Meanwhile at China’s doorstep…
China BLOCKS US Carrier Group Entry to South China Sea — Two-Ocean Crisis America Cannot Manage
Ok,
Global politics. *sigh*
My Quora Answer for today…
How does China’s “heavenly mandate” concept play into its global strategy and interactions with perceived threats like the US?
To understand this, you must first forget Western political theory.
Forget it completely.
You’re not looking at an election cycle or a doctrine of national interest. You are looking at a cosmological operating system for statecraft.
The concept is Tiāndào (天道), the Way of Heaven.
This is often translated as the “Heavenly Mandate.” Historically, it meant a ruler’s legitimacy was derived from moral alignment with cosmic order. Lose that alignment through corruption or incompetence, and you lose the Mandate—rebellion is justified, dynasties fall.
In its modern, secularized strategic form, the Mandate is no longer about divine right. It is about historical and civilizational inevitability. It is the deep, unshakable belief that China’s return to centrality is not a policy preference, but the natural correction of a historical anomaly—the “Century of Humiliation” was a deviation, not a destiny.
This isn’t ideology; it’s tectonic patience.
Wait… These Mandela Effects Changed Back?
WATCH THIS, guys!
How This Informs Global Strategy: The Long Game
- Strategy as Cultivation, Not Conquest: Western strategy, particularly America’s, is often teleological—focused on a definitive end-state (victory, democratization, market dominance). Chinese strategy, informed by this Mandate, is phasal. The goal isn’t to “defeat” the U.S. in a climactic battle. The goal is to cultivate conditions where American primacy naturally becomes irrelevant, and the systemic advantages of China’s model become undeniable. It builds institutions (AIIB, Belt and Road), fosters dependencies (rare earths, manufacturing), and champions narratives (multipolarity, non-interference) not to win a war, but to reshape the entire ecosystem in which power is exercised. You don’t fight the current; you become the new, deeper current.
- Perceived Threats as Tests of Alignment: From this view, a “threat” like the U.S. is not primarily a military rival. It is a symptom of systemic dissonance—a powerful force operating on an outdated, hegemonic principle that is out of alignment with the Tiāndào of multipolarity and shared development. U.S. carrier groups in the South China Sea are not just ships; they are manifestations of a fading order clinging to its domain. The response is rarely direct, symmetrical confrontation. It is about demonstrating resilience, strategic depth, and superior alignment with the future. It’s about letting the adversary exhaust itself against the inertia of a rising historical tide.
- The Ultimate Objective: Civilizational Stewardship: This is where it transcends geopolitics. The Mandate, in its highest interpretation, isn’t about China ruling the world. It’s about China shepherding the world through a turbulent transition—from a period of extractive, unilateral Western dominance to a new, more stable, and (in their view) more just civilizational equilibrium. The “Community of Shared Future for Mankind” isn’t just a slogan; it’s the modern expression of the Mandate. It posits that China’s rise is not for itself alone, but to re-balance the entire human system.
What This Means for the U.S. and the Human Race
For the U.S., this is a nightmare opponent.
You cannot “deter” a tectonic plate. You cannot “contain” a season. American strategy seeks checkmates. Chinese strategy, under this framework, is playing Weiqi (Go)—securing strategic advantage through envelopment, patience, and the gradual accumulation of irreversible positional gains.
For the destiny of the human race, this introduces a paradigm we have not seen in centuries: a peer competitor motivated not by a missionary desire to remake the world in its image, but by a custodial impulse to restore what it sees as natural order.
The conflict is not over which god to worship or which political system to install. It is over who gets to define the underlying principles and time horizon of global governance.
In the end, the Heavenly Mandate means China is playing a game where the score is not tallied in quarterly GDP or aircraft carriers, but in decades and centuries. It interacts with threats not as existential crises, but as temporary obstructions to a destination it believes is pre-ordained by history itself.
The question for the U.S. is not, “How do we counter their strategy?”
The more profound question is, “How do we operate in a world where our primary rival is not fighting for the next election, but for its perceived place in the next millennium?”
That is the weight of the Mandate.
…
Enjoy the day you all…
Why Some Species Evolved Consciousness While Others Remained Unaware
Scientists at Ruhr University Bochum have uncovered compelling evidence about one of evolution’s greatest mysteries: why consciousness developed in some species but not others. Their groundbreaking research examines the evolutionary advantages of conscious experience and reveals that birds may have solved the puzzle of awareness through a completely different brain architecture than mammals Phys.org.
