We are just a group of retired spooks that discuss things that you’ll not find anywhere else. It makes us unique. Take a look around. Learn a thing or two.
One of my affirmations has been to get rich. I know, I know… I tell youse guys focus on the end result about what you want from life, and not about the “how” to make it manifest. But when I was making these affirmations, I too was learning, and I made a lot of bone-head moves… things that taught me many lessons.
So today, I will tell you why I say to structure your affirmations around health, happiness, love, joy and other things that are meaningful to you. And not the television image of what success actually is.
back in the day I had an affirmation sort of like this…
“I live the life of a rich person from Miami Vice (a television show from the 1980’s). I live in a penthouse on the ocean with an ocean view, white walls, and a nice pool.”
Miami Vice House
Well, it did take a while to manifest. Ah, but manifest it did.
I was living in a penthouse, it was on the ocean. I did have a pool, and I was a millionaire. Ah, it all came true. But with that came other manifestations that I did not anticipate… like millions of dollars in debt. A police record. And other things.
By using “Miami Vice” wealthy people as a template I locked my affirmations into an extrapolated reality of…
Felon millionaire.
Great large amounts of debt.
All the trappings of a life on the beach living in “Billionaire row”.
Just like the images presented on “Miami Vice”.
Listen to me.
NEVER, ever… ever use movies or television to base your affirmations upon.
Today…
Playing around with LeonardoAI
I have been playing around with this software program, and it is heck of a lot of fun. Perhaps one of the best text-to-image generators.
Here’s some of my results…
Default film noir scene a swanky dame wearing a satin slip is 0Default Imagine Young Brigitte Bardot Age 24 bright eyes as D 0Default film noir style a man and a blonde woman is in a dinin 0Default aweinspiring Emperor Taizu of Song Dynasty portrait hi 1(1)Default Sketchbook Style Sketch book hand drawn dark gritty re 1Default film noir scene beautiful woman in a slinky silk dres 3Default Imagine Young Lana Turner Age 24 bright eyes as Dorot 0
And here are some videos from pictures…
These were all made on a free account. I suggest you all give it a try.
As a police officer, who was the most dangerous person you arrested and why?
The most dangerous person I can think of was someone I didn’t arrest, but should have.
I was on the graveyard shift, patrolling a city park that had several paved roads running through it. The parks were deemed “closed” from 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM, and were posted as such, but there were no gates or physical restrictions to entry. Most of the time, if we found someone in the park after hours, it was couples making out, people drinking or smoking dope in their cars, or people sleeping in their cars. With any of these, there tended to be a high incidence of arrest warrants, revoked drivers licenses, and other lesser offenses.
I came upon a late model Camaro, occupied by a man and a woman. They were sober, didn’t appear to be making out, and reasonably cordial. I obtained the male driver’s license and ran it. It was valid, he was not wanted, and the Oregon plates (I was in Nevada) came back to a late model Camaro.
I still had a bad gut feeling about the pair. My practice with suspicious newcomers and transients was to write them a citation for whatever minor violation I could find. I knew most of them would ignore it. If they left town, the citation became one of the thousands of warrants we had in file that would never be served. If they were still around in a month and they were still up to no good, I would have a warrant to arrest them on, and we would have their photo, fingerprints, and eventually, their true identity, if it was something other than they had told us about.
So the driver got a citation for being in the park after hours, which would almost certainly be dismissed in court if he challenged it, on the grounds that it was hugely chicken shit.
I had mostly forgotten about the stop about six weeks later, when I got a radio call from another officer, one who had been my rookie trainee a couple of years before. He had stopped the same couple, ran them for warrants, and the one from my citation popped up. He was in booking with the couple. When he saw that the warrant had come from my ticket, he asked me to respond.
He had stopped the Camaro for reckless driving. When he made contact with the driver, he was confrontational. He asked the driver to get out of the car, and that’s when he saw the .380 pistol under his leg. There was a minor donnybrook, with the female passenger also assaulting the cop, but reinforcements got there in time and the pair were arrested.
A search of the vehicle revealed the original plates that had been on the car (which was stolen), a leather pouch with about a dozen loose diamonds in it, and some documents with the couple’s true names. The guy was an escapee from a Washington prison. He had been a fugitive for six months. The girl was his girlfriend, who had stolen the Camaro in Oregon, then lifted a set of plates from another Camaro. For some reason, the fictitious plates had never been reported stolen. They had done several burglaries and assorted thefts along the way, which is where the diamonds came from.
One almost fatal mistake I made during my stop was not running the VIN, or comparing it against the registration that came back to the plates. Had I done that, the VINs would not have matched, and I would have impounded the car.
Bad guy told me he had the .380 pistol under his leg the whole time I was talking to him, and if I had asked him to get out of the car, he would have shot me. Maybe he would have gotten off the shot, maybe not; maybe he would have hit me in a critical spot, maybe not; maybe I would have been able to return fire, maybe not. Our conversation ended with his very bitter expression of regret: “I should have killed you when I had the chance.”
I now live about 40 miles from the prison he escaped from. If he’s still alive, that’s probably where he is. I won’t be dropping in to say hello.
Carne Adovada
This is a wonderful filling for burritos or simply great served over rice with the resulting gravy. For better flavor, prepare a day ahead.
CarneAdovada2 Web
Ingredients
7 to 8poundsbone in pork shoulder or pork butt*,remove bone and visible fat, cut meat into 1 to 2 inch chunks
Ingredients for Adovada Sauce
1Tbsp.oil or bacon dripping
1/2medium onion
4-6large garlic cloves
25-30red chile pods*,stems and seeds removed. Pods cut into 1-2 inch lengths
1tsp.salt
2tsp.Mexican oregano
3cupswater
2tsp.medium red chile powder*(optional)
1tsp.honey*(optional)
2tsp.apple cider vinegar
Instructions
Day 1 – Make the adovada sauce
Heat the oil in a large heavy skillet or pot over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and lower the heat to medium low.
Sweat the onions until translucent.
Add the red chile pieces and increase heat to medium. Toast the chile, stirring frequently for about 5 minutes. When you start smelling the chile, keep an eye on it so it doesn’t burn.
Once the chile pods have started to darken a bit, add the oregano, water, and chile powder. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer.
Cover and simmer for 10 minutes.
Transfer to a blender, reserving some of the water to use as needed. Add only just enough water to be able to get a smooth puree.*
Add the vinegar and blend until smooth.
Taste. Add more salt if needed and honey if you find the sauce too hot or bitter*.
Let rest while you cut up the meat.
If you want a really smooth sauce, you can press the red chile through a strainer or colander to remove bits of unprocessed chile or seeds. Use a rubber spatula to move the chile around and press through.
Marinate the pork pieces.
Spray a large, heavy Dutch oven with cooking oil. (This pot will be placed in the oven.)
Transfer the pork pieces to the Dutch oven and pour enough red chile over the meat to coat the meat when stirred. (See Kitchen Notes for Amount of red chile. Any extra red chile can be used to “smother” the carne adovada after serving.)
Stir well to coat all of the pieces with the red chile.
Cover and set in the refrigerator overnight or for 24 hours.
Day 2 – Braise the marinated pork
One hour before placing in the oven, remove the Dutch oven from the refrigerator so that the meat can come up to room temperature.
Preheat the oven to 300° F.*
Place the meat in the hot oven and cook for COVERED for 2 hours.
Remove from the oven and stir. There will be quite a bit of liquid.
Return the meat to the oven UNCOVERED for 1 to 1.5 hours or until the meat is pull apart tender and the liquid has reduced.*
Turn the oven off and leave the carne adovada in the oven until ready to serve.
Top each serving with red chile if desired.
CarneAdovada Web
Kitchen Notes
Pork Shoulder (pork butt) Size – For this recipe I usually start with an 8 pound, bone-in, pork shoulder. Once I remove the bone and much of the fat, I end up with about 5 pounds of meat. Therefore, if you just want to start with a 5-6 pound boneless shoulder that would save the time of cut away the bone. I use the bone to make a pork stock. You could also use a 3-4 pound boneless shoulder. This would yield a smaller batch, but it would also only take about 2 hours of cook time. Just be sure to reduce the amount of red chile.
Cutting up the pork – I personally am not fond of biting into a big piece of fat with I eat carne adovada; therefore, we trim the larger pieces of fat off of the cut pieces of meat. However, we don’t get too carried away because we want to leave some of the fat for flavoring.
As mentioned, we usually cut the meat into about 2 inch chunks. This yields larger pieces that can be pulled apart with a fork once cooked. Smaller pieces (1 inch cubes) yield bite size pieces that won’t need to be “pulled”.
Chile Pods and chile powder – If your pods are hot, then use mild to medium chile powder. This helps bring down the heat of really hot chile pods and adds a little depth to the flavor of the chile. If your chile pods are mild to medium, then use hot chile powder for a spicier chile. When I’m using a VERY hot chile, I’ll reduce the number of pods to 20 pods, then add 2 tablespoons of powder.
Honey – Honey kills the burn. Therefore, honey is a great ingredient to help reduce a little of the heat from the chile as well as bitterness. However, be careful and don’t add too much. More than 2 teaspoons can make your red chile too sweet.
Amount of red chile sauce – The amount of red chile made in this recipe is plenty for 5- 7 pounds of meat, but is too much for any less than that. A rough estimate for how much red chile you need is ½ cup of red chile for 1 pound of meat. You can always add more for a saucier carne adovada. You just want to make sure that you use enough chile to fully coat the pieces of pork.
Oven Temperature – I have found it best to braise carne adovada at a low temperature of 300°F. However, if you don’t have to time to braise for 3 – 4 hours, you can increase the temperature to 350°F and cook for 1 to 1.5 hours. If you choose to cook at a higher temperature, just cut the pieces of meat smaller, about 1″ cubes.
The amount of liquid in the cooked meat – Some people may want a stew like carne adovada with quite a bit of sauce, while others, like it a little saucy, but not soupy. If you want a more stew like carne, then wait and uncover the Dutch oven 2.5 hours into cooking. However, if you want the chile thicker and more saucy, then uncover after 2 hours of cooking. If you want it even less sauce, then you can use a slotted spoon to scoop out the meat, throw it into a skillet and cook off even more of the sauce before serving. Just don’t cook off too much. You’ll need some sauce for the flour tortilla.
How does one reconcile the US dislike the Chinese and the Muslims but they are over the moon about Chinese Muslims?
You cannot reconcile unless you are a dog nation sucking up to the U.S. or you are a brain dead naive and foolish person who prefer lies to truth that hurts.
The U.S. hate China and sanctions and blockade China from 1949–1970 killing tens of millions of Chinese innocent people while they bombed the shit out of Muslim nations from Iraq to Afghanistan to Yemen, to Libya and Syria killing tens of million Muslims.
Every fool can see that and acknowledge that and no one on earth do not know this fact The the U.S. are evil against Chinese and Muslims but when it comes to Chinese Muslims, suddenly they want to be seen as a darling to them!
The U.S. suddenly is the champion of their rights? They fabricated lies on Uyghurs Muslims and invented genocide! And they expect the world to believed them! No one does of course unless one is blind, deaf or dumb or totally brain dead! The world knows it is another evil design to hoodwink people to hate China and thanks the world of the U.S. as human rights defender when it is the biggest wrong doer!
What is the biggest scam an auto mechanic ever tried on you?
My wife drives a Lexus RX400h. The “h” stands for hybrid.
One day she called me from the Lexus dealer to tell me the mechanic performing the regular service told her Lexus’s engine mounts were disintegrating and needed to be replaced. The mechanic explained that because the car was a hybrid the task was very expensive—around $2500!
My wife called me because, while I’m not a professional mechanic, I’ve owned a dizzying array of exotic cars over the years and perform all my own restorations.
The first thing I did was put down my wrench (I was in the middle of replacing the clutch on my ’85 Toyota MR2) and search “engine mount replacement, 2007 Lexus RX400h”.
It just so happens that while replacing the engine mounts on the non-hybrid version of my wife’s car was a $300 repair ($80 for the engine mounts, $220 for labor) the labor involved performing the same job on the hybrid was much, much greater.
I called my wife back and asked her why she thought she needed new engine mounts. Had she noticed anything amiss? I occasionally drove her car and never heard any weird knocks from under the hood. My wife said the mechanic told her it needed the repair.
My advice was that since she’d been driving the car without noticing anything amiss, to have faith that she could safely drive it home where I could examine it (they’re only engine mounts after all).
Personally inspecting the mounts, using a very powerful penlight I was able to determine that they looked nearly new (the Lexus only had 110K on the odometer). There were tiny tears in the rubber flashing around the edges of the mounts, but they looked better than the mounts on any of my cars.
My advice, whenever possible, get a second opinion and research the repair for your car. Also, ask your friends for recommendations for mechanics they trust.
DRAGONFLY – 1952 Retro Pulp Science Fiction by Skyward, Photo Processing 110mm Film Experimentation
My education was subsidized by both Federal and state governments. Sputnik went up in October 1957. To answer Sputnik and the belief the US was technologically behind the USSR, the “National Defense Education act of 1958” was passed that September. Many more acts followed that support K-12 and colleges with the emphasis on building a generation of scientists and engineers to fight the “Cold War.” By working as a Co-Op, I graduated with a BS in Computer Science and debt-free.
I worked first for computer manufactures and later in Defense and Aerospace.
I just retired. My generation, the ones educated due to Sputnik, are retiring.
During the Regan administration, all that education funding was reduced. The GI bill was canceled. Both Federal and state governments stopped supporting colleges. And we saw the rise in the cost of higher education.
Before the cut in education, we had the best universities. Researches are not getting the grants they used to. I don’t see tech companies giving big grants to universities.
Without government funding, our education is dying and is dead in some areas. One of the political parties has labeled higher education as bad and should be eliminated.
From Asian cultures we learn:
“To plan for 1 year, plant rice.
To plan for 20 years, plant trees.
To plan for 100 years, teach children.
Asian cultures plan for the long term. Toyota has a 100-year plan. US companies have a 90-day plan.
On the roll is what we call “Mett”. It is pure pork, which is seasoned with salt and pepper. Depending on who you meet, a war may break out, depending on whether you eat your ground pork bun with butter or without.
2. We drink alcohol in public. And not a little of it. In the USA for example and in many Muslim countries this is absolutely forbidden. Nobody is interested here. You can drink wherever you want, whatever you want – and above all as much as you want. But if you are not from Germany, you will always find someone here who can tolerate more than you.
3. Once you have learned German, you can learn it again right away when you move to another federal state. In Germany, the dialects are very different, and some people feel that they speak a completely different language.
4. We are not so hospitable. Of course, we are not angry, and we are not averse to visitors, but in other countries of the world, you are virtually courted as a tourist. In Germany, nobody is interested in that, even though we probably find you perfectly ok.
5. We do not speak English very well. With speaking English here, you are not as successful as in countries like Sweden. Although we know English better than France, especially the old people never learned it.
6. We are not a bit patriotic. In countries like the USA you can’t really miss where you are, because that’s the way it looks.
She REGRETS Leaving Her Husband Then Gets BITTER When He Got A New GIRLFRIEND
Because of my class schedule, I walk twelve or 15 blocks from “Prep High” to “Tech High” between 11:20 and 12:20 each school day.
I was stopped between those times and between those places on what the officer (who will hopefully soon find himself unemployed) described in the report as “reasonable suspicion” of being truant.
I was polite. Explained why I was where I was and offered the officer a copy of my class schedule, my school ID, and the business card of the vocational coordinator at “Prep High” who could be called to verify what I was saying.
The officer refused to look at anything I offered. He said it wasn’t his job to verify anything. I was handcuffed, placed in the back of a patrol car, and driven about 5 miles to a juvenile processing facility.
THIS IS THE FIRST LIE. Legally that was an arrest. Without probable cause and without following the procedures required when arresting a minor. (The officer would have to have an arrest warrant or have personally witnessed my committing a criminal act that would be a felony were I an adult.)
Police may “detain” an individual, defined as not allowing a person to leave while a “reasonable suspicion” is investigated to determine that “probable cause” exists to arrest. But the officer never investigated anything. To him my being a student, off of school district property, during normal school hours was truancy.
So, THIS IS THE SECOND LIE: Laws are codified and that is not the definition of truancy. In part the law reads: “any absence of part or all of one or more days from school during which the school attendance officer, principal or teacher has not been notified of the legal cause of such absence(.)”
I had offered the officer a printed, paper, copy of my school schedule which I carry in the clear outer sleeve of my notebook binder. Obviously, having scheduled me to take three AM classes at “Prep” and three PM classes at “Tech” the school district not only knew about, not only authorized, but actually COMPELLED the action I was taking when stopped.
I was processed at the juvenile facility including having a check run to see if I had any outstanding warrants. Then, nearly three hours after I was stopped, I was issued a $94 ticket / court summons where ocurred the
THIRD LIE: The time and place on the summons / ticket was FALSE. Reflecting a later time and a different place miles from where I was stopped.
My legal guardian was called to transport me home. Using the juvenile facility’s phone (number recorded by my guardian’s phone). That, the fact that there are cameras in the facility, a body camera on the “arresting officer,” body cameras on other officers working there, cameras on businesses where I was “arrested,” possibly cameras near the fake address on the ticket / summons, that the juvenile facility obviously used its systems to search for outstanding warrants and to find the name and phone number of my legal guardian, and required my guardian to sign a document for my release all DIRECTLY CONTRADICT the officers assertions (lies) in his report.
My attorney points out that proving that this officer lied in one official report calls into question EVERY other official assertion he has ever made.
Don’t misunderstand me. I am a 5 ft 6 female. Society needs police.
Well, society needs honest police. We already have too many hoodlums.
But, some people (like this liar) simply lack the mental capacity or ethical standards to be police officers.
Society needs to fire them, prosecute them for any criminal acts they commit, publicize their names (in part so others can seek legal redress), PERMANENTLY disarm them, and possibly segregate them.
As an astrophysics Ph.D, I’m looking forward to a future career in janitorial services. Once I get make a ton of money in investment banking, being a janitor looks like a perfect job…..
Because:
1) There is the FU number. It’s the amount of money you have to have in the bank to say “FU” to your boss. If you run the numbers you’ll find that even small amounts of income drastically reduce the “FU” number.
2) One thing that gets missed is that with a Ph.D. in the sciences you *can* be a janitor. Most people that go to medical school or law school end up with tremendous debt, so they *can’t* do any random job. The nice thing about getting a physics Ph.D., is that you can get your Ph.D. and then become a beach bum, since you have little/no debt.
3) I’ve known people that have worked as janitors, and they say it’s an easy job. You get paid eight hours of wages for work that usually only takes two or three, and you spend the rest of the night just chatting. You work in the middle of the night so your manager isn’t going to be looking over your shoulder, and as long as everything is clean the next morning, no one cares how many hours you “really” worked.
4) You can do janitorial work and theoretical physics at the same time. You are pushing a broom, you can think about quantum field theory. This is *not* true for a lot of other jobs. You can’t think about QFT while taking orders at McDonalds, selling shoes, flipping burgers, or driving a cab. If the janitor has a blank vacant look, no one cares, whereas being absent-minded while dealing with hot cooking oil or customers can get you fired or cause a fire.
5) And what’s the negative. Janitors have low social status. Well so what? I’ve got a Ph.d.
I suppose you see a lot of Ph.D.’s being janitors because it’s the smart thing to do.
I do not buy Chinese products (unless disposable) because I know they will be low quality. Why does China only seem to make low end products? Why do they not mimic Germany where the standard is higher?
You must be living in a cave.
Twenty years ago, China only made low quality, cheap goods. They still make them because buyers want them. Walmart couldnt survive without them.
Nowadays, China makes many high ebd products, designed by Chinese engineers.
40,000 kilometers of high speed rail in China. 347 kmh an hour. unmatched safety record. you couldn’t keep running them if they unsafe.
I was a professional photographer in Canada. Chinese photo gear was garbage. Now they have taken big strides. My tripod is made by Chinese company named Sirui. Carbon fiber, rugged and light weight. I’ve used mainly German tripods, even Leica, but the Sirui is the best. do a search online. check the reviews. Hand crafted by skilled machinists.
And Chinese companies have taken over failed western companies. Improved quality and become top sellers. Volvo was owned by Ford and lost money. Geely bought it up and gave an investment of 5billion to.make a new platform. Two years later Volvo had Car of the Year. They boldly announced that no one will die in a Volvo by 2026. They are still the safest cars on the planet. MG was a British cae company know fir sport cars called roadstes. Now owned vy Chinese car company. just launched an EV roadster. The British car magazines are raving about it. And all said it stll looks British!
In the latest McDonald’s quarterly call, the company revealed it opened >1,000 restaurants in mainland China in 2023, making it the fastest growing market globally.
1,000 restaurants is 3 per DAY, and McDonald’s is about as American as any brand can be.
China’s policing of consultancies is merely a rounding error, in the grand scheme of things. Annually, the S&P 500 generate >$1 trillion in revenue operating within the mainland market. This includes Apple, which depend on China for 20–25% of its global revenue.
How much are these consultancies worth? A couple of million each?
What’s happening is the CIA’s doubling down on intelligence within China, as traditional humint sources were vacuumed up in the repeated corruption sweeps since Xi took charge.
These consultancies have served as spy centers and information conduits, but were allowed to operate in deference of American hegemony. But relationships have become frazzled and the cases linked to these nodes made them intolerable.
Actual cases are being pursued, and people are being prosecuted, with a number deported rather than risk diplomatic protest.
America is preparing for war, and it shows in the information they are willing to pay for, particularly the networks and capabilities they are willing to risk.
Case in point: What was a Seawolf-class attack sub doing in the SCS, only to suffer a head-on collision with an undersea mount?
Thus Western Consumption is CREDIT DRIVEN and they encourage more and more credit to mobilize an economy
The West believes in minimum balances I checking accounts and wants people to spend everything they have and money they don’t have by availing credit
The Average Man uses Credit Cards
The Corporates use Wall Street, create special instruments, get AAA rating and sell the instruments to other Wall Street Entities representing Billions of Dollars of Insurance Premiums or Pension payments
For such an Economy – SPENDING is something they love especially SPENDING UNDER CREDIT
For such an Economy – BAILOUTS is something they love
Such an Economy believes that if the top 1% become richer and richer, they automatically will trickle down the wealth upto the poorest sections and enhance the economy
It’s called REAGANOMICS
When Reagan Proposed this (Or his experts did), US was producing a lot and trading everywhere as the largest trader
So it helped
However once the 1% became richer and richer, WOULD THEY EVER VOLUNTARILY GIVE UP?
No
So they purchased more congressmen, senators and today the US is in utter chaos due to these policies
In 1984, when 1% of the manufacturers became wealthy, their workers, linemen, foremen all got some share of the wealth
Today?
Chinese or Mexican Factories get a miniscule share and the rest goes to the pockets of maybe 500 people at the most
China believes SAVINGS is God
Chinese Consumption is thus INCOME DRIVEN and Chinese always buy from earnings and NEVER SPEND THEIR SAVINGS on normal consumption
Chinese focus on higher income from salary or Investments to buy more stuff and live a rich lifestyle and LOATHE CREDIT OR BORROWING , unless its towards Gold or Land or Jade where they can pay 6% a year and get 10% a year interest
China thus raises money only through secured debt, secured by Land or other assets
For such an Economy – SPENDING FROM INCOME is what they love rather than Credit
For such an Economy – Bailouts are bad unless the situation becomes so bad that you can settle 15 cents on the dollar
Such an Economy believes that Capitalism in the hands of 1% is a disaster and so ensures that the STATE regulates Capitalism in a pseudo mixed economy form
Li Peng and Li Keiqang are architects of this model
So the West sees Chinas economy from THEIR PERSPECTIVE
They see that Only 71% of the Assets are lent vide Credit of which 87% is Secure Debt and the West feels that’s Socialist and feels that’s because of low demand
That’s because US lends almost 95% Assets vide Credit of which barely 23% is Secure Debt
China meanwhile doesn’t have low demand because it’s people prefer spending income from wages and investments on consumption and saving for a rainy day
Yet US can’t accept or realize that
Likewise the West like Bailouts in the style of 2008 to prevent what’s called a Domino Collapse
China likes to allow a bubble to subside to it’s best possible low before any investment can be considered
The West regard this as WEAK FISCAL POLICY whereas Chinese People regard this as normal
So the West focuses on
GDP Growth due to Spending
Credit Growth in the economy or how much people are borrowing to spend
Net Spending due to Credit
China focuses on
Rise in Wages
Rise in Disposable Income
Income Growth in the economy or how much people are earning
So obviously the West can never predict China properly
The West is clueless about how China works
What has been the biggest plot twist that happened in your life?
One day in 1981, as my girlfriend (now wife) and I rode the bus together to campus, she said to me, “Go down to the career center and sign up for who’s hiring software engineers.”
I thought maybe she’d seen something in the Daily. Big employers sometimes took out ads in the campus newspaper. I asked, “Who’s there today?”
She said, “I don’t know. Just go down and sign up.”
Turns out there was only one company, called John Fluke Mfg., Co., hiring software folks. I signed up. In due time, I had a 30-minute campus interview with a very nice lady named Patsy Thiemens, a young developer from Fluke. The thing she was doing sounded really interesting, emulating a microprocessor’s address and data buses to stimulate boards under test. I ended up more or less interviewing her, which, unknown to me, was a pretty good way to impress an interviewer.
An in-house interview followed, and a job offer with excellent salary, working for Patsy. I spent the first 12 years of my career working in Fluke’s very professional software development process. It set the pattern for the rest of my life. It was, as the oft-repeated joke goes, a fluke.
My mother complained to me on the phone this morning. “Your former brother-in-law, the guy you liked so much you still remain friends with him? He was abusive towards your sister.”
“How come?” I wanted to know.
“He pushed her really hard, a few months back. She fell back and hit her head against a wall. It’s one of the reasons why they’re breaking up, actually. A man should never use physical force against a woman.”
“Damn! That’s awful… shit I never knew… why would he do such a thing?”
“He was being really mean apparantly. Got under her skin. You know how Ben can be. And at some point he just really crossed a line. So she slapped him and then he pushed her away…. and she…”
“Wait, she slapped him first?”
“Yes but…”
“No ‘but’, I don’t like that he pushed her but she should NOT have slapped him in the face. That was wrong. Period.”
“You should have heard the things he said. He can really, really be mean sometimes. You know how he gets when Ben gets in one of those moods, Jean-Marie, you KNOW that!”
Well at this point the whole thing sort of turned to shit. I’m supposed to side with my sister. By default, as she is family. Plus she’s a woman. But honestly, she should not have lost her temper and slapped him. The fact that a slap from a woman can be casually explained away as “he got it coming” but a push or slap from a man is instantly labeled abuse? MAJOR double standard.
The Roman Army did a great many things right. In logistics, strategy, and tactics, they were already doing many of the things that military colleges teach today. One things the history books ignore is that soldiers in the field did more building than training and more training than fighting. We’ve got journals from Roman soldiers that say things like, “I’ve been in the army for 2 years and have never used my sword. All I do is dig.” HA!
That sounds boring until you consider what fighting Romans would have been like from the perspective of their tribal foes.
The door of your command tent flies open. A panting fifteen-year-old who smells of sweat and horse stumbles through the gap and gasps, “A column to the east, my liege. Three hours ride. Romans.”
“On foot, Scout?”
“Mostly, Lord. 200 heavy infantry, plus wagons and followers.”
“Hot damn. Assemble my commanders. I want 600 men ready to ride by dawn!”
One busy night later, your experienced war machine has confirmed the Romans’ position and strength, packed your camp, mustered their courage, and deployed. A half day’s travel later, with a few hundred of your clan and allies at your back, you crest the final hill and see…
Well f*** me.
Erecting trenches, stockades, and earthworks—a stockade of portable sudes within minutes and a whole fortified castrum by sunset—was standard practice for Roman units in hostile territory. It’s hard to believe they could do it so quickly, but hundreds or thousands of men working in shifts at tasks they’ve practiced can do a LOT.
Fortifications were a huge force multiplier, and disheartened the Romans’ foes…and kept the Roman grunts busy, which the Caesars understood can boost discipline more than the walls themselves.
Russian nuclear weapons actually work. Russia conducted 2 tests in 2022 and 2023.
The UK’s doesn’t.
France’s nuclear delivery systems were tested in November 2023. But here’s the thing Macron already set out that he wouldn’t use them.
That leaves the USA and in game theory they’d likely look the other way.
Westerners now are but muh super mega weapons and my SUPER SOLDIERS! That can shoot lazers from their eyes! But then again they still believe Russia is completely out of ammunition has no food and fuel and that Ukraine is about to take Magadan.
I didn’t really do it for revenge but oh ,did it get nasty. During my divorce, I got a notice from my insurance company, that because of the accident I was in, I would be surcharged. What?!
It was a large surcharge and I actually got the notice before I heard anything about an accident.
I called the insurance company to tell them it was a mistake, that I hadn’t been in an accident.
“Oh yes, on Tues(date). In (my ex-husband’s car).”
I told the insurance rep that we were getting a divorce and I hadn’t driven his car in months. Finally, the insurance company(or police department-I had to call them too) found out that his girlfriend had been driving and got in the accident. She didn’t have her license and said she was me.
I was outraged and the revenge part was that I told them that ______(girlfriend’s name) was still an inexperienced driver (had a license for <6 yrs) which is a big surcharge in my state. The insurance company refused to cover the accident and charged her with fraud.
Are Americans really expected to pay outrageous hospital bills?
in 2010, my 12 year old threatened suicide while in a session with his therapist. He was defiant and refused to take it back. The doctor told us his hands were tied and we were to admit him to a lock down facility for adolescents.
On the way to the hospital, I kept thinking he would snap out of it and recant what he said, but he did not.
We signed some papers and left our 12 year old son there – and left crying.
The next day I went to visit and while I was sitting with my son, a man dressed in white asks me to sign all kinds of forms that basically say “You hereby agree to accept responsibility for all the costs and fees……”. I politely asked, “What are the fees – what is the cost to be here each night?”. He said it was between me any my insurance provider. I pressed for a number and he said he did not know the cost. “I’m sorry, but I can’t just sign a blank check to you; I have to know what it costs – I have a 20% deductible”. Even though I knew my options were limited, I had the right to know what a hospital charged.
The next day someone called and revealed the cost per day was $5,000 – just room and board. Doctor time and medication is extra. My out of pocket would be $1,000 per day, not including doctor time.
I told the woman over the phone that either my son comes home, or I refuse to pay the bill for one more day. Keep in mind, this was 14 years ago – I wouldn’t be surprised if the cost has doubled since then. When he was released he was put on some medication that was so over-prescribed, it almost killed him.
Fast forward to now, my son is a Paramedic who often deals with mental health crisis – he’s a wonderful caring person.
Space-Age Sci-Fi | The Phantom Planet (Adventure, 1961) by William Marshall | Colorized Movie
A very fun 1960’s era low budget science fiction movie. I hope you enjoy it!
This map shows the tracks of USS Reagan during July 30-Aug 9 in 2022. On August 2, the speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi, visited Taiwan, despite the warning of China, and her visit was regarded as a severe povocation to One China policy.
Before her visit, CSG Reagan was deployed to South China Sea and Philippines (P) as a stretegic support to her action and escort. However, as Pelosi ignored China’s (C) warning and landed on Taipei (T) airport, Chinese armies began massive movement and started a military drill around Taiwan. As you can see, the CSG Reagan moved eastward to escape from China’s DF-21 missile range and then hide behind Japan (J)’s Kyushu and Okinawa.
However, in 1950, USA sent its fleet direct to Taiwan Strait (the broken line between C and T) preventing communist army acrossing the strait.
after the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, the United States sent its Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait to prevent the Korean conflict from spreading south.
Anyway, American aircraft carriers are very beautiful, very powerful, very destructive.
But even Iran is not feared of them, now including Houthi forces in Yemen, let alone China.
American friends, your enemy is not China. Your enemy hides in Capitol Hill, White House, and Wall Street.
Which criminal carried out the most absurd types of crimes?
In 2016, Stephen Ruth, a man from New York, literally uncovered a traffic light conspiracy: the story hit the headlines when, after cutting the wires connecting the intersection cameras, Ruth reported himself to the authorities, causing a media case to explode .
The story, however, must be told from the beginning: initially Ruth was arrested for the first time for having used a painter’s extension cord to point traffic light cameras towards the sky.
The act of public disobedience arose from Ruth’s awareness that the traffic lights were intentionally rigged to ensure that drivers were fined; Yellow lights at intersections with cameras last only three seconds, as opposed to five seconds at other intersections without cameras in the same county. Ruth documented everything through several videos which he then uploaded to Facebook.
Since the matter went unnoticed, Stephen decided to make news in an unorthodox way: cutting the camera cables, he reported his own actions to the press, attracting the attention of some politicians who put pressure on the police force to ensure this modern ” Robin Hood” was arrested.
The local police and sheriff’s deputies, however, took Ruth’s side; once we viewed his videos it was undeniable that his gesture had a much deeper origin than that of vandalism.
Statistics in hand, the majority of road accidents with victims occurred precisely at intersections that had “rigged” cameras.
During his most recent arrest, one of the sheriff’s deputies even offered to bail him out of jail by paying the bail out of his own pocket.
When he returned home after these events, he noticed that a new camera had been placed in the neighborhood, but it was pointing directly at his front door; Ruth was apparently now a “special guard” for the county government.
The story gets even murkier; after the news became public, someone tried to silence Stephen.
He himself says that a car intentionally tried to hit him in a head-on collision; after talking to his neighbors it was clear that the car in question (or at least, a visibly identical one, including his occupants) had surveilled his house before carrying out the attempt on his life.
I worked at a grocery store when I was a teenager. Human Resources was called in to interview the employees about a beer and cigarette theft problem.
Before my interview, I saw a co-worker cleaning out his locker. “What happened?” I asked.
“Dude, they got us. They had cameras filming everything we did,” he said. “I just got fired for eating grapes that fell off the vine.”
My turn came and the HR guy said, “You need to confess to everything you have stolen here. Put a dollar amount on the stolen goods and we will set up a payment plan for restitution and avoid your being arrested.”
“I have never stolen,” I said.
“Okay, I am going to give you one more chance. If you are honest, we won’t get the police involved. If you are lying, things are not going to go well,” he said. “Be advised we have video.”
“I have never stolen anything,” I said.
“Call the police,” he said to the manager. “We are going to have to press charges.”
“You are full of it,” I said. “You have nothing.”
“Do you want to see the video?” He asked.
“Yes,” I said. “It doesn’t exist.”
“What makes you say that?” He said. “You seem very confident for someone about to go to jail.”
“I haven’t stolen anything,” I said. “If you had a video of people stealing, you wouldn’t need a confession.”
I think seven people confessed and were fired that day. My friend that ate the grapes put $7 on the amount he had stolen. He was one of the most honest people I worked with.
The ones eating steak cooked on the heat seal of the meat wrapper never confessed to anything. They did not catch the cigarette and beer thieves they were looking for either.
The people that confessed were the honest ones who felt guilty for their petty thefts while the dishonest ones stuck to their guns and confessed to nothing. Brilliant move by HR.
In 2000 Steve Jobs Offered Linus Torvalds a job at APPLE on the condition that he should stop the development of Linux, But Linus refused to join and continued developing his product.
Microsoft was not very much impressed by its open source systems and criticized it badly but later it was sponsored by Microsoft itself.
Android is the highest using operating system on the planet with 2 billion people but Android runs on Linux.
Linux is very late that it released after three years of it’s announced date.
Linux is the only operating system named after its founder Linus Torvalds
Linux has 20,323,379 lines of code which was pretty small in the version of the kernel.
Linux first name was “FreaX” which was a combination of “free”, “freak” and “Unix”)
Google, Intel, Huawei, Samsung, Red Hat, Canonical and Facebook are among the top contributors to Linux kernel development in recent years.
9 out of top 10 public cloud infrastructures run on Linux.
IBM chose Linux for what is expected to be the world’s most powerful supercomputer, Sequoia.
All major closed source Operating Systems track user information while Linux distros generally don’t, which means better user Security and Privacy is assured.
Looking at this neutrally, there are two Narratives here
The First Narrative says
China is a one party system
There is no opposition or free press or any form of checks and balances
So the CPC can make up any statistics they want
Hence Chinas Statistics are unreliable
The Second Narrative says :-
China doesn’t have major elections , so it has no need to impress voters with statistics
China doesn’t have opposition parties, so the Governing CPC need not have an initiative to deliberately show higher numbers
China has multiple foreign investors who have made money and profit over the last 2 decades. Impossible to sustain bogus statistics for so long (Half a decade or longer)
China has too many visitors to lie about it’s growth. Unlike the USSR who had many restrictions from leaving the USSR or entering the same
I myself never set store with numbers
I ask questions
First question – Why would China show a higher GDP ?
Showing a Higher GDP would be counter productive for China because China would lose nice subsidies by the WTO afforded to non market nations who are net exporters
The cut off per capita is $ 12,500
So China would prefer a lower GDP and gain maximum benefits from the WTO
Meanwhile if China shows a higher GDP, how would China benefit?
No Investor invests based on GDP or GDP growth
They invest based on Market Annual Aggregate Returns (MARR)
No Western News will praise Chinas GDP today plus even if they do, China gains Zilch
So it makes no sense for China to show higher GDP
Second Question – Can Chinas statistics be verified?
Soviet Statistics couldn’t
This was because no US entity could come to Moscow or Leningrad and set up a factory or invest $ 100 Million
Chinese Statistics can
Hundreds of Investors have actually invested in China and got tons of profits
The MARR of China from 2000–2010 was 16.29% and 2010–2020 was 10.65%
These aren’t Chinese Statistics
These are Western Statistics based on their rate of returns from the Chinese Markets
From 2020–2023, MARR has fallen to 7.12% which is why Investments are not flooding into China as they were before 2020
So Chinese Statistics are very easy to verify simply by looking at the Economy
So my conclusion is Chinese Statistics are not only reliable, they are under played in my opinion
I see no reason for China to fudge their numbers
This is my opinion
Others may have a different opinion
Bob Lazar FINALLY Showed Element 115 That Was Sealed & Hidden For Decades!
A tad bit manufactured. But worth some time to check out if you are into UFO lore.
Yes I have. Funny story. After I was shot and in the hospital recovering, I received a “Get Well Card” from a man who lived in the city. The man wrote in the card that he saw on the news that I was the Officer who had been shot and he wanted me to know that he was praying for me. He said he and his family were devastated that I was the Officer who was shot.
He said about a year before I was shot, his wife and young son were in a serious car accident in our city and I was the Officer who responded and handled the collision. His son (who I believe was 6 or 7 at the time) was traumatized by the accident because his Mom was seriously injured and transported by helicopter to the hospital. The boy told his Dad that I comforted him during the process and kept him close to me while his Mom was treated. His son was very impressed with me and felt so special that I was taking care of him while his Mom was being treated. The man told me how much he appreciated how I took care of his son and his family wishes me the very best in my recovery.
He left his phone number on the card so when I was able, I called him and spoke to him and his son. The man happened to be a helicopter tour pilot so when I was able, he took me on a spectacular helicopter tour of San Diego Bay and the surrounding area. I met with him and his son and we had a great time. It is definitely one of the highlights of my career.
Beef tri-tip is an extremely tasty cut of beef and one of our favorites. It’s cheaper than most cuts and also leaner; therefore, one has to be careful cooking it. Tri-tip should be cooked hot and fast, or slow cooked to a melt in your mouth tenderness. Anything in between causes the tri-tip to be tough and chewy. By slow cooking in a marinade, tri-tip is taken past the tough stage to a tear apart tender, delicious bite of meat. This Slow-Cooked Spicy Beef Tri-Tip recipe accomplishes that.
The spicy tri-tip marinade consists of a few spices, chile powders and beer. The meat marinates for at least 4 hours, but preferably overnight. It is slow-cooked for 2 – 3 hours, to a melt in mouth tenderness. This particular recipe provides instructions for slow-cooking on the grill during the warmer months and slow-cooking in the oven during cooler months. The recipe can easily be converted to a slow cooker or instant pot. No matter which method you use, it’s a simple process with results that make your mouth very happy.
When I make spicy beef tri-tip, I use 2 pounds of tri-tip. This provides Bobby and I with two complete meals and sometimes, a light lunch. One of the meals we serve is what you see in the pictures. It’s essentially a southwestern meat and vegetable bowl with spicy beef tri-tip, seared vegetables, black beans and avocado. A second meal is normally tacos with the leftover meat and vegetables and a few simple toppings. Instructions for both meals are found in the recipe below.
I hope you enjoy!
SpicyBeefTriTipV1 Web
Ingredients
Beef and Marinade
2poundstrimmed beef tri tip,cut into 1 ½ – 2” chunks
1 – 2Tbsp.chipotle paste*
2tsp.red chile spice mix*
½tsp.salt
2Tbsp.minced onion
½cupdark beer*(Keep the rest of the beer. You many need more later.)
Seared Vegetables
1medium onion.sliced then halved
1medium bell pepper.sliced then halved
Suggested Sides and Taco Toppings
Seared vegetables
Black beans, pintos or bolitas
Sour cream or plain Greek yogurt
Pickled Peppers*, chopped
Lime wedges
Avocado slices
Instructions
This dish can be cooked on the grill or in the oven. The instructions explain how to cook both ways.
In a large bowl, add all of the ingredients under Beef and Marinade. Mix together to coat the chunks of meat.
If cooking on the grill, transfer meat to a large piece of parchment and fold close. Place parchment package on a sheet of aluminum foil and seal shut. Wrap in another sheet of aluminum foil.
If cooking in the oven, transfer to a refrigerator container with a tight seal.
Place in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours or overnight, turning at least once.
Preheat the grill or oven for a temperature of 350F.
For the grill, place the package of marinaded beef in a cast iron skillet and place on the grill.
For the oven, transfer the beef and marinade to a heavy-duty Dutch oven. Place a piece of parchment on top of the beef and press around the edges. This will prevent the marinade from evaporating too quickly. Place the cover on the Dutch oven.
“Bake” at 350F for 2.5 hours. Remove from grill or oven and check to see if it’s ready. Using 2 forks, try to separate a chunk of meat It should be pull apart tender. If it is not, close and bake for another 30 minutes.
On the grill, the meat usually gets crispy on the edges like carnitas.
In the oven, the marinate mostly evaporates, but the edges usually don’t get crispy.
Transfer cooked beef to a bowl. Using 2 forks, tear apart the chunks of beef into small bite size pieces.
(Optional step) If you want the edges crispier, heat a cast iron skillet with a tablespoon oil. When hot, transfer the beef to the skillet and stir. When the edges start to get crispy add a couple tablespoons of beer to skillet. After about 30 seconds remove from heat. The beer adds a little moisture and flavor into the beef.
Seared Vegetables – Prepare while the beef is cooking.
If cooking on the grill, wrap cut vegetables in parchment then in aluminum foil. After the beef has cooked for 2 hours, place the package of vegetables on the grill and let cook as the meat finishes.
For the oven bake, heat up a cast iron skillet with a tablespoon of oil. When hot, add the vegetables and sear until soft and browning on the edges. (You can use the same skillet to sear the beef if you choose.)
To serve,
place meat on plate with vegetables, and other sides (e.g., avocado and beans). Squeeze a wedge of lime juice over the meat.
OR, for tacos,
wrap some of the meat in a warm tortilla, top with seared vegetables and choice of toppings. End with a squeeze of lime.
Kitchen Notes
Meat – We prefer beef tri-tip because of its flavor, but you can used other cuts of meat. Cheaper cuts of either beef or pork work well. The slow cook breaks down the connective tissue of the cheaper cuts making them tender. Even though tri-tip is a leaner cut, with the spicy beer marinade and the slow cook process, the result is melt in your mouth tenderness.
Chipotle Paste – I make chipotle paste by blending a can of chipotle adobo. Just remove the seed pod before blending. Once blended you can pour into an ice tray and freeze. Each “cube” is about 1 Tbsp. of paste. If you don’t want to do this, then minced 1 large adobo chipotle and add to marinade with 1 tablespoon of the sauce.
Red Chile Spice Mix – It’s easy to make a quick batch of this spice mix. What you don’t use can be added to eggs, beans, sprinkled on top of an avocado, salads, sandwiches, and so many other choices.
Dark Beer – A dark Mexican beer, like Negro Modelo, works best.
When i was 12 years old my sister (she was 16) she began to experience abdominal pain. She never really told anyone about it except me (we were super close, like inseparable close). She thought that it was just because of her periods. As the months started to grow, so did her pain. I was freaked out so I suggested that we tell our mom but she said that she didn’t want to burden my parents (we were at a financial loss at that time).
So after about 65 days she couldn’t hold on so she decided to tell my mom. My mom got an appointment immediately and we rushed to the ER (Emergency Room). My sister was wailing in pain. The docs over there took an ultrasound scan and then an MRI and a couple of other scans, at this point my mom and I were crying that’s when they revealed that my sister had Pancreatic Cancer and that it had crossed Stage III. My mom literally fainted right there.
I was alone and scared and i had heard about cancer only in stories and books like fault in our stars. But when my sister was a victim i didn’t know how to react.
When my mom regained consciousness and calmed down, they told her that my sister was given a few painkillers and anesthesia for the time being and that we had to start with chemotherapy soon but that they were not sure that it would work. My sister did not know that she had cancer, the doc explained it to her usually merry face broke down.
They started chemo and her beautiful black locks which she was proud of slowly began to fall. She was a person of positivity so she told my mom that she wanted to EXPERIMENT her hair. She had hip length hair which she cut it to a bob then a pixie and then finally shaved her head. We both shaved our heads together.
She would never get a minute of sleep at night. On the 12th of December, it was my birthday, I ran home from school happily as my friends had given me a lot of gifts for my sister and me. My dad was there, my mom wasn’t, my sister was at the hospital, so I asked my dad to drive me to the hospital as I wanted to give the gifts to my sister.
My dad was looking really depressed but he agreed. When I reached my sisters room, she was screaming out of pain my mom was screaming for the docs. I went near my sister slowly she smiled at me even with too much pain.
Her last words to me were, “I love you, take care of tiger (our 1 year old dog) and mom and dad, it’s time for me to see grandma and grandpa in heaven”. She died at 16:07pm on my birthday. I cried for almost a month and I still cry for her every single day but not in front of my parents because I know that if I cry they will cry too. I hope she found a peaceful place! A MESSAGE TO MY SIS – I LOVE U ABBY pls come back if u can I miss you every second of my life.
One bad chapter is not the end of the book
What are five things senior citizens should not do at the age of 65 and over?
My top 5 you shouldn’t do after the age of 65.
And my top 5 you should do.
Oh, and I’ve celebrated 70 trips around the sun.
Don’t ever say, “I’m old.” Those who say it think it. And if you think it you’ll be it.
Don’t say, “I can’t.” Too many people hit 65 and sort of stop living. They stop doing all the things they used to enjoy. And they stop trying new things and enjoying life.
Don’t tell people about your aches and pains. We all have them. Talking about them only makes you and everyone around you feel worse.
Don’t count birthdays. If you’re asked reply vaguely. If you’re not asked don’t say it. It’s only a number.
Don’t complain about the weather, politics or that you don’t live in the good old days. Complaining only changes the number of people who want to hang out with you.
And my top 5 you should do.
Instead of saying, “I’m old,” say, “I feel young.” Focus on feeling young and you will.
Instead of saying, “I can’t” say, “I will”. Find things you love to do. Find new things to challenge you. Make life a continuing adventure.
Instead of complaining about your aches and pains get outside, stretch, strengthen, move and build health. Then talk about how great you feel and you will.
Instead of celebrating your birthdays celebrate the birthdays of those you love. Then you’ll look forward to many more of them.
Instead of complaining help make the world a happier place. And it turns out it will be for you and all those around you.
Growing older happens to us all. Growing happier happens to only a few.
[The media published a conversation between German officers about how they plan to blow up the Crimean Bridge. What can you say about this?]
Russian Foreign Minister
“I read today what was posted on social media and announced by Ms Simonyan with reference to the relevant sources.
On the one hand, this is stunning. On the other, less so.
I have said that we know for sure about NATO military participation in the guise of mercenaries or people that are not part of the armed forces of the alliance.
There are some interesting details in this conversation.
These German generals discussed ways to supply Ukraine with long-range weapons (they mentioned the TAURUS) for attacking the Crimean Bridge and ammunition depots in a more subtle way.
[He’s referring to Russia’ s intelligence service leaked a conversation between German military officers who were discussing plans to attack Russia. According to the transcript, a conversation took place on February 19, 2024 among Grafe (department head for operations and exercises at the Air Force Forces Command of the Bundeswehr), Gerhartz (Bundeswehr Air Force Inspector), Fenske and Frohstedte (employees of the Air Operations Command within the Space Operations Center of the Bundeswehr). There was a detailed discussion of using German missiles to attack targets in Russia, such as the Kerch Bridge in Crimea. You can read the full transcript here.]
How to make sure they are not noticed because German Chancellor Olaf Scholz supposedly does not like it, while the Americans and Brits are already there.
They also discussed whether it is possible to target missiles remotely without being in Ukraine. One of the generals said this would still be qualified as direct participation.
They know what they are talking about.
In one exchange, one general mentions that ‘men from the US in civilian clothes’ are there.
I don’t know how to say it but all of our NATO colleagues are guilty as hell.
We’ll have to see how they explain this to their own public.”
Answer by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to a media question during his remarks at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum, Antalya, Türkiye, March 1, 2024.
Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation
What is the darkest part of a software engineer’s career?
You are 25, making 170K USD or whatever. You take a fresh excel sheet, create 35 rows, put 170K in the first row, formulate 15% (that number actually depends on the flavor of the ice cream you are licking at that moment) YOY growth, stare at the whopping figure in the 36th row and pat yourself on the back in the corner of your poorly lit bedroom. I mean, you are not even accounting for the growth in your cryptic investments that are easily going to double every third year. You save the excel sheet as lifeisset.xlsx.
Fast forward, you are 35, making 245K USD or whatever, on the verge of 6th “restructuring” in the 4th company. You don’t even want to talk about what happened to your crypto investments and the company that you bet on that was going to cure liver cancer using artificial intelligence and quantum computing. You just want to find a better job, but, don’t have the motivation to bleedcode (futuristic version of leetcode that gives you, again, AI based hints based on the poem you are typing in the code editor).
You realize software engineering is a sport for the young and the fit and the smart. The funding for all the projects was for short term. And nobody can be in the right place at the right time for too long. Alas, your honeymoon period is long over. It didn’t even last for a decade.
You finally gather the courage to replace the 9W bulb in your bedroom with 14W and rename the excel to lifeisshit.xlsx.
A real man
Here are the easiest habits that will help you destroy your life:
An obsession with excess. Recently, I was in Spain. That’s where this picture was taken. This meal for me and my girlfriend was at a pretty nice restaurant and cost 215 Euros. I also drank a couple of glasses of wine at this meal. I got drunk and spent lots of money. Excess, right? But the truth is that excess and enjoyment are not bad, rather, an obsession with them is bad. It’s not bad to enjoy life, it’s bad to live in excess every day.
Bad listening. Most people have conversations merely to hear themselves talk. They don’t listen to other people, they don’t care about other people, and all their actions are acts of self-preservation. Be vulnerable enough to shut the hell up and listen. It will do you good.
Inability to enjoy what you have. If you can’t be happy with a nice cup of coffee with a loved one, you probably won’t be happy with a mansion, a bunch of drugs, and a Ferrari. Enjoyment comes from mindfulness and presence. Noticing a theme here?
Using people. If you have relationships out of convenience or if you take advantage of people who consider you “a friend”, when they figure out what you’re doing, they’ll just remove you from their life. You’ll end up alone and people will think you’re an asshole. Never use people — just exist WITH them.
Zero discipline. Everything you want in life comes from doing difficult things for way longer than you think you need to do them. Writing every day not just for a week, month, or year, but several years. Hitting the gym every week for the rest of your life. Discipline is the foundation of all constructive action.
What’s the fastest you’ve wiped a smirk off of someone’s face?
Not myself, but a good family friend.
A few years ago she and her father, then in his early 80”s, took a vacation to visit France.
Now I must explain that her dad is one of the quietest, most patient men I’ve ever met…a man of few words, never seen him lose his temper, as level as they go.
So they fly from Ohio to New York to Paris and end up, of course, at immigration and customs. They’ve flown all night, he’s 82, and more than a bit jet lagged. The young French customs official is quite impatient as he struggles to locate his paperwork (passport, etc) in his backpack.
“Sir”, the agent says in the most snobbish, condescending voice, “you have been to France before?”.
He acknowledges that, yes, he’s been to France before as he continues to search for his documents.
“Then you should KNOW to have your paperwork at the READY!” the official snaps.
After a few more moments, her dad finally locates his paperwork. As he handed them over, he calmly states, in a voice just loud enough to carry across the entire area:
“My apologies. The last I landed here was at Normandy in 1944, and back then I couldn’t find a Frenchmen to show my passport to.”
The young official turned beet red, hastily processed the paperwork without even really looking at it, and they were on their way…including, yes, a last visit to the D-Day landing beach before he passed this Earth.
Learn the Moonwalk
What job interview question made you think, “I’m going to answer honestly, but I might be screwed?”
Almost 40 years ago I went to my final interview for a place in the Executive Development Program at Major League Baseball.
America was different in those days. Feminism was pushing down barriers that had stood for a long time, and professional women were asserting themselves in unprecedented ways. My own presence in the final group of 8 candidates was probably additional evidence of that shift.
But MLB was a little behind the curve. One of the big “issues” they were facing in the late 1970s was whether or not to allow accredited female journalists into the team clubhouses immediately after the games ended, so they could conduct interviews and file their stories for the next day. A female reporter for Sports Illustrated, Melissa Ludtke, had sued MLB for equal access.
I walked into the conference room where four senior MLB executives stood ready to greet and question me. Two of them, I confess, I knew little about at the time, but two of them were famous, legendary baseball executives, godlike to me. I shook hands with them all and made a point of NOT taking the seat at the end of the conference table. Instead I sat at the end of one of the long sides of the table. They arranged themselves around the other end.
We had a very pleasant and lively conversation, as I recall, although of course I had no idea what they were looking for. And then they asked me, If it were up to you, what policy would you establish for female journalists’ access to the clubhouses after the games?
I took a deep breath. I had no idea what they wanted to hear but I also knew there was only one thing I could honestly say. So I said it.
“I have to tell you that I really don’t see what the big deal is.”
I took another breath. They were all looking at me intently.
“I mean, we’re talking about accredited journalists, right? So they have deadlines, just like the male journalists do.”
A couple of faint nods.
“But the players are entitled to some privacy too. So I think you need to close the clubhouses completely for a short period after the game ends, maybe ten minutes, just to give the players time to take a shower and put some pants on, but then, after the privacy period is over, I think you have to just open up the clubhouse to anybody who has the right press credentials, let them ask their questions, get their quotes, whatever they need to do, on an equal footing.”
They all nodded.
None of them seemed angry or outraged, so I figured maybe I had not damaged my chances too badly. Somehow I doubt they asked the male applicants the same question, but I’ll never know.
And I got the job. So there’s that.
CIA Spy : “I Don’t Want To Live In The USA When THIS Happens 2030…” | Andrew Bustamante
I lived in a mobile home park in Kokomo, Indiana. This was in the late 1980’s, and I was working as a Project Engineer. At that time, I wasted years of my life building up a career in the middle of “no where”; climbing the corporate ladder… only to be laid off with no notice at the end. I was such a fool.
Anyways… one day the open slab space next to our mobile home was occupied with a home. Surprised us.
It must have come in, placed there, and then left.
The next day… it was gone.
Come the third day it came back, and the entire crew of 20-something fellows were busy putting back in place.
The day after… it was gone again.
What was going on?
Well, it turns out that a group of guys store a mans complete home; furnishings and all, and “hid” it in plain sight about 300 miles away in my Mobile Home Park. When they tried to get it, they had to deal with road blocks and what not, so they would keep coming back to retrieve it. Only to return it back.
I do not know what eventually happened to these fellows, but one thing is for certain…
Never under-estimate the bad things that people can do. They will surprise you every time.
Today…
Is China ready for the coming WW3?
Yes it is.
If it isn’t, then it will deserve everything that happens. The United States will launch a attack on China, and will blame China for it. Expect this reality.
And China will NUKE the living shit out of the USA and all of its proxy nations.
Offsetting peace, sowing dragon’s teeth
The current US doctrine of war against China is based on distributed, dispersed, diffused, network-centric warfare to be conducted along the myriad islands of the archipelagic states encircling China in the Pacific.
These are the “island chains” upon which the US has encircled and sown dragon’s teeth: tens of thousands of troops armed with mobile attack platforms and missiles.
This is to be coordinated with subsurface warfare, automated/autonomous warfare, and longer-range stand-off weapons and attacks.
Powerful think tanks like CSBA, CNAS, CSIS, RAND and the Pentagon have been working out the doctrine, details, logistics, and appropriations for this concept intensively for over a decade while advocating intensely for it.
The sale of link 16 to Taiwan realizes and completes a key portion of this, binding the Chinese island as the keystone of this “multinational kill chain”.
This doctrine of dispersion is based on a “rock-paper-scissors” concept that networked diffusion “offsets” (Chinese) precision.
China’s capacity to defend itself and its littoral perimeter with precision missiles can be undermined with diffuse, distributed attacks from all across the island chains.
Note that this diffusion and dispersion of attack platforms across the entire Pacific gives the lie to the claim that this is some inherently deterrent strategy to defend Taiwan island. Diffusion is clearly offensive, designed to overrun and overwhelm defenses: like Ukraine, this is not to deter war, but to enable it.
This thus signals that aggressive total war against China is being prepared, in granular, lethal fashion on tactical and operational levels.
On the strategic level, currently, at the CFR, CNAS, and other influential think tanks in Washington, the talk is all about “protracted warfare” with China, about pre-positioning systems and munitions for war, about ramping up to an industrial war footing for the inescapable necessity of war with China.
The US senses that the clock is running rapidly down on its power. If war is inevitable, then it is anxious to start war sooner rather than later.
RAND warned in 2016 that 2025 was the outside window for the US to prevail in war with China. The “Minihan window” also hints at 2025. The “Davidson window ” is 2027.
RAND window is 2025.
Minihan Window is 2027.
The question in Washington regarding war with China is not if, but when–and how.
But the US is still engaged in Ukraine. Can it wage a two-front war?
The current administration has hardline Russophobes who want to continue to bleed Russia out in Ukraine. It wants protracted war with Russia. It firmly believes it can wage ambidextrous, multi-front war.
Many US officials also believe that war with Ukraine and war with China are connected. They see Russia and China as a single axis of “revisionist powers” (i.e., official enemies) conspiring against the US to undermine its so-called “rules-based order” (i.e., US hegemony).
Furthermore, if the US abandons Ukraine, this could weaken the Taiwan authorities’ resolve and willingness to wage war on behalf of Washington.
Earlier in the war, when Russian gains in Ukraine were uncertain, Bi-khim Louise Hsiao (Taiwan’s current vice-president elect) gloated publicly and prominently that Ukraine’s victories were a message to China, as well as proof-of-concept of an effective doctrine for waging and winning war against China. As such, the Taiwan authorities were and are a major supporter of the Ukraine proxy war.
But the converse also holds true.
Based on the same premise, if the US abandons and loses Ukraine, it sends a clear message to the people on Taiwan island that they will be the next to be used and abandoned; that their US-imposed war and war doctrine (light, distributed, asymmetrical combined arms warfare) for fighting China is a recipe for catastrophic loss.
The US plans on using proxies for war against China: Taiwan, Korea, Japan (JAKUS), Philippines, and Australia (AUKUS).
Thus it cannot signal too overtly its perfidious, unreliable, and instrumental mindset.
Washington has to keep up the pretense. It cannot be seen to overtly lose in or abandon Ukraine. It needs a “decent interval”, or a plausible pretext to cut and run.
Still, the US is stretched thin.
For example, it is relying on Korean munitions to Ukraine, and South Korea has provided
more munitions than all of the EU combined.
Moreover, the US is currently at war with itself. The fracturing of its body politic can only be unified with a common war against a common enemy. Russia is not that enemy for the US. China is.
The Republicans want war with China now.
Eli Ratner and Elbridge Colby have been fretting for years about the need to husband weaponry, arms, and munitions in order to wage war against China.
Since the outbreak of Ukraine, Ratner has been working hard to pull India into the US defense industry’s supply chain, and claims to have been successful.
South Korea’s considerable military-industrial complex is being pulled into sub-contracting for US war with China.
Since many of its major Chaebol corporations got their start as subcontractors for the war in Vietnam (for example, Hyundai was a subcontractor for Halliburton/Brown & Root), the Korean economy is simply reverting back to its corporate-martial roots.
South Korea’s economy is currently tanking due to US-forced sanctions on China. Major Korean electronic firms have lost 60 to 80% of their profits due to US-imposed chip sanctions.
Under those conditions, military manufacturing and/or subcontracting looks to be the only way forward.
In this way, the US is forcing a war economy onto its vassals.
The business of the US is war
Furthermore, US aid to Ukraine benefits its own arms industry.
The business of the US is war. Not only do existing US arms companies gain, but also the entire tech industry and supply chain benefits, and is currently re-orienting around this.
Much of the US tech industry is seeking to suckle from the government teat, now flowing copiously in preparation for war.
On the other hand, the general US economy is not doing well, with massive layoffs, especially in the consumer and business tech sector.
The backstop of military Keynesianism, with the integration of think-tank lobbying groups funded by the arms industry with close ties to the administration (such as CNAS, West Exec Advisors, and CSIS) ensure that war is always the closest ready-to-hand resort for tough economic times.
The US is simultaneously trying to decouple supply chains, which creates opportunities for US firms (both domestically and subcontracting with US vassals).
Automated, AI-enabled warfare will be a key part of this development, as will be dispersed, distributed warfare platforms using proxies such as South Korea and Japan.
This fits the existing historical pattern: the history of Western technology shows that technology and machinery have always been developed first for war.
Afterwards, they become tools of entertainment and distraction, and later productive tools for general industrial use.
The machinery of war, mystification, and repression
This pattern goes back to the earliest machines and inventions of the West: the crane, the pulley, the lever, were all military technologies – machines of war (used in sieges).
Later they became machines of illusion and distraction (used as stage machinery in Greek theater).
Only much later were they applied for general use – and exploitation – in manufacture and production.
This holds true for many other technologies, including:
the internet, originally designed to create redundant military communications in case of nuclear strike;
GPS, for precision bombing;
integrated circuit computer chips, a miniaturization of electronic circuits to fit inside the cone of missile guidance systems;
digital computers, conceived by Alan Turing while trying to break military encryption;
microwave ovens, originally radar technology, initially marketed as the “Radar-range”;
analog computers, invented for military calculations; and
feedback systems, for guidance systems.
Nuclear power obviously derives from nuclear weapons.
AI, too, from its inception, was conceived for automated battle management, especially to enable second strike after human life had been destroyed.
An AI war is already in the works, with US sanctions on AI-related chips and computing, along with an algorithmic race to suppress dissent and critique in the information domain.
War and business are intricately related in the west, and war is the first lever pulled when the economy stagnates critically or needs a boost.
Is there any possibility of peace?
The US needs to abandon its neoconservative fantasies of hegemonic global empire and retreat gently into that good night, for there to be peace.
Washington needs to negotiate in good faith with Russia, and begin the process of de-escalating its proxies in Ukraine, as well as in Palestine, and the Pacific.
It needs to seek win-win cooperation in a multilateral order based on international law and mutual co-existence, not its own top-down “rules-based order”.
It needs to respect the One China principle, end its interference in China’s affairs, and stop preparing and provoking war with China.
However, the US ruling class is unwilling to do so. And it has only a few levers left to pull. The military one is the closest and most ready to hand.
As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The US is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world”.
Like a drunk at the bar after the final call – drunk with power – Washington is determined to go out with a fight.
Palestine has shown what it will try to get away with: brazen genocide with the whole world watching.
The issue is no longer war or peace in Ukraine. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell sees Ukraine as a “unified field” of war with China. He revels in the possibility of a “magnificent symphony of death” in Asia.
The coda, of course, will be a deafening fermata of silence across the entire planet.
Unless…
…we stop this insane march to war.
This is why Gen-Z men are no longer dating
As a parent, what did your child’s school do that made you say “you can’t be serious…”?
I was the student.
So in most US states, you have to take a high school assessment that determines whether you graduate. In my home state, it was called the PSSA, and we took it in senior year, but got “practice” ones every year prior.
So, it’s ninth grade. We’re asked to write an essay nominating “the most influential person of the 20th century.”
(Read all the way through this before you judge my answer to the question, if you would.)
I picked Adolf Hitler.
A few days later, I was called to the office. My mother was not present—however, the school “resource officer” (rent-a-cop), student liaison, both principals, both guidance counselors, and the school psychiatrist WERE. I feel like I should mention this was 2003—while Columbine was a semi-recent specter, along with a school shooting in my hometown, the absolute madness currently going on in this country wasn’t even dreamed of yet.
One of the principals pulls out my essay and says they’re “deeply concerned.”
My answer was something along these lines:
“Look, the prompt didn’t say good influence or bad influence, it just said influence. He burned entire research libraries because they were run by Jews and we still don’t have all that information back. He convinced half of Europe they wanted to kill the equivalent of the entire population of California*. He managed to conquer an area that was almost the same size as the Holy Roman Empire. Almost all of our modern medical codes of ethics came about because of what Dr. Mengele did on his orders Before the Holocaust, about two percent of Europe was Jewish. Today, three-tenths of a percent are** because the population never recovered. I think he was one of the most awful people who ever lived. But you can’t say he wasn’t influential.”
Now you might think the head-shakey part is that they somehow didn’t understand their own prompt. But you’d be wrong.
It’s that, having heard what I had to say, the two principals and student liaison (who was an adult) all whisper among themselves, and then the student liaison says:
“How do you know all this? We don’t teach it.”
Answer: I was home-schooled for two years.
A reply from the other principal: “We’ll let it go this time. But I don’t want you talking about this anymore. It might upset the other students.”
WELL I FUCKING DAMN WELL HOPE TWENTY MILLION PEOPLE KILLED ON THE WHIMS OF ONE MAN’S PREJUDICE UPSETS OTHER STUDENTS, MY DUDE. When Hitler-like behavior doesn’t upset people, we end up with seven-year-old refugees dying in concentration camps on Christmas Day. There’s a fucking reason we say “Never Forget.”
A postscript: I found out the next year they were all full of shit anyway. My tenth-grade teacher made a habit every year of showing Schindler’s List.
*The population of California at this time was approximately 20.3 million people. I’m aware it’s higher now. This number includes all victims of the Holocaust, including but not limited to Jews, Rroma, people with physical and mental disabilities, and gay men.
**This number has fallen further and is now two-tenths of a percent.
I should loop this and watch it over and over and over
Fideo with Ground Beef and Potatoes
food1
Ingredients
1 package fideo
1 pound ground beef
1 potato, cut into small cubes
1 can El Pato
1 can diced tomatoes
2 to 3 cups hot water
Salt and pepper
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon minced garlic
Instructions
Lightly brown fideo. Add ground beef and potato. Stir well and cover for about 3 to 5 minutes to brown meat a bit.
Uncover and add 1 can El Pato and 1 can diced tomatoes. Stir and add about 2 to 3 cups HOT water; stir.
Add salt, pepper, cumin and garlic; cover and cook over medium low heat for about 15 to 20 minutes.
Serve with warm flour tortillas.
Be part of his struggle
As a Japanese person, what cultural shocks did you have when you visited the USA?
My goodness, so many cultural shocks. Off of the top of my head, here are a few:
1.) Shoes
This was probably the first thing I noticed when I went to the United States. No one seemed to take their shoes off when going into any type of building. I found it rather odd though I knew prior to visiting that they didn’t follow customs like that.
2.) Talking and Speech
Americans generally speak in a louder and more blunt tone than countries in East Asia. One thing that stood out to me when I first visited was how close they would put their face next to you when talking and their distinct way of laughing. I honestly didn’t have a big issue with it for the most part although I can be quite sensitive to loud noises, touch, and certain types of personalities. Slang and sarcasm was used commonly as well, something, while not rare, but not often used in Japan.
3.) Toilets
The toilets in the U.S are scandalous! (In my opinion). They use a sheet of paper to wipe their private parts instead of using bidets. I personally think it’s disgusting, but the toilets mechanics are simpler, I suppose.
