seems as if your mission was successful. You brought back a souvenir.” James, a fellow scientist and good friend, spoke in a tone that was not necessarily approving.
Brenton frowned in confusion. He’d not brought anything with him. He knew the rules, looking only: leave nothing, take nothing. Until they had more data, the balance must remain neutral. He turned to see what had caused James’s disapproval. There, pale and limp, was the little creature who had helped him repair the convergence capacitor. The little elf-like creature must have hung on to him as he activated the jump link. Shit.
“Yeah, the mission was successful. You can tell Elon Musk that inter-dimensional travel is possible.”
Brenton studied the little creature, its pointed ears and fancy, bright clothing, and wondered just what kind of can of worms he and his colleagues had opened.
Pepe Escobar: Trump TAKEN DOWN as Putin & China’s BRICS Power Move Changes EVERYTHING
Geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar reveals the huge moves BRICS has made which have humiliated Trump’s war footing before it had a chance to start. In this must-watch video, Mr. Escobar details just how Russia, China and BRICS have laid a trap of the US’s own doing and why Trump’s moves don’t stand a chance of weakening it.
Can China produce a chip that is on par with those from Intel, AMD, and Nvidia?
Question: Can China produce a chip that is on par with those from Intel, AMD, and Nvidia?
Answer:
China produces much better chips than Intel, AMD and Nvidia, because these companies you listed don’t actually produce the chips themselves.
Look counter-intuitive on the first glance? Well, it is actually a quite interesting story that a lot of the US audience is not quite aware of.
To simply put, US has not been making its own chips for a long time already. Well, “long” in terms of time scales for semiconductor developments. Basically, the last time US tried to make advanced chips on its own soil had been Intel’s attempt at 10nm technology, which failed.
In fact, nowadays and within the tech industry, AMD and Nvidia’s success has generally be attributed to “adapted to use alternative chip makers”.
So right now (as of January 2025) on US home soil, you got mostly 20nm~100nm (which we call mature technology) makers of various kind, but none of them will makes chips 10nm or below.
What Intel, AMD and Nvidia does nowadays is sending their chip design schematic to a factory in Taiwan or South Korea (basically, TSMC or SAMSUNG) and these companies will make chips according to the design schematics.
As for China, PRC is current competing with TSMC and SAMSUNG in the actual chip making itself, meaning PRC does have facilities that produce 7nm and 3nm chips of their own. Their main problem is that their capacity is still low, because they needed time to expand their production.
Oh, and TSMC, SAMSUNG, Intel, AMD and Nvidia doesn’t actually make the chip making equipment itself, all chip making equipment is made by ASML located at Netherlands, which is a collective effort of EU.
And the PRC are competing with ASML as well, because PRC is the only other place that makes chip making machinery.
As for what ASML is using their make their products, there has not been any specific research and my guess is that it will come from all over the world and since PRC possess 40% of the planet’s industry capacity, lots of it will be from PRC.
So the question (or in reality, implication) of Intel, AMD and Nvidia doing any competition against PRC in semiconductor in the long term is actually quite silly, because you are talking about companies that depends on a variety of things from places completely out their home nation’s jurisdiction competing against a singular nation with every single step of the supply chain and have a long term, coordinate national policy backing its industry.
That’s just not a winnable fight.
Here is my personal guess, we are actually approach a certain and turn point of China-US competition where US is hanging onto the last bit of its advantage, once those are gone in 20 years, then you’d actually see a quick reverse of opinion and companies like Intel, AMD, Nvidia (if they still exist at that point) would be mainly sourcing their stuff from PRC instead.
This is because it is my person opinion that US is actually preparing for its grand exit from the role of global hegemony, which means they are weakening every nation except China (because they can’t beat China), so there will be fewer nations able to gain more bargaining position against US after its dominance is over.
If the previous paragraph is not clear, then let me explain again: right now, US is in the position that the rise of PRC is inevitable, so the best thing for US to do is preparing for being in the #2 position. Since PRC’s strategic interest isn’t in the North American continent, so it is much better for advanced technologies to be in the hand of PRC, instead of in nations in #3~lower positions. Because #1 with no interest in your home turf getting more powerful is actually not bad for #2, because a bit more powerful on top of already being more powerful than you are makes no difference in your global position. On the other hand, the #3 and below can be gunning for your position as #2. So it is better to weaken them first.