The question of consciousness has puzzled scientists for decades, but new research suggests the answer lies not in what consciousness is, but rather in what purpose it serves. According to Professors Albert Newen and Onur Güntürkün, understanding the function of consciousness is essential to explaining why oak trees remained non-conscious while crows developed sophisticated awareness. The research, published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, challenges long-held assumptions about brain structure and conscious experience, demonstrating that evolution can achieve similar solutions through remarkably different pathways.
Three Levels of Consciousness Serve Different Survival Purposes
Newen and Carlos Montemayor have identified three distinct types of consciousness, each serving unique evolutionary functions. The first and most primitive is basic arousal, which developed to trigger alarm responses in life-threatening situations. This fundamental form enables organisms to recognize bodily damage through pain – an extraordinarily efficient mechanism for detecting threats to survival. When an animal feels pain from an injury, this conscious experience immediately signals danger and triggers defensive responses like fleeing or freezing.
The second evolutionary stage brought general alertness, allowing organisms to focus selectively on important stimuli while filtering out less relevant information. This capability enables a creature to notice smoke during a conversation and immediately shift attention to search for fire. Beyond simple cause-and-effect learning, targeted alertness permits the identification of complex correlations and scientific relationships in the environment. This advancement represents a crucial step in cognitive evolution, enabling more sophisticated interactions with the world.
The third and most advanced form is reflexive self-consciousness, which allows organisms to reflect on themselves, their past experiences, and potential futures. Humans develop this ability around 18 months of age, as demonstrated by the classic mirror test where toddlers recognize their own reflection. Some animals, including chimpanzees, dolphins, and remarkably, magpies, have also passed this test. This form of consciousness enables better social integration and coordination with others, suggesting that awareness evolved partly to facilitate complex social behaviors.
The researchers used the experimental of the “mirror-audience test” in roosters to measure their self-consciousness. The tested rooster was placed in an arena divided by a transparent glass (A,C) or a mirror (B,D). (Maldarelli & Gunturkun/Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences)
Birds Achieved Consciousness Without a Cerebral Cortex
Perhaps the most surprising discovery involves avian consciousness. Gianmarco Maldarelli and Onur Güntürkün demonstrate that birds possess fundamental forms of conscious perception despite lacking the cerebral cortex that mammals rely upon for awareness. When pigeons encounter ambiguous visual stimuli, they shift between different interpretations just as humans do. More remarkably, crows display nerve signals that correspond to their subjective perception rather than the physical stimulus itself – a hallmark of conscious experience.
The avian brain contains functional structures that meet theoretical requirements for conscious processing through entirely different architecture. The NCL (nidopallium caudolaterale), which serves as the bird equivalent to the mammalian prefrontal cortex, enables highly integrated and flexible information processing. The connectome of the avian forebrain—mapping all information flows between brain regions—shares striking similarities with mammalian brains, meeting many criteria of established consciousness theories like the Global Neuronal Workspace theory.
Recent experiments reveal different types of self-perception in birds beyond the traditional mirror test. While some corvid species pass the mirror test, other ecologically relevant experiments have shown additional forms of self-consciousness in different bird species. Pigeons and chickens can differentiate between their mirror reflections and actual conspecifics, adjusting their behavior according to context – evidence of situational, basic self-consciousness that mirrors capacities previously thought exclusive to mammals.
Ancient brain structure evolution theory of Scala Naturae showing brain development proceeding from simple to more complicated with the addition of new brain regions as evolution progressed. This erroneous view is compared with a modern understanding of brain structure evolution that reveals a basic common structure evolved in the vertebrate brain and various regions expanded to accommodate each specific animal’s needs. (Pablo Carlos Budassi/CC BY-SA 4.0)
Consciousness Emerged Earlier and More Widely Than Previously Believed
The implications of this research extend far beyond understanding birds. These findings suggest that consciousness represents a much older and more widespread evolutionary phenomenon than scientists previously assumed. The fact that birds developed conscious processing without a cerebral cortex demonstrates that different brain structures can achieve similar functional solutions – a principle that fundamentally reshapes our understanding of how awareness evolves.
This discovery also raises profound questions about consciousness in other species. If birds with their radically different brain architecture can achieve awareness, what other animals might possess forms of consciousness that we have failed to recognize? The research team suggests that scientists may need to look beyond traditional markers of consciousness, such as specific brain structures, and instead focus on functional capabilities and behavioral indicators. This shift in perspective could revolutionize how we assess consciousness across the animal kingdom, potentially revealing awareness in species previously dismissed as simple automatons operating purely on instinct.