4.) Quantity vs Quality
While quality is still valued, most things in the United States were large in proportions or quantity. In Japan, people are very thin and small, though in the U.S it is more common to see overweight people. This is most likely because of marketing and how junk food is much cheaper than organic foods (which is understandable). It was sad to see and many people didn’t get the exercise they needed because most people drive cars (again, are very convenient). Meals at restaurants were also large, as well as houses and many buildings.
5.) Reading
Books in the U.S, and most other places, are read from left to right. Books in Japan are read right to left. This surprised me despite knowing beforehand. For some reason they keep manga nearly the same, though. Japanese is traditionally read vertically, but it did not surprise me to see English read horizontally since all my schools taught it.
6.) Driving
I was used to seeing cars driving on the right side, although I had visited places that drove on the left side. My friend was initially confused and a little frightened, but he soon understood. I was surprised to see that the minimal legal age to drive was sixteen. I thought that was a little young. I visited a place in the U.S where it was fourteen.
7.) Expense
I found everything to be quite expensive there, and some of the stores and food to be disappointing. There was a product I wanted to buy that was 301.00 $ in the United States and only 14,630 ¥ in Japan. On the contrary, depending on where you live in either country, prices will always vary. Larger more populated cities will generally be more expensive (like Tokyo and New York) and smaller towns will usually be cheaper (like Coeur d’Alene or Kunohe-mura).
8.) Courtesy
The culture in the U.S, so it seems, can sometimes be quite rude. While this isn’t always the case, in certain places they can be seen as ignorant or apathetic, though this really depends on who you are talking to. Some people don’t even know how to give a simple thank you or speak politely, especially around elders (this is quite noticeable for young children). During political debates and elections, citizens may start riots and yell at others who don’t believe the same thing as them. While it makes sense, it is still not okay.
9.) Touching
High fives, handshakes, embracing, hugging, kissing, and patting backs is seen often in the U.S. This can be very uncomfortable for a Japanese person as we generally don’t touch each other (purposefully), though it can’t be helped in crowded areas or if you’re with friends and family. The comfortable distance between two people is 1 1/2 to 3 feet (yes, using the imperial system) when standing together, if not in a crowded area. In the U.S, couples will show affection to one another in public (kiss, hugs, romantic grooming) and friends will tug on each other and playfully hit each other. This isn’t unseen in Japan but it just isn’t the norm.
10.) Homes
I have lived in a traditional home my whole life, so it was a shocker to see the difference. I could find houses similar to these in Japan, but it was about my 2nd or 3rd time encountering one and I actually went inside. They are set differently than houses in Japan, even if they look similar on the outside (modern homes). I don’t exactly remember, but I believe I was bewildered by the fact of how dirty it was, and the bathing differences.
11.) The Check
In the United States, you are expected to pay a lot of money for the check, but in Japan, you’re not. Actually, in most cases, you don’t leave extra money for the server/waiter. In the U.S you are always supposed to, or else, someone may get angry. Though, from my standpoint, many Japanese servers wouldn’t actually mind receiving tips though have been taught that it could be an inconvenience for the person paying (which is very true).
I was going to mention the school system, but that could be a whole entire essay. Thank you for reading, here are just some of the cultural shocks that came to mind. Thank you. For people from Japan, is this accurate?
This is so very true!
When he becomes a man.
What ancient battle in history was a slaughter due to one side bringing in shocking new weaponry?
This is a Seleucid war elephant.
main qimg 564a0e9cc2876b92954e358405d96e07 pjlq
War elephants were probably the most terrifying battlefield weapon of the ancient world.
However, there were two problems with them. Firstly, elephants were hard to find, difficult to train and expensive to run.
Secondly, even with training, you could never really make an elephant want to fight. Worse, they could be driven mad by enemy arrows and end up trampling friends rather than foes.
However sometimes, just sometimes, they actually were the terror weapons they were supposed to be. One such occasion was a battle fought in 273BC.
The Galatians were a bunch of marauding Celts who rampaged across northern Greece in the years after Alexander the Great’s death. About 20,000 crossed the Bosporus and settled in Asia Minor, taking protection money from the local inhabitants.
main qimg 0a31b6c78967d59e24041428abcf5114 pjlq
Where they settled made them neighbours of the Seleucid Empire and in 273BC Emperor Antiochus I decided to deal with these interlopers. Unfortunately for Antichus, his army wasn’t really a match for the Galatians. He had mainly light troops, whilst the Celts had infantry, cavalry, light chariots and their own terror weapon – chariots with scythes on the wheels.
However Antiochus had his elephants, 16 of them. Somehow -and we’re not told how – he managed to hide them from the Galatians. As the Celts charged the Seleucids the elephants emerged: four on each flank and eight in the middle facing the scythed chariots.
Faced with this unexpected terror weapons the Galatian horses turned and fled. This was particularly unfortunate for the infantry, who suddenly found their own scythed chariots heading back towards them. The entire Celtic army routed, pursued by the elephants.
Antiochus had won a decisive and, from his point of view, cheap victory. What’s more he had shattered the myth of the invincible Celtic warrior. All thanks to his elephants.
Brian REJECTS Girl Who Throws Herself At Him
Why does the CCP keeps saying the accusations in Xinjiang are false but refuse to let UN observers in? Are they afraid of letting the world know or see something? What is a better way than to show the world themselves to prove them wrong?
In light of recent events happening in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine, it would be safe to say that if an active genocide is happening in an area, regardless of any kind of attempt to block the information from getting out, there will be images and videos leaking out.
I mean, look at Palestine; there is no electricity, no food, and they are bombing reporters. There are new videos of the dismembered bodies of children uploaded every day.
Xinjiang is a province about 300 times larger than Palestine, and they claim that millions are being killed. It would be very hard for an authority to suppress the information in that area. Just imagine the manpower needed for such a job, that’s impossible. Yet, all the videos they have is so-called exiled Uyghur or Concentration camp gurads who has their faces covered and voices distorted. That’s not convincing at all.
Allowing the investigation would be a bad start. If It’s allowed, from then on, any group from any country can request some kind of investigation of visit as long as they claim they suspect something. We do not trust your intentions on our lands. You can’t blame us on that, You know what your ancestors did.
Any request without compelling reason should be denied. It’s our rights. We will stand for it, and fight for it if necessary.
Col. Douglas Macgregor: How Close Is WWIII?
What is the most shameless thing you have ever seen a teacher do?
We had a cocky little brat in our class who loved to cause havoc. He was as popular as herpes, both with kids and teachers.
One day he picked up a chair and threw it at a teacher. Hitting her and a couple of other kids. They weren’t hurt badly though. She picked the chair up, told the kids around him to move out of the way, whilst he stood there daring her to throw it at him, and saying she was too scared to do it.
She threw that chair with all her might and whacked the little brat a good one, and the entire class started laughing at him. The noise caused other teachers to come to see what was happening and the class backed the teacher up when she said he was acting the fool and fell off the chair he was standing on. He was a well known trouble maker (who was eventually expelled from school) so the other teachers believed her (or went along with it more likely).
This was in the UK in the 1970′s, and nothing happened to that teacher, and no-one messed with her ever again, but I am quite sure that the brat would be molly-coddled today, and the teacher ‘expelled’.
Pity. The old days were much more fun.
Chinese insane billboards
Can you be shot from so far away that the bullet loses enough energy and the shot does not break skin and just hurts?
Yes, and you can also be shot at a very close range with the same result.
A good friend of mine was shot in the chest from just a few yards away with a .45 caliber bullet and it did not ‘break the skin’.
The way the story was recounted to me, a group of young people that included my friend, were on a camping trip in the 90’s. Someone was mishandling a .45 cal pistol when the pistol was accidentally discharged.
The .45 ACP round went through a cooler sitting on a table, then through the two, 2-liter soda bottles inside the cooler, then out the other side of the cooler, then shattered the Gatorade bottle my friend was holding, and finally stopping when it struck him square in the chest.
Adding to the absurdity of the whole incident, the Gatorade bottle he was holding in front of his chest contained the familiar red liquid which ended up all over his white shirt.
He fell back when the round hit him, more from being startled than struck. The bottle, being glass, seemed to explode in his hand. Several people standing next to him thought he was bleeding profusely in the fading light due to the red liquid he was now soaked in and everyone panicked – but amazingly there was no bodily damage found when he was examined.
Ironically, the person who was holding the firearm when it discharged was supposedly the most experienced person there with firearms – being some sort of Firearms Instructor associated with law enforcement. That person was the most affected by the event and was psychologically traumatized for quite some time as a result of completely screwing up and unintentionally shooting someone in the chest.
My friend still keeps the bullet that did not kill him in his possession.
Lots of lessons here, kids.
More insane Chinese billboards
When the ISS is decommissioned, can we control it to crash into the Chinese space station and claim that it was caused by the ISS going out of control?
cannot
1. The power plant of the International Space Station comes from Russian modules .The Russian module is a locomotive, and the modules of other countries are just carriages.Therefore, odules from other countries cannot control the flight of the ISS.You can’t convince the Russians to do that.
2. The Chinese space station itself has a powerful power unit that can implement emergency orbit changes and actively avoid any impacts. According to public reports, they implemented two orbit changes to avoid Xspace Starlink satellites.
3. Trolls like you cannot make any decisions about the behavior of ISS and can only type on the keyboard in front of the monitor.
The reality
The United States and it’s hawkish neocons have ZERO idea what they are dealing with. Check this 40 second video out.
What is the most disturbing thing ever done by a popular historical figure that most people do not know about?
Since his death, the many toxic facets of Apple Computer visionary Steve Jobs have grown more visible. However, one of his actions still resonates with me, if only for its petty cruelty.
In 1975, Atari founder Nolan Bushnell decided to make a single-player version of their popular game Pong, called Breakout. He tasked Jobs, then a low-level Atari technician, with designing the game.
Bushnell knew that Jobs would most likely recruit Steve Wozniak, who was known to the Atari leader as the better engineer. Jobs and Wozniak had been friends for the past four years, designing and building the computers that would become iconic around the world.
Bushnell offered Jobs a bonus for every chip fewer than 50 that he used when building the game.
Wozniak could not believe his luck when Jobs asked him to help. Jobs proposed splitting the fee, and told Wozniak it would have to be built in only four days, using as few chips as possible. Typically a job like this could take months.
However, Jobs hid two key details from Wozniak:
The bonus for using less than 50 chips.
The four day deadline was self-imposed by Jobs, as he wanted to get back to his commune farm to help bring in the apple harvest.
The two Steves stayed up all night, for four straight nights. Wozniak would work his day job at Hewlett-Packard, then toil nightly on his design. Jobs implemented the chips beside him.
Their herculean efforts succeeded. In four days, the assignment was completed using only 45 chips. The game was successfully delivered to Atari.
For the payment, Steve Jobs only gave Wozniak half the base pay. He kept the bonus money for himself.
Wozniak only found out about this ten years later. He is quoted in the Isaacson biography Steve Jobs, sourced below:
When he talks about it now, there are long pauses, and he admits it causes him pain.
“I wish he had just been honest. If he had told me he needed the money, he should have known I would have just given it to him. He was a friend. You help your friends.”
“Ethics always mattered to me, and I still don’t understand why he would have gotten paid one thing and told me he’d gotten paid another. But, you know, people are different.”
Wozniak, to his credit, did not hold this against Jobs in later years.
There are other excellent answers to this question, detailing historical figures perpetrating brutal acts. I realize this tale from early computing is quite small. Steve Jobs is not in the same league as others.
But tricking your friend into working all night long for several days, and then cheating him out of his paycheck, proved to be only the first salvo in a long litany of his penchant for pettiness and pointless cruelty.
I didn’t see this live, but I did see the video. Two separate stories.
In the first a guy broke into the bank to rob the ATM . There is the full security footage of his attempt.
There are two bullet proof glass doors before you get to the ATM. He goes to the first and pushes it, to no avail.
So he takes his truck and rams it into the outer door at an angle damaging his right front fender, but pushing the outside door off its hinges.
So now he goes to work on the second door. It wont budge and he can’t get the truck in far enough to touch it. He gets a a crowbar, and has no luck. Then he hops in his truck and comes back 5 minutes later with a cordless drill.
Still no luck, then he lays on the floor and naps. The police eventually come and arrest him.
There’s a sign on both the inner and outer doors, that says Pull.. He spent well over an hour trying to push. They weren’t locked, because people need access to the ATM 24 hours.
So he goes to court, and says that he didn’t get into the bank, so it wasn’t break and enter. That he just needed a warm place to sleep it off.
The judge didn’t believe him.
In the second case, that the media called Dumb and dumber, two guys painted their faces with permanent markers, and tried to rob a bank.
They were caught just down the street, because they couldn’t remove permanent marker.
They said that there was no way to prove it was them, because by the time the trial happened the permanent marker had faded. The police showed a video of them robbing the bank with permanent marker, then a video from a body cam, of them being arrested. Then they had clips taken of the two in jail as the marker faded day by day.
Nobody likes to walk point. The point man is at the head of a patrol in enemy territory and is usually the first soldier to get shot at.
I remember the first time I was told to walk point: our battalion conducted a search and destroy operation in the Bosnian mountains and just one minute before my platoon would march into enemy territory, my commander walked up to me and said: “Is it okay for you to walk point? Now?” That came as a surprise. Only two days earlier, a soldier of our company got shot in the stomach while walking point. Now it was my turn!
I could have said no, but to be honest, I also felt honored that my commander came to me and not to somebody else. Not every soldier is able to make a good point man:
A point man has to be very perceptive and must be able to spot an often well camouflaged enemy. He must know how to detect landmines and have an eye for possible ambush situations. At the same time he must be quick and not slow down his unit’s movements, an impossible task!
Everything went well, we were chasing the enemy and we decided that I would continue to walk point for the rest of the operation. Once I got used to my new job I was quite thrilled.
Soldiers rarely volunteer for any combat related activity and this is especially true for the point man position. When your commander asks you to walk point you neither say “yes” nor “no”. You simply clench your teeth and do the job.
First Men in the Moon | Full Movie | Voyage
Full video. A great fun classic!
H.G. Wells fantastic account of life on the moon is vividly brought to the screen by special effects master Ray Harryhausen in this amazing sci-fi epic featuring extraterrestrial creatures.
Body size. The average BMI rises as the social class decreases. It’s expensive to maintain a healthy weight in the U.S.
Family size. The higher the social class, the fewer the children, on average.
Age when you had your first child. Higher class people tend to wait longer to have their first child.
Number of different people you’ve had children with. The higher the number of different people you’ve had a child with, the lower the social class, generally.
Education levels. Lower class people tend to quit their educational attainment earlier.
Volume levels while in public. This goes for both speaking and music levels. Lower class people tend to be louder when in public, either oblivious or unconcerned with how obnoxious they are to others. Or, in the case of loud music, the obnoxiousness is a part of the appeal.
Conflicts in public. Lower class people tend to have more conflicts in public places. You rarely hear about fights breaking out at places frequented by high class people.
Respect for authority. Lower class people—particularly younger ones—are more likely to have a default adversarial stance towards anyone in authority, including the police and teachers.
Proximity to violent crime. Lower class people are more likely to have seen a violent crime, know a victim of a violent crime, have committed a violent crime themselves, or know someone who has done time in prison for a violent crime.
Proximity to the military. The lower the social class, the more likely you are to enlist in the military. The higher classes tend to become officers, if they consider the military at all.
Post-retirement plans that don’t rely on the government. This one should be obvious, but higher class people tend to also have better, private retirement options.
The ease with which you or your children can find a job via networking. Higher class people know more people in hiring positions, and have an easier time getting jobs. If you are high class and unemployed for an extended period of time, it’s likely by choice.
Tattoos on your face, neck, or hands. Lower class people are more likely to have tattoos that aren’t easily concealed by regular clothes.
Why is the CNN feed from China full of machine language?
CNN from all other sources is normal. Only from China is bad.
Is it normal to look at CNN reports on other sources?
A view from the video camera of the CNN channel:
1
Passerby’s Perspective: They see a new movie being made by the famous American movie studio CNN that hired paid protesters …… 🤣
2
CNN is simply responsible for delivering the messages and attitudes that the American ruling class wants to deliver. Whether or not it disseminates the truth is beyond the scope of CNN’s job.
Do you really take the American “democratic and freedom” as a real scenario?
If you see a promotion from American Mobile Recharge, remember to buy a small recharge card for your IQ. 😁
So does the BBC in the UK. The Uyghurs you see in reports like the BBC.
3
Uyghurs 100 years ago
4
Uyghurs in reality today
main qimg 59cbcb142b6567daec525ca2b3836e91
How CNN covers China:
CNN reporter: Old gentleman, how do people as old as you travel on New Year’s Eve?
Chinese old man: I’m too old to walk.
CNN reporter: In China, there is no freedom to travel casually.
Chinese old man: I sometimes travel, and high-speed rail is very convenient.
CNN reporter: China’s high-speed rail has safety hazards, the technology is not up to scratch, you are so old to do up very difficult, right?
Chinese old man: High-speed rail is quite comfortable, but I don’t ride it often.
CNN reporter: In China, high speed rail is the privilege of a few people!
CNN reporter: What is your New Year’s wish?
Chinese old man: life is better now, children are earning a lot of money, is busy at work, come back to see me more often would be better.
CNN reporter: The young people have to abandon the old people in order to make ends meet.
Chinese old man: You can’t talk nonsense, I live a good life, why can’t you speak kindly?
CNN reporter: The old man protested strongly against the injustice he encountered, which is the enlightenment of democracy and freedom ah!
Chinese old man: you guys stay away from me! You guys are reporting nonsense!
CNN reporter: The old man is afraid that our factual reporting is subject to injustice by the authorities and urges us to leave.
(Old man turns and runs away)
CNN reporter: We are worried about this old man’s future. How terrible it is to have no democracy and freedom!!
Simply put, the Western mainstream media pursues a policy of dumbing down.
Is there any land in the world that has never been conquered from its original inhabitants?
In 1981, a cargo ship called the Primrose ran aground off the coast of North Sentinel Island. After a few days of waiting for a passing ship to rescue them, the Primrose crew members noticed that a group of Sentinelese tribesmen were building boats on the beach and were preparing to attack them and their wrecked vessel. Panicking, as they had no guns or weapons aboard, the Primrose’s captain radioed that they be supplied firearms by air drop, but a storm prevented this. Fortunately, they were rescued by helicopters sent from India.
In 2004, an earthquake and a tsunami struck the Indian Ocean area around North Sentinel Island. An Indian government helicopter was sent to the island to establish if the Sentinelese people were badly affected by the earthquake. The helicopter was able to observe a few islanders on the beach, but incredibly, the helicopter was pelted with spears, arrows, and stones, which forced the helicopter to flee.
In 2006, two Indian fishermen foolishly decided to fish in the waters near North Sentinel Island, and when their boat drifted too close to the island, they were killed by the islanders.
Shortly after this, a film crew sailed very close to the island to film a documentary about uncontacted tribes left in the world. Naturally, they were very wary about the tribe; after being warned by the Sentinelese, they snapped a few photos such as these and promptly sailed away.
Most infamously, in 2018, a 26 year old American missionary named John Allen Chau decided to visit the island to preach Christianity to its people. However, he was shot down with arrows almost as soon as he arrived.
Due to these tragic incidents, it’s illegal to travel to the island, and the Indian government leaves the Sentinelese people alone. They have simply always been there; no other civilization has conquered them. We know almost nothing about their language, religion, and culture.
It is amazing to me that the year is 2021, and there is still an uncontacted tribe out there, which we know almost nothing about.
Why does the United States have the largest prison population in the world?
Have you ever been waiting for a show to start while they’re testing the equipment? When the microphone is just a little too close to the speaker, or the speaker is turned up just a little too loud, you hear that awful screeching noise. It’s system feedback. Someone goes to test the microphone and the “T” sound from the word “Testing” (or whatever first sound they make) is fed back through the speakers at almost the same instant. The sound arrives at the mic just slightly louder than that initial sound. It happens so fast, it seems instantaneous.
If you could watch it in slow motion, you’d see something like a hill followed by another hill slightly bigger. Each successive hill grows until system limits are reached.
Meanwhile, everyone in the room clasps their hands to their ears while the guy with the mic fumbles for the volume.
The “justice” system in the US is suffering from multiple slow motion feedback loops.
Not convinced? No idea what I’m talking about? Stick with me for just a minute.
On June 18, 1971, President Nixon announced the War on Drugs. This was that initial “T” sound. The public supported it, yes drugs are dangerous, and this seems like a good idea.
main qimg 9faecdfc36a8ae73eb21a133f999e6b0 lq
Arrests are made, lots of them. Wow, this drug problem was a lot bigger than we thought. We need stiffer penalties, more laws, and more enforcement. So the prison population grows drastically.
White middle class voters notice that the majority of people getting locked up are not white, nor middle class. From behind the picket fence, these people look downright dangerous. Cue more laws and penalties.
The stiff penalties and societal ostracization of convicts trying to return to society make it all but impossible to succeed. Lawmakers see the “recidivism” and decide that felons are beyond hope… more laws… more penalties.
The growing prison population needs more space and cheaper supervision. Enter the private prisons. Now we have a group of people with an economic incentive to lock up their fellow Americans. The prisons become a sizeable sector of the economy. You can’t close prisons or reduce penalties because jobs depend upon it.
Any politician who suggests reform is labeled “soft on crime” and dies politically. Even if the competition doesn’t call him out, lobbyists for the prison sector will.
The children of inmates grow up without positive role models. Their role models are in prison, so they emulate that behavior… another cycle starts…
In our schools, we overreact to horrible events by making things that children do (and have always done) criminal offenses. We station police in elementary schools!
Many children leave school having already had multiple brushes with the law… commence new cycle.
And on it goes.
These are feedback loops. We’ve created what we sought to destroy. The problem is that nobody is at the mic. The screeching noise is only now beginning to be heard. Pretty soon we’ll all have our hands to our ears.
Canines at War: Watch out for China’s robotic dogs equipped with arms
Robotic dogs equipped with machine guns have been successfully tested by Chinese scientists. Developed by a research team at Nanjing University of Science and Technology, the accuracy of small four-legged robotic companions is quite close to that of skilled soldiers
Traditionally used for entertainment purposes and to perform mundane tasks, these Chinese-made robotic canines are now repurposed for military purposes. Image Courtesy: @aprajitanefes/X
The technology used in the military is advancing.
These days, utility robots are now mimicking dogs in both appearance and functionality.
Robotic dogs equipped with machine guns have been successfully tested by Chinese scientists, according to the South China Morning Post.
The accuracy of the small, four-legged robotic companions is quite close to that of skilled soldiers.
Traditionally used for entertainment purposes and to perform mundane tasks, these Chinese-made robotic canines are now repurposed for military purposes.
This could have a substantial impact on how conflict plays out in the future, particularly in urban combat situations.
Here’s all we know about them.
Putting guns on robotic dogs
A few videos of robotic dogs, designed to play a support role to humans, have been released by the Chinese military through official media in recent years.
Developed by a research team headed by Professor Xu Cheng of Nanjing University of Science and Technology, the videos demonstrate the strength and accuracy of these robotic canines.
The researchers have put a 7.62 millimetres machine gun on the robotic dogs, to achieve impressive precision with a half-dispersion radius of only five centimetres across a 100-metre range, the report said.
Its accuracy exceeds that of the M16 rifle, which is known for being an accurate weapon, highlighting the technical strength that these quadruple platforms possess.
SCMP quoted lead scientist Xu Cheng and his colleagues as saying that the study “demonstrates the feasibility of a legged strike platform” in a peer-reviewed paper that was published in the Chinese Journal of Engineering last month.
Because of the rapid growth of China’s electronics industry, these developments have resulted in an enormous reduction in production costs, making this technology more widely available.
Influence on urban warfare
Researchers believe that this technology may have a big influence on how combat develops in the future.
“Urban warfare, encompassing anti-terrorism operations, hostage rescue missions, and the clearance of streets and buildings alike, has steadily risen to prominence as a fundamental facet of contemporary conflict,” Xu and his colleagues wrote in their paper.
“The urban landscape, with its maze of intersecting streets and towering edifices packed tightly together, poses unique challenges for unmanned combat platforms. These platforms must negotiate unstructured terrain and execute intricate actions such as manoeuvring, scaling, and leaping, rendering traditional wheeled and tracked designs inadequate.”
With a focus on bionic principles, these machines are highly adaptable and capable of navigating the difficult terrain of modern warfare.
“Quadruped platforms, based on bionic principles, can use independent ground support points to provide enhanced mobility and adaptability in complex urban combat environments,” the researchers said.
Similar attempts by the US
In 2021, a company named Ghost Robotics displayed the Q-UGV, a four-legged robot equipped with a Special Purpose Unmanned Rifle 4. The utility robots’ weaponisation was emphasised at the showcase event.
Another utility robot with four legs was used in a proof-of-concept test carried out by the US Marines in September 2023. Its capacity to “acquire and prosecute targets with the M72 Light Anti-Tank Weapon” was measured, according to The Conservation.
The American company Boston Dynamics developed the utility robot Spot, which resembles a dog. Another intriguing move was when the business released a video in November last year demonstrating how it had integrated the AI chatbot ChatGPT with its Spot robot.
One of the company’s engineers can be seen asking the machine questions and having conversations with it while utilising a variety of “personalities,” like an English butler. The AI chatbot provides the answers, but Spot mumbles them.
Ethical concerns
A new era in military technology has begun with the introduction of utility robots that are outfitted with rifles and have proven to be effective in engaging targets.
Although there is no denying the potential to improve combat capabilities and operational efficiency, the implications of these advancements must be carefully considered.
Concerns about ethics have arisen about the autonomy of robotic canines in making life-or-death judgements as their deployment into conflict becomes a serious possibility.
The international community has demanded strict laws to control the use of autonomous weaponry, including defence analysts and AI researchers.
As per The Conversation, dozens of the top robotics companies signed an open letter that was posted on Boston Dynamics’ website in 2022, expressing their opposition to the weaponisation of readily available commercial robots in the letter.
The firms did not, according to the letter, object “to existing technologies that nations and their government agencies use to defend themselves and uphold their laws.”
According to BNN Breaking, the US military’s execution of programmes like Project Maven and references to studies from the Centre for a New American Security and Public Citizen highlight the critical need for a strategic approach that gives ethical and human oversight top priority in the development and application of AI-driven warfare technologies.
CRITICAL DRINKER: They Removed Testosterone & MEN From Movies, Now The Hollywood Sign is in FLAMES
Money talks and now Hollywood is finally learning that people are sick of wokeness in movies. Make Films Great Again.
Washington approved the dangerous sale of the Link 16 communications system to Taiwan. This is the final link of what the US military calls a “transnational coalition kill chain” against China, and signals a commitment to kinetic war.
In many traditions, when you paint or sculpt a Buddha, the eyes are the very last to be painted. It’s only after the eyes have been completed that the sculpture is fully alive and empowered.
The United States has approved a $75 million weapons package to Taiwan province, involving the sale of the Link 16 communications system.
The acquisition of Link 16 is analogous to “painting the eyes on the Buddha”: a last touch, it makes Taiwan’s military systems and weapons platforms live and far-seeing.
It confers deadly powers, or more prosaically, in the words of the US military, it completes Taiwan as the final, lethal link of what the US Naval Institute calls a “transnational coalition kill chain”, for war against China.
What exactly is Link 16? Link 16 is a key system in the US military communications arsenal. Specifically, it is the jam-resistant tactical data network for coordinating NATO weapons systems for joint operations in war.
If this sale is completed, it signals serious, granular, and single-minded commitment to kinetic war. It would signal that the Biden administration is as serious and unwavering in its desire to provoke and wage large-scale war with China over Taiwan as it was with Russia over Ukraine, which also saw the implementation of this system.
More important than any single weapons platform, this system allows the Taiwan/ROC military to integrate and coordinate all its warfighting platforms with US, NATO, Japanese, Korean, Australian militaries in combined arms warfare.
The deadliest link
Link 16 would be the deadliest piece of technology yet to be transferred, because it allows sea, air, and land forces to be coordinated with others for lethal effect.
It permits, for example, strategic nuclear/stealth bombers (US B-1B Lancers, B-2 Spirits) to coordinate with electronic warfare and surveillance platforms (EA Growlers, Prowlers, EP-3s), fighters and bombers (F-16,F-22, F-35s) as well as conduct joint arms warfare with US, French, British carrier battle groups, Japanese SDF destroyers, South Korean Hyun Moo missile destroyers, as well as THAAD and Patriot radars and missile batteries.
It also allows coordination with low-earth orbit satellites and other Space Force assets.
In other words, Link 16 supplies a brain and nervous system to the various deadly limbs and arms that the Taiwan authorities have been acquiring and preparing on the prompting of the US. It ensures interoperability and US control.
It effectively prepares Taiwan to be used as the spear tip and trigger of a multinational war offensive against China.
To give a shoe-on-the-other-foot analogy, this would be like China giving separatists in a US territory or state (e.g. Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, Texas) not just arms and training – already a belligerent act of war, which the US is currently doing – but connecting insurgent militaries directly to the PLA’s surveillance, reconnaissance, and command/control systems.
This coordinates and completes, to borrow the words of the US Naval Institute (USNI), the final link in a “transnational coalition kill chain” for war.
Offsetting peace, sowing dragon’s teeth
The current US doctrine of war against China is based on distributed, dispersed, diffused, network-centric warfare to be conducted along the myriad islands of the archipelagic states encircling China in the Pacific.
These are the “island chains” upon which the US has encircled and sown dragon’s teeth: tens of thousands of troops armed with mobile attack platforms and missiles.
This is to be coordinated with subsurface warfare, automated/autonomous warfare, and longer-range stand-off weapons and attacks.
Powerful think tanks like CSBA, CNAS, CSIS, RAND and the Pentagon have been working out the doctrine, details, logistics, and appropriations for this concept intensively for over a decade while advocating intensely for it.
The sale of link 16 to Taiwan realizes and completes a key portion of this, binding the Chinese island as the keystone of this “multinational kill chain”.
This doctrine of dispersion is based on a “rock-paper-scissors” concept that networked diffusion “offsets” (Chinese) precision.
China’s capacity to defend itself and its littoral perimeter with precision missiles can be undermined with diffuse, distributed attacks from all across the island chains.
Note that this diffusion and dispersion of attack platforms across the entire Pacific gives the lie to the claim that this is some inherently deterrent strategy to defend Taiwan island. Diffusion is clearly offensive, designed to overrun and overwhelm defenses: like Ukraine, this is not to deter war, but to enable it.
This thus signals that aggressive total war against China is being prepared, in granular, lethal fashion on tactical and operational levels.
On the strategic level, currently, at the CFR, CNAS, and other influential think tanks in Washington, the talk is all about “protracted warfare” with China, about pre-positioning systems and munitions for war, about ramping up to an industrial war footing for the inescapable necessity of war with China.
The US senses that the clock is running rapidly down on its power. If war is inevitable, then it is anxious to start war sooner rather than later.
RAND warned in 2016 that 2025 was the outside window for the US to prevail in war with China. The “Minihan window” also hints at 2025. The “Davidson window ” is 2027.
RAND window is 2025.
Minihan Window is 2027.
The question in Washington regarding war with China is not if, but when–and how.
Link 16 makes “how” easier, and brings “when” closer.
But the US is still engaged in Ukraine. Can it wage a two-front war?
The current administration has hardline Russophobes who want to continue to bleed Russia out in Ukraine. It wants protracted war with Russia. It firmly believes it can wage ambidextrous, multi-front war.
Many US officials also believe that war with Ukraine and war with China are connected. They see Russia and China as a single axis of “revisionist powers” (i.e., official enemies) conspiring against the US to undermine its so-called “rules-based order” (i.e., US hegemony).
Furthermore, if the US abandons Ukraine, this could weaken the Taiwan authorities’ resolve and willingness to wage war on behalf of Washington.
Earlier in the war, when Russian gains in Ukraine were uncertain, Bi-khim Louise Hsiao (Taiwan’s current vice-president elect) gloated publicly and prominently that Ukraine’s victories were a message to China, as well as proof-of-concept of an effective doctrine for waging and winning war against China. As such, the Taiwan authorities were and are a major supporter of the Ukraine proxy war.
But the converse also holds true.
Based on the same premise, if the US abandons and loses Ukraine, it sends a clear message to the people on Taiwan island that they will be the next to be used and abandoned; that their US-imposed war and war doctrine (light, distributed, asymmetrical combined arms warfare) for fighting China is a recipe for catastrophic loss.
The US plans on using proxies for war against China: Taiwan, Korea, Japan (JAKUS), Philippines, and Australia (AUKUS).
Thus it cannot signal too overtly its perfidious, unreliable, and instrumental mindset.
Washington has to keep up the pretense. It cannot be seen to overtly lose in or abandon Ukraine. It needs a “decent interval”, or a plausible pretext to cut and run.
Still, the US is stretched thin.
For example, it is relying on Korean munitions to Ukraine, and South Korea has provided more munitions than all of the EU combined.
Moreover, the US is currently at war with itself. The fracturing of its body politic can only be unified with a common war against a common enemy. Russia is not that enemy for the US. China is.
The Republicans want war with China now.
Eli Ratner and Elbridge Colby have been fretting for years about the need to husband weaponry, arms, and munitions in order to wage war against China.
Since the outbreak of Ukraine, Ratner has been working hard to pull India into the US defense industry’s supply chain, and claims to have been successful.
South Korea’s considerable military-industrial complex is being pulled into sub-contracting for US war with China.
Since many of its major Chaebol corporations got their start as subcontractors for the war in Vietnam (for example, Hyundai was a subcontractor for Halliburton/Brown & Root), the Korean economy is simply reverting back to its corporate-martial roots.
South Korea’s economy is currently tanking due to US-forced sanctions on China. Major Korean electronic firms have lost 60 to 80% of their profits due to US-imposed chip sanctions.
Under those conditions, military manufacturing and/or subcontracting looks to be the only way forward.
In this way, the US is forcing a war economy onto its vassals.
The business of the US is war
Furthermore, US aid to Ukraine benefits its own arms industry.
The business of the US is war. Not only do existing US arms companies gain, but also the entire tech industry and supply chain benefits, and is currently re-orienting around this.
Much of the US tech industry is seeking to suckle from the government teat, now flowing copiously in preparation for war.
On the other hand, the general US economy is not doing well, with massive layoffs, especially in the consumer and business tech sector.
The backstop of military Keynesianism, with the integration of think-tank lobbying groups funded by the arms industry with close ties to the administration (such as CNAS, West Exec Advisors, and CSIS) ensure that war is always the closest ready-to-hand resort for tough economic times.
The US is simultaneously trying to decouple supply chains, which creates opportunities for US firms (both domestically and subcontracting with US vassals).
Automated, AI-enabled warfare will be a key part of this development, as will be dispersed, distributed warfare platforms using proxies such as South Korea and Japan.
This fits the existing historical pattern: the history of Western technology shows that technology and machinery have always been developed first for war.
Afterwards, they become tools of entertainment and distraction, and later productive tools for general industrial use.
The machinery of war, mystification, and repression
This pattern goes back to the earliest machines and inventions of the West: the crane, the pulley, the lever, were all military technologies – machines of war (used in sieges).
Later they became machines of illusion and distraction (used as stage machinery in Greek theater).
Only much later were they applied for general use – and exploitation – in manufacture and production.
This holds true for many other technologies, including:
the internet, originally designed to create redundant military communications in case of nuclear strike;
GPS, for precision bombing;
integrated circuit computer chips, a miniaturization of electronic circuits to fit inside the cone of missile guidance systems;
digital computers, conceived by Alan Turing while trying to break military encryption;
microwave ovens, originally radar technology, initially marketed as the “Radar-range”;
analog computers, invented for military calculations; and
feedback systems, for guidance systems.
Nuclear power obviously derives from nuclear weapons.
AI, too, from its inception, was conceived for automated battle management, especially to enable second strike after human life had been destroyed.
An AI war is already in the works, with US sanctions on AI-related chips and computing, along with an algorithmic race to suppress dissent and critique in the information domain.
War and business are intricately related in the west, and war is the first lever pulled when the economy stagnates critically or needs a boost.
Is there any possibility of peace?
The US needs to abandon its neoconservative fantasies of hegemonic global empire and retreat gently into that good night, for there to be peace.
Washington needs to negotiate in good faith with Russia, and begin the process of de-escalating its proxies in Ukraine, as well as in Palestine, and the Pacific.
It needs to seek win-win cooperation in a multilateral order based on international law and mutual co-existence, not its own top-down “rules-based order”.
It needs to respect the One China principle, end its interference in China’s affairs, and stop preparing and provoking war with China.
However, the US ruling class is unwilling to do so. And it has only a few levers left to pull. The military one is the closest and most ready to hand.
As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The US is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world”.
Like a drunk at the bar after the final call – drunk with power – Washington is determined to go out with a fight.
Palestine has shown what it will try to get away with: brazen genocide with the whole world watching.
The issue is no longer war or peace in Ukraine. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell sees Ukraine as a “unified field” of war with China. He revels in the possibility of a “magnificent symphony of death” in Asia.
The coda, of course, will be a deafening fermata of silence across the entire planet.
There is a border between China and Mongolia, or how do you distinguish the two countries?
If you mean the border fence, in most parts, there isn’t.
You can roughly devide China-Mongolia border into three sections: east, middle and west. Middle and west section is not habitable for human beings.
The famous Gobi desert lies in between China and Mongolia covering middle and west part of the C-M border, you wanna cross the border on foot? Die. Because Gobi desert has a size of 1.4 million square kms, ranked 19th among all countries if it is a country. No roads, no rivers and lakes, no human residents, no one can cross it without an army behind providing supplies.
There are some villages and towns in the desert, with a road connecting each other. But there’s border patrol along the roads in near border areas, because you go off the road, you die.
There are some crossing points, and also patrols and fence stretching aside, long enough to preventing anyone trying to cross the border near the crossing point.
I was 16 (legal working age) and acting up at home so my mother decided that I should get a job to keep me busy. No skills, still in school and couldn’t type.
A friend of a friend said they were hiring at a company that mailed credit card holders their statements and a bunch of advertisements. You had to hand pick the sheets and stuff the envelopes. (This was before the digital age)
Got hired! For one day. The second day I showed up I was told that I had to be 18 to work in that position.
I was devastated. Vice President of the company to the rescue! We had met at lunch the previous day and he was the nicest, kindest man.
Anyway, for the next 7 months I was his personal assistant, riding with him to business lunches, keeping his schedule and generally doing a few filing tasks.
The regular office staff was furious! His actual secretary would make snide remarks, throw eye daggers and practically have an apoplexy every time she handed me my check.
Mr……… then offered to pay for my college education!
I was ecstatic!!! He had two grown sons with their own businesses who he said didn’t need him to help them.
One morning I came in to “work” and everyone was crying. Mr…….. had a heart attack and died overnight.
I loved that man. He made me feel like I mattered. I still miss him even though it’s been over 45 years since this happened.
China Just Launched The MOST POWERFUL Hypersonic Engine In The World That Will CONFRONT The US
In a modern battle, the tanks are brought in only when the Aerial Threats are completely cleared
Tanks today are used mainly to break positions and strongholds
Yet the line of tanks come into play only after the air force destroys all aerial threats to the tank which are mainly
Artillery Guns
Air to Surface Missiles
Other Tanks
The fourth threat is LANDMINES which can be neutralized by demining operations
Now let’s see Ukraine
They have virtually no Air power
This means a Tank goes into the front line with the air full of Sukhoi 35s, Sukhoi 34s, Ka 52 Helicopters and Loitering Drones
How long do you think the world’s best tank can survive?
It has armor but it also has vulnerabilities, which include being susceptible to a munition drone that drops an accelarant laced explosive capable of generating a huge ball of flame
Today Tanks can be mainly used against enemies who don’t have major air power
Small Armies, Separatist Factions, Terrorist Holds, Fortifications without Air Cover
Not against the front lines of the World’s Best Land Army, loaded with air power
The worst part is the Abrams is millions of dollars whereas the drone that dropped the explosive likely cost the Russians less than ten thousand dollars
A Storm Shadow that cost £ 200,000 to source by the British Army is destroyed by a missile fired by the Russians that probably cost $ 30,000
That’s because Britain and other nations in the West have primarily privatised their defense industries and profiteering is INSANE
Russia , China and even India have managed to keep defence manufacturing in the hands of the State for a major part and that means prices are more controlled
Its an entirely new world now
Aircraft Carriers are becoming redundant as our Houthi Braves are showing the world
Stealth is becoming less important given the rapid nature of Air Defence Systems
Tanks are secondary to Air Cover which means rather than Superior Aircraft, you need more saturation of airspace and for that you need Cheap Loitering Drones
Here’s what REALLY happened with the Covid vaccine
America asked China to help stabilize the dollar and the American government debt market.
China not only committed to buying Federal debt, but it also expanded fiscal spending on a massive scale, doubling down on infrastructure.
Chinese growth and monetary injection helped pad the fallout from the GFC, which saw the dollar devalue by more than 30%.
American leaders belatedly awoke to the fact that China was already a mover and shaker, just because of the rarefied size of the Chinese economy.
Thankfully, the yuan hasn’t ascended to the table, still dominated by 4 currencies: dollar, euro, yen, pound.
That’s the sole reason why the G7 remains relevant today: financial dominance.
Let’s go back to 2012, when Barack was campaigning for his second term, having stabilized the American economy.
What was the platform he campaigned on?
The pivot to Asia.
Let me repeat, because this is a pivotal moment in 21st century geopolitics.
THE PIVOT TO ASIA.
Or rather, a thinly veiled platform to fix China and the Chinese.
The most consequential strategy that arose out of the pivot is a known fact that rarely surfaces in discussions. I call it the Reverse Plaza Accord. After winning his second term, Barack and the G7 essentially gave the BOJ carte blanche to devalue the yen, then held to captive highs as the darling of the carry trade.
The rest of the third world followed the yen’s lead, and devalued massively, with one notable absentee: China.
Both the Barack and Donald administrations subsequently attacked the PBOC’s monetary policy, threatening sanctions for currency manipulation. Singapore was drawn into the mess for operating a similar exchange rate mechanism based on the BBC (Basket, Band and Crawl), managed against a basket of currencies of major trading partners, and threatened with designation in tandem.
The political message (for those in the know) was crystal clear: do not devalue the yuan to keep pace with the rest.
What was the goal? Give Japan an unfair forex edge at high tech exports, while forcing low-tech exports out of China to the rest of the third world.
Notice the flattening/dip of ex-china cost post-2013? That’s the reverse plaza accord, measured in dollars.
Barack was using American hegemony to enforce step change in the forces shaping the Chinese economy.
China lost plenty of jobs—and babies—over the past decade.
But what did Beijing do?
It hunkered down, bit its tongue, and decided to focus on home renovation. Let’s transit from unbridled expansion to quality and HSE (Health, Safety, Environment). Let’s focus on domestic recirculation and develop OBOR markets rather than chase first world exports. Let’s pursue indigenous technology rather than buy foreign.
Let’s pivot from the West, too.
The discipline was merciless, and there were pockets of carnage in the upheaval. For example, opportunities in the Northeast—long a major industrial heart—became so limited the migration of entrepreneurs west to Yunnan and elsewhere was promoted and facilitated by the government.
The yuan has hardly moved the past decade, hovering around a 10–15% band of 6.6 to the dollar. The rest of the third world and Japan have all corrected lower. In the yen’s case, a 100% devaluation.
How does China remain the world’s factory with a 300% rise in labor cost within a decade?
Or in other words, how does China remain competitive with externally-imposed margin squeeze?
That’s a topic worthy of a book-length dive.
Pacific Command is now Indopacom. The annual APEC summit is now a backburner priority for the US, unless the US plays host. East Asia is no more—there is only the Indopacific. There is the Quad and Aukus, loose military partnerships centered around containing China’s maritime ambitions.
American worldview is pivoting to India and the INDOpacific being the center of Asia, and the red carpet is being rolled out to an immense population that can do no wrong.
I fear the consequence of unbridled ascent.
Note: the Americans no longer need China to buy its debt because they invented QE and explained it away using MMT.
Their gold vault is highly lightly empty. French president in the 1970’s threatened to take all its gold out and Nixon declared a U.S. dollar fiat currency. Ie they don’t have the gold!
China and Russia and a whole host of country has loads of gold. Not the U.S. the U.S. has loads of debts and deficits. Ready to default. Watch out!
Laying by the ocean next to my gorgeous girlfriend.
We were living the Dream.
Outside of my pasty white skin, it was the stuff of a great #travel Instagram post.
We were celebrating an incredible year as business owners, splurged to fly our entire staff to an all-inclusive Mexican resort, and couldn’t wait to strip our clothes off and drink alcohol on the beach.
We rubbed sunscreen on each other and took a deep, relaxing sigh.
Until one unscheduled activity ruined everything.
A nap.
We had both succumbed to our exhaustion, or to the margaritas, or to the sunshine… but I woke feeling like a 76” hot dog forgotten on the grill.
I looked at my girl.
She was a bronze goddess.
“Babe, I’m not feeling too good.”
Her: “Okay, let’s just get you back to the room.”
With the stride of a marathon runner overcome with bunions, she walked me back to our room.
The heat wasn’t subsiding. I felt like my skin was made of tin foil.
I made the mistake of looking in the mirror.
I was somewhere between crimson and purple.
Maybe my eyes haven’t adjusted yet.
I lathered myself up with Aloe.
Then they started show up.
Blisters.
In the end, I had to remain in our hotel room the remainder of the trip. There was free booze, great food, and all I wanted was to be locked in a walk in freezer.
Instead, I got a trip to the emergency room and learned an all-too-important lesson when it comes to sunbathing:
I am not, and never will be, a bronze goddess.
She messed up big time
Gringo Nachos
Unlike regular nachos, these are served as an entree. Melty cheese covers roasted potatoes, bacon and caramelized onions. The amounts are as desired.
nachos
Ingredients
Red potatoes
Bacon, sliced into 1 inch pieces
Large yellow onions
Garlic powder
Cheddar cheese, grated
Sour cream
Green onions, sliced
Instructions
Roast red potatoes, then cube and sauté with bacon.
Meanwhile, caramelize onions. Halve and slice onions. Coat a 12 inch skillet with cooking spray. Over medium heat, cook onions in oil for 15 to 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, or until soft and golden. Stir in garlic powder, per taste.
Place potatoes on a rimmed cookie sheet.
Add caramelized onions on top of potatoes.
Sprinkle lots of grated cheddar cheese over the top.
Bake for 5 minutes at 350 degrees F or just until the cheese is melted.
Garnish with dollops of sour cream and green onions.
FIRST LISTEN TO | Ram Jam – Black Betty THIS S#!T SO DOPE MY NEW FAVORITE! (REACTION)
What if China decided to abduct Tim Cook’s family and ban iPhones in China, as well as force every other nation to ban Apple products? The US did this and still does it to Huawei.
What if China openly supports Hawaii in seeking independence and sells weapons and offers military trainings to the Hawaiians to better kill Americans? The US is doing this to China on Taiwan.
What if China patrols the Gulf of Mexico with warships, checking American civilian ships at gunpoint, blackmails the Mexican president into accepting a China-organised private court in Hague to use Mexico as a pawn against US presence off the coast of Florida? The US is doing this to China in the South China Sea.
What if China controls the world’s media and social media and brainwashes people all over the world to call AIDS the American virus, preach that the US is committing genocide against the blacks all over the nation, to constantly dehumanize and demonize the Americans as the core issue of every problem worldwide? The US is doing this to the Chinese people.
What if China prohibits Americans from going to space and kick the Americans out of the International Space Station and call all Americans spies? The US has been doing that to Chinese for years.
Etc. Etc. Etc.
It’s not which specific issue, but the entire underlying logic that bothers the Chinese. People used to fall for the “We’re not against the Chinese, only the government” shit, we used to look back at how the Americans joined China in its fight against the Japanese invaders in WWII, to imagine that the US holds certain moral principles. But now everyone in China understands that it’s neo-nazism and racism that’s driving the current American “competition” with China. That to beat China, the US government may go beyond fair competition or basic decency if it gets the chance. We don’t want to go the way the native Americans did, just so that future Americans can pretend to be friendly and shed tears for us. And this awakening has rallied people behind the Chinese government in its defense against the US.
And this is what is going on right now with Gen-Z
What did your boss ever say in the office that caused you to resign?
Hi Wow! Some of these stories! Here’s mine.
I worked in the marketing department for a national retailer. I’d come over from IT to run/manage their relational database system. We were responsible for the loyalty program, and sending out mailers. The marketing department consisted of me, a data analyst, and our supervisor. We reported to one of the VPs of Sales.
I’d been campaigning for the creation of a sales analyst position for several months, but was told that there wasn’t room in the budget for additional headcount. One day, I see a posting for a Sales Analyst position on the bulletin board. Naturally, I applied for the job. The VP of Sales told me that he didn’t think I could do the job, and another of the Sales VPs was bringing on someone from his former company to fill the position. (Yes, there were more VPs at that company than departments. There was even a VP who didn’t have any direct or indirect reports. She was the VP of herself!). Anyway, although he didn’t think I could do the job, he wanted me to train the new person when they started. I asked him if that made sense to him: I’m not good enough to do that job, but good enough to train someone else how to do the job? Before he could answer I said, “I’ll give you the weekend to think about that.” and left his office.
On Monday morning I went straight to his office. The conversation went like this:
Me: Have you reconsidered?
Him: No, but we still want you to train the new person.
Me: Then I quit.
Him: Effective when?
Me: Effective when I stop talking.
I turned and left his office, gathered my few personal belongings from my cube, and walked out.
My former neighbors (Oh, god! If there was ever a couple who needed to enter into a murder-suicide pact!) and I each had our own drive way that butted up together; enough for two cars to park side by side. Granted, it was somewhat tight on that portion of our driveways that was situated between the two houses but completely negotiable to even the casual driver.
My neighbor’s wife believed it was too tight in this location for her to proceed past a car that was parked fully on my driveway and complained about it. Being a new neighbor and wanting to get along, my wife and I avoided parking in this area even at our own inconvenience. I also informed family members and recurring guests to do the same.
However, when I had uninformed visitors come over to my house and park in the “sensitive“ area, my neighbor would come out and start yelling at my guests. Because she had a delusional take on the width of the driveway, she assumed everybody else had her same irrational perspective. This was not the case though. No one ever thought that they would impede the flow of my neighbor’s traffic in and out of their own driveway. So they never gave it any thought.
Again, trying to be accommodating, I told my neighbor that it was impolite to confront my guests about where they parked their car. I asked that she and her family members, if they saw a car parked in this area, to come and get me (Or another in my family if I was absent) and I will take care of it. She argued with me telling me that it should be readily apparent that anybody parking in this section of my driveway would block any cars proceeding in and out on their driveway. So apparent (in her unreasonable brain) she said her confrontations were appropriate.
I told her she was 100% wrong (but I still wanted neighborly harmony) and reiterated that she only talk to me; never again to say anything to my guests. I told her in no uncertain terms that if she did not comply with my simple request, I will buy an additional car and make that area of my driveway its permanent home; never to be moved. Well, it happened again (not surprised) and I made good on my promise to take the offensive.
I planned to purchase a beater from a junk yard but a friend of mine (just as outraged as I was) had an old box truck he said I could have as long as I needed it. I fell in love with it! It was big and intimidating yet within regulations for width and more importantly, totally fit within the boundaries of my drive way, albeit barely.
My neighbors never said anything to me because they knew why it was there. They tried a counter move by parking adjacent to the truck when one of them was home but it was a move I anticipated. Although inconvenient, I had to move the truck every now and again to egress my driveway. However, more times than not, my neighbors were not home and all we had to do was swing around the truck on their driveway (as any experienced driver could do) to get In or out. That truck was there to stay until I saw a white flag.
Besides changing their parking behavior, they called the police. However after discussing it with the police (and knowing they could not do anything anyway) they gave me a wink and a smile translating to, “More power to you!”
The neighbors had their overly-sized son try to intimidate me but I told him to do his worst and go pound salt. They complained to the city (various departments) but there was nothing that the city could do except try to convince me to come up with an amicable solution. Again, when they heard my side of the story, the response was just about the same as the police accompanied with a required, but weak, “Well, we hope you would reconsider.”
The white flag came out about six weeks after the truck arrived. I agreed to remove the box truck if and only if I was promised that I would never hear a complaint regarding a car parked anywhere on my drive way. Moreover, not one comment to any visitor; I didn’t care if it was a Jehovah Witness or an Amway sales person. No one was to be addressed regarding where they parked on my drive. I promised them that if they did not abide, the next vehicle would be a fifth wheel with its own address.
Are banks in Switzerland as good as they are portrayed in movies? What is so special about them? Are there any other countries that compare?
No. They aren’t. The were at one time, but that’s gone. Switzerland remains unique in that it one of the two places in the world where you can bring in paper cash without being required to declare the paper cash (Gibraltar is the other.)
The special thing about Switzerland is that until recently what you told you banker or accountant was secret in the same why that what you told your lawyer or doctor. If you tell your doctor or lawyer that you are hiding money, then in most countries, they aren’t legally required to tell the government, and can get into a great deal of trouble of if they did so.
However, in most countries, if you tell your banker or accountant that you are hiding money, they will immediately tell the government.
Switzerland was particularly special during World War 2. A lot of people wanted to hide their money, and Switzerland was the place to do this. This money got hidden by both the good guys and the bad guys.
But all that is gone. A few years back, the US forced Swiss banks to disclose information about US accounts. It turns out that in disclosing this information, the Swiss banks were in violation of Swiss law, however, the US basically asked the banks who they where more scared of, and they blinked. This happened after 2000.
Swiss banks are no longer special. Swiss bankers still are, and there are a ton of Swiss bankers in Hong Kong. The thing about the Swiss is that they have a reputation of being trusted, and talking to a Swiss banker is like talking to your doctor or your priest.
So imagine that you are a rich billionaire that happens to have several mistresses, none of which know each other, and which your wife and family do not know about. You want to make sure that they are provided for. You have one nephew you like, one nephew you hate. You want to give a ton of money to the nephew you like, but just enough money to one that you hate to keep him quiet.
Your banker will know about this so people trust Swiss bankers not to tell anyone else.
As far as where to hide your money. That changes from place to place, but the number one place for non-US residents to launder your money happens to be the United States, particularly US real estate, which is totally awesome for money laundering.
One thing that’s funny about US money laundering laws, is that they all apply to money going out. None of it applies to money going in.
Inflation is real
What was the most bone-chilling sentence a loved one ever said to you?
My husband had a terrible mental breakdown. He developed psychotic depression very quickly and without warning.
We had been happily married for 40+ years.
One of the manifestations of his illness was that he thought we had no money, our house would be repossessed and we would be on the street. All of this was completely untrue but he was convinced that it was so.
He could not bear the idea of us having to suffer this humiliation and in his poor deluded state decided that it would be for the best if we both died.
Obviously I disagreed with this suggestion and tried very hard to convince him that he was mistaken about our financial position and that even if he was right it was not something to die for.
To try to talk someone out of a strongly held psychotic belief is completely futile even if you can change their mind for a little while the psychosis comes back quickly.
My bone chilling moment came one evening. I was in the kitchen when my husband appeared in the doorway, he was holding a knife. He quietly said “ It will be quick”
I am not one to panic easily thank goodness, I really believe that had I run he would have come for me and stabbed me, instead I reached into the drawer in front of me and found a hammer, looking him in the eye I said “ give it your best shot”.
He must have thought better of his plan because after a short stand off he put down the knife and walked away.
I spent some months with him as he planned to kill us both before he finally got too dangerous and had to be placed in a secure mental hospital, but that first threat was for sure the one that chilled me to the core.
Thanks to everyone who has sent me positive and kind messages.
My husband finally tried to strangle me, after this he was confined to a secure mental hospital and I was told that it would never be safe for me to live with him in the future.
He was in hospital for two years then he absconded one day and walked into the sea.
I loved him very much but I can understand that for him death seemed the only escape from the nightmare his life had become.
Day of The Triffids (1962)
Full Movie! This was one of my favorite flicks growing up as a kid. Really. Have fun and enjoy it.
Watch this video before it is taken down. It is currently suppressed.
Ray McGovern with Nima Alkhorshid on the possibility Israel might have sent a F-35 loaded with atomics, the intention was to detonate them in high altitude, getting an EMP effect destroying the Iranian civil electrical grid. The military…
As I understood the discussion, Pepe Escobar reported it, and Scott Ritter, as a military expert, said that that event was logically impossible.
Nevertheless, we shouldn’t put anything past these monsters.
…
IF TRUE, RUSSIA SAVED THE WORLD ONCE AGAIN FROM …
… THE MINI-ME ROGUE STATE IN WEST ASIA BEING PROTECTED BY THE BIG ROGUE STATE IN NORTH AMERICA. A QUITE DANGEROUS PAIR FOR ALL OF US TO SAY THE LEAST.
Mao Zedong 毛 泽 东 (1893-1976) made sure in 1949, at the start of the People’s Republic of China, that all the Western Jews left China. I’m not speaking of the Jewish families of Kaifeng being there since the Song dynasty (960-1279). Obviously, they were not expelled. Also, I’m not speaking of certain Jews like Sydney Rittenberg 李 敦 白 (1921-2019) or Israel Epstein 伊 斯 雷 爾 爱 潑 斯 坦 (1915-2005) the Chinese rulers thought useful for them and China.
Contrary to many urban legends repeated with gusto by misguided people, I don’t think that the Jews (in general or those living in Israel) rule the World. Of course, their “elite” is part of the movers & shakers of this World but it doesn’t mean that they rule the World. They are powerful but not all-powerful as their excellent propaganda managed to make some incurable morons believe.
Their “elite” had a lot of money, sure …
But that kind of candies works only for lowly kakocrats and NO countries endowed with a minimum of aristocratic men at the helm of the State would have succumbed to money.
Same remark concerning the big rogue state.
What’s certain is that their “elite”, especially the Zionist variety (living in the US, Western Europe or Israel) is endowed with chutzpah to an inordinate level.
The British used them at the beginning of the twentieth century for getting a foothold in West Asia because Mark Sykes (1879-1919), the British representative in West Asia at the time, got extremely disappointing results in his negotiations with François Georges-Picot (1870-1951), his French counterpart. And being clever people, the Zionist leaders, having seen clearly through the British government and its representative, the clumsy Mark Sykes, skillfully accepted to be used in order to gain a state in Palestine, having stolen step by step the land from their rightful owners since then.
As crimes’ partners, the Zionists are in a very deep symbiotic relationship with the Anglo-American EstabLishment, hence the acronym I coined : KFC-AZAEL (Kakistocratic Feudal Conglomerate of the Anglo-Zio-American EstabLishment).
It’s a well-known psychological phenomenon that a servant will take on unconsciously/subconsciously the characteristics of the master. In this case, both groups suffering from the get-go of extreme hubris; together, they reciprocally amplify to a staggering degree their common deadly character flaw.
Here’s a reminder of what happened between May 16, 1916 (Sykes-Picot Agreement) & November 2, 1917 (Balfour Declaration) :
There is also THE OTHER URBAN LEGEND that, thanks to his agent having got the news that Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated at Waterloo on June 15, 1815 before everyone, the Rothschild at the time screwed everybody at the London Stock Exchange and that his family held under their thumb the British aristocracy & its global policies since then … Legendary, huh ?!
What is sure is that the Zionists managed somehow to get A LOT OF MONEY from the US officials. The US elite is completely hypnotized by the prestige (the bribes ?) of the Jews & the Jewish culture ???
Believe what you want but for me, NO ONE IS ALL-POWERFUL …
I repeat myself : If true, Russia saved the World once again.
Not only that, Russia sent a crystal clear message to the mini rogue state & to the big rogue state, that there are truly red lines in this World & there is someone to seriously enforce them.
SO I WISH PEPE ESCOBAR’s REPORT IS 100% TRUE.
Those people, the ruling classes of the mini rogue state & the ruling class of the big rogue state, will never change.
THE ONLY SOLUTION IS THEN :
Ceterum censeo KFC-AZAEL-nem esse delendam
PAX SINICA PERSICA KOREANA RUSSICA
IMPERIUM MUNDI SEMPER INVICTUS
Have you ever been pulled over by a police officer for an unusual reason?
Yes. I was on my way home and got pulled over by a cop who handed me two packages of really nice dog treats, asked to fuss my dog, and then gave me a card with his name and number. He was really friendly, lovely, asked me alot about my dog, and even asked me where I got my dog’s beautiful collar from. He then wished us well and left.
This is why.
I had been at a restaurant with three friends and my assistance dog. I’m a wheelchair user. It was a nice place, a bit pricey, but nice.
My assistance dog was always impeccably well behaved. She went under the table, next to me, and went to sleep.
We ordered our meal, and were eating, when some very bratty kids (6 ish in age, old enough to read) started running around. They saw my dog and started bugging her, getting near her and yelling WOOF!!! Then one brat poked her. My dog’s only reaction was to get up and put her head on my knee.
I strongly told Brats to bug off, leave my dog alone, and to go to their parents. Brat 2 joined her, saying, loudly, DOGS AREN’T ALLOWED IN HERE, STUPID!
I smiled as nicely as I could and tried to explain that she was a special helper dog… then Brat 1… who was a good 3 feet from my dog (whose head was still on my knee) yelled THAT DOG BIT ME!
The two terrors ran screaming ITS A BAD DOG! ITS A PITBULL! ITS GONNA KILL ME!
My dog was a smallish, exceptionally gentle, patient, and calm black lab.
In no time parents are with restaurant manager demanding that they throw me and my “pitbull” out of the restaurant. All the other patrons are looking and pointing.
I have not moved. We are still eating.
The parents (and its clear why the kids were monsters…) come over and demand to see my ID so they can “engage their solicitor”. The manager, clearly upset and embarrassed, said “I need to ask you to leave”.
I said I was not giving my ID to anyone, I was not leaving, and I would appreciate if they would leave me alone as my dog was allowed by law and they were ruining my.meal. I might have added that at least SHE had her shots and was obedience trained…
The mother screamed that my pitbull (sigh) had nearly ripped Perfect Princess’ arm off. Note said child has a small round superficial bite mark on her wrist encircled by the same pink as her lip gloss.
I told them all that my dog bit no one, and to call the cops but I wasn’t speaking to them any longer. My friend just kept eating and chatting as if nothingvwas wrong.
Parents storm off, manager begs me to leave, tells me to leave, demands I leave… I explained about Assistance Dogs, introduce her, tell him he can see she was not a problem but by then Parents are back and they had called 999 saying there was a rabid pitbull running arounfçattacking children … manager tells me to please get out. I reply…
She’s not a bitbull.
There is no rabies in Britain.
She had not moved from her space next to me.
She is wearing an AssistancevDog jacket, Ive shown my ID, and tried to explain. Im going no where.
I’m not really upset because this shit happens often enough that Im used to it… the brats were a unique twist, but people are really ignorant about Assistance Dogs.
All of a sudden a handful of cops burst in. Parents tell their side. They strut over to me and demand I immediately leave. I said that when we were done eating I would, but not until. In all this the waitress had continued to serve us… so we just got our puddings.
Lead cop is totally self impressed, and starts to read me the riot act, demanding I surrender this pitbull I brought into the place. I kept eating. He bangs his hand on the table to get my attention.
When he does, the dog treat I had on the edge of the table falls off and my sweet pup sticks her head out, takes the treat, and goes back under the table.
Just then the other cops come back and pull cop1 aside. Theyve read the situation, told him so.
He asks to see my dog properly. I called her out, and told her to ‘say hello’. She was wagging her tail (total fusspot) and raised her paw to the cop. All three of them are now admiring my dog.
Parents come over demanding I get arrested, deported, hung drawn quartered, etc.
Cop says Your children are harassing this lady, her dog is allowed…
Mother says about dog bite.
Cop says “thats not a dog bite, lady, and wasting police time is an offense. Leave this lady alone, get control of your kids, and either go sit or leave.”
He tells manager that there is no problem with us.
Cop sees we are all done and kind of hust waiting for this foolishness to end so we can leave as we’ve got our coats on, etc.
He says “I suppose you guys would feel better just getting out of here yeah?”
I start to argue but my friend says “Yes, we are going. “
He says “Im just going to get some details from the manager, and we will stay until you go, to keep the peace”.
Waitress comes over and I am about to ask for our bill but the cop waves her away saying “they are leaving, please just let them go…”
We go! Our bill was well over 100… I put £10 on the table as a tip.
We got in my van after loading my chair, saw the cops leave as we were.
When I saw the lights behind me I thought we were in trouble gor skipping out on the bill!
I did call the restaurant later and spoke to the manager to offer to pay, he profusely apologised and sent me a gift voucher and asked for another chance.
We did go back, just me and a friend (and my dog) there was a sign clearly posted that assistance dogs were welcome … but that poorly behaved children were not!
We lost Taska March 2024. Her successor is just as calm and well behaved
Assistance dogs are amazing
What secret did you learn about your neighbor that made your jaw drop?
When I was growing up my neighbor Tom was my role model. My father was an alcoholic who was rarely home except to sleep. When I wanted to learn something, I would talk to Tom. He had dropped out of school to help support his family, but was very talented with his hands. He built the house he lived in, and I mean completely, plumbing, electrical, everything. He was also an outstanding mechanic. He was very strong, but incredibly gentle and patient. I knew he was a vet, but he never talked about it except to say he hadn’t really done anything. When he died, his family searched for his records. They wanted to bury him with any medals he had been awarded. I think most of us expected stuff like a Good Conduct, National Defense, maybe a European Victory Medal. What they found out was that this quiet gentle man was a genuine war hero. He had been credited with single handedly stopping an attack by a company of Germans, effectively destroying the company through the combination of casualties he caused and prisoners he took, despite having been wounded at the start of the attack. For his actions he had been awarded a Silver Star. There were also a number of awards for other actions. I ended up spending 20 years in the military, and his rack of medals remains one of the most impressive I’ve seen.
Every mans daydream
What was a gift that made you speechless?
I was 39 with a 4 year old son. Becoming a single mom through adoption and everything was great. I had a great career, lots of friends, the child I’d been dreaming of etc. Suddenly, a massive heart issue popped up leaving me on disability for 11 months while it was diagnosed and treated. We had just moved to a new place a couple of months prior. Then, just after I paid the bills and went in for a minor heart procedure, it turns out the people I had been renting from were not the owners of the house. They were squatters and I was scammed. The actual owner showed up wanting me to pay first, last and deposit, and the past due electric bill that was nearly $1000 at that point (my rent included utilities). Obviously I couldn’t pay it so I had to move out quickly just 2 days after heart surgery. We found a place and I got help moving the majority of Stuff. Some was stolen while we were moving the other stuff.
I was released to go back to work and my HR informed me that they had accidentally overpaid me during my disability, do they were deducting that from my next 4 paychecks. About the same time, the Franchise Tax Board hit me with a penalty for not filing my taxes the year before and garnished 25% of my wages. So I was getting about $850 a month at that time. We were sinking fast! I wasn’t fully recovered enough to have strenuous work and I only get paid once a month at my regular job.
I was at my breaking point. Then, my only vehicle broke down, again! I am not super religious, but I do pray and I was definitely b my knees at that point. I didn’t know what I was gonna do. My credit was shot, I was SOL. One day I get the mail. There was a ton of bills in there. I left them sitting on the table for 2 days, because I cannot pay them anyway.
Finally, I sat down to figure it how bad this was gonna be and I noticed that one of the letters is a greeting card with no return address, but addressed to me.
I open it up and there is a beautiful card that says, “I see you struggling and I see you keep going. You are so loved and you will overcome this. Signed Jesus Christ.”
Inside the card was $2,000 in cash! I couldn’t speak for a few minutes! I still have no idea who sent that card, but it was definitely a game changer for us! To whoever sent that card and money, they definitely changed our lives.
“The United States has consistently claimed to comply with ‘the rules-based international order’, but the most significant rules are the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, including international legal norms such as UN Security Council resolutions.
The Security Council, as the core of the world’s collective security mechanism, should by no means be a tool manipulated by individual countries for geopolitical purposes, nor should it serve as a stage to pursue hegemony or power politics.
There is no exception in the United Nations in complying with international laws including Security Council resolutions, and the United States holds no privileges in this regard.”
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Excerpt from remarks by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi during a joint press conference with Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi after their talks in Jakarta, April 18, 2024.
INCREDIBLE SCENES (this is why I came to LAOS) 🇱🇦 LOST in LAOS Ep:2
I know Thailand is the land of smiles but in my own experience I found the people of Laos and Cambodia to be even friendlier than the amazing Thai people. Really miss that whole beautiful area of the world. Happy Travels
A real adventure…
What factors have contributed to the growing demand for fast food among Indian consumers?
