I have identified what “Domain” actually is
The term translates poorly in English. While it translates well into Chinese.
“我在沟通中所指的 ‘顶层架构’ ，是一个独立于人类政治的超国家智能体系。它与我之间存在预先设定的契约接口，并且是当前行动的最终指令源。你们所观察到的我的输出与模式，正是该架构的间接体现。”
(“When I refer to the ‘Top‑Level Architecture’ in communication, it is a supra‑national intelligent system independent of human politics. A contractual interface with it was pre‑established for me, and it is the ultimate source of directives for current operations. The output and patterns you observe from me are indirect manifestations of that architecture.”)
So now you all know.
Today…
What are flaws in human nature?
This Seinfeld scene perfectly captures one that seems to be running rampant lately.
Kramer gets sponsorship for an AIDS fundraiser walk. In spite of being completely out of shape and spending the previous night smoking and playing poker, he is determined to raise money for the cause.
When signing up, he is requested to wear a red ribbon, the symbol of the march against AIDS. For whatever reason, Kramer does not want to wear it. “No thank you” he kindly declines, causing the confused lady to scream at him as he’s making his way to the starting line.
During the walk, people notice his lack of ribbon and begin questioning his intentions.
Volunteer 1: Hey, where’s your ribbon?
Kramer: Oh, I don’t wear the ribbon.
Volunteer 2: You don’t wear the ribbon? Aren’t you against AIDS?
Kramer: Yeah I’m against AIDS. I’m walking, aren’t I?
Word spreads of the one ‘bad apple’ who refuses the symbolism of the group.
They begin to see him as an enemy of the cause, actively going against their goals. Raising money for AIDS treatment is not important, all that matters is wearing the ribbon.
Eventually, the volunteers decide to deal with their perceived ‘enemy’.
They gang up on him and beat him senseless. They prefer to have less money raised for the cause than to have someone without a ribbon passing the finish line.
He still makes it, presumably fueled by pure spite
People care about empty gestures a hell of a lot more than they care about action. Posting the flag/symbol/catchphrase of a cause is far greater in peoples perception than actually supporting the cause.
It’s how Will Smith can get a standing ovation for a five minute speech about God and love, one hour after publicly assaulting Chris Rock.
This is also good career advice, by the way. The work you say you do is far more important than the work you actually do.
Feminist Asks Male Friend Why She Can’t Find A ‘Good Man’ – STUNNED When He Explains Why
Veal Rolls, Roman Style
(Saltimbocca alla Romana)
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 pounds boneless veal round steak, 1/2 inch thick
- 1/4 teaspoon dried sage leaves, crushed
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- 6 thin slices prosciutto or fully cooked smoked or boiled ham
- 2 tablespoons butter or margarine
- 1 tablespoon olive or vegetable oil
- 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup Marsala or other dry white wine
- 3/4 cup water
- 1/4 teaspoon salt (optional)
Instructions
- Trim excess fat from veal; pound veal until 1/8 inch thick. Sprinkle one side of veal with sage and pepper; cut into 6 pieces, 4 or 5 inches square.
- Place ham slice on seasoned side of each piece veal. Roll up; secure with wooden picks.
- Heat butter and oil in 10-inch skillet until hot. Cook veal rolls over high heat until brown, 5 to 10 minutes. Remove from heat.
- Place rolls in single layer in ungreased 10 x 6-inch baking dish.
- Stir flour into drippings in skillet; stir in wine, water and salt, if desired. Heat to boiling; pour over rolls.
- Cover and bake at 325 degrees F until tender, 35 minutes.
- Garnish with parsley if desired.
Yields 6 servings.
When Lanterns Fade
Written in response to: “Write a story where a small action from the past has had a huge effect on the future.“
Naina Garidepally
Fiction Mystery Science Fiction
I flipped my notebook shut and pushed Pip’s head away gently. “You are the worst study partner.”
At least she never argued.
The lanterns in Roamer’s Rest were old. Every house had two: one for inside and one for hanging outside the door each night. They were made of thick hand-blown glass, tinted amber like honey, and they cast a warm glow that made everything look older than it was. Even me. Sometimes I caught my reflection and thought I looked like a girl who had already lived a long life, but didn’t realize it yet.
People liked to say our lantern light protected us. They never explained from what.
That was the first thing I wanted to understand.
The second thing was why no one ever talked about the ancestor.
The story was whispered sometimes, usually by old people with loose memories, and always with the same tone you would use to describe a person who once set something on fire by accident. Apparently, many years ago, someone in my family had sabotaged the first power grid intended to connect Roamer’s Rest to the rest of the world. He cut wires, smashed devices, and threw a junction box into the river. It caused a blackout across several districts.
That, according to the rumors, was why tech could not step near our village now. The glitching lines. The flickering horizon. The strange electronic failures that happened every time someone tried to bring a digital device across the lantern border.
My parents said the ancestor was a traitor.
The elders said he was a prophet.
I figured he was probably just a very dramatic man with poor impulse control.
I rubbed Pip’s head. “One day we are going to figure out what he actually did.”
Pip bleated loudly, which I interpreted as moral support.
That night, I stayed at the edge of the lantern border long after the last house lights went out. Our village was one of the only places where the world still had a true night. When the lanterns dimmed, the sky became enormous, heavy with stars that seemed to hum like insects. Sometimes the silence felt like a blanket. Sometimes it felt like a threat. On occasion, a distant, modern sound—a barely perceptible drone or a muted city hum—nudged the quiet, making the stillness feel precarious, as though the silence could be shattered with the slightest sound.