The research ultimately tries to answer a crucial question of the evolution of consciousness as follows: consciousness evolved not as a single solution to a universal problem, but as multiple adaptive responses to various environmental and social challenges. Species that developed consciousness gained significant survival advantages through improved threat detection, flexible learning capabilities, and enhanced social coordination. Meanwhile, organisms like oak trees, which solved survival challenges through entirely different strategies such as chemical signaling and structural adaptations, never required conscious awareness.
Top image: AI Generated representation of a woman and her consciousness. Source: AI Visual Vault/Adobe Stock
By Gary Manners
Chicken Italienne
Yield: 20 servings
Ingredients
- 2 (4 pound) chickens
- Leafy tops from one bunch celery
- 1 onion, cut into large pieces
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 12 ounces egg noodles
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 3 onions, diced
- 2 green bell peppers, diced
- 2 cans mushrooms
- 1 clove garlic
- 1 tablespoon chili powder
- 3 cans tomato sauce
- 1/2 cup ripe olives, pitted
- 1 can lima beans, peas or corn
- Worcestershire sauce, to taste
- Salt and pepper, to taste
- 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Instructions
- The day before serving, place whole chickens in a large kettle with water to cover, celery tops, one onion cut in large pieces, and 1 teaspoon of salt. Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer one hour.
- Let chicken cool. Skim fat from broth; remove and discard onion. Remove meat from bones in large pieces; set aside.
- Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
- Use the chicken broth to cook the noodles. (You can save the broth afterward and use it to make soup or other recipes that require chicken broth.)
- In a large skillet, sauté onions in the olive oil until tender; add bell peppers, mushrooms, garlic, chili powder, tomato sauce, olives and beans. Cook and stir several minutes, until hot.
- Stir in cooked noodles; add Worcestershire sauce and salt and pepper to taste.
- Transfer to two 13 x 9 inch casserole dishes. Arrange chicken evenly through noodles. Top with grated cheese.
- Bake until browned, about 30 minutes.
Notes
You can prepare the casseroles entirely in advance and then just heat them in the oven when you’re ready to eat. Serve with a salad or vegetable.
Nutrition
Per serving: 508 cal, 25.2g fat, 120mg cholesterol, 34.4g carbohydrates, 6.6g fiber, 34.8g protein, 592mg sodium
Run, Run, Run – Jo Jo Gunne | The Midnight Special
The speed of dark
Written in response to: “Write a story that includes the line “Did anyone else see that?” or “Who’s there?”“
Alex Davies
Horror Science Fiction Suspense
In that light there was a reason to go home.
But the console beeped, and perspective returned. They were gone, and he was here on behalf of a humanity he would never meet, generations unknown to him between his outward and inward voyage. He looked back to the screen and found it changed from when he’d searched for Sol. A text log, an open file. One word.
Dark
The word blinked away, the monochrome diagrams of inclinations and declinations taking its place. He tapped at the control buttons, but could find nothing of it in the logs. Then, just as he turned away,
Dark
But again it was gone before he could be certain it was there. He shook his head again, helmet un-moving to any non-existent watchers, and began to follow the service procedure.
The ‘Scope was in exactly the shape it should be in. The panels outside were free of detritus or efficiency drop, the RCS system had fired infrequently and sparingly, and
Run
This time he was sure he’d seen it, because it took a moment longer to stay on the screen, before a jolting, swirling static swept diagnostics back into view. And there too, something was wrong, but he could not see what, only knew that he could not be right, so would not let himself see it.
He closed his eyes and fought the rising isolation that the pills were supposed to push away. Jostled softly through the suit as he was bumped between the walls of the cramped tube, he drifted in nothing, oxygen pumps whirring with his breaths. When he opened them again he found himself facing the forwards cupola, following the line of the ‘Scope towards Andromeda, the space barren compared to his view towards Sol. Emptiness in front, ancient deaths behind, loved ones alive only in the light, the nihilism of it cleared his mind for a moment.
The moment stretched just long enough for him to see that it truly was a void, the way he faced. Rare and distant galaxies were sparingly distributed around this hemisphere of the sky, distances far larger than the Solward view behind, but in the centre of this view, right above him, was nothing.
Nothing.
Where was Andromeda?
Muscle memory operated the controls at first, eyes fixed on where a galaxy should have been, then he tore his view away to check the monitor, and yes, Andromeda was gone. He checked orientations. Then he checked their calibrations, then the stars they used for their basis, the anchor points in a shifting sky, only to find that down to machine precision this telescope was seeing exactly what it should be, watching the same sky as him, and that Andromeda had fallen from view.