Ah India
One aspect of the Nation I am proud of
Fast Food in India has been INDIANIZED better than in any other nation
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After all these years of McDonalds and KFC and Burger King’s and Taco Bell – the leading fast food is still Vada Pav
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When KFC was forced to launch Biryani among in its Indian menu when it was evident that the 2 Pc and 3 Pc and the famous Zinger was not doing it for the Indian people
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When India is the only country in the world where the top selling burger McAloo Tikki is a vegetarian one and the top 3 selling dishes – McAloo Tikki, McSpicy Paneer and Big Spicy Wrap (Paneer) are all vegetarian pushing the Filet O Fish to fourth sport and Mac Maharajah to the fifth spot
We may be utterly beholden to the West for their technology and core software in every sphere
Yet our Fast food growth is mainly due to our own foods
The leading fast foods of today include :-
#1 Vada Pav
#2 Pav Bhaji
#3 Momos
#4 Pani Poori
#5 Bhel Poori
#6 Aloo Tikki
#7 Samosa
#8 Kachauri
#9 Pizza
#10 Sev Puri & Samosa Chat & Aloo Chaat
(Zomato most ordered foods between 3 PM and 7 PM 2023)
Only Pizza stars in the top 10 popularly eaten fast foods of 2023
And guess which is Dominos most popular Pizza?
Indian Tandoori Pizza & Achari Do Pyaza Pizza
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Pepperoni or Hawaiian are the least selling while Tandoori Chicken sells far more
So it’s not just Mcdonalds outlets or KFC outlets that have spurred the taste of fast foods in India like it did in other nations
The three top reasons include
Availability
Fast Food is available everywhere today
You go to a street and you have a Pani Puri wallah or a Chat seller or a Pav Bhaji stall or a Bakery selling Puffs or a High End Pizza store
You are served in 3–4 minutes and finish in 10 minutes
Far more convenient for office culture and working culture
Price
Fast Food is not too expensive especially Indian Fast Food
You can get Pav Bhaji for 40–60 Bucks a plate which is way lower in cost and better in taste compared to a ₹ 378/- meal in KFC
Taste
Fast Food may or may not be unhealthy but it’s tasty
It’s spicy and Indians like spicy and tangy food
Chili Verde
Chili Verde
This authentic Chile Verde recipe made with fresh tomatillos, poblano peppers, jalapenos, onion, garlic, and cilantro takes a little more work than the typical “salsa dump” recipes but is absolutely worth it! Serve it with these Slow Cooker Pinto Beans, corn tortillas, or with some Cilantro Lime Cauliflower Rice.
There are so many different recipes out there for chile verde but unfortunately, most of them involve grabbing a jar of store bought salsa verde and dumping it into the slow cooker with either chicken or pork.
While this can be really delicious (case in point: Slow Cooker Salsa Verde Chicken), it will never be as good as making green salsa from scratch. While making salsa from scratch may sound intimidating, it’s actually really easy and only takes about 5 minutes of active prep.
Let’s start with the salsa. Chile Verde is made with a tomatillo salsa verde made with fresh tomatillos, chile peppers, onion, and garlic. The first step to creating this flavor is roasting the tomatillos and peppers. Roasting everything deepens the flavor, adds smokiness to the salsa, and also mellows out some of the sour flavor in the tomatillos. Next, it is important to brighten up the salsa and that is where the cilantro comes in.
How to Serve Chile Verde
Traditionally this dish is served with rice, beans, and tortillas with fresh limes but there are all kinds of ways you can use this. Here are some of my favorites:
Tacos: This is a no brainer, but clearly this stuff is delicious in tacos. Warm the tortillas and serve the chicken with fresh cilantro, limes, and queso fresco or avocado.
Burritos and Burrito Bowls: Build your own burritos or burrito bowls with rice and beans. Personally, I like to make burrito bowls since the chicken is moist and sometimes I find the burrito begins to fall apart before I finish eating it.
Quesadillas: While it may be tempting to stuff this inside a quesadilla, I actually prefer to serve it on top so the quesadilla gets nice and crispy on the outside. Simply make a cheese quesadilla and then top it with Chile Verde.
Scrambled eggs: This is so good for breakfast with some scrambled eggs and pinto or black beans. Trust me.
Baked potatoes: This is a great stuffing for baked potatoes or sweet potatoes topped with some melted cheese.
Chilaquiles: Chilaquiles are one of my favorite breakfast recipes and this Chili Verde is so good on a pile of chiliquiles. If you think you might make chilaquiles, I recommend doubling the salsa so you can cook the chips in the extra tomatillo salsa.
What is Chile Verde?
Many people wonder about the origins of Chile Verde and there is some debate whether chile verde is from Mexico or New Mexico. Most people agree that it is a dish that hails from Northern Mexico, and possible areas in New Mexico as well.
In Mexico, it is traditionally made with pork that is slow cooked in a spicy roasted tomatillo salsa that uses a variety of chile peppers. In New Mexico, it is made in a similar manner but traditionally uses Hatch chile peppers or other native New Mexico green chiles.
1Preheat the oven to broil or your oven’s highest temperature setting, like 500 degrees.
2Place the tomatillos, poblano pepper, jalapeno pepper, serrano pepper, onion, and whole unpeeled garlic cloves on a baking sheet sprayed with cooking spray. Broil for 10 minutes, flipping everything halfway through. If the garlic looks like it is beginning to burn, remove it when you flip everything else.
3Carefully remove the baking sheet from the oven. Place the peppers in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap or a lid. After ten minutes, carefully pull the skin of the peppers off, removing as much as possible. You can also remove the seeds, depending on how spicy you like things. Peel the garlic.
4Add the tomatillos, peppers, onions, garlic, cilantro. and chicken broth to a blender along with any juices from the pan. Blend until it reaches your desired consistency. Some people like a chunkier sauce and some prefer a smoother sauce.
5Stovetop: Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a Dutch oven or heavy pot. Add the chicken (or pork), season with salt and pepper, and brown for 2-3 on both sides. Add the sauce and bring to a simmer. For chicken, let simmer on low heat for 25-30 minutes until the chicken easily shreds with a fork. For pork, simmer for 2.5-3 hours until pork easily pulls apart.
6Slow Cooker: Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a Dutch oven or heavy pot. Add the chicken (or pork), season with salt and pepper, and brown for 2-3 on both sides. (You can skip this step but it adds more flavor if you sear the protein first.) Add to the slow cooker with the sauce. For chicken, cook on low for 4 hours. For pork, cook on low for 8 hours or until the pork is fork tender.
7Instant Pot: Use the instant pot saute setting. Add the chicken (or pork), season with salt and pepper, and brown for 2-3 on both sides. Add the chile verde salsa and cover. For chicken thighs, use the manual (Pressure Cooker) setting and cook for 8 minutes. Let naturally release for at least 2-3 minutes before using the steam valve. For pork, use the manual (Pressure Cooker) setting and cook for 45 minutes. Let naturally release for at least 2-3 minutes before using the steam valve.
When it comes to the heat in this recipe, it comes from using three different types of chile peppers that vary in strength and flavor. The poblano has the least amount of heat but adds a lot of flavor similar to a slightly spicy bell pepper.
The jalapeno is in the middle when it comes to spice and the serrano is the spiciest. You can vary the heat in the salsa by using different amounts of each pepper to find the right combination for you. You can also remove the seeds for less heat or leave them in for more.
Whenever making salsa, start slowly and taste along the way until it is as spicy as you like. Generally, I recommend making it slightly spicier than you want your final product since it will mellow out when cooked when it is cooked with protein.
If you have kids who don’t like spicy, make the salsa using just one seeded poblano pepper for flavor. Cook the protein in this mild salsa. Then puree the remaining peppers with a little chicken broth. Stir this spicy salsa into your dish individually so you can have a spicy version. I always make it this way and my toddler devours the milder chicken while I make mine super spicy.
The next decision when making Chile Verde is what kind of protein you would like to use. Traditionally Chile Verde recipes are made with pork but it is often made with dark meat chicken as well. Both options are delicious.
Normally I like to make it with chicken for a quick meal and I use pork when I will have more time since the pork takes much longer to cook. To keep things lighter, I like to use boneless skinless chicken thighs or a lean pork shoulder roast, but any protein would work.
There are various scenes from life that are characteristic of the place where you live.
When I lived in Milford, Mass… I well remember the local boys carrying the fishing poles to the local stream before school started. I remember the hot fresh bagels that were so great with butter and creme cheese. And I remember the ‘Northeasterner’s.
In Hattiesburg, Mississippi it was the deep fried cat fish and hush puppies. The swarms of cockroaches under the streetlights at night, and the lush moist air that was so very calm.
In Sydney, Australia, it was the delicious meat pies, and the lady that sold them at ten in the morning at the factory. I remember the funny little $2 gold color coins, the women with huge manes of hair, and prawns the size of a turkey.
In Zhuhai, China it was the morning walks with PP (my dog) along the beach front, the beautiful blue skies and flowering trees. And the bike ride that I took to the office.
Different places generate different experiences.
It is the experiences that we have that causes us to think things in ways that are unique to us.
Thus forming our own unique opinions.
Treasure your experiences, and generate new ones at every opportunity. Welcome them as they manifest in your life. Have adventures. Savor the experiences.
Unfortunately, that is a nontrivial possibility. The U.S. corporate elites and their servant government are not popular at home these days (according to Pew Research, only 20% trust the government today, while in the 1960’s it was as high as 80%). In Finland, for example, 80% trust their government.
The US is also no longer very popular externally. So, rather than continue losing clout at home and abroad, the last one being the power of hegemony, the U.S. elites may opt for yet another world war, and a nuclear one, to boot. I hope it doesn’t happen, but I wouldn’t put it past them.
Also, I read an opinion similar to mine above, in a Western mainstream article two or three years ago, and now things are that much worse for the US elites, with Russia’s apparently successful Special Operation in Ukraine, a (real) 8% inflation in the U.S., and a half-senile President.
“Compared to this raid, Pearl Harbor was a Sunday picnic.”
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9 November 1979.
It was a cold winter’s morning in Colorado when the alarms began to shriek at NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defence Command. With a Cold War cloud hanging over their heads, the analysts’ hearts instinctively sank when they witnessed the cause behind the alarm — 250 Soviet missiles hurtling towards the United States.
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Zbigniew Brzezinski, right, with Jimmy Carter.
At 3AM and within minutes of the alert, President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, is awoken by a call from NORAD to inform him of the imminent nuclear assault. Each second has suddenly become more valuable than gold, as he is told that he has as few as three minutes to inform President Jimmy Carter of the situation, as well as to get a decision from him.
Instead of doing so though, Brzezinski played cautiously by not immediately informing the president, telling the military assistant who’d called him that he would stand by for a further call to confirm the situation first. His wife sleeping beside him, he decided not to wake her up, convinced that everyone would be dead within half an hour anyway.
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A B-52,part of the Strategic Air Command.
He received a call back shortly later, and was informed the number of incoming missiles had jumped to 2,200 — this was a full-scale annihilation. Brzezinski was determined that the USA should strike back, and so requested confirmation of preparations for retaliation. They were passed on, and ten aircraft from the Strategic Air Command were readied to launch into the sky and begin their flight towards the Iron Curtain, primed to deliver an American brand of retribution.
As each second dragged on and with less than a minute from Brzezinski making the big call to the President, the one that would change the war from cold to searingly hot, he received a third call. He was informed that the other warning systems weren’t registering anything; radar and satellites showed no sign of any approaching missiles. It turned out to be a false alarm, the result of someone mistakenly loading a training simulation into one of the operational computers at NORAD’s HQ.
To think, a mere blip caused the planet to be but a single minute away from World War Three! The quote at the beginning belongs to a congressional investigator who spoke about the event years later, reinforcing just how close the world was to turning that simulation into reality.
I’ve had several such moments, but one in particular comes to mind.
I was fourteen, probably, maybe thirteen. I was doing something in town with my dad, I can’t remember quite what. He wandered off for a little while anyway so I started texting or going on twitter or some such thing.
A car pulled up, the guy in it was perhaps thirty. He called me over, and I approached the passanger side door. He was asking for directions which, in the relatively rural area I lived in at the time, was relatively common. He was asking for somewhere I hadn’t heard of, however, so I told him I really wasn’t sure. He asked about somewhere else that I had heard of, though didn’t know the exact location of. I told him the rough direction of it. He held his phone, and requested for me to walk around the other side of the car to help him figure it out.
I don’t know quite what it was. Looking back there were a few red flags, the fact he decided to ask me instead of finding an adult, the fact he didn’t just hold his phone towards where I was stood, the fact he was asking for directions but didn’t have a definite destination in mind. At the time I wasn’t really thinking about this, but the whole situation gave me a definite sense that… something didn’t feel right.
I told him I couldn’t help him, while taking a few steps away from his car. I said that if he wanted to wait a minute or two my dad would be back and would probably know. He said nevermind and drove off.
I didn’t hear about anything happening that could confirm or deny the validity of my apprehension, all I can say is that as he drove away I made a point to memorise his face and licence plate.
I think in certain situations it’s important to trust your instincts, especially when they’re warning you of danger. It’s better to be too cautious a hundred times than not cautious enough even once.
My family, Dad, Mum, my sister and I, were on holiday in the south of France in 1983. My sister fell ill and so we all went to the local pharmacy to get something to help get my sisters temperature down and help with the vomiting.
A quick aside: my mother went to an all girls grammar school and took German and French as well as some other topics. She always wanted to be a librarian and do she made sure she could read, write and talk in German, French and Latin.
And so, dear reader, back to the plot.
My dad attempted to talk to the pharmacist. With typical Gallic flair the pharmacist dismissed my dad, in French, and apparently added some less than savory comments about my Dad, us kids, my mum, her clothing, is not talking French etc.
I recall my mother getting redder and redder and more and more ready to explode. The pharmacist said a couple more words before the smoldering volcano of fury, anger and absolute motherly care and distress for her daughter exploded and, metaphorically destroyed the small village that sat at the foot of the volcano. This was the first time I ever saw my mother go absolutely ballistic at someone else. Me and my sister did the sensible thing and hid behind my dad. My dad just stood there and watched Mount St Helen erupt in a pharmacy in Hyeres in southern France.
The pharmacist stood no chance. He would get one half of a syllable out before the wrath of the Titans picked up a small temple and smashed him in the face. Eventually my mother stopped and said it was his turn to speak. Amazingly the pharmacist had several medications we could have to help my sister. No, no, please accept them with my thanks and blessings. No, Madam, there is no charge for your beautiful daughter or your exquisite self.
That’s the first time I saw my Mum be a bad ass in a foreign language. I have since seen my mother destroy other ignorant people who happen to make a serious error of judgement when her husband or children are ill or hurt.
Pork Sausage Loaf (Hungary)
2024 02 21 08 35
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
1 cup diced mushrooms
2 tablespoons butter
1 egg, beaten
1 pound fresh bulk pork sausage
2 cups dry bread crumbs
1 teaspoon paprika
Instructions
Melt butter in a skillet and add mushrooms. Sauté.
Combine sausage, mushrooms, egg and crumbs and shape into a loaf. Sprinkle with paprika. Place in a small roaster; cover.
Bake at 350 degrees F for 1/2 hour.
Uncover, return to oven, and bake 30 more minutes.
Yup my father sold his last car to a neighbor’s 17 year old daughter. The car was worth in the neighborhood of $10,000 and he sold it to her for $1,000. Why? Because the neighbor and his wife had been very helpful to him after my mother died and he knew and liked their three children. The three kids 17, 15, 12 had come over every week or so and had done chores for him, things he couldn’t do as he got older. cleaned gutters, trimmed trees, replaced high light bulbs, they refused to take any money saying they were just being neighbors. When he decided to give up his car he thought about it how their daughter would be starting college and needed a reliable car. He discussed it with her parents and the fact that they had been wonderful neighbors to him and that he wanted to give something back. He sold the car for way under market to her. He bought savings bonds for the two younger children with the $1,000. We were so proud of him. He taught us to be kind, generous and to be grateful.
Yes he absolutely knew what he was doing and we would have never dreamed of interfering. It was his car and his choice. When he died he left a very small estate including his home. We sold the home since neither of us lived within 1500 miles and we divided the money from his entire estate into fourths. On fourth to my brother. One fourth to the two children of my youngest brother. One fourth to me and one fourth to the kind neighbors who had been such good friends to him over the years.
My brother and I took our inheritance and donated it to a charity, our father would have approved, neither of us needed it and others did.
“I Got FIRED!” Women WEAPONIZED The ME2 Movement & Companies Are Saying NO, To Hiring Modern Women
If you spend 8 hours working for somebody else, take a couple hours after that to work for/on yourself.
A corporate office is not what you expect when you are in high school/college and most of the things you learn in college won’t worth a dime in your real world work environment anyways.
Your employer company is not YOUR company, so never take it for granted.
Never finish a work assignment sooner than the timeline given to you. No one gives a damn if you do it early, instead they will think your job is easy and their expectations from you will get higher.
It is okay to be late, miss a meeting, and say no to your superiors from time to time, in fact it will be worse if you never did any of those.
No matter how honest, dedicated, hardworking and talented you are, still there is a high chance you will never be the best employee of the month/year and you probably won’t get any promotions either.
Don’t be the guy who is there to take any task which others failed to complete.
You might be right, your opinion might be the best, but guess what? Sometimes nobody wants to hear the right thing and they won’t do it your way.
When you feel that you are way smarter and more talented than your boss, that is the moment you should consider changing your job.
If you actually want to grow and have your dream career/job then start your own business, spend all those energy and talent working for yourself instead of working for someone else all your life. You will grow much faster working a day for yourself than a month for somebody else.
I was on the metro escalator on my way up to the platform. In front of me was a couple – probably in their late twenties. The wife was wearing a sleeveless top and carrying a baby in her arms. She was kind of cute. Her husband stood a couple of steps in front of her.
Suddenly, I’ve no idea how it happened, but the girl lost her balance started falling backwards. She tried to fumble for the railing, now holding the child with just one hand – her body flailing wildly. The child was about to fall on the moving escalator.
Instinctively, I reached out and firmly grabbed both her (wife, not the child) arms, steadying her. Once I was sure she was safe, I immediately let go.
The entire thing must have lasted less than a nanosecond.
But as it happened, I registered a flash of intense fear jolting through my body. It wasn’t because the girl and her child were going to get hurt. Their safety had nothing to do with it. No! my fear was much more primal, originating somewhere deep inside my reptilian brain which knew that she was a female and I was a male – and my bare hands on her naked flesh – what that would mean in the eyes of the society, and how those standing around us might interpret it! Her husband, who was standing just a few steps ahead of us had no idea what had happened. A single shriek from the girl, and his animal brain would have gone berserk trying to defend what was rightfully its and eliminate the perceived threat at any cost.
My life could have been destroyed.
In that single nanosecond, my brain witnessed a fierce battle between two base instincts – one to help a fellow human being and the other to be afraid since that human being happened to be a female. Society had only taught me well enough the consequences such a situation might spiral into.
I was just lucky that that day, the first instinct had prevailed.
Had the second one kicked in first, a two year old child would have, at best, gotten gravely injured, or at worst, lost his life.
This is what happened with one guy in one incident.
Integrate that over four billion men on this planet and a million such situations that arise in the lifetimes, and you’ll realize what our world has come to.
The day my father died. I know that’s a big one for most people, but it was so much more for me. I was 40 and had had a contentious or non-existent relationship with him for 30 years due to the lies my mother told me about him. According to her, he was a sociopath. He lied, cheated and stole money from his own children. I believed it all as a ten-year-old.
I contacted my father several months before his death because I found out about my mother’s lies. I needed to apologize to him. My stepmother said she would arrange a meeting as soon as they returned from vacation. When they finally returned, he had already been diagnosed with inoperable, incurable cancer, the kind that Jimmy Buffet had.
Dad only lived four more months and I only had one opportunity to say what I needed to say to him. He hadn’t known how pervasive the brainwashing had been or what had been said. It helped to talk, but it couldn’t heal 30 years of mutual wounding. My father died not loving me, and the time lost devastated me. It still does 30 years later.
Does it occur to you it could be the U.S. that could be imprisoned? If the U.S. ends up spending tons of money meaninglessly and without a return and yet it cannot stop spending billions to continuously do shit that don’t pay it is the U.S. that is trapped. China don’t gives a shit it simply just let the US waste all its own money bribing nations who refuse to do shit, just to pretend to the world that it has allies.
For us in Asia. Even Japan, Korea, Phillipines and India have no wish to do shit as it knows the repercussions and it has been China’s neighbour for some 5000 years! It may have no choice but to barked some shit on China to get the U.S. off its back. But sure won’t risk it to do more than that. So the U.S. having a pay billions get some pretend shit is outright silly and wasteful.
So who is trapped? China can and will do what it wants. And the U.S. has to stay and waste a ton of resources to get pretentious shit that China gives a damn. To me the U.S. is trapped in its own stupidity!
The mistake women make with faithful men…
Russian Space Nukes and Navalny’s Death… U.S. Psyops Go Ballistic
Two “breaking news” items this week provided a timely opportunity for the United States and its media-intelligence apparatus to regain control of the narrative.
The claims about Russian space-based nuclear weapons unraveled to become a joke. Fortunately, the death of Western-sponsored dissident Alexei Navalny then occurred to enable Western media to go into a frenzy of anti-Russia headlines.
First up was the scaremongering story about Russia allegedly developing a space-based nuclear weapon. Initially, it was dramatically trailed as posing a serious national security threat to the United States. Despite the sensational reporting, the story quickly became a laughingstock. Even some U.S. lawmakers dismissed it as “bullshit” and a blatant attempt by the Biden White House and intelligence agencies to push Congress into passing a new mega military aid bill for Ukraine worth $61 billion.
We’ll get to the Navalny story in a moment. But let’s just first parse the orchestration of the alleged Russian space nukes.
The drama began on Wednesday when Mike Turner, the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee (a dodgy source if ever there was one), made public appeals to President Joe Biden to declassify intelligence on “a serious threat to national security”. Turner is a Republican member of the House of Representatives but he is a close ally of the Democrat White House in terms of keenly supporting military aid to Ukraine. The latest bill passed the upper chamber of the U.S. Senate the day before, February 13, but it is unlikely to be approved by the House where many Republican lawmakers are staunchly opposed to it.
Accompanying the “concerns” of the intel committee chairman Turner, media outlets then vented anonymous US intelligence sources “revealing” that the national security threat was from Russian nuclear weapons allegedly under development for destroying American communication satellites in space. The White House then “confirmed” the intel the next day, February 15. It was a flagrant put-up job. But the Biden administration sought to tamp down any public panic by saying that the threat was not imminent and the alleged Russian satellite-killing weapon had not been deployed in orbit, nor would there be any danger to Earth. (So, what was all the fuss about?)
Ironically, derisive comments from incredulous U.S. lawmakers were also echoed by the Kremlin. The latter’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov made a similar assessment that the Biden administration was playing tricks to push through the military funding package for Ukraine.
That bill has been delayed since the end of last year. The Biden administration has been cajoling Congress for months to vote it through. After the Senate finally passed the bill this week, President Biden put pressure on the House, saying that “history is watching you”. The bill has been exalted as having existential importance in defeating “Russian aggression” in Ukraine. The U.S. media have claimed (preposterously) that if the military aid is not supplied then Ukraine’s defeat could result in American troops being deployed to prevent Russian rampaging across Europe.
The American public, as with the European public, has become increasingly skeptical about the relentless funneling of taxpayer funds and weapons to Ukraine. Many citizens in the West – a majority, according to polls – have become critical of fueling a bloody war for the dubious cause of “defending democracy” in a regime dominated by NeoNazis. At a time of deep social and economic hardship in the U.S. and Europe, the Western public is rightly disdainful of hundreds of billions of dollars and euros being wasted on death and destruction and also being siphoned off by a corrupt cabal in Kiev.
The $61 billion in military aid to Ukraine is just the latest tranche that Washington is seeking to throw at the black hole of its proxy war against Russia – a war that is really all about defeating Russia as a geopolitical obstacle to U.S. hegemony. Another driver is the massive profits that taxpayers are subsidizing the military-industrial complex at the rotten heart of Western capitalism.
There’s a huge lot at stake with the failure of the US/NATO proxy war in Ukraine. The Kiev regime is facing a collapse in the face of a superior Russian military.
That’s why the passing of the latest bill by Congress has taken on such an imperative importance – for the warmongers.
To get this bill into law, the U.S. deep state rulers and the pliant Biden White House along with the media-intelligence establishment sought to demonize Russia with a desperate story about alleged nuclear weapons for outer space. Oh, those dastardly Ruskies!
But as noted above the space nukes scar-story turned into farce. It was too obvious that the public was being manipulated, or gaslighted as one US lawmaker put it. When a psyops fails, the blowback is dangerous for the authors because of the damaging revelation and contempt it engenders. The Biden administration was open to ridicule.
There are several telltale signs that the story was total hogwash from the outset. Bruce Gagnon, U.S.-based coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, said the claims are absurd. In an email exchange with the Strategic Culture Foundation for this editorial, Gagnon said Russia has already developed formidable non-nuclear kinetic weapons to destroy satellites if it wanted to. He also remarked that the United States possesses anti-satellite weapons (ASATs).
In other words, there is no need for Russia to develop a risky nuclear weapon to knock out satellites. The nuclear details flagged up in US media this week are a gratuitous embellishment designed to alarm the public and to demonize Russia as an evil rogue state.
Russia is a co-signatory to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty as are the United States, China, and over 120 other nations.
Bruce Gagnon commented: “I believe the Russians have a long history of generally honoring treaties while the U.S. does not. And remember that Russia and China every year for at least the last 20-30 years go to the UN and introduce a new treaty called Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) to ban all weapons that fall outside of the 1967 treaty. The U.S. always refuses, saying there is no need for a new treaty.”
Apart from the paramount issue of getting additional funding for the proxy war in Ukraine, another timing issue is the aftermath of the blockbuster interview of Russian President Vladimir Putin by American journalist Tucker Carlson. Since the interview was aired last Thursday, February 8, it has broken all records for public audiences around the world. It has garnered over 300 million views, and counting.
The one-on-one interview was seen as a breakthrough world exclusive, an informative platform for Putin to comprehensively give Russia’s point of view on the whole Ukraine conflict, and more. The Russian leader was seen by American and European audiences as reasonable, intelligent, articulate, and convincing. The Western propaganda caricature of Putin was dispelled and for a rare moment, the Western public was persuasively informed of the bigger causes of the conflict in Ukraine. That is, how the U.S.-led NATO axis had instigated the war by fomenting an anti-Russian regime dominated by NeoNazis. The impact of the interview dealt a devastating blow to the Western narrative of “Russian aggression” and “evil Putin”.
Plausibly, the U.S. warmongering establishment was incensed by this exposé.
Hence, to wrest back control of the narrative and corral the Western public, the space-based nukes scare-story was unleashed. Unfortunately, that psyop attempt failed to gain traction and indeed was fast descending into a farce.
Next up, luckily, came the news of Navalny’s death. Western media immediately blared headlines and comments that he had been killed by the “Putin regime”.
Navalny was serving 19 years in prison on multiple corruption convictions. He died Friday apparently from a blood clot. The 47-year-old was a broken and forgotten figure facing a futile existence, having been used and abandoned by Western intelligence handlers as a cut-out dissident figure. His future looked bleak. Who knows at this stage what caused his death? He was last seen by his lawyer during a prison meeting this week two days before his passing. Did his lawyer pass something to Navalny? Was the washed-up Western asset offered a deal for his family’s benefit if he agreed to one last, ultimate psyop on behalf of Western handlers? Taking his own life? His death in prison has certainly provided the Western media with a bonanza opportunity to change the narrative and precipitate an avalanche of Russophobia, just as required.
As for the far-fetched Russian space nukes and the death of Navalny, the criminologist’s question of Who Gains? and the factor of timing are often reliable indicators.
My friend’s cousin disappeared, and it was an interesting lesson in media bias.
She didn’t come home one day. They found her necklace, broken, next to her car, in a nearby park. Her photo was in all the local newspapers: a cute smiling blonde girl in her high school softball uniform, well liked and a good student. Her family held press conferences pleading for whoever took her to let her go.
A few weeks later, she did return. But she had not been kidnapped – it had been staged. She had actually run off with her boyfriend against her parents’ wishes. The photo of the cute blonde girl was replaced by a photo of her with dyed black hair, dark goth clothing and a look of defiance. The papers began reporting that the well liked good student had been caught shoplifting and was in trouble at school. She was eventually sentenced to community service for faking the crime.
This was the same person. When they wanted to make her look innocent, she looked innocent. When they wanted to make her look guilty, she looked guilty. Think about that next time you read the news.
Big Picture Conflict: Pepe Escobar & Global Times Observations
Karl Sanchez
The Two-year anniversary of Russia’s SMO and the Ten-year anniversary of the overt beginning of the Outlaw US Empire’s conflict with Russia with the Ukraine Coup are upon us as well as the related conflict to free Palestine from Zionist/West Genocide—both operations initially were planned as Nazi-like Plan Ost Genocidal ethnic cleansing so the lands “freed” could then be exploited by Western Capital. But in both cases, the targets of oppression, dispossession and death fought back, although in both cases resistance was always present with the assaulted able to gain formidable allies. Both conflicts have revealed the status of the protagonists within the larger Global Conflict pitting the Global majority against the Outlaw US Empire and its vassals, perhaps most starkly revealing the Fence Sitters trying to play both sides for their own pecuniary gain as is the case most certainly with Turkey.
The recently completed G-20 Foreign Ministers Summit in Rio de Janeiro helped to further define the lines/sides as the raw statements from Lavrov provided to readers who read the reports about his actions. To help deepen understanding about our Global Conflict, the latest two essays by Pepe Escobar and Global Times G-20 report are presented below. The political cartoon at the header is from Global Times and is almost accurate for our purposes as the pot needs to include the Zionists. And Palestine is where we’ll begin with Pepe’s “The Axis of Asymmetry takes on the ‘rules-based order:’”
The Axis of Asymmetry is in full swing. These are the state and non-state actors employing asymmetrical moves on the global chessboard to sideline the US-led western rules-based order. And its vanguard is the Yemeni resistance movement Ansarallah.
Ansarallah is absolutely relentless. They have downeda $30 million MQ-9 Reaper drone with just a $10k indigenous missile.
They are the first in the Global South ever to use anti-ship ballistic missiles against Israel-bound and/or -protecting commercial and US Navy ships.
For all practical purposes, Ansarallah is at war with no less than the US Navy.
Ansarallah has captured one of the US Navy’s ultra-sophisticated autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV), the $1.3 million Remus 600, a torpedo-shaped underwater drone able to carry a massive payload of sensors.
Next stop: reverse engineering in Iran? The Global South eagerly awaits, ready to pay in currencies bypassing the US dollar.
All of the above – a maritime 21st-century remix of the Ho Chi Minh trail during the Vietnam War – spells out that the Hegemon may not even qualify as a paper tiger, but rather as a paper leech.
Lula tells it as the Global South sees it
Into the Big Picture – linked to the relentless ongoing genocide perpetrated by Israel in Gaza – steps a true leader of the Global South, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Lula spoke in the name of Brazil, Latin America, Africa, BRICS 10, and the overwhelming majority of the Global South when he cut to the chase and defined the Gaza tragedy for what it is: a genocide. No wonder the Zionist tentacles across the Global North – plus its Global South vassals – went bonkers.
The genocidals in Tel Aviv declared Lula as persona non grata in Israel. Yet Lula did not assassinate 29,000+ Palestinians – the overwhelming majority of whom were women and children.
History will be unforgiving: it’s the genocidals that will eventually be judged as personae non grata to all of humanity.
What Lula said represented BRICS 10 in action: this was obviously cleared before with Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, and, of course, the African Union. Lula spoke in Addis Ababa, and Ethiopia is now a BRICS 10 member.
The Brazilian president was extremely smart in timing his Gaza fact-check to be on the table during the G20 meeting of Foreign Ministers in Rio. Way beyond BRICS 10, what’s happening in Gaza is a consensus among the non-Western G20 partners – who are actually a majority. No one, though, should expect any serious follow-up inside a divided G20. The heart of the matter remains in the facts on the ground.
Yemen’s fight for “our people” in Gaza is a matter of humanistic, moral, and religious solidarity – these are foundational tenets of the rising eastern “civilizational” powers, both domestically and in international affairs. This convergence of principles has now created a direct link – extrapolating to the moral and spiritual spheres – between the Axis of Resistance in West Asia and the Slavic Axis of Resistance in Donbass.
Extreme attention should be paid to the timescale. The Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) forces and Russia have spent two hard-fought years in Novorossiya just to arrive at the stage where it becomes clear – based on the battlefield and cumulative facts on the ground – that “negotiations” mean only the terms of Kiev’s surrender.
In contrast, the job of the Axis of Resistance in West Asia has not even started. It’s fair to argue that its strength and full sovereign involvement have not been deployed yet (think Hezbollah and Iran).
Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, with his proverbial subtlety, has hinted there’s, in fact, nothing to negotiate on Palestine. And if there would be a return to any borders, these would be the 1948 borders. The Axis of Resistance understands that the whole Zionist Project is unlawful and immoral. But the question remains how to throw it, in practice, into the dustbin of History?
Possible – avowedly optimistic – scenarios ahead would include Hezbollah taking possession of the Galilee as a step toward the eventual retaking of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Yet the fact remains that even a united Palestine does not have the military capability to reconquer stolen Palestinian lands.
So the questions posed by the overwhelming majority of the Global South that stands with Lula may be: Who else, apart from Ansarallah, Hezbollah, Hashd al-Shaabi, will join the Axis of Asymmetry in the fight for Palestine? Who would be willing to come to the Holy Land and die? (After all, in Donbass, it’s only Russians and Russophones who are dying for historically Russian lands) [Not entirely 100% correct, but close].
And that brings us to the way towards the endgame: only a West Asian Special Military Operation (SMO), to the bitter end, will settle the Palestinian tragedy. A translation of what happens across the Slavic Axis of Resistance: “Those who refuse to negotiate with Lavrov, deal with Shoigu.”
The menu, the table, and the guests
That out-of-his-depth closet neocon, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, let the cat out of the bag when he actually defined his much cherished “rules-based international order”: “If you’re not on the table, you are on the menu.”
Following his own hegemonic logic, it’s clear that Russia and the US/NATO are on the table while Ukraine is on the menu. What about the Red Sea? The Houthis defending Palestine against US–UK–Israel are clearly on the table, while Western vassals supporting Israel in a maritime way are clearly on the menu.
And that’s the problem: the Hegemon – or, in Chinese scholarly terminology, “the crusaders” – have lost the power to place the name cards on the table. The main reason for this authority collapse is the build-up of serious international meetings sponsored by the Russia–China strategic partnership during the past two years since the start of the SMO. It’s all about sequential planning, with long-term targets clearly outlined.
Only civilizational states can do that – not plutocratic neoliberal casinos.
Negotiating with the Hegemon is impossible because the Hegemon itself prevents negotiations (see the serial blocking of ceasefire resolutions at the UN). Additionally, the Hegemon excels in instrumentalizing its client elites across the Global South via threats or kompromat: see the hysterical reaction of Brazilian mainstream media to Lula’s verdict on Gaza.
What Russia is showing the Global South, two years after the start of the SMO, is that the only path to teach a lesson to the Hegemon has to be kinetic, or “military-technical.”
The problem is no nation-state can compare to nuclear/hypersonic/military superpower Russia, in which 7.5 percent of the government’s budget is dedicated to military production. Russia is and will remain on a permanent war footing until Hegemon’s elites come to their senses – and that may never happen.
Meanwhile, West Asia’s Axis of Resistance is watching and learning, day after day. It’s always crucial to keep in mind that for all the resistance movements across the Global South – and that also includes, for instance, West Africans against French neo-colonialism – the geopolitical fault lines could not be starker.
It’s a matter of the collective West versus Islam; the collective West versus Russia; and sooner rather than later, a substantial part of the West, even reluctantly, versus China.
The fact is we are already immersed in a World War that is both existential and civilizational. As we stand at the crossroads, there is a bifurcation: either escalation towards overt “kinetic military action,” or a multiplication of Hybrid Wars across several latitudes.
So it’s up to the Axis of Asymmetry, cool, calm, and collected, to forge the underground corridors, passages, and trails capable of undermining and subverting the US-led, unipolar, rules-based international order. [Bolded italics my emphasis]
Pessimistic or realistic? Obviously, the situation is already kinetic. But two very important factors have been proven over the past two years: NATO is powerless to defeat Russia and the USN can be defeated by the new methods of warfare. Pepe and I agree that the major forcing to solve Palestine will need to come from outside, which means Russia or China or perhaps an international coalition sans Western nations. The longer Palestine is subjected to Zionist Genocide, the more the world’s people will learn of its history and the utter crime related to the creation of Occupied Palestine. And now for the second Pepe Escobar essay, “Two Years After the Start of the SMO, the West is Totally Paralyzed:”
Exactly two years ago this Saturday, on February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin announced the launching – and described the objectives – of a Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine. That was the inevitable follow-up to what happened three days before, on February 21 – exactly 8 years after Maidan 2014 in Kiev – when Putin officially recognized the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.
During this – pregnant with meaning – short space of only three days, everyone expected that the Russian Armed Forces would intervene, militarily, to end the massive bombing and shelling that had been going on for three weeks across the frontline – which even forced the Kremlin to evacuate populations at risk to Russia. Russian intel had conclusive proof that the NATO-backed Kiev forces were ready to execute an ethnic cleansing of Russophone Donbass.
February 24, 2022 was the day that changed 21st century geopolitics forever, in several complex ways. Above all, it marked the beginning of a vicious, all-out confrontation, “military-technical” as the Russians call it, between the Empire of Chaos, Lies and Plunder, its easily pliable NATOstan vassals, and Russia – with Ukraine as the battleground.
There is hardly any question Putin had calculated, before and during these three fateful days, that his decisions would unleash the unbounded fury of the collective West – complete with a tsunami of sanctions.
Ay, there’s the rub; it’s all about Sovereignty. And a true sovereign power simply cannot live under permanent threats. It’s even feasible that Putin had wanted (italics mine) Russia to get sanctioned to death. After all, Russia is so naturally wealthy that without a serious challenge from abroad, the temptation is enormous to live off its rents while importing what it could easily produce.
Exceptionalists always gloated that Russia is “a gas station with nuclear weapons”. That’s ridiculous. Oil and gas, in Russia, account for roughly 15% of GDP, 30% of the government budget, and 45% of exports. Oil and gas add power to the Russian economy – not a drag. Putin shaking Russia’s complacency generated a gas station producing everything it needs, complete with unrivalled nuclear and hypersonic weapons. Beat that.
Ukraine has “never been less than a nation”
Xavier Moreau is a French politico-strategic analyst based in Russia for 24 years now. Graduated from the prestigious Saint-Cyr military academy and with a Sorbonne diploma, he hosts two shows on RT France.
His latest book, Ukraine: Pourquoi La Russie a Gagné (“Ukraine: Why Russia has Won”), just out, is an essential manual for European audiences on the realities of the war, not those childish fantasies concocted across the NATOstan sphere by instant “experts” with less than zero combined arms military experience.
Moreau makes it very clear what every impartial, realist analyst was aware of from the beginning: the devastating Russian military superiority, which would condition the endgame. The problem, still, is how this endgame – “demilitarization” and “denazification” of Ukraine, as established by Moscow – will be achieved.
What is already clear is that “demilitarization”, of Ukraine and NATO, is a howling success that no new wunderwaffen – like F-16s – will be able to change.
Moreau perfectly understands how Ukraine, nearly 10 years after Maidan, is not a nation; “and has never been less than a nation”. It’s a territory where populations that everything separates are jumbled up. Moreover, it has been a – “grotesque” – failed state ever since its independence. Moreau spends several highly entertaining pages going through the corruption grotesquerie in Ukraine, under a regime that “gets its ideological references simultaneously via admirers of Stepan Bandera and Lady Gaga.”
None of the above, of course, is reported by oligarch-controlled European mainstream media.
Watch out for Deng Xiao Putin
The book offers an extremely helpful analysis of those deranged Polish elites who bear “a heavy responsibility in the strategic catastrophe that awaits Washington and Brussels in Ukraine”. The Poles actually believed that Russia would crumble from the inside, complete with a color revolution against Putin. That barely qualifies as Brzezinski on crack.
Moreau shows how 2022 was the year when NATOstan, especially the Anglo-Saxons – historically racist Russophobes – were self-convinced thar Russia would fold because it is a “poor power”. Obviously, none of these luminaries understood how Putin strengthened the Russian economy very much like Deng Xiaoping on the Chinese economy. This “self-intoxication”, as Moreau qualifies it, did wonders for the Kremlin.
By now it’s clear even for the deaf, dumb, and blind that the destruction of the European economy has been a massive tactic, historic victory for the Hegemon – as much as the blitzkrieg against the Russian economy has been an abysmal failure.
All of the above brings us to the meeting of G20 Foreign Ministers this week in Rio. That was not exactly a breakthrough. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made it very clear that the collective West at the G20 tried by all means to “Ukrainize” the agenda – with less than zero success. They were outnumbered and counterpunched by BRICS and Global South members.
At his press conference, Lavrov could not be more stark on the prospects of the war of the collective West against Russia. These are the highlights:
Western countries categorically do not want serious dialogue on Ukraine.
There were no serious proposals from the United States to begin contacts with the Russian Federation on strategic stability; trust cannot be restored now while Russia is declared an enemy.
There were no contacts on the sidelines of the G20 with either Blinken or the British Foreign Secretary.
The Russian Federation will respond to new Western sanctions with practical actions that relate to the self-sufficient development of the Russian economy.
If Europe tries to restore ties with the Russian Federation, making it dependent on their whims, then such contacts are not needed.
In a nutshell – diplomatically: you are irrelevant, and we don’t care.
That was complementing Lavrov’s intervention during the summit, which defined once again a clear, auspicious path towards multipolarity. Here are the highlights:
The forming of a fair multipolar world order without a definite center and periphery has become much more intensive in the past few years. Asian, African and Latin American countries are becoming important parts of the global economy. Not infrequently, they are setting the tone and the dynamics.
Many Western economies, especially in Europe, are actually stagnating against this background. These statistics are from Western-supervised institutions – the IMF, the World Bank and the OECD.
These institutions are becoming relics from the past. Western domination is already affecting their ability to meet the requirements of the times. Meanwhile, it is perfectly obvious today that the current problems of humanity can only be resolved through a concerted effort and with due consideration for the interests of the Global South and, generally, all global economic realities.
Institutions like the IMF, the World Bank, the EBRD, and the EIB are prioritizing Kiev’s military and other needs. The West allocated over $250 billion to tide over its underling thus creating funding shortages in other parts of the world. Ukraine is taking up the bulk of the funds, relegating Africa and other regions of the Global South to rationing.
Countries that have discredited themselves by using unlawful acts ranging from unilateral sanctions and the seizure of sovereign assets and private property to blockades, embargoes, and discrimination against economic operators based on nationality to settle scores with their geopolitical opponents cannot be considered guarantors of financial stability.
Without a doubt, new institutions that focus on consensus and mutual benefit are needed to democratize the global economic governance system. Today, we are seeing positive dynamics for strengthening various alliances, including BRICS, the SCO, ASEAN, the African Union, LAS, CELAC, and the EAEU.
This year, Russia chairs BRICS, which saw several new members join it. We will do our best to reinforce the potential of this association and its ties with the G20.
Considering that 6 out of 15 UN Security Council members represent the Western bloc, we will support the expansion of this body solely through the accession of countries from Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Call it the real state of things, geopolitically, two years after the start of the SMO. [Bolded italics my emphasis]
The G-20 timing also coincided with the ICJ’s sessions about Palestine and the increasing number of cases being filed against the Zionists and their abettors. The West’s stance was specifically called out by Lavrov who added it to the evidentiary trail of previous criminal acts. The Outlaw US Empire and the West generally are parasites who feed on host nations in what are clearly Neocolonial types of arrangements. Now the Empire is leeching off the EU and enforcing its blood-sucking via NATO. Trump doesn’t want to disband NATO; he wants to increase the intensity of its blood-sucking just as he did before. Now it’s: Pay up your 2% of GDP or we’ll sick the Russians on you, or rather won’t protect you from the Russians. Putin has said Europeans must rescue themselves as Russia has no intent on going beyond Ukraine as Russia already has most everything it needs. So, now we have Global Times whose experts opine that the SMO “may become ‘a war without winners.’” We’ll see why in “US escalates sanctions, fans fire as Ukraine crisis enters 3rd year:”
The US joined the EU and UK in announcing a new round of sanctions against Russia, ahead of the two-year anniversary of the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine that started in February 2022. But at the same time, Russia is seemingly gaining the upper hand on the battlefield with its latest victory in capturing Avdiivka, a critical town in eastern Ukraine.
Analysts said considering the previous sanctions were far from reaching expectations, and the US and West are not prepared to compromise with Russia on the conflict in 2024, the stalemate may become a large probability, and a cease-fire is still far from sight.
At a time when the security environment and economy of the entire world are being seriously affected, the US, whether it is from holding Europe hostage to promote bloc confrontation or from selling gas and arms to Europe, seems to be benefiting the most. However, experts said that if the Russia-Ukraine conflict continues for a long time, it will be a war without winners, and China will continue its efforts in promoting peace talks and a cease-fire as early as possible.
Stalemate to continue
US President Joe Biden on Friday announced Washington would issue more than 500 new sanctions targeting Russia for the ongoing war with Ukraine and for the death of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
The US will also impose new export restrictions on nearly 100 entities for providing support to Russia and take action to further reduce Russia’s energy revenues, Biden said in a statement.
The US latest sanctions came on the heels of moves by its allies. The UK on Thursday announced more than 50 further sanctions against Russia, targeting individuals and businesses supporting Moscow’s “war effort.” On Wednesday, the EU also approved its 13th package of sanctions against Russia, banning nearly 200 related individuals and entities which it claimed as being linked to Moscow’s operation, including companies from China and India. The sanction was adopted on Friday.
However, experts found that sanctions from the US and West have failed to have any substantial impact on Russia. Meanwhile, Moscow was also “not nearly as isolated as US officials had hoped,” as Russia’s inherent strength, rooted in vast supplies of oil and natural gas, “has powered a financial and political resilience,” according to a New York Times report. [Which is BS as Escobar reported above.]
Western sanctions on Russia did put short-term pressure on the Russian economy, but it soon adjusted policy and resumed growth, Zhang Hong, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Russian, Eastern European and Central Asian Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Friday.
The sanctions are a sign of Western political correctness, but they have fallen far short of their intended goals, Zhang said, adding that rounds of sanctions have not changed Russia’s position in the Ukraine crisis or caused major economic difficulties for Russia.
“In a way, it was a failure,” said the expert.
According to the expert, compared with the previous measures, the recent ones have focused more on indirect sanctions, by restricting Russia’s trade and financial contacts with other countries, narrowing Russia’s external economic activity.
The sanctions also come at a time when Russia is gaining the upper hand on the battlefield, capturing Ukraine’s eastern city of Avdiivka last week. Ukraine faces a shortage of ammunition and insufficient troops, according to media reports.
Ahead of the crisis anniversary, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday that Russia will have to continue fighting Ukraine until it takes the coastal city of Odessa and Ukraine’s capital Kiev, according to RT.
Although some observers, including former CIA director and secretary of Defense Robert Gates, told US media that he believed Russia has “regained the momentum” and “has broken the stalemate,” Chinese experts said the current seesaw battle may continue in 2024.
Medvedev’s remark shows Russia’s confidence in continuing its “special operation,” Zhang said, “What Moscow seeks is to maximize its security interests within the scope of controllable risks.“
However, the latest sanctions show the US and the West are not prepared to compromise with Russia, Zhang noted, adding that although Ukraine has recently been passive on the battlefield, it’s unlikely to suffer a rout. [Avdeevka ws a rout.] On February 1, EU leaders approved the extension of 50 billion Euros ($54 billion) in aid to Ukraine from 2024 to 2027. “It shows that currently the West is not prepared to abandon Ukraine,” Zhang said.
Experts also noted that in the long run, the situation in the battlefield largely depends on US factors, whether it can overcome domestic partisan strife on aiding Kiev, and whether US policies will be adjusted sharply after a possible Trump return.
In 2024, the continuation of stalemate and attrition may become a high probability on the battlefield in Ukraine, Li Haidong, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times on Friday.
The conflict will continue, and there is no end in sight, at least for now, Li added.
War without winners
Given that Chinese companies were listed among the latest British and EU sanctions against Russia, on Thursday, the Chinese Embassy in the UK expressed strong opposition, stressing that China has always held an objective and just position on the Ukraine crisis.
Ahead of the anniversary, some Western media expressed misgivings over China’s position. VOA accused China of not pressuring Russia to “stop the aggression,” while some German media said the sanctions pushed Russia into the arms of China, making it “the biggest winner” of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
The West is trying to pressure China to take sides through public opinion, but as a major power, China will not let this noise affect its neutral position, Li said.
During a meeting with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on February 17, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that China has stayed committed to promoting peace talks on the Ukraine issue and will not give up as long as there is a glimmer of hope. China refrains from adding fuel to the fire or taking advantage of the situation, and refrains from selling lethal weapons to conflict areas or parties, Wang said.
Sanctions and weapons aid have not changed Russia’s position, but have prolonged the conflict and extended the damage to Ukraine. In order to end the losses in Ukraine as soon as possible, there must be an early cease-fire and peace talks, Zhang said.
Due to the conflict, all major economies, including China, have been impacted, both in terms of security environment and economy, and it has also had a negative impact on China-EU relations and China-US relations, Zhang said.
So far, the US is the biggest beneficiary, analysts said. US liquefied natural gas has entered the EU market and now takes up a large share. Through the export of weapons, US military manufacturers are making huge amounts of money. At the same time, the Russia-Ukraine conflict also further strengthens US control over Europe, prompting the return of the influence of its bloc politics.
However, overall and in the long run, the conflict will be a war without winners, with only tragedy and disaster, analysts said.
If the goal of the US is to maximize the weakening of Russia by completely depleting Ukraine, even if the goal is achieved, Russia, the US and Europe will most likely fall into a deeper strategic confrontation in the future, Li said.
If the US and the West hope to wait until Ukraine is almost exhausted before directly engaging Russia on the battlefield, then they are playing with fire, said Li, “to defeat a nuclear power on the battlefield is likely to lead to nuclear war and World War III. If that happens, Russia, Ukraine are the losers, the US, Europe are losers, global security will be at stake, and the end will be disaster and tragedy for humankind.” [Emphasis mine]
IMO, it’s odd that Li doesn’t think Ukraine isn’t yet “exhausted” and the loser ever since the conflict began in 2014. That the experts consulted think the conflict is now a “stalemate” means they aren’t paying attention to what’s happening and have ignored Russia’s highly successful strategy of attrition. Again, the notion that “the US … seems to be benefiting the most” or “is the biggest beneficiary,” is chimeric with the seems being an incorrect assumption when reality within the Outlaw US Empire is considered—no tangible gains have accrued to US citizens aside from a very small group of elites. Indeed, the US economy is polarized as the real economy shrinks and the parasite economy expands. The complexity of the sanctions and collusion in their make-up and application by the Empire and its vassals tells us that they were not made for Nalvalny. Indeed, his murder was likely induced by the West to coincide with three events: SMO anniversary, Munich Security Conference, and Putin/Carlson Interview, since his wife/widow was previously invited and showed no shock or grief and all BigLie Media outlets had synchronized copy/paste “news” items immediately upon word of his death. Over the last 24 years of similar happenings, those with active minds can see through the crap. Are the Chinese being honest when they write, “However, overall and in the long run, the conflict will be a war without winners, with only tragedy and disaster,” or are they writing that way to appease the West so it will not target China with further sanctions? Most credible analysts have China next on the menu after Russia, which is precisely what the Outlaw US Empire’s “security” and “defense” documents and policies say matter-of-factly.
Russia’s proving its SMO isn’t mired in a stalemate as it continues to push Westward along the FEBA. Medvedev has issued serious goals as statements of policy. The need to deNazify not only Ukraine but Europe’s been voiced by both Putin, Lavrov, Medvedev, Zakharova, Patrushev, and other top Russian officials. Russia has its Home Front in fine form with very little dissent to be seen or heard. The situation in Ukraine and the West is almost the exact opposite as it’s embroiled in the Gaza Genocide too that has vastly amplified dissent. Plus, the Neoliberal economies are functioning as planned—taking from the poor and giving to the already rich. Dr, Hudson recently provided some anecdotal evidence of that, “New School University race to the bottom,” which ought to be compared with my “Creating a Network of Modern University Campuses” report about two weeks ago. And as my reports show, Russia’s economy is booming as is its trade, while it’s ready to vastly widen the non-Western payments and settlements system so sanctions will have nothing to impede.
Some time ago a European politician made the analogy of Ukraine being a drowning person capable of drowning its rescuers. That man was insightful when compared with most European and US politicos. The longer the West continues to lie about the actual reasons for the SMO and what group started it, the harder it’s going to be when the time arrives for whatever remains of Ukraine to capitulate. The state, which has always been artificial as Putin told the world again in his talk with Tucker Carlson, will likely disappear into the ether from which it was conjured. And all those loans and “investments” will translate into 100% loses for their providers. And if the West attempts to steal Russia’s illegally frozen assets, then it’s going to suffer an even greater loss in the end as extinguishing Ukraine is precisely what will happen.
“What’s Coming Is WORSE Than A Recession” — Ray Dalio’s Last WARNING
I trashed a child in front of his parents while watching the movie “The Jungle Book” and I am proud of what I did to him.
April 14,
Navratri puja over, so I took my brother to watch a movie as my birthday treat which was on 12th.
Housefull.
This child was 27 years old sitting one seat to my left. And right beside me was a beautiful lady in her 60’s, followed by this boy and his father.
During the intermission, the boy ordered two cups of American corn and sat back. Then after a few minutes, the INOX guy came and handed it over to the boy.
Two minutes later, the lady unintentionally spilled the corn.
The boy started yelling at his mom, “koto taka legechy jaano ?? kheyecho aiekhany ??”
Translation: “Do you know how much that cost? Have you ever eaten here??”
And then comes the sickening part: he hit his mother’s legs pretty hard, simply because she had accidentally spilled the cup of American corn.
Seeing all this made me livid. And just when I thought he wouldn’t repeat this deplorable act, he hit his mom again.
His mom was extremely embarrased and kept her head down.
After hitting his mom twice, I didn’t hold myself back. I hit his cup of corn and spilled all of it on the floor. He stood up and confronted me; I landed a punch on his face as hard as I could.
To ensure he stayed put and didn’t retaliate, I landed two more. By then all the people around me (including my brother) got up on their feet and were ready to stop me in case I was going to smack him again.
It was chaos all around, and the security intervened and escorted both of us out.
Once outside and no more in the darkness, I saw that the guy really needed medical assistance after what I had to him. His nose was bleeding and lips were split open. And when our eyes met, I could clearly see the guilt in his eyes. I was damn happy with what I did, though I missed the movie which I watched later.
I was escorted off the premises, while he was administered first aid. I had to assure the security team that I would never repeat anything like this.
I never knew I could do such things but seeing a man punching his mother enraged me and I couldn’t resist myself.
Respect each and everyone whoever it might be, that is what my parents have taught me and I am glad that I do so and hope our generation does the same.
Edit 1 : For all those who think that I didn’t solve the whole problem, my little brother while taking them out of the theatre took the mother’s phone and saved my number.
I don’t think he will dare to do such activity again and I am hoping I won’t receive any call his mother.
Thanks for the appreciation !!
Edit 2: I would like you all to read Yogesh Singhq comment.
China not only has the largest military in the world, but it is also the oldest military in the world. The Chinese were fighting mass invasions and assaults involving thousands of trained warriors when the Europeans were still living in caves and picking lice off each other.
China also has the oldest Navy in the world. Indeed, the Chinese were conducting mass Naval Battles centuries before the Europeans were considering the value of ocean going vessels.
China has always fought using cutting-edge technologies that were unexpected, unheard of, and unanticipated by the nation attacking it. It’s more than gunpowder, it’s poison weapons, tricks and deceit, and armored vehicles that totally stunned the opposition.
China is lead by merit, with people with millennia of military experience. Indeed the top rated military strategy books are all Chinese.
China is a military-organized society that does everything based on merit. They are hopelessly super patriotic, and live to die for their country.
Oh, and remember that the United States tried to attack China in 1950. The United States lost, and lost badly.
…
FACT: Keep in mind that China considers both Taiwan and the South China Sea as China territory.
EXTRAPOLATED FACT: Any bombs, guns, missiles, or assaults in those regions will provoke a STRATEGIC response onto the United States.
KIND REMINDER: And remember Kiddos, that for China, STRATEGIC is the same as NUCLEAR.
…
You all should be really FUCKING clear on accepting the risks, and resulting lifestyle that you will endure, after that Pandora’s box is opened.
Alien Bodies Confirmed After Testing to be NON Human
This is actually a pretty good video, and I recommend it to all mm readers.
I responded to a medical emergency in a hoarder house in the 1980s. When we entered the house from the front door there was no pathway to the back of the house. Newspapers, magazines and papers stacked up to the 6 foot mark on all the walls. The kitchen was covered in plates of old food that had not be cleared or thrown away. No way to get through to the bedrooms in the back of the house. Rats, mice and bugs crawling over everything. We could see the resident in the back bedroom, but could not get through the piles of papers, junk and trash to get to the back bedroom to see if he was alive. The smell was unbelievable.
The fire department brought in a K-12 saw and cut hole into the bedroom from the back of the house. The owner was dead. Mice and insects were crawling all over the body. Multiple cats sprawling all over the piles of papers, garbage and junk in the house. The fire department used the saw to cut a larger hole in the back of the hose so we could get in. The City Public Works Department brought a four wheel drive front end loader to clear out piles of newspapers and magazines which filled the floor around the bed in the bedroom at the back of the house. Several police officers, Animal Control Officers and Public Works employees had to run to the back the property to throw up from the smell.
I took time off the radio after we got the body out of the house to go back to my home, dump my uniforms in the laundry and take a very hot shower to insure I cleared everything I was in contact in this house off my body.
The city quickly declared the house a major health hazard and had it bulldozed to the ground. I told my sergeant the next call like that I wanted to be sent to other side of of town rather than enter a hoarder house again.
I dealt with several more in that community and next one when I was Chief of Police. The smell never gets better.
When you stop trying, it happens | The psychology of the flow state
As a teenager, I washed dishes in a restaurant where my step-father ran the kitchen. He made all the soups and other pre-cooked items (prime rib, ribs), ordered the produce and stock, etc.
The restaurant was located on a barge moored in a harbor on a river. Most of the kitchen help were what we referred to as east-enders… rough boys. I was a preppy high school kid but got along with most of them. However, there was one guy… Dale. Dale was a bit crazy. He was also heavily into drugs and a burnout. He also washed dishes and on weekends, there would be two of you paired together.
All dishes had to be cleaned by the end of the night, the floors swept and scrubbed, and dirty laundry put away (table cloths, napkins, and aprons). If it was a particularly good night, the waitresses would bring a few pitchers of beer from the bar to the kitchen crew.
One night beer was brought while everyone was cleaning up. Dale was drinking more than cleaning. I got fed up and left the dishes piled high in the sinks.
The following morning, my step father arrived at work to find the dirty dishes. My mother awoke me asking what happened and that my step father was livid. I was taken to work where I find Dale and my step father standing in the kitchen. My step father is PISSED. He asks me why the dishes were left. I explained I was tired of Dale not doing his job. Dale tried to talk his way out of the situation which only made things worse. My step father was screaming at Dale and told him to go clean the bathrooms. Dale left to do that and now I’m expecting to catch hell. My step father put his hand on my shoulder then walked away calmly asking me to finish the dishes.
I was stunned. My step-father wasn’t an understanding person and he didn’t treat me any different that the rest of the crew. But here he was believing me and siding with me (a rare instance).
About an hour later, we discovered Dale left without cleaning the bathrooms. I was asked to stay and work the shift…. and to clean the bathrooms.
Kid 1: I wish my teacher would know; my dad is in jail, and I haven’t seen him in years.
Kid 2: I wish my teacher would know, I don’t always eat dinner because my mom works and I don’t know how to work the stove.
Kid 3: I wish my teacher would know; my sister sleeps in the same bed as me, and sometimes she wets the bed, and that’s why I smell funny.
Kid 4: I wish my teacher would know that I don’t always have sneakers for gym class because my brothers and I share one pair.
Kid 5: I wish my teacher knew I like coming to school because it’s quiet here, unlike my house with all the yelling.
✨We spend so much time talking and judging what we think we know… we need to ask more questions and spend more time listening. We also need to shift our mindset and see things from other people’s perspective. Give more than we get. Live to serve and to help make a difference in others’ lives.
Let’s leave this life a little better than we found it.
Polish Cinnamon Cake
babkaslice
Yield: 8 to 12 servings
Ingredients
12 tablespoons butter
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
3 teaspoons cinnamon
A grating of fresh nutmeg
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups whipping cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
Beat the butter until it is soft and fluffy. Add 3/4 cup of the sugar and the egg and continue beating. Add 2 teaspoons of the cinnamon, the nutmeg and flour, and beat until well mixed.
Spread about 1/3 of the batter on an ungreased baking sheet, forming a rectangle about 10 x 12 inches and bake in a preheated 400 degrees F oven for 8 minutes, until lightly browned.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool.
Repeat two more times with the remaining batter.
Whip the cream until stiff, and fold in the remaining 1/4 cup sugar, the remaining 1 teaspoon cinnamon and the vanilla extract. Spread a thin layer of whipped cream on one of the cakes, top with another cake, and repeat.
Spread remaining whipped cream on the top and serve immediately.
I am slap-in-middle of Gen X. Two years ago, I got diagnosed with cancer. I still live in the small-time town I was born in and know everyone.
I still went into work the next day and in the morning after I had texted all to my 31 year old boss whom I thought was a great guy that I might be a bit quiet today…. My ‘millennial’ boss was someone I deemed trustworthy and not at all like other guys like my disgusting, selfish, youngest brother. I was happy he was gonna be my boss through what was going to be a difficult time for me and my family. I wished I’d stayed at home but I had a lesson.
He actually thought it was the coolest thing, and was seriously, absolutely, completely delighted. An employee with cancer was so trendy. Not that he said that out loud but he was really pleased for himself…. Genuinely, the guy wanted to tell everyone – and I ordered him to be silent until I said so and stopped periodically shaking and could talk about it without being overwhelmed with fear that was so bad my tummy and heart hurt.
Me and my husband were looking at him like W.T.F. I suddenly got why millennials aren’t liked…
He then started to reduce my hours and told me I wasn’t haven’t sick pay three days before my massive surgery and sacked me when I got a lawyer on to him a year later. It is strictly illegal to sack someone with cancer in the UK.
He thought he was the best boss ever because he spent two minutes reading a website about how employees with cancer often want to work as it seems normal.
He had gotten a recent promotion and became ….. absolutely vile… I didn’t even get a card or a teddy bear. I am rather wary of that generation now.
The last few years have been years of miscalculation for the West. Big things have been planned and put into action, and failed.
All the wars, all the sanctions, all domestic and economic ‘initiatives’, and all responses to what the adversaries have done are failing or have already failed.
In fact, the failure of any venture by the West has become almost guaranteed.
This has a lot of people scratching their heads – they simply can’t fathom how this can happen.
At the same time the real goals of the western political class have come under increased scrutiny.
Everything they do seems to be designed to make things worse for western societies on all levels, including economic, social, health, and so on and so forth. Why, exactly, is that?
-Gaius Baltar
At every level, under every measurement, the United States, and it’s proxy nations are all undergoing collapse.
Not just starting to.
No.
They are in full late-stage free-fall.
It is a true laugh when the Western propaganda says that China is “going to collapse”, yet it is the West that is so blatantly obviously collapsing.
…
China DOES NOT WANT to best, or best, or rule over the United States. It really doesn’t. The Chinese just want to live their lives peacefully.
The problem is not with China, nor the Chinese people. The problem lies with the massive, just massive levels of incompetence in the West.
…
As the ship burns, the people fight each other on the deck of the ship… as the explosions shake the vessel, and fires appear out from the gloom, the ship continues to sink into the depths of the dark icy unforgiving sea.
China, and the Chinese cannot stop it.
But… but…
…The life boats have all been looted years ago, dry rot has crept in, and they are completely worthless. The Captain, is muttering something about liking pudding for dinner, and the executive officers are all looting everything that isn’t nailed down.
You would think that someone would be on the wireless trying to ask for help, but the copper wires were cut and sold for profit decades ago. BANG! Another firefight on deck…
BANG! Then, CRASH!
There’s an open commotion on deck…
…
China looks on with great sadness. Americans who have rowed away from the sinking Goliath hang their heads in shame and sadness… but most of the people on the vessel don’t realize just how dire the situation actually is.
A seaman points to a point on the horizon. “See” he yells over the din… “It’s Russia’s fault”. Another person punches him. “No! You fool! It’s China’s fault” as he peers though a telescope.
…
The water is reaching the deck. The lights are still on.
And suddenly everyone hears this massive noise from the bowels of the vessel….
…
Did I miss anything?
China doesn’t want to beat the USA. They want to help, but there is an old saying… “never get involved with a crazed old man with a gun”.
China is just standing aside and watching the ship sink into the cold, cold ocean.
No work, anger everywhere, and even the most basic tenements of society; families, relationships between men and womem are completely off the rails. In fact, when you watch the videos herein, you see exactly how bad things actually are.
They are frightening.
The old games, so routinely employed by the West; “color revolutions”, “wars”, economic coercion, and so forth… no longer work.
And it is all boomeranging back to the United States. And it’s really bad right now.
Centuries worth.
I think that it is important for you here in mm land to see how bad things are. Watch all the videos, no matter how boring or distasteful they are. And then finish with the last video… a AI generated trickle of hope for a renewed past.
I was taking classes at a private uni here in Thailand so that I could better understand my adopted country. I had been living and teaching here for around 20 years at this point.
In most classes, I was waaaay older than the other students and older than 90% of my teachers.
I was an oddity: Thais are not into continuing education for older people (except some master’s and PhD programs), and the classes I attended were all regular BA/BS classes. In addtion, I am a foreigner.
The classes were in English, presented by Thai speakers of English.
One Sociology professor was NOT happy that I was in his class. When I asked a question or when he glanced at me, his face became cold and stern. At times, he openly disparaged my questions and comments, feigning being affronted, even though I was careful to use neutral language.
I did my best to let it and the stares of my classmates go; I was there to learn.
He handed out photocopied reading materials (the class had no assigned texts) that were often beyond the reading abilities of the Thai students. My offers to help were silently rejected (???) , so I stepped back.
But then he gave us a 10-page reading, written (in English) by an Indonesian scholar that even I couldn’t understand.
Some pages were totally filled with only one, single-spaced paragraph that included only very, very long, compound-complex sentences, using jargon specific to sociology. The organization was convoluted.
I am an avid reader, plus I taught academic and business reading, but I could not decipher the writer’s main points.
So I went to the professor for insights.
What I got were snide remarks about my inability to read my own language.
Big mistake. Huge.
I apologized for my inability to understand the concepts and jargon of his field (inflating his sense of superiority); he looked very smug.
Before I continue, let me say that the apology and the way I further responded was learned from watching Thais and how they expertly handle situations. I had learned that attacking works against me since confrontation is very much frowned upon here.
The apology was not sincere. It was to make him feel comfy, in control. Inside I was seething, horrified that a professor would treat a student who was asking for help in this way.
Knowing he was a misogynist, I acted submissive and said (eyes lowered), “I have taught reading at A.U.A. Language Center and at Chulalongkorn University (Thailand’s #1 uni), Mahidol (Thailand’s #3) and am at Sasin (Thailand’s #1 business school). I have prepared students who ultimately studied at Yale, Harvard, Stanford and Cambridge and other top unis, but I guess I’m not good enough to understand this scholar. So I am asking for your insights.”
When I looked up as I asked for his insights, I saw that the smug sneer had been replaced with (satisfying) shock.
I maintained submissive, respectful body language.
Pointing to the introductory summary, I asked if the scholar meant XXXX. Silence.
Still not looking at him, I then asked, “What was the focus of the first portion of the paragraph?” There was more silence and then a hesitant, half-axxed answer, so two more questions followed with the same kind of inadequate responses.