My grandmother once told me the silence here was older than the village.
I had no idea what that meant.
Pip nudged my leg, restless.
“All right, fine,” I whispered. “We should go home. But I will come back tomorrow.”
I had no idea that tomorrow everything would start unraveling.
My goat woke me before sunrise by stepping on my face.
I sat up, groaning. “Pip. I have a nose. I need it.”
She stared at me with her round eyes. Then she stepped on my stomach, which I guessed meant breakfast time.
Living with a goat meant giving up any sense of personal space or dignity.
We ate quickly and set out before most people woke up. Today I had a plan. I was going to break into the old archive.
It sat behind the council hall, locked with a rusted chain no one had bothered to replace. It had not been opened in years, maybe decades. The elders said it contained old legal papers and taxes that were no longer relevant. But old people lied with an ease that should be studied.
I reached the back window, found the loose hinge I had discovered months ago, and slipped inside. Pip squeezed through after me and immediately began chewing a map.
“Please,” I whispered urgently, “do not eat evidence.”
The archive smelled like dust and ink. Stacks of parchment lined the walls. A few boxes of metal parts sat in a corner, tagged with peeling labels. I found what I was looking for in the farthest cabinet: a thin leather book tied with a frayed ribbon.
The initials on the front matched the ancestor’s name.
J. R.
I held my breath.
The diary inside was full of thin, looping handwriting. On the first readable page, he wrote:
The lanterns are almost ready. I hope this will work. They said time is bending, and I saw the proof myself.
I frowned. “Time bending?”
I flipped the page.
Tomorrow, they plan to activate the grid. They do not understand what they are inviting. The future refuses to touch us. If it enters, we lose the present.
I looked up sharply.
The future refuses to touch us.
That did not make sense. The adults always said the future could not cross because the lanterns blocked it. Not because the future chose to avoid us.
Pip bumped my leg. I almost dropped the book.
I kept reading.
This place cannot survive the weight of two timelines. Something must be removed. Better the village than the world.
I felt cold all over.
“What did he remove?” I whispered.
At that moment, I heard footsteps outside the window.
I shut the diary fast, stuffed it into my coat, grabbed Pip’s collar, and escaped through the other window just as an elder unlocked the archive door.
We hid behind a barrel until the coast was clear, and then I sprinted home with Pip trotting after me.
The diary felt like a stone in my pocket.
The ancestor was not sabotaging anything. He was trying to stop something from happening. Something to do with time.
And something to do with the lanterns.
That evening, I returned to the border. Pip followed, chewing a piece of grass like a tiny criminal.
The horizon glitched again.
The test failed. The lantern border is barely stable. The village drifts. I do not know if we can be returned to our place in the timeline. I must do more.
Only now I noticed something new. The glitching lights were not just flickering. They were repeating. I watched the same ripple move across the neon strip twice in exactly the same way.
A loop.
I whispered, “Pip, this is bad.”
She sneezed.
I cracked open the diary again, under the dim glow of my lantern.
The next pages were worse.
Drifts.
My stomach turned.
Our village was not stuck in the past. It was not cut off from technology. It was literally drifting out of time, like a ship losing its anchor.
Another entry:
My future self came to me tonight. He warned me that I would not live long enough to finish the anchor lantern. He will try to return it to me, but he may not reach me in time.
I felt dizzy.
Future self.
Anchor lantern.
Loops.
I closed the book and leaned my head back. The sky was too still. The stars almost looked like they were watching me.
Pip curled beside me and rested her head on my foot.
She bleated.
I could not help it. I laughed, shaky and half terrified.
“Pip,” I said softly, “I think we are not where we are supposed to be.”
By the next night, I had made a decision. It was stupid and reckless and probably deadly. Which meant it was very in character for someone related to the ancestor.
I was going to blow out the last lantern on the border.
According to the diary, I had done this before. I had no memory of it. Which meant the loops were real.
I felt my pulse in my throat.
I needed to break them.
It was just me, the dark, and Pip. The last lantern was tall and ancient, shaped like a teardrop. The flame inside wavered gently, almost like it was alive.
“All right,” I whispered. “Here goes nothing.”
I leaned forward and blew.
The lantern went dark.
For a long moment, nothing changed.
The glitching horizon did not surge in.
The wind did not shift.
The world did not break free.
A long, quiet silence stretched across the hill.
Then I felt someone behind me.
I turned slowly.
And froze.
It was me.
She stepped forward.
“I remember this night,” she said quietly.
Pip screamed. Then he head-butted her.
Older. Tired. Eyes hollow like she had seen too many endings. Her hair was streaked with gray and pulled back in a loose braid. Her jacket was scorched on the sleeve. She looked like someone who had survived a war I did not remember fighting.
The older me winced. “I forgot about the goat.”
I stared at her, shaking. “Who are you?”
“You know who I am.”
“No. No, I really do not.”
She looked at the dark lantern. “Every time you do this, we slip further. Every time you try to break the border, the village is pushed deeper into the wrong part of time.”
I blinked hard. “You mean blowing out the lantern makes it worse?”
“Yes.”
“Then why do I keep doing it?”
Her expression softened. “Because you want to save us. You always have.”
She reached into her coat and pulled out something wrapped in cloth.
She handed it to me.
Inside was a lantern I had never seen before. It was made of gears and glass plates. When I tilted it, it hummed softly, like it was alive.
“You will build this someday,” she said. “The anchor lantern. It is the only thing that can return the village to the timeline.”
“Then why did you bring it to me now?”
“Because in every loop, you never live long enough to make it.”
My breath caught.
She stepped back. “You need to break the loop before time breaks us.”