Feeling sweat begin to float from his forehead into the tiny atmosphere of his helmet, he snatched a glance at the view again, and watched another point of light snatched from the sky. Again, despite checking twice and then a third time, Telescope 13 saw exactly what he did.
Dark
A harsh constellation of lights behind buttons wrapped around the word, colours dividing rows in grids and lines. He blinked and it was gone again. More galaxies blinked out of the sky. Some inter-stellar matter, then, surely, the travelling darkness of a long-cold supernova blocking his view. But there was no magnetic change, and the stars beyond the ever-growing circle were bright.
The rising isolation required a few breaths, deeper and slower each time, until some faculty returned to him. The darkness had continued to spread, and he used the glowing buttons and dials to sketch out what was not where it should be. A circle of void was drawing out from his lost Andromeda, too perfect to be natural,
Run. Dark.
Two words, together. Perhaps a second, this time, then gone. Sweat condensed against his visor. He spun in the silent vacuum to look back at the hatch and the jointed tube beyond, and reassured that his world had not shrunk to this metal and glass coffin, turned back to the view from the cupola. He had just enough time to see the last of the galaxies blink away, and now the glass showed only the black. The monitor screen showed the same, slightly grey, and
Dark. Coming.
Longer again, but then gone like the others. Something, his logic finally told him, was in the computers and chips of the ‘Scope. Three button presses, and then the lifted cover and the fourth, and the operator’s terminal was on the screen. He watched it remain empty. A few seconds passed and he wrote out, slowly with thickly gloved fingers on keys that were too small, the best he could think of.
User (sudo) > Run from what?
He snatched a glance down towards Sol, and gasped to see that the darkness had begun to encroach past the equator, stars going dark now in place of galaxies. It didn’t make sense, the distances in one way were magnitudes more than those towards his home, but the dark did not care, and extinguished them anyway.
Too fast.
What is the speed of dark?
Earth, Sol, at the centre of a ring of those stars, still alive. Dim, changing lights in the reflection of his visor brought him back to the screen. His hovering tears, in the air of his helmet, piled to one side as he snatched himself around.
> Dark, coming. Run.
It had to be an AI, there in the ‘Scope with him, fragmented and limited by the minimal processing power it had found, a million and more years from its home. But it was warning him, no threats, and out here it was younger, more recently departed from Andromeda.
Again he fumbled with the keys, looked back to see the circle of light was growing smaller.
User (sudo) > Friendly?
Words already on the screen, visor spotted with tears and sweat.
> Too late.
Dark from both windows now, not a pinprick in either sky.
Sol, Earth, the light with his life still alive in it somewhere, gone to black.
He scrambled for the hatch, was halfway inside before he stopped himself, the flexible tube stretching away before him. At the other end should have been the lights of the ship, of the airlock, of the next big sleep and the pills that were supposed to numb him. Instead, darkness, growing closer as he looked, rigid rings disappearing one-by-one as illuminating strips died away.
Without thinking, he was back in the service module, the hatch yanked shut behind him, the sealing wheel turning easily, the tube lost from view. With an effort he did not think possible he dragged himself in a spin, away from the hatch and back to the screen. No new words, just the same ones repeated.
> Too late.
Then like before they were gone, but nothing came to replace them, the screen flashing to static before going dark. It spread from the screen to the controls, radiating out in a perfect circle, LEDs in buttons switching off one-by-one before the module was lit only by the lights on his helmet.
He screamed, but no one was there to hear it, and his lights on the darkened cupolas brought him only his own flailing reflection.
Then his helmet went dark too, and all the little whirring noises of a functioning space suit went the same way, one-by-one, until the air began to taste stale and he fought and failed to conserve his breaths.
All there was, now, was dark.
It would not, he knew now, stop with the suit. On the cupola, out in the vacuum, he heard a knocking, three taps, impossible without air to carry the sound, but there anyway. From the black that once held Andromeda. The words were lost in the loneliness of his helmet, pointless, but he said them anyway.
“Who’s there?’’
It bore no echo, no reverberation of any kind in the insulation-lined interior of his helmet, dying in the vaccum of the now so tiny service module. There was another knocking, three taps, and though no sound should be possible, this time he knew it was on his side of the glass.
He whimpered, pathetically, feebly, as what had to come next began, his feet and hands going cold, numb, a gentle amputation. It came in jumps, nerves falling quiet, without pain.
The speed of the dark was slower with his body than with the stars.