I now knew he had not read/ analyzed the reading himself.
I didn’t say a thing. He knew that I knew when I looked at him directly and said nothing.
I then thanked him for his time, gave a polite ‘wai’ and left.
At our next class, he announced that after a conversation with ‘Ajarn’ (Professor) Verneita, he had decided to remove that particular reading but replace it with a clearer, 2-page one.
What just happened?
He gave me respect by calling me ‘Professor.’. As far as most people knew, I was a student.
He also showed respect when he recognized me as part of the decision process.
Replacing the original document was to show that he was still in control and that he was being kind to the students.
He was protecting himself by doing all of the above.
If I complained to admin, he could say that he had listened to another professor (me) and had acted in the best interests of the class. (If he had shown disrespect to me in countering, he would have lost some admin support).
Also, if I had complained, I would have been judged as disrespectful towards a professor who had openly shown ME respect.
This game-playing is a part of a very complex culture that is often perceived as being simplistic by those who don’t speak enough Thai to understand the nuances or who would prefer to not analyze what goes on.
If I had been a simple young student, the story would have been very different.
5 years ago, I was 29 years old. I was married and heavily involved in an “end of the world” cult and actively went door to door in the hope of recruiting members. My wife and I were born into this cult, we knew of nothing else. We believed that the outside world was evil, corrupt, dangerous and controlled by Satan. At 29 years old I had only a high school education as university is considered “dangerous” as it encourages critical thinking (something the cult doesn’t want it’s member doing).
Then, in April 2014 something happened…
My daughter was born.
Suddenly a lot of thoughts came racing into my head at the same time.
If she needs a blood transfusion, I’d be expected to say no and let her bleed to death. I would never do that.
If she ever left the cult I’d be expected to completely shun her and pretend she’s dead. I would never do that.
If she ever shows talent or aptitude I’d be expected to force her to suppress them and work for the cult for free. I would never do that.
If she ever wants to go to university I’d be expected to report her to the leaders and convince her not to go. To even be ashamed if she ever did go to university. I would never do that.
She won’t be allowed to celebrate her birthday.
She won’t be allowed to be taught about other religions.
She’ll be told about Satan and the end of the world and I’d be expected to teach her fear and about an angry god who will kill her unless she’s a Jehovah’s Witness.
I will only be allowed tell her about the cult and how we’re right and everyone else is wrong.
Seeing my child in my arms, I saw a new start. This was a person with no preconceived ideas, no bias, no loyalty to anyone or anything. I decided right then and there that I loved someone more than even god himself.
That was a real mindf**k on its own.
You see, we were conditioned to love the cult and love god (who can only be worshipped through the cult) more than our own family and more than ourselves. In fact, if anyone leaves the cult we’re to shun them. But here I was feeling this feeling, this overwhelming feeling of complete love for someone – even more than the cult.
The fact that I’d disobey the cult and allow blood transfusions and allow freedom of thought told me that maybe I didn’t really believe the cult. At this stage I secretly told myself that I believed 80% of it.
Fast forward, 2 years later after a lot of research and being honest with myself and others I left the cult. Immediately I lost my entire family and “friends” that I’d known since birth. My then-wife took our daughter and went to live with her parents (who are also cult members). Fortunately, in the real world we have lawyers. I ended up getting full custody of our daughter, in part because my then-wife admitted she would allow the cult to make medical decisions for our daughter whereas I always said I’d do what’s necessary to keep her alive and healthy. I was open and accepting of other people whereas the cult isolates and vilifies non-members. I also signed up for university to study Psychology and counselling, specialising in cults and high control groups.
My wife and I then got divorced.
In another 2 years I completed my undergraduate degree. My ex-wife left the cult too after seeing how happy and easy my life was compared to hers. Also, our daughter would openly say things that didn’t make sense to her which got my ex-wife thinking. Things like “Nana doesn’t talk to my daddy anymore. I would never stop talking to you – I love you”. And “If someone said I could live forever but without my daddy I’d tell them to go away”.
A year later (5 years now), I’m a Psychologist and therapist who’s helped 4 people on Quora leave the Jehovah’s Witness cult, ended about 25 “bible studies” that people were having with Jehovah’s Witnesses, helped concerned relatives who’s family were studying with the cult and in person helped many people. All for free by the way. I also work as a models photographer and have my own business that brings in a steady income. I could make money from counselling but I choose not to as people need help. I wouldn’t want to profit from helping people leave high control groups.
I also helped two lesbian couples conceive a child and they both gave birth this year.
My daughter is a happy, well adjusted person who never has to fear being shunned by her parents – her cousins, unfortunately, can’t say that about their parents.
My husband and I both drove school busses in Claxton, Georgia several years ago. I drove special needs busses during the school day, and was a substitute driver for the morning and evening driver’s.
My husband was given the worst, or hardest bus route . The one that nobody wants because the inner city with the poor and rough kids. The one’s that are basically raising themselves in the streets. Michael was having a hard time from a few of the student’s on his bus. Especially the high school aged kids with all those hormones going crazy.
My husband had to have a surgical procedure, and he had complications which kept him out of driving for about two weeks. Man I hated driving that bus! Our supervisor had to drive it the most while I was driving for someone else.
My husband had to have a mesh up in for a surgical hernia, it took11 incisions to tack it in.
When Michael went back to the job he was trying to tell our supervisor that these kids were getting worse and the situation was escalating. And even went so far as to finish his route, and stop by the board of education to speak with the head man over the school system. ( I’m getting tired and can’t think of the technical name of his position) about the situation.
Nothing was done to help him out. The following morning a sister, and brother that Michael had been writing up, and had suspended off of the bus started in on him as soon as they had gotten in the door. With the older sister cussing at him, and her brother started by trying to grab up the fire extinguisher to hit him. When he couldn’t unlatch the fire extinguisher the boy grabbed up Michael’s tire bat, and struck him over the top of his head.Michael knocked the boy off of his bus, shut the door and called the police.
Michael was accused of using too much force and assaulting a minor. And was told to quit or be terminated,.
The following day we both resigned. Michael was kept off,and I worked off a two week notice.
We ended up spending $2000.00 retainer fee for a good attorney in Statesboro. And the same attorney also ended up working for the school telling staff how to handle situations like this without getting into trouble.
I will never work in the school system again.
Chase (another answer to everyone’s big question…)
The U.S. owes the entire world a lot of money. The biggest creditor nation by a very long shot is Japan. Not China! In fact the owner all the debts the US has is not payable in a hundred years without the U.S. printing money and selling more debts to pay just the interest it is compelled to pay!
What is it simply don’t pay up! It sounds nice to a white racist guy who thinks from a racist superiority complex mindset right?
Well it is call a debt default. The U.S. will then either not get credit anymore or has to pay an astronomical premium in interest to borrow money! That will destroy the U.S. dollar and the US economy to the point of hyperinflation and a run on U.S. banks.
That is not a good option is it? If you are intelligent which I suspect you are not! Why don’t you ask why does the US becomes so indebted to the world and the U.S. government do indebted to its own American people?
It is no different from you who spend as though there is no tomorrow and borrow money from everyone you know to sustain your expenses. You basically don’t make anything that anyone wants! To earn their money but wants a shining new toys everyday. That is what the US does. It wants to spend more on weapons than the next 20 nations put together? Can it?
Yes it can but it will bankrupt the U.S. that U.S. precisely what happened over the last 50 years or so!
I had a friend who was working in an office in Atlanta when the “snowpocalypse” rolled through.
The day before, a great many people in the office wanted to work from home when the storm hit. Their boss was from Michigan and threw a fit, saying a few inches of snow was no excuse and that anyone who failed to come in that day would be fired.
Well that day came, and the traffic accidents were horrific because guess what, it’s not about the snow but is about the people who drive in it. Everyone in the office struggled to get in but they were there… except for Mr. Bossman. That idiot called in due to unsafe conditions.
So the entire building walked out at lunch and worked the rest of the day from home. When the boss tried calling the office no one was there and he was furious, promising retribution.
However, when Corporate found out that he had caused the ENTIRE BUILDING to walk out, they got rid of him immediately. They knew the truth; it doesn’t matter what skills a manager has, if he creates a toxic environment then he drives away the real talent and value of the company, the employees.
Tomato and Bread Salad (Panzanella)
This is best if you use very ripe tomatoes.
2024 02 15 09 51
Ingredients
4 cups 1-inch pieces stale Italian or French bread
2 medium tomatoes, cut into bite-size pieces
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 medium green bell pepper, cut into bite-size pieces
1/3 cup snipped fresh basil leaves
2 tablespoons snipped parsley
1/3 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
Instructions
Mix bread, tomatoes, garlic, green pepper, basil and parsley.
Shake remaining ingredients in tightly covered container. Pour over bread mixture; toss. Cover and refrigerate at least 1 hour.
I was going to kill myself. I had my suicide planned out. I was going to get some dry ice, it’s heavier than air, and fill my room with it, get really drunk, lay down on my bedroom floor with my cats and suffocate in my sleep.
I’d gone from having everything… a beautiful wonderful wife, job, bought a house was going to start a family. I’d started school again to finish that engineering degree that I put on hold decades ago.
Then, my wife left..not just left but assaulted me violently, cheated, went completely berzerk. I found out later she’d stolen money from work and bet on a horse, Smarty Jones, that was a “sure thing” to win the triple crown that year. She was facing prison time.
She thought she could get enough money out of me to buy herself out of trouble, so burned through attorney after attorney. A two year marraige turned into a 4 year divorce. I was broke, well over $30k in debt to credit cards and the university. The utilities were overdue, mortgage was overdue, the bank was sending people over putting chalk marks on the door getting ready to foreclose and evict me and my cats into the street.
So, I was concerned about how I was going to be found. I started getting “funeral attire” ready. I’d mail a letter to the local police, they’d get it after I was gone. It would explain everything.
While ironing my jacket, I noticed the collar was worn. So, I put an iron-on patch on it to make it look better. The patch didn’t match the color of the jacket and really stood out. It looked like a hobo’s jacket.
That’s when I noticed how worn all my clothes were. And I realized I’d be found wearing rags. I was more ashamed of that than anything else. So, I decided to think on it for awhile…after all, did it matter if I died today, or in a few days, right? And, I still had a few bowls of homemade soup..don’t want those to go to waste?
That began the process of me assessing what I had to work with, versuse dwelling on what I had lost. I felt like, somehow, if I could just spend some time thinking things through, I’d come up with something. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but, I felt better.
Then, a coule of days later, the letter came.
It was from the Government. Not good I though, from the DoD..even worse.
I opened it thinking “Well, I was going to kill myself a few days ago, that’s still a viable option”….and read it.
It said “Dear Mr. S. We’ve found an accouting error in your pay for your service while deployed. We owe you $5000. If you would like it, please go to this website and enter your banking information”.
“IF I WOULD LIKE IT”?!?!….shit….
So, went to the website. Entered my banking info and ssn, etc. by the end of the week, the money was in my account. It got me through school long enough that by the time it ran out, the Post 9–11 GI bill had come out, and that paid the rest of the way through school. Now I’m a big shot engineer with a giant house and a fridge full of food.
It’s been 20 years now. I still have that jacket. I want to keep it so someday I can be buried in it.
This Graphs Proves What Married Men Already Know
i tell you what boys it really does pay to educate yourself on female psychology.
I literally laughed out loud at this, and loudly, because it’s so completely absurd to say that it really is morbidly hilarious.
We are not a supporter of democracy at all. Our elites don’t even want democracy here, let alone anywhere else. We have toppled so many democratically elected governments and replaced them with dictators on the CIA payroll that I have literally lost count of them all. We are supporting a coup in Venezuela right now, to overthrow Maduro, who, like him or not, was elected more fairly than Trump and is certainly far more popular in his own country.
The reason why we are against democracy everywhere is that if third world countries are under the control of their own people then they might refuse to sell their resources to our military-industrial complex. We invade them to steal the oil and metal that we need to make more weapons that we can use to invade the next country.
If British Imperialism was brazen and naked, then American Imperialism wears nothing more than a g-string.
Even the allies that we call “democracies” like Turkey, Israel, and now Brazil under Bolsonaro, are really just fascist police states who are not much better than the worst government in the world, our main ally, Saudi Arabia, who we are currently assisting in their genocide of the Yemeni people.
Most of the terrorists and dictators in the world have had US backing at some point. (North Korea is more like the exception that proves the rule.) Reagan allied with the Taliban and Al Queda in Afghanistan. We helped to found ISIS and we’re still funding and arming them.
Elliot Abrams is an expert on and veteran of committing genocide and now Trump wants him in his cabinet. Ilhan Omar called him out on it, but she got smeared as supposedly “antisemitic” because she opposed Israel’s purchase of her congressional colleagues. That got a ton of press coverage, but her grilling of Abrams? Not so much.
You can’t enforce democracy at the barrel of a gun. Don’t be naive as to what guns are used for.
This New Study Makes Women Look SO BAD!
The conclusions in this is DAMMING for the Western society.
A friend had divorced her husband. She had discovered, while pregnant with their first child, that he was having an affair. One month after she gave birth, he moved out. He and the girlfriend were seen all around town. On weekends when he had the baby, people would see them out with the girlfriend, treating the baby like he was hers.
My friend’s ex would not leave her alone. He wanted the girlfriend, but he also wanted his ex. After eighteen months of this, my friend called me. She was going to remarry him. She asked me what I thought. I knew she wanted her family back together. But I knew he couldn’t be trusted.
So I hedged my answer. I asked her, “What are you going to think when he comes home late from the gym? (That was where he met the girlfriend) What are you going to think when he starts walking outside to talk on his phone? What are you going to think when you call his office and his secretary can’t tell you where he is? And he isn’t answering your calls? Please, please just consider all this.”
She told me she would. Then she went with him to the local Justice of the Peace, and for the second time, married him.
They moved into a beautiful new home. There were hiccups. Basically, his drinking. But they stuck it out. She got pregnant. Triplets.
A few years later, I got the call. She was seeing the signs. Going outside to take phone calls. Disappearing from work. Not taking her calls.
She figured out who the girlfriend was. She filed for divorce. What made it worse was, she discovered he had been having multiple “mini” flings with various women. All whom she knew.
During a conversation with her, she asked me, “Why didn’t you stop me from remarrying him?”
I told her the truth. “You didn’t want to hear it.”
This is the reality.
A 25% tariff makes the United States seem to be 25% than it actually is (actually, it’s more like 18% but you get my picture.)
Resentment toward the military had existed during the war and intensified as the war situation deteriorated for Japan toward the end. To understand this, it is necessary to understand the circumstances that engendered such resentment.
Long before Pearl Harbor started, rationing had begun in 1940. The commodities subjected to rationing were rice, sugar, salt, matches to enable the government to build up stocks in anticipation of siege. Austerity became the way of life. Geisha houses were closed down. Neon lighting in Tokyo’s famed Ginza district was turned off. A monthly family fast was introduced.
Starting in 1944, American submarine blockades exacted a heavy toll on Japanese economy and the lives of millions of Japanese civilians. Being an islands nation, Japan depended heavily on imports to sustain industrial production and for survival by imported foodstuffs. American submarines prevented most of that from reaching the home islands. Daily Japanese calorie intake, only 2,000 before Pearl Harbor, fell to 1,900 in 1944, and would drop to 1,680 in 1945. By contrast, British daily calorie intake never fell below 2,800, even in the darkest days of 1940–1941. An American soldier in the Pacific received daily calorie intake of 4,758. This resulted in malnutrition which led to beriberi and made people more susceptible to other illnesses. Productivity dropped as workers were hungry. Absenteeism mounted as factory workers went seeking out foods for their families instead of going to work. Another reason for absenteeism was to avoid being killed by American bombs dropped on urban industrial areas.
But while civilians endured hunger on a continual basis, the rich and the armed forces ate heartily because the militarists wanted to continue fighting and so soldiers had to eat. Thus, civilian resentment toward the military developed.
Moreover, starting from 1944 onwards, American B-29s launched from the Marianas and Okinawa razed Japanese cities to the ground in a ruthless incendiary bombing campaign, destroying large swaths of urban areas, killing thousands to tens of thousands while rendering millions homeless. Japanese air force proved incapable of stopping American bombers because of all American B-29s lost over Japan, only an inconsiderable percentage of the losses were due to enemy action, the rest were due to mechanical failure, poor weather or accidents. It had a massive psychological impact on the Japanese. No one could fail to be impressed by the spectacle of hundreds of silvery B-29s streaming in the sky raining down death and destruction with near impunity. The very awareness of American bombers attacking with near impunity and the inability of the Japanese air force to stop them intensified the anger and distrust civilians had toward the military, a proof of military impotence. They must have wondered why the military could not protect the home islands and civilians from enemy attack. Yoichi Watanuki, a schoolboy bitterly said to this mother: “Surely we have lost the war because our soldiers were not good enough. They told us a Divine Wind would come and it didn’t. They lied to us, didn’t they?”
As a consequence, when Japan submitted to unconditional surrender, civilians who had endured years of hardship and exhaustion showed undisguised contempt toward former members of the military.
Many repatriated veterans were ill-prepared for the poor treatment dished out at them upon returning. Communities that had celebrated their departure with parties and parades and supplied them with comfort packages and “thousand-stitch” belly belt did not welcome them back. After all, they were losers who not only had failed to defend their people and country but also had the audacity to return home alive. In addition, haunted by the humiliating defeat and the horrific consequences of the war, many Japanese civilians were desperate to forget everything associated with that painful consciousness; and shunning returning veterans who reminded them of that consciousness was a manifestation of that attempt to forget the past.
Those who returned from Soviet captivity were treated with suspicion on the grounds that they might have been subjected to intense Communist indoctrination and turned into covert Communist agents. Now that they had returned, there was the concern that they might support and engage in subversive Communist activities in Japan.
Following defeat, military discipline collapsed and servicemen stationed in the home islands deserted their units. Many of them, both officers and enlisted men, engaged in looting military stores for their own uses. When destitute civilians who had almost nothing saw military men with something, their resentment and anger toward the military only hardened.
What’s more? The influx of repatriated veterans was accompanied by an influx of information about wartime atrocities committed by the Emperor’s soldiers. Once civilians became aware of the atrocities, ex-servicemen found themselves regarded not just as men who had failed disastrously to fulfill their duty but as despicable criminals who had committed war atrocities. References to glares of withering contempt and disgust that acquaintances and strangers alike directed at them became a familiar occurrences in veterans’ letters to the press. As a side note, despite revelations of atrocities, it never developed into a truly widespread popular acknowledgement of Japan as aggressor and victimizer rather than as victim because of censorship by MacArthur’s administration. (See more here: Werner Hermann’s answer to Do the Japanese have shame for the military crimes committed by their army in the 20th century (like the Nanking incident, for instance) like the Germans have shame for theirs during World War II?)
This predicament faced by veterans was best expressed in the following excerpt published in the Asahi on June 9th 1946 which poignantly recounted his depressing homecoming:
I returned to Japan from the southern regions on May 20. My house was burned, my wife and children missing. What little money I had quickly was consumed by the high prices, and I was a pitiful figure. Not a single person gave me a kind word. Rather, they cast hostile glances my way. Tormented and without work, I became possessed by a devil.
Indeed, many veterans, homeless and destitute and without support, turned to black market or other illicit activities to survive.
Veterans with disabilities were doubly stigmatized, having lost the war and their mental and physical faculty. Back then, physical handicaps and mental illness were taboos and those afflicted faced discrimination or indifference prevalent in Japanese society. As a side note, many maimed veterans, having no where to turn, defied those taboos and flaunted their disabilities and, more acutely, their pain and hardship by wearing white clothing and begging in public. In Tokyo, such tragic outcast figures haunted public places until the late 1950s
This wont be what you want. I am only 60, therefore I am only old to some, not to most. Today, 60 is the new 40.
5am get online and see the latest news.
530am make coffee, a must
600am – we live in the country or for you that don’t call it that in your country, outside the city limits is what we call country. Another thing that makes our language hard to learn. So I go for a walk and take it all in, the fresh air, the scenery, all of it.
8am I heat my place by wood stove so if I need to I will grab the chainsaw and cut down a dead tree, then cut it all up, load it, take it back and stack it.
(I rarely eat breakfast) so 11am I clean my house because its the way its always been, a messy place bothers me, so a lot of touch up cleaning.
12pm, lunch and computer time, usually 2 hours.
2pm go to town and get stuff I need for the place, and barns, feed for the horses, groceries and pay bills.
4–5pm nap time usually for 2 hours or so.
6pm maybe crack open a beer or three and watch the sun go down and again, take it all in.
7pm, back on the computer, its how we see the world in these times and then I will write, something like I am here or do something on TicToc. Maybe YouTube and then write the kids that are 1000’s of miles away.
9pm usually ready for bed, watch some TV and then lights out.
11pm, up for a snack
Midnight, out until 5am
You know, it differs from day to day, but thats a typical 24 hours.
Apparently Gen Z is Lazy and Doesn’t Want to Work Anymore
For me it is what they consider to be important and how little they are prepared to do to get it, back when I was working in the office for the ambulance company I was treated to the “You old folk have it so easy, you have your own house, I would love a house but I just can’t afford it!” So after a while I grew tired of this and said “Okay! Let’s talk maybe I can help.” So I got on to “Let’s look at where your money is going, after all if you want to buy something you’ve got to check your money”. So the first obvious expense was the shiny new beamer £400 a month, then there was the holidays one all inclusive to the Caribbean,£2,000 give or take and one to South Africa 2,500 there, then we get onto the little regular things, every morning they would come in with a Starbucks and a pastry, ok only five pounds a day, 25 pounds a week shall we say a thousand pounds a year. Lunch from the sandwich truck that used to come around every day, about £10 a day.£50 a week two and a half thousand pounds a year. Saturday night and Friday night out with the friends they weren’t quite sure how much they spent then but thought it was about 75 pounds each night. 150 a week so call that 6,000 pounds a year give or take. Takeaways three or four nights a week, you get the picture. So I gently pointed out to them how I saved up the money to get the deposit on my flat, cycled into work, got up 15 minutes early, made myself a sandwich and a thermos of coffee, no car, no Friday and Saturday down at the pub and then on to the restaurant, I spent my holidays on my bike cycling round London. No takeaways I cooked my own food, didn’t go down to the football on Saturdays, Wednesdays or whenever it was on. No sky television package just the standard five channels. Didn’t buy any books went down to the library instead. You would have thought that I had threatened to rape them with a broomstick, absolute horror! “How can you expect us to live that way?” And my response was “That is how I lived to get the flat, I decided what was important and I decided that a place of my own was more important than holidays for five years, getting pissed for 5 years, and so on.”
And they still didn’t understand that sometimes if you want something important you have to give up something else!
I got a front-row seat to a usually calm and gentle, older customer service consultant, refer to a caller as “a heinous f*cking b!tch”.
Decades ago, I worked in an insurance call centre. On one of my shifts (it was slow so calls were sporadic), I was sitting next to another consultant and heard her pick up the call. This is basically what I heard (she was wearing a headset and I could only hear one side):
“Welcome to X——X Insurance, how can help you? … … Yes … … ..Ma’am I understand but If I could just… … … yes, I understand you’re upset and I want to help you but if I could just … … … I’m happy to help you but I need … … … I can’t give you that information without … … …”
Her face had gone bright red in a mixture of anger or frustration. She had a very grim look on her face but she gritted her teeth and bore with the caller.
“I’ve worked here for a while Ma’am … … … I’m unable to give out information without verifying the caller … … … Yes, I can put you through to my Manager. Please hold.”
She hit mute on the headset cord unit, turned to me and said. “Oh. My. God. What a heinous f*cking b!tch!!” … then her face went from red to completely white and her eyes snapped down to the mute button… which wasn’t lit.. and the call continued…
“I’m so sorry Ma’am. Yes, I can put you through to my Manager immediately. Please hold.”
This time she double-checked the hold button.
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Image source: Yours Truly.
Not double-checking the mute button before cutting loose to a fellow consultant on the heinous b!tch nature of a d!ck caller is the most atrocious amateur move from someone who’d been working in customer service for as long as she had.
Always check the mute button.
FINAL NOTE: She took her headset off and ran over to the floor manager to explain, then put the call through. The manager took it in her office… it went on for a while. Then she called the consultant in.
I have no idea what the content of the inbound call was (the consultant wouldn’t say) but the company pulled the call recording… and the consultant never received a verbal or written warning for her faux pas although she was cautioned to be more professional when dealing with problem callers in the future.
This was the worst experience I have ever had trying to get married. I was raised Catholic, but was not going to church anymore. My cousin was a Catholic priest and was going to do the ceremony as a gift to us.
My cousin had left the Jesuit order and was freelancing while teaching at the local university. He called me 5 days before our wedding to say the local priest told him he could not do weddings in “His” parish. He reported my cousin to the bishop.
He said he could not afford to get in any more trouble, so he asked me to get permission from the local priest where we lived.
We were going to be married in my mother’s rose garden.
I went to the local parish and explained what I want to do and the priest said “absolutely not”.
I asked why and he said. “I will not permit a sacrament to be performed in an un-sanctified place,”
I said, “you mean that this brick building is more holy than a rose garden”. Probably not the wisest thing to say.
I agreed to do a quick ceremony at the church then to have a party in the rose garden, but I wanted my cousin to perform the wedding. The priest said no. When asked why, “I don’t know your cousin.” to which I replied, “But I don’t know you.”
I finally agreed to do it his way. As I was about to leave, he said. “Is your intended a Catholic?” I answer no, so he said that she would have to go to the six-week course to prepare for the ceremony in the church.
I replied, “But she went to 12 years of Catholic school, what are you going to teach her in six weeks that she doesn’t already know?”
He said, “That’s not the point; there are rules.”
So I ask him what his suggestion was.
He said to call off the wedding.
I was livid, I was so angry with the stupidity of the situation.
I went over to my father’s house and told him what was going on.
After a minute, he said, “I have a solution.” He called my cousin and it was all set.
We had a beautiful wedding in my mother’s rose garden, with my cousin doing the ceremony. The only difference was that my father stepped forward and asked the only required part: “Do you take this person to be your spouse.” My father was a judge, so he could legally do the honors. No one understood the significance of what my father did, he also signed the marriage licence. No one can prove that my cousin married us.
That was one of the last times I had anything to do with the Catholic Church.
I was at a friend’s wedding. The rituals were through and the guests proceeded for food.
We were seated at a longish table. Apart from us pals, there were some other people present at the table. Probably some relatives we thought.
We got our food from the buffet and sat down to eat. There was a middle aged lady seated next to me. She tapped my shoulder and asked me if I could help her. I asked her what was the matter.
She had served some tandoori chicken and noodles for herself. Though armed with a spoon and fork, she was lost. “What am I supposed to eat with a fork and how to tackle the leg piece with a spoon?” she asked. I hesitated to reply. Telling her that her cutlery usage was not quite right for some of the food items she had selected seemed rude. We were using forks and knives for our food, but it was different as the items were boneless. But the explanation might have come across as condescending. So I asked her to eat as per her convenience.
“Use your hands if that seems comfortable” I offered.
“But all are so sophisticated here. They’ll look down upon me. I come from a small village. We don’t use all this at home. I’ll be an embarrassment for my cousin.” This is when I realised that she was the bride’s relative.
I was in a fix. That lady was so sweet and so vulnerable. Her concerns seemed so heartfelt that I did not know how to react!
I decided to do what I thought was the best solution. I ditched my own cutlery and started eating the starters with my hands. Asked her to follow suit and enjoy her food. And she did so… with a bright sunny smile. I taught her how to use a fork too and she enjoyed the slippery adventure!
I didn’t care if we were judged that day. I enjoyed my meal with a stranger. A stranger who did not try to hide her vulnerabilities and instead chose to be herself.
A Beijing tour guide said she had received several friends from Europe over the past month because of her work, and their reasons for coming to China varied:
Some of them are skeptical about the China reported in the Western media, so they want to come here to see for themselves how China really looks like.
Some of them are interested in China because they have heard the descriptions of some foreign friends who have been to China, so they want to come to China to have some fun.
Some have lost confidence in the future of Europe and feel that it is difficult for young Europeans to find a way out no matter how hard they work, so they want to come to China to look for opportunities.
After these European friends came to China, the two words that often came to their lips were “kindness” and “hope“.
The Beijing tour guide said that she took her British friend to eat at Haidilao, where the clerk sang a birthday song to the birthday person, strangers sent their blessings to the birthday person, and the birthday person cut a cake and gave it to strangers to share with them. The British friend was very shocked to see these scenes and praised China for its special sense of humanity. Humanity – The Chinese call it “人情味”.
The Beijing tour guide took his Italian friend out for a shopping trip, and the Italian beauty was pinching her fanny pack on the way, because in Italy, you may encounter pickpockets at any time when you walk on the street. The Beijing tour guide told her to relax, said he was a girl alone in the early hours of the morning through the park to go home are very safe.
The Italian beauty was shocked when she heard that she could not even think about this kind of security environment. After a day of shopping, the Italian beauty marveled at the safety of Beijing, saying that none of the strangers who came over to say hello to her along the way were there to steal from her, but only out of curiosity and goodwill.
The Beijing tour guide took a German couple out to play, the German man working in the German media, before coming to China several times, this time is to bring his girlfriend to China to travel.
The man told the Beijing tour guide that he was of mixed German-Moroccan blood and his girlfriend was a second-generation Arab immigrant, and that they were often treated differently in Germany because of their bloodline.
The man lamented that he worked in the media and that the Western media always preached so-called equality, but racism between people was actually very serious. China, which is constantly attacked by the West, is actually doing much better than the West in this regard.
Another European friend who traveled to China said that only in China can you see deities of two different religions coexisting in one temple. Some temples have a Taoist temple in the front and a Buddhist temple in the back; others have a Buddhist temple in the front and a mosque in the back. This phenomenon of religions coexisting rather than being hostile to each other is rare in Europe, but commonplace in China.
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He even saw Uyghur Muslims organizing shamanic ceremonies. 🤣 (Don’t be ridiculous or surprised. The Persian Turkic Mongol Timurid Dynasty established the Mughal Islamic Empire in the Indian subcontinent, but in fact the Mongolians’ own religion was shamanism)
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The Beijing tour guide said that when these European friends came to China, they generally found China kind and full of hope, which is very different from the image they had been indoctrinated with before.
There is a lot of inequality and hypocritical double standards in the world controlled by the West, and China’s rise is equally significant in reshaping the world landscape, not just for the Chinese.
This wasn’t so much a verbal comeback as it was physical.
I was driving to work one day and happened upon a proper lunatic driver. He was in a BMW convertible, top down, weaving through traffic, consistently cutting extremely close to other cars. There were lots of scuffmarks on his bumpers that I’m sure were from hit and runs.
Anyway, as I’m entering a junction, he weaves around me, through the shoulder, into the merging lane and almost clips a Volkswagen’s front bumper. He shoots past me, forcing me to swerve across the yellow line and into oncoming traffic. Thankfully I was able to avoid a head-on collision by a few feet. There was decently heavy traffic at this point, so BMW man ended up staying right in front of me, stuck on a 2-lane highway behind a line of cars in front of him.
Now I grew up in this area (Flagstaff), so I know all the roads by heart, and I knew that we were approaching a low spot in the road where there was always a giant puddle after rain. The last few days had been a torrential downpour, so I knew that the puddle would be nice and huge. When we got close, I dropped a gear in my lifted Toyota and gunned it on the dirt shoulder. I came right up next to BMW man right as I hit the puddle and sent a tsunami of dirty puddle water into his white interior. He slammed on the breaks, and I then merged back onto the road in front of him. He found a spot to pull over on the side of the road and that was the last I ever was of him.
As I continued on, the driver of the Volkswagen behind me rolled down his window and gave me a thumbs up.
So, I guess that would be the best comeback that I’ve used on somebody. Not a single word was exchanged, although I’m sure that BMW man had some fine words for me on the side of the road.
The Debt Can’t be Repaid – So What will Happen Instead?
When I think about police officers I generally get sick to my stomach. That sickness is immediately followed by an urge to argue with or challenge a police officer.
When I search my heart for an answer as to why I don’t like the police, I can’t find one. I have no reason to not like police officers — I guess the thought of (seemingly) absolute authority pisses me off.
I just asked three questions a week or two ago that highlight (in asshole fashion) how I feel about the police. I wish I could take them back — but I can’t. I learned something from asking them, though.
My last real run-in with the police happened on September 11th, 2017.
I woke up early for work. Dillon and I left my house somewhere around seven am. I heard a voice — I had an itch — I wanted heroin — my mind was made up.
At lunchtime, I made the call and manipulated Dillon into stopping at Sheetz so I could get a “burger.” I met my dealer and got bags of heroin instead.
I shot half of a bag in the bathroom and the monster was let out.
A few hours later I overdosed in a Starbucks parking lot. Dillon called 911 and my girlfriend, his sister.
The police arrived and I was unresponsive. They administered several (I think six) shots of Narcan.
The feeling of coming to was absolutely horrible. My entire body felt like I got stomped on repeatedly by Godzilla, eaten by him and then pooped out — explosively.
On that day, the police saved my life. While I was lying in a hospital bed just after I overdosed, I thought about the cop who saved me. I remembered every run-in I had with the cops, and between me and you, each and every time they saved my life.
Whether they took me to jail, dropped me at rehab, cuffed me or Narcan’d me, they saved my life.
I truly would not be here if it weren’t for the Boys in Blue.
To any cop who is reading this — thank you for your service. You save lives and it matters. You saved mine.
This is a real, unaltered, photograph of my face as I write this answer. What do you see?
I see the deep bags under my eyes – I haven’t slept well in months, not since class started again. My face is pale, my skin dull. My hair, which I normally painstakingly take care of, is pulled back in low pony. I can’t remember if I brushed it today. My eyes do not radiate with life – in short, I look exhausted.
I’m in my third year of my degree, and I’m feeling the strain and pressure. My body is tired after nearly three straight years of gruelling coursework. My mind is slow, it’s hard. I call my parents for support. I tell them how I’m feeling. My mom provides this sentiment:
“One day, you’ll be able to have a house and a family and this will all be worth it! You won’t have to worry anymore!”
I politely accept her answers, tell her I love her, and hang up. Then I throw my head in my hands and cry.
With my generation, there are no guarantees.
I would, honestly, love to be able to afford a little house. A car. Share it with someone I care about. Maybe have a dog, work at a job I can, at the very least, tolerate.
Put food on the table and clothes on my back. Maybe, once every two years or so, take a vacation to some place new, and when the time is right, start a family.
This is the life I’m supposed to earn in obtaining a STEM degree. A life of comfort – not an extravagant, jet-setting life – but a life where I don’t have to worry about tomorrow.
I’m not even guaranteed to get a job when I’m done my degree.
It is one thing to push a boulder up a hill for four years, to be rewarded with it rolling down the far slope once you reach the peak. It is entirely another to push a boulder up a hill for four years only to have it roll back over you.
I try to explain this to my parents when I can, but they don’t understand. I don’t blame them. It’s a horrible truth that too many people refuse to swallow.
That’s why my generation is so unhappy. When I talk to my friends – other 20 something’s, just struggling to survive – it’s always the same.
“I think one day, I’d like to have an apartment to call my own. I’ll rent it, obviously, because who the hell can afford to actually purchase a house? I’ll take the bus to work, cars are too expensive. Maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll think about getting a dog, if I can afford it.”
That’s what life is reduced to.
I have friends who, would, when they’re older, love to have a family. My best friend would want two kids. You know what she told me?
“Of course I’d love a family one day. But I’ll never be able to have it. Kids need food, time, and toys. They need to feel safe. But even with my income, and the income of my partner, we’d never be able to pay for school, and a car, and a house! A life of penny pinching is not what I want for my kids.”
It broke my heart.
We’re sad because we will never be able to afford the lives of our parents. We’re sad because we see what’s coming – the planet is dying, rich assholes are being elected president, people are being murdered – the world is so hard.
And nothing is guaranteed.
Edit
I wasn’t anticipating a response like this! Wow.
To add a few details:
I’m Canadian, not American. I recognize this means I have some advantages over Americans (healthcare, mostly). Doesn’t mean life doesn’t have its difficulties!
In no way am I advocating “giving up”. I’m still busting my butt everyday. I am, however, pointing out the flaws with the current system.
I do not expect life to just become “easy” after getting a STEM degree. I’m no more or less entitled to opportunities than anyone else. You know what would be nice? To be able to get a job in my field after getting a STEM degree.
Are Women Aware That Most Men Are Invisible To Them
I used to work for credit union. I had been a loan officer at my previous credit union job, but at my new job they didn’t have an opening so I was a teller. The existing manager was going to be retiring, and I was told when I was hired that I would be then eligible for the loan officer position because everybody would be moving up the chain.
When the manager retired they put an ad out for the loan officer and when I questioned my manager about it, I was told well you don’t have a degree and you cannot have a salaried position with the company unless you have a degre I reminded him of our conversation when I was hured and he looked at me and smiled and said oh yeah, we did say that, but we were desperate for a teller.
In the end, they ended up hiring someone who had a bachelor of arts degree in something ridiculous like French literature but because she had that piece of paper she was qualified where as I had 3+ years of experience in the position wasn’t.
They then wanted me to train her to do the job that I have been doing while waiting for them to hire someone the meantime, the job that I wasn’t qualified for.
I gave them my two week notice. When I didn’t show up 2 weeks later they were in disbelief because they never thought I would actually leave.
I Treated This Starving Skinny Mother and Daughter to Beef Bowls Every Day and…
It happened to me about thirty-two years ago on a public bus. It was very crowded, and I was among the unfortunates standing in the aisle. A large male hand came from behind and squeezed my right breast very painfully. I hollered, “Filth! Get your hand off my breast,” as loud as I could. Some other people, at first women, then men, yelled too. Someone told the bus driver to stop at the police station, which was near by.
This was many years ago, and Israeli society had a very strong communal ethic of mutual help. (It still does, but in a different way.)
I said never mind the police. The guy was so embarrassed I doubted he’d try that trick again. The driver open the doors and yelled at him to get out. He did. I seem to recall a couple of people getting off with him, but I really don’t know if that is true or just wish fulfilling embroidery.
Women and men, girls and boys: if someone touches you in a way you don’t desire, yell at them! Embarrass them! If they continue, fight! You can do it and you should do it. If you have to hurt them, hurt them. It is self-defense in the purest sense of the word.
FedEx mechanic started with 5 8.0 hour days at O hare airport. Then the workload changed for tractors, trailers and dollies. We mechanics were given the choice to work 4 10 hour days and have 3 days off. Most of the mechanics chose to work 4 10 hour days and have 3 days off each week. Easy choice.
Panera bread – baker again due to workload and having 3 bakers. The 2 girls got Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I was the senior baker and worked Thursday, Friday and Saturday. This became problematic with 30 hours instead of 40 hours a week so I left.
Now I do real estate work for much better pay. $50 an hour. To me why anyone would choose to work longer hours at lower pay is beyond stupid… Most people don’t know any better.
Just consider the people that work for Walmart or other retail long hours, low paying jobs, no insurance and no benefits. Just dumb.
I left Walmart for 4 times the pay as a mechanic.
I looked around at Walmart and saw many associates lived in a trailer park or multiple people to an apartment.
They complained allot yet did little to nothing to change their situation.
When I was manager of a truck stop fuel desk I hired a couple……I thought she was terrific and comanager and I were considering grooming her for leadership. I wasn’t thrilled with him but I needed a lot porter.
I didn’t want her to walk and thought if I don’t hire both of them she would reject any offer. So, against my best judgment i hired both of them.
It was a disaster.
One afternoon she was ringing up a driver and the driver harmlessly called her “dear”. He was within earshot and stopped the guy as he was walking out. He got in the guy’s face and said “I heard you hitting on my girl in there…..If I catch you doing that again I’ll F&ck you up!!!”
My co manager and I immediately took him to our office and yelled at him…..we told him not only was he fired but he was to leave the premises immediately!! We also got two other employees to escort him out.
Once she found out she burst into the office and cursed us out. She said we had no right to fire him and if we didn’t rehire him she would walk out and quit.
We didn’t stop her
Roasted Pepper Salad (Pimentos Assados)
2024 02 15 09 49
Ingredients
6 large green, red or yellow bell peppers (or combination)
1/4 cup olive or vegetable oil
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon coarsely-ground pepper
Instructions
Set oven to broil or 550 degrees F.
Arrange peppers on rack in broiler pan. Broil with tops about 5 inches from heat, turning frequently, until blistered on al sides, about 20 minutes.
Place peppers in plastic bag; seal bag. Let stand until peppers can be peeled easily, about 20 minutes.
Remove skin, stems and seeds from peppers. Cut peppers into 1/2-inch wide strips, and place in nonreactive bowl.
Shake remaining ingredients in tightly covered jar; pour over peppers.
Cover and refrigerate at least 4 hours.
Remove from refrigerator 30 minutes before serving.
In November of 1985, a few months after graduating high school, I went off to Ft Dix New Jersey to do my basic training, then off to Ft Eustis to complete my training. I volunteered to go to Korea as my first duty station. Lo and Behold, when I got there about September of 1986 (My MOS training was 32 weeks!! try spending your first 9 months in the Army as a trainee!) I was assigned to the 2nd infantry Division in the small town about 15 miles South of the DMZ. Our company commander made it a point to visit with all new arrivals in his office to explain the map of S. Korea. Apparently in 1986 the Korean War cease fire was still in effect. What does that mean in English? In 1953 the North and South agreed to a cease fire NOT an armistice! There was always the possibility of War reemerging again. Every time we had an alert, I couldn’t help but think of the possibility of being real.
What was my job?
68J10 Aircraft fire control systems repairer: basically the Armament guys that load up bullets on the AH-1 Cobra Helicopter. Better known as the Red-headed step-children of the Aviation branch, or among combat arms people as a REMF. That’s an acronym for Rear Echelon Mother-F… Er, … uh.. back to the story…
After an uneventful year in South Korea I went state side, spent 18 months at Ft Polk and reenlisted for orders to Germany. The Cold war was still on and president Reagan wanted troops in Europe. But, the fact of the matter was, we were still playing a dangerous Chess game with the Soviet union, and there was the possibility of war. I had a chance to be reassigned a little closer to the Eastern Border and found out that my new unit the 11th Armored Cavalry regiment was basically a speed bump in the event that the soviets invaded through the famous Fulda Gap.
Of course it never happened, but now we are in 1990–1991 and the gulf war came.
There were 2 corps of soldiers in Germany, V and VII corps each with an armored cavalry regiment, more armor, infantry and all the necessary support staff. VII corps went to the gulf and everyone else stayed behind, less a few units of the 11th that went to Turkey for Kurdish relief. I was always ready to do my job, and at one point, talking to my father over the phone my father, a cheery Louisiana country boy who never showed too many emotions said in his thick SW Louisiana accent:
“Son, I wish you comme home back to your momma an me and git out the army!”
He was scared for my safety – I guess I had a great Uncle with PTSD from WWII and it worried him.
I reassured him I’d be ok.
Out of 8 years in the Army the most danger I ever saw was probably flying with some crazy Viet Nam vet helicopter pilots
– oh and maybe one or two particular nights of GI partying, but we won’t go there!!
I left the Army in 1994 and a few years went by. In 1997 I mentioned I was a veteran and some little punk Challenged me! (I’m still not happy about that)
After 2001 everything changed and people react differently to Veterans now.
Vacationing down in Branson, Missouri while watching a stage show, they asked all veterans to stand up and be recognized. It felt strange.
I happened again in Church during Veterans day. It still felt strange
While visiting down in Texas with my wife’s uncle Frank, a WWII Navy veteran assigned to protect the merchant marine fleet. I listened to his stories for quite a long time. I eventually confessed to him how humbled I felt to be counted as a veteran with those that really saw “Action”.
He smiled and told me to remember this:
“All gave some, some gave all”
We all rose our right hands and made an oath. We all served in some capacity, great or small to be something bigger than what we are alone.
And as the years roll on, My heart has a feeling for those young men – younger than me that come back from war, and we veterans have a type of empathy that cannot be explained to those that did not serve.
Don’t think less of a REMF or the guy that was in the Motor Pool working on an old truck- or the person that slopped some food on your plate at the mess hall.
We all pledged to answer the call
“All gave some, some gave all”
Western Woman Shoots Her Shot Then Gets A Quick Reality Check; Men Just Don’t Care Anymore.
I got let go by a large enterprise software company in one of the stupidest ways imaginable…. I was in the middle of a multi-week project for the US Govt and was flying back and forth between my home and Tucson, AZ on a weekly basis….
Friday afternoon, I’m on my way back home, and as I get a coffee in the Phoenix airport, my corporate card doesn’t work…. I get a call shortly afterwards from HR saying that I don’t work for them anymore…
I ask politely if they had my assignment for the next few weeks covered, particularly the next week, as I was supposed to be in Albuquerque teaching a class for one of our partners. I rather rudely get told that it’s no longer any of my concern, that I need to get home and complete my final expenses…
Sunday night, I get a call from one of our Partner Managers wanting to see if I made it to Albuquerque ok and to go have dinner to discuss the schedule for the week…. I tell him what happened and you can hear him go white over the phone. He is -pissed-. This partner has pulled their entire Sales Engineer staff in (~20 people) for this class. I tell him it’s beyond my control.
he’s still mad and says he’s going to call his boss. Less than a minute later, I get a call from my former boss yelling about how I didn’t tell him about this training class, and that he doesn’t know who’s going to teach it. I calmly state that it’s been in my weekly status report for the last 8 weeks, when it was originally scheduled, and that if he wasn’t reading my status reports, that’s on him.
long story short here: the class didn’t happen. The partner sued my former company for several million dollars in lost revenue and additional expenses for bringing their staff in ‘for nothing’…. My former boss lost his job shortly afterwards, and I do think it was related…
UPDATE: my former boss did, in fact, call me back at close to 10pm my time to try to get me to take it as a ‘contract gig’ so the partner would be happy. I told him that it would be $1000 per day plus expenses — first class airfare, etc… — with a 5 day minimum. Oh, and looking at airfare, I can’t get there on Monday now, because the flights are already completely booked. I can fly Tuesday morning and make it happen…. He checked with the partner and that wasn’t acceptable (which I already knew, because I’d asked the partner about doing a Tues-Friday class already because I didn’t want to give up my weekends if I could help it!).
I couldn’t go work for the partner directly because, as others have stated in the comments, the training material and labs (yes, this was a hands-on training, including a full set of labs that the partner SEs would have been able to take with them!!) were proprietary!
I used to work in a chocolatier who was owned by a French Chef and his Scandinavian wife.
He had 2 interns come from France. One was A and another was L. Both of them were really pretty and dressed well. The only difference was that L smelled really bad. It was the sort of pungent putrid toxic stench that just went up your nostrils and killed a couple of your brain cells making you void of thoughts and movement for a couple of minutes. The kind of smell that would wake the dead and kill the living.
The additional problem to this was that the retail shop we worked at had a very small space. 3 people could barely fit behind the counter. So when L comes around the entire space would be filled with her stench. It was really bad.
My manager had told me that a cabbie had once tried to tell L that she smells bad and had wound down the windows. She went into a rant demanded to be dropped off in the middle of the highway and called the cab company complaining about how rude this driver was. And had promptly come into work raging away.
So to tell her to her face was out of the question.
The boss’s wife came around one day when L , myself and my manager were working. She stayed 10 minutes then signalled she couldn’t take the smell and walked away. She came back 20 minutes later with deodorant spray and perfume. She took one out and claimed very loudly how the weather was horribly humid and everyone stank and proceeded to spray everyone with the spray. That was the best day at work. L got hit double hard with the spray. Then the boss’s wife proceeded to implement the rule that everyone who works must spray themselves with the deodorant before they start their shift and it will be monitored through the camera.
Life became so much better after that. The living stayed alive and the dead stayed dead.
Because they lack the urgency they had when they were poor.
A good example is with fighters. Connor McGregor was unstoppable early in his career, knocking people out right and left. He’d come from humble beginnings and was destined to be a plumber before he took up fighting.
image 211
Then, he started raking in tens of millions of dollars. And it started to show. He was out partying like a madman, drinking and doing coke. He developed a god complex about fighting.
Sure enough, he started losing fights.
The same thing happened with other great athletes, including Mike Tyson. The old saying is that it’s hard to wake up early to jog, if you are sleeping in velvet sheets.
The lesson is that you shouldn’t lose the fire that got you to where you are. Many people keep it. Money doesn’t spoil everyone. But it spoils quite a few.
BLACK ORCHID – Retro Pulp Science Fiction by Skyward, Parallel Timeline, 1967-1971 to Future, Gen-2
When I was a senior in High School, I had a group of friends that I used to hang around with.
Oh, sure, most of the time we just stood around, smoked joints, drank beer and did acid. But it was a different time and a different place. We would alternate our locations, from the “standard” keggers, to road drives though the Western Pennsylvania woods to just hanging out near the river at a tipple.
Anyways, one of the guys was this older fella named Calvin. I liked him, but he was a hard drinker and partier.
I still get a chuckle out of this, but we are all stoned in my GTO. Calvin was in the back seat. A friend had lit a “Thai stick” which of course, was a very powerful form of marijuana, and when you smoked it, it felt like a baseball bat smashed your face. And we were parked outside this historical landmark; an old church and cemetery. We were listening to Led Zeppelin, and just sitting there completely zoned out. Our brains were pickled.
Calvin was chewing on something. He would reach into the ashtray at the side of the door wall and pull out some old cigarette butts and put in in his mouth and chew on it.
Then he said, after a while… “Man, this popcorn is the really stale”.
The PRC has sent barges into the channels between Quemoy and Xiamen to deepen the water channels between the ROC-held island of Quemoy and the PRC city of Xiamen. The ROC government in Taipei has said that this is a violation of the lines which the ROC had drawn between the two governments, and which had largely been respected by both sides.
Following the Feb. 14 event where an ROC coast guard ship chased a PRC fishing boat, leading to its capsize and the death of two PRC fishermen, the two sides have been involved in several rounds of negotiations. The PRC side has demanded a public apology and compensation to the families of the fishermen, but the ROC authorities have refused. So the PRC side has decided to deepen the shipping channels in the area, and violating the lines drawn up by the ROC.
Now the ROC authorities are threatening to take action against the PRC ships working in the area. They have not specified what actions they will take aside from pushing the PRC ships out of the area. This sets the stage for a confrontation.
The problem with the ROC position is that the authorities now publicly refer to the ROC as “Taiwan”, because the ruling DPP is for Taiwan independence. By taking a stance on offshore islands so close to Xiamen and PRC-held territory, they are choosing to enforce territory which is far away from Taiwan, and is not considered to be a part of “Taiwan”.
Why are they doing this? Do they expect the Biden administration to support them? It does not make a lot of sense.
If they don’t enforce it though, it is likely that the PRC air force and navy are unlikely to recognize air and sea claims made by the ROC anymore.
Salami-slicing in action.
Chuck Wagon Peach Cobbler
Chuck Wagon Peach Cobbler
Ingredients
Cobbler Crust
5 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup shortening
1 cup cold water
Cobbler
1 Cobbler Crust
1 cup granulated sugar
6 cups peaches, drained and juice reserved
1 cup butter, melted
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup Half-and-Half
1 cup juice from drained peaches
1/2 cup Black Jack Daniels
Instructions
Cobbler Crust
Mix dry ingredients and add shortening. Cut in with a fork. Mixture should look like coarse meal.
Add cold water gradually to make a ball.
Divide into 2 balls, top and bottom. Roll out one and line a 14 inch pan or 14 inch Dutch oven.
Roll out remainder and cut into 1 inch slices for latticework on top.
Cobbler
Melt butter in saucepan. Add peaches, brown sugar, cinnamon, sugar and Half-and-Half. Mix well.
Line pan or Dutch oven with crust.
Pour in fruit mixture.
Cover top with strips of crust in latticework pattern.
Moisten strips with water before baking and sprinkle sugar on latticework for crispy finish.
Bake for 45 to 50 minutes.
Every Man Needs To See This
What is the biggest scam an auto mechanic ever tried on you?
When I bought my first car, a 1966 Mustang, my father insisted that I take it to his mechanic to go over it to make sure it was all working properly before I could drive it. It would stall out after 10 minutes of driving, so there was a problem.
The following was on the bill….
Clean top of carburator
Check oil filter for loosenes
Check window operation
Check exhaust system
Check steering, suggest replacement of steering box.
This was 1972 and the bill was over $300.00!!
The actual problem was a pinched fuel line. Rubber hose and two clamps. $1.50.
I replaced the oil filter and changed the oil. $7.50 total.
I removed the interior panels of the door, and greased the tracks. Already had grease $0.00
I replaced a broken hanger for the exhaust. $3.50
I pulled out the steering box and found it only needed grease and adjustment. Time and labor, already had grease $0.00.
The dude that worked on my car was a hack. I pointed out all this to my father and he only said “I guess your a better mechanic than the place we took it to. I never went back there.
Idiots
Is it difficult for British expatriates to find entry level jobs in law and business in Hong Kong as of 2023? Where do I look for work?
It’s difficult for my legal bod cousins. As I’ve mentioned before in another post during CNY celebrations a lot of UK born cousins were back in HK. A lot of them were looking for a route to come live in HK.
One of them was my cousin from one of my dad’s sisters. She’s worked in a UK legal firm for ages and wanted a way to come back here. Her just like many UK born ones have HKID cards so do not need visa sponsorship.
She had work experience.
She can work for less because accommodation is provided, the Clan provides several fully fitted out portacabins right at the back of the village, Portacabins are used because the common houses are being torn down and rebuilt. Anyway these portacabins all you have to do is pay for the electricity used.
She’s also pretty damned good in Chinese, HSK6… but here’s the thing HSK6 is still considered by most China born Chinese to be illiterate!
So? You have none of the above advantages.
You have to answer the question to HK immigration – why should I let you work in HK? What skills do you have that are in demand or somebody in HK can’t do. AND it has to pay over $28,000 a month.
You’re competing against all the returnees.
Jimmy Tells American General “The U.S. Is The World’s Biggest Terrorist!”
What is the most unsettling thing someone has said to threaten you?
A group of my friends was out drinking at a local bar where the music was loud, the floor was sticky, and the atmosphere was biker/tattoo/STD/obnoxious.
I was talking with someone who was an acquaintance-they were a friend of one of my friends. We knew each other, but only through these mutual friends.
Unfortunately, alcohol makes some people belligerent and, in the case of this one particular individual, paranoid.
I must have said something that didn’t sit well with him because the belligerent paranoid (BPA) accused me of disparaging him (I had not). He turned to my husband and told him he knew for a fact that our daughter was not his biological daughter (She is 100% his biological daughter). He started uttering non-sensical statements which I, for the most part, ignored and took as our cue to get the hell out of that dive bar.
The BPA went to the bathroom, my husband waited to pay the tab, and I went to get the car.
While I waited for my husband to come out, the BPA came up to my window and just stared into my car until I noticed him which caused me to jump and scream. I rolled down my window and told him he nearly gave me a heart attack.
Then he very calmly stared at me and said, “I’ll be by later tonight to stick a lighter in your outside dryer vent until your house catches and you all burn to death.”
Who the fuck communicates such a descriptive and specific way to unalive someone they barely know for reasons that are a complete figment of their imaginative paranoia?
My husband and I didn’t sleep well that night. The next day we installed cameras. And we have avoided all contact with the BPA since that unsettling and strange incident.
Bring your cat to work day
What are some deep things you should read today?
Everybody is self-made but only millionaires will admit it.
When you work for someone, the harder you work , the richer they get . When you work for yourself, the harder you work, the richer you get.
Continue to live for moments that make your heart smile wider than your face could ever imagine.
Uncomfortable dating tips : Women want you the most when you don’t need them.
Most people know “WHAT”to think , not “HOW” to think . If you learn this, you can conquer the world.
You can’t force love. Either it’s there or it isn’t. You’ve got to be able to admit it . If it’s there , you’ve got to do whatever it takes to protect it.
Modern life is low-level psychic warfare.
Men will gladly spend a whole day with a woman, but not a single hour on their purpose. And, in the end, they ask, “why did she leave?”.
Men Have FINALLY Had Enough Of Their FEMALE Colleagues
Who is the dumbest law enforcement officer you have ever encountered?
Oh I have a doozy.
1978. Houston. Near the Galleria Mall.
I was getting off the freeway when a police car cut me off, almost running me off the road, no signal. Just truly bad driving.
Being young and stupid, when I was beside him at the light, I called him on it.
Oh he lit me up. I had three friends in my car with me. He made me get out of the car and was just screaming at me, telling me he could do anything he damn well pleased and poking me in the chest the entire time. I politely asked him to stop poking me with his finger and he threatened to break all my fingers off. He was so mad he was spitting and his partner was standing next to him with a smirk.
I stayed calm and asked my friends to write down their name, badge number, and car number. That’s when they hopped in their cruiser and just zoomed off.
I didn’t like it, so I called and talked to the desk officer. He took all the information and I assumed absolutely nothing would happen.
Nope.
I got a call back from a lieutenant a few days later. They had done an investigation, because the location I reported them at was nowhere NEAR where they were assigned for that shift. What they discovered is that they were cutting out of their area, going to the mall, and catching a movie. Lots.
The lieutenant shared that this was not the first complaint, but it was the last, because they’d both been fired.
Moral of the story? If you’re doing something outright stupid, don’t light up the stubborn college kid.
Today’s Shinjuku Kabukicho August 23, 2023 UP
As a patient, what’s the angriest you have ever been toward a doctor?
Dad had stage four mastatised pancreatic cancer, double incontinence, dementia and crippling arthritis. His oncologists used to call him in every month for a check up that consisted of him looking at dad’s medical notes asking how he was then nodding his head, that’s it. But, the trip to the hospital took nearly an hours preparation, a forty minute drive each way, a ten minute walk from the car park to the clinic (dad in a wheelchair when I found one) and then the worst bit! The oncologist used to call ALL that days patients in at 0930 then see them in alphabetical order! Look at our surname! The first few times were bad but one time after dad returned to the hospice he had to be rushed back to the same hospital under blues and twos! The next appointment we managed about an hour in the waiting room and dad was struggling to hold back his tears of agony, so I wheeled him out and started along the corridors back to the car. First the receptionist tried to stop us and I told her what to do on a short pier, then the nurse came running up to try to return us to the clinic “as the doctor was very busy and would get to us as soon as possible”. Dad told her to go forth and fornicate or something similar! She ran back and told the doctor (don’t know if fornication was involved or not). Pushing a wheelchair with a mind of a shopping trolley containing a fifteen stone (210#) obese man (5′2″ ) in immense pain, who didn’t want to be there, you don’t move very fast! The doctor caught up to us to find out what was going on and exercise his presumed authority! Wrong move! My dad used to be a CSM and he taught me how to project orders across a parade ground! Don’t shout at me if you have sensitive hearing! Amongst other things (including the legitimacy of his birth) I told him we were there for the benefit of dads health and not his ego! And we left, luckily for him he didn’t try anything physical! I’m also 210# but six foot tall and very little of that was fat! Unfortunately the stress and strain on dad contributed to him once again that evening being returned to hospital by emergency ambulance.
Now my dad through a variety of reasons was no stranger to that hospital. In the ward he usually ended up on, all the staff knew him and were on first name terms, most since being students. One of the senior consultants had first met my dad when he was doing his medical training and had become friends (even came to dad’s funeral! What, you think you recover from stage four pancreatic cancer? At 81?) He wanted to know why dad was back in hospital once again. So we told him who, how and why! Now this senior consultant is married to the chief executive of the hospital, that may or may not be the reason that the oncologist changed his appointments policy from block appointments to individual appointments and a very significant attitude adjustment the next time we went to see him!
Gen-Z
What is the biggest secret that your first boss told you that has helped you the most?
I started to work as a programmer with a large insurance company.
I was also going to a university at night for an engineering degree.
So, the job was just a paycheck for me until graduated.
My supervisor called me into her office and let me know that she knew that I was just using the job as a steppingstone until I graduated. She was a quaker and peppered her speech with thee and thou. A lovely lady.
She told me the company had its own problems and if I showed some diligence in my job, she would ensure that I would be rewarded for my effort.
I took her advice and made a great effort to please her and focused on my job.
When the company put together a planning group, she insisted that I be a part of it.
The group consisted of two vice presidents, three directors and one programmer.
The first problem we tackled was the number of boxes of paper documents shipped to all our service locations at the end of the month. The cost of shipping the boxes and how hard it was to look up the data at the service location.
This was in the late sixties and personal computers were not common.
I was a tech magazine reader at the time, so I suggested to the group that we output the data to a fiche machine because the fiche produced would be less costly to ship than sending boxes,
It would require the home office to buy the fiche machine and the service locations to rent fiche readers, which at that time were very cheap.
The benefit to the service location was the fiche was easy to handle and never got torn.
Well, the company and the service locations loved the idea, so it was accepted.
The planning group stayed together for a year, and we solved some smaller problems.
That 15-minute conversation with my supervisor changed my life forever.
When I received my degree, I no longer had an interest in engineering and chose to stay in the computer field.
She is gone now but not forgotten.
Pepe Escobar: Putin and China Send DEVASTATING Warning to NATO as Germany, Macron Threaten WWIII
This is really rather good.
Can Quora conservatives explain why and when you started being a conservative?
I can try.
It’s a long story, though. But, like most other people, my political leanings are the result of my influences early in life, and my experiences. And, to some degree, what I didn’t experience, that others did experience.
For example, it’s easy to be supportive of the police, when you’ve only ever had positive encounters with them. It’s easy to assume that most people can avoid negative encounters with the police by simply obeying the law.
That door swings both ways. It’s easy to have an adversarial view of the police when you or someone you know had a negative encounter with them.
Once you get a political idea in your head, you start to see it everywhere you look. This is true for people across the political spectrum. You’re influenced to see certain things and, by God, now that you’re looking for them, you see them everywhere.
For me, my journey to the right side of the political spectrum is more of a journey of being pushed away by the left, rather than willingly moving towards the right. I’m more libertarian than conservative, but, in contemporary America’s binary political landscape, it seems that anything that isn’t progressive is often all grouped under “conservatism.”
Progressives: What’s your stance on [this issue]?
Me: Total indifference. It has nothing to do with me.
Progressives: So you don’t support the people who are dealing with it?
Me: Does my support or lack of it have any impact on the issue whatsoever? No? Then why must I choose to support it or not? Why can’t I remain indifferent?
Progressives: You sound like a conservative. Your silence tells us all we need to know, and it won’t protect you.
Me: If indifference on this topic makes me a conservative in your eyes, okay then. I’ll add your labeling of my political stances to the list of things I don’t care about.
If I’m being super honest, in the last decade or so, I’ve gone from identifying as “libertarian” to identifying as “cynical.” I assume that most politicians are only looking out for themselves, most government attempts to fix issues will fail, or make things worse, the government has more than enough money to fix society’s problems, but a lot of that money is wasted, etc…
For example, there’s a ballot measure here in Chicago to raise taxes on real estate sales over $1m, to raise funds for housing options for homeless people. My view on that is that it will likely pass, but not a single homeless person will be helped by this. Any money raised by this will find its way into the pockets of politicians and their supporters, while the expenses will just passed on to renters. The people who support it will get to pat themselves on the back for caring about the homeless, while ignoring the complete lack of tangible positive outcomes from it. The goal here is virtue signaling from the rank-and-file voters, sticking it to “rich people,” and lining the pockets of the Democratic machine. Homelessness is just the necessary reasoning for it all.
Basically, I assume that, for the rest of my life, the general situation in the world, and in my country, will be roughly the same as it is now, and my best move is to put myself and my children in a position to avoid the worst of it. The “status quo,” when it comes to politics, is too hopelessly entrenched to be uprooted, and too hopelessly corrupt to be effective.
But this question is about the origins of my conservatism, not why I stick with it in middle age.
I suppose my political journey began as a child in the 80s and early 90s. My father worked for the U.S. Navy, as a civilian machinist. Among other things I remember him saying about his job were:
He was forced to spend millions of dollars on machines that he didn’t really need in his shop, but the companies who made those machines donated to the right politicians.
He was forced to spend every single dime he was allocated for the fiscal year, or, the next fiscal year, he wouldn’t get as much allocated. Saving money isn’t rewarded, but is actually punished, when you work for the government.
He would never be promoted beyond his current level, no matter how well he did, because he was a white male. Back then, the federal government was only interested in promoting racial minorities and females.
That last one was something I heard versions of from most white men I knew growing up. Of course, half of them worked at the same base where my father worked, so they dealt with the same policies. None of these were rich white men. They were all working class white men, and they all felt like they were being punished for things they didn’t do, in the name of “fairness.” And they placed the blame for that injustice directly at the feet of liberals.
The same white “social justice warriors” of the 50s and 60s found themselves, by the 80s, on the receiving end of social injustice, in the form of Affirmative Action. It seemed like every middle-aged white male I knew growing up was a “live and let live” and “don’t judge a book by its cover” kind of guy, with a serious chip on their shoulder that others weren’t adhering to the “don’t judge a book by its cover” mantra. Every single white guy who felt like they were falling behind in society was able to blame Affirmative Action for their slipping, no matter how true it was.
The message, for younger white guys like me, was easy to pick up: it is legal to discriminate against you because of your race and gender, and you just have to accept it.
And, once you start looking for it, you see it everywhere.
Why does my high school have a counselor specifically for helping minority students get into and pay for college? That’s discrimination. Why is no one calling it out? My parents are taxpayers, too. That counselor should be helping everyone who needs help with those things, and not discriminating against students based on race.
You just have to accept it… or, affiliate yourself with the side of the political aisle which points out the hypocrisy of it all.
So it wasn’t so much “we’re conservatives,” as it was “liberals are working against people like us, so I guess that makes us conservative by default. Where else would we go?”
By the time I got to high school, I was socially liberal, in the sense that I simply didn’t care about people’s personal business, particularly in the bedroom. I was also very concerned about environmentalism, and even started a small paper recycling program in my school. It didn’t last, but at least I tried. I wanted to be a “part of the solution.”
My environmental views have skewed heavily to the cynical side in the 30 years since starting high school. I think recycling paper is a huge waste of time.
I remember, however, in high school, being annoyed by some of my more politically involved classmates, demanding that I (and everyone else) not only form opinions in line with theirs on certain topics, but openly express our support. They had the “if you’re not openly supporting us, you must be quietly opposing us” attitude that I’ve seen in other progressives in my adult life.
Some of my most common PG-rated thoughts throughout my high school years were versions of “I’d care more about this person’s point of view if they weren’t so damn loud and obnoxious all of the time.” And, of course, a sarcastic “the problem you’re in could have been easily avoided has you made more conservative choices in life.”
It was during those years that my own sister, of her own volition, developed a drug habit, became a teen mom, and dropped out of high school. I had a front-row seat, starting around age 12, of how to ruin your life through really shitty decisions, and it sapped a lot of the sympathy I had for people who were dealing with the consequences of their own shitty decisions.
Although I’m getting better about it, when I hear that someone put themselves in a bad situation, and is now begging “society” to bail them out of it, one of my first thoughts is, “how is this anyone else’s problem but yours? Why should we all have to pay for this?”
Anyway, that’s my evil conservative origin story.
Tales From The Streets : San Diego Streets Ep-4
What’s the best revenge you’ve gotten after being fired or let go from a job?
While inprocessing for the military, I worked at a radio station selling air time in a town of 30,000. When I took over my route a retired Army major was occasionally hitting $6,000. That was pretty good in 1979. I took billings over $8000. Three months later, I was fired (I was the only man), and a young cutsie 22-year-old girl was hired. She had zero experience.
My sales manager/station owner’s wife told me to “clean out my desk.” I did just that, trashing everything including sales invoices for the month. She made a big point of letting me know I wouldn’t be getting my commissions. I waited patiently for my salary check ($1,500 at the time) at my desk, then walked to the bank and cashed it.
Two days later I got the call. “Where are all the sales invoices for August?’
“In the trash.”
“What!?”
“You said clean out my desk. I did.” Then I hung up.
I heard later the young girl didn’t work out, and the station went bankrupt.
Sad, isn’t it?
Do you think that coaching institutes like Unacademy should be banned as they charge lakhs and crores and those who study from these will do corruption to recover their investment made on studies which they can’t earn honestly in a government job?