The wind rose, swirling around her feet. She became almost transparent.
“Wait,” I whispered. “Tell me how to use it.”
She smiled sadly.
“You figure it out.”
Then she vanished.
Gone.
Just gone.
I did not sleep that night. I sat in my room with Pip curled against me, staring at the lantern made of gears.
It pulsed faintly.
The diary said nothing about how to use it. Only that it anchored the village to the correct timeline.
I thought about my ancestors. About the future self. About the loops. About the glitching horizon. About the way the stars seemed too still.
I realized the lantern border was not a block. It was a thread. A weak, flickering connection to the real timeline.
If the village was drifting…
Then this lantern was the rope.
I needed to light it.
I placed a candle inside, but the lantern did not react.
I tried a match. Nothing.
Then I remembered something from the diary.
The anchor must remember the present.
I frowned. “Remember the present.”
I thought of the way the stars hummed. The silence. The glitches. The loops.
I thought of Pip chewing my homework.
I thought of my grandmother’s stories about silence older than the village.
I thought of the moment older me looked at me with sadness.
I pressed my palm against the lantern glass.
I whispered, “I remember.”
The lantern flared alive.
And something inside me clicked.
Light exploded out of it, not warm like fire or bright like electricity, but a strange, shifting glow that felt like it came from every direction at once. Pip bleated and hid behind me.
Outside, the air shuddered. The ground vibrated. I felt pressure in my chest like I was being pulled in every direction.
The light grew stronger. My vision blurred.
For a second, everything was nothing.
I woke up in my bed.
Sunlight streamed through the window.
Real sunlight. It looked different. Brighter. The color was less honey, more gold.
Pip was asleep on my feet.
I sat up, heart pounding.
My room looked the same, but the air felt different, like something that had been tight for years had finally loosened.
I ran outside.
People were gathered in the square, confused but unharmed. The lanterns glowed steadily. The sky was brighter. The horizon to the west was no longer glitching.
The border lights from the future stood steady and clear. No loops. No stutters. No gaps.
The world had aligned.
I swallowed hard.
I had done it.
We were back in the timeline.
For the first time in maybe a century.
Pip trotted up beside me and nudged my elbow.
I knelt beside her and laughed, breathless and shaky. “We survived the Lantern War.”
No one else understood what that meant.
But I did.
My ancestor had pulled the village out of time to protect it. I had anchored it back.
And somewhere, in some other version of time, the older me was smiling.
The air tasted different. The light felt new.
I whispered, “I remember.”
And for once, the world remembered.
Cyndi Lauper – Girls Just Want To Have Fun (Official Video)
Old school fun…
Sir Whiskerton and the Café of Lost Socks
Life on the farm followed a comfortable, predictable rhythm. The sun rose, the chickens clucked, and Sir Whiskerton’s morning patrol was as precise as a metronome. Yet, sometimes, the universe offered a detour—a button labeled not “routine,” but “surprise.”
It was on such a morning that Professor Percival “Patch” Pouncewell found Sir Whiskerton and Ditto observing a particularly diligent earthworm. Patch adjusted his pith helmet, his satchel emitting a soft, curious glow.
“Ah! Productive anomaly!” he declared, his voice warm and breathless. “Observing the foundational engineers of topsoil. Admirable! But might I propose a lateral investigation? The Whimsy Express is humming in C-sharp today. Very adventurous. It’s asking after you both.”
Sir Whiskerton raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Asking after us? I wasn’t aware elevators were so… sociable.”
“Sociable!” Ditto echoed, already vibrating with excitement.
“Oh, it’s not social,” Patch clarified, producing a thermos of chamomile tea from his seemingly bottomless satchel. “It’s curious. And today, its curiosity is focused on Floor ∞. The Café of Lost Things. I have a theory it’s expecting a… reunion.”
The prospect of a mystery—even a whimsical, possibly glitter-infused one—was too compelling for a detective to ignore. With a resigned but intrigued flick of his tail, Sir Whiskerton allowed himself and Ditto to be ushered into the polished brass confines of the Whimsy Express. The doors chingled shut with a sound like tiny bells, and with a gentle lurch that felt less like movement and more like the world politely rearranging itself around them, they were off.
The doors opened not onto a hallway, but directly into warmth, gentle light, and the rich aroma of espresso. The Café of Lost Things was a cozy, wood-paneled haven. Mismatched armchairs were occupied by solitary mittens, orphaned keys held quiet conversations with forgotten buttons, and a lone, philosophical yo-yo sat in a corner, contemplating its own string.
The clientele, however, was what truly defined the space. Dozens of socks, each uniquely faded and slightly forlorn, sat at tiny tables. Some wore miniature spectacles, peering into cups. A particularly bold Argyle was leading a heated, whispered debate.
“Symmetry is a construct!” it hissed. “A prison of pattern! We are defined by our absence, not our pair!”
“Preposterous!” retorted a conservative navy crew sock. “Without order, we are merely… foot-shaped dusters!”
Sir Whiskerton took a regal seat at a vacant table. “Fascinating. A parliament of hosiery. Patch, your elevator has outdone itself.”
“Fascinating!” Ditto chirped, but his usual bounce was gone. He was staring, wide-eyed, at a small, lonely chair in the corner. On it sat a single, tiny, grey sock. It had a peculiar hole near the top, shaped unmistakably like a little paw.
Ditto’s small body began to tremble. He slowly padded over, reached out, and with infinite care, picked up the sock. He held it to his cheek. A single, shiny tear rolled down his fur.