“Please!’
But his breathing had robbed the air of its content, that or some part of his core was already gone, and it sounded quiet even to him, a whisper before a private audience. The tears continued to float away from his face, unbound and unbidden, leaving him one by one.
There was another knocking, on the glass of his helmet, then finally the dark of the ‘Scope’s interior was overtaken by a dark of another kind.
KANSAS – Carry On My Wayward Son || Reaction (First Listen)
Col 26-Book 436 – Sir Whiskerton and the Bagpipe Bass Drop – A Tale of Skirling, Subwoofers, and Sonic Reconciliation
Ah, dear reader—prepare your ears, steady your kilt, and brace for resonance. Today’s story does not begin with a quack, a snort, or even a kazoo blast.
It begins with a deep inhale…
a stuttering wheeze…
and then—
SKREEEEE—WUB-WUB-WUB!
So settle in. Breathe deep. And step gently into Sir Whiskerton and the Bagpipe Bass Drop.
The First Note (Or: How One Squeak Shook the Barn)
It was a Thursday—golden, crisp, humming with possibility.
Sir Whiskerton stood in the hayloft, bagpipes in paw, journal open to a page titled:
“On the Proper Embouchure for Emotional Catharsis (See Appendix: ‘Don’t Pop a Blood Vessel’).”
He took a breath.
Filled the bag.
Tucked the pipes under his arm—
And played.
Not a lament.
Not a reel.
Just… a note.
The sound erupted—a raw, reedy skreee that shot through the barn like lightning.
- Rufus yelped and hid under the tractor.
- Doris fainted mid-sentence: “Oh, I ca—”
- Bessie’s mood ring flashed emergency amber.
- Even the scarecrow creaked—“Ye gods.”
But then—something unexpected.
From the toolshed, a thump.
A thump-thump.
A sub-bass pulse that rolled across the yard like thunder on velvet.
DJ Fader Fuzz stepped into the light—turntables mounted on a repurposed feed cart, headphones askew, eyes wide with revelation.
“Whoa… that wasn’t noise.
That was texture.”*
He jogged forward, paws outstretched.
“Sir Whiskerton—please—let me drop a beat under that.”
Sir Whiskerton lowered the pipes.
“You wish to… remix my father’s lament?”
“Lament!” echoed Ditto, already dancing in place.
“Remix it,” Fader Fuzz said, grinning. “Honor it. Make it live again.”
A pause.
The wind stirred the kilt’s pleats.
Somewhere, faint on the breeze—a crow cawed.
Sir Whiskerton adjusted his Tam.
“Very well.
But no autotune.”
The Barnyard Studio Session
What followed was sonic alchemy.
- Sir Whiskerton, kilt rustling, played “The Weeping Glen”—a slow, aching air his father had written after leaving home.
- DJ Fader Fuzz layered in a dubstep pulse—deep, warm, human—not mechanical, but alive, like a heartbeat under snow.
- The Blind Mice kept time on turnip drums (“¡MÚSICA NATURAL!”).
- Tony the Bear, on borrowed saxophone, added a low, honeyed croon—“Like a bear missing honey… but hopeful.”
- Ditto, in charge of “Atmosphere”, released glow-worms in jars—floating orbs that pulsed with the bass.
Even Genghis watched from the hayloft—gold chain gleaming, smirk softened.
“Hmph. Needs more cowbell.”
“Cowbell! Cowbell!” echoed Echo.
But the true magic happened when Ferdinand waddled in—beak trembling, feathers ruffled.
“I… I wish to harmonize.”
He took a breath—and sang not in opera, but in keening, ancient and raw:
“Ooooh—lantern light… on the moor…”
The pipes wove around his voice.
The bass held them both.
And for the first time—a Highland lament met a barnyard lullaby.
The Yodeling Fish, drawn by the resonance, surfaced in the pond—and added a single, perfect yodel: “HOOO—la.”
Bartholomew the Piñata, moved beyond words, let go—showering the circle in confetti shaped like tiny bagpipes.
The Moral of the Story
That evening, as the fireflies rose and the farm gathered in the fading light, Sir Whiskerton addressed the animals—not from the roof, but from the circle.
“The moral of the story, dear reader, is this:
Tradition and innovation aren’t opposites—they’re duet partners.
My father played for ghosts and memories. Today, we played for the living—for the hopeful, the clumsy, the brave.
We didn’t erase his song. We expanded it.
And in doing so—we found a new way to say:
I remember. I honor. I belong.”
Doris dabbed her eyes.