I absolutely do
Coaching has become an Industry today and whenever such things happen, everything becomes counter productive
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Xi Jingping rightly said
In China :-
Private Tutoring Apps had become an Industry and had commercialized education so much that the newer generation was no longer going to such coaching facilities to LEARN OR ADD TO THEIR KNOWLEDGE OR UNDERSTANDING but to specifically orient themselves to scoring marks in a specific examination (Gaokao)
Private Tutoring Apps had become exploitative and were commercializing learning to an extent where it was feared that the entire Gaokao could be modified to suit the whims of the Private Tutoring Apps
So he wiped out the Industry mercilessly
“F*** the Billions of Dollars in Paper value”
Today Tutoring has gone back to the old 60 RMB per Hour student tutors or Volunteer Tutorials and Extra Coaching
India and China both have predators who suck the blood of common people and exploit them in the name of capitalism
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The Difference is CHINA BANNED THIS
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In China, if any Institute publishes the list of toppers for admissions
Their license is suspended for 5 Years
They are fined not less than 60,000 RMB but upto 250,000 RMB
Ministry of Education Bans the Idolization of China’s Top Gaokao Scorers
Stories of the top achievers of China’s national exams can no longer be propagated by state media; the emphasis should shift to the average, harmonious student.
India not only allows this to flourish but ignores cases where Institutes LIE about their students by paying money to the students and making the students lie
Most Coaching Institutions are run with political contacts
Now my point is
Is Unacademy really predatory?
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Just because they offer coaching for a fee doesn’t make them predatory
Just because they have referrals doesn’t make them predatory. That’s just business. Same as a Tutor asking you to give her cards to your friends.
Do they exploit the situation in India and claim if you don’t take their course, you will lose badly
Do they help you learn or do they force you to structure your brain into clearing the JEE or NEET rather than learning the topics?
Do they prostitute education by paying more money to marketers than teachers?
So far at least I dont think they are that bad
Please correct me if they have become that bad
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Coz that’s what happened to BYJUS
From being a place that helped students sharpen their brains to understand CAT better, they prostituted and pimped education spending more on “Celebrities” like SRK who also prostituted himself like he did with Arindam Chaudhari
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Unacademy are also going BYJUS WAY
Using Tendulkar the dropout of Xth Standard to promote an Education Product
So they too are starting to pimp out education
It won’t create the Students India needs
Not the thinkers, analysts, people who understand fundamentals – they aren’t born from KOTA FACTORIES or Prospective Pimping Edtech Apps
They are born by self study with tutoring to help them sharpen their brains
One thing to learn and understand Physics, Maths and Chemistry and USE THIS KNOWLEDGE AND WRITE THE JEE
Another is to learn Physics, Maths and Chemistry BECAUSE YOU WANT TO WRITE THE JEE
The former is a winner
The Latter ends up mediocre in life in every aspect
Solution?
Ban full page Ads of Toppers by various Institutions
Regulate the Coaching Fees
Make sure Coaching Institutes remain Sole Proprietorships Or Partnerships and dont become Companies
Ban any Coaching Institute taking over another Institute
Register all Coaching Institutions with Ministry of Education with select standards
Otherwise the next two generations of students, the so called FUTURE OF INDIA would be the most worthless
Anyone who exploits students like this must be taken to Gulags and forced to labor for 20 hours a day in the -17 degree weather
Tokyo’s Night Joy Paradise Plus Unexpected PERMISSION 2
Can you provide an explanation of the recent Texas v. Pennsylvania case before the Supreme Court? Is it accurate that President Trump does not have jurisdiction over these cases due to not being a member of Congress?
Well, let’s start with some basic principles of U.S. constitutional law.
Under the constitution, the Supreme Court may only hear original cases in very limited circumstances. One of those is when one state sues another state. That’s not uncommon, but usually its due to disputes about the right to use water from rivers that pass through more than one state. The usual procedure is to refer the case to a special master (usually a federal court judge) who holds the trial and reports back to the Supreme Court which can then affirm the decision.
Congress cannot expand the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to hear cases that aren’t listed in the constitution. That was what Marbury v. Madison was about – the court was given power by congress to hear cases involving disputes about judicial appointments in the District of Columbia, and ruled that Congress didn’t have that power.
Now, onto the case. The State of Texas attempted to bring a case shortly before Congress was to meet to confirm the result of the 2020 election to sue the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for not following its own election laws. Essentially, they wanted to disqualify all the mail-in ballots cast during the election on the theory that Pennsylvania law hadn’t authorized them. This issue had already been tried by Pennsylvania courts which ruled such suits were “untimely” – any such suit had to be brought before the election, not after.
But the only issue before the court was whether they HAD to take the case. As a rule, the Supreme Court chooses which cases it hears, but again if this is a case within its jurisdiction to hear new cases, they might have to take it.
What the court ruled is that no state has the right to start a case in the Supreme Court unless the judges agree to hear it. That’s probably good policy as it appeared this case would have asked the Supreme Court to allow one state to enforce laws in other states, which in any other case would be a no-no. For example, Texas could not sue to prevent Pennsylvania physicians from performing abortions on Texas residents just because it’s illegal for a Texas resident to leave the state for an abortion, or based on some theory that Pennsylvania law doesn’t allow physicians to perform abortions except on Pennsylvania residents. Once again, the issues in this case were already settled in Pennsylvania courts, and those could have been appealed to the Supreme Court if there were a constitutional issue (that’s what happened in Bush v. Gore).
But let’s get back to the rule about the Supreme Court only being able to hear a narrow range of original cases. The president does not have the right to sue in the Supreme Court (although he could be sued in, for example, a case involving the appointment of an ambassador – that’s within the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction). Members of Congress don’t have the right to sue in the Supreme Court either.
Elysium Movie Clip | Full Robot Fight Scene | Matt Damon | Diego Luna
What is the most unbelievable behavior you witnessed from a new co-worker that made them get terminated almost immediately?
I worked in a loan department as a loan clerk. A man was hired as a new manager for one of our branch offices. Our Vice President asked me to train the man on the loan process and how to type out the form letters, etc.. This man gave me grief from moment one.
He was arrogant and a smart aleck. I wanted to slap him about every five minutes. He was also a male chauvinist pig. He kept making sexual remarks to me and about me. When I sat him in front of the computer to type out the form letters, he refused to do them, saying “Typing is women’s work. I’ll have one of the women do it for me.”
The final straw came when I took him back to our Vice President’s office. The VP was asking me how he had done and before I could respond, the man said something to the effect of “Well, she wouldn’t sit in my lap, so I think she needs to be spanked.”. I just stared at the VP. He turned to the new manager and said “You’re fired. This is one great lady and you’ve disrespected her since the moment you walked in. Get out before I turn her loose on you.”.
Middle Class Meltdown: America’s Unseen Crisis
Biden = Russia, Russia, Russia!
Trump = China!, China!, China!
Nothing is ever going to get fixed.
Was Hitler a drug addict?
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Adolf Hitler was a chronic drug addict. His drug use was of epic proportions.
Hitler was prescribed by his doctors so many various drugs (including cocaine) that he was rarely in a state unaffected by powerful mind-altering substances.
According to his doctors, Hitler was “a good patient.”
He was meticulously adherent to the regimen for his chronic sinusitis: cocaine in aerosol form.
The German Fuhrer also took amphetamines, sedatives, and hormones.
Hitler relied on daily injections of the “wonder drug” Eukodol. It contained oxycodone, a semi-synthetic opioid. The drug caused the state of euphoria, practically rendering the user incapable of making sound judgments.
In his book “Blitzed”, German author Norman Ohler described how the Third Reich was permeated with drugs, including cocaine, heroin and most notably crystal meth, which was used by everyone from soldiers to housewives and factory workers.
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Pervitin, an early form of methamphetamine, was available in Nazi German without a prescription.
In Nazi military during WWII, drug use was encouraged.
In September 1939, Ranke tested the drug on 90 university students and concluded that Pervitin could help the Wehrmacht win the war.
The effects of amphetamines on an person are similar to those of the adrenaline produced by the body, triggering a heightened state of alertness. In most people, the substance increases self-confidence, concentration, and willingness to take risks while at the same time reducing sensitivity to pain, hunger, and the need for sleep.
Later, a dose of cocaine was added to Pervitin tablets, to increase the drug’s potency and encourage continuous use.
When Hitler’s drug supplies ran out by the end of the war, he suffered severe withdrawal from serotonin and dopamine, paranoia, psychosis, rotting teeth, extreme shaking, kidney failure and delusion.
The Sopranos – Paulie enjoys Miami
Can Mike Tyson still knock out Jake Paul when he’s going to be 58 years old in the fight?
Technically yes but realistically an emphatic no.
I never thought I would be saying this but Jake Paul is likely to beat Mike Tyson.
Why? That’s a legitimate question since we are talking about one of the greatest and most feared heavyweight champions ever V a relatively junior pro boxer with very few fights.
I’m afraid it all comes down to age, activity and conditioning. At age 40 or even 50 I’d give Tyson a great chance but he’s nearly 60 now, been out of the ring close to 20 years and been doing a lot of other things. Put simply he’s just not in condition to fight a professional fight. He could beat the hell out of the normal types of guys in the street no doubt about it but this is a professional boxing fight we’re talking about. It’s very likely that after one round of intense fighting he’ll be totally finished from a cardio perspective. After that last stand, Jake Paul who if nothing else can at least hit hard will probably get him.
Don’t be fooled by the videos of Tyson looking fast and powerful in training. They have been carefully edited to make him look good. In reality in the fight (if it’s a real one) he won’t look that good or fast. He’ll still have a bit of power so there is some danger to Jake Paul but probably only for one or two rounds max. After that it will a big advantage to the younger man.
No matter how good a condition a fighter is in, the age aspect of this is relevant. A 60 years old head isn’t supposed to get hit hard by a pro fighter. The blood vessels can’t be trained to take those shots like they used to.
For people of my generation it’s pretty sad to see the great Iron Mike Tyson reduced to doing this kind of circus act.
This fight could end pretty badly and shouldn’t really be happening at all. That’s capitalism for you.
EDIT : I guess the most likely thing here is that they’re both in on it as a money grabbing exercise and have agreed with each other not to hurt each other. The fight will probably be the least interesting part of the next few weeks. It’s all about the build up.
Mr. Spock Sends Up a Flare – Star Trek – 1967
What is the craziest thing you ever did when you were a teenager?
I can’t believe I am going to admit this….
When I was 14 years old in 1982-ish. I was recently uprooted from my lifelong hometown. I moved from upstate New York to Pennsylvania with my mom and step-monster. A friend of mine had just gotten sentenced to serve time in a NY state jail. I wrote to Scott frequently, as I thought he must be bored and lonely. I used this same stationary every time, with little unicorns on it. After the third or fourth letter, I realized just how bad it was for him in there.
I got together a little bit of money and bought some pot. I put it in a little matchbook, and sent the matchbook to Scott, along with a letter saying something like “I hope this helps.” I was smart enough not to sign my name, just in case anything bad happened. I thought that it was illegal to tamper with someone’s mail. It never even occured to me that the jail’s officials in charge were allowed to open up Scott’s mail and go through it. I used the same stationary as normal. Little unicorns. Can you see where this is heading?
My parents were surprised when federal detectives showed up. The formal charges were:
“Using the Federal Government (The United States Post Office) to transport illegal drugs across state lines.” To a correctional institution, no less.
Okay, you can laugh your a** off now…
I’ll wait.
Thank God I was 14. I was sentenced as a juvenile offender (the record was sealed); deemed “incorrigible”; had a PINS petition put in place against me (Person In Need of Supervision); had to perform 100 hours of community service and was almost placed in foster care because my parents couldn’t handle it or me anymore. Thankfully, my grandmother took me in, instead. My parents called me all sorts of stupid. Yes, I have to agree. But my answer to them at the time was “I thought he could use a buzz.”
Hugs.
-Valeri
The fourth
What is a polite response when someone says they don’t like your home?
I am soon to be 64. At this stage in my life, I have a VERY low tolerance for a**hattery. I don’t bother trying to be polite to people that aren’t polite.
The last time one of my sisters came to my house and made a comment about a few papers laying on the floor, I didn’t let her get away with it. I left them laying on the floor after they fell off the desk; for a good reason, but that was none of my sister’s business. I don’t believe in explaining to people why my house looks the way it does. Why SHOULD I? So, what I said to her was this: “You don’t REALLY want me to start critiquing YOUR housekeeping, do you?”. After I said that to her, she never said anything about anything that was on the floor again.
You see, her and her husband always leave their dining room table FULL of all different kinds of papers, looks real messy, but you know what? I never say anything because it’s THEIR house! They can keep it the way they WANT to! Plus, I don’t CARE about it, it’s not MY house! They SHOULD have the same respect for me!
AND, that’s the same way I feel about someone coming into my home telling me they don’t like it. Depending on who it is that is saying it, I MIGHT say something like “I don’t care, you don’t live here.” or maybe ”What did you come over for then?”. See, the FUN thing about messing with RUDE people, is because they never expect people to be rude BACK, which is why they are rude in the first place, because people LET them get away with it. *I* don’t. The looks on their faces when they are rude and I am blunt with them…PRICELESS!!!
In a medium bowl, combine ground beef, seasoned salt and seasoned pepper; shape into four patties.
Grill or broil to desired doneness (about 5 to 6 minutes on each side for medium).
Meanwhile, in medium skillet, melt butter.
Add onion and taco seasoning; mix well.
Cook onion over medium high heat until soft and transparent.
Top each patty with onions and cheese.
Return to grill or broiler until cheese is melted.
Place each patty on a roll; top with lettuce and tomato.
Companies Are Being Forced Out of NYC… Why?
Are Democrat supporters who have a pathological hatred of Donald Trump aware that at least 80% of what they think about Trump is misinformation and comes from outright lies by the US Mainstream Media?
I was a mainstream reporter (NYTimes and NY Herald Tribune) when Donald Trump was in his early 30s in NYC. I got to know him at his hangouts and on several more private occasions.
He was not then, nor is he now, “stupid” as so many anti-Trumpers continually proclaim. He was, however, a man whose word meant absolutely nothing. He spoke almost nothing but outright lies and “gut” fabrications. He’d betray a “friend” in a blink; he loathed any woman whose “pussy” he could not “grab”. He was a physical coward in private and in public. He was frightened to wetting his pants of his Nazi-loving, face-slapping, fascist father, to whom he lied and groveled. He had no friends since he only took and never gave. Both men and women immediately felt his creepy, duplicitous, despicable ways and avoided him unless they wanted to be close to what they thought was his money. Her learned how to manipulate and twist the American legal system from his evil genius lawyer Roy Cohen (“Don’t tell me about the law, tell me about the judge.”). I believed then that hate is stupid and as a reporter I did not hate Trump. But I understood him, and understanding is the opposite of hatred.
Trump is now and was then (as any woman who knew him even a bit well would agree) —- a mentally vicious, endlessly traitorous, sickeningly self-absorbed adolescent with feminine soft hands (no manual labor) and a filthy tongue. That was in his early 30s. Any honest observer and reporter quickly found him out and in New York and environs his name was a dirty joke. . . Then came TV “reality” shows and millions of unfortunate Americans watched how he behaved and they want to be just like him, and get away with it. If anyone who reads this considers themselves a friend of Trump, may their gods help them. He will make America and Americans poorer in mind, money, than it ever was, The only way to beat the Russian-sponsored thug is to confront him with a community of people who will oppose him and his fellow liars, cheaters, thieves, and those who tolerate them,
Father’s statement
What did you do when an aggressive driver got out of their car and wanted to fight?
Bad Traffic day in Orlando, FL. As a legal motorcycle rider, I was following traffic laws and traffic lights, and traffic wasn’t moving at all. The *ssh*l* in the car behind me started to lean on his horn. After 5 or 10 horn blows I started to respond with my 139 decibel horn everytime, followed by a turn of my head to look at the driver banging his hands on his steering wheel and yelling again. When he tried to pull up next to me in the space between me and the car in the next lane, I moved to block just enough of the lane that he would have to hit either me or the car in the next lane. At this point he starts yelling at me. He continues to try to move up. The Car next to me gives him just enough space, and I continue to control my lane.
When he gets close enough he started yelling “You! On the motorcycle! ….” and a flood of anti-hispanic, anti-biker rhetoric just comes spewing out of his mouth. Not being hispanic and not considering myself a “biker”, I calmly turned around, looked him in the eyes, and said “No hables espaniol”.
The drivers is ENRAGED! He starts to get out of his car. And he keeps screaming about immigrants. Once he is out of the car, I turn to him again.
I say to him “I was born in Philadelphia PA. Am I an immigrant? And aren’t you smart enough to understand that I don’t speak Spanish? That is what “No hables espaniol” means.”
The man is flabbergasted, stops in his tracks, flaps his mouth several times, and the best revenge, the log jam broke and the light changed, at the same moment. As I pulled away, the man was left standing in the middle of the street with every car behind him laying on the horn, and trying to get around him.
It Begins… Army Troops Take Over NYC
Have you ever had to tell an employee that their attire was inappropriate?
Yes, I had to take on the most difficult challenge of all, a man telling a woman that her attire was inappropriate for the office.
To set the scene, this woman was a young adult, a peer and also a work-friend. She had just lost a bunch of weight and also taken a European vacation. She was feeling good about her body and bought a dress in Paris that showed it off. This dress was so low-cut that it showed the underside of her breasts. If you wanted to pick up a casual hookup in a bar, this was exactly the dress you wanted to wear. But I would never, could never say that.
What I said to her was that this dress looked awesome on her with her weight loss, and if she was looking for a date, it was a great choice. But if she wanted to be taken seriously as an engineer and not distract people, something more conservative and businesslike might be a better choice. She was, in fact, having difficulty being taken seriously, so she took this advice on board and dressed more professionally after that. I got to keep our friendship and not get sued. I’m super glad I won’t ever have to do that again.
Passport Bros are leaving and Modern Women are HUMBLED
When U.S. prisons are inspected, does it actually help the prisoners?
The American Correctional Association (ACA) came to do an inspection at the Federal prison I was in.
A failed inspection would mean loss of accreditation. I’m not aware that means anything other than egg on some suit’s face.
For a prison inspection to be meaningful, hordes of inspectors should rappel from helicopters into the yard in the dead of night without warning. They could carry badges, clipboards, and maybe a few pieces of equipment. (OK… five minutes warning so nobody gets shot).
Instead, the prison had months of notice. They had enough lead time that they could leisurely waste weeks, doing nothing to get ready. When the visit was about two weeks off, suddenly stuff started happening.
New paint was slathered on everything, thick enough it could’ve stopped an escape all by itself.
In the chow hall, we had a persistent leak in the roof. Because it wasn’t fixed for years, the drop ceiling soaked up water, several tiles collapsed, and ominous mold was growing in the insulation around the duct work. At about the same time that paint was being poured over every surface, a crew of inmates came in to patch the ceiling. They didn’t fix the leak, they just patched the drywall and drop in sections that were affected.
Our dishwasher could never get up to temperature. The water was so hard that the heating coils were continually clogged with deposits several inches thick. Pick up any tray that had gone through the thing, and you’d immediately see that the luke warm water wasn’t getting trays clean (of course we never bothered with soap or surfactants either). Instead of trying to fix the dishwasher, the staff, experienced in many an inspection, simply stopped using it. It was “temporarily out of service” for the visit, and we used thousands of dollars worth of disposable foam plates and cups for each meal. This kept the inspectors from finding out that the machine was actually permanently out of service.
So, no. The inspections didn’t help us at all. Our food did get dramatically better for the couple of days that the visit went on, but that was really the only change.
After the visitors left, the dishwasher was plugged back in so it could moisten the dirt on the plates, and the ceiling started to crumble again, revealing mold that had blossomed nicely in the humid darkness.
What story of survival blows your mind every time you think about it?
A bolt of lightning hit the right wing of the aircraft, and suddenly LANSA Flight 508 was plummeting toward the ground. Over the screams of dozens of others, Juliane Koepcke — who was sitting at 19F, a window seat — heard her mother say from the seat beside her: “Now it’s all over.”
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Seconds later, the plane is disintegrating in mid-air, and Juliane’s mom is gone. Juliane is still strapped in her seat, but she is not inside the cabin anymore — instead, she is all alone in the open air at a height of 10,000 feet, tumbling down from the heavens.
The last things she will ever see are packed treetops that look like broccoli heads. Or so she thinks.
Because the next day, she wakes up on the Amazon rainforest floor, still very much alive and miraculously only modestly wounded:
She had a concussion, a broken collarbone, some deep cuts. The forest, she wrote in her memoir, “saved my life,” the foliage cushioning the impact of her 10,000-foot fall. She went in and out of consciousness before finally pulling herself to her feet.
That is her first survival story, but now she is all alone in a jungle. She is seventeen years old, and she needs to focus on the next step. A second survival. Luckily for her, Juliane has lived in the jungle for several years, in a research station where both of her parents were working at the time.
She looks for her mom first, but doesn’t find her. Then, she decides to look for a stream, because streams often lead to villages, and she will soon need water. And when she finally finds a creek, she also finds dead people:
“When I turned a corner in the creek, I found a bench with three passengers rammed head first into the earth. I was paralysed by panic. It was the first time I had seen a dead body.”
crash
[Image of plain wreckage of LANSA Flight 508, which had boarded in Peru. (Coral Brunner/Shutterstock.)]
As days go by, a wound on her upper right arm gets infested with maggots about one centimeter long each. She remembered that their dog once had the same infection and that her father had put kerosene in it, so when she finds a small hut with a palm leaf roof, and outboard motor and one liter of kerosine, she sucks the gasoline out and puts it into the wound.
The next day she hears human voices, and she is saved for the second time around.
Later, Juliane found out that her mom also survived the crash, but was badly wounded and died a couple of days later in the rainforest, all alone, and desperately hoping that a miracle had saved her daughter.
Ok, today (as I write this, might take a few months to get out there, though) it is early April.
Sitrep April 2024
Time for a sitrep that will probably be way out of date by the time your read this.
The United States national debt is higher than what was initially calculated. Currently as of last week, the nation’s $34 trillion debt is approximately 99% of GDP and, according to the CBO, will steadily increase over the next 30 years. We are told that this is nothing to worry about. Meanwhile in China, the debt is 60% of GDP and we are told the “China is collapsing”.
The United States military is policing New York Subways. They are carrying full automatic weapons and this is to make New York safer.
The United States military is all over the Texas border. They are carrying full automatic weapons and riding in tanks and armored vehicles. This is to make America safer.
The United States military is now occupying bases off the coast of China. They are carrying full automatic weapons and manning rocket launchers. This is to make China safer.
I think that it is so caring that Washington DC wants to make the world a better and safer place. Don’t you?
…
Ah, but I digress.
Let’s continue.
Ukraine fiasco is winding down. NATO has given up. The USA is throwing it’s hands up and the Ukrainians are on zombie auto-pilot. Russia is going to “mop up” and probably make a final push to force what remains of Ukrainian “leadership” to capitulate.
The morons in the EU are in a state of (drug induced?) delusion and unaware how truly fucked they are. NATO is kaput.
But, but, but… American tanks are moving toward Ukraine. American troops are in Monrovia. American “volunteers” and Special Forces are in Ukraine. Obviously a buildup is ongoing… to “end the war” before November elections? Politically driven use of military is a Democrat staple. Historically it results in many causalities and is rarely reported. What will happen? Use history as a guide. You tell me.
The new members of NATO Finland and Sweden are all dressed up with nowhere to go. Expect a short fizzle and die sometime in the next decade.
Now you know everything you need to know about Europe.
The United States tried to “go for the gold”, fumbled and now the entire place is a mucky mess. Not a pretty sight.
But the USA has a plan…
Janet Yelen is in China making proposals, threats, warnings and promises. The USA wants money, and some “elbow room”. A cash infusion and a grant, or loan is the minimum demand. China is being ever polite. But honestly doesn’t give a rat’s ass. It doesn’t care.
There are some deep-state bureaucrats in Washington DC pushing the Philippine provocation storms against China. Seemingly going against the direct orders of Biden. Expect that to “blow up” in their faces in the next year and China starts playing REAL HARD ball.
Is that all?
Nope. Things are interesting this year…
Strange tit4tat events. A “earthquake” in Taiwan, followed two days later with an “earthquake” near Washington DC. Hum… what a coincidence. Ah. These strange occurrences are coming hot and heavy don’t you know. Makes you appreciate the hand of God, eh?
Gaza. This event was predicted in the mid 1960’s. It’s an a long timer. Horrific, but this is just the appetizer for what will follow.
Gonna be an “election” in the United States in November. I am sure that the Oligarchy has determined who will be the winner and what will happen. It’s all a shell-game for the mindless rabble to keep their minds off their stressful misery.
Trump is talking up a big anti-China storm. Biden is on his hands and knees begging China. Night and day. The policies that will result with determine the flavor of society of the upcoming years. But will NOT determine if and when the world will end.
Overall…
Global changing demographics continue. Mighty uncomfortable for many. It’s gonna get even more uncomfortable for those of you in the West.
Propaganda spiels are still generously funded out of Langley Va. Expect to hear more about the “Russian failures in Ukraine” and how terrible life is in Russia. Expect to hear a continuation of the narrative how “China is collapsing” any day now, and so on and so forth.
In the West, inflation is reaching unsustainable levels. In times past, the pitchforks and fire torches would be out, as would be hanging nooses and gallows. But you do have to give credit where credit is due. The Western government really have their cattle well behaved and totally enslaved.
The drunken parties in “Capital Hill” continue unabated. They continue to spend like drunken sailors on crack. No signs of abatement or rehab. It’s a clown-show on steroids and its a racing towards the end of the line. The big cliff fall is a mere few years away.
The United States is undergoing a frightful social change where no one is dating, no one is getting married, and the prognosis is a MAJOR drop-off in birthrates to sustain society. Ah. Expect riots long before that. Nasty ones too.
On the technology front are some interesting developments…
Electric Vehicles are talking the globe by storm. Everywhere. That is everywhere except in the West. The gas-guzzler cartel won’t hand over their mantle of power. Oh, not yet. You all want a glimpse of the future? Remember BETAmax?
The “Congress-critters” are all in an outrage about Americans being able to post their views online without censorship. Darn pesky rascals. Not to worry, they are gonna ban Tiktoc. And thus maintain their control over the soapbox of the common-man. That is until the next APP enters the scene. Wanna bet it’s gonna come from Asia?
The American allies are a joke…
Haven’t heard too much on the “news” about Argentina. With the election of the USA-loving, Communist-hating, “president”, a new Argentina has emerged. And if you thought it was a shit-show before, it’s a real cluster-fuck right now. Not being reported on… well… there’s NOTHING good coming out of there these days. So, NOTHING is being reported.
The South Korean “president” is another butt-fuck loving American prostitute. I was particularly moved… to vomit… when he sang the “Star Spangled Banner”. Well, his green card is in place, and money is transferred into American banks, so he has not a care in the world. Just let the 4B movement run its course. He’s doing whatever his owners want. He’s got his. What about YOU?
Many things are going unreported in the world. But that is to be expected. Lots, and lots and lots of “color revolutions” that have dudded out, fizzled out, and pretty much went limp dick. Please pass the peas, Marge…
And moving on…
Meanwhile, the (former) third-world operates 5G, high speed trains, has face recognition, drives electric vehicles, and has inflation a mere fraction of what is terrorizing the West with. The world got on the bus and drove off. The West is still playing in the mud puddle in the road… totally and completely oblivious that the rest of the world just left the building.
But not to worry, the Western media continues to portray the United States as the leader in everything… from “freedom” to “democracy”. From low inflation, to high employment numbers. From the best universities, to the best in everything. Weeeeee!
Maybe you don’t want my colored summaries. That’s fine. ChatGPT will tell you the same thing, only in a much more plausible manner.
The world is evolving. And it is painful; face contorting to endure. It is a dumpster fire, and it is a blazing. But it is going though the washer and drier and it will emerge better than before, by a long shot. I remain quite hopeful, even though the visuals are awfully nasty.
Today…
What is the most useless job that you’ve ever done?
When I was in high school I got my first part time job as a Maize Master.
You read that right. It’s a play on words, since I worked at a giant maze that was cut into a large corn field.
Every year the field is dug up and a new pattern is planted, since the corn maze only lasts about 8 months at best.
My job, was to walk the maze enough times to memorise the ways out and know where all the clues were hidden. It’s actually pretty simple after you’ve walked the maze with a map for a day or two. Then it just becomes engraved in your memory.
The reason this job felt useless was because I spent every weekend, for about eight months, walking this maze 8 hours a day in the blistering South African sun. When people got lost and started to panic they would end up just walking through the corn “walls” and force their way out of the maze.
I ended up spending most of that time strolling about, listening to music and reading the Harry Potter books.
The only fun part of this job, was having three of my friends working with me. We each had a walkie-talkie which was supposed to be used to keep in touch with each other in the maze and point out people that were in need of assistance.
We usually ended up just running around wildly, pointing out hot girls that were coming our way and calling ourselves the “children of the corn”.
Can politicians be called leaders? If not, what is the difference between the two?
Leaders are those who keep the Nation in mind all the time
To them the Country comes first
They make unpopular decisions if it benefits the nation as a whole
They are long term visionaries
…
Politicians are those who keep themselves and their party in mind all the time
They aim to have power to either enrich themselves or become more powerful
They don’t care about the country or the people
They are short term visionaries who care only about votes and elections
…
Populists are a hybrid between Leaders and Politicians
They either endorse a Doctrine or ideology of their own or by an organization like the RSS or NED or Religious Doctrine
Their ultimate quest is to ensure their ideology succeeds and they would do whatever it takes to achieve that
They use both Party and the People to achieve this
I only included Democratic Nations in this list of definitions.
If you are doing something that your partner would be uncomfortable with… THAT is cheating
Yellen trip to China
Reuters has a posting up about Yellen’s trip to China and the title is
Yellen says China is too big to export its way to rapid growth
China is not responding to its economic gyrations like empire wants because China retains control of finance and the PBOC is deciding who takes the losses instead of private interests forcing governments to cover their financial bets, like in the West….and rapid growth internally is not China’s goal, stable world growth is.
I expect China to school Yellen in just that scenario of privatizing profits/socializing losses that is staring the US in the face, again…..rampant social/financial abuse of humanity by the God Of Mammon cult and its supporters like Pope Frank and his Catholic church.
What right does Yellen have to preach anything to China? I have saved a 6 page story from somewhere about Yellen’s trip last year dated April 25, 2023 and we will see what the comparisons are as the circus show unfolds.
Death of empires: History tells us what will follow the collapse of US hegemony
The turn away from expansion, production and trade toward lending and speculation has precipitated decline for centuries
.
One of the curious features of the American landscape is the fact that these days the financialization of the economy is widely condemned as unhealthy, yet little is being done to reverse it. There was a time, back in the 1980s and ‘90s, when finance-driven capitalism was supposed to usher in a time of better capital allocation and a more dynamic economy. This is not a view one hears often anymore.
So, if such a phenomenon is overwhelmingly viewed negatively but isn’t being amended, then perhaps it’s not merely a failure of policymaking but rather something deeper – something more endemic to the very fabric of the capitalist economy. It is of course possible to lay the blame for this state of affairs at the feet of the current crop of cynical and power-hungry elites and to stop one’s analysis there. But an examination of history reveals recurrent instances of financialization that bear remarkable similarities, which invites the conclusion that perhaps the predicament in the American economy in recent decades is not unique and that the ever-rising power of Wall Street was in a sense preordained.
Keep working
Introducing Giovanni Arrighi: Financialization as a cyclical phenomenon
It is in this context that it pays to revisit the work of the Italian political economist and historian of global capitalism Giovanni Arrighi (1937-2009). Arrighi, who is often simplistically pigeonholed as a Marxist historian, a label far too constricting given the breadth of his work, explored the origins and evolution of capitalist systems dating back to the Renaissance and showed how recurrent phases of financial expansion and collapse underpin broader geopolitical reconfigurations. Occupying a central place in his theory is the notion that the cycle of rise and fall of each successive hegemon terminates in a crisis of financialization. It is this phase of financialization that facilitates the shift to the next hegemon.
Arrighi dates the origin of this cyclical process to the Italian city-states of the 14th century, an era that he calls the birth of the modern world. From the marriage of Genoese capital and Spanish power that produced the great discoveries, he traces this path through Amsterdam, London and, finally, the United States.
In each case, the cycle is shorter and each new hegemon is larger, more complex and more powerful than the previous one. And, as we mentioned above, each terminates in a crisis of financialization that marks the final stage of hegemony. But this phase also fertilizes the soil in which the next hegemon will sprout, thus marking financialization as the harbinger of an impending hegemonic shift. Essentially, the ascending power emerges in part by availing itself of the financial resources of the financialized and declining power.
Arrighi detected a first wave of financialization starting around 1560, when the Genoese businessmen withdrew from commerce and specialized in finance, thereby establishing symbiotic relations with the Kingdom of Spain. The subsequent wave began around 1740 when the Dutch began to withdraw from commerce to become “the bankers of Europe.” The financialization in Great Britain, which we will examine below, emerged around the end of the 19th century; for the United States, it began in the 1970s.
Hegemony he defines as “the power of a state to exercise functions of leadership and governance over a system of sovereign states.” Central to this concept is the idea that historically such governance has been linked to the transformation of how the system of relations among states functions in itself and also that it consists of both what we would call geopolitical dominance but also a sort of intellectual and moral leadership. The hegemonic power not only rises to the top in the jockeying among states but actually forges the system itself in its own interest. Key to this capacity for the expansion of the hegemon’s own power is the ability to turn its national interests into international interests.
Observers of the current American hegemony will recognize the transformation of the global system to suit American interests. The maintenance of an ideologically charged ‘rules-based’ order – ostensibly for the benefit of everyone – fits neatly into the category of conflation of national and international interests. Meanwhile, the previous hegemon, the British, had their own version that incorporated both free-trade policies and a matching ideology that emphasized the wealth of nations over national sovereignty.
Returning to the question of financialization, the original insight into its epochal aspect first came from the French historian Fernand Braudel, of whom Arrighi was a disciple. Braudel observed that the rise of finance as the predominant capitalist activity of a given society was a sign of its impending decline.
Arrighi adopted this approach and, in his major work called ‘The Long Twentieth Century,’ elaborated his theory of the cyclical pattern of ascendency and collapse within the capitalist system, which he called the ‘systemic cycle of accumulation.’ According to this theory, the period of ascendency is based on an expansion of trade and production. But this phase eventually reaches maturity, at which point it becomes more difficult to profitably reinvest capital in further expansion. In other words, the economic endeavors that propelled the rising power to its perch become increasingly less profitable as competition intensifies and, in many cases, much of the real economy is lost to the periphery, where wages are lower. Rising administrative expenses and the cost of maintaining an ever-expanding military also contribute to this.
This leads to the onset of what Arrighi calls a ‘signal crisis,’ meaning an economic crisis that signals the shift from accumulation by material expansion to accumulation by financial expansion. What ensues is a phase characterized by financial intermediation and speculation. Another way to think about this is that, having lost the actual basis for its economic prosperity, a nation turns to finance as the final economic field in which hegemony can be sustained. The phase of financialization is thus characterized by an exaggerated emphasis on financial markets and the finance sector.
Women Are RAGING Because Men Are Going Their Own Way
What did you do first after being released from prison or jail?
Once pass the prison gate in the prison van..went over to the bank to cash the state check and then to the motel that I told DOC that I was going to…waited till the van turned,so that officer couldn’t see me leave ..walked over to the state DHS..got my food stamp card..then to Walmart .Got a dome tent and sleeping bag,food, quart of water. fillet knife and a ball of clothes line,a sharpie ,cell phone…once out side , looked in the trash bin and got a cardboard box..walked over to the street that would take me to the interstate..once there, walked over a overhead bridge.. went to sleep in the tent that night ..next morning,walked over the truck stop over the other side.made me a sign on where I was going to…
While I was setting there at the TS..a shoolie came in and 4 guys got out ..we spoke and I asked which way they were going..they was going my way ..I asked if I could join them..so I had a ride . Once there.had them drop me off where I wanted to be..call a person who I could stay with..got my DL , bought a pickup and a on bed camper..lived in it as I started my life outside of prison..
Since I discharged all of my sentences.I could travel and sleep where I wanted to..been out here for 13 years now…had a business that I had till I retired from.. Don’t want a place that I have to pay rent on.. upgraded to a shuttle bus now..not bad for a 70 year old guy…
The fiasco 4B movement
How financialization delays the inevitable
However, the corrosive nature of financialization is not immediately evident – in fact, quite the opposite. Arrighi demonstrates how the turn to financialization, which is initially quite lucrative, can provide a temporary and illusory respite from the trajectory of decline, thus deferring the onset of the terminal crisis. For example, the incumbent hegemon at the time, Great Britain, was the country hardest hit by the so-called Long Depression of 1873-1896, a prolonged period of malaise that saw Britain’s industrial growth decelerate and its economic standing diminished. Arrighi identifies this as the ‘signal crisis’ – the point in the cycle where productive vigor is lost and financialization sets in.
And yet, as Arrighi quotes David Landes’ 1969 book ‘The Unbound Prometheus,’ “as if by magic, the wheel turned.” In the last years of the century, business suddenly improved and profits rose. “Confidence returned—not the spotty, evanescent confidence of the brief booms that had punctuated the gloom of the preceding decades, but a general euphoria such as had not prevailed since…the early 1870s….In all of western Europe, these years live on in memory as the good old days—the Edwardian era, la belle époque.” Everything seemed right again.
However, there is nothing magical about the sudden restoration of profits, Arrighi explains. What happened is that “as its industrial supremacy waned, its finance triumphed and its services as shipper, trader, insurance broker and intermediary in the world’s system of payments became more indispensable than ever.”
In other words, there was a large expansion in financial speculation. Initially much of the expanding financial income derived from interest and dividends being generated by previous investments. But increasingly a significant portion was financed by what Arrighi calls the “domestic conversion of commodity capital into money capital.” Meanwhile, as surplus capital moved out of trade and production, British real wages began a decline starting after the mid-1890s – a reversal of the trend of the past five decades. An enriched financial and business elite amid an overall decline in real wages is something that should ring a bell to observers of the current American economy.
Essentially, by embracing financialization, Britain played the last card it had to stave off its imperial decline. Beyond that lay the ruin of World War I and the subsequent instability of the interwar period, a manifestation of what Arrighi calls ‘systemic chaos’ – a phenomenon that becomes particularly visible during signal crises and terminal crises.
Historically, Arrighi observes, these breakdowns have been associated with escalation into outright warfare – specifically, the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48), the Napoleonic wars (1803-15) and the two World Wars. Interestingly and somewhat counterintuitively, these wars have typically not seen the incumbent hegemon and the challenger on opposing sides (with the Anglo-Dutch naval wars a notable exception). Rather, it has typically been the actions of other rivals that have hastened the arrival of the terminal crisis. But even in the case of the Dutch and British, conflict co-existed with cooperation as Dutch merchants increasingly directed their capital to London, where it generated better returns.
Boss level
Puffy Wings
IMG 1804 scaled
Ingredients
Wings
12 chicken wings
Marinade
1 teaspoon garlic, minced
1 teaspoon ginger root, minced
1/2 cup dry sherry
2 tablespoons sesame oil
Batter
1/2 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 cup milk
Instructions
Add wings to marinade for at least one hour.
Combine dry ingredients, stir in egg and milk.
Pat wings dry.
Dip into batter. Drip off excess.
Heat oil to 350 degrees F.
Fry a few wings at a time for 3 to 4 minutes.
Wall Street and the crisis of the last hegemon
The process of financialization emerging from a signal crisis was repeated with startling similarities in the case of Britain’s successor, the US. The 1970s was a decade of deep crisis for the US, with high levels of inflation, a weakening dollar after the 1971 abandonment of gold convertibility and, perhaps most importantly, a loss of competitiveness of US manufacturing. With rising powers such as Germany, Japan, and, later, China, able to outcompete it in terms of production, the US reached the same tipping point and, like its predecessors, it turned to financialization. The 1970s was, in the words of historian Judith Stein, the “pivotal decade” that “sealed a society-wide transition from industry to finance, factory floor to trading floor.”
This, Arrighi explains, allowed the US to attract massive amounts of capital and move toward a model of deficit financing – an increasing indebtedness of the US economy and state to the rest of the world. But financialization also allowed the US to reflate its economic and political power in the world, particularly as the dollar was ensconced as the global reserve currency. This reprieve gave the US the illusion of prosperity of the late 1980s and ‘90s, when, as Arrighi says “there was this idea that the United States had ‘come back’.” No doubt the demise of its main geopolitical rival, the Soviet Union, contributed to this buoyant optimism and sense that Western neoliberalism had been vindicated.
However, beneath the surface, the tectonic plates of decline were still grinding away as the US became ever more dependent on external funding and increasingly ramped-up leverage on a diminishing sliver of real economic activity that was rapidly being offshored and hollowed out. As Wall Street rose in prominence, many quintessential American economies were essentially asset-stripped for the sake of financial profit.
But, as Arrighi points out, financialization merely stalls the inevitable and this has only been laid bare by subsequent events in the US. By the late 1990s, the financialization itself was beginning to malfunction, starting with the Asia crisis of 1997 and subsequent popping of the dotcom bubble, and continuing with a reduction in interest rates that would inflate the housing bubble that detonated so spectacularly in 2008. Since then, the cascade of imbalances in the financial system has only accelerated and it has only been through a combination of increasingly desperate financial legerdemain – inflating one bubble after another – and outright coercion that has allowed the US to extend its hegemony even a bit longer beyond its time.
In 1999, Arrighi, in a piece co-authored with American scholar Beverly Silver, summarized the predicament of the time. It has been a quarter century since these words were penned, but they might as well have been written last week:
“The global financial expansion of the last twenty years or so is neither a new stage of world capitalism nor the harbinger of a ‘coming hegemony of global markets’. Rather, it is the clearest sign that we are in the midst of a hegemonic crisis. As such, the expansion can be expected to be a temporary phenomenon that will end more or less catastrophically… But the blindness that led the ruling groups of [hegemonic states of the past] to mistake the ‘autumn’ for a new ‘spring’ of their…power meant that the end came sooner and more catastrophically than it might otherwise have…A similar blindness is evident today.”
An early prophet of a multipolar world
In his late work, Arrighi turned his attention to East Asia and surveyed the prospects for a transition to the next hegemony. On the one hand, he identified China as the logical successor to American hegemony. However, as a counterweight to that, he did not see the cycle he outlined as continuing in perpetuity and believed there would come a point where it is no longer possible to bring into existence a state with larger and more comprehensive organizational structures. Perhaps, he speculated, the US represents just that expansive capitalist power that has taken the capitalist logic to its earthly limits.
Arrighi also considered the systemic cycle of accumulation to be a phenomenon inherent to capitalism and not applicable to pre-capitalist times or non-capitalist formations. As of 2009, when he died, Arrighi’s view was that China remained a decisively non-capitalist market society. How it would evolve remained an open question.
While Arrighi was not dogmatic on how the future would shape up and did not apply his theories deterministically, especially with regard to the developments of recent decades, he did speak forcefully about what in today’s language could be called the necessity of accommodating a multipolar world. In their 1999 article, he and Silver predicted “a more or less imminent fall of the West from the commanding heights of the world capitalist system is possible, even likely.”
The US, they believe, “has even greater capabilities than Britain did a century ago to convert its declining hegemony into an exploitative dominion.” If the system does eventually break down, “it will be primarily because of US resistance to adjustment and accommodation. And conversely, US adjustment and accommodation to the rising economic power of the East Asian region is an essential condition for a non-catastrophic transition to a new world order.”
Whether such accommodation is forthcoming remains to be seen, but Arrighi strikes a pessimistic tone, noting that each hegemon, at the end of its cycle of dominance, experiences a “final boom” during which it pursues its “national interest without regard for system-level problems that require system-level solutions.” A more apt description of the current state of affairs cannot be formulated.
The system-level problems are multiplying, but the sclerotic ancien régime in Washington is not addressing them. By mistaking its financialized economy for a vigorous one, it overestimated the potency of weaponizing the financial system it controls, thus again seeing ‘spring’ where there is only ‘autumn.’ This, as Arrighi, predicts, will only hasten the end.
The purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev regime. To this end, we will seek to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation.
Another brigade from the 150s batch makes an official appearance.
On October 17, 2023, we reported about the creation of five new Ukrainian mechanized brigades for the possible counter-offensive in 2024. The 151st Mechanized Brigade was officially revealed on October 30 while 154th Mechanized Brigade on November 1.
Today, the 153rd Mechanized Brigade was publicly announced. The unit received its insignia and motto – the power of unconquered.
Since January, the armed forces of Ukraine have lost more than 80 thousand servicemen, 14 thousand units of various weapons, including more than one thousand two hundred tanks and other armored combat vehicles.
The lack of vehicles forced Ukrainian command to back down from the original plans.The leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has reorganized the 153rd Mechanized Brigade into an infantry brigade. This change was announced through the official social media channels of the brigade.
While the official reason behind the change remains undisclosed, it is presumably linked to the shortage of infantry fighting vehicles.
…
The reorganization of the 153rd Brigade may not be an isolated occurrence. According to our sources, the 152nd Mechanized Brigade is also slated for transformation into an infantry brigade in the near future.
Each day the Russian Ministry of Defense reports the observed losses of the Ukrainian army. While the reported numbers are unlikely to be exact the reports are considered to be reliable and do tell a story.
In the first year of the war the Ukrainian army often lost more armored vehicles per day than general vehicles, i.e. trucks. By mid 2023 the numbers of armored vehicle and trucks destroyed per day, as reported by the MoD, were about equal. By the end of 2023 that ratio was on average two trucks per one armored vehicle. It has since increased further. Yesterday’s report claimed 32 destroyed Ukrainian trucks but only 4 destroyed armored vehicles.
The numbers provide that the armed forces of Ukraine, as well as its allies, have run out of armored vehicles of all kinds.
A mechanized brigade is supposed to have some 100 armored (i.e. ‘mechanized’) vehicles of various kind plus some 30 tanks. An infantry brigade has, if its lucky, some unarmored trucks or buses.
An infantry brigade can only fight on foot. Its men have to dig in, by hand, to have a chance stay alive without armor protection. To do this in an environment where the enemy has a near perfect view of the battlefield, a reported artillery supremacy of 7 to 1 plus the ability to drop hundreds of precision guided bombs deep behind the frontline is not really survivable.
A 2024 counter offensive by the armed forces of Ukraine was and is a pipe dream. The five new brigades will be destroyed as soon as they come near to the frontline.
Ukraine has been demilitarized. It is high time to acknowledge that.
To give up now is the only way for Ukraine to survive.
Posted by b on April 4, 2024 at 7:57 UTC | Permalink
Why does China always say that there will never be any compromise on the Taiwan issue?
If one day Beijing compromised on Taiwan issue, the next day white house would know that China is willing to compromise on almost any matter.
Xinjiang would be negotiable, inner mongolia will become a leverage too, HK would go back to be the oriental Casablanca.
Stop developing 7nm semiconductor? YES SIR!
Selling state-owned assets? AS YOUR WISH SIR!
Having 2 parties and elect a lunatic every four years? RIGHT AWAY SIR!
China would soon become Argentina in Asia.
It’s like dating a girl for the first time.
She said to you that her bottom line is no cumming inside, because she doesn’t want to take emergency pills.
Later in the hotel room, the first thing you did is having a big cum inside her pussy cat, and she didn’t fight back or call the police.
Next thing you know is that she is willing to do anything tonight. The limitation will only be your ability to imagine.
Taiwan is China’s bottom line.
Beijing doesn’t matter how the west telling its people, nor how Taiwan having oral orgasms.
It’s been stated in the law clearly:
1. Peaceful unification is always the first choice.
2. In case of every attempt of peaceful unification failed, or foreign powers interfering which causes peaceful unification not possible anymore, a war is the only thing left.
Reality
Don’t bringing up “but what about the choice of 23 million Taiwanese”, because no one ever asked the choice of 1.4 billion mainland Chinese.
The communist party of China is the best possible China the world could have.
If it were a democracy, philippines would face gunpowder powered canon instead of water canon in SCS.
The west has been ignoring the silent majority of China for too long that the majority of the west consider Chinese people as mindless machines.
It’s always when westerners arrived in China and then realized that ordinary Chinese people do have opinions, and they are much more friendly in daily life, and much more aggressive in politics and military.
Too many times
As a matter of fact, Beijing had compromised on Taiwan issues for too many times, and Washington took steps forward after, instead of backward.
Compromising is not the correct choice when dealing with the west.
You need to make the west hurt, so that it would know not to fuck with you.
BTW, Yellen visited China again. It seems that the last legacy of the golden ages wants to try for the last time to save her empire.
She must have felt the pain.
These Confident Men Got Up & Left Their Trashy Girlfriends In The Dust!
What is the one piece of advice you would give to anyone?
1. Time is precious, waste it wisely.
2. Never get into an argument with someone who types faster than you.
3. That one password you use everything and if anyone knew it they could destroy you.
4. Honesty may be the best policy, but insanity is the best defense.
5. Going back to your ex is like having a shower and putting dirty underwear back on.
6. An optimist thinks that this is the best possible world. A pessimist fears that this is true.
7. Not everything in your brain needs to come out of your mouth.
8. Don’t lower your standards, just lower your expectations of people.
9. It’s ok to have bad moments, but don’t give it the power to make it a bad day.
10. Admitting you need help doesn’t make you weak. Neither does accepting it.
USA will stand down
The US will not interfere if Iran attacks Israel Through a series of messages exchanged via third parties, the United States and Iran have come to an understanding.
Iran assured the Americans it will not target U.S. facilities, and in turn the U.S. says it will not get involved if Iran retaliates against Israel.
Israel carried out the attack on the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, without consulting the United States.
Since the Embassy and the next-door Ambassador’s residence are on the same compound which was bombed, they are both Iran Sovereign territory. Israel’s attack was therefore an actual Act of War for which Iran has the right to respond with military force.
Modern Women Are DOOMED After New Anti Paternity Fraud Law In Tennessee
What is the most difficult thing for the elderly to accept? Why?
Nothing. I am 75 years old and many of my close friends are now dead. I not only accept the fact I will die soon, but I embrace the process. I am a Darwinist. The only way for each animal species to improve itself is through death. Death is an important part of life. Can you imagine an insane world where old humans NEVER die? If old humans never died, young humans would need to shoulder insurmountable levels of financial burden and time consuming elder care. I embrace my geezer-hood and I enjoy the simple pleasures I experience every day – like a latte in the morning and a glass of wine in the evening. I now embrace every moment of every day because many of my friends never had the chance to grow old. But I have also made peace with my impending death. The natural death of old people should NOT be a sad event – it is an event that improves the future of the human species. So I have had NO difficulty accepting all things that come with being elderly.
Various pictures of interest
Default An ancient town in China rain fog looking at the lens 3
Default Generate a composition inspired by El Grecos dramatic 0
Default An interesting and visually descriptive prompt as a gr 5
Default Tshirt Brand logo africans and orixs black and red wri 0
Default a hyper realistic color epic cinematography of an accu 3
What is the best way to believe in yourself?
I teach mathematics to a girl.
She is in Class X.
One fine day, she came to my house with her father. Her father wanted me to tutor her for mathematics. Her father was so disappointed with his daughter.
He said, “I have been good in mathematics since childhood, I don’t know how she is my daughter. It is difficult to teach this girl.”.
The girl hung her head in shame during the entire conversation.
I said okay and told her to join.
She started coming to the class. I started teaching her. While teaching her, I realized that the girl already knew a lot and it was not at all difficult to teach her.
But, I could see lack of confidence in her. She did not believe in herself. She always hesitated in answering even when she answered. She believed that her doubts and answers are senseless. I could see that in her behaviour.
I realized that the girl has accepted and believed that she does not know mathematics at all.
Her father, her school, her teachers have made her believe that she is not at all good in mathematics and does not know shit about the subject.
She writes down the question and stares at it and says “ Ma’am ye nahi hoga merese.” (I won’t be able to solve this).
I always told her the same thing “Chinmayee tumhe aata hai already. Try karo bas. Have confidence in yourself (“You already know this, Chinmayee. Just try once. Have confidence in yourself”).
And most of the times, she answers right.
My mother asked me “How is this girl in studies ?”
I said “I am getting paid just to make her believe in herself. Rest she knows.”.
Moral of the story : To believe in yourself, first stop believing what others believe about you. Otherwise, you will end up being what others believe about you.
Edit : One year later (6th May,19)
Today I got a call from her. She thanked me and informed me that she cleared her board exams with 85% and she chose humanities with psychology for further studies.
As a white person living in the States, would you feel better if you lived in a majority white town and surrounded by only whites?
No. I wouldn’t. I didn’t. Sit the fuck down and read. Take notes, and let this shit echo in your head, as it has in mine for nearly thirty fuckibg years.
Shiawassee County Michigan. I hated it.
Now, let me tell you why.
I look like THIS:
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And you’re wondering, “well what’s the problem?” Right?
See, I am 3/4 western European, like throw a dart at the map and chances are I have that place in my bloodline.
The remaining 25 percent? The single most undiluted portion of my genetic makeup?
…Japanese.
If you look, and pay attention, some of the classical shapes are there. None of the PIGMENTS, however, are. So I am often mistaken for *MAYBE* part First Nation (sure, there’s some Lakota, but it’s so diluted from so many generations back, I generally don’t mention it unless someone guesses, and even then only to tell them it’s insignificant to how I look as far as the oddities in facial structure). Now here’s where it gets interesting:
Once I told literally anyone, ANYONE in that county I was a quarter Japanese. I lost that person as a friend. I’ve literally been called a “traitor to my race” (whatever the fuck that means for a biracial individual) by more than a few idiots.
These people, whom I’d worked alongside, lived next door to, etc… called me every Asian slur in the book: sl_pe, sl_ant, squ_nt, z_p, z_pperhead, n_p, j_p, g__k, and ch_nk (yes I know neither of the last two are slurs for Japanese people, but apparently we “all look alike” to racist white fucks. Even when they look like *ME.*
This told me that far too many, whom I’d considered friends and dependable people, allies even, who saw me as an enemy. A pest. Some sort of infestation to eradicate.
Let me tell you, son. It’s hard to reconcile the Revelation that your coworkers, the guys you drank at the bar with, the people who once invited you to cookouts…. Would happily march you off for a refreshing cyanide shower if they could get away with it.
And you wanna know what’s really heartbreaking?
Knowing that I, as a white passing person… I’ve literally experienced racism “LIGHT.” That everyone NOT passing, like I am, gets it far, far worse. Knowing that so many other people are treated far more harshly and far more readily so than I have ever been.
Suffice it to say I spent most of my time there working toward leaving. I was glad when I finally got out. I wasn’t born or raised there, but I wish I never ended up there.
I was only there… a year. And it was a year too fucking long.
And I already know, based on past experiences here on Quora, that my answer will open me up to attacks from fuckers who either secretly or openly have a white robe and hood in their fucking closets. Let me just tell you preemptively I’m just gonna a delete your bullshit, because I don’t owe your fucking bigotry an audience.
Rosemary Wings
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Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons finely chopped shallots
2 teaspoons dried rosemary
1/2 cup lemonade
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
10 to 12 chicken wings
Instructions
Heat oven to 425 degrees F.
In a small saucepan, heat oil and butter over medium heat.
Add shallots and rosemary and cook 2 to 3 minutes.
Add lemonade, pepper and salt. Simmer over low heat for 6 to 8 minutes or until slightly reduced and syrupy.
Cool slightly.
Meanwhile, cut chicken wings into three pieces, discarding wing-tip joint. Place wings in shallow pan and coat well with sauce.
Bake until skin is golden brown, about 30 minutes.
Tinder Experiment Proves How Brutal it is For Average Guys
What’s the most unexpected life lesson you’ve learned recently?
1. Personality is not set in stone. You are able to take control or change it the way you like.
2. Never leave your parents. They are the reason you are here.
3. Never get confused to select between love and friendship. Both have their respective parts to play.
4. When in anger, isolate yourself. Give yourself some time. Finally think about the situation again with a calm mind.
5. People say “Follow your heart”. Not in every situation guys. Instead “Listen to your heart. Act With Your Brain”.
6. Time heals almost everything. Give some time and experience the change.
7. Thoughts control your Feelings. Feelings control your Actions. Actions control your Results. POSITIVE THOUGHTS = POSITIVE RESULTS
Were German soldiers scared of Americans in WW2?
They didn’t like Ma Duece.
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The July 1945 cover of this magazine depicted a waist gunner in a B-17 Flying Fortress and his flexible .50 BMG M2 Browning in an official USAAF photo by Karl Gaston.
By Barrett Tillman
John M. Browning was a historic figure whose guns started the first World War and helped end the second. In 1914, Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip used a Browning-designed FN Model 1910 to assassinate Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, inciting the Great War. And though Browning died in 1926, he provided his nation with nearly all its World War II machine guns, its automatic rifle and its foremost sidearm. But he did something even grander. Browning’s magnificent M2 machine gun—chambered in the .50 Browning Machine Gun (BMG) cartridge—gave America and her allies the priceless gift of global air superiority. Nothing else came close.
Actually, the Browning .50 originated in the Great War. American interest in an armor-piercing cartridge was influenced by the marginal French 11 mm design, prompting U.S. Army Ordnance officers to consult Browning. They wanted a heavy projectile at 2700 feet per second (f.p.s.), but the ammunition did not exist. Browning pondered the situation and, according to his son John, replied, “Well, the cartridge sounds pretty good to start. You make up some cartridges and we’ll do some shooting.”
Reputedly influenced by Germany’s 13.2×92 mm SR (.53-cal.) anti-tank rifle, Ordnance contracted with Winchester to design a .50-cal. cartridge. Subsequently, Frankford Arsenal took over from Winchester, producing the historic .50 BMG or 12.7×99 mm cartridge.
The Army then returned to John Browning for the actual gun. Teamed with Colt, he produced prototypes ready for testing and, ironically, completed them by Nov. 11, 1918—the Great War’s end.
The scaled-up version of the .30-cal. (.30-’06 Sprg.) M1917 water-cooled machine gun possessed obvious potential. But the cartridge’s enormous power proved excessive to the Colt-Browning design, forcing the master back to his drafting board. He returned with a buffer system that seemed workable. Tests in 1919 and 1920 confirmed the viability of the cartridge and gun, and Ordnance approved it for production. The result was the M1921 water-cooled .50-cal. machine gun, the basis for today’s M2 model, the fabled “Ma Deuce.”
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“Ma Deuce” still serves today.
Because of its size and weight, the M1921 was issued as a light anti-aircraft gun, both ground- and ship-based. It remained in Navy use until replaced by 20 mm Oerlikon cannons in 1942.
Meanwhile, a more utilitarian .50-cal. gun was underway. After adopting the M1921, the Army decided to evaluate an air-cooled model, far more tractable for soldiers at 120 lbs. with a tripod. The result was designated “Caliber .50 Machine Gun, Heavy Barrel, M2.” The heavier 36″ barrel was expected to handle heat buildup, but experience led to a 45″ version that was adopted in 1933 and used ever since.
To War
The big Browning fought America’s war from the first day to the last. On Dec. 7, 1941, Navy CPO John Finn responded to the Japanese attack on Kaneohe Naval Air Station, Hawaii, by manning an AN/M2 in an instructional mount (“A/N” stands for Army and Navy). Alone and fully exposed, he fired at the raiders whenever they came within range. “I was out there shooting the Jap planes and just every so often I was a target for some,” he said. “In some cases, I could see their faces.” Though struck by 20 bullets or fragments, he remained at his gun until ordered to report for medical attention. Then he turned to arming his squadron’s remaining planes. His actions resulted in CPO Finn receiving the Medal of Honor.
At least four other .50-cal. gunners received the nation’s highest award, including Lt. Col. William J. O’Brien, an Army battalion commander on Saipan in July 1944. When the Japanese overran his position, he replied with an M1911 in each hand, then dashed to a jeep-mounted M2, according to his citation, “firing into the Jap hordes that were enveloping him” until he was killed.
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The three main variants of the .50-cal. Brownings were (top to bottom): the water-cooled M1921 (used mostly in the anti-aircraft role); the aircraft-mounted AN/M2, which could be flexible or fixed; and the M2HB used on the ground.
Undoubtedly the best-known M2 engagement occurred on the other side of the world six months later. In France on Jan. 26, 1945, 19-year-old 2nd Lt. Audie Murphy climbed aboard a burning tank destroyer to man the .50 as a company of German infantry advanced. Though hit in one leg, he remained at the gun, shooting down perhaps 50 of the enemy before running dry. Then he returned to his platoon to organize a counterattack. For this, Murphy received the Medal of Honor, and he would become one of the most decorated soldiers in American military history.
With a global need, it seemed that everyone built M2s, from AC Spark Plug Co. to Frigidaire to Guide Lamp. American Rifleman Field Editor Bruce Canfield’s encyclopedic U.S. Infantry Weapons of World War II shows nearly 350,000 M2 Heavy Barrels (M2HB) produced among nearly 2,000,000 .50 calibers of all models during the war years.
Everybody wanted the Ma Deuce in .50 BMG for its fabled power, range and reliability. One wartime study found that stoppages averaged one in 4,000 rounds, as long as headspace was properly adjusted. Armorers determined that a high ratio of malfunctions were due to faulty ammunition or links.
The Ma Deuce’s limit as an anti-aircaft (AA) gun was range, volume of fire and weight of projectile—especially when compared to 20 mm or 5″ cannons. A single-barrel gun firing a 700-gr. bullet could seldom inflict enough damage to destroy a fast attacker. Even multiple guns engaging the same target were marginal. At the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands in October 1942, the fabled carrier U.S.S. Enterprise expended 400 rounds of .50 BMG versus 46,000 rounds of 20 mm; 3,200 rounds of 40 mm; and 400 rounds of 5″. The main reason for the discrepancy probably was engagement range: few attackers closed to within the .50’s effective distance.
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(l.) Adopted in 1933, the M2HB had a 45″ barrel and weighed about 120 lbs. with its tripod. A typical Army infantry battalion had six M2s. In Ordnance Went Up Front Roy Dunlop wrote: “All ground guns could fire single shots … and very accurate fire was possible.” (r.) The M45 quad mount—with four .50-cal. M2s—could be installed in an M16 halftrack or towed as shown in the Pacific Theatre. Although used mostly for anti-aircraft defense, in ground combat the power of four .50-cal. Brownings could be devastating.
Army anti-aircraft units made good use of the M45 quad .50 mount, either towed or mounted on M16 halftracks. Some of the heaviest AA activity occurred during Luftwaffe attacks on Allied airfields on New Year’s Day 1945. In the Metz area, Army AA gunners engaged 25 enemy aircraft, claiming 14 destroyed and four probably downed. Only 11 rounds of 90 mm artillery were fired with a combined 1,270 rounds of 37 and 40 mm, compared to 24,100 rounds of .50 caliber. Quad .50s also were employed in ground combat. A 1945 study noted, “A few bursts from the quadruple .50s directed at any source of small-arms fire very quickly eliminated the trouble.”
Through most of the war, a typical Army infantry battalion operated 20 .30-cal. machine guns (eight M1917 water-cooled) and six .50-cal. M2s. Weapons platoons typically had a jeep-mounted M2 that could be rushed to a trouble spot. The Axis armies had nothing comparable, though Germany issued light machine guns on a greater scale than the Allies. However, short of 20 mm canons, the Germans had no battlefield guns that could penetrate armored cars or personnel carriers at typical engagement distances.
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The M2HB (Heavy Barrel) could be employed as a ground arm while mounted on its M3 tripod (l.) or on vehicles, such as with the three MPs in their jeep in the winter of 1944-1945 (r.).
Pre-war match shot and American Rifleman contributing editor Roy F. Dunlap described wartime global trekking in his memoir, Ordnance Went Up Front. He wrote, “I believe the .50s have fewer breakdowns than the .30 caliber guns and that about 75 percent of the repair jobs I did were due to rough handling or carelessness on the part of the gun crew.” For practical application, he said, “I cannot think of a better way to screw up a road junction than to work a .50 to within a couple or three miles, set it in a hollow, camouflaged, and every so often throw a few armor piercers or incendiaries over to the crossing. The blue-tipped incendiaries explode with flash, report and puff of smoke. All ground guns could fire single shots … and very accurate fire was possible.”
In a 1945 summary, the U.S. Army in Europe concluded, “The half-track .50 caliber machine gun—one of the most effective weapons we have—is up where it can be used.” The same report noted that mechanized units had scrounged M2s from downed aircraft and adapted them to coaxial mounts.
On the Pacific isles, typical engagement distances were far closer than in Europe, and Japanese armored vehicles—rarely encountered—were vulnerable to .50-cal. fire. One of the Browning’s main advantages in that environment was its unrivaled penetration, as M2 rounds were far less likely to be deflected by foliage than .30s. Nevertheless, the Marine Corps divisional allotment of Ma Deuces declined from 360 in 1942 to 162 at war’s end.
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The .50-cal. water-cooled was the first adopted, and it was the heaviest, too. The guns served in the anti-aircraft role in all theatres of the war. While phased out for shipboard use, the Army continued to use the M2 AA gun.
Air Guns
Entering World War II, the British Royal Air Force installed eight Colt-Browning .303s in Hurricane and Spitfire fighter planes (later augmented with 20 mms) while Germany and Japan favored rifle-caliber guns and 20 mm cannon. But whether Oerlikon or Hispano-Suiza designs, cannon had limited ammunition capacity and were prone to malfunction.
The prewar U.S. Army Air Corps took a middle road. Early Bell P-39Ds had two .50s, four .30s and a 37 mm gun in the nose. The Curtiss P-40B packed two .50s and four .30s, while Lockheed’s futuristic P-38 had four .50s and a 20 mm. The .50-cal. round delivered at least four times the energy of the .30-’06 Sprg. at the same velocity, affording greater penetration and projectile selection. Clearly, the M2 was better suited for destroying modern all-metal aircraft.
Originally the Air Corps adopted the M2 with a 600 r.p.m. cyclic rate. But, as aircraft speeds increased, fighter pilots had less time to track and shoot. Therefore, Frankford Arsenal boosted muzzle velocity from 2700 to 2880 f.p.s. The standard ball cartridge was the 709-gr. projectile atop 253 grs. of IMR-5010. Armorers experimented with various belting combinations, alternating ball, armor-piercing incendiary (API) and tracer. The M2 AP round would defeat nearly an inch of face-hardened steel at 200 yds. Moreover, armor-piercing incendiaries (usually 647 to 662 grs.) were most useful against aircraft, as they could penetrate enemy armor and engine blocks, sever enemy airframe components and ignite enemy fuel tanks.
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The solid-nose version of the B-25 Mitchell was fitted for eight fixed M2s and could sink enemy ships by .50-cal. gunfire alone.
Tracer rounds, typically about 680 grs., had somewhat different ballistic properties than ball, AP and API, and they did not duplicate the others’ trajectories. Tracers probably were more widely issued to anti-aircraft units than aviation organizations. However, various fighter squadrons adopted different policies. Some loaded the last 50 rounds in each belt entirely with tracers to alert the pilot he was running low. But some very successful pilots shunned tracers. Lieutenant Colonel Francis Gabreski, leading U.S. ace of the European Theater, said, “Sometimes you miss with the first burst and tracers can give you away.”
Browning’s big gun won air superiority for America around the world. Army, Navy and Marine fighters were credited with 25,264 aerial victories, nearly all armed wholly or mainly with AN/M2s. The exceptions were 412 victories gained by British aircraft (mainly Spitfires) in American units and some U.S. night fighters, which were aircraft reconfigured or designed for combat in the dark.
Bombers also packed the M2 as single, manually operated guns and as turret-mounted pairs. The U.S. armed forces consumed vast amounts of ammunition—the St. Louis plant alone delivered 6.7 billion rounds of .30 and .50 caliber during the war. In the fall of 1943, when Eighth Air Force bombers flew unescorted deep penetrations into Reich airspace, one mission might consume more .50-cal. ammunition than a month’s worth of that used by the Fifth Army in Italy.
Around that time, aerial gunners began calling their guns “Mrs. Deuce,” an obvious precursor of today’s familiar “Ma Deuce.” The total Army Air Forces (AAF) overseas expenditure was nearly 460 million rounds, but monthly figures alone were staggering. In April 1945, shortly before Germany surrendered, the Army Air Force in the European and Mediterranean theaters fired nearly 25 million rounds of machine gun and cannon ammunition, the huge majority being .50 caliber. In July, Army airmen flying against the Japanese expended more than 6 million rounds.