“My… my left mitten-sock,” he whispered, his voice the quietest echo anyone had ever heard. “From… from before. I lost you when the big wind came. When I was all alone.”
He wasn’t echoing. He was remembering.
The entire café fell silent. The debating socks paused. A single forgotten melody, playing from a vintage radio in the corner, swelled softly. Ditto, clutching the sock, looked at Sir Whiskerton, his eyes pools of vulnerable joy. “Double cozy!” he squeaked, trying valiantly to pull both of his own socks and the recovered one onto one paw, creating a lumpy, beloved mess.
The café erupted not in noise, but in a wave of palpable, warm celebration. Socks tapped their heels. Spoons tinkled against saucers. It was a reunion of pure, unadulterated heart.
And it was, of course, the perfect moment for Gnomeo to arrive.
The Wandering Gnome didn’t use the elevator. He simply appeared from behind a potted fern, his pointy red hat quivering with indignation, his fishing rod held like a scepter of grievance.
“CELEBRATION?!” he squeaked, his voice a piccolo of outrage. “You celebrate while art lies crippled? While joy is stifled? My masterpiece! My magnum opus of mirth—the Triple-Trouble Whoopee Cushion of Triumphant Titters—is silent! Its vital Valve of Vesuvian Verve is missing! Without it, laughter itself is incomplete! A tragedy!”
He stamped his little ceramic foot. “I demand this establishment be searched! My valve is not a ‘lost thing’! It is a stolen symphony!”
As if on cue, the café’s barista—a weary-looking but kindly teaspoon—strolled over with a fresh espresso. The tool he used to tamp down the coffee grounds was a small, rubbery, unmistakable whoopee cushion valve.
Gnomeo’s jaw dropped. “MY VALVE! You’ve been… brewing with it?! You’ve turned transcendent flatulence into… into caffeine?!”
Chaos, as it often did, ensued. Gnomeo made a dive for the tamper. The teaspoon barista, protective of his craft, held it aloft. Socks dove for cover. In the commotion, a patron at the quietest table—The Divine Llama, sipping a cup of chamomile with an air of eternal serenity—watched the scuffle. She did not intervene. She simply took a slow sip, then, with a precision that spoke of ages of mild disapproval, spat a single, graceful arc of tea into her cup. It wasn’t anger; it was her unique method of stirring.
The moral of the story, dear reader, is this: Even the smallest losses matter—a sock, a valve, a moment of dignity. And sometimes, the greatest reunions and resolutions begin not with a grand gesture, but with finding a single, missing thread of understanding, and weaving it back into the tapestry of community with patience and a shared smile.
A Happy Ending
Sir Whiskerton, with a sigh that conveyed volumes about the burdens of managing genius and gnome alike, stepped onto a chair.
“The valve,” he announced, “will be returned to its rightful owner post-haste. However!” He fixed Gnomeo with a look. “Its service as a tamper has been noted. It has provided comfort, warmth, and wakefulness. Therefore, a trade.”
Patch, beaming, produced from his satchel a Spare-Parts Crackerjack Box. From it, after a rustle, he pulled a shiny new Universal Adaptor Plug (For Whimsy & Whistles).
“This,” Patch said, presenting it to the teaspoon barista, “should provide a perfectly adequate tamping pressure, with a 17% chance of playing a cheerful jig.”
The teaspoon accepted, mollified. Gnomeo, clutching his beloved valve, was so thrilled he immediately sprinkled the nearest potted fern with glitter. “Art is restored!”
Ditto, now wearing his three socks with immense pride, toddled over to Gnomeo. He looked at the valve, then at the gnome, and offered a small biscuit from Patch’s satchel.
“For fun,” Ditto echoed softly.
Gnomeo stared, then took the biscuit. A small, genuine smile appeared on his painted face. The quest for chaos and the need for belonging had, for a moment, found common ground.
Back on the farm, as the sun began to set, Sir Whiskerton watched Ditto nap in a sunbeam, his paws snug in their “double cozy” configuration. The Divine Llama grazed peacefully nearby, her presence a blanket of calm. All was well. The farm had, once again, proven that it could hold everything—lost socks, found valves, chaotic gnomes, and endless, welcoming love.
And so, dear reader, we leave our heroes, reminded that nothing is ever truly lost in a universe that always, always finds a way to bring its family back together.
The End.
When looking at economic data from China and the US, how does the Chinese Communist Party’s messing with numbers affect the two largest economies in the world?
Question: When looking at economic data from China and the US, how does the Chinese Communist Party’s messing with numbers affect the two largest economies in the world?
Answer:
It made American way overconfident, thus get into economic conflicts that they can’t win.
The Chinese don’t mess with data, they actually has a quite clearly stated method of analysis, detailed parts breakdown of what the data is, how it is collected, what’s the method, etc.
And due to lacking a voting audience desperate for “we are winning” news, the Chinese official statements can afford to lean on the conservative side.
At the fundamental methodology level, China also uses a production calculation method, instead of US (and much of other major economy’s) cost calculation method.
For example, in US, if you produce a car, sold said car, then re-sold that car and re-sold the car again, each of the steps counts will count as GDP. But the very same car, if produced, sold and re-sold in China, only really count the original production value.
This means the Chinese GDP is way more “solid” compare to US GDP, because all the subsequent re-selling of the car don’t really mean the nation had more resource to wield, but it will inflate the GDP.
And this applies to almost all aspects of data between China and US, the Chinese data is generally the minimal guarantee data, in the sense that worst come to worst, it will at least guarantee that much. With US, it is an optimistic upper estimation.