“A sonic metaphor! I can’t bear it!”
“Bear it! Bear it!”
And the Divine Llama—standing at the edge of the circle—blinked.
Once.
Deep.
Approval.
Post-Credit Scene
Late that night, Sir Whiskerton stood alone in the hayloft, bagpipes in paw.
He didn’t play a lament.
He played something new—soft, steady, full of light.
The tune had no name.
It didn’t need one.
But as the last note faded, a single line glowed on the journal’s open page—ink that hadn’t been there before:
“Well done, son.
The pipes sound… joyful.
—Dad”
Sir Whiskerton closed the journal.
Smiled—really smiled.
And for the first time in years, he whispered:
“Thanks, Dad.”
Outside, the farm slept.
But the bass still hummed—in the soil, in the stars, in the heart of a cat who’d finally found his rhythm.
Jingle on. 🏴🐾✨
(Or, in the old tongue: Slàinte mhath—and drop the bass.)
The End.
What’s the pettiest thing you’ve seen a customer do to save just a few cents at checkout?
When I first moved to where I live, now, I found a local Chinese restaurant and the food wasn’t just good, it was GOOD. So, I kept going there. The little grade-school kids doing their homework behind the counter became the ones handling orders and taking money and waiting on customers. I’ve been a loyal customer for > 20 years.
One night, my housemate and I went in there for dinner, and the phone was ringing off the hook, as usual. (They do a LOT of take-out/delivery business.)
Suddenly, the manager (the little girl doing homework, now all grown up) was at our table, holding the phone.
She explained to us that there was this one couple who had, for four nights running, placed a delivery order, gotten their food, then called back, told them it was all wrong, and demanded that they get “the right order” for free.
And because confrontation wasn’t in this woman’s playbook, and these customers were also racist and kept demanding to speak to someone who “speaks English!”, she asked if I wouldn’t mind talking to them and explaining that they no longer deliver to their area.
I readily agreed.
“Hello,” I answered, followed by the name of the restaurant. “How may I help you?”
The answer confirmed everything I’d been told. “Oh, thank God! Someone who speaks English! That other woman barely—”
I interrupted, “I’m sorry, but we no longer deliver to your area.”
There was a long pause. “What do you mean, you don’t deliver!? You just did!”
“Well, we’ve changed our delivery policy. I’m pretty sure you know why. So, I’m very sorry, but we can no longer deliver to your address. But if you’d like, you can come down in person and—”
They hung up after cursing me out.
We got a free meal for helping the restaurant owners out. Including ice cream! 🙂
This nasty couple were from out of town and staying in a hotel about five miles away. Every night, they’d order two entrees, eat it all, then call back and say it was the wrong order, blame the manager and her brother for not speaking good English and getting the order wrong, and demand two more entire entrees, which we presume they would eat the next day for lunch.
I just do not get how people can be so nasty and awful. To my knowledge they did not call again.
And for the record? The brother and sister who run the restaurant speak English just fine.
Pictures
Blind Faith – Can’t Find My Way Home
How does counter battery fire work, and how does the second side know where the initial fire came from?
The idea is that when artillery fires, it reveals its position. No matter how well camouflaged the artillery position is, when it fires the muzzle flash and shockwave are pretty hard to visually miss.
Camouflaged US artillery position during WW2
In order for counter battery fire, the artillery intended for that role will need to have some way of spotting that firing. In the days of WW2 that would be something like a reconnaissance aircraft, in contact with the counter fire battery.
After WW2 that could still happen, but the rapid development of surface to air missiles made that manned aircraft spotter role increasingly dangerous for the low and slow flying aircraft used.
So in the late 50’s and early 60’s that artillery spotting role gradually shifted to unmanned aircraft like this Ryan Model 147 from 1960 below.
Using drones for artillery spotting isn’t something new, the wide availability of drones is.
This all relies on visually spotting the firing artillery you want to counter. In the 1970’s the combination of radar with increased computer power allowed the creation of the counter-battery radar.
Essentially this is a radar that tracks the artillery shells or rockets fired by the enemy in flight, and based on their trajectory, will calculate where they originated from, to give a fire solution to connected friendly artillery.
Thales Ground Master 200 Multi-Mission radar that can be used for artillery fire tracking.
The advantage of a counter battery radar is that with modern computers, these firing solution can be calculated very fast and accurately, thus allowing counter battery fire to arrive sometimes within minutes of an enemy battery opening fire.
That’s why modern self propelled artillery systems like this German built Panzerhaubitze 2000 are designed to ‘shoot and scoot’.