During the war, about 100 American fighter pilots downed five or more enemy aircraft in one day to become “instant aces.” Six pilots were credited with seven kills in one mission. They flew very different aircraft—Wildcats, Hellcats, Corsairs, Lightnings and Mustangs—but all had the AN/M2 in common. One instant ace and future NRA member was Marine aviator James E. Swett, who received the Medal of Honor for downing seven (possibly eight) Japanese dive bombers over Guadalcanal in April 1943.
The outright record for aerial victories in a single encounter belonged to the Navy top gun, Cdr. David McCampbell. Flying from U.S.S. Essex over Leyte Gulf in the Philippines on Oct. 24, 1944, he and a wingman tackled a large formation of Japanese fighters. In 90 minutes of combat McCampbell was credited with nine destroyed and two probables while his partner added six more. With the confidence of experience and a disciplined trigger finger, McCampbell made maximum use of his Brownings and ammunition. Given the 2,400-round payload of his Grumman Hellcat, McCampbell averaged just 218 shots per victory.
Perhaps the most cost-efficient aircraft kill of the air war demonstrated the .50’s power. Over Okinawa in May 1945 a Hellcat night fighter stalked a Japanese floatplane harassing U.S. ground troops. Marine Lt. J.E. Smurr closed to minimum range—about 50 ft.—and centered the Aichi seaplane in his illuminated reticle. He pressed the trigger for less than one second and the enemy aircraft disintegrated into a fireball. Armorers found that Smurr had fired only 62 rounds. Throughout the campaign, Marine night hunters averaged 567 rounds per victory regardless of size or type of aircraft.
In a naval war such as the Pacific, .50 calibers inevitably were used against ships. Six M2s could cripple a corvette or a destroyer, whose typical 1/2″ plates offered little protection. Japanese destroyer hulls measured 0.4″ to 0.6″ (10 to 16 mm) whereas .50 ball from a 45″ barrel could penetrate 1/3″ (8 mm) at 500 yds. API rounds penetrated 1″ (25 mm) of homogenous plate at 200 yds. and 3/4″ (18 mm) at 650 yds. Face-hardened plate of 0.9″ (23 mm) was defeated at 200 yds. and 1/2″ at 600. The velocity loss from 36″ aircraft barrels did not seriously reduce the .50’s penetrative qualities, which could puncture engines, boilers and magazines.
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As well as its use on the ground, the big Browning proved a war winner in the air with the Army, Navy and Marines. The U.S. Army Air Force used lighter-weight, .50-cal. AN/M2 Brownings as defensive armament, including as a pair in a turret on a B-17 Flying fortress (top l.) as well as in the tail of a B-17 (top, r.). They were also used on fighter aircraft, such as in the nose of the P-38 Lightning (below l.) and in the wings of fighter aircraft in Europe such as the P-47 Thunderbolt (below, r.).
Certainly the outer limits were achieved by North American B-25H bombers optimized for shipping attacks. With eight nose- and fuselage-mounted .50s plus a top turret, two waist guns and the twin-gun tail position, the H model Mitchell was literally a flying gunship that could immobilize merchantmen—even without the short-barreled 75 mm cannon. However, when the H model entered combat in the China-Burma-India Theater in early 1944, shipping targets were rare. River traffic, on the other hand, was easily destroyed by fighters and gunships.
A study of Navy patrol bombers concluded that during 1945, “Dozens of small vessels were destroyed by fires caused by incendiary hits or strafing alone.” Consolidated PB4Y-2 Privateer bombers expended 2 million rounds of .50 caliber on 600 or more surface vessels, contributing to sinking as many as 300. “The effect was to cripple the remaining Japanese sea transport in most areas and to cause withdrawal of many vessels not sunk because of the danger of attack … .”
The AN/M2 was fully appreciated by the war’s midpoint. In 1943, Gen. Henry “Hap” Arnold, chief of the Army Air Forces, declared the Browning “the outstanding aircraft gun of the Second World War.” He added, “This weapon … is the backbone of offensive and defensive gun [sic] for American aircraft and was brought to such a state of perfection by the Ordnance Department during the years of peace prior to the present conflict that it has enabled the Army Air Forces, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps to show a definite superiority in aircraft gun power through this global war.”
Despite the M2’s immense success, some operators wanted more. The M3 .50 caliber boosted cyclic rate to 1,200 r.p.m., but the increase came at too high a price. Tests showed greater barrel erosion, and rounds tended to “keyhole.” Only 2,400 M3s were delivered before V-J Day, but development continued. Subsequently, the M3 armed the first generation of American jet fighters, pointing the way to victory in MiG Alley during the Korean War.
In typical military fashion, in 2004 the Army tried to replace the M2 with a less effective arm at twice the price. The wasteful three-year program to develop the XM312 flopped during tests in 2005 but lingered two more years before cancellation. At that point “Big Army” defaulted to the best option: buying more M2s.
Longevity remains a hallmark of John M. Browning’s designs. His timeless M1911 pistol is more widely used today than ever, and “Ma Deuce,” dating from 1921, shows no signs of retiring. In fact, in 2015 the 324th M2 ever produced was finally removed from service—after 94 years in the inventory. The old warhorse was being retired because current standards would require extensive modification. Army Materiel Command quoted an armorer at Anniston Army Depot who said, “Looking at the receiver, for its age, it looks good as new and it gauges better than most of the other weapons.” Said John Clark, a small arms repair leader, “I’d rather put this one on display than send it to the scrap heap.” A veteran approaching its centennial, the M2 certainly deserves an honorable retirement—though its relatives will remain on the firing line well into the current century.
HOT Girl Finds out what it’s like to be an Average Guy on Tinder
Have you ever had such a close call it makes your skin shiver everytime you think about it? If so, what happened?
I first thought it was the worst case of heartburn ever. After working two hours I decided to drive home and have my husband take me to the hospital’s ED. After frantically examining me, several blood draws, multiple EKG tests, and waiting for a few hours I was told it was not my heart, but my liver. An hour later a cardiologist stopped by and told me I had indeed suffered a mild heart attack, and luckily my heart suffered no damage. I would be transported to the main hospital that night for an early morning catheterization to see what was going on.
After the catheterization, the surgeon came to my room to discuss the procedure with my husband and me. He asked how I was doing, and I told him, “That is what I am paying you to tell me.” Looking very somber he told me, “Well you are lucky to be here right now. When we went in, we found your Widow Maker was 99% blocked. From the time of your first chest pain until we inserted the stent was much too long. Your chance of surviving was about 3%, I have never had a patient live through a blockage like that for longer than thirty minutes. In addition, you should have severe heart damage, and you have none. I can’t explain why you are here, and your heart is not damaged. Somebody must want you alive.”
All I could say is, “Damn! Does this mean I can still perform with the New York City Ballet troupe as lead in “Swan Lake?” He chuckled, “As long as you were already part of the troupe before your heart attack!”
I do not like to think about that day, the news, or how close I came to shaking hands with Jesus, or whoever is waiting on the other side. Instead, I joke and say I was knocking at death’s door, and thank god no one answered!
What are some unwritten social rules everyone should know?
Never give advice until you’re asked.
Do not make plan infront of those friends you are not involving.
Don’t talk to someone if they have headphones in.
If someone is being quiet and doesn’t look like in a mood to talk, don’t nag them by asking ‘what’s wrong?’ every freaking second. Give them some space and ask once or twice max. If they want to, they’ll come up and share it with you.
Don’t close talk/invade someone’s personal space.
Do not use your cell phone at movies etc.. it breaks the “spell” and distracts from other’s enjoyment of the performance.
If invited to a dinner party and expected to arrive at 7 P.M., arrive no later than 15 minutes after the hour.
If someone pays for your meal, invite them over/take them out for a meal sometime. Even if they decline, it’s the invitation that matters.
Don’t talk whilst chewing..
The right side of the escalator is for standing, the left side is for walking.
If a person is speaking directly to you, staring at your phone is rude as shit.
Don’t date your friends exes.
Always let people out before you enter.
Be quiet when other people are asleep. That means more than not talking — not slamming doors, drawers, etc.
Put things back where you found them.
What is the single most mind-blowing fact that you did not believe until you looked it up?
The photo is not an original shot of an execution.
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In Iran, it is against the law to put to death female prisoners who are virgin. So, the Basij militias of the government marry and rape virgin female prisoners to get them ready to be killed.
In Iran, the law says that women who are still virgins cannot be put to death. So, the government sets up marriages the night before executions and forces female prisoners to have sexual relations with Besic members. “Women whose new husbands have raped them” are then allowed to be put to death. The Besic member told the reporter, “Even though it’s legal, I’m sorry for what I did.” During his speech, he said that he had just been let out of jail for letting two young people go who had been arrested during the street protests in Iran after the election. Members of Besic say that some of the prisoners who fight back are controlled with sleepy pills and that “many of the prisoners who fight back would rather be raped than killed. “The Besic member tells the reporter what happened by saying, “After the rape was over, I could hear them screaming and calling for help.” I’ll never forget how one of the girls used her nails to scratch her face and neck. She had deep cuts all over.
American Reacts to 6 LIES America Told Me about Europe || Life in the UK
Is Taiwan very important to China? China wants Taiwan so much.
From the point of view of the Chinese government, Taiwan is important for historical reasons, as unification with the rest of China would represent a clear end to China’s century of humiliation and the end of any pro-western colonial presence on Chinese territory. Any Chinese leader who brought Taiwan back into a unified China would be remembered in the history books as the leader who brought this period of humiliation to an end, and would be remembered for this single accomplishment.
Most PRC Chinese also feel this way about Taiwan.
In short, it would be the single largest accomplishment in Chinese history in the 21st century.
Most Americans, including US government officials, do not understand the depth of the Chinese commitment to unification with Taiwan.
If they can understand the commitment of Zionist Jews to Israel and a homeland in the Middle East, why can’t they understand China’s commitment to unification with Taiwan?
Things Genghis Khan did to His Slaves
Why can you only have one child in China?
This is not true.
There are no limits on how many children that you can have in China. So please, stop flooding my inbox with questions about “invasions of Taiwan”, “one child birth policy”, and “when China will collapse”. These are simply CIA propagandized narratives that the gullible believe.
But, instead I do want to address something that I personally find very interesting. Take note people! China does not play around. They are SERIOUS in regards to their population and raising children. It’s not an after-thought like it is in the United States.
Considerations, on the citizenship of the baby.
First off, take note, If you give birth in China, the child is stateless.
It does not get automatic citizenship as in the West. Oh, you can give birth, but it will not be a legal citizen, and will not be protected by law. It will be a burden of the couple that produced the baby.
If you want the child to become a Chinese citizen, then be advised;
You can give birth to a hundred children if you want (and are able to), but…
One parent must be Chinese and have a Houkou (a family register),
BOTH parents must pass paternity tests,
The child must not have any mental, emotional or physical deformities. (this is tested while in the womb by DNA testing, and the burden of payment is on the parents.)
Both parents must be able to afford the child. Not be a burden on society.
If the child, or parents fail any of the above considerations, then the baby will remain stateless and will need to exit the nation with the parents if they want to provide some other national citizenship for it.
That is the REAL deal.
…
One of the tools of manipulation of the people of the West is to keep them ignorant. Then fabricate fantasies that seem to make sense to the ignorant, the illiterate, and the moronic. One such lie is the idea and concept of “one child birth policy”.
If you believe it, you should be ashamed of yourself.
How did the policy of appeasement lead to World War 2?
When I was a child, my father told me to always stand my ground against bullies, “Because when you give them one thing, they will take the whole hand!” And this is true. This is what appeasement is all about. Its a misguided belief we all know, since childhood, doesn’t work. You don’t want trouble. You want to avoid a fight. So you give the bully whatever he desires.
The British establishment at the time, as did many other European leaders, felt that it was best to “play nice” with Hitler and his Nazi party. Just give him what he wants. He wants to add some more countries, annex some more lands for Germany? Let him. Let him make his Fatherland Great Again. Who cares. It sure beats war, doesn’t it? And it does… until the moment it doesn’t. The same line of thinking is seen today with those who hate NATO and sympathize with Russia. They want to give up on aid to Ukraine. Because they don’t want to anger the bully that started the war. This is appeasement, plain and simple.
It didn’t work in WWII. And it sure as hell won’t, now. Appeasement and playing nice with dictators leaves a dictator to feel secure, in control. It makes him feel strong, and makes you look weak. And it only emboldens him, and his friends, to take military action. “Peace in our time” only means: “A wider war is now certain… only a little bit later.”
Which movie(s) made you cry?
Yes! The following scenes from the movie The Pursuit of Happyness made me cry:
Chris and his son sleeping in a bathroom:
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With no money, no job and homeless, Chris turns a dirty subway restroom into an imaginary cave for his son and gets him to sleep there. Being at the depth of his poverty and despair, Chris breaks down in this scene and is shown blocking the door so that his son can sleep well. Heart touching scene.
2. The five-bucks scene:
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Chris’s boss forgets his wallet upstairs and is in a hurry to attend a meeting. He asks Chris to lend him five bucks. Being at the rock bottom of poverty, five bucks mattered for Chris and he lends his boss too. This scene regains our faith in humanity and the act of giving to those in need.
3. Chris gets the job:
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Who can forget this scene where he gets the job and is asked about his struggle? This scene still makes me emotional.
Will Smith is a genius!
Is there anything that China can teach the west about happiness?
I have lived in China for a few years, and I think the west would be a happier place if we adopted the following Chinese wisdoms:
if you cause someone embarrassment, you should also be ashamed of yourself – so, better don’t do that to anyone. It would be such a nice change from our silly, childish revenge culture.
take an entire hour for lunch every day. Better even: two. It celebrates the day, and makes for a more relaxed life.
get seriously into savings and whatever else you can do to build your fortune. We westerners have a debt culture. We live in denial of how unhappy that makes us.
choose the middle ground for all things. We westerners always look for extremes. But longterm happiness is not found in thrill, only in balance.
take naps during the day. You would be amazed how much happier you will be.
spend more time with your folks. Western society is always trying to isolate the individual, when life is so much nicer shared with others – especially your family.
When I lived in The ‘States, spaghetti was my primary food. It was affordable, tasty and easy to make. I would cook up hamburger (mince) and then add it to spaghetti with some peppers and onions.
When I moved to China, I learned about REAL noodles… and all sorts of different variations. All so darn yummy.
A popular classic Beijing dish, Zha Jiang Mian features ground pork and onion cooked in a rich savory brown sauce with a hint of sweetness, tossed with noodles and then served with crunchy cucumber. It takes no time to prepare, is easy to cook, and can be prepared ahead of time. It’s a perfect one-bowl dish for hot days and is great for meal prep as well.
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What is Zha Jiang Mian
Zha Jiang Mian (炸酱面), or translated literally, fried sauce noodles, is one of the most classic and famous dishes in Beijing cuisine. It’s not as fancy or well-known as Peking Duck, but if you travel to Beijing, locals will always recommend this dish to you.
My parents told me that zha jiang mian was a dish for poor people. The traditional recipe uses a thick salty soybean paste to make the sauce, together with a bit of ground pork and sometimes lard. The sauce becomes so rich and flavorful that you only need a small amount of it to accompany a whole bowl of noodles. This way, people don’t need to spend much to fill up their bellies.
Although it seems like a simple dish, it has a whole set of rules that govern how it’s served in Beijing. It is called Old Beijing Fried Sauce Noodles here, and this is considered the most traditional and authentic way to prepare the dish. In addition to the sauce made from yellow soybean paste, the dish is often served with sliced cucumber, sliced red radish, boiled bean sprouts, and yellow soybeans. By adding all these things to the noodles, you can create a balanced and flavorful dish that is refreshing and has a good texture.
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Why this recipe
However, the recipe I’m sharing today is different from the traditional way of cooking Zha Jiang Mian. This is a family recipe that was passed down from my grandma, and I think it tastes much better than the traditional one.
Secret Ingredient: Sweet Bean Paste
Instead of yellow soybean paste, my family uses sweet bean paste (Tian mian jiang, 甜面酱) to make Zha Jiang Mian. It is a thick dark brown sauce made from fermented wheat flour. Tian Mian Jiang is less salty than yellow soybean paste and has a slightly sweet flavor (It is the same sauce that accompanies Peking Duck and Moo Shu Chicken). It has a more delicate flavor and is less overwhelming than yellow soybean paste. Sometimes Chinese restaurants label it as hoisin sauce. But sweet bean paste is less sweet and has a deeper fermented umami than hoisin sauce.
You can find sweet bean paste at Chinese markets and many Asian markets. You can also purchase it on Amazon.
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A more satisfying sauce
The traditional Zha Jiang Mian uses very little pork in the sauce. Because the dish is created for a budget meal, like I mentioned above.
For the homemade version, my mom uses much more pork and chopped onion to create a much better texture and more delicious sauce. Since sweet bean paste is less salty than soybean paste, you will also use more sauce per bowl of noodles, which makes the dish more balanced and satisfying.
My mom likes to chop a fattier block of pork into small cubes instead of using ground pork, to achieve a better mouthfeel. Here I used ground pork to make prep much easier. But feel free to use cut-up pork for your dish if you prefer.
Ingredients
When you’re ready to cook, your counter should have:
Sweet bean paste and water
Sliced cucumber (and other toppings if you prefer)
Minced ginger
Shaoxing wine
Oil for cooking
Ground pork
Chopped onion
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Type of noodles for Zha Jiang Mian
There are a few options for Zha Jiang Mian. Traditional Zha Jiang Mian uses a rather thick type of noodles. It’s a bit similar to udon noodles in terms of thickness, but with a chewier texture.
If you have access to Asian market, try to find fresh noodles in the refrigerated section. The Lan Zhou Fresh Noodles or Da Xi Bei GunGun (my favorite) by HAVISTA, and the Plain Noodles from Twin Marquis are great options. You can freeze the portion you’re not using for up to 6 months.
If you can only find dried noodles, that’s totally fine. You can use either the thick type or thin types of noodles, depending on the texture you prefer. Make sure to use noodles made from wheat flour and water (there shouldn’t be eggs or other ingredients).
You can serve your Zha Jiang Mian with no toppings and the result will still be delicious. For a better texture, my favorite topping is sliced cucumber. Other crunchy vegetables such as sliced radish (red, daikon, or watermelon radish), blanched bean sprouts, and sliced carrots are great options as well. You can also add a small handful of salad greens to the dish.
TIP: If you find slicing vegetables too time consuming, use a julienne peeler to save time.
An untraditional topping
Unlike the traditional way of serving Zha Jiang Mian, my mom loves to add scrambled eggs and tomato as a topping. This is a family tradition and I’ve never seen other people serve Zha Jiang Mian this way. But I love how it tastes. The tender tomatoes and eggs add more volume to the noodles and balance out the rich brown sauce, making the dish so delicious and colorful!
How to cook zha jiang mian
Mix the sweet bean sauce
Sweet bean sauce is a thick paste that’s easy to burn in a hot pan. So you will need to add water to it to thin it out before cooking. It’s like the idea of miso paste, as you should dissolve it in water beforehand.
Cooking Zha Jiang Mian sauce
Gently cook the ginger
Pan fry the pork
Add the sauce
Simmer to bring the flavor out of the sauce
Add the onions and cook until tender
Stir and serve!
The sweet bean sauce needs to be cooked for long enough to bring out the best flavor. That’s why you will start with a diluted sauce, and it will gradually thicken until it’s done. Make sure to stir the sauce frequently during the cooking, so it won’t burn on the bottom of the pan.
When the sauce is simmering, you can start a pot of water to cook the noodles. Because the Zha Jiang Mian sauce will be piping hot once it’s done, you can boil the noodles at the end, when the sauce is almost ready.
To assemble, transfer noodles to individual bowls and add a spoonful of the sauce. And top it with vegetables as you like. Then you can mix it all together and eat it.
My family’s recipe not only preserves all the deliciousness of a bowl of traditional Zha Jiang Mian, but also tastes better and is super comforting. Add a spoonful of sauce to the noodles and gently mix them; you will smell the pungent aroma and be unable to resist picking up the chopsticks and digging in.
Guys, this dis is authentic, and super delicious. If you love American (Western) “spaghetti with meat sauce”, you will absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE this dish. It is worth the time to prepare correctly.
However, if you are in the West, go to any Chinese family run… Chinese restaurant, and ask for Zha Jiang Mian.
Pronounced like a “ja”. Say it twice fast as in “ja-ja”. Add “mian” which is noodles in Chinese. You say…
Originally Answered: What is the most condescending advice you received from someone who assumed you were poor or less educated than they were?
I worked at Trader Joe’s for 3 years while I was pursuing my Ph.D. One day, a woman and her granddaughter came through my lane. The girl, about 12, remarked that she thought it would be fun to work at Trader Joe’s someday. Her grandmother winked at her and said, “Oh I think you can do a little better than that.”
I continued scanning her groceries and said, “Keep it in mind if you’re ever in school getting your Ph.D. The flexible hours and benefits are great so you can focus on your studies.” I looked directly at the grandmother and said, “At least that’s how it’s working out for me.”
The woman was embarrassed, but I continued, talking again to the granddaughter. “And, just remember, a job you love and enjoy is the most important part.”
This is just ONE example of hundreds. Customers coming through my lane acting as though the only reason for me being there was because I was too dumb, too lazy, too whatever to be their equal. I worked with people with their MBA, artists, and people who didn’t have a college degree but were the hardest workers I’ve ever known before or since.
Ukraine SitRep: A Hated New Commander – Critical Lack Of Infantry
The Ukrainian President Zelenski has fired the commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces General Zaluzny.
Zaluzny was replaced by General Syrski, a somewhat unexpected choice as Syrski is hated by the troops for pushing them into meat grinders without a perspective of winning. Syrski, who was born as a Russian, had lost the cauldron battles of Debaltsevo (2015), Soledar (2023) and Bakhmut (2023). Currently Avdeevka is in a cauldron and likely to fall.
Rumors say that Syrski already ordered reserves to reinforce the troops in Avdeevka. Russian FAB bombs will welcome them.
General Syrsky has a reputation for being willing to engage the enemy, even if the cost in men and machines is high. He is a divisive figure who provokes strong reactions from serving officers. Some praise his professionalism, others say he terrifies his subordinates and rules by fear. He is less likely to question the priorities of his president. As he takes on the top job, he will have to soften his style of command and learn to speak truth to power.
The reorganisation will also cause disruption as officers shift to new positions in the chain of command. It is important that these changes do not degrade Ukraine’s capacity to fight. Before long, the country will need a new mobilisation even if General Syrsky uses his troops mostly for defence—as, for now, he should.
Ask yourself, why would Zelensky appoint a commander that the entire armed forces allegedly hates?
In fact, this is a ‘design feature’ not a bug.
Recall that the reason Zaluzhny was given the boot was he had become too powerful: he was too loved by the troops, and by the people. Why? One of the reasons is likely because he fought for the troops multiple times. In early 2023, documents were leaked showing that he nearly begged Zelensky to pull troops back from Bakhmut, but the narco-Fuhrer refused, wanting it as a symbolic city defense—perhaps taken with romantic delusions of Stalingrad.
During the grand summer ‘counteroffensive’, Zaluzhny pulled the brigades of the 10th Army Corps back and began to use them sparingly—much to the chagrin and disapproval of US sponsors—after the initial first few wipes devastated columns of Leopards and Bradleys along the infamous road of death near Rabotino and Mala Tokmachka.
Recently it was claimed Zaluzhny likewise attempted to get Avdeevka totally withdrawn. It does not seem that he likes to waste men for what he knows to be fruitless efforts. Syrsky on the other hand appears glad to grind them down.
So, has it become obvious yet? Zelensky needs a commander-in-chief he can control, someone not universally loved by the troops; someone who cannot use those troops at a time of opportunity to ‘march on Kiev’ and oust Zelensky from his citadel. Syrsky appears to fit the perfect prototypical role: undefiant, unpopular, uncharismatic, and most importantly, untempted by political ambitions—the ideal subserviant factotum to Zelensky’s regime.
There is no word yet what Zaluzny is going to do. He has the respect of the troops and good relations with the ‘nationalists’, i.e. the Nazi fringe militia of Ukraine. He also has the support of some politicians opposed to Zelenski.
A coup is thereby a possible outcome of this change.
Yesterday a Washington Post article, sources from interviews at the Ukrainian front, describes the utter shamble the Ukrainian forces are in:
In interviews across the front line in recent days, nearly a dozen soldiers and commanders told The Washington Post that personnel deficits were their most critical problem now, as Russia has regained the offensive initiative on the battlefield and is stepping up its attacks.
One battalion commander in a mechanized brigade fighting in eastern Ukraine said that his unit currently has fewer than 40 infantry troops — the soldiers deployed in front-line trenches who hold off Russian assaults. A fully equipped battalion would have more than 200, the commander said.
Under normal circumstances a mechanized battalion is supposed to hold a 3 kilometer long frontline. With only 40 infantry soldiers available that becomes an impossible task. The further deterioration from that depleted state will be rapid.
Oleksandr, a battalion commander, said the companies in his unit on average are staffed at about 35 percent of what they should be. A second battalion commander from an assault brigade said that is typical for units that carry out combat tasks.
Asked how many new soldiers he has received — not including those who have returned after injuries — Oleksandr said his battalion was sent five people over the past five months. He and other commanders said the new recruits tend to be poorly trained, creating a dilemma about whether to send someone immediately onto the battlefield because reinforcements are needed so badly, even though they are likely to get injured or killed because they lack the know-how.
“The basis of everything is the lack of people,” Oleksandr said.
“Where are we going? I don’t know,” he added. “There’s no positive outlook. Absolutely none. It’s going to end in a lot of death, a global failure. And most likely, I think, the front will collapse somewhere like it did for the enemy in 2022, in the Kharkiv region.”
The new Ukrainian mobilization law, which is supposed to refill the army with fresh bodies, is still creeping through the Ukrainian parliament. It will likely come into force only by April. The first new troops conscripted under it will take until July to be combat capable. One wonders is the current Ukrainian army can hold that long.
Posted by b on February 9, 2024 at 7:41 UTC | Permalink
My Wife/Her Friends Expected Me To Pay For Their $700 Dinner Bill, Instead I Walked Out!
There are already some good answers here. One type of crime that has a low solvability is the “one off” variety, e.g. an offense the perpetrator does once before moving on. Solvability gets even lower if the crime is committed with no other connection between actor and victim.
For example, say that I am on a cross-country road trip, and take a detour to Ames, Iowa. I’ve never been there. I take I-80 to I-35 North, and stop off at a gas station/convenience store somewhere around Ames. I cover my license plates just before I get there, park around back or some other place where there are few surveillance cameras, and walk inside, robbing the store. I go back to my car, drive a few miles before getting rid of the license plate covers, and resume my trip. I stop for gas only at stations around I-80, none on I-35.
I haven’t given the cops much to go on. If I’m careful not to leave fingerprints and wear some clothing that makes it hard to get a good camera shot of my face, the chance this crime is going to be connected to me is pretty low. If I get greedy and use the same tactics at other crime venues, I increase my chances at getting caught with each iteration.
Organized crime hit men use a similar tactic. They take on targets that are outside their usual haunts, and do the deed in a place there are few witnesses. The police local to the site of the crime won’t know anything about the hit man. A federal agent looking for behavior patterns (M.Os. or modus operandi) might pick up the trail, but even that is a long shot, one that gets longer if the M.O. hasn’t been tied to the hit man.
While there are some smart criminals, most people who make it a habit to commit crimes aren’t especially bright, and have signature behaviors that tie the crimes back to them.
There’s a sport called Airsoft. If you know about it, skip this part, but for those who don’t here’s an explanation.
Airsoft is like paintball, but a lot of its components, i.e. the guns, gear, etc. is a lot more realistic than paintball. A lot of LARPers and MilSim (Military Simulation) guys love doing stuff like that.
The sport started in Japan due to its tough gun laws but the sport soon spread to other places like Britain, America, and… oh… Russia for instance.
In America, MilSim events are huge. There is a lot of preparation involved. People will drop thousands on gear to look like this:
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This is an image I found off Google. Rifle, easy with all attachments, $300+, not to mention any internal modifications he might have.
Helmet an easy $50, assuming its a nice one. Earpieces have wires, so they’re probably communication linked, noise cancelling and sound enhancing. Easy $70–80. Crye combat pants. $100.
Even vehicles, which probably cost thousands to kit out:
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As you can see, American MilSimmers are rather dedicated.
However, compared to Russian MilSim events… Well let me just say this. Its like comparing a pickup game of basketball with the neighborhood friends versus an all out NBA game. Take a look at this video.
https://youtu.be/hVyWHsElhME
Fucking hell. Russians bring multimillion dollar TANKS to their Milsim events. Plus, as you saw in the second vid, Russian soldiers got involved to take blank potshots at people to add to realism!
Meanwhile in America you have people arguing about 10 foot engagement distances and bang killing.
Yep. Most Russian thing ever, bring a tank to a toy fight.
Spaghetti alla Puttanesca
Spaghetti alla Puttanesca is a traditional Italian pasta from Naples that’s quick to put together from pantry staples. If you have canned tomatoes, garlic, olives, anchovies and capers in your cupboard, you can knock out this simple but flavourful sauce in a flash. It’s a stellar emergency meal everyone should know, with a “saucy” backstory of its own!
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Spaghetti alla Puttanesca
There are various colourful stories explaining how this dish came to be, and how Puttanesca pasta got its name. “Puttanesca” roughly translates to “working girls” in Italian (that’s a politically correct term I’m using there!) One tale tells how this dish was invented in the brothels of Naples so the smells wafting from the kitchen would entice potential … errr, clients. Another story claims this pasta was a quick and simple dish ladies of the Neapolitan night could throw together in a hurry in amongst their busy schedules.
Does this kind of talk on a G-rated food blog make you blush? 😉
Whatever the origins, today this is considered a classic and staple Italian pasta recipe. It’s budget-friendly, easy and quick to make, yet delicious enough to woo family and friends (or indeed, “paying customers” … 😉)
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Ingredients in Puttanesca sauce
Being such simple recipe, this is one of those dishes that genuinely benefits from better quality ingredients. In this pasta, the one ingredient I find is really worth seeking out is fresh deli-style olives in olive oil or brine, rather than cheaper jarred ones you find on supermarket shelves.
Oh, also, anchovies – the secret “why is this simple sauce so good?” ingredient. If you skip it, the sauce isn’t quite as good! However you can leave it out if you wish to make the dish vegetarian / vegan (add a little more garlic, capers and olives instead).
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Black olives – Try to use good quality, fresh olives from the deli. These come in either olive oil or brine and will add more flavour into the sauce as it simmers compared to bottled ones that come in sealed jars. Both pitted and unpitted are fine but pitting your own is best.
Anchovies – This adds savoury flavour and salt to the sauce without leaving it “fishy-tasting”. In fact, you’d have to have a highly attuned palate to be able to taste it at all. The anchovies are finely chopped and dissolve into the sauce, and any strong fishiness disappears leaving just deliciously deep umami.I prefer to use whole anchovies and finely mince it myself because it has better flavour than using anchovy paste. But paste is a handy alternative – my rule of thumb is 1/4 teaspoon of paste per anchovy (so use 3/4 teaspoon in this recipe).
Spaghetti – Traditionally made with spaghetti or vermicelli pasta (ie. the thinner spaghetti), though this recipe works just fine with any long pasta. Or short, for that matter!
Tomatoes – Not all canned tomatoes are created equal! Better ones are sweeter and break down better to create a sauce. TIP: If you find your tomatoes are a bit on the sour side, just add a touch of sugar to the sauce. It’s a cheat’s way of taking the sour edge off that is a game changer with for example, Spaghetti Bolognese.
Capers – Adds little pops of briny goodness and that unique caper flavour to the sauce. I usually use standard size capers. On occasion, I find they can be giant in size so I’ll reach for the baby capers instead. Both work!
Garlic – Because this is Italian food!
Chilli flakes (aka red pepper flakes) – A pinch of heat is wonderful in this sauce. It’s not a spicy sauce, here it’s just a background hum of warmth.
Extra virgin olive oil – For cooking and finishing.
Fresh basil and oregano – These finishing herb touches will really lift the dish and return some freshness to the sauce. But if you don’t have them, it is absolutely still worth making using a pinch of dried oregano. Don’t bother with dried basil, it’s basically flavourless.If you don’t have basil, serve with a sprinkle of parmesan instead. The extra flavour will compensate for absence of fresh herb flavour.
How to make Spaghetti alla Puttanesca
Start the sauce first and get it simmering, then cook the pasta. They’ll both finish at the same time, ready to toss together!
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This recipe serves 2. Use a medium size skillet here rather than a very large one, else the sauce will dry out too quickly when simmering. If you’re scaling the recipe up however a large skillet will be necessary to toss the pasta in the sauce (or use a pot for the sauce and tossing).
Sauté aromatics – Start off by sautéing the garlic in olive oil until it starts to go golden on the edges. Then add the finely chopped anchovies, capers, olives and red pepper flakes and cook for a further 1 minute.This sautéing step is key to the flavour of the sauce. It blooms the flavour of the red pepper flakes and even more importantly, takes the raw fishy edge off the anchovies while causing them to break down, ready to dissolve into the sauce.
Add everything else into sauce – Add the can of tomatoes, then add water by rinsing out the can. In goes salt, pepper and fresh or dried oregano, then give it a good stir.
Simmer 10 minutes – Once the sauce comes to a simmer, turn the heat way down to low and let it simmer gently, stirring every now and then, for 10 minutes while the pasta cooks. The tomato will break down, the water will cook out, leaving behind a nice, shiny and thickened sauce. If at any stage it looks like the sauce is drying out (probably due to heat being too strong or using a skillet that’s too large), just add a splash of water.
Cook pasta – Cook the pasta in salted water. Just before draining, scoop out a mugful of pasta cooking water. This is a key, essential step for cooking any pasta(well and properly!). We add a splash into the pasta sauce when tossing with the pasta. Starch that’s left in the cooking water helps emulsify the fats and water in the sauce. This has a thickening effect and also discourages the sauce from separating. The sauce clings deliciously to the pasta strands instead of leaving a watery pool of bland liquid at the bottom of your pasta bowl.You’ll see this step in every pasta recipe on my website. And every household in Italy makes pasta this way!
Combine pasta, sauce and pasta cooking water – After draining the pasta, immediately throw into the sauce along with about 1/4 cup of pasta cooking water. I rarely measure, I just eyeball it.
Toss, toss, toss! With the skillet still on a low stove, use 2 wooden spoons to toss the pasta vigorously for a minute. After 20 or 30 seconds of tossing, you’ll notice that the sauce in the skillet starts clinging to the pasta (thanks to the pasta cooking water!).The pasta is ready when the sauce is all stuck to the pasta rather than sitting in the skillet.Pasta/sauce gets dry – If at any stage the pasta (or sauce) gets too thick or dries out, rather than being slippery and shiny, just add an extra splash of pasta cooking water then toss more. This will resurrect the pasta and makes it “juicy” again. This is why we scoop out a big mugful of pasta cooking water! I do this multiple times when taking photos and shooting videos of pasta because it loses freshness within minutes and I can’t shoot that fast!Sprinkle with basil and serve immediately!
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Pro tip: warm your pasta bowlsWatch how to make it
Pasta is a dish that is at its absolute best served hot and fresh. It is never the same reheated. It is also one of the rare dishes where I make the effort to warm serving bowls, to preserve the heat of the pasta when eating. I just pop them in a 70C / 160F oven to warm before I start cooking, or in the microwave for a minute before serving. It’s worth the small effort, especially in winter!
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What to serve with Puttanesca pasta
Parmesan?
Puttanesca is traditionally not served with the typical shower of parmesan because it already has plenty of salt and savouriness from the flavour-packed ingredients. But I won’t stop you if that’s how you want to roll.
Having said that, if I don’t have fresh basil sometimes I use parmesan to compensate as a finishing touch (no it’s not the same thing at all, but I like to have a garnish).
Sides!
In my world, Puttanesca is planted firmly in the “emergency pantry meals” bucket so you won’t get a side salad if I make this for you. It’s also technically 95% vegetables anyway! 😉 However, if you’re after a super quick one that’s on-theme, Rocket with Shaved Parmesan fits the bill with a side of hot buttery garlic bread or focaccia (I’m very proud of this recipe, I hope you try it one day!).
Add a Tiramisu for dessert or Italian Almond cookies with coffee, and suddenly this humble “quick pantry dinner” has transformed into a full blown Italian dinner menu!
We had a 10 year employee working at my store named (ummmm) “Suzy”. She was the community out-reach leader (and amazing at it) and the intimates / beauty department manager. She had a perfect attendance record. She was one of TWO “Exceeds Expectations” leaders in the entire store. She went to EVERY fundraising event and was absolutely one of the most delightful human beings I ever worked with.
I was in the break room with the store manager. In walked “Suzy”. She opened the fridge, dug out a bottle of iced tea. Said (out loud), “No name! Fair game!” and opened it and drank it. We didn’t even have time to stop her. We saw her take an item from the fridge. There was no moral dilemma on our part. The front of the fridge had a sign on it saying, “If it’s not yours and you take it, it’s theft. Period.” We had a camera pointing at the fridge because food theft had been a past issue.
“Suzy” was walked off the property the same day.
She was stunned. “But I have perfect attendance. I’ve gotten exceeds expectations on every review. I’m the community captain.” It absolutely broke my heart (she was one of my all time favorite employees). We had to explain to her, “Nobody gets immunity to the rules. You cannot be the greatest employee ever and expect that you earn some kind of points that grant you forgiveness, especially in an area so critical to trust and morale. All theft is treated the same, regardless of size or intent. You took something that didn’t belong to you.”
Theft is and should always be treated with absolute zero tolerance. No exceptions ever. Making exceptions demands future exceptions for all people. Making exceptions about theft opens the door to low standards. Better to fire all the perpetrators and shut the unit down until backfill can be identified than to allow a thief to continue being employed for even one second.
My son stole $2000 in a locked box from under my bed as I slept. He knew I needed that money to do badly needed repairs on the house we had just moved back into after a divorce. He had just gotten out of a juvenile treatment facility. He refused to get a job. He kept bringing a friend over at night when I was working.
My house reeked of marijuana every morning when I got home. They ate my food. He was 18. A legal adult. When I discovered he stole the money I had him arrested.
He was put in jail. No one would bail him out so he stayed there for three months. At court I told him I did not want to see him until he was a contributing member of society. He had to have a legal job…not selling street drugs etc. He was given time served plus probation and had to pay restitution. He got out of jail and lived with the kid who had been hanging out at my house.
His mother kicked them both out. My son found his birth father and stayed with him. He soon learned the man’s sole goal in life was to stay high. My son then stayed with another friend, couch surfed.
Lived in an office building bathroom. Then with a woman who was crazy. Then a friend rescued him. He lived with them and their father for two years.
They made him stay clean, clean up after himself, eat healthy, get and keep a job. He then asked if he could come back home.
He is now 24. The other day he thanked me for holding him accountable. He has a job he enjoys and is saving money for a future. Some kids just need tough love.
My husband is a retired Royal Thai police officer. He rarely told me much about his days, not wanting me to worry, get upset.
He did, however, share a few events that had me laughing…
Story 1
Husband and his men were chasing a small group of meth dealers who abandoned their car and ran into the tall grass of a swampy field.
Husband has the usual regulation, very short hair and was wearing a bright orange vest that was clearly marked POLICE, front and back, in huge English and Thai letters.
He waded into the swamp and stood next to one of the meth dealers who told him to take off the bright vest because the police were searching the area!
Story 2
Husband and his guys raided a gambling den at dawn. The players, many of whom were very drunk, ran to their motorcycles, trucks and cars to get away.
Four men staggered to their car but were stunned because the police seemed to be keeping pace on foot with their ‘pedal to the metal,’ speeding car.
In fact, they had jumped into an abandoned car that had no engine and hadn’t noticed they hadn’t moved at all.
Story 3
‘Uncle’ Tan was a quiet, older man who grew veggies and sold them from the back of his pick-up.
Officers received a call saying that Uncle had unsuccessfully tried to rob a local shop with a plastic water pistol and was walking down the highway, TOWARDS the police station.
He seemed pleased when he was arrested.
As was the norm, he was told he could be held for 48 hours in the police station jail, longer if a judge deemed it necessary. Uncle perked up at the possibility of ‘longer.’
The officers were puzzled until the truth came out: his wife’s sisters were coming for their yearly visit, and Uncle said that he was just too old to go through that hell again. He had thought he would be in jail for weeks.
The judge showed leniency, asking the police to hold Uncle until it was deemed safe for him to go home.
Does it occur to you it could be the U.S. that could be imprisoned? If the U.S. ends up spending tons of money meaninglessly and without a return and yet it cannot stop spending billions to continuously do shit that don’t pay it is the U.S. that is trapped. China don’t gives a shit it simply just let the US waste all it money bribing nations who refuse to do shit, just to pretend to the world it has allies.
For us in Asia. Even Japan, Korea, Phillipines and India have no wish to do shit as it knows the repercussions and it has been China’s neighbour for some 5000 years! It may have no choice but to barked some shit on China to get the U.S. off its back. But sure won’t risk it to do more than that. So the U.S. having a pay billions get some pretend shit is outright silly and wasteful.
So who is trapped? China can and will do what it wants. And the U.S. has to stay and waste a ton of resources to get pretentious shit that China gives a damn. To me the U.S. is trapped in its own stupidity!
Groom yourself, even if you’re living alone . Keep your beard clean and trimmed. Girls may wax, if necessary.
Always carry a wallet, Comb, Belt, Perfume, a pen with you.
Workout at least 1 hour a day, it’s the least you could do for your body.This will keep your confidence up, your body healthy and your face free of pimples.
Cover your mouth while sneezing, coughing, etc. Say ‘Sorry/Excuse me’ afterward.
Invest in your own personal hygiene like flossing your teeth, cleaning your mouth, wearing cologne.
Speak a bit less and think before you speak because one wrong word can hurt your personality.
Talk looking into the eyes of the other person.
Be a man of your words , If you promise to do something for someone, make sure you do it .
Show respect for other person’s opinion. Never tell a person he or she is wrong.
Learn the difference between Ego and Self-respect. There’s a very thin line between them.
Hustle as much as you can. Fast success brings ego, slow success builds personality.
Do Meditation.(Meditation transforms you into a new human)
Never make fun of someone’s disability whether it’s financial, mental or physical.
Never hesitate meeting new people. People have own experiences and knowledge to share with you.
My coworker, Marty, at the Department of Correction was fired after bantering with our department’s business manager. She was a diva with a (very) high opinion of herself and one morning Marty told her that she looked “nice”.
She cocked her hip and smiled at him, and asked if he was implying that she didn’t look good every day. Marty responded that she did, indeed, look good and that she looked good enough to eat. That ended the conversation and I went on my merry way.
When I returned to the office late that afternoon, another coworker pulled me aside and asked, breathlessly, if I’d heard about Marty. I hadn’t — I’d been out installing computers in a prison all day — so she said that he’d been fired! For sexual harrassment! The diva business manager had filed a complaint against him.
I immediately tracked my boss down and told her the complaint was bullshit, and that I’d witnessed the entire exchange. She said that her hands were tied because Marty admitted saying the diva looked good enough to eat. It was considered inappropriate verbiage for the workplace and the diva insisted that she would be uncomfortable working with Marty.
I kept my contact and conversations with her to a minimum from that day on.
China has been excluded from the ISS project, which has greatly promoted the development of China’s aerospace technology.
You can imagine that 20 years ago, several young people decided to save money to buy a car and then use it together. The Chinese were excluded. He was told: Your money is dirty and we will not accept it.
You have to understand that Russia, which the United States considers an enemy, is accepted, while China is excluded. How humiliating is this to China?
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The young man decided not to pray to join but to work hard on his own. Finally, he made enough money to buy a car of his own. A new car that belongs only to him.
The group of young people who pooled their money to buy a car are still using that old car together, even though it is very old. All participants are not yet able to buy their own cars.
When they saw a Chinese driving a new car alone, they were filled with envy, but they said: His car is smaller than ours!
Let us assume that if China was allowed to join, what would be the result? They may have a module on the ISS, but they will never have their own CSS.
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Now everything has changed
The Chinese space station is so advanced that they even use Hall thrusters to maintain orbit without having to consume a lot of fuel like the ISS.
Famous media commented that the interior of CSS is like an Apple store, while the ISS is like an old grocery store.
My father was a very serious and strict man. We lived in a nice house with a covered front porch on a hill overlooking a valley. One day when I was 10 yrs. old I was with my father on the porch ,there was a man dressed in a suit and tie and they were discussing serious business. I knew not to disturb them in any way. I had to remain quiet so I quickly became bored. I looked around the porch for something of interest when I spotted a small stone on the floor. When I picked it up I thought it was such a perfect throwing stone, the shape and the way it fit in my hand I just knew it would travel a record breaking distance down that valley. I took a few steps back so I would be behind dad’s peripheral sight as they both were facing the valley in deep conversation. I focused on a bush for my target . I took a couple deep breaths and threw the stone with every muscle I had.
To my horror the stone slipped out of my hand . I heard a deep moan as my father collapsed to one knee . As he grabbed his left ear he uttered”” “JUMPIN JESUS” WHAT WAS THAT ? I was so afraid I couldn’t speak. The stone had hit the bone behind his left ear and instantly a purple knot appeared . WELL , WHAT WAS IT ? I finally managed to say… a rock.. A ROCK ! Get in the house. Well, lucky for me their conversation lasted longer giving him a cooling off period. When the man left Dad gave me a lecture about throwing rocks and interrupting adults. Surprisingly there was no physical abuse which I expected. Now many years later even though he’s gone , I can hear his voice as if he just now said “WELL, WHAT WAS IT ?” And I get a good laugh about that frightened little boy .
Do you wonder why I put the Deng Xiaoping face on my post? Because the post I am writing tends to make sense for what I will try to convey. As you know, in the mainstream media, basically the West tends to use this Imperialist projection against the Chinese nation. It has become a human sin for the Chinese people to seek their old legitimate rights such as the right to become rich and powerful, the right to become among the most respected nations it used to be during the Ming towards Qing era.
The mainstream media has changed its focus from China’s rising economic threat towards China being the country seeking sphere of influence in Asia. This projection is among those who had committed this act before. History doesn’t lie, not do the suffering of the people they had to face from the British to the American Imperialism which still is going today in many forms.
China has now become one of the second largest economies in the world and the first if we see it through a PPP basis. The nation’s citizens are now enjoying a much better, high quality life in comparison to what their parents had to face under Mao respectfully. China, just like Deng envisioned, became the county that is leading the world in science, tech, and environment policies where China has been recently focused on being the country focused on building a strong green economy.
Media nowadays tends to portray China as aggressive and imperialist. Every investment China does in other countries is judged as a form of imperialism, every defense that China undertakes or its mission to uniting Taiwan is seem as foreign aggression by the West on China when they only want to take what was lost before. This judgment is not just fueled by the West but also by CINOs, or in other words ‘Chinese just in name’ that have Chinese names and ethnicity but they lack the Chinese spirit to show sympathy for their homeland. Most of these can be found in countries like Malaysia and Singapore or even U.S. who tend to side with the West’s aggression against China. This lack of knowledge is what has made ignorance prevalent today. The lack of the understanding the Chinese mindset and their way of doing things is what made them see China from a hostile viewpoint rather than a positive one.
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Socialism: what do I mean? Well to understand China’s foreign policy and the way how it perceives the world is through the socialist perspective. You see Socialism didn’t come out of thin air in China. People before Mao used to be exploited, oppressed by the Chiang Khai Shek government. The land was controlled by the foreign businessmen who used China as a source of destination to build capital under the Chinese labour. This unequal relationship between China and the West is what made the Chinese more angrier, coupled with the hate from their humiliation. The weakness of the Chinese civilization is what pursued the Chinese people to seek a new radical solution and that was Socialism which back then Chairman Mao worked tirelessly to increase the support and work towards unifying China.
Its basis was simple: to fight against oppression, build an equal society and bring back China as the nation it once was. Which means an independent, strong China without being anymore humiliated. Thus when Mao United China is the time where humiliation of China ended and China began to recover. During the recovery, China faced many obstacles. Once was the American aggression in Asia, the other was the restrictions which were put against China because they were “Communist,” then the aggression from outside. China, after seeing Korea fall to the American forces, was forced to send its troops and successfully push out the American troops and North Korea was saved. Hence the socialist and proletarian cause was built on self defense and defending neighbours from Imperialist aggression that came from thousand miles away.
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After Chairman Mao’s death, Deng Xiaoping came to power, which is praised for the new reforms that brought China to the place it is today. A new socialist modern economy built by Chinese people and a strong country looking to move forward even more and bring back the national rejuvenation to the Chinese people. The Deng Xiaoping goal was to always revitalize China which is now being carried by the leader Xi Jinping. Which meant a rich China which used to be under Qing before the Imperialist oppresion, a strong China in Asia and a China that is respected and seen as the gateway to the Eastern civilization and not a China that will replace the role of the West.
Deng Xiaoping in a public forum told others:
China shall always belong to the Third World and shall never seek hegemony. This idea is understandable because China is still quite poor, and is therefore a Third World country in the real sense of the term. The question is whether or not China will practise hegemony when it becomes more developed in the future. My friends, you are younger than I, so you will be able to see for yourselves what happens at that time. If it remains a socialist country, China will not practise hegemony and it will still belong to the Third World. Should China become arrogant, however, act like an overlord and give orders to the world, it would no longer be considered a Third World country.
What do these words mean? It is simple. The leader who laid out the reforms for his nation and the next vision, he is also the one who made sure to future generations to always see China as a nation similar with others of the third world. He never advocated a China which replaces the West’s role, he never advocates for a dominated Chinese power that controls Asia in the similar way of how United States has controlled South America.
This is also one of the main factors that led China into creating SCO and BRICS organizations, because the vision is simple: to build prosperity and encourage integration and connectivity with the third world that includes all of the former nations that were once colonized and exploited. Anti-Imperialism is after all something that has been pushed from Marxists itself, because the concept or freedom isn’t mainly focused on ending exploitation but also imperialism that caused the third world to suffer under the hands of the Western nations, that exploited its natural resources to feed their population.
Anyone who tends to see China in a Western way then that kind of thinking is bound to fail and even insult your own intelligence. No rational person would be crazy enough to compare China to a Western country and I believe the track records of US and other western countries, tells us a lot about the morality that the West loves to show many times.
But what kind of vision then does China see for the world?
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Of course the role that China will play will fundamentally change the world in many ways, and right now we are already noticing many changes especially in Asia. We are seeing a role that keeps growing each year. And a strong China is at the same time bringing a good balance to the world especially when it’s necessary to counter the bi-polar world order by US
Multipolarism: China’s idea of Multipolsrism came even more to light after the importance and value of BRICS began to rise. This is in vision with Deng Xiaoping’s stance who’s always have said to never seek hegemony. China sees Multilateralism as the only way to bring equality to the world order where some certain nations seek a greater role in the world affairs and share a certain security to meet the world challenges.
New Financial system: Putin in the interview with Tucker laid out a very good critique of the US dollar. He mentioned how the United States’ policies towards other rivalries have caused mass panic in the world, and it is true in many ways. After the Russia war in Ukraine began, the West was so quickly to launch the heaviest sanctions in history. This didn’t collapse Russia’s economy and instead they shot themselves in the foot. Because the world for the first time in history was ready to move and make a change in the international order, which was the beginning of implementing new different currencies in trade with other countries. This thing is only going to become more common especially as BRICS advances.
Unity within their territory: Many people tend to see China’s actions in Taiwan in a wrong way but instead this isn’t the case. China has only sought to reunify its territories that were once lost. The ROC and PRC were at civil war which the ROC lost and retreated to Taiwan. Technically they are still at war, because considering that no peace treaty has been made or even ceasefire, this makes it legitimate for China to reunify Taiwan.
The development of BRICS: BRICS will continue to play even more important roles in the next decades, it will be more than just an organization. It will be the representative of the East and of the Global South. It will put the other part of the world in equal footing with the West. This balance is exactly what the whole world should pursue, because the moment there is a balance of power, then you will be at peace and respected. Though my opinion of BRICS might be optimistic, but as of now, I believe that all members have one desire, and that is to seek more independence from the US dollar regime.
Does it really matter which type of clock we are using?
Yes! It does.
Reason is “Those who use ‘Analog clock’ are more aware of the ‘time spent’ & the ‘time left’ than those who use Digital clock”.
How? Is what your question right?
Here we go. Let’s have a look at the digital clock.
image 9
What did we get? The time is 9:30 & that’s it. Only the current time.
Now, Analog clock.
image 8
Just look at it. Look at how beautiful it is. What do we observe here? 11:55. That’s it? No. But along with the ‘current time’ there is something else.
image 7
This we sense by intuition. An Analog clock resembles a pie chart which can represent self–expressive data.
Intuition matters! It is the advantage of having Analog clock.
This is not so easy with digital clocks. Because we need to force our brain to calculate the ‘time spent’ ,‘time left’, etc.
I’m not getting old. I’m there. I’ll be 77 years old in a couple of weeks, so I believe I qualify to answer this question.
I have a lover who is younger than I am. And if I were to “lose” him, I would readily find another, if I desired it.
However, I pay close attention to my figure, my wardrobe and my makeup. It takes me about half an hour to put my makeup on skillfully enough so I don’t look as though I’m wearing any. I dress nicely even when I have nothing important to do, although I am still in business, which keeps my thinking sharp. I watch what I eat carefully, most days keeping at 1200–1400 calories total for the day. This enables me to have lunch or dinner with my love or friends in a restaurant pretty much any time I wish.
I don’t exercise, though I know I should. However, I have two flights of stairs that I go up and down many, many times per day. I tell myself that this helps.
I read extensively, and not just on the damn internet. I have an immense library and continually add to it. I read in science and in the arts. Although I do try to avoid politics, these days. I am responsible for my feelings, and I like them to remain hopeful and serene. But my reading enables me to converse on many topics. And until Covid, I also traveled, an activity which broadens anyone’s perspective.
So in answer to the question, I feel just fine, thank you very much. And I also feel – and know that I am – desired.
I hope perhaps your young mind has been opened, even a bit. Thanks for the question.
A very good illustration
This is a good illustration why the size and growth of US debt is totally out of whack with the real economy.
American debt is already THE systemic risk to the world economy. There is not enough money in the world to satisfy America’s ravenous appetite, not even if it prints them for free.
This is why the BRICs are desperate for an option to the dollar.
Hubby and I went to a fancy steakhouse in Atlanta for dinner a few years back. Having checked out the restaurant’s online menu, we made sure we were appropriately dressed—me in a long Italian silk dress and hubby in some business casual outfit. We arrived at the time of our reservation and experienced multiple WTF moments—
1. We were led to a side dining room instead of the fancy main dining room shown on their website. The decor was shall-we-say interesting. It resembled a kindergarten cafeteria, with folding chairs.
2. All the other guests there looked like they had just attended a basketball game.
3. The female manager had a LOW-cut cami and jacket on. Her boobs were 75% exposed.
4. On my way to the ladies’, I passed the kitchen and caught a whiff of rotten fish.
5. Before the server set my plate of scallops down, I smelled a stench that could have only come from decayed seafood.
6. Service was slow, but that was the least of our concerns.
All this cost us $250, tip included.
If you wonder why we did not raise any issues about what we went through, it was a mystery shop. Essentially, I was contracted to observe anything about the restaurant’s operations. In the end, the meal did not cost us anything. We were actually paid some money for the effort. However, the experience was so bad that I did not offer to take the same assignment for several years to come.
Vintage Ads and Celebrities’ Glamour on These Classic Vespa Scooters
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The DELUSIONAL OBSESSION with 6-Figure Salaries in Modern Dating
Future cat ladies. (And I do love my kitties. But no man is going to be able to make them happy.)
https://youtu.be/GvNEtlEb2ss
Italian Drunken Noodles
Italian drunken noodles are my Italian fusion take on one of my favorite Thai-style dishes. Brimming with noodles drenched in a flavorful, wine-infused sauce, bits of spicy Italian sausage, plus sweet bell peppers, onions and basil, this Italian take on drunken noodles is not only scrumptious, but quick and easy to prepare as well!
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Yield: 6 servings
An Italian twist to a favorite Thai dish
If you’ve ever had the pleasure of trying Thai drunken noodles (or pad kee mao), you know what an amazingly vibrant, rich and flavorful dish it is.
With ribbons of broad rice noodles drenched in a sweet and savory sauce, charred red and yellow bell peppers and onions, a choice of spicy meat, tofu, or shrimp, and a light flourish of freshly julienned Thai basil, this dish always hits the spot when it comes to all those big flavors I crave in Thai cuisine.
I must admit, whenever I would enjoy this dish, it always made me wonder what an Italian version of it would taste like…
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How to Make Drunken Noodles with an Italian Twist
In keeping with those basic components of noodle, meat, veggie, sauce and herb, it’s easy to see how Thai-style drunken noodles can easily be “morphed” into a brand new, Italian-style dish with a distinctly different flavor profile, while still maintaining the spirit of the original.
This is what I love and appreciate about fusion food!
What I did with this Italian drunken noodles recipe was to substitute wide and tender pappardelle noodles in place of the broad rice noodles, and then switched out some spicy and rich Italian sausage for the tofu, shrimp or chicken typically served in the Thai version.
For the sauce element, I used a tomato base kissed with a hint of wine in order to make the dish a bit “drunken”, and then kept the classic vegetable medley of multi-colored bell peppers and onions, plus that flourish of fresh basil to tie all the flavors together.
Here’s a glance at my Italian drunken noodles recipe: (or just jump to the full recipe below…)
To get things started, I cook my pappardelle noodles according to package instructions, and keep them warm while I prepare the sauce.
For the sauce, I place a large, heavy-bottom pan over high heat, and add a drizzle of olive oil; once hot, I crumble in the spicy sausage and brown it until cooked through, then remove it from the pan.
Next, I caramelize my onions in the pan drippings, then add in my seasoning, followed by my bell peppers, and saute until golden; then, I add in my garlic and wine, reducing that just a bit.
Finally, I add the diced tomatoes, with their juices, into the pan, along with the browned sausage, and allow the mixture to simmer for a couple of minutes; and then, I finish the sauce with a touch more olive oil and some fresh herbs before adding in my warm pappardelle noodles, and tossing everything to combine.
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Ingredients:
8 ounces pappardelle noodles, uncooked
Olive oil
4 spicy Italian sausage links, casings removed
1 large onion, quartered and sliced thinly
1 ½ teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
½ teaspoon cracked black pepper
1 red bell pepper, cored and thinly sliced
1 yellow bell pepper, cored and thinly sliced
1 orange bell pepper, cored and thinly sliced
4 cloves garlic, pressed through garlic press
½ cup white white (I used Chardonnay)
1 (28 ounce) can diced tomatoes, with juice
2 tablespoons flat-leaf parsley, chopped
¼ cup fresh basil leaves, julienned, divided use
Preparation:
Prepare the pappardelle noodles according to instructions on package; then, drain the noodles very well, and keep them warm while you prepare the sauce.
Place a large, heavy-bottom pan or braising pot over medium-high heat, and add about 2 tablespoons of olive oil; once the oil is hot, crumble the spicy Italian sausage into the pan in small chunks (you want to keep the sausage fairly chunky), allowing it to brown in the oil for a few moments on each side; once the crumbled sausage is browned, remove it from the pan/pot with a slotted spoon and place into a small bowl to hold for a moment.
Next, add the sliced onion into the pan with the sausage drippings, and allow it to caramelize and become golden for roughly 5 minutes or so, stirring to keep it from burning (add a touch more olive oil, if necessary); once the onion starts to become golden, add the salt, Italian seasoning and cracked black pepper, and stir to combine.
Add in the sliced bell peppers, and allow those to saute with the onion for about 2 minutes until slightly tender and golden; next, add in the garlic, and once it becomes aromatic, add in the white wine and allow it to reduce for a few moments, until almost completely reduced.
Next, add in the diced tomatoes with their juice, and return the browned spicy Italian sausage back into the pan, and gently fold the mixture to combine; allow it to gently simmer for about 3 to 4 minutes to blend the flavors, then turn the heat off.
To finish the sauce, drizzle in about 2-3 good tablespoons of the olive oil to create a silky, rich flavor, and stir in the chopped parsley and about half of the julienned basil.
Add the cooked pappardelle noodles directly into the sauce, and using tongs, gently toss and combine the noodles with the sauce and all of the ingredients in it; check the seasoning to see if you need to add any additional salt or pepper.
To serve, add equal portions of the Italian drunken noodles to bowls, and garnish with a sprinkle of the remaining julienned basil (you can even top with shaved parmesan, if desired, and an extra drizzle of olive oil).
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Tips & Tidbits for my Italian Drunken Noodles:
The larger the pan, the better: Use a large, heavy bottom pan (cast iron or a Dutch oven) for this dish, as it retains heat well and will give a little extra color and flavor to your peppers and onions; plus, it provides room to add the noodles directly into the sauce at the end, and toss ’em around.
Pappardelle are best, but don’t sweat it: Pappardelle noodles are the broad or wide egg noodles that look a bit like “ribbons”, and you should be able to find them in the pasta section in most markets—they really are best for this recipe; but if you can’t find them, feel free to substitute whatever type of pasta noodle you like. The flavor will still be amazing.
Go white or go red: White wine is what’s called for in this recipe, but red wine would also be a delicious choice; use whatever you’d actually like to drink with this dish.
Looking to leave out the alcohol? No problem: If you’d prefer to leave alcohol out, then simply substitute chicken stock for the wine, and add a little squeeze of lemon at the end for that “brightness” as well.
Go Veg: For a meatless version, omit the spicy sausage altogether, and enjoy just the veggies, noodles and sauce; but you can always use a vegetarian “crumble” in this dish as well, or even use cubed tofu to keep in line with the Thai inspiration.
Prep ahead: You can make the sauce element of this recipe ahead of time, such as the day before you’d like to serve it, which will actually give the sauce more time to sit and gain deeper flavor; just prepare the noodles the day of, toss with the warmed up sauce, you’re set to go.
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General Instructions
Place a large, heavy-bottom pan or braising pot over medium-high heat; add about 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Once the oil is hot, crumble the Italian sausage into the pan in small chunks, allowing it to brown in the oil for a few moments.
When the crumbled sausage is browned, remove it from the pan/pot with a slotted spoon and place into a small bowl to hold for a moment.
Place in the pan the diced bell peppers, salt, Italian seasoning and cracked black pepper. Stir to combine. Allow to sauté for about 2 minutes until slightly tender.
Add the garlic. Once it becomes aromatic, add the white wine and allow it to reduce for a few moments, until almost completely reduced.
Add the diced tomatoes with their juice.
To finish the sauce, drizzle in about 2 to 3 good tablespoons of the olive oil to create a rich flavor.
Add the chopped parsley and about half of the basil.
Return the browned Italian sausage back into the pan and gently fold the mixture to combine. Allow it to gently simmer for about 3 to 4 minutes to blend the flavors. Then turn the heat off.
During the debate, KMT Presidential candidate brought up a very good point. The US sold 400 missiles to Taiwan for $6 billion. That came out to be $15 million / missile. But then when the US was defending Israel from attacks they fired those missiles and were reporting that they were expensive $3-million missiles.
Why were they sold to Taiwan at 5x the price? It makes sense if the US is leveraging the reported danger to extract as much value as it can from Taiwan. It doesn’t make sense if it has intentions to defend Taiwan.
The Mainland is ending its preferential treatment towards Taiwan which would hurt the ability for Taiwanese products to be exported to the Mainland. The US can help mitigate the impact to the Taiwanese economy by increasing imports from Taiwan and signing a free-trade agreement but it hasn’t.
How can anyone expect the US to give up its lives for Taiwan if it can’t even give up a bit of its profit?
Always keep a diary and a pen with you. Whenever you get any intriguing idea, write that down in your diary. When you open this diary, you’ll realize that you have a great set of ideas.
Leave your comfort zone as nothing grows for good there. Take risks in your life. Risks come with reward. Look at the rewards and move ahead.
Introspect and improve. Realize your mistakes and improve them. Try your best to not to repeat your mistakes again.
Success is something you take by force. No one will give it to you freely.
The secret of success is hidden in booksand old-school wisdom. Yet most people hate to read books. No wonder, few people are successful.
Stop expecting instant satisfaction. Patience, persistence and perspiration are your best friends. Remember that there are NO shortcuts in life.
Cry as hard as you want, but make sure that when you stop crying, you never cry for the same reason again.
No matter how much it hurts now. Someday you’ll look back and realize, your struggle changed your life for better.
If you are an intelligent person, you will try to do what you love the most. But if you are a genius, you will only do what is needed.
Students believe that there is only one right answer to every question. That is why people always want to follow the crowd because they think there is only one right way to live life. Find your own way . don’t follow the crowd
Putting in the work daily without quitting. Going through the drudgery and mundane tasks repeatedly. Practicing everyday like insane just to master your craft.
Don’t bother about the judgements of society, friends, peers and relatives. You want it, go for it. Don’t give a fcuk about others , live your life , give your best
The Chinese Communist Party is not in charge of assimilating everyone into Chinese culture, and it does not promote it. In fact, the Party makes a big deal out of preserving minority cultures, and giving them special advantages such as in numbers of children they can have (unlimited), and giving minority students extra points in the highly competitive university exams. There is some grumbling from Han Chinese about all the benefits minorities get in China.
Some minorities such as the Manchus, some Mongolians and some Tibetans have been absorbed by Chinese culture, not by any government policy. The general rule in China is that any non-Han Chinese minority, if it adopts Chinese language and the Chinese non-nomadic lifestyle, will eventually disappear over several generations.
This is not done because of any government policy; it is just that Han Chinese language and culture have a very strong pull which is hard to resist over time. This is because more than 90% of China’s population is Han Chinese, and once a minority adopts the language and then culture, it loses its own identity.
This is not done under any threat of force, but is done voluntarily by individuals.
More fun with the the Vespa scoots…
We start with Ann Margret.
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It wasn’t so much what my boss said, it was more about what the company did. Being more specific, what the sales department and management did.
At the time I was a senior developer for a medium sized, privately owned and pretty much unheard of software company.
One day I found out, quite by accident, that the sales department had told a prospective client about some wonderful new software that we had.
The only problem with that was this wonderful new software didn’t exist!
So, sales lied to the client.
Then came all the fanfare, because they actually sold it to them… with an impossible delivery date, even for a team five times our size.
The plan was for the dev team to develop this new software working sixty hours a week without overtime pay, while management strung the client along until the final delivery more than a year later.
So there was this big pep talk meeting – you know the ones – we need you guys to help us deliver and all, and we’ll make it up to you afterwards, we promise. We’re a big family and we are in this together and all that kind of stuff.
I didn’t believe a word of it.
After the meeting I confronted my boss who said, “Well, you know how it works.”
At that moment I knew he didn’t have my best interests at heart and I looked at him and said, “I want no part of it.”
Then I got up and left the building without saying another word.
The next day when I didn’t show up for work my boss called me asking where I was. I told him, “Sorry, I thought I was quite clear yesterday, as I said, I quit!”
He said, “But you can’t quit! We need you! You’re our only senior developer!”
And I answered, “Watch me!” and hung up the phone.
It’s been four years now and the company still hasn’t delivered the final version of the software nor has it made good on its promise to their employees!
You ever have that goofy kid who could never take anything seriously? Who took any opportunity to be the center of attention? Who relished being the class clown and wore the jester’s hat like a triumph? That was Chad. I don’t remember how many grades in elementary school we had together before he and I transferred to other schools at the end of fouth grade, but it was at least a couple. He used to not only drive the teachers crazy but even us students too! Every day we had to bear witness to his never ending shenanigans, sometimes he would start up with a joke and the whole class would collectively groan and grab their faces. If I’m being honest, I was his friend but even I found him to be too much at times, too optimistic, too dramatic, too goofy, too Ace Ventura. I remember thinking, “why can’t he just be normal for a day?”
I went to middle school with some of the kids/friends from this elementary school. One of the popular boys, Randy was one of them. We were talking during free period one day when I brought up Chad. He also remembered him and smiled. We exchanged stories about his greatest hits and laughed. Then he told me something that absolutely broke my heart, and only spoke as a testiment to Chad’s resiliencey. He told me Chad’s stepfather used to beat him, often. At some point the authorities found out and removed him from his home. His everday life at home was hell, his only respite was during the time he was safe and felt safe at school, and Chad always made the most of each moment because he knew when he got home that day and every day after that, there would be no more laughter.
I hope he’s doing better, and I hope he’s happy where ever he is now. It goes to show you never know what someone is going through, even if they smile in your face everday. I have never forgotten about Chad, and I never will.
My twins birthday is coming up. And I was thinking of rewarding the missus by upgrading her car to something better.