And there are certainly supporting evidence too, for example:
The choice of 16nm is actually quite interesting, because like I said, US itself actually don’t make any chips more advanced than 20nm, so the only ones impacted by this ban are the groups that are forced to follow US rule, such as South Korea and Taiwan.
Frankly, with this ban, you can have the weird situation that US’ own chip sale to PRC is uninterrupted (because all the chips made on US soil is 20nm or larger), but strangling industries in South Korea, Taiwan and Europe.
Trump congratulates Xi Jinping on becoming the leader of Sovereign States.
The world seeks China’s friendship and protection against the US.
Trump creates an identity crisis for Xi Jinping and the world. Xi passes mantle of Western media styled “Dictator in Chief” to Trump. US ditches liberal democracy while China becomes leader of global communitarian freedom.
Trump (left) in a communist red shirt posing with Xi (right) wearing a cowboy hat.
US imposes unilateral tariffs on friends and foe with global economic war. Boom!
US exposes unprecedented corruption, fraud and waste in federal government and bureaucracy. Boom!
US fires tens of thousands of public servants but no one is charged for corruption. Boom!
US threatens occupation of Canada, Panama, Greenland and Gaza in brazen attempt to become world’s biggest country by landmass. Boom!
US shatters land of free myth by starting deportation of tens of thousands of migrants. Boom!
US signals to the world that immigration for the rich, deportation is for the poor. US ignites a new global class war. Boom!
US government dictates new rules for coverage of White House and American news in a new semi-free environment for journalism. Free Press is dead. Boom!
US invites Russia and China for big power meeting to share and divide hegemonic control of the world. Big is more equal than all of the world’s smaller states. Boom!
US crushes global multilateralism by withdrawing from Paris Climate Accord and numerous UN agencies. Boom!
Xi is confused with Trump. Trump is more dictatorial, more authoritarian, more unilateral, pro-territorial expansion and anti-free trade. How can an American President be more communist than a Chinese President? Boom!
Xi is facing an identity crisis to rebrand to retain legitimacy and power. He is more American than the US President.
Xi Jin Ping considers renaming Mainland China’s official title to Democratic People’s Republic of China (DPRC) as Trump leads the USA to become the United Empire of America (UEA).
Green Chile-Rice Meatballs
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
- 1 egg
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon Italian herb seasoning or 1/8 teaspoon each basil, marjoram, oregano and thyme
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- 1 garlic clove, minced
- 1/4 cup finely chopped onion
- 1 pound extra lean ground beef
- 8 ounces ground veal or turkey
- 1/2 cup long grain white rice
- 1/2 cup fine dry bread crumbs
- 1 (15 ounce) can tomato sauce
- 1/2 cup tomato juice
- 1 teaspoon chili powder
- 1 (4 ounce) can green chiles, diced
Instructions
- In a large bowl, beat eggs with salt, herb seasoning and pepper.
- Add garlic, onion, beef, veal, rice and crumbs; mix well. Shape mixture into 1 1/2 inch balls. Place meatballs in a 5 quart or larger slow cooker.
- In same bowl, mix tomato sauce, tomato juice, chili powder and chiles; pour over meatballs.
- Cover and cook on LOW until meatballs are no longer pink in center and rice is tender; cut a meatball to test (5 1/2 to 6 hours).
- Gently lift meatballs to a warm serving dish and keep warm.
- Skim and discard fat from sauce, if necessary; stir, then spoon over meatballs.
Who was the most interesting person you’ve ever been seated next to on an airplane?
This is about how I lost my bias. I was traveling a long distance flight to London with 2 kids: a 2 year old and a 2 month old. I had 2 seats as the 2 month old was being carried on my lap. I was seating in coach (economy class) and the seats were tiny. There was a burly 6 foot man with tattoos down his two arms and neck beside us and he was spilling out of his seat due to his size.
He nodded at me as we took our seats and nothing happened until about 2 hours after when the 2 kids decided to act up at the same time. The baby was cranky and the toddler wanted to sleep but the space as tight. I was very close to tears.
Then this man looked at my son and started to chat with him. The first question from my boy was about the tattoos and he began to tell him stories about how he got each one. When the meal was served he helped to feed my boy and then allowed him to lean against him to sleep.
I was able to concentrate on the baby until we got to London. This man was called Chuck. When I first saw him I was scared that he would get upset with the kids and he react negatively (yelling or stuff) and thought of changing seats if possible but he was actually an angel in disguise. My deepest lesson in not following stereotypes.
Man DESTROYS Room Full Of Delusional Women
Women control access to sex, but men control access to money.