It can fire a 3 shell burst within 9 seconds and be moving within 2 minutes. The idea is that by the time their shells are tracked and their firing position is calculated, it will no longer be there by the time the counter battery fire hits that spot.
Of course older self propelled artillery systems, or tracked artillery can’t move that fast, and are still vulnerable to counter battery fire.
The Dream Eater
Written in response to: “Write a story that includes the line “Did anyone else see that?” or “Who’s there?”“
Alia Lewis
Science Fiction Speculative Thriller
This story contains sensitive content
But it’s rarely worth the risk now. Not like the old days when people were written off as insane. My favorite was when people believed, some even saw you, and they had enough respect to pay tribute. You didn’t have to siphon here and there, just enough to keep going on to the next place.
Glimpses, I’m guessing fragments of the movie, took shape in the woman’s mind. A darkened alleyway with the sheen of a recent rain painted the scene. Cornered and starting to panic, a woman backed her way into a brick alleyway. Why do they always do that? Silly animals, humans. Multiple male figures, features as dark as the alley, but otherwise undifferentiated, blocked her only exit. Screaming, she runs face first into the brick wall behind her.
Visions shift to another scene, this time a corn field outside of town. Same set of men chasing the same woman. Must have been a cheesy horror flick. But they don’t make ‘em like they used to anymore. I sighed. Guess now is as good a time as any. Eyes closed, yes I have eyes, though not in the way a human expects; I sniffed the dream air and followed the scent to where it originated. Dreams are kept in the same part of the brain, but each person is different so the path to get there is also. At the edge of the nightmare, the vision changed from the scene itself to a dim gray emptiness. Here it is.
A golden orb floated in the gray, unattached and unmoving. Willing my spirit form, I reached out a tendril of power towards the orb. As we connected, power surged into me. It tasted like what I imagined mulberry’s would, though I had never eaten physical food. It was sweet, dark, and a little tangy.
Outside, the woman’s body stirred. Humans never like the feel of the contact, even though it doesn’t actually hurt them. This is what makes it dangerous though, the mind fights the intrusion. Time to go. Snapping out of her body, I regained my position in the dark corner of the ceiling over looking the sleeping couple. She rolled over, curling into her husband.
I left their house through the crack under the front door. Drifting past houses, still dark with sleep. There should be enough time for another. My senses spread like veins as I passed each house, searching for my next meal. Aha, there.
Floating up the porch steps and sliding under the door I paused and listened. It was a male this time, and I could sense the dream had just started. Into the room I went, hovering over his still form, sheets had been cast off and sweat beaded his forehead.
Dim gray light, an austere room. A cell, maybe? It had a single bed and sink, turning I saw the man with his fists pounding the glass “wall”. There were no doors. He looked around the room and then up. Spotting an opening, he removed the A/C vent, pulled the bed directly underneath and pulled himself up and into the duct. Following him, the duct collapsed as he crossed into the next room over. He tumbled out onto the floor, where a scuffle ensued with the occupant. I lost interest in the show unfolding and began my search.
At the edge of the cell block the light faded into a deep black void. Here. Once the the dream faded to black the orb appeared and I again reached my power towards it. At contact, I was pushed out of his subconscious and for a moment hovered over his body, which was twitching as if electrocuted, before being pulled back in down the tether of power that had initially connected us. Guess I better be quick with this one. His subconscious was fighting me, so I pulled the energy hard and fast. Outside, his body had progressed from twitching into bucking, so I severed the connection, shooting out of his subconscious bouncing off the floor to the ceiling where I stayed waiting for the man’s dream to settle. Instead, he jolted upright in bed.
“Who’s there?!” He said looking around and wiping the sleep from his eyes. “Show yourself!”
Silence stretched for several heart beats before his breathing slowed and he relaxed back onto the bed.
“Just a dream. Get yourself together John, the house is empty. As usual.” His lids fluttered shut as he pulled the covers up and over his head.
That was too close. I thought as I glided out of the house. The light glow of dawn was just peaking through as I floated through the still dim street. Towards the end, there was a dense patch of trees far enough away from people and the every day goings on, so I found a nice patch of shadow and rested. As I listened to the birds chirp, the air shifted around me and the landscape changed.
I was back in my realm, the realm of dreams. It isn’t like the physical realm of the humans, the dream realm is more of a collective consciousness of all beings that dwell here. I floated through several dream spaces; a coming baby, a human flying, a big promotion. This was the hope level. Coming to the central space which was a vortex leading through all dreams levels, I followed it down to the processing floor.