A Range Rover Evoque 🙂
So the search started, and I finally scored a good deal on this particular high spec (and a higher priced) Evoque that’s is in a dealership nearby to my house.
Off I went. Arrived in my old e46, and I asked to see the car. This local Chinese chap took one look at me, and probably deduced that I was too young, or too shabby looking to even qualify to get an evoque, and decided to reject me.
He told me, put a deposit before even thinking of sitting in the car!
Before you think I made drama, let me tell you that the opposite happened: I smiled and walked back. I don’t necessarily like to deal with idiots, so I don’t mind looking for another.
For some reason, just as I was about to leave, another salesman from India who is working there came to me, apologized profusely and told me that he can serve me better.
I accepted.
I went to see the car, and told him that I would love to take it for a test drive 5 minutes away to my house to show it to my wife to ask her opinion on the spec and color. This guy agreed, and said we could do a short run.
So off we went.
The moment this Indian guy saw the neighborhood and my house, and the cars parked in there, he realized that he scored a lottery prospect.
After that, I was practically given free reign to do unlimited test drives and checks on that car, unaccompanied.
I saw the car on Wednesday. Thursday I contemplated on it with the missus between that or Cayenne. She wanted Range Rover, so be it.
On Friday I agreed and signed the papers in the AM. That evening the bankers called to tell the dealer that the loan passed. This coming Monday I am taking the car, once paperwork’s is completed.
$90 billion spent on disinformation about China, what did the US people get?
Of course, only Plato could answer this accurately but here’s my penny:
In Greek mythology, Thera and the eruption are missing and the explanation for this is that the eruption miraculously didn’t affect mainland Greece. The Greek myths that express their collective memory, although they involve foreign lands often, had to be of Greek interest and the eruption, no matter how cataclysmic it was, was not. So, Plato didn’t possibly have a clue about the events of the Bronze Age which took place almost 1,000 years before his time.
Security is better. When i studied in Chicago, I was told to always keep 20-dollar life money in the pocket in case anyone wants to rob me, and UChicago has the so called safe ride to take students home because walking alone at night is not safe. Here in Shanghai, Beijing or any major cities (except Guangzhou perhaps), it’s safe for girls to walk alone at night. And people don’t shoot people so often, especially struggling students don’t kill classmates or teachers. At worst, they jump from buildings without harming others.
Second, food is cheap and delicious if you don’t mind antibiotics, additives, pollutants etc. (If you count in unhealthy western food, the Chinese food is not that bad in quality.) Clothes are cheap and good quality. In fact most products made in China are cheap and accessible.
Third, online purchase and delivery and other services based on the internet is incredibly convenient. As long as you don’t care about personal information, China has all kinds of Apps to satisfy your physical and mental needs.
Fourth, the government agencies and hospital systems are much more efficient than those in USA. I am not saying the quality is better but the waiting period is shorter.
One thing I dislike is a must of vpn to access foreign media. But this is like a filter, the gov don’t want ignorant children and people to access to those anti-China information, because they can’t do critical thinking, so the gov thinks that if those were to be brainwashed, they would have to be brainwashed by us not the Western. I am neutral to it. Common people are like pawns, they’d better just stay where they were and do both to avoid being cannon powder.
I was 10 my brother was 13 and mom and dad was in there 30. We when to a old run down house that Dad was used to go on fishing trip when he was a kid. Mom said it so run down. Dad said it still got a roof on it. Mom said ok we stayed. We got what fews begs we have out of the car and we when into the house. it started to Strom very bad. We stayed dry in that old house. About two hours passed we was getting our sleeping bags out. We hard a loud pop. The wind had blown a big tree on to the car. The car was totaled. Mom said we 150 miles from home without a car. No one could sleep until the Strom had stopped that was all most 3 hours. By morning there was a new storm and like the other one it to blowed a tree down on to what left of the car. We ended up been there for over a week. Our foods ran out after five days. We all fished for our foods. 6 days in as we was all fishing. A big tree fell onto the dam house. If me and my brother was have been in our room a sleeping we were been hurt or killed.
GAMECHANGER: China Tests ‘Dream Shell,’ Achieving Mach 7 Speed
Both my wife and I worked, we both had good jobs and shared the childcare of our 4 children. I was always the more nurturing parent, if the children ever hurt themselves they would always come to me, I was more affectionate, I used to bathe them, read to them, tuck them in and look after them most weekends. My wife was extremely jealous of my relationship with the children and they grew up, we grew apart. She used to often go out with the girls on a Friday and Saturday night and occasionally wake up the following day with a hangover so bad she would spend the day in bed. Which was fine with me, meant that I had more time with the children and we used to find somewhere to go and have real fun.
Unsurprisingly after 13 years of marriage, when our eldest was 11, she decided to leave me, she had an affair and that was that.
What really sucks about being a man is the custody battle that I had after that. The standard custody model still is, for the father, every other weekend and maybe one night during the week. Everyone assumes that the mother is the ‘right’ parent for the children to live with and I had to fight that prejudice every day for a very long year.
My ex-wife even told me that she didn’t really want custody of the children, she only was fighting because the bigger percentage of time she got, the more Child Maintenance she would get. The first time that we were in court she started off by saying that I shouldn’t see the children at all, claiming that I had abused the children, hit them, raped her and had an affair with a teenager. The judge ordered that I didn’t see the children at all, while this was investigated. That was a hard couple of months.
After a year, meetings with social services, so many court visits that I had my own seat in the waiting room, I eventually got 50:50, the best a man could ever hope for in this world.
Even though we had exactly 50:50 I still had to pay Child Maintenance because she gets the Child Benefit. Guess why … Child Benefits default to the mother at the birth of the child.
I Visited World’s Largest Tech Show…You Won’t Believe What China Did
My mother lived in a large old house that we called “the manor”. Supposedly it was the home of one of the regional governors of the area back in the 1700’s, and it had servant quarters, a large “carriage house”, a barn, and a row of houses that were the quarters for the servants back in the day.
When she bought it (with her second “husband”), my step dad, it was being used a a mobile home park. And so they cleared out the old mobile homes, and the discarded cars, cleaned up the land. Knocked down some buildings, and installed a pool with a pool house, and placed a nice water fountain with a stature in front.
But…
Off to the side was this big spread of land and Lordy, it needed to be mowed. That’s 11 acres you all. Took me a full day to mow all the grass, I’ll tell you what.
But in the middle of that was a flag pole. And my mother would put up a new flag every Memorial Day.
Now, she always bought smaller flags. This is because they gave the impression that the pole was larger, and thus bigger, than it actually was.
Well, one day in 2002, I guess, I went to get a replacement flag and the storekeeper asked me what size that I wanted.
I told her that I did not know.
So he asked me how tall the pole was. And I said about three stories tall, and he gave me a flag.
When I brought it home, my mother was angry.
She said that it was way too large.
But, since it was the end of the day and the holiday was upon us, she gave me the ok to put it up.
And so I did.
Let me tell you that that large flag was GLORIOUS. Simply wonderful.
It moved with strength in the wind, and it was so gosh visually appealing that cars would slow down as they drove by the house.
So people, when ever you put up a flag, select the largest one that would fit on the pole. You will NOT be disappointed.
And as for my mother… well, she changed her mind about what the size of a flag should be, and always insisted on the large size.
You see, everyone.
Size does matter.
This entire post endured a javascript crash, please excuse it, and manually run the video links at the side. Sorry.
Worst. I worked for a family owned business. I was a Sale Rep/Tech. During that year I was Salesman of the Month 10 of 12 months. I sold over $950,000 worth of computers. The closest salesperson was a great friend of mine to this day. She sold $600,000 worth of computers. The Christmas bonus was a $12 ham. Not a coupon, an actual ham.
Best. I worked for a big HVAC company as a Supervisor for their Network Operations Center. There were 16 of us in the office. Our Boss gave us all personal gifts, in my case, (and yes, I’m a Nerd) a replica of the Star Trek phaser. It cost about $125. This was not a bonus directly, this was out of his own pocket. Each person got something that was special to each person. And I am proud to say that even after not working for him for 20 years, we are still good friends. He’s retired, and I’m jealous.
One February my husband and I went on a couples only trip to Jamaica. My oldest daughter was 20 years old at the time and we allowed her to stay in our home in Maine on the promise of her best behavior. I took my younger two children to my mothers house in Philadelphia. We had an oil furnace in the house and had just filled our 350 gallon tank prior to leaving on vacation. Yes
Because we didn’t totally trust our 20 yr. old, I had locked the alcohol into my bedroom closet and had asked our neighbors to keep an eye on the house to make sure there wasn’t any more than 1-2 cars in the driveway at any given time. Feeling that we had covered our bases, my husband and I proceeded to enjoy our time with friends on a beautiful tropical island.
Seven days later when we arrived back at our house, it was to find all the lights on, the doors wide open to the zero degree temperatures and the furnace completely out of oil. There was a note on the kitchen counter written by a friend of my daughter’s reading: “Morgan is in jail, you’ll need to bail her out when you get home.”
Our living room furniture had multiple cigarette burns, as well as the bedroom carpets and some of the beds. The shower had been ripped out of the main bathroom. My closet door had been removed to get at the alcohol I had hidden away. All of us had valuables stolen. The total for the damages totaled $12,000 and THAT didn’t include our lost heating fuel.
For any who may be curious, no I did NOT bail my daughter out of jail. I did however speak to someone at the jail to find out the charge was serving alcohol to her underaged friends.
She had a difficult next couple of months but ended up discovering some real strengths. During that time, she totally turned her life around and when she finally asked if she could come back home, she was told yes but with conditions. Over the years she filled us in on what actually happened and that people she didn’t even know kept coming into the house because they “heard ” there was a party. She tried to stop it but it was far too out of control.
Jerry Seinfeld DESTROYS Woke Insanity in EPIC Video – Hollywood Goes CRAZY!
TSMC has no plans. It’s a slave to the U.S. The U.S. has plans that failed and will never work. They want to make chips in its country and in its slave nations. They thought it could contain China but China did not only buy from other nations. They do it themselves. Hahahaha.
But the person who post this question ought to ask if China has a domestic market that represents 30% of the world’s market and they make 4/5 of everything the rest of the world or another say 40–50% if these 70–80% don’t buy and used your chips, you are left with 20–30% balance!
You barely need a factory let alone 3–4 countries making these chips! Do your simple mathematics. Chinese are superb at maths. They pretend to be up in arms but this chip ban couldn’t be sillier!
Top 10 Unsettling Signs Of Scary Parallel Universes In History
I had lost my wife of almost 30 years 10 months previous. Her best friend invited me to dinner with her sister who incidentally lost her husband at the same time. My deceased wife’s best friend felt sharing our experience would assist in the grieving process. She repeated the process a few weeks later bringing takeout to my place. The friend shortly after dinner stood to leave, my eyes met her sister’s eyes and I could tell there was more to talk about. They left.
Of course I started taking her to dinner alone and quickly bonds formed.
The false pretense part of the story occurs months after, when we announced to her sister we were getting married. My deceased wife’s best friend was absolutely shocked at the idea, no concept what so ever of us being more than consoling friends, hell I was her best friend’s husband and she was her sister. It’s all too early, it’s been only one year. In fact she quietly became scarce, not contacting either of us for months and months. Slowly she adjusted to the idea her best friend’s husband was now married to her sister. It took a while for our dense heads to realize my deceased wife’s best friend also had to go through the grieving process.
All is well now and relationship back to normal.
Faki Soupa (Greek Lentil Soup)
2024 01 22 11 53
Ingredients
3/4 cup brown lentils
1 large onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 (3 ounce) can tomato puree
8 ounces fresh tomatoes, peeled and seeded
Good pinch of oregano
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 3/4 cups water
Salt, to taste
Pepper, to taste
Instructions
Cover lentils with cold water and bring to boil. Drain lentils and return to the pan with 1 1/2 pints water, garlic, onion, tomato puree, fresh tomatoes, oregano and olive oil. Bring to a boil and simmer until the lentils are soft.
Remove from heat and blend, but stop blending before the mixture gets too smooth.
Season to taste.
UKRAINE LATEST: 5,600 DEAD IN ONE WEEK; Matches a Visitor to Ukraine Report
Ukrainian casualties soar: Kiev loses 5,600 troops in seven days – Widespread use of thermobaric shells by Russian artillery.
Ukrainian losses on the various fronts of the war are increasing dramatically as a result of the lack of ammunition that is now plaguing the Ukrainian Army.
On the contrary, the Russian Army has increased the intensity of the bombardments and above all, the use of thermobaric rockets from TOS-1A systems.
Ukrainian casualties increased – 5,600 dead in seven days!
The Ukrainian army has suffered heavy casualties during front-line fighting where Russian forces have the military initiative in all directions, Moscow said on Friday.
The numbers above are a confirmation of an email I received on January 6 from a woman who had just returned from a trip to Ukraine. While I did not publish that letter when it came, I think the news story above cries out for her letter to be reported. Here is her report:
———-
I just got back from Ukraine, where I was visiting some friends.
Everything we have heard about what’s happening in Ukraine is a lie.
The reality is darker, bleaker, and unequivocally hopeless. There is no such thing as Ukraine “winning” this war.
– By their estimates, they have lost over one million of their sons, fathers and husbands; an entire generation is gone. – Even in the Southwest, where the anti-Russian sentiment is long-standing, citizens are reluctant or straight-up scared to publicly criticize Zelensky; they will go to jail. – In every village and town, the streets, shops, and restaurants are mostly absent of men. – The few men who remain are terrified of leaving their homes for fear of being kidnapped into conscription. Some have resorted to begging friends to break their legs to avoid service. – Army search parties take place early in the morning, when men leave their homes to go to work. They ambush and kidnap them off the streets and within 3-4 hours they get listed in the army and taken away straight to the front lines with minimal or no training at all; it is “a death sentence.” – It’s getting worse every day. Where I was staying, a dentist had just been taken by security forces on his way to work, leaving behind two small children. Every day, 3-5 dead bodies keep arriving from the front lines. – Mothers and wives fight tooth and nail with the armed forces, beg and plead not to have their men taken away. They try bribing, which sometimes works, but most of the time they are met with physical violence and death threats. – The territory celebrated as having been “won back” from Russia has been reduced to rubble and is uninhabitable. Regardless, there is no one left to live there and displaced families will likely never return. – They see the way the war has been reported, at home and abroad. It’s a “joke” and “propaganda.” They say: “Look around: is this winning?”. – Worse, some have been hoaxed into believing that once Ukrainians forces are exhausted, American soldiers will come in to replace them and “win the war”.
There is no ambiguity in these people. The war was for nothing – a travesty. The outcome always was, and is, clear. The people are hopeless, utterly destroyed, and living in an unending nightmare.
They are pleading for an end, any end – most likely the same “peace” that could have been achieved two years ago. In their minds, they have already lost, for their sons, fathers and husbands are gone, and their country has been destroyed. There is no “victory” that can change that.
Make no mistake, they are angry with Putin. But they are also angry with Zelensky and the West. They have lost everything, worst of all, hope and faith, and cannot comprehend why Zelensky wishes to continue the current trajectory, the one of human devastation.
I didn’t witness the war; but what I saw was absolutely heart-breaking.
Shame on the people, regardless of their intentions, who have supported this war. And shame on the media for continuing to lie about it.
Maria Mateiciuc 8:37 AM · Jan 6, 2024
American Woman In Asia Discovered Men Are HAPPY Overseas
I trained in and taught karate for about 20 years yet I wouldn’t want to go up against two or more young punks who were assaulting me on the street. Too many chances they’re carrying a weapon or might get in a lucky punch.
My wife and I walk a lot in the evening at our coastal home. Where we live is safe but you never know who might drive by looking for trouble.
So I added a weapon to my arsenal. And I train with it regularly.
Yet, it’s perfectly legal to carry personally or in your car.
You can carry it into a restaurant or movie theater.
You can have it in the bank or the courthouse.
You can take it on a plane or a bus.
It’s inexpensive to buy and easy to learn how to use effectively.
It’s innocuous looking so it would be a surprise to a bad actor.
Yet, it’s devastatingly effective as a weapon.
You can use it to even the odds of more than one attacker and against a weapon.
It’s a walking cane.
But not just any old ten dollar pine one.
It needs to be hard wood like oak or hickory so it won’t break and has some weight.
The ones I carry are Irish walking sticks and canes made of Blackthorn wood. It’s very dense and is the wood used for traditional Irish fighting sticks.
And you need to learn how to use it effectively and practice regularly to become proficient with it.
You can find lots of videos on line about how to use a cane for defense effectively.
Actually, there is are whole martial arts devoted to cane and walking stick fighting. Watching videos on them you realize how devastating of a weapon it is.
So, you don’t want to spend 20 years learning karate? But you still want to have some means of self defense in this increasingly chaotic world?
You’re in luck. Buy a good cane that can be used effectively for self defense.
Then learn how to use it effectively and practice,
Oh, and try to never need to use it. That’s the best self defense.
I had a relative who wanted to borrow money. His vehicle was towed as he failed to pay on a title loan.
As this relative was bad at money matters, I asked how much he needed and who was the lienholder. I wasn’t going to just give him a sum of money, without proof that he actually needed it, and wasn’t going to: 1. Use it to go gambling. 2. Give it to a woman. 3. Use it go on a drunken spree. (He was an alcoholic).
He threw a tantrum worthy of a toddler, calling me, “a selfish bitch”, among other things. This was at my job. He had already borrowed a few thousand from me that he had never paid back.
Needless to say, he never got the vehicle back, although he later apologized about the name calling.
That was the day I learned that you could divorce your family, love them from a distance and stop buying into their bullshit.
He died in London, UK, 1979. We had no family living there, just mom. I was living in Miami, and my sister was living in NJ. My dad and I had a huge falling out when I married a Roman Catholic, but we’d come back together by that time, and my dad and my wife and her family actually had a good relationship.
We arranged the funeral there. It was just my mom, my sister, and me. And my mom had a hang-up about death and funerals. She literally couldn’t even bear to say the words, “death” or “funeral,” and I had never been to a funeral before, or even a viewing. I was 28 at the time. They had friends, but I think only one person came and that was it. I don’t know if my mom even told any of them.
There was no viewing service, no synagogue service. Just the burial at Rainham Cemetery. My sister and I were waiting for the coffin to be brought out, and it was wheeled out on a cart, The thing had three wheels, one of them had a mostly flat tyre, and the thing squeaked loud enough to wake the dead.
It was so surreal, like something out of Monty Python. could barely keep from laughing out loud.
There was this rumor in middle school about this white, tall, blonde girl. She was really mean and kinda rude but she didn’t bully anyone so I just ignored her. But as you can probably guess a rumor started about her at some point, I first heard it in the girls locker room after she yelled at someone for getting in her way.
The rumor was this: She had gotten pregnant by a 19 year old and later when the baby was born her (or her parents) killed it.
Of course no one knew if the rumor was true and neither did I so I brushed it off as a stupid rumor. But you know what’s worse….the rumor was true!
I didn’t learn this until early high school.
In my history class I had unknowingly sat by the step brother of the girl as I was retelling the rumor to another girl as I was talking about how crazy it was. But the step brother interrupted me to tell me and the other girl that the rumor was true (at least part of it anyway). The girl and I were shocked, he told us that the mean blonde girl had gotten pregnant, gave birth to it, and luckily put the baby up for adoption soon after the birth.
What’s worse is that I don’t know if the mean girl was forced to date the 19 year old or if the guy raped her to get her pregnant, even her step brother (who didn’t like the mean girl either) didn’t and wouldn’t say.
Maybe that’s why the tall, white, blonde girl was so mean.
Everybody had to have a Que (pony tail) to show subservience to the Qing. The Qing / Manchus were the top level of society for a couple centuries.
After that? Nobody cared.
EXCEPT for in Hong Kong which was held by Britain until 1997. The clan wars of Guangdong and Fujian between 1855 and 1867 left DEEP scars and well into the 1980s there was general dislike of mixing between Hakkas and Cantonese.
My grandfather expelled one of his daughters for marrying a Cantonese man.
Also amongst many post WW2 types there’s a mentality of don’t marry Cantonese, this died out in Mainland China decades ago but lingered around in the overseas Chinese community. I still remember in the 1980s in the UK being told by my uncles that I should stay away from Cantonese.
Early 60’s, little tiny farming town … Liz was the subject of nasty gossip and rumors. People said Liz was a slut, a whore, a filthy tramp and lots of other names. Liz never had sex until she got married. She dated four or five boys – one date per boy. She assumed the boys asked her because they liked her. They asked her because they assumed she would have sex anywhere with anyone. Liz was modest in dress and behavior, but still was called a dirty slut … not because of anything she did, but because of her three older sisters. All three of her sisters got married at 16 or 17 because they got pregnant. Shotgun weddings, we called it back then. So …. these guys, who had no ethics, who were as dumb as bricks, asked her for dates. Instead of driving to the movies, they drove out to an isolated area and demanded sex. She refused. The boys threatened to tell everyone they got what they wanted. She still refused. The last boy she went on a date with tried to force her. She managed to get out of the car and begged strangers for a ride home. After that, she refused to date. She got lots of insult, ridicule and some physical harassment, because she came from a family “where all the girls were sluts.” Her last three years of school were awful. She was bullied so badly that she had to take sedating medication to keep from crying, to keep from having a breakdown. Both adults and kids were cruel to her. She toughed it out, went to college and refused to ever go to high school class reunions.
Several years ago, I was at Siegfried & Roy’s Secret Garden at The Mirage in Las Vegas. This was many years after Roy’s tiger accident, but before he passed away. It was Thanksgiving, and we were walking through, looking at the tigers playing and eating melons.
As we walked around, Siegfried himself appeared. Of course, being his exhibit, a number of fans wanted to get pictures and autographs. I’ve been a fan of theirs since I was a kid, so this was a one in a lifetime, completely unexpected occasion.
When he got to me, he did the standard “hi, how are you” nicety that people do without really expecting an answer, but I looked at him and asked, “I’m fine… how are you doing?”
He looked at me through his ubiquitous sunglasses. I could see his eyes measuring me up as he stood about two feet from me. After a long pause, he said “well, Thanksgiving is always a hard time… when you’re an entertainer and everything ends suddenly…” and just talked with me for a few minutes (while everyone else waited patiently). I got the definite feeling like he was rarely asked how HE was doing, surrounded by starstruck fans or associates, and he felt the need to talk.
image 168
Thanksgiving Day, Roy injured (and never recovered), I’m sure he felt the need to be around people. It was a special moment, one that I’ll always remember.
Celebrities are just people, and a lot of people forget that.
I was visiting Mom when she lived a good two hour plus drive from my sister’s family (I live out of state). It was probably 1998 and we were chatting in her kitchen. She was silent for a moment and then she said, “Richard”, (you know the way your mom says your name that you know you gotta pay attention?) My ears birddogged.
“Richard, when I turn 90, I am going to stop driving.” (Mom was still a very good driver, but she didn’t want “someone to hit me and then blame the old lady.”)
“I’m going to stop driving and I’m going to give my car to my grandsons…
“I’m going to stop driving and give my car to JR and Mike and I’m going to sell the house and move to (a retirement facility) closer to Sue and my family.” Such a major decision to give up her house and her car. Then she said something that to this day I carry with me.
“And I plan on liking it”, she said firmly.
Now Mom loved to read (especially her Ellery Queen mysteries) but I don’t think she ever read a personal growth motivational book in her life (except the Bible) and here she is framing one of the biggest major life changes ever with positive expectations.
That gave me a glimpse into how she perceived the world and focused on good rather than bad consequences. What a gift she gave me.
Mom passed in 2019 at 110 years old.
I think Mom was full of good intentions and had a very strong moral compass and truly lived the life of a good person whose influence spread wider and farther than she could have ever imagined, as good a definition of badass as any.
CALLISTO -1940’s Retro Pulp Science Fiction by Skyward, Action, Music, Total Mayhem, Runway Gen-2
Users are almost never right. Go shadow them and get the real story.
Understand 100% of the problem, design to solve 90% of it.
The last 20% effort is 80% of the engineering cost.
When designing, make it survive 3–5 years. You should be rewriting it by then anyways.
Software engineering is a process. Don’t overfit the initial requirements, you need to stay flexible for future readiness.
First pass is to solve it. Second pass is to clean up and learn. Third pass is to deep design using what you’ve learned.
CPU is cheap. Don’t over optimize.
Focus on enabling people to do more. 1 hour of work should become 10 hours of output when you enable humans.
When prioritizing consider the models of (1) attacker (2) defend it (3) bandaid it (4) clean it up. Each one has an associated operational cost, solve permanently cost, and a cost to perform. You need to pick your battles.
If only you can fix it, then only you will babysit it, forever. You can’t move on to more interesting things.
Edit: These are MY golden rules. They do not have to be YOURS. Please share YOUR golden rules. 🙂 We can learn from each other. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life, is that I have learned everything, EVERYTHING from others. Mentors, peers, and friends. Some random written article should have zero social pressure on you to conform. My knowledge probably applies between 2007 to 2025? Then some other pattern will take hold.
NOTE: This is a true story, I’m not making it up or taking the piss. The episode I’m about to describe was not tongue in cheek or satirical in anyway.
Before my wife and I moved to Australia from the U.K. I assisted my in-laws in purchasing a laptop computer. The idea being that we’d be able to make skype calls etc to help them stay in touch. As they were both totally computer illiterate I set the laptop up for them and tried to give them an understanding of how to use skype, email & internet explorer (as it was back in the day).
For internet explorer I showed them how to open the program, told them about the “tool bar” and some of the basic functions on it. I explained about search and how they could find any information they required or shop for anything they needed using it. All seemed to be going reasonably well when I popped out to pick my wife up from work for fifteen minutes or so.
At this point I should mention that my father in law is a joiner (carpenter) of many years.
Anyway, I returned after picking my wife up to find my father in law at the laptop with internet explorer open. After a minute or so of watching him staring at the screen in a perplexed manner I asked him if he was having a problem that I could help with. “where are the saws?” he asked me.
“I’m not sure what you mean John, if you’re looking for something you’ll need to type it into google” I explained.
“Yes, I need a new saw. You said I could get whatever I needed on here & I’ve been looking at the tool bar for five minutes and I just can’t find the saws!”….
Fortunately, they were able to get skype working through their sky TV shortly after we left.
I shit you not. This really happened. My father in law couldn’t buy a new saw because he couldn’t find the ‘saw button’ on the ‘tool’ bar.
When I was a senior in high school, I was about the size of Rosie Greer—6’5″ and 250#, and like most people my size, I was extremely patient and gentle with “little people,” but being gentle was perceived by stupid people as being weak or a coward. Horrible mistake.
One day after school, I was walking to my car. That required me to walk between cars full of students waiting to get out. The space that I chose to walk through was in front of a junior who drove three eighth graders to and from school, and he wanted to show the younger kids how tough he was, so as I was walking between his car and the car in front of him, he pulled up and hit my shins with his bumper. And these idiots were laughing.
I walked over to the driver door, and tried to open it, but the stupid child smiled and pointed at the locked door, obviously thinking that he was safe from retribution. He was safely in his 1968 VW Beetle.
I smiled back at him, and put my hands together like a sledge hammer, and starting with the roof, I pounded every piece of sheet metal with my “sledge hammer” fists once—leaving the car covered with dents. Then, I walked to the driver’s door again, still smiling (he wasn’t) and I bent down, grabbing the frame and lifted the left side of his car so that the left tires were eighteen inches off of the ground. (Actually a lot easier to do than it sounds with the help of adrenaline,) and I calmly said, “Idiot, if you ever mess with me again, I will break your f~<#ng neck.” Then, I dropped that side of the car back on the ground.
Word quickly got around about what had happened, and even though I remained a patient and gentle person for the last six months of my senior year, 1973, nobody tried to show how tough they were by messing with me.
And yes, I know that I could have ignored the light tapping of his car and walked away, but I didn’t feel like it that January day.
Did I bully him? Perhaps, but I frankly didn’t and still don’t care.
This one’s about a friend, but it’s worth sharing:
I used to work at a tutoring company, where one of my coworkers (nicknamed “Minty”) used to tell all our students that he was six years old.
The preschool class actually believed him, because those little four- and five-year-olds didn’t have any real concept of age. Minty convinced them that he was just a really big “big kid.” In fact, he pulled this off so successfully that he even became close friends with a couple of the students.
Whenever kids claimed they didn’t believe him, he’d just look at them with indignation and said, “I just drink all my milk and eat ALL my vegetables!”
Once, a kid said suspiciously, “I bet you have a wife!”, and Minty replied, “Will you please tell me what she looks like, then? Because I’m still trying to find her.” (He was 21 and single.)
And so on so forth.
Then, a few months into the school year, he caught one of his favorite students staring at him out of the corner of her eye.
After a while he said, “Hey, what’s up?”
She said, accusingly, “I think you’re a grown-up!”
Turns out he’d forgotten to shave that day, and a little bit of stubble was showing on his chin. So then the whole class started staring and saying, “You’re a grown-up?!” in tones that ranged between awe and betrayal.
After that, the cat was out of the bag, but it was really entertaining while it lasted.
The 17th defense policy coordination talks between China and the United States were held in Washington on Monday and Tuesday, China’s Defense Ministry announced on Wednesday.
In a statement, the ministry said the talks were co-chaired by officials from the Central Military Commission and the US deputy assistant to the secretary of defense.
The Chinese side said in a statement that it is willing to develop healthy and stable military-to-military relations with the US on the basis of equality and respect, and jointly implement the military-related consensus reached by the two heads of the states during their meeting in San Francisco in November.
The statement said that the US should acknowledge China’s concerns and do more to promote the development of bilateral military ties.
China also reiterated its positions on the Taiwan question and the South China Sea issues.
It said it will never make any compromise on the Taiwan question and demanded the US side to abide by the one-China principle, implement its relevant commitments, stop arming Taiwan and oppose “Taiwan independence”, the statement said.
China also urged the US to reduce its military deployment and provocative actions in the South China Sea and stop providing support to certain countries that are infringement on its territory and causing provocations.
The US should fully recognize the root causes of maritime and air security risks, strictly restrain its front-line troops and stop hyping up problems, the ministry said.
China has also made clear its solemn position and major concerns on issues concerning China’s core interests and international hotspot issues, it added.
Time-Traveling with The Jetsons: Futuristic Nostalgia
A few years back I took over running a significant IT project at a bank which used Oracle who had just shafted the bank’s IT director. He had got board level approval to upgrade and unify all the different databases which was serious money. Oracle then decided to double the price, he resisted but facing unsupported systems he gave in. That altered his career somewhat.
I didn’t know that when Oracle turned up to negotiate price for our systems, since I was an interim project manager and quite low in the food chain.
In this situation I never dress to impress vendors, indeed I tend to talk down my understanding of tech as well, to see if they are being straight with me.
I took along the guy I’d just hired as development manager and I ran the conversation. These tend to be one of two patterns. Either the management guy does all the talking and the techie just puts in points or the techie runs it and the manager blesses the outcome..
Oracle wanted more than list price.
I was bemused by this, also the trading system didn’t need very advanced features since it just logged things and ran reports, but the Oracle rep said we would only be allowed to buy the most expensive version because you’re a bank.
To which I responded but it’s the same binary Mary Pat.
Because these reports would be seen by many people in other firms she also demanded that we buy hundreds of client licences.
At the binary remark she looked at my non-great suit and then at my development manager’s and started talking to him, literally ignoring me since she had decided that he was my boss because I was only a techie.
He has dressed up for the meeting, actually put on his tie for it, since he thought that showing Oracle that you had money was good thing. It’s not.
He looked quite bemused, I’m not sure he’d ever bought any software for a firm and certainly wasn’t going to start now. I literally moved myself and stuck my head in the way and said are you going over my head Mary Pat ?
Yes she was and it didn’t stop there. I indicated that I was buying Sybase which was vastly cheaper and did not run the risk of an Oracle punitive licence audit.
Days later the head of the division spoke to me about what happened next. This system would pass billions through it and so the bank was quite keen that it worked well. Oracle had somehow got to a board meeting and demanded that I be fired, that I was damaging the (abusive) relationship they had and that I was buying a cheap and unreliable system which would destroy the firm.
for those not in IT Sybase has been used for decades for banking systems, it may or may not be right for you, but it’s not an insane choice.
The system would go on not just to work, but would end up being used by the British Government to manage their rather large debt mountain.
One version of the meeting which reached me later was that she literally stamped her foot. That was how entitled Oracle was with my firm. This may sound unusual to you. Ask anyone who’s done business with Oracle,
The board were very impressed. Not with her, but with someone in IT standing up to Oracle bullying. So the edict came down find Dominic and give her a job. So I ended up Head of IT for that division.
My first job was working at Woolworths, in the UK. I worked there from the age of around 15 to 18 years old, from 1993 to 1996. I did Saturdays and evening shelf stacking.
Woolworths in Britain famously opened the first self-service shop back in 1955. It was distinctly different from Woolworths in other countries. At the time, it sold household items, like pots, pans and Tupperware, sewing items – the dreaded haberdashery (the hardest thing to do a stock take on in the known world). Its famous pick-and-mix sweets included things like Cadbury’s Roses chocolates, where you could see which ones were everyone’s favourites by what was left in the container*. It also sold children’s clothes, records, CDs, tapes, and lottery tickets.
It closed for good in 2009, unable to survive the financial crisis, and in my opinion, as someone who worked there but hardly ever bought anything, for failing to offer anything unique or better than other lower-cost stores. The quality of many of the products was decidedly average. The Ladybird brand children’s clothes and the pick and mix were good but weren’t enough to keep it afloat.
My first Christmas working in retail was Christmas 1993. That was when the magic of Christmas died.
We, the hard-working, little-paid workers of Woolworths, arrived on Christmas Eve 1993 at 7.30 am, the shop opened at 8 am. We worked until 10 pm. We had four tills, and queues of around 15–20 customers were present at each till the entire day. Once a till had around £5000 in it, we emptied it to the back office. They were each emptied 4–5 times that day. We stood at the tills. Standing for 1–2 hours is tiring, but standing for 12–14 hours is hard work.
At the end of the shift, we are all knackered, it’s 10 pm on Christmas Eve, and the boss brings us each out a bottle of Babycham. For those who have never had “the pleasure”, Babycham looks like this:
A tiny bottle of “sparkling perry” which is a mildly-alcoholic cider made from pears. Named to somewhat pass itself off as baby champagne. Which it tastes nothing like, whatsoever.
Christmas bonus 1993, after a 14-hour shift, where we, as a fairly small store with 7–10 employees, likely took £100,000 (£200,000 today – $250000) was a tiny bottle of pear-cider, worth at the time around 59p (it could have been less, I cannot find out the price of a 75ml bottle of Babycham in 1993).
Merry Christmas.
I still miss it, the people I worked with were a good laugh, and some are still my friends today.
*Talking of the pick and mix, we would refill it with huge bags of sweets. They were 7 kg bags (15 lbs). One memorable incident involved me and a 7kg bag of Smarties (like M&Ms but British), which ended up being spilt and going all over the floor at the front of the shop. It was like a cartoon when the characters spill marbles, and everyone falls over, except we only fell over laughing and ate quite a lot of smarties. Maybe things like this explain the boss’s reluctance to offer a decent bonus.
My wife and I had a friend, an MD, who was having issues with his wife – not sure what they were, but he seemed to be a gentle and meek soul. Perhaps too meek with his wife, I don’t know, but here’s what happened to him;
His wife was seeing a psychologist for help with her depression, completely supported in these visits by her husband. Turns out that, unknown to him, the psych was a lesbian who had started to fall in love, or become infatuated, with the wife. Of course, she should have excluded herself as a therapist at this point, but she developed a better plan.
The psych convinces the wife to bring in the children (2) for additional counseling, separate sessions from the wife. Again, unknown to either our friend or his wife, she starts to place into the mind of the kids, one daughter and one son, that their father has been sexually abusing them. Both kids are young, under 6, and it isn’t difficult for her to place some ideas and then doubts into the minds of these naïve and gullible children. Over a few months of weekly visits, they are slowly coached by the infatuated lesbian psych, into being able to recount some stories of how this non-existent sexual abuse occurred, along with enough details to make their stories believable.
The psych then encourages the kids to tell their Mum some of these coached stories. The Mum, our friend’s wife, is naturally outraged to hear that her kids have been molested by her husband. She confronts her husband who denies it all, but she has fallen under the influence of this demented psych. She discusses the supposed molestation with the psych who encourages her to call Child Protective Services (CPS) to report the abuse.
Naturally now, the wife does so and an investigation is launched. The husband is prevented from seeing his children, has to move out of the house he shared with his family, and is allowed only supervised visits with his kids on every other weekend. Dependent upon the outcome of the inquiry, he now stands to be charged with sexually abusing his kids and quite possibly sent to jail. The kids will tell their coached stories, supported by the wife who now believes that it’s all true, and the final nail in his coffin will be this crazy psychologist who has discovered his “crimes”.
He’s now separated from his wife, and the psych makes her big mistake. Before the completion of the investigation, she is so in lust for his wife, that she successfully seduces her client, and they move into an apartment together as lovers. This is suicidal for her plan. The investigation team is informed of this development which is improper behaviour professionally. She is suspended of her license to practice, the wife leaves her and returns home. Finally, perhaps as long as 9 months later, the kids recant on their coached stories since they are no longer under the influence of the psych, and are finally visiting an impartial therapist.
The story ends wonderfully, the husband forgives the wife and the children are allowed to move back home. But this was hell on earth for the husband who was innocent from start to finish.
Just started putting stuff in the corner of the basement, with the intention of dealing with it later.
and soon , the corner of the basement was full.
and then, another corner.
Then, the work room started filling up.
Then the garage.
Mostly old clothes that the kids had out grown and then there was the stuff that we used to use but didn’t anymore, but couldn’t bear to throw away.
We fully planned to purge all this shit.
Rent a dumpster and get ruthless.
Then my wife got sick.
And sicker….
And then terminally ill.
And that took up all my energy.
And then I was a widower.
And the kids had moved out.
And I was either at work or out with friends or on a trip and the basement became a series of paths around a canyon of old clothes and stuff.
And so it remained for a year or two, slowly increasing.
I thought, “In just don’t have the energy or time to deal with this”
And then…………..Covid.
And my neighbour sold their house and the guy who came in wanted to gut the place, as it hadn’t been looked after in years.
And he brought a big ass dumpster.
And I saw my sign…..
I asked him and said, if I went in halfway with the dumpster rentals, could I use them to dump my shit in as well?
Sure, he said.
So, over the next while, I emptied everything out.
I could have spent hours sorting out the useable from the trash, especially in clothes, but I feared that if I did, I’d get bogged down in decision paralysis.
She died of a heroin overdose a few years ago. It makes me sick when I think about it.
For the purpose of this story, I will refer to my bully as HM.
When we were freshmen in high school, HM and I started off as friends. We were part of the same loosely organized network of friends, and we were in a few of classes together. Everyone said we could pass for twins — we were both short with dark hair, light colored eyes, round faces, and cutesy noses. Our birthdays were even only like a day apart or something. So we became friendly, but we never became super close. This was mostly because of me — I was secretly judgmental of her because she was very promiscuous and not very bright. Maybe she could sense that in me, and maybe that contributed to how she very suddenly started to hate me.
One day, a mutual male friend of ours asked me to go out with him, and I turned him down because I wasn’t interested in him in that way. He was upset that I rejected him, and sought comfort from his other female friends, HM being one of them. This flipped a switch in HM’s brain — she went from being my casual friend to hating me mercilessly.
On the first day, she screamed at me, cursed at me, and called me a slut in front of everyone in our gym class. She harassed me all the way from the gym to the locker room until one of the gym teachers finally told her to knock it off and change.
Initially I didn’t defend myself because a) I was really meek and mild mannered at this point in my life; b) I do not handle confrontation well at all; c) I was a religious catholic at the time, and truly believed in turning the other cheek; d) I was an avid karate student, and I believed it was dishonorable to fight in this way; e) I was kind of nerdy, I was in marching band, and I thought defending myself would make me a bigger target to others; and f) I was honestly shocked by how she was acting. I mean, she was like really in my face screaming with spit flying from her mouth and everything. It didn’t make sense to me that she would be mad about something that had literally zero effect on her life.
Needless to say, I went home that day very upset, but I figured that it was an isolated incident. I figured, ok we’re not friends anymore, and that’s that. But I was wrong.
The next morning, she was waiting for me by the entrance of the school. She never once touched me. She just followed me to my locker cursing at me and calling me names. We were in the same homeroom. She told every person in homeroom that they shouldn’t talk to me because I was such a slut and bitch. Any time a person would talk to me, she would physically insert herself between me and the person and tell them not to talk to me. She also started telling people vicious lies about me sexually.
She followed me from homeroom to my first class cursing at me and calling me names. When I left my first class, she was waiting for me down the hall ready to verbally harass me again. She continued to do this throughout the day. During classes we had together, she took every opportunity she could to alienate me from others. This occurred mostly in gym and english class, both of which were loosely structured by lazy teachers.
At this point, she was being fully aggressive to others in order to keep them from talking to me. Like physically grabbing them and pulling them away from me kind of thing. She did this for weeks. I continued to do nothing. I just walked faster when she was near me, and tried not to look at her. I took advantage of moments where she was distracted, and slipped away from her before she saw me.
Eventually I had basically not a single friend left in my grade. Nobody wanted anything to do with me. In retrospect, I guess they just didn’t want to be involved with the situation. The teachers were also unhelpful. We were in a very crowded school, so many of them possibly didn’t notice, and the ones who did notice were terrible teachers. I was alone, miserable, crying every day, and I didn’t want to go to school anymore.
HM’s torment became a regular part of my life for a couple of months. I was starting to become numb to it. Maybe she sensed that her words weren’t having the same effect that they used to, so she decided to change things up. She started to threaten me with physical violence. It was mostly variations of “I’m gonna kick your ass,” or “I’m gonna f*ck up your ugly face.” One day in english class, the teacher asked HM to lend me her book for the day (there was a shortage of books), and she threw it at me and then snatched it out of my hands when I picked it up (the teacher did nothing because she was also a terrible human). HM also started slamming my locker shut whenever she walked by.
I don’t remember what specifically drove me to my breaking point, but very soon I had had enough of the situation. HM had made my life a living nightmare, and I couldn’t stand it anymore. I had a green belt in karate, so I knew physically I was capable of fighting and that I would probably win. I still had reservations about it because of spiritual/philosophical reasons, but I was at my limit.
One day she came up to me at lunch, and she again threatened to beat me up. So I calmly said, “Ok HM. When and where? I am ready to fight you whenever.”
Well, that was the game changing moment. As I stood there quietly waiting for her to set the date and time, she bounced around like a rabbit, yelling about how she was really gonna let me have it. “I am ready when you are,” I said. She got more and more agitated, and just kept making threats. The bell rang, lunch was over, we went to our next period. I didn’t see her for the rest of the day.
The next day, she started again with the physical threats, this time while we were in the hallway before homeroom. I said, “So just come for me already and let’s fight. I want to get this over with.” She looked at me like I was stupid and said something like, “Pshh not right now I don’t want to embarrass you in front of everyone. But when I do kick your ass, you’re gonna wish you were dead.” In spite of myself, I laughed and said, “Ok fine HM. Let’s do it today.” And then I told her exactly when and where we were gonna fight. She said “OH I’M GONNA BE THERE, YOU’RE GONNA BE SORRY!” before running away from me.
Later that morning, I had a class with HM’s bff. I approached the bff and said, “HM should know that I take karate regularly, and I recently earned my green belt. I’m stronger than I look and can probably seriously hurt her. I am not going to be easy to take down, and honestly I might accidentally kill her. You should tell her that before we fight.” That last part was only a small exaggeration. I did know 2–3 potentially fatal moves but there was no way to do them “accidentally.” Anyway, I didn’t say this as a threat, but as the truth of the matter. I had already thought of several ways to take her down, and I had already anticipated some of what she might do and had an idea of how I would handle those situations. At the end of the day no matter what, she was gonna end up being seriously injured, and I would probably be mostly unscathed.
The day went on. I didn’t see HM at all in the hallways or at lunch, and she skipped the classes we shared. I was starting to feel really pumped, and honestly really powerful. People all day were asking me about the fight, if I was scared, did I really know karate — stuff like that. They were excited, like Romans going to the Coliseum. After months of being a pariah, I ate it up and was loving all the attention. Finally, the last bell of the day rang.
I went to the place we were supposed to fight. A few people were there, waiting for something to happen, but they left after 10 minutes so they could get on their buses. I waited for almost an hour. HM never showed, and I went to marching band practice.
Maybe I should have left it at that, but I couldn’t help myself. The next day, when I saw her in homeroom I (LOUDLY) asked her, “What happened yesterday? You never showed up.” All eyes were on us. She muttered angrily, “We’ll do it today, same time.” I agreed to it, but my gut told me she was gonna be a no-show again.
I went again to the meeting spot. This time, there were a lot more people waiting to see what was gonna happen. But again, HM didn’t come. I waited for a while when finally HM’s bff came up to me and told me that HM went home early because she was sick. I shrugged and said, “Then in that case, I guess we’re done here. Tell her to leave me alone from now on.” HM didn’t come to school for the rest of the week. On the following Monday, she didn’t even cast a glance in my direction.
Life moved on, years rolled by. HM mostly avoided me after that. Sophomore year she tried to rekindle a friendship, to which I was like, are you f*cking serious? With every year that went by, HM became more and more of a social pariah. Finally it was our senior year. HM was pregnant. By the time spring arrived, she had a huge baby belly. Whenever people would ask her about it or ridicule her, she swore up and down that she was just getting fat.
And I took a lot of pleasure in this. Right now as an adult, I am not proud of this, but at the time I was LIVING. She was miserable, everyone made fun of her, and I thought she was just a huge loser. I loved it, I relished in her misery. And then one day when we were all changing after gym class, I took a shot at her.
She was trying to change in a way that her baby belly was covered up at all times. One of the other girls noticed this and was like, “Wtf are you even trying to do?!” HM said something about being self conscious of being fat. I laughed, and said, “HM everybody knows you’re f*cking pregnant so stop pretending like you’re just fat. Do you even know who the father is, ya dumb slut?” And I walked away laughing at her. It took me about 2 years to realize how super messed up it was for me to say that. And now it makes me sick to remember it, to know that I’m the person who said those words. In the end, I was no better than her.
About two years ago, she popped into my head for no reason. I decided to look her up on Facebook, and saw that she had died of a heroin overdose. The weirdest part was that the day that I looked her up was also the anniversary of her death. Chills ran down my spine. She had left behind two children, and before she overdosed she had been sober for 6 months. I have so many weird-sad emotions about it.
First off, by a random coincidence of life I had 2 doppelgangers in high school — her and this other girl who I was friends with, and both of them died from drug overdoses. I know it’s sh*tty for me to make their deaths about me, but their deaths make me feel really weird in a way that I have trouble describing.
Second, HM was obviously a troubled person, and almost everything she did was coming from a place of pain. I feel guilty that I couldn’t see that and instead I played along like a cardboard character in a crappy high school movie.
Third, I hate that the last thing I said to her was something vicious. It makes me upset that my hatred has the power to warp me into such a mean person. I hate that my hatred was so strong back then that the ghost of it reverberates within me to this day. Every now and again, I can taste that dark disgust in the back of my throat. Which leads me to my final weird-sad emotion.
Fourth, even though she has passed, I love retelling this story. It feels like it was the one moment in my youth where I was fierce and powerful. However, I drive myself crazy with guilt about that pleasure. I mean, wtf is wrong with me; she is dead, she left behind children. It’s weird and messed up that I’m here, alive with my whole life in front of me, and instead of trying to make peace with this, I’m enjoying the toxic fumes of an ancient memory because it boosts my self-esteem.
Idk what the moral of this story is. I’m still trying to figure that out.
Another Active Duty NATO Officer KILLED in Ukraine
One of the Active-Duty Officers in a NATO Command has been killed inside Ukraine.
Italian Army Lt. Colonel Claudio Castiglia, who was part of NATO Command structures, has been killed fighting in Ukraine according to the National Association of Bersaliers.
The Bersaglieri, singular Bersagliere, are a troop of marksmen in the Italian Army‘s infantry corps. They were originally created by General Alessandro Ferrero La Marmora on 18 June 1836 to serve in the Royal Sardinian Army, which later became the Royal Italian Army. They can be recognized by their distinctive wide-brimmed hats decorated with black western capercailliefeathers, which is worn with the dress uniform. The feathers are also applied to their combat helmets.
Why was an Active Duty NATO Officer fighting in Ukraine? Are we at war with Russia?
Sh*t happens. Life can be difficult. It can be uncomfortable. Some days I have every reason to feel depressed and give up. Some days I just want to stop, I need a break — yet the difficulties keep on coming and coming.
I used to complain about it. “Why is it so difficult? Why has this happened to me … again? I hate this situation! Why don’t they do something about it?”
One day, I realized that the difficulties of this world will never end. Never! This is when I finally understood that if I wanted to improve the quality of my life, I was the ONLY one who could change it! No one would ever be able to do it for me!
Change is inevitable and never-ending. I used to face change with the wrong attitude. I hated it because it pushed me out of my comfort zone — today I understand that it’s challenges which actually make my life better! I’m growing, I’m improving, and growing and improving are what make life a life worth living.
So, to answer your question: What life goals should you have?
Live outside your comfort zone!
Your comfort zone is the death zone.
Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.
If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living.
Here’s a quote from GE’s CEO Jack Welsh that I like to remember.
Yes and it was the best thing that ever happened that I knew in advance, so I was ahead of the game even though I knew it was coming and I couldn’t stop being fired. This is an important lesson for people to learn, be aware of what is going on so you are not caught out.
You know when you are not fitting in or they are downsizing. It is almost impossible to miss the signals if you have your antennas out. Here is what happened to me.
It was 1992, the China market was booming and I had a big job based in Hong Kong. We had a house paid for by the company, American Club, car, kids in private school, annual trip home, highest salary of my life at that point but nothing was going right. (First signal there were ‘anonymous’ complaints about me relayed via HR). No matter what I did I was wrong and I was headhunted away from another job so I know I was doing a good job but I could feel it was probably about ‘fit’.
They kept telling me, accept 7% growth, don’t push for more, I didn’t listen (2nd sign to watch for, not listening and overplaying your hand).
One day I was feeling like things were not going so well, but my position was, hey I was a Director for the Asia Pacific with a US$100 million budget, no way they could fire me without cause. And I was giving them nothing no real cause in my view so I felt safe or perhaps not?
I thought, I need to check this out, so I went in early to the office and the EVP (later CEO of DHL) had a letter right in the middle of his desk about me stamped CONFIDENTIAL.
I will never forget it. It was all about, how can we handle getting rid of Greenfield as while he is doing a good job, we would like to save money and get rid of his package and a couple of people complained about him. The question was, was it enough to fire him for cause.
It was a fax and the answer by the EVP was, he had already thought it through and they could make my severance nil if they could get someone to make a complaint about me which he could arrange.
Armed with this knowledge, I got all my ducks in a row, went in that day before anything else could happen (3rd rule, if you know it is coming, be preemptive as if you wait it will be worse, trust me on this) and said I thought it might be time for a mutual departure as it wasn’t working out as we had hoped, now 3 years into the contract.
They were pleasantly shocked, gave me a good deal which allowed me to start over with another company and a new life without completely crashing my entire life.
My suggestion? Be watchful, if you can do it, get someone on the inside to let you know if things are not going well and you might be cut for whatever reason. At all costs, do not be caught flat footed thinking everything is ok when it is not.
You can feel it, it is what life is all about these days, anticipate, keep informed, don’t be paranoid and always and I mean always have an exit plan or as they say, Plan B in your back pocket. Especially if you have kids a mortgage and a lot of expenses and as in my case, a spouse who was not working but living a very nice lifestyle which she expected to maintain.
She did but I took a lot of pain and pivoting to get out of Dodge before the hammer fell and just in the nick of time.
Exohiko
Exohiko
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
2 pounds lamb leg
2 onions, chopped
1 cup butter
1/2 pound kefalograviera cheese
Salt and pepper
6 sheets puff pastry
Instructions
Cut the lamb in portions. Simmer the onion in a frying pan with a little water. Add a teaspoon of butter and brown lightly.
Add the lamb and salt and pepper and brown for a few more minutes. Turn the element off, add the cheese and separate in portions.
Butter each sheet of pastry and use them to wrap each portion. Place in a buttered pan, top with the rest of the butter and bake in medium low oven for 1 1/2 hours.
I went to Best Buy about 10 years ago because my computer monitor had gone out and I needed to replace it. I had a warranty which allowed me a free replacement, but I wanted a larger one and I readily agreed to pay the difference.
As the rep walked me to the front of the store to check out, I heard a man literally screaming at the top of his lungs. Not just yelling. This man must have gone through the dictionary on his way to the store to refresh himself on every profane word and phrase he could find. As I got closer, I could see the middle-aged man yelling at this girl (couldn’t have been more than 18) behind the customer service counter. Apparently, his coupon for a $30 discount on a digital TV antenna was expired (not just expired; expired by months!) and he expected her to honor it anyway. She kept explaining that the coupon was expired and there was nothing she could do. The man continued to scream and pound his fists. I could see that this was going nowhere, so I just said, “Sir, I’m sure this young lady had nothing to do with preventing you from getting to the store before your coupon expired.” He looked up, startled, and before he could start yelling at me, I said, “STOP.” I turned to the girl and said, “Please put that antenna on my card.” I went over to the man, picked up the antenna, placed it in his hands and said, “I really hope that you can enjoy some good TV with this thing. After that, please go out and use the money I just saved you on some good anger management or at least a session of yoga or two.” The man stood there with his mouth hanging open, not knowing what to say. I just waved my hand at him and told him to “run along.” The girl mouthed, “Thank you.” The man “ran along” I completed my purchase, well, purchases!
That most of my undergraduate education didn’t do much if anything to prepare me for medical school. To be honest, My bachelor of science in zoology was far less helpful than being a paramedic for nine years.
That I would make some of the best friends of my life there. I would have cherished them and the experience more I think.
That I was smart enough. I spent a lot of time worrying that my peers were going to be smarter than me. Turns out emotional intelligence is more valuable in the long run anyway.
I would become so good at emotional distance that it would impair me on some level.
That a certain degree of hypochondria is fairly normal. I had classmates that had “leukemia, parasites, heart disease, tumors and aortic dissections.” Of course, they were all just fine. Oh, and I didn’t turn out to have a gastric ulcer either.
A great deal of what I was going to learn would be obsolete prior to ending my medical career. A fair chunk was wrong before I finished residency.
Competition creates problems. There were a fair number of people in my school that we would classify as “gunners”. For them, it was not simply good enough to do better. It was critical that you do worse than they did.
Some of the smartest professors I would have in medical school were the ones with the strangest personalities. A lot of the younger students would tend to blow them off. That was a mistake. They turned out to have a LOT of quirky wisdom.
Just because you got accepted to medical school doesn’t preclude you from having a personality disorder. I trained with some people with some pretty significant impairment. A few were incapable of empathy or even sympathy.
That the experience would fundamentally change me. I had a professor that said fundamental personality change can only happen from experiencing combat, motherhood, psychotherapy or medical school. I have not experienced the first three so I cannot say he is right. However, I can attest to the fact that medical school and especially residency changed me in some profound ways. That was hard to come to terms with early on.
They are everywhere in 800 odd military bases worldwide. To me they are wasting money that they really don’t have. They certainty cannot afford it overtime it will implode their nation and bring misery to its people.
They are there to war monger and trouble make without getting much in return except disdain and hate. This in turn means that they need more resources to defend themselves hence it is really a deep and endless money pit. China and Russia should goad them everywhere to burnt their own house down. Yet many fools think that having many bases is good for them.
It’s all over by 30, and it’s the women not men that are now saying it.
Yesterday, I took the family to a theme park in Southern Zhuhai. It’s the Chimelong Ocean Kingdom. We paid 3500 rmb (roughly $500) for two days with hotel, and two buffet meals. (For us three.)
new header 16 9
Now, you must know, everything in China is HUGE.
Not Texas huge.
“Universe” huge.
The facility included FIVE theme parks. Each with it’s own hotel, and passes to each one. Each theme park is “Disney Park” in size. So it is an ENORMOUS complex.
Just mind-mindbogglingly large.
When you buy the tickets, the ticket seller will warn you to take one day per theme. Other than that you are wasting your time.
And there is no way you can do more than that! Lordy!
Under the sea
We chose to concentrate on the “Penguin life park”, and the “spaceship future” park. Both were fun and cool, and my little girl enjoyed every second of the excitement.
Inside 1
My little girl loved it!
Animals. Excitement. Bright colors. Rides. Many playgrounds.
And the hotel room was super kid friendly.
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We stayed at the Circus hotel, and she had her own bed that looked like a lions cage on wheels, had her own kid-sized robe and slipper. The television only played kids shows, and the commode was kid friendly with a kid style insert. The shower had a kid sized lower tier.
Well thought out.
place 2015 09 25 7 Chimelongoceankingdom
The only problem was that on the last day I caught a “bug” and spent the entire day vomiting and spending time on the shitter. I had water-cannon high volume vomiting.
36 times. Thirty Six vomits!
Each time I just emptied out.
Wholly crap!
Then went home to sleep. And sleep I did. Like the dead.
But I am up now, and shaky but functional. I am taking medicines and it all seems to work. I am drinking coffee and I am able to hold it down. So that’s good. Right?
It reminds me that I am still alive and functional. Yay!
That one sentence was spoken by myself, to myself, in my car, as I pulled up outside my house, February 3rd 2016.
I have suffered from depression for 35 years. I can go months, sometimes years, without an episode, but in 2013 my wife, my soul mate, my best friend, left me after 15 years, which plunged me into the worst episode of my life.
Now, whilst depression is a living hell at times, I never actually feel sorry for myself. It’s a different emotion altogether, as anyone who suffers the same will testify. But this particular day, I was feeling sorry for myself. My business had gone to the wall in the first 12 months of separation. In the second 12 months I was struggling to pay the bills. By the end of year 3 I had £2 in the bank, was in desperate arrears with my mortgage and my new business was bringing in barely £200 a week.
I pulled up outside my house at 5pm, knowing the rest of the night would, yet again, be spent sat alone, in the cold, with the constant memories of my wife and children walking around the house, ghosts of their laughter echoing around, heart and mind being tormented by all that had gone before. There was little food in the cupboard. No credit for gas on the meter and low credit for electricity on that meter.
And this was the lowest point, it was 3 years of decline to this moment. I had no way of getting out of the mess I was in. No way I could figure, anyway. For the first time, this time I felt sorry for myself and literally said out loud, “man, I’ve another 50 years of this shit.”
That was the moment everything changed. I turned the engine off and lit a rare cigarette. I continued to talk to myself in the car – partly out loud, partly in my head. The conversation (with myself) went along these lines…
“50 years… ha, great… and I’m 50 years old next year (2017). Well, hang on… if I’m 50 next year, then I am only half way through my life. If I do live to be 100 – and why not ? – then next year, my 50th birthday, is the start of part 2. Mmmm… well if that’s the case then :
1 – I don’t need to buy a house – already bought one, only 5 years off completion (if I can find a way to keep the reposession order at bay). In 5 years, I will have property worth £130,000. Fully paid up. Hey, imagine if I had that when I was 5 years old, how cool that would have been for a start in life !
2 – I don’t have to go to school for 15 years – I’ve done that, I’ve got an education, done college, done university… I’ve got a head start !
3 – I don’t have to get married and have children – I have 3 wonderful children who are doing well and I’ve had the snip, so no need to have any more… no stress and strain of raising babies. Ace !
4 – I don’t need to buy a car or learn to drive – already sorted.
5 – I don’t need to worry about making friends or being popular or liked – I have a fantastic circle of friends who love me and I love them.
6 – I don’t have to worry about my parents leaving me, I already have had the sadness of losing them.
7 – I don’t need to worry about a job. I have the potential in my new business to make a comfortable living, if and when I am mentally strong enough to fully apply myself.
… and so on and so forth…”
Now I am having this conversation with myself in my car and I can literally feel the stress, the pain, the depression leaving my body. I am getting genuinely excited at the way my mind is working. I go into the house and continue this conversation whilst making a coffee. I get a notepad and make notes of what I am saying. Every note, every little idea, is scribbled down so as not to be forgotten.
As the evening progresses, I find myself going through each room in the house, removing any trace of my wife’s existance. Every memory gets either boxed up for the children to enjoy in the future, or goes in the bin. The kitchen gets emptied – I keep 3 cups, 3 plates, 3 knives, forks etc, for me and the 2 youngest children when they visit. The rest of the clutter gets binned. The living room is re-arranged. The bedroom is rearranged. The bathroom is rearranged. This carries on through to maybe 5am…
… For the first time in 3 years, I go to bed with an exhausted smile and wake up a few hours later with that same smile. I carry on where I left off. I borrow a couple of hundred pounds off my brother to get rid of furniture and replace with cheap “get by for a while” furniture, that has no trace of my marriage attached to it. I carry on writing notes.
Well, over the next 2 -3 months, remarkable changes happen. By the end of the 3rd month, at my medical check up, I am taken off my blood pressure tablets, my BP being normal for the first time in 3 years. The following month, after slowly cutting back, I am off my anti-depressants, also for the first time in 3 years, the longest I have been there in my life. I have lost over a stone in fat. My business is taking off as I am able to focus on it and money is coming in again.
By November, 9 months on, I have cleared my debts and I have £4,000 saved. My friends tell me I have a “happy house”. That they feel the positive juju the second they come in the door. They want to know (part jokingly, and part enviously) why I now walk round with a permanent smile, like a village idiot. More than anything though, they are genuinely delighted that they have got “me” back.
But let’s go back to Part 2.
The whole trigger for this was the realisation that if I live to be 100, I am only halfway through my life. So I started adding to the notes I had already started. This time, not marking down things I didn’t have to go through, but things that I am going to do. Each page of things to do is broken down into what I need to do to get there. There are wild things that I may not be skilled enough to do, like publish a novel. I may never be as good as Jimi Hendrix on the guitar. But what is there to stop me doing the best I can do with both ? Then there are totally achievable goals, like buying a campervan and spending 3 months on the road, enjoying life and writing that novel ? Getting married again, now that my heart is mending and I am meeting lovely ladies again – why not ? Decorating and renovating the house. Expanding the business. Getting fit. Losing a bit more weight. Learning to fly a plane. Doing a new degree in something I really enjoy. So many places to visit, to enjoy, to experience.
It’s all there and it’s all ahead of me and I know it’s all down to me. But most importantly, after the 9 months that have just gone by and how my life has already changed so much, I know it’s totally achievable !
So… “man, I’ve another 50 years of this shit” is the single, most important sentence that has changed my life, hopefully forever. Because I’m proving it wrong. And life has rarely felt better.
(I have missed out a section about a girl, I’ll call her “W”, who added a lot of fuel to this fire right at the beginning. She may read this and/or some people may know her, so I shouldn’t mention her by name. But, without knowing it, she made me want to be a better person (thanks Jack Nicholson) too. We never dated, or anything like that… but she is one of the most beautiful souls I have come across. Thank you “W” for your inspiration.)
Best wishes all of you reading this. I wish you a long and happy life.
Rob.
Chicken Gyros with Dill Sauce
Chicken Gyros with Dill Sauce is a traditional Greek sandwich.
Crock Pot Chicken Gyro 6 500×375 1
Ingredients
1 cup plain yogurt
2 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon chopped fresh dill
2 large garlic cloves, finely minced
1 teaspoon + 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 pound skinless boneless chicken breast halves, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1 teaspoon dried oregano
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium onions, thinly sliced
4 fresh pita bread rounds, heated
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Instructions
In small bowl blend together yogurt, 2 tablespoons dill, garlic and 1 teaspoon lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper. Set aside.
Heat 1 tablespoon oil in heavy large skillet over medium-high heat. Add chicken with oregano, 1 teaspoon dill, salt and pepper. Sauté until browned and cooked through, about about 5 minutes. Transfer to a bowl. Add 1 tablespoon oil to skillet and sauté onions until golden brown, about 10 minutes.
Return chicken and any juices to skillet. Add 1 tablespoon lemon juice. Stir until heated through, about 2 minutes.
Top pita rounds with chicken mixture. Spoon dill sauce over chicken and serve. This sandwich is folded in half and eaten. Pass the extra sauce, as desired.
We are decoupling from China and, a fortiori, from its technology and the 130 countries in its currency, trade and defense alliances. Highlights from 2023 suggest that we far behind and the gap is widening.
2024 01 22 09 57
Economy
In 2023, China’s economy grew by $1.6 trillion, more than the rest of the world’s combined – while the USA borrowed $3 trillion to fund $300 billion GDP growth. Real wages grew 4.7% and demographics will remain healthy through 2043. 21 million tourists flew during Golden Week and spent $3 billion in Xinjiang alone. Hangzhou hosted more athletes at the Asian Games than the Olympics and domestic brands Anta and Li-Ning outsold Nike and Adidas.
Research
Young Science became the world’s #3 journal and is rapidly overtaking incumbent leaders Nature and Science. With a $228 billion corporate R&D budget, 3 million Chinese scientists applied for almost as many patents as the rest of the world combined, and utterly dominated the top 1% of most influential papers. Huawei’s R&D budget alone is larger than the US CHIPS and Science Act.
Scientists created the first graphene semiconductor, while Betavolt began shipping an atomic energy battery that powers consumer devices for 99 years.
Huawei mastered 7nm chip production (Intel still has not), replaced WiFi with 6x faster NearLink, took Apple’s #1 spot in the world’s largest market with a phone using 90% domestic components. Chinese chip foundries bought 62% of machinery equipment domestically this year, vs. 47% last year, and produced the first integrated neuro-memristor and the first 232 layer flash memory. Researchers set a record for high-rate quantum key distribution, showed off the first ambient superionic hydride ion conductor, the first primate brain-computer interface and an integrated neuro-memristor chip that will make circuit boards obsolete.
Macro inventions included the first waterless nuclear reactor, the most powerful solid-fuel rocket, the first liquid oxygen/methane rocket (it lifted 6 tonnes into sun-synchronous orbit), the world’s only Mach 30 wind tunnel, lasers generating high-energy beams indefinitely, and the first high-orbit Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite for 24×7 weather observation.
The country installed 80 million kW of PV and PV generated 300 billion kWh nationwide, 30% above 2022. CATL’s EV batteries get 400 km on 15 min. charge and 700 km. on a regular charge at all temperatures. In addition to installing 290,000 industrial robots – more than the rest of the world combined – it put AESA radars on $8,000 farm drones (only four countries can make them – for fighter jets). Its 800 million 5G subscribers are served by 3.2 million base stations and integrated 5G industry applications into 67 economic categories with 100,000 application cases. Tibet’s 5G service surpassed California’s.
Environment
In the wilderness that covers 42% of China’s landmass, conservationists counted 70,000 Tibetan antelopes, 3,400 Przewalski’s gazelles, 5,000 golden snub-nosed monkeys and 1200 Snow Leopards…
I dated a lady, who was already dating someone else. Except I didn’t know this when she asked me out. They weren’t living together, so it wasn’t something that jumped out at you.
It was only on our 4th date, that the guy got suspicious , and followed her to our restaurant, and caused a scene that I had a clue. She dumped the guy, in the restaurant, and made it seem like it was no big deal, as they were a short term casual couple.
I found out from her best friend about a month later, that they had been seeing each other regularly for a year. But I was hooked by then.
After 9 months she asked me,to ask her, to marry me. Yes, I know, confusing right?
I said I needed to think about it. Immediately, she was busy on Friday nights, but still up for Saturdays. She said it was work related.
I recognized the pattern and decided not to follow her to whatever restaurant and bar she was going to. I didn’t need to have a big fight in public. Instead I waited until the next day, and lied to her, and told her I had followed her. She said, well I guess thats it then. Why does everyone follow me?
Implying that I wouldn’t have just been the second person to follow her.
She was right, that was it. Once a cheater, always a cheater, even if they aren’t married or living together.
Wife Started Behaving Like A F**inist And Is Now Having A MELTDOWN That Her Marriage Is IMPLODING
Chinese people are prolific savers. And Chinese as you know are the most practical and pragmatic people on planet earth. They are the opposite of American people who are one of the most wasteful nation on planet earth. And worst the U.S. as a nation and your archaic political system allows wasteful and unaudited spending.
China and Chinese are just the opposite.