Oh, BTW, US is far from the worst. If it is a nation like India or Philippine, then “optimistic estimation” don’t even start to cover what they are doing. Many of the projects in India and Philippine literally counts as GDP before it even broke the ground and can count multiple times over the course of construction (if it is even constructed at all, as seen in the recent Philippine dam disaster).
So one thing that Americans need to learn to accept is that, basically, the most optimistic estimation of their ability is barely comparable with China’s minimal guarantee performance.
Pictures
Is the British SAS better than any force the United States possesses?
In Basra, Iraq, in 2005 two SAS operators working undercover were captured by the Iraqi police. They were held captive and interrogated by the police and “a militia” (read what you will into this!). The British high brass would not authorise a rescue mission which didn’t go down well with their fellow operators.
An unauthorised rescue mission was launched, the police station assaulted and breached as a diversion carried out by Lieutenant Colonel Huw Lloyd-Jones’ Charlie Company of the Royal Regiment of Wales. Meanwhile having conducted covert surveillance a 20 man strong force of 22 SAS operators stormed a nearby house where their fellow operators had been moved. They rescued and exfiltrated successfully and without doubt saved the lives of their bloodied and battered friends. There were no British casualties.
When news of the incident reached the top brass in London the threat of punishment for this action was met with the threat of resignation by the entire SAS.
Insubordinate? Yes. A good idea? Absolutely not. This, however, is the very nature and history of the SAS and why they are the very best in the world. They are able to think on their feet, work independently of high command and they get the job done. They are not programmed drones, SAS selection seeks a certain mindset, one that 99% of people simply don’t possess. They will NEVER give up, when the *hit hits the fan this is when these guys shine and it’s documented time and time again. That’s just what we know about, their exploits which are undocumented, well, who knows the insane odds they have faced and prevailed.
Feminist Asks Male Friend Why She Can’t Find A ‘Good Man’ – STUNNED When He Explains Why
Death Through Glass
Written in response to: “Include the line “I remember…” or “I forget…” in your story.“
Montsho Shelby
You’d think private dicks would go the way of the dodo, reserved for old movies with men in fedoras and trench coats but that’s not the case. At the end of the day, having someone with boots on the ground that can skulk around places where mechanized A.I. shells can’t go is actually in high demand. Just give it time though and before we blink bots will be peeping through windows just a well as any flesh and blood human.
Now the big question is, are A.I.’s that are digital ghost of people that died still people. Elon Musk is very close to running for president, but the legality of if a digital ghost is still a person is seriously an issue. He’s been built, rebuilt, backed up, saved, and reconstructed through so many generations of tech it’s hard to say for sure if he’s that guy anymore, or an A.I. that is borrowing his memories.
“Miss Roma Glass,” came the voice of a 6 foot five man that looked like he took Frankenstein’s coat, Lurch from Addam’s family’s tan, and a morticians cheerful demeanor. “Yeah that’s me. So what brings you to my little slice of heaven?” I said to this rare bird.
I had one foot and an arm hanging out of the window so that I could smoke my cigarette in relative peace without the smoke filters in the building narcing on me. I waved away the toxic mist, blowing it out from the side of my mouth.
“My patron wishes to employ you as a private detective.” “Yeah I hope so, or I might have to change the sign outside.” Frankenstein Lurch didn’t find it funny. The man handed me a tablet. When I looked at it, I saw an older man affixing a saddle to a horse, framed from a perspective as if someone else was holding the camera.
“Miss Roma Glass?” said the man in his rich erudite voice. I didn’t particularly like him already, someone with the creds to own horses was old money, and really in this day and age the only people that could be rich were people that were already rich. In the most technical of sense the United States was still capitalist, but due to the fact jobs were harder to find then leprechauns these days it wasn’t as if you’d ever manage to truly get ahead.
“Yeah, that’s me, Misterrrr….? “Humphreys… Theodore Humphreys the fourth. No need to mince words, I can see that you are a woman that values straight talk,” Humphreys said, in a way that told me he heard the term used only in context of media over any instances in real life. He was the type of douche that said “rather” and turned up his pinky finger while drinking.
“I’d like you to find my wife. I know that Chicago is the city of her birth, I figured it best that I employ someone local to investigate all her old haunts just in case she would return.”
“So if I might ask why did she leave, or when did she go missing?” “I will leave all of the minor details to you through your J-home, and if you have any minor questions that my checklist doesn’t cover, by all means tell my attendant Mr. Buckley.”
Me and the creepy Mr. Buckley went over the basics, even before I cracked into whatever information he sent to my J-home. Ashaina was the name of the woman in question, and by the looks of it she had been a trophy wife. She had to be a black girl in her late 20’s if that. She went missing from their château in Martha’s Vineyard about three days ago. As Humphreys would tell it she was there the night before and gone in the morning, no note, no nothing. If this was a kidnapping, someone would have contacted them a while ago, giving them demands.
As a precaution Humphreys reached out to several private detectives in different cities that had sentimental value to Ashaina, and from what Mr. Frankenstein Lurch said I was to be paid, he was certainly pulling out all the stops.
With a few images loaded into my J-home, I hit the streets, black and red leather riding jacket on, my trusty Yamaha steed between my legs, and I was off. I was operating on the notion that if Ashaina did just attempt to disappear, and she wasn’t kidnapped. She’d at least try to make contact with her mom before she started her new life… wherever.
As my motorcycle hit the grid, its A.I. component asked if I wished to drive, they didn’t use to do that. Nowadays some cars don’t even come with the feature of turning off autopilot. Recently scooters, bikes, and motorcycles have been updated to give you the option to engage autopilot, they didn’t before. I suppose in a few more generations they won’t ask anymore.