Processing was made of a churning, moist mist resembling a cloud formation and as we added our dreams to the mix, little bursts of lightning would spark between them. Eventually, the process would push the cloudy visions up level after level, continuously adding to our home.
Exiting the way I came, I returned to the human realm. Night already blanketed the streets, the moon an amber sliver between the trees. Lights still illuminated many of the windows. My senses picked up a house filled with enough negative energy that I was sure would result in a nightmare. Gliding under the door, I explored the house. Immaculate, verging on sterile. The master bedroom was modern and dim with accent lights, but there was a nice spot just above the bed in the corner of the ceiling.
Waiting, but not for long, the wife came into the room and prepared for bed. She kept looking over at me from mirror she used while attending to her nightly skin regimen. Another sensitive, I should tread carefully. Thinning myself along the crevice so I didn’t darken the shadows quite as much, I watched her finish up and headed towards the bed.
“Relax Janet, you’re just imagining things. Shadows are just shadows. There are no red eyes, just normal shadows. Go to sleep.” She said, fluffing her pillow and getting under the sheets.
Grumbling as she got comfortable, “You would probably be more at ease if your husband was home to check the house and not fucking his secretary at the office late into the night. But what can you do.”
She adjusted her eye mask over her face and instantly fell asleep, it wasn’t long after that before short dreams flitted behind her eyelids. I waited until the sleep deepened and she was the least likely to startle when I fed. Here we go.
Two people, tangled in sheets, a third steps out of the darkness with gun drawn and aimed at the others. So much blood. The sheets, originally white, reddened with the crumpled figures. The woman stood shaking, the look on her face said she debated turning the gun on herself, but instead it clattered to the ground as she fell holding her hands to her face. I left the bedroom scene as it started to morph. The edge of the dreams melted into a pale pink light, misting like blood rain all around. Her orb was more hidden than the others, but after groping for it in the mist a moment, I found it. As I began to siphon the energy, her physical form bolted up right with eyes wide open.
“Who’s there?! Jack, is that you? Are you home?” Panting slightly, she gingerly stepped out of bed. I was partially expelled from her psyche but still connected through her dream which meant she was more likely to know when she saw me. Besides I was tethered to her so I couldn’t easily hide, so I choose to stick to her back, just out of sight.
“I can feel you, show yourself!”
Impossible. Right? I’m not able to touch humans, I usually just pass right through them if we happen to run into each other. Maybe because we are still connected? I need her to fall back asleep before she starts draining my energy instead. With only a tendril still connected, I kept to the shadows as she moved through the house, checking for anyone or anything not supposed to be there.
We are not designed to stay straddled between the physical world and the subconscious mind, so as she pulled me with her, our energy created a spark and like a matchstick the ceiling caught fire. She screamed and ran through the house, my Smokey form trailing behind, and a string of fire that only grew hungrier as we went.
Thunk. Thud. Unconscious, she fell after running head first into the front door. I snapped back into her mind, siphoning every once of energy I could take as quickly as possible and snapped out. The house was fully aflame as I slid under the door.
MC HotDog 熱狗【差不多先生】Official Music Video
Chicken Enchilada Casserole
Yield: 100 servings
Ingredients
- 2 (50 ounce) cans Campbell’s Condensed Cream of Mushroom or 98% Fat Free Cream of Mushroom Soup
- 1 (50 ounce) can Campbell’s Condensed Tomato Soup
- 7 pounds stewed tomatoes
- 9 pounds chicken, cooked, diced
- 6 pounds 1% fat cottage cheese
- 3 pounds 8 ounces Cheddar cheese, shredded
- 1 pound canned green chiles, drained and chopped
- 144 (6 inch) corn tortillas
Instructions
- Mix 1 can mushroom soup, tomato soup and tomatoes.
- Mix remaining mushroom soup, chicken, cottage cheese, 2 quarts cheddar cheese and chiles.
- In each of 4 baking pans (12 x 20 x 2 inches) spread 2 cups tomato soup mixture. Top with 12 tortillas and 1 1/2 quarts chicken mixture. Repeat layers. Top with remaining 12 tortillas and 2 cups tomato soup mixture. Sprinkle with 1 1/2 cups Cheddar cheese.
- Bake at 350 degrees F. Bake until internal temperature is 165 degrees F or higher for 15 seconds, about 40 minutes.
- Let stand for 15 minutes.
- Hold at 140 degrees F or higher.
- Cut each pan into 25 portions. Portion 1 piece each.