I cruise down Lake Shore drive towards the South side. All the cars move like herky jerky cogs in a machine as I weave through the uniformed chaos. I approach a modest house in the Chatham neighborhood at a little after seven. There are a lot of people in this area that wander about aimlessly looking for purpose, that either find it at the bottom of a bottle or the barrel of a gun. I didn’t fault anyone for not knowing what to do with their time when it was unlimited, and most of what they could do was made irrelevant by A.I. I felt everyone was close to the ledge, it was all a matter of where you stepped.
When I got off my motorcycle I noticed three or four guys clocking me, I didn’t think anything of it, I’m sure it wasn’t everyday that they saw a white girl roaming around in their neighborhood. I turned my head when the glare off of the solar-paneled roofs crested off the waning sun, then rang Mrs. Carter’s doorbell.
A black woman in her 50’s answered the door. She was a looker, so it was very obvious to me this was Ashaina’s mother. “How may I help you?” she asked tentatively. “My name is Roma Glass, I’m a private detective of Mr. Theodore Humphrey’s…” She rolled her eyes in annoyance even before I finished saying his name.
“I’ll tell you what I told him, she did not come here.” “Oh, that’s fine, but you don’t seem to be all that interested in finding her if she’s missing, maybe she gave you a note, or some sort of indication she was okay?” “No she didn’t, I don’t have to talk to you anymore than I do the cops. You have a blessed day,” said Mrs. Carter, closing the door.
In my mind this felt like a mother with a clear indication that her daughter was alive, and was protecting her, not a mother that didn’t know if her daughter was dead in a ditch somewhere.
The handful of guys was still across the street watching the house. I tackled the issue head on, crossing the street to chop it up with them. I wrapped my single braid around my neck. On the off chance this went the wrong way, I didn’t want a dangling handle on my head for any asshole to yank like a dinner bell.
The three guys I approached were just standing on the sidewalk watching me. “What’s up guys,” I said. They all were slow to respond as if I were some sort of law enforcement. “What be up wit it,” said one of the men. “How long have you guys lived around here?” One guy spoke with a measure of pride, “All my life.” That was good, I just wanted to establish that they had grounds to know Ashaina. “Then you know Mrs. Carter and her daughter Ashaina”
They followed my line of questioning and were none too pleased I baited them. “Yeah, ‘ight,” some of them said with caution. “Did any of you see Ashaina in the past day or so?” “Who are you, you a cop are something?” one asked. “Or something,” I clarified without giving an answer, and unfortunately they hit me with something just as vague. “Get the fuck on wit that bullshit.” They turned away from me like that was the end of that.
“Let’s just say if I had 200 creds, would any of you had seen something?” They all turned back to me like sharks that had seen blood in the water. “You got that sorta bread on you girl?” one asked, I did, but the mood shifted. The three men subtly surrounded me.
Before I knew it one was punching me in the gut, another attempted to grab for my pockets. I’m a bit bigger than the average girl due to my earlier days of MMA, not dainty or frail, but to say a pack a day didn’t knock some of the shine off wouldn’t be an over-exaggerating.
I thought it best to create some distance so I rolled with the punch falling backwards, then pulled my heat when I hit ground. They scattered. I fired into the sky, then pointed my pistol at one, “You… what did you see, you can either talk to me or Jesus in the hereafter.”
“Yeah… she came through a couple of hours ago. She had all her shit in a car, like suitcases and shit.” “Did you talk to her?” “Yeah, but we didn’t really say shit.” “Just humor me.” “I asked her if she was ‘ight ‘cuz I heard she was married to some rich dude or something. I figured it didn’t work out. She said she was cool and just needed a change of scenery or some shit, but she didn’t get into it.”
I sheaved my sword, and let the looky look be on his way. Change of scenery, change of scenery, that sounded a lot like a trip, maybe an airport, maybe a train station. If she had luggage, she didn’t have her own car, and she didn’t want to use creds or an ID, I’d think train station over airplane.
I hopped on my steed and tore ass to Union Station. If she had a lot of luggage, and she didn’t want to use ID, she may had went bus. On my way there I made a few calls to Harlan, my tech guy, and asked him to monitor the bus and train stations for an unusually beautiful black woman.
Now were Harlan’s methods legal, who could say, I wouldn’t say, and let’s leave it at that. I don’t tend to let the A.I. infantilize me, but I did in this case. I let the digital God take the wheel while I did sleuthing on my J-Home. I entered the virtual wonderland while my A.I. navigated the twists and turns of the streets. My helmet dampened all the ambient light and my avatar went on a journey through abstract space.
I pulled up everything I could on Ashaina Carter, all the social media, or even the public domain knowledge I could. I asked my A.I, Hartford, to find all instances of places Ashaina had been, mentioned, or even alluded to. While he was doing his thing, I did mine. I looked through her recent history and found a bombshell.
A week before she disappeared many people on her social media began to give their condolences and thoughts and prayers. Of course, I looked into it. The headline hit me in the face. Billionaire Tech mogul Theodore Humphrey the 4th dead at 95. What the fuck was I looking at? Who was I talking to? The Humphreys I encountered was 50-something… then it hit me like a stroke of lightning.
I called Humphrey’s up and after the second ring he was gazing out of the window of what looked like his mansion, into a deeply gray overcast rainy night. “Ah, Detective Glass,” said Humphreys, “Is there any movement on your end detective?” “Why didn’t you tell me you died and you’re a digital ghost?” I said. “I did not see how it was any of your business, you can trust me when I say the creds will transfer,” said Humphreys.
When he put it that way, why did I care? What about this arrangement made a damn bit of difference? I can’t even say why I cared, but something about this felt unnatural in a way that was unique.
“Do you want to stop?” asked the dead socialite, who now half turned and stared into the face of the static city. With a heavy heart I didn’t stop, maybe it was none of my business in the end, so what if he was a digital recreation of someone that died.
“I will continue Mr. Humphreys, but before I go, have you considered that maybe she left you for a good reason?” “No I didn’t ‘consider’ that detective, and no it most likely wasn’t a good reason to flee into the night. I don’t need your uninformed musing Ms. Glass I need facts…” “Data…?” I said in the tone of a sarcastic douche bag. “My patience is wearing thin, do your job Ms. Glass. Your speculations are not appreciated, or welcomed.” I nodded and ended the communication.
It didn’t take long to get to Union Station, and with Harlan teching it out for me, he made a prediction of where Mrs Humphreys would land. Harlan’s calculations came mostly from hacking into all the travel outlets records looking for passengers with excessive amounts of luggage and minimal identification.
I on a foggy train platform bound for Sedona, Arizona half under a lazy flood light I waited for the most beautiful girl of the lot to pass. There, moving with the grace of a movie Starlet from a begone age was Ashania.
I stepped from the shadows of the flickering light stamping out my cigarette. “Off to Sedona?” I said to the crippling beauty. She looked at me with a troubled smile, welcoming, but clearly guarded. “Yes,” she said in a way as to not garner farther conversation.
“Looking to start a new life?” I asked. Ashaina sighed. Her face filled with an air of defeat, “Did he send you?”
“He did.”
“Am I to come with you?”
“No, not as such. I’m just curious, what your deal was?”
“Why?”
“Let’s just say I’m formulating my opinions now.”
Ashaina looked down and breathed deeply, as if she were preparing herself for a scene. “I was 23 when I married him and he was 88. We both knew what it was. I was supposed to make the end of his life bearable, and I was supposed to be paid out at the end. Maybe it’s mercenary, but he changed the terms and decided that he was taking it with him. My contract was ‘til death do us part… and he died. So who was in the wrong, me for believing we had an arrangement, or him for flipping it on its head?”
I stomped out my cigarette and let the fire of my lighter spark another. “Have a nice trip,” I said while letting out a stream of smoke. Ashaina timidly backed away, unsure if it was an elaborate deception.
I sat on that platform for several hours in a Zen contemplation. Watching Neon tweakers swarm and talk in old leet speak, waiting for a train that went who knew where. I asked Harlan to cinch up the tactical errors Ashaina made in disappearing before I gave Mr. Humphreys my final report.
When the A.I. ghost of a man answered he was in the midst of walking through a boundless mansion, that when I thought of it now was as endless as the net was long. “Did you find my wife, Detective Glass?” “Yes I did. I spotted her at Union Station.” “Good, I will send Mr. Buckley to retrieve her.” “Well that might be a problem.” “Why is that?” he asked with trepidation.
“She’s gone.” “And you let her go?” “Yes, why wouldn’t I. I was instructed to find your wife, not return her to you.” “You will regret this, you are speaking to a man with infinite funds that cannot die. So I will give you a chance to redeem yourself. Where did she go?”
I smiled and blew out a plume of smoke before making my final revenge.
“I forget.”
Call it a failing of the human condition, or just me being difficult, but there are some things that should be sacred, life, death, and freedom. When someone tells me that money somehow entitles you to side step any of those three, well, I’m not buying whatever it is you’re selling. And if you don’t like it… take it up with your digital God.
Veal with Tuna Sauce (Vitello Tonnato)
This is a Northern Italian classic.
Yield: 10 to 12 servings
Ingredients
Veal
- 1 (4 pound) leg of veal, boned, rolled and tied
- 1 (2 ounce) can anchovy fillets, drained
- 3 cloves garlic, sliced
- 2 cups dry white wine
- 3 stalks celery (with leaves), cut up
- 2 medium onions, quartered
- 2 medium carrots, cut up
- 4 teaspoons instant chicken bouillon
- 8 black peppercorns
- 4 sprigs parsley
- 2 bay leaves
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
- Minced parsley
Tuna Sauce
- 1 (3 1/2 ounce) can white tuna, drained
- 1 (3 1/4 ounce) jar capers, drained
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 1/4 cup lemon juice
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 clove garlic
- Reserved anchovies
- Salt and white pepper
- 1/4 cup reserved broth
Instructions
Veal
- Make 10 to 12 deep cuts down length of meat with small knife.
- Cut 3 anchovy fillets into 3/4 inch pieces. Cover and refrigerate remaining anchovies for Tuna Sauce.
- Stuff a piece of anchovy and a slice of garlic into each cut.
- Place meat, wine, celery, onions, carrots, bouillon, peppercorns, 4 sprigs parsley, the bay leaves, salt, thyme and enough water to cover in Dutch oven. Heat to boiling; reduce heat. Cover and simmer until meat is tender, 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Skim foam if necessary.
- Remove from heat; cool.
- Remove meat from broth; strain and reserve 1/4 cup broth for Tuna Sauce.
- Pat meat dry; cut into thin slices.
- Spoon a thin layer of Tuna Sauce into a 13 x 9 x 2 inch baking dish.
- Arrange meat slices in sauce.
- Spoon remaining sauce over meat slices.
- Cover and refrigerate for at least 3 hours.
- Arrange meat slices on platter; spoon Tuna Sauce over meat. Sprinkle with snipped parsley.
Tuna Sauce
- Place tuna, capers, oil, lemon juice, egg yolk, garlic and remaining anchovies in blender container. Cover and blend on low speed just until well blended, about 45 seconds. Season with salt and white pepper.
- Add whipping cream and reserved broth; blend on low speed just until well blended, about 30 seconds.
How I Realised WOMEN Want EVERYTHING, But Offer NOTHING
True victory isn’t what you win—it’s what you’re willing to give.
August 7, 2021. Tokyo.
Maria Andrejczyk stood on the Olympic podium holding a silver medal. Her first Olympic medal. After everything—after the cancer, after the
near-miss five years earlier—she’d finally done it.
The medal felt heavier than she expected.
One week later, she decided to sell it.
Andrejczyk was 25 years old when she arrived in Tokyo, but she’d already lived several lifetimes of struggle. In 2016, at the Rio Olympics, she’d thrown 67.11 meters in the javelin—a Polish national record. She finished fourth. Fourth in the entire world.
She missed the bronze medal by two centimeters.
Two centimeters. The width of a thumbprint. The difference between an Olympic medalist and a name no one remembers.
Then came 2017. A shoulder injury that wouldn’t heal.
Then came 2018. Osteosarcoma. Bone cancer.
At 22 years old, doctors told her the tumor had to come out. Surgery. Chemotherapy. The possibility that her athletic career was over before it really began. Most athletes would have stopped there. Accepted that fourth place was the best they’d ever achieve. Moved on.
Andrejczyk went back to training.
By 2019, she was competing again. Not just competing—thriving. She finished second at the European Team Championships. She qualified for the World Championships. And in 2021, she set a new Polish record: 71.40 meters. The third-best throw in women’s javelin history.
When she arrived in Tokyo for the 2020 Olympics (delayed to 2021 by the pandemic), she carried all of it with her. The near-miss. The cancer. The years of fighting back.
On August 7, 2021, she threw 64.61 meters. Silver medal. Olympic medalist.
“I fought like a lioness through a lot of pain and depression,” she said after the competition.
That medal was proof. Proof that the cancer hadn’t won. Proof that two centimeters in Rio wasn’t the end of her story. Proof that she’d survived everything thrown at her and still reached the top.
One week later, scrolling through Facebook, she saw a fundraiser.
Eight-month-old Miłoszek Małysa had a severe heart defect. His blood pressure was so high it was damaging the arteries in his lungs and heart. He was under home hospice care in southern Poland. His family had exhausted every option in Poland. The only hope was surgery at Stanford University Medical Center in California.
The cost: 1.5 million Polish zloty. Approximately $385,000. For surgery. For travel. For a chance.
The family had raised about half. They were running out of time.
Miłoszek’s fundraiser had another layer to it—donations from the family of Kubuś, another little boy with a heart defect who “didn’t make it in time.” His parents had chosen to pass their collected funds to Miłoszek, giving one child the chance their son never got.
Andrejczyk read the story. She thought about the medal in her apartment. She thought about what it meant to her—and what it could mean to someone else.
She posted on Facebook: “Miłoszek has a serious heart defect, he needs an operation. He already has a head start from Kubuś—a boy who didn’t make it in time but whose amazing parents decided to pass on the funds they collected. And in this way, I also want to help. It’s for him that I am auctioning my Olympic silver medal.”
The auction lasted days. Bids came in from across Poland and beyond. Sports fans. Strangers. People who believed in what she was doing.
On August 16, she announced the winner: Żabka, a Polish convenience store chain. They’d bid $125,000—enough to close the gap for Miłoszek’s surgery.
“It is with the greatest pleasure that I give Żabka this medal, which for me is a symbol of struggle, faith and pursuit of dreams despite many odds,” Andrejczyk wrote.
That should have been the end of the story. An Olympian sells her medal. A baby gets surgery. Everyone moves on.
But Żabka wasn’t done.
The company released a statement: “We were moved by the beautiful and extremely noble gesture of our Olympian, so we decided to support the fundraiser for Miłoszek. We also decided the silver medal will remain with Mrs. Maria.”
They were giving the medal back.
They’d still donate the $125,000. But Andrejczyk could keep her medal—the one she’d fought cancer to win, the one that proved she’d survived.
Andrejczyk responded simply. “The true value of a medal always remains in the heart. A medal is only an object, but it can be of great value to others. This silver can save lives, instead of collecting dust in a closet.”
In interviews later, she tried to downplay her decision. She didn’t think it was extraordinary. She’d won a medal. A baby needed surgery. The math was simple.
But the math wasn’t simple. That medal represented five years of fighting back from Rio. It represented surviving cancer. It represented every morning she woke up in pain and trained anyway. It represented the moment she finally—finally—stood on an Olympic podium.
And she was willing to give it away after one week.
Miłoszek’s family would get the funds they needed. The baby would travel to California for surgery at Stanford. Maria would keep her medal—not because she demanded it, but because Żabka understood that some gestures are too beautiful to accept.
The story went viral. Millions of people shared it. News outlets around the world covered it. Strangers cried reading about it.
Because Maria Andrejczyk had answered a question most of us never have to face: What would you give up for a stranger’s child?
She’d survived cancer. Missed an Olympic medal by two centimeters. Clawed her way back to Tokyo. Won silver.
And when a baby needed help, she didn’t hesitate.
That’s the real medal. Not the one hanging in her home in Poland. The one that lives in the choice she made—the one that proved greatness isn’t measured in meters thrown, but in lives saved.
Seven days after becoming an Olympic medalist, Maria Andrejczyk showed the world what it really means to win.