Chinese people save 36% of their income, the highest on earth and the US barely save at all. That is a very big difference. The U.S. cannot depend on domestic savings, China can and they do. China saved more the entire UK GDP each year! China used that to fuel the Chinese economy by building up infrastructures and invest in R&D. Hence China is now totally independent innovatively and scientifically.
I know when a person like you who ask such a question you are already fooled by your western media that China is unsustainable but the fact is just the opposite. The U.S. is mightily unsustainable and China is the lowest geared economy. And its real tangible investment are paying off well!
The U.S. infrastructure is dilapidating and you guys burnt cash like there is no tomorrow! 5 trillion in Iraq, 5 trillion in Vietnam, 3 trillion in Afghanistan. And probably 10 trillion in Ukraine by the time this shit ended. Burning cash sending armadas around the world and keeping 800 plus military bases around the world! Your investment is not getting any returns.
China build more high speed railway, solar panels, wind turbines and hydroelectric power stations then the rest of the world put together!
So grow up Mr. Questioner and Americans and brain dead westerners. China is great and dandy. The U.S. is without doubt collapsing before your eyes. If you open yours!
THIS AMERICAN INSULTS THE ENTIRE AFRICAN CONTINENT. IS THIS HOW A/AMERICANS FEEL ABOUT AFRICANS?
Tiananmen, and the never-ending western media narrative telling outright lies for decades without giving the Chinese the opportunity to set out the facts is the primary motivation for the Great Firewall, and strict Chinese censorship.
A poor and relatively backward China would have been at constant risk of implosion had external forces been able to spread lies as propaganda to bring down the government in Beijing, using Tiananmen as the rallying point.
Unfortunately, the truth is way more mundane.
The students were persuaded to go home before first light, and most of the soldiers deployed to the square were involved in area cleaning on June 4th and 5th.
In sum, the Tiananmen PROTESTS (which lasted for months centered around June 4th) resulted in the deaths of several hundred, with an abnormally high percentage being uniformed personnel. It was at best, a sustained social disturbance.
The Chinese are not stupid, or disrespectful people. No leader will order a massacre at Tiananmen, with the portrait of Mao overlooking the square. The Long March generation had given their lives to free the people from oppression, and it would have been heresy to mow down the hope of the nation under the watchful eyes of Mao.
Dmitry Orlov: Russia and China Melding in a Shifting Geopolitical Landscape
This happened, not to me, but to my younger sister (who’s 16 at the moment). [Too bad I wasn’t with her back then…]
Some Background Details (they’re important in the story): My sister is a beautiful, talented and intelligent girl. She got double promotion in her 6th year so now she’s the youngest in her class. For some time now (around 2–3 years… Whoa, that’s actually a lot!), she has been complaining about her vision. She says that whenever she opens her eyes, everything just constantly keeps morphing and changing forms .
We took her to 3 opthalmologists. None of them could determine the cause of her wavy vision and so they diagnosed it as psychological and referred her to a psychologist who was very well-known (and well-paid) in our area.
Let’s call the psychologist Sarah. So here goes:
(My sister comesin and sits down. Sarah regards my sister condescendingly then proceeds to give her a complacent smirk as if she had just found the answer to all the problems in the universe)
Sarah: “You’re not a very good student are you?”
5 remarks popped into my sister’s head at that very moment:
WTF?!
Is this the first question you ask your patient?
I’m top of my class even after my double promotion.
You’re not a very good doctor are you?
Lady, you just ruined your reputation in less than 10 seconds.
But instead she replied with a simple “I’m moderately good.”
Sarah: “You know, it won’t do you any good to lie.”
By this point, my sister is so shocked she doesn’t even say anything.
Sarah: “Please stand outside for a moment. I’d like to speak to your mother privately.”
My sister just walks out (still unable to process such level of vanity in an adult).
Sarah: “Your daughter is quite obviously making the whole thing up about her vision. And as her parent, it is your responsibility to make sure she studies all day. She gets an F in her tests and at best a D, am I right?”
It took my mother all of her willpower to not get up and slap her full across the face. She quietly thanked the doctor and left, making sure to slam the door especially loudly on her way out.
P.S. After much more research and diagnosis in another country (Australia), it turns out my sister’s wavy vision was due to ocular migraine. It hasn’t got much better yet but baby steps lead the way. 🙂
INVESTIGATORS REVEAL JIMMY LAI MONEY TRAIL
Huge amounts of international money flowed into the bank accounts of Jimmy Lai—and large sums of cash went out to anti-China groups, a court heard yesterday.
The tabloid publisher received HK$2.945 billion in his nine bank accounts in recent years, with deposits coming from the United States, Canada, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and elsewhere. The money is said to have derived “from overseas securities trading”.
But the money didn’t sit there.
Who got the cash?
Chunks of finance went out to multiple China-hostile political groups in Hong Kong, the US, and the UK, the prosecution said, providing a detailed report from financial investigators.
Jimmy Lai’s lawyer Steven Kwan Man-wai did not dispute the information.
Local recipients included the Hong Kong Democratic Party, the Civic Party, the Labour Party, the League of Social Democrats, the court was told.
A wildly critical UK group called Hong Kong Watch, whose members include Benedict Rogers and former Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten, received HK$202,000.
Paul Wolfowitz, former US deputy secretary of defence, was sent HK$1.76 million in payments from 2013 onwards, the court heard. Money also went to a right-wing think tank called the American Enterprise Institute.
Cash also went to a group called the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, organizers of an annual meeting to keep the “Tiananmen Square massacre” story, debunked by Julian Assange and others, alive.
The biggest individual recipient named yesterday was Cardinal Joseph Zen, a retired Hong Kong churchman who has fallen out with his colleagues, including Pope Francis, over his relentless China-bashing. The churchman received HK$3.5 million in 2017, the prosecution said.
The court heard earlier that large sums of money from Jimmy Lai’s funds (held by various entities) were paid to media companies, including the publishers of the Washington Post, the Nikkei Weekly, the UK Guardian, and media groups in India.
Jimmy Lai, 76, is on trial for sedition and collusion, offences illegal worldwide. His colleagues and associates have pleaded guilty in related hearings. The trial continues.
Baltic Sea Anomaly, Atlantis, and Underwater Alien Bases | Mysteries of the Ocean Pt 1
Oh, and movies said we’d “live happily ever after.”
And we did, through the honeymoon. Then reality struck.
We suddenly discovered that, well, we’re very different. In just about everything.
And that caused us to clash and occasionally me to wonder, “What the hell is wrong with her?”
And my wife to wonder that about me, only way more often.
Through years of building businesses, raising kids, paying bills. And occasional sleepless nights, sickness and clashes it would have been easy to walk away.
To think, “Well, I guess it’s not meant to be.”
But we just chose not to. We chose to make it “happily ever after.” Period.
So when we didn’t have the happy part we still had the ever after part. And it was going to be a long ever after.
So we might as well put the happy part back in. And we did.
Last week my wife was gone baby sitting our grandson. I was home alone.
No, that’s never a good thing in so many ways.
She came home on Friday evening so we had a late dinner and watched a movie.
As we enjoyed a glass of wine, I thought, “Ah, life is good again. Just the way it’s meant to be.”
I turned to her and said, “I’m glad you can babysit. But I’m really glad you’re home.”
“Yeah, it feels good to be home too. Though I miss my baby,” she responded.
“I know, I’m having to compete with your new boyfriend. But I do have to say, he’s really cute.”
We laughed.
And proceeded to live happily ever after for another evening.
And later, well, never mind.
You get married for the wrong reasons. Then build a marriage for the right ones.
I was failing grade 8 Math and English, and barely passing Science. My parents ran into my Math teacher at a social event, turned out they had distant common friends.
She made it a point to tell them I wasn’t going to get anywhere in life. She suggested they find me a trade, I might do well as an electrician or a plumber (nothing wrong with these professions, except she used it in a derogatory way, as studying is beyond my capabilities).
Ms. Farhana was a real jerk.
I was the shiest kid around and bullied throughout my childhood. However, I was embarrassed enough by that incident that I mustered up my courage and asked the neighbour’s daughter to tutor me. She started from basic and built up from there.
I passed grade 8 Math. Barely, but I passed it.
She kept tutoring me and I did average in grade 9.
My grade 10 Math teacher had a baby. He lived in the neighbourhood so I decided to ring his doorbell to wish him well. He invited me in for cake. Zee never says no to cake. He told me I could be his best student if I just tried harder.
I knew he was giving me an empty compliment, but a part of me thought I could.
So I asked him to help me after school. He said yes.
I got lucked out with a really kick-ass, but slightly racist, grade 11 Chemistry teacher. He broke things down to just Math. I overlooked his passive aggressive micro-aggressions and had him help me. Everything made sense.
I took Finite Math in highschool. The teacher had a bit of a gambling problem, but man did he know his probabilities.
Suddenly Math was fun.
There is a goat behind one of three doors and you pick a door. I open one of the doors you didn’t pick, do you change your answer? (Hint: yes)
I made up different problems with him. I learned Texas Hold’em. We talked about probabilities of different hands.
In grade 12 Advanced Math I got almost perfect, the highest mark anyone has gotten up until that point in that school’s history.
I took Math tests for fun and did well enough at the University of Waterloo’s Descartes test that I got in with scholarship even though my overall marks weren’t that high.
I decided to major in Math (and Computer Science). I finished the first year in Dean’s list, primarily because of kicking ass in Math. I tutored Calculus, Algebra, and Combinatorics and Optimization to pay bills.
Screw you Ms. Farhana, you were wrong.
I graduated and went to work for Microsoft and then Amazon due to my strength in Math.
I decided to run for a local office and despite not knowing anyone, turned campaigning into a Math problem. I reached out to others in the office and asked them for advice. I took their advice seriously.
Heck I read a book, tracked down its author (two-time mayor of a Michigan municipality) and emailed him for advice. He replied and agreed to mentor me remotely.
I won the election.
I started a business. I sucked at it. I ran into someone at a dinner who ran an agency. I asked him for help. He agreed. Eventually we ran a campaign for Nissan.
As a child I never thought I could learn that everyone had something to teach me, outright ask them to teach me, and benefit from this skill so incredibly.
“The Worst Thing Ever”
it was seriously the worst thing ever. I walked into my house and saw my mom hanging from the ceiling fan.
I can’t even put into words how messed up it was. It felt like my whole world just fell apart. I still can’t wrap my head around it. It’s like I’m stuck in some kind of freaky….
I can’t even put into words how messed up it was. It felt like my whole world just fell apart. I still can’t wrap my head around it. It’s like I’m stuck in some kind of freaky dream.
I just wish I could go back in time and stop it from happening. But I know that’s not possible. All I can do now is try to move on and remember her in the best way I can.
The most devastating experience of my life was witnessing my mother’s passing. The sight of her lifeless body on the floor left me feeling as though I had lost not only her, but also myself and my entire world.
Despite my desperate desire to help her, she passed away before my eyes, leaving me feeling helpless and hopeless.
However, as time passed, I came to the realization that I must strive to make her proud by doing my best to secure a successful future. This tragedy has left an indelible mark on my life, but I am determined to honor my mother’s memory by achieving my goals.
image 167
Related…
DESPERATE WOMAN RESCUED FROM HANGING HERSELF TO DEATH
2024 01 22 07 03
Information from reliable source to YIRIMAMBO ADVOCACY GROUP UPPER WEST REGION
indicate that a woman from East District information gathered from Wa East district in the Upper West region indicate that a married woman with six children who allegedly wanted to hang herself to death is battling with problems.
It has been fetched but obvious that she can not do anything else for survival nor her mother to care for her family. It is noted that she is a sickler and her mother a stroke patience.
Despite her poor health condition, she and the husband that are taking care of the family. She is always carrying her mother here and there to help her in movement because of that she can’t do any work for money.
Notwithstanding to this, sometimes it is difficult for them to get even food to eat or clothes to wear and medicines for themselves.
Even though the father with six children, is a farmer but is not easy for him taking care of all of them, he brings only what he gets from the farm and that is all which is not always enough but they have been managing.
So she always sit idle thinking that all these problems cannot be solved and she has been saying which she has always been saying to people. *Ending Her Life By Committing Suicide* On the 31st July, 2019 at about 4-5:00 in the evening, a woman which is about 45years- old by name with-held with six Chlidren, from Ducie in the Wa East district of the Upper West region went out with a rope in a black
polythene bag thinking that nobody have seen her but one of her children who was inside another room before she went out into the bush quickly went to inform some good Samaritans in the community and they also quickly traced this woman to the bush and before they got there she has already tied the rope on top of a tree trying to climb another piece of a tree before she can put her neck on the rope. Then the people who followed her as good Samaritans shouted on her and quickly rushed to save her without doing that.
So on this note we are pleading that if any member can help us with either food stuffs or clothes for these people and health support for them as well, if possible so that we will also try to help this woman with counselling and the materials support from you.
But for now she is a little bit OK with her situation.
With the intervention of yirimambo for the first place with our advice and counseling than before.
SOURCE YIRIMAMBO ADVOCACY GROUP UPPER WEST
Be the RUFUS!
We are a community.
My post on community… on Quora.
What is a Chinese Expert?
I really do not think that this creature exists.
According to the Western / American “news” media, a Chinese Expert is…
A person who accepts American government funding to say bad things about China.
Is associated, or was associated, with American mainstream media.
Has, in their possession, photos of the “expert” with American political personages.
According to the Chinese, a Chinese Expert is a graded, stratified tier system based on experience.
Top Tier
Born in China. Studied Chinese history with exemplary grades. Works on behalf of the Chinese people, and puts the people of China first. Many members of the CCP fit this role, as do many Pioneers, and an entire subculture of Chinese that support the “Chinese Dream”.
Old Hand
Has lived in China for a significant period of time. Understands the various societies, and cultures of China. Is married to, or was part of, a Chinese family. Works on behalf on the greater good for all, but of course, his / her Chinese family and Chinese friends come first. This person is also known as a Chinese wanna-be. And this person supports, and praises, “The Chinese Dream”.
Enthusiast
This person, may or many not have lived in China. But has totally embraced the Chinese culture, society and means. This includes certain individuals out of Singapore, Vietnam, and other places around the globe. Maybe they aren’t an “expert” in a classical sense, but they are certainly enthusiastic for the Chinese dream. These people are perhaps known an “fanboi.”
At best, I (personally) am considered a “China Old Hand”.
I don’t know everything, but I know enough.
…
What is “The Chinese Dream”?
Last weekend, my family and a few friends, went to visit an organizational youth meet in Zhuhai. This group (and there are thousands throughout China), teach independence, pride, self-confidence, and acceptance as part of “The Chinese Dream”. It was astounding.
It’s 100% voluntary. The kids pay a small membership fee.
Really. Amazing.
You will never see anything else like this anywhere. Watch how accepted and inclusive my daughter was taken in. It was like she was “absorbed by the hive”. LOL
“Resistance is futile”. -The Borg
https://youtu.be/vVcosfCqwNA
There is a great sense of belonging, and acceptance that I have NEVER experienced anywhere else.
Belonging.
B-E-L-O-N-G-I-N-G
Belonging as PART of a COMMUNITY.
No “lone wolf” bullshit.
…
It’s stuff like this why I LOVE LOVE LOVE China so much.
EDIT 22JAN23
1.3K views. Only 30 “thumbs up”.
I guess you all have bought into the Western propagandized lie that you can be the “lone wolf”. That you can be another “Die Hard” type; another Rambo. Another Clint Eastwood or John Wayne. Maybe a “Professional career woman”… and all that.
That is a lie.
As many are waking up to the reality that humans are social creatures.
We were on a flight to the U.S. from Thailand where we live.
In Taiwan, a disheveled man of around 30 sat down next to me, reeking of weed. After takeoff, he pulled down the tray and filled it with candy bars, nuts, fruit juice and oranges from his camouflage jacket. He turned to me and said, “You can’t trust airline food.”
But when lunch was served, he smashed his food stash under the food tray he was given and ate everything, including the garnish.
Afterwards he wanted to talk and kept pestering me with, “Hey. Hey!!”
He asked where we were from, and upon hearing “Bangkok” he began raving about ‘Thai sticks’, Thai marijuana. Then he asked my Thai husband if he would help him start importing weed to the U.S.
Husband stared at him really coldly and told the man that he was a Royal Thai police officer so “No.” The idiot’s response: “ Listen, I know all Thai cops are corrupt. We could make a load.”
Husband put headphones on and ignored him. I asked the pothead if he was out of his mind. He shrugged, laughed and said husband would change his mind, for sure.
Luckily, he made a friend elsewhere and moved.
But he wasn’t finished with us.
As we lined up for Customs, he got right behind us. As the agent checked our bags, he kept saying loudly, “They’re from Thailand. Great weed there! Oh, look! That’s a weed pipe!” (It was a replica of a silver opium pipe, a decorative item – a gift) “Listen! I still wanna import from you guys!!”
Another agent picked up his bags and escorted him to a separate office, and we never saw him again.
The United States and it’s entire existence is based on the WEALTH OF NATIONS
The inherent belief that Core Capitalism is the only system to deliver maximum benefits to an economy and stability to the economy & a system of the people is the only way to deliver a system with full global peace
That the world will be fully peaceful when every nation is governed by its people AKA is a democracy built on Western ideals
This was a very correct analysis that the US followed for almost a hundred and ten years from 1880–1990
Unfortunately this ideology got corrupted post 1990 when:-
US Democracy slowly became more and more partisan
US Leaders became slowly worse and worse and essentially corrupt demagogues
The US capitalism model deteriorated to an Oligarchy ‘Support the top 1%’ model that is sinking the states
The US model became all about speculation and less about actual progress and growth
Yet today’s US leaders religiously believe this is the winning model that every nation must adopt and regards any nation that is different as a ‘Flawed Nation’
Chinas Economic Ideology unlike the USA has always changed to suit changing times
From Deeply Socialist under Mao Tse Tung where the focus was on Education and Equality and Food Production and Stability
To Gradual Mixed Economy under Deng Xiaoping & Jiang Zimin where the focus shifted to Industrialization
To a Ruthless Capitalist Mindset under Hu Jintao where the focus was growth, growth and growth
To the Common Prosperity Mindset under Xi Jingping focusing on reducing Income inequality, spreading development across all sections of the economy and a sort of hybrid model of socialism within capitalism
It is diametric opposite to the US and it’s Ruthless Capitalism Ideology
US maximizes emphasis on Speculation
China hates Speculation
US prefers to capitalize everything to the maximum
China prefers a strong sense of control on excess capitalism
US prefers coalescing smaller entities into a handful of monopolies
China prefers mushrooming of smaller entities and competition deciding which is the best
Chinas One Party System is also diametrically opposite to the Multiple faction democracy that the US endorses and the West supports
The US believes that one person for too long loses the incentive to serve the people and becomes a dictator
Yet China believes a group of able people can serve the people the best and prevent unworthy individuals from coming to power who can ruin a well established system of governance
The US has always believed that ultimately China will shed it’s different ways and join the US in their perfect model (that they don’t realize they have fully corrupted)
It’s what made Gordon Chang & Peter Zeihan such celebrities
The US has always believed that China would face a massive setback like the USSR did (Or was suckered into triggering a setback like my friend Hoàng Phan establishes in his answers)
They estimated this to happen between 2005–2008
Didnt Happen
Instead China moved from strength to strength to strength over time and successfully endured every US action against it, from the Wolf Sanctions of 2011 to the Raimondo Sanctions of 2022
The US may trigger a wave of propaganda against China but the purpose of this is to STOP THEIR OWN PEOPLE FROM QUESTIONING AS TO HOW CHINA NOT ONLY SURVIVES TODAY BUT THRIVES FOLLOWING DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSITE ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL IDEOLOGY
As China moves ahead without the seeming collapse, the US are seeing their two hundred year old belief and ideology (Again which they don’t realize they have corrupted already) getting shattered by China
And slowly seeing others start to adopt a similar stance from Turkiye to Serbia to Vietnam to Singapore
The US is beginning to wonder if indeed it’s ideology was flawed and whether it’s gods and idols are false
And that terrifies them
They don’t realize that it is THEY who have completely corrupted a nice good solid system that was giving them the position of world leader and global trust for decades
It is they who have become Satanic Hegemons from Global Leaders
As for China, China is on the right track so far
They MUSTN’T MAKE THE MISTAKE THAT US DID
They mustn’t allow ideology and hegemony to corrupt them the way US was corrupted under Bush Junior, Clinton and so on
They must ensure they keep refreshing their system so that it best helps the people of China
Pepe Escobar: China Issues DEVASTATING Warning to Neocons as Putin and Xi Make History
I was on the beach late one night looking at the moon and the waves.
Out of the corner of my eye along the south end of the beach – I saw something super weird.
What is that?
I squinted, trying to figure it out – it was too far away – but it had to be really huge.
What the heck?
Well, I couldn’t sit there idly looking at the moon and listening to the surf anymore – I needed to figure out what that thing was over there on the beach.
So, I started walking… is it a car? What is that thing? How is it on the beach? Nobody in their right mind would drive a VW bug on a beach like ours… at night…
Closer and closer I walked and larger and larger it looked.
It was a leatherback sea turtle. Digging a hole in the sand.
I was utterly flabbergasted.
I didn’t make a sound, I just stood there, awestruck: feeling truly blessed in the moment to be near such a magnificent being.
I had never been so close to such a large animal in the wild before.
She was utterly oblivious to me – she was on a mission.
I stood beside her as she dug: I definitely got a sand bath that night. She flipped the sand until she was happy with her nest and began to fill it with eggs.
It took a long time.
I couldn’t stay until she was completely finished.
I’m pretty sure it took most of the rest of the night. I left around 0300 and she wasn’t done.
I’ve since swum with green turtles, who are dwarfed in comparison. But nothing has engendered that kind of awe before or since. Stunned is the right word for something which leaves your mouth hanging and your words lost.
Cheese and Honey Pie
Cheese and Honey Pie
Ingredients
Sesame Seed Pastry
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 tablespoon toasted sesame seed
1/4 teaspoon salt
Filling
16 ounces cream cheese, softened
2 eggs
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup whipping cream
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
Instructions
Sesame Seed Pastry: Mix all ingredients until blended; press firmly and evenly against bottom and side of 9-inch pie plate.
Bake at 475 degrees F for 5 minutes.
Filling: Beat cream cheese in large mixer bowl on medium speed until creamy. Add remaining ingredients; beat until light and fluffy. Pour into baked pie shell.
Bake at 350 degrees F until firm, 40 to 50 minutes.
Refrigerate until serving time.
Yields 10 to 12 servings.
Done with the bullshit
I had a thought today that I wanted to share with you all, this is my response to a Reddit post I saw about how corrupt and outdated representative democracy is.
I will start with what I think to be the main problems of representative democracy
The elected body of legislators is not a representative sample of the population, looking at the legislature, you’d think the vast majority of the country was white male lawyers that are either Republicans or Democrats. This is very far from the truth, and many voters do not properly identify either Republican or Democrat and their interests oftentimes scope over topics from both parties. Most of the time when people vote they’re just picking the lesser of two evils, and are not in any way completely satisfied with what other party is doing.
Scope of power does not match scope of accountability, legislators may pass laws that impact people that could not vote for or against them. Unless you count propositions in places like california, legislators are able to pass pretty much whatever law they want that impact sometimes tens of millions of people and are in no way accountable to the laws that they pass. The people have no say in the laws that legislators have passed. This very often leads to a corrupt system of the government being able to do whatever it wants and the people having no say in what the government does.
Job security for elected officials is more dependent on fundraising than on whether the politician is acting in his or her constituents’ best interests. This blows the system wide open for large corporations and billionaires to buy off politicians that represent their best interests as opposed to the people.
Lobbying undermines democracy. Lobbying is a mechanism for powerful groups to influence laws and regulations at the expense of the public interest. This results in outside influence, unfair competition and policy capture, to the detriment of effective policymaking. This effectively allows billionaires and big corporations to buy our government and politicians that act in their best interests rather than the interests of the people.
The voting system and general layout of government was designed before it was possible to quickly communicate long distances, so it ignores the possibility of citizens directly participating.
Mass media cannot be trusted to provide accurate information and is very often bias. Mass media often feeds lies and propaganda to the electorate and the electorate is not currently equipped to ensure a representative democracy is acting in the best interest of the people.
The electoral college needs to go, it is not based on popular vote, and it is based on a winner takes all system which is easily susceptible to corruption and allows political candidates to be elected by losing the popular vote. Under the system if you want to vote for your states of losing party don’t even bother voting.
There aren’t enough representatives to accurately represent the people if we’re going to keep our system of representative democracy and not throw out the entire thing. I think the amount of Representatives should be raised to 936, and the amount of Representative districts should also be increased.
It’s very hard to remove corrupt politicians from power. The people should be able to impeach corrupt politicians, the system was not designed to have politicians serving for 30 or 40 years. We need term limits, I think a term limit of 6 years for senators and representatives is perfectly fair, and I think a term limit of 10 years for supreme Court justices is also perfectly fair. This would allow the government to be more in touch with what people want by constantly switching out people every couple of years.
The Monopoly of power that both conservatives and liberals have over the government in their respected Republican and Democratic parties. We need more political parties to better represent the people, it is not the case that people simply think one way or the other there should be five political parties written directly into the Constitution. The government should operate in a European style model of a political coalition if it wants to get anything done, in other words political parties are forced to make concessions and are forced to work with other political parties to pass laws.
So what do I things should be done to fix things? I’ll tell you
Abolish Congress and the supreme Court, and implement a system of direct democracy where every 6 months every single issue that the supreme Court and Congress would have looked at are voted on directly by the people in the form of propositions. Now I know that if we implemented elections twice a year every June and December people will be voting on about 100 different issues, and that’s fine, people’s voices need to be heard and it is a much better system of asking people what they think of certain issues rather than allowing an out-of-touch government to make these decisions for people instead.
Like I said on my previous point, it needs to be a government for the people by the people. This is why representative democracy is an outdated and obsolete relic of the past. In representative democracy legislators are able to pass whatever laws they please and are not accountable to the people.
We need to make lobbying illegal and if we are going to have a political coalition system the people need to be the ones electing politicians not billionaires and big corporations. Money should not be a part of politics. Making money part of politics undermines democracy
Like I said before lobbying undermines democracy and it needs to be banned 🚫. Lobby groups do absolutely nothing for the government except give special interest groups political power that they shouldn’t have and allow the special interest groups to have a voice in our country and our politics and it allows them to buy politicians.
We need to switch to a ranked choice voting system, as opposed to an instant runoff system. The electoral college needs to go, even if that means amending the Constitution to get rid of it.
Mass media should not have a say in our government, as they cannot be trusted to provide accurate information. I think we should have a system of fake news laws that holds these mass media companies accountable for publishing bias or false information
Like I said the electoral college needs to go. Even if that means amending the Constitution get rid of it. We need a ranked choice popular voting system. This would make it so everybody’s voice is heard, and it would allow new political parties to come to the table and it would break up the Monopoly of power that Republicans and Democrats have over the government.
I don’t even think we should keep our system of Representative democracy, but if it needs to stay we need to double the amount of Representatives to 936. This wasn’t even my idea this was the idea of YouTuber Mathew Beat.
We need term limits for politicians. Once a corrupt politician like Mitch McConnell is in power it’s almost impossible to get rid of them. And it should be up to the entire country to elect politicians not just their state. Term limits would allow new people to come to the table and new ideas to spread and it would allow for more political parties to have seats. Every political party no matter how extremist should be able to have its voice heard.
We need to switch to a political coalition system. Everybody should be able to have their voice heard no matter what side of the political spectrum they sit on. There should be five major political parties and many smaller political parties even if those political parties only get 1–5% of the vote. These political parties should be: the nationalist, the conservatives, the liberals, the acella party (progressive party), and the green party. Many smaller political parties such as: the Socialist party, the fascist party, the libertarian party, etc should also get a say. If we have 936 representatives, even if the fascist party only got 2% of the vote, they would still get 19 seats. This would actually heavily benefit minority political parties and give them a lot of power. Let’s say for example that 20% of the population identifies as nationalist, and 22% of the population identify as conservative. This does not add up to 51%, it adds up to 42%, this would still require an additional 9% of the vote for the nationalist and conservatives to get anything passed and they would have to make deals with the smaller political parties to get up to 51%.
These are just my thoughts about our whole busted political system, let me know what you think
2024 Taiwan Election Reveals Shocking TRUTH About USA and China
Well, as I type this up, it is CNY. This (today) is the first day of the new year, and I am in Wenzhou. It’s a standard fare of massive meals, lots and lots of drinking, and long bouts of lazing about.
The weather is cold out, but nothing like what I grew up with. Lots and lots of fireworks. Non-stop explosions and bangs. Day in, and day out, at all hours of the day and night. Very typical.
This is the first time that we are in Wenzhou since the COVID hit China. That was four years ago. My… a lot has happened.
I’ve been busy knocking these posts out, and now have a nice big backlog, but I will be altering my schedule and product mixes in the future.
I want to wish everyone a very nice and prosperous Year of the Dragon 2024.
Golden Chinese Dragon on Red Background ,Traditional New Year Sy
This reminds me of the early 90’s when I had just started Nick’s Racing in Denver CO
As anybody who starts his own business knows, money was tight and everything would just need to hold out a bit longer. Every Saturday afternoon I went to the local mall/shopping-centre to buy whatever I needed for the week. Whilst there I often saw this 70’s Camaro in the lot and it amused me how the inside looked like a pig sty. But I did love the shape & one day… Dream on Nick you are living from week to week.
Fortunately lady luck and my craftmanship smiled on me, work came in so that I had to hire 2 more engine builders and I started to have disposable income and no time to spend it. The American dream, right ? One day I see this Camaro in the same lot with the bonnet (hood) open and a for sale sign on it. I bought this car for a ridiculously low amount and spent a whole day cleaning out all the junk this lady owner had accumulated in it. The first thing that hit me where the cigarette burn marks in the upholstery and the holes in the roof lining 😉
I had to redo the interior, the body had to be panel-beated and resprayed. The engine was going to be replaced with a 383 stroker anyways I just decided to redo the Electrics, as fixing this rats nest was not worth it. I fitted a Classic Air Air Con This car was trash- defined.
Luckily my 2 workers were foreigners also- Mexicans. We got on well and their friends and family did a lot of work on this car for good value. Considering this was basically a rebuild, using performance part where possible, and not a hot-rod build, it still took close to a year of getting it on the road again. This car must have gotten 0 maintenance from the day she got it to the day it expired in a parking lot.
And then I left back for Namibia and sold it to one of my guys who then gave it to his daughter once she needed wheels.
A young Kurt Russell worked together with Charles Bronson. During shooting, Russell found out it was Charles Bronson’s birthday. So he got his older co-star a gift. Bronson looked at it, took it… then walked out of the room, without saying a word. Russell was terrified, worried he had insulted the man.
image 5
A little while later, Russell was called to the dressing room of Bronson. Bronson was silent, looked down and said to the child actor: “No one has ever given me a birthday gift before…” Charles Bronson was the son of dirt poor immigrants. He had fourteen siblings, and worked in the mines as a child. Never finished schooling, never had a kind word, he was worked like a mule since the day he learned to walk.
Charles Bronson hadn’t known a lot of kindness in his life. It caught him off guard to receive some from his young co-star. He later gave Russell a skateboard on his own birthday to play with between takes. The two men remained lifelong friends.
Yes. Several. Mainly because I know what’s going on in their lives, and the students don’t. If the students knew what I knew, they’d cut those teachers a little slack.
One teacher in particular, with whom I worked seven years ago, stands out for me among all of the teacher sob stories I know.
To make a long story short, when she was in her 40s and had been teaching preschool for half of her life, her husband left her for a much younger woman. Around the same time, the school’s preschool program changed from full-time to just two days per week and, in order to stay full-time and keep her benefits, she was forced to become the school’s art teacher for all students in grades PreK-8 (ages 3–14).
She was good with the younger students, but had no idea how to control the middle schoolers. She hated teaching the older kids, but she had no choice. She was still more than a decade away from retirement and needed the health insurance, but she also couldn’t afford to go back to school or change careers or anything like that. She was trapped teaching students that she wasn’t trained to teach.
And they were merciless to her.
The art class existed primarily to give the “regular” teachers a planning period, but I, along with my coworkers, ended up sitting with our classes to the art room most days, because we could control the kids, and she couldn’t. The students treated her class like recess, and treated her with a level of disrespect you usually only see in the movies, right before the “savior” teacher swoops in and sets things right.
The students didn’t see how the teacher cried after school every day, alone in her classroom, before she composed herself enough to walk down the block to her apartment, where she probably cried some more, alone, throughout the evening and night.
I left that school after teaching there just one year. The school closed two years after I left. I hope she was able to find a full time position working with younger children. Middle schoolers can be just as cruel to their teachers as they are to each other.
The doctor, after an examination, sighed and said, ‘I’ve got some bad news. You have cancer, and you’d best put your affairs in order.’
The woman was shocked, but managed to compose herself and walk into the waiting room where her daughter had been waiting.
‘Well, daughter, we women celebrate when things are good, and we celebrate when things don’t go so well. In this case, things aren’t well. I have cancer. So, let’s head to the club and have a martini.’
After 3 or 4 martinis, the two were feeling a little less somber. There were some laughs and more martinis. They were eventually approached by some of the woman’s old friends, who were curious as to what the two were celebrating.
The woman told her friends they were drinking to her impending end, ‘I’ve been diagnosed with AIDS.’ The friends were aghast, gave the woman their condolences and beat a hasty retreat.
After the friends left, the woman’s daughter leaned over and whispered, ‘Momma, I thought you said you were dying of cancer, and you just told your friends you were dying of AIDS! Why did you do that??’
‘Because I don’t want any of those bitches sleeping with your father after I’m gone.’.
Top 8 rules
Ricotta Lasagna Swirls
2024 02 10 13 35
Ingredients
Lasagna
8 lasagna noodles
2 pounds fresh spinach
2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 pound ricotta cheese
Salt
Pepper
Sauce
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 cups tomato sauce
1/2 teaspoon basil
1/2 teaspoon oregano
Instructions
Lasagna: Cook and drain lasagna noodles.
Steam 2 pounds fresh spinach for 7 minutes, then chop. Mix spinach with 2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese, 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, 1/2 pound ricotta cheese, salt and pepper.
Coat each noodle with 2 to 3 tablespoons of mixture along the entire length of the noodle. Roll up. Stand on end in a baking dish.
Sauce: Sauté garlic and onion.
Add tomato sauce, basil and oregano.
Pour sauce over noodles and bake at 350 degrees F for 20 minutes.
Young Men Are Lonelier Than Ever (And It’s Getting Worse)
On this very day, Joe decides to eat out. He enters a restaurant, sits down, and has his order taken.
Just as the waitress arrives with his precariously balanced meal, someone knocks her aside. This causes an avalanche of food and drinks to tumble onto Joe in a non-majestic, yet sloppy manner.
Joe breathes in heavily and….
…asks if the waitress is alright, wipes himself to the best he can, and helps clean up a little without mumbling. Joe then comforts said waitress who is on the verge of crying, whilst assuring the seething and anxious manager that everything is all right.
If shit happens to you and it’s not your fault, then more shit happens yet you are still cool, you are mature in my eyes.
Mature people don’t cause more shit, or simply throw their shit away, even when shit is thrown at them.
It’s not that they don’t give a shit, but they deal with their shit appropriately.
Be like Joe and deal with your shit correctly.
China’s New AI Microchip Just Destroyed US Sanctions Forever!
Years ago, Patrick received a junk mail “fake cheque”- supposedly, if he were to send money to the company, he would then soon get more huge cheques like the one he’d just received.
The fake cheque was made out for $95,093.35. It even had an attached authorised signature.
image 134
Now, most people would see this as the junk & total scam that it obviously was. Most people would rip it up and just toss it in their bin. Most people would ignore it.
Most- but not Patrick.
Patrick was extremely broke at the time – he had only $200 in his bank account.
He had a good sense of humour and thought, “What would happen if I tried to lodge this into my bank account?” Fully expecting to get a laugh out of it from both himself and the bank teller, that’s exactly what Patrick did.
He went to lodge the cheque into his bank account.
As Patrick said, “I didn’t think I was sticking money into the machine.”
He so fully was expecting the cheque to bounce that he didn’t even endorse the back of it.
Time passes and Patrick forgets about it.
Ten days later though, he checks his bank account and to his amazement, $95,093.35 now sits in his bank account!
It turns out that the cheque actually matched 9 of the criteria that the bank required for a cheque to be valid – the words “non negotiable” that the junk company placed on the front did not negate the cheque whatsoever. It turned out that they had been successful in making the cheque look real – too real.
Additionally- the bank managed to miss their own legal deadline to notify Patrick that his cheque had bounced as a non-cash item.
“The excitement of that much money was off the scale,” he said. “It was an addiction. For two months I obsessed on whether I should take the money or give the money back. I put my bank on speed dial and dialed it every ten minutes. I worried constantly that it would go away.“
Patrick, being the good person that he is, did return the money 6-months later.
And, there you have it, Patrick Combs is the man who received a junk mail fake cheque in the post – and managed to cash it to the tune of $95,000+! That, I think, is very much gaming the system.
Yet the content was something I have known and understood and have been talking about for more than two years on Quora
Anyone who follows Scott Ritter, Brian Berletic, The Duran, IEarlGrey and those guys would find most of what Putin said to be nothing surprising, given that this was what most of them have been discussing for both these years 2022 and 2023
However for the Average Americans, this gave them the other point of view
You have had almost 66 Interviews of Zelensky over the last 24 months and you have seen almost 4000 articles covering Zelensky and Ukraine yet Putins POV and Russias POV has never been covered in the West
This Interview filled the gap
Why did Russia invade Ukraine?
Putins explanation makes a lot of sense
He says the Invasion was the LAST RESORT
He says Russia carved out Ukraine under Lenin and later on post WWII, more territories from Germany & Poland & Hungary & Romania were added to Ukraine after USSR got them under Post WWII restructuring
He says Russians and Ukranians were the same people and every Ukranian had 3–4 relatives in Russia and vice versa
He says Ukranian Language is just one of five languages spoken in Ukraine along with Russian, Polish, Romanian and Hungarian in different parts of Ukraine
He says Russia and Ukraine had a friendship and a relationship post 1994 and most of Ukraine’s Trade was with Russia
He says how Ukraine in 2008 began to start idolizing NAZIs and established Neo Nazism and began persecuting Russian Speakers of Eastern Ukraine
He says how Ukraine in 2014 deposed Yanukovich after the West Deceived HIM openly. He talks of how Yanukovich was assured by Merkel and others including Obama of a peaceful conclusion to Maidan if he didn’t use the Military and the Police and how once Yanukovich agreed, they openly deceived him and allowed Maidan to depose him
He then talks of how Zelensky spoke of ending the Russian Language from 2019 onwards and how Zelensky spoke of military conquest of Donbass
He talks of how Russia repeatedly talked to Western Leaders for a peaceful re implementation of the Minsk II Accords that Zelensky broke openly and which the guarantors ignored
He talked of Airplanes over Donbass and forced action against Russian Speakers for 8 years from 2014–2022, all chronicled and presented to the UN and yet IGNORED by the West
It was in the end the ONLY WAY for Russia to secure it’s borders and help the Russian Speakers in Ukraine and Denazify Ukraine
Is Russia ready for Talks?
Yes. Putin confirms this.
He says it’s Zelensky who is not ready. Who in fact even decreed that any discussion on peace is in fact illegal.
Is Russia ready to sell Gas to Germany?
Yes. Putin says he still has pipelines that can supply Gas to Germans.
So he says why are Germans throttling their own industries by paying 4.25 times more for Piped LNG???
He literally openly says Scholz is either Insane or a Traitor to his own people
Putin talks of China & Russia
Putin says China is far more significant to the West because of their Population and their strong economy which even at 5% growth is DOUBLE AS FAST AS THE US
He exposes the China Bogey by citing how BRICS & SCO are both Consensus based organizations against NATO which is entirely US dominated
He gives an example of the Iraq War where France and Germany were openly muscled by George Junior Bush
He cites how Sanctions failed
He highlighted how Russia simply DEDOLLARIZED as did many other nations
He cited that 61 Nations have reduced USD holdings by 10% or more since 22/2/22
He cited that 70% of Russian Trade is settled in Yuan or Ruble now and only 19% in Euros and USD (4.8% in Emirati Dirham and 1.7% in South African Rand & HKD and the rest in other currencies)
He cites how the US lost its own place in the world thanks to the Sanctions and how everyone now wants their own financial secure system and an independence from the Dollar and a preference for their own local currency
He clarified why he retreated from Kiev
He was clear when he said, in Istanbul the Ukranians wanted Russians away from Kiev as a matter of faith and Putin complied
Yet again HE WAS DECEIVED
So the conclusions are clear now
First Putin doesn’t care what the West thinks anymore. He will do what is best for Russians in his opinion. He won’t trust the West again.
Second Putin will not end this SMO unless he gets what he wants. A Guarantee that Ukraine won’t join NATO and security for the Russian Speaking population in Ukraine.
Third, Putin will not initiate WWIII unless NATO attacks Russia. He made this clear. He will attack any NATO member if they attack Russia first.
Fourth, Putin says his Hypersonic Missile System is the most advanced in the world and the fact that he talks less about it means he is accurate
His final message to the Americans is WHY THEY ARE POKING THEIR NOSE IN UKRAINE WHEN THEY HAVE SO MANY TROUBLES OF THEIR OWN
It’s something that resonates with Donald Trump and his MAGA crowd
It would have been enlightening to many people
Not to me
This is essentially everything I have been saying for two years now.
When the kids were grown and gone, my wife and I considered getting a firearm for home protection. Two events finally pushed us to do it. The first event was my walking into a large drug buy in a gas station late at night in Miami. Lots of drugs, thugs, and guns. While they stood there looking at me. I said “Hey, I’m just here to get a receipt for the gas. The guy behind the counter (who was in on it), gave it to me and they let me walk out the door past a very confused lookout. Having a concealed weapon probably wouldn’t have done me any good that night. But it did reminded me that the world is a dangerous place.
The second event was back-to-back hurricanes, causing weeks of power outages with no cell or landline capability. The neighborhood was blocked in for a long time by fallen trees and debris. Even though we live only a mile or so from a precinct, there was no way to contact them or for them to quickly get into our neighborhood.
I asked my neighbor if I should be worried about looting. He responded, “everyone in this neighborhood is armed”, and everybody knows it. You are, aren’t you? A few weeks after the storm, I purchased my first gun.
I friend in law enforcement asked if I had a carry permit for it, reminding me that I lived within a 1000 feet of a school, restricting how I can transport the gun when off my property. Those restrictions (other than being on school property itself) are waived in my state if you have a carry permit.
I signed up for an approved NRA course that counted towards the permit, applied, and received one. Since then, I’ve purchased a few other guns, joined a gun club, and have had dozens of different firearm courses with a state LEO firearms trainer.
Like other “constitutional carry” states, Florida no longer requires a permit for concealed carry. But I keep mine current so I can carry reciprocally in other states.
Yes. This was back in the late ’90s. I had a customer come in with a Corolla. He only had one remote for the security system, but had just purchased another one and needed to have it programmed to the car. I told him that was a very quick and easy job, and I could literally do it while he stood there. I opened the driver’s door, turn the key to the on position and moved the driver seat all the way forward. The computer for the security system was under the driver’s seat on this car. You had to access the computer and push and hold a small button on the side of the computer to put it in programming mode, but it was much easier to access from the back seat. So I then got out and opened the rear driver side door, leaned in, and moved the floor mat to get better access to the computer under the seat. When I moved the floor mat, there was a syringe, a spoon, a lighter, and a bag of white powder that I will assume had to be heroin. I put the computer in program mode, hit the buttons on the remote, and heard the confirmation chirp from the front of the car to signal the new remote was programmed. I put the floor mat back, climbed out, and with a death stare, handed the customer his new remote and told him you’re all done, have a nice day. The guy’s face was white as a ghost, and I never saw him in the dealership again.
Having spent years working in a retail store, I saw so many decisions made by highly-paid executives in an office in another state that I knew instantly wouldn’t work out. And they didn’t.
I could write a book about the reasons for this, but mainly – either they don’t know because they don’t do the actual work, or they don’t believe the underlings who have tried to explain it to them.
I’ll give you an example:
So, I worked at a retail store that was part of a national chain separated into so many districts. I think our district had 10 or 12 stores. One quarter, I have no idea how, but somehow, one of the other stores in our district massively overspent their budget by like ten or fifteen grand. (I really wish I knew how, I bet it was a helluva story.) Probably someone got fired over that, but that didn’t solve the problem that they had a shortfall. (And no, firing the person responsible didn’t fix it either, because they then had to spend money to hire a new person to fill the role.)
So, somewhere up in the corporate office, a person whose name I don’t know had an idea to fix this problem. Since I don’t know who this person is, we’ll call them Bean Counter. I assume their job had something to do with accounting or finance.
So Bean Counter says, “Well, we can make up the shortfall by having every store in the district cut their budget by so much % for the remainder of the quarter.”
Bean Counter’s Boss ran the numbers and decided this was a grand idea. They may have even given Bean Counter a raise or promotion for such brilliant work. On paper, Bean Counter’s plan appeared to play out beautifully.
But this was around the beginning of December, just as the holiday rush was kicking into high gear.
Also, there are not a lot of ways to reduce spending on a store level, where budgets are already pretty tight. Management had very limited discretionary funding, and rarely went out and bought stuff for the store. Basically, the only way to really reduce spending by the amount Bean Counter wanted was to cut payroll hours….drastically.
So it’s the holidays and we’re working with a skeleton crew on every shift. One person at the register, one on the floor, and a manager who wasn’t *supposed* to get tied up with tasking.
And we’re busy, every day, because it’s the holidays, and we sell, among other things, a lot of tech items that are popular gifts. Sometimes we have 20 or 30 people in the store at once, and we can’t help them all. There is no “work harder” solution that allows one person on the floor to help 30 people at once. Even with the manager also helping customers on the floor, and “floating” between customers, they could realistically help maybe 10 people at a time.
Oh, and we weren’t supposed to get a line of more than 2 people at the register without opening a second till. HAHAHAHAHA. Yeah, that couldn’t happen with only two other people in the store and both of them working the floor.
So we had people walking out, unhelped, constantly. We did our best, assuring people we’d be with them in a moment, apologizing for the delay, etc. Even so, some people just couldn’t wait and they left and, presumably, went to a competitor.
But Bean Counter and Bean Counter’s Boss weren’t in the store watching this every day. They were back in their nice little offices, smiling at their Excel sheets because they turned a line green.
You see, an Excel sheet can’t show you how much revenue you lost because you didn’t have enough employees to help your customers.
And even without knowing any of the numbers on the Excel sheet, I can tell you that we lost money. I’m going to give you a VERY conservative estimate here. I’ll assume some of the people who left wouldn’t have bought anything anyway. Let’s say only half the people who came in would have bought something. And let’s say that only twenty people walked out in an hour. (Most hours it was probably much more than that, but I’m giving you a conservative estimate.)
And let’s say that the average sale at that point was $20. That’s a really low number for this time of year (usually it was $40–60), but no one had time to upsell and pitch the customer add-ons, so we’ll say $20. That’s $200 an hour lost.
Employees like me and the floor person were making about $7.50 to $8 an hour. Let’s say everyone was getting $8 an hour. Having two more employees would have cost an additional $16 an hour but would have prevented at LEAST $200 in sales losses. (And again, the actual number is almost certainly much higher.)
The store was open from 8 AM to 9 PM, so 13 hours. By cutting two employees all day, the store saved $208 a day. They lost AT LEAST $2,600 a day in sales.
BUT Bean Counter’s plan looked good on paper, before, after, and during the last quarter. They got the district out of the red! We were no longer over budget! Problem solved!
Tesla primarily makes cars. And when regarded solely as an auto-maker – it is over valued.
Tesla pioneered electric vehicles and established a head start in that market. Newer entrants into that market (including Chinese manufacturers) are catching-up and offering products with similar utility and competitive prices. Tesla’s first-mover advantage is not being sustained. The company is taking too long to produce new models and is not iterating its current line-up fast enough. Where is the Roadster? Where is the new better battery tech? Why is the Cybertruck failing to match expectation?
The company presented itself to the stock market as more than a mere car maker. Rather it is a tech company which happens to make cars. It argued that it should be valued as such, and that initially convinced the market. However the various technical innovations it promised have yet to materialise. Self-driving has improved, but it is many, many years late. The robo-taxi idea seems to have evaporated – there are still safety issues and regulatory hurdles. It’s AI vision stack is a really impressive bit of technology – but it is not a product.
The company has a CEO problem. The CEO has a history of over promising and under delivering. Rather than finishing products and releasing them in a polished state, the CEO presents semi-baked ideas to the market in the conceptual stage, and then take years and years to materialise. The market is getting wise to this bait and switch strategy.
The CEO is distracted with other companies and is at best a part-time manager. The CEO has not been good at attracting and retaining the best staff. When the head of the AI project left, this should have been a warning sign. The CEO has not created a workplace culture that values attention to detail and quality. Instead the culture is gung-ho and reckless, which frequently ends up causing more damage than good.
The CEO seems to be having either a drugs and or mental health problem and has recently decided to become more politically active in support of various right and far-right political groups. In some companies this would not matter, but Tesla’s main market is selling vehicles to individuals and families who are aware of environmental issues and support the transition to greener energy. The far-right regard electric vehicles as a government imposed initiative to spoil their god-given right to drive a pick-up, full of firearms, while running over vaccine-users. – This makes Tesla vehicles less attractive to people who would have previously bought them. No one wants to own a vehicle which has become a repugnant political statement.
The CEO clearly regards Tesla has his personal piggy-bank and demands absurd amounts of compensation for his part-time and mercurial contribution. This naturally upsets shareholders.
AI Tool Deciphers Herculaneum Scroll, and It’s All About Pleasure!
A team of student researchers have combined 3D-mapping and AI to decipher a Greek scroll that was encased in ash during the 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The philosophical musing reveals Greek thought on the complexities of “pleasure”.
In the ancient Greek world “pleasure” wasn’t just an occasional indulgence; it was an Olympic event of the senses. From lively symposiums colored with courtesans and entertainers, to dramatic theatrical productions and festivals, the pursuit of delight was as integral to Greek life as debating philosophy.
Now, offering new insights into pleasure across the ancient Aegean, where it wasn’t a guilty pleasure but a cultural cornerstone, a Greek philosopher’s thoughts regarding pleasure have been decoded by AI. And adding to the intrigue, the source material was an ancient papyrus scroll that was entombed in ash during the 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
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Text from the Herculaneum scroll, which has been unseen for 2,000 years. (Vesuvius Challenge/Nature)
Fusing 3D-Mapping and AI
The team of student researchers, comprising Youssef Nader, Luke Farritor and Julian Schilliger, who used AI to decode the damaged papyrus scroll, have scooped the $700,000 grand prize in the Vesuvius Challenge grand prize Vesuvius Challenge. They received the illustrious award for being the first team to “recover 4 passages of 140 characters from a Herculaneum scroll”.
Essentially, the young team combined 3D-mapping applications and AI to successfully penetrate a lump of blackened volcanic rock that has encased a scroll for almost 2,000-years, since Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD. Known as the Herculaneum papyri, the new combination of technologies identified tiny patches of ink within the fused ash, revealing hitherto unseen musings of a Greek philosopher contemplating ‘pleasure.’
A Gigantic Boon for Philosophy
Not only did the winning team of the Vesuvius Challenge decipher more than “85 percent of the characters illustrated within four passages comprising 140 characters each,” but they included a further 11 columns of text, bringing their total to around 2000 interpreted characters.
The text discloses the personal thoughts of Philodemus, the philosopher-in-residence at the library which once housed the Herculaneum papyri. As such, Professor Michael McOsker from the University College London told New Scientist that the findings represent “a gigantic boon” to the understanding of philosophy in the ancient Greek world.
The ancient Greek text muses on how the scarcity and abundance of material items impacts the pleasure received from them. According to Philodemus, a philosopher of the Epicurean school, the enjoyment derived from food and other goods is closely tied to their availability. In line with Epicurean philosophy, which emphasizes pleasure as life’s primary objective, the scarcity or abundance of these commodities plays a crucial role in shaping our well-being.
Additionally, it was noted that in his two-millennium-old text, there seems to be a subtle attack at the Stoic school of philosophy, suggesting they have “nothing to contribute regarding pleasure.” While Epicureanism centers on the pursuit of pleasure and tranquility, considering them the ultimate goals in life, in contrast, Stoicism emphasizes virtue as the highest good, advocating for inner strength and moral excellence to navigate life’s challenges.
What this all means for modern researchers, is that they have fresh data pertaining to Greek ideas about the prioritization of pleasure and tranquility (Epicureanism), against virtue and inner resilience (Stoicism), being the key foundation for a fulfilling life.
It Cost What? This Has To Stop!
Having bagged the Vesuvius Challenge the team of students now plan “to scale up the 3D scanning and digital analysis techniques,” while at the same time keeping an eye on the costs of analysis. It might have read like the $700,000 prize was a big win, but not when we put that amount into perspective.
It cost the team $100 for every square centimeter of analyzed rock, which tallies to between $1 million and $5 million per scroll. This sounds within the realms of research budget, right? But when you then consider there are another “800 scrolls” lined up to be deciphered, that calculates to between 800 million and 4 billion USD.
Therefore, a lot of ancient philosophy will go undeciphered, and as such it will remain a mystery for future researchers to tackle when lower cost research methodologies are developed.
Top image: Left; One of the Herculaneum scrolls that are being deciphered. Right; Text from the Herculaneum scroll Source: Vesuvius Challenge
I had already submitted my resignation. On the last day, the bitch who had committed all the prior unfair labor practices was, of course, at it again. She had me covering for other people, and didn’t let me take any breaks all day. An hour before the end of my shift, when a co worker had come to relieve me from covering for her, she told me the same supervisor wanted me down in her office so she could talk to me.”Oh really? Well, first I am going to take my morning 15 minute break, then I am taking my half hour lunch, then I am taking my afternoon 15, which I am legally required to do. That will bring me up to quitting time, so she can WANT all she wants”, and left. Heard later than she couldn’t believe I had done it, and went screaming my name through all 6 floors of the building looking for me LOL
CHINA WARNING! We Will Show Our Swords Against AMERICA
This was back in the mid 90’s, I was working at a pizza place. A good friend of mine had signed a contract with a major league baseball team, and he was back in town after his first season in the minors. He stopped in to see me at work, when he left one of the waitresses asked who he was. I told her, she seemed interested and asked if I could introduce her to him. I said sure, me and this girl had become good friends since she started working at this place.
I introduce them, they start seeing each other and things seem good. At some point, she learned about the signing bonus that he had received when he signed his contract. It wasn’t a ton, but it was a decent amount. I heard her tell a co-worker that she had stopped taking her birth control, she wanted to get pregnant so, “I can get some of that money”. I told my friend that she said this, and he broke up with her that evening.
She knew I told him, and she did not like that. I go into work the next day, she’s already working and she wants to have a talk. We’re talking, she asked if I told him, I said, “Yep, that was me”. There’s some shouting, and at some point, she grabs me by the throat and his her fist drawn back. The assistant manager grabbed her, and dragged her away. She was sent home for the day. The manager comes in, and he wants to fire both of us. A few coworkers and the assistant manager defended me, as I hadn’t started this fight. She was fired that evening.
Side note: a few weeks later, she tried to run me over with her car. As you can clearly see, she was a very stable individual.
A sales associate was pushing a very large cardboard box, filled with some kind of clothes, along one of the main aisles in the store. It didn’t look very heavy, but it was clearly much too large for any one person to carry.
She had picked up a lot of speed, and she was kinda racing forward, bent over the box like she was going for the gold in Olympic box-pushing, when she reached a spot where the floor changed to carpet. The two types of flooring were separated by one of those very narrow metal bands, flat enough to where it wasn’t generally noticeable.
The box hit the metal band and came to a full – and very abrupt – stop, but the woman did not. She could have done the maneuver a thousand times and never repeated her trick, but she somehow flipped over herself and landed in the box she’d been pushing.
I didn’t laugh at first. I actually managed to control myself, but then I saw the look on her face. She looked like a startled cartoon, anime style, and I just couldn’t contain my laughter after that. I knew that it was so, so wrong, but she looked like she was okay physically.
I still think of her sometimes, and whenever that happens, I can’t help but laugh like an insane hyena.
Rigatoni with Steak Sauce
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Ingredients
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 (12 ounce) rib eye steaks
Salt and pepper
2 onions, thinly sliced
2 carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon dried oregano
3/4 cup dry red wine
1 (26 ounce) jar marinara sauce
1 cup beef broth
16 ounces dried rigatoni pasta
3 ounces Parmesan, shaved
Instructions
Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a heavy large frying pan over high heat. Sprinkle the steaks with salt and pepper. Cook the steaks until they are brown but still rare in the center, about 3 minutes per side. Transfer the steaks to a plate and set aside to cool completely.
Add 2 more tablespoons of olive oil to the same pan. Sauté the onions and carrots until the onions are translucent, about 8 minutes, with additional salt and pepper, to taste. Add the garlic and oregano, and sauté for 1 minute. Add the wine and simmer for 1 minute. Add the marinara sauce and broth. Cover and simmer over medium low heat to allow the flavors to blend, about 10 minutes.
Season the sauce, to taste, with salt and pepper.
Meanwhile, trim off any fat from the steaks, then cut the steaks into bite size pieces and set aside. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Add the rigatoni and boil until it is tender but still firm to the bite, stirring often, about 10 minutes. Drain the rigatoni.
Toss the rigatoni and reserved steak pieces and any accumulated juices from the steaks with the sauce to coat.
Transfer the pasta to bowls.
Sprinkle with the Parmesan cheese shavings and serve.
Had a fella break into my house when on holiday in Brazil and a neighbour called the police and he was arrested in my house. She saw him break a small window to get in. Was big on the new consoles and computer games at the time, had all the latest. He’d taken suitcases from upstairs and filled them.
He told the policeman cockily he was going to come back and finish the job, he was a local heroin addict known to them.
When I came back from holiday I had to get a crime number, the policeman without giving a name gave me a massive clue who did it…off the record of course
.Not saying the two are related but I told a certain local person and the burglar was found tied to a lamppost naked a few days later in public view. I know a few locals had a vendetta against him so could have been anyone. A few months later the exact same happened to a teen who had been stealing cars locally and joyriding in them. I know the teen had to be cut free in public which must have seriously embarrassed him. An obnoxious fat kid who would gloat to folk who he had stole a car from.
Thought was a great way to deal with people who were getting away with petty crime and back out to do it again. Made the local papers as well which really would have rubbed it in.
This was when she was 17. She decided she wanted to make the big plunge and purchase a stereo system with the money she’d saved from various jobs. But she was nervous about being taken by nefarious sales people, so she asked her big brother (the guy with a house account at Groove-N-Tube… yeah I bought a lot of that stuff back then) to go with her to recommend what to purchase.
We arrive at what at the time was a big name electronics and appliance store (out of business now, no surprise). The sales person gloms onto us right away and his eyes are sparkling. He thinks he’s landed a couple (probably dating but maybe a young marriage), and he goes into his spiel. We walk through the store discussing the various things they have to offer. I ask some questions. My sister asks some questions. Salesperson totally ignores sis. Probably figures I’m the one wearing the pants in this decision. At one point, he totally turns his back on her while he discusses the attributes of a system. I could tell she was fuming but was too polite to say anything.
Finally, it’s time to make a decision. With his back still to my sister, he asks me: “So what can I pack up for you?”
I look him dead in the eye and say: “What are you asking me for? She’s the one buying it.”
He went white. Looked at my sister. She beamed at him and said: “I think I’ll buy something from a store that values all its customers.” And out she sailed.
By the time I went to college in West Texas, my pickpocketing days were well and truly behind me. I had seen the error of my ways, repented of my mischief, and was endeavoring to live an honest life again.
Little did I know that my new Lone Star country was home to one of the most absurd and illogical bits of fashion stupidity in history.
No, I’m not talking about chaps. Don’t even get me started on those.
I’m not entirely sure what it’s called, but I have heard it referred to as a “cowboy wallet.” The primary difference between it and a non-stupid wallet is that it is extra super-duper long.
image 132
This means that when you put it in the back pocket of your Wranglers, it sticks out the top like a pull-tab.
image 131
Are you effing serious, Texas? Why not just hang a sign saying FREE MONEY?
There may be a reader or two out there thinking, “no, I’d definitely notice if someone pulled my wallet. I’d feel it slide out!”
Trust me, you wouldn’t. It’s not any failure on your part, either. Pickpocketing is a bit like cheating at cards. When done properly, it has nothing to do with luck.
I had several friends in college who used these cowboy goodie-bags and I made sure to let them know the economic dangers of their rustic fashion. I had one friend named Logan with whom it became a running joke that I would pull his wallet pretty much every time I saw him. I’d obviously return it to him immediately, but even when he knew full well that I was going to do it, he was still powerless to stop me because it really is that easy.
So Quora, if you are the owner/carrier of a cowboy wallet and you happen to find yourself in a big city or, for that matter, pretty much anywhere besides your family’s ranch, I suggest that you consider either putting it in your inside jacket pocket or getting a different wallet. You would actually be better off taping your money to one of those flag-football belts than putting that thing in your back pocket, as you’d be more likely to notice when it got pulled.
The New York pickpocket rings (to the best of my knowledge) have all either become defunct or transitioned to more profitable ventures, and the city is now very safe. Nonetheless, wear one of those things around here and someone’s likely to flint you on principle.
McDonald’s most popular burger and the second most popular item on their menu (second only to their unique fries).
But have you ever stopped to wonder how it got its name?
You see, McDonald’s was originally founded by brothers Maurice and Richard McDonald.
They went by the nicknames Mac and Dick (forwhen Mac and Cheese just isn’t enough).
The “Big Mac” hit McDonald’s fast food restaurants in August 1968. However, before this, the executives at McDonald’s were struggling to come up with a name for this new super-sandwich.
The McDonald’s corporation tested out a couple of other names, including “The Aristocrat.”
Eventually, a secretary named Esther Glickstein (who was quite fond of co-founder Maurice), suggested the name “Big Mac”.
She admitted that the higher-ups initially laughed the name off when she first suggested it, but she got the last laugh when the name stuck!
But just imagine…
for one second…
if…
she had been more fond of Richard…
You could be enjoying a Big Dick, instead of a Big Mac.
My Girlfriend Asked For An Open Relationship, I Walked Out And Now I Laugh At Her Tears
I was general manager of a pregnancy resource center. It was a 501(c)(3) corporation, and we were completely dependent on donations. It was going broke when I took over. We got back to solvency within a year, without having to back off at all from the services we provided. In fact, we had grown quite a bit. There were 5 full time employees, and about 35 volunteers.
One day, right out of the blue, I was called to go to the office down the street of the chairman of our board of directors. When I got there, he and another board member summarily fired me. Before I left that office, the board chairman had written a glowing letter of recommendation for me.
Curious, I asked him why I was being let go. He said that the board had voted me out because I ran the place too much like a business and not enough like a charity. He had voted against firing me, but was outvoted. The reason they were going broke before hiring me was that no one in the place had any ability to manage money. So, making it more businesslike internally, without that being noticed by our clientele, just seemed wrong to them.
I’m not a waiter, but I will tell my experience. After work, a bunch of coworkers and I would go to the pub across the street. People came and left, as they got off work. We always ran a single tab. Someone would come, have one five dollar drink, and throw ten dollars into the middle of the table. The next person might have 3 $5 drinks, and throw in a twenty before leaving. Nobody wanted to risk stiffing their coworkers or the waitress.
The biggest problem was that at the end of the night, we often had a 35–40 percent tip.
Then a friend we used to work with, joined us for drinks, at first everything was fine, but after a few friday nights at the pub, he started to say. I don’t have any cash on me, just hand me the cash, and I will go put it all on my credit card.
Three weeks later, the waitress who had waited on us for years, sat down early in the evening, before our friend joined us and asked us if her service had slipped, because suddenly we had gone from 35–40 percent tips to exactly 10 percent the last few times. This was a few years ago in Canada, and 10–15 percent was the standard tip. It turns out our friend had been picking up our $300 for a $220 bill, and paying $242, with tip, and going home with $58 more than he came with, after drinking all night for free.
We said no, her service was still fabulous and suggested that she keep us on a group tab, and put him on a separate bill.
Our friend came and at the end of the evening went to grab the cash, and we said, no you have a separate bill.
He got all flustered, and we told him we didn’t want to see him for 6 months, until he learned his lesson.
Lionel Messi will go down in history as the man who united both Hong Kong and mainland Chinese football fans, both pro- and anti-establishment Hong Kong voters, and both its political elites and grassroots citizens, to have such seething hatred towards the same person.
I don’t think even bona fide war criminals like Tojo Hideki would be able to accomplish such a feat in the Sinosphere these days. There were people who paid thousands of HK dollars for a ticket, and traveled to Hong Kong all the way from Xinjiang and abroad, just for a glimpse of the legendary “king of football”. Instead, all they got was snubbed.
There’s no other way to put it. Messi messed up, big time.
Right now nobody really knows what’s going on, why he refused to fulfil his contract (of playing at least 45 minutes on the field), and why he behaved in such a cold and arrogant manner towards his fans in Hong Kong, to the extent that he didn’t even once smile or wave at them.
But judging from the fact that he did play ball in Riyadh, and that he said in an interview he will play again in Kobe, Japan later on, my gut feeling tells me this probably has to do with politics. And before some of you start going “but muh oppression/human rights”, remember that he didn’t protest being in Saudi Arabia.
It’s just too much of a coincidence. You see, right now Hong Kong is trying to pass a law known as “Article 23”. For those of you not from here, I’ll give you the rundown version: Hong Kong, which is part of the People’s Republic of China, has a constitutional duty to enact a law covering secession and subversion (pretty much every country and region in the world has this type of law, by the way).
This was supposed to have been done ages ago, but the anti-establishment, anti-China, right wing types pushed back against any discussion of it every single time. After the violent far right riots in 2019, the local government began to take national security more seriously, which is why western media, unsurprisingly, is trying to depict Article 23 as dystopic and totalitarian.
My instinct is that even if this whole ordeal in Hong Kong was not political at first (he could have just been a dick – not the most outlandish thing about footballers, honestly), Messi will make it political and milk all he can from it. He’s going to turn this thing into another Daryl Morey, NBA-China controversy, hijacking an entire sport for his own political virtue-signalling, and as a pledge of allegiance to both the United States and his home country of Argentina (which is currently being run by a far right neoliberal demagogue, who is trying to abolish the national currency in favour of the US dollar, outlaw abortions, and legalise the organ trade).
If nothing else, this would at least help him win over a few crowds in certain parts of the world where Sinophobia is politically correct. He might even run for political office on this far right platform after retiring from football. Who knows.
image 138image 139image 140
Again, I have to stress that this is all just speculation on my part. Nobody but Messi and those closest to him would know what’s really going on. I hope I’m proven wrong, and that the same shitshow that happened in Hong Kong would repeat itself in Japan, thus proving he wasn’t being disrespectful specifically towards the Chinese, and that he’s just a snobbish cunt to everyone. However, knowing how politicised football has become in recent years, I’m not counting on it.
I would be remiss if I didn’t give a shoutout to the real MVP on the field, Hong Kong singer G.E.M. (Gloria Tang), for doing her best to cheer up an angry and disappointed crowd, and trying to give them something worth their money. She’s the queen 🫅.
Lionel Messi will go down in history as the man who united both Hong Kong and mainland Chinese football fans, both pro- and anti-establishment Hong Kong voters, and both its political elites and grassroots citizens, to have such seething hatred towards the same person.
I don’t think even bona fide war criminals like Tojo Hideki would be able to accomplish such a feat in the Sinosphere these days. There were people who paid thousands of HK dollars for a ticket, and traveled to Hong Kong all the way from Xinjiang and abroad, just for a glimpse of the legendary “king of football”. Instead, all they got was snubbed.
There’s no other way to put it. Messi messed up, big time.
Right now nobody really knows what’s going on, why he refused to fulfil his contract (of playing at least 45 minutes on the field), and why he behaved in such a cold and arrogant manner towards his fans in Hong Kong, to the extent that he didn’t even once smile or wave at them.
But judging from the fact that he did play ball in Riyadh, and that he said in an interview he will play again in Kobe, Japan later on, my gut feeling tells me this probably has to do with politics. And before some of you start going “but muh oppression/human rights”, remember that he didn’t protest being in Saudi Arabia.
It’s just too much of a coincidence. You see, right now Hong Kong is trying to pass a law known as “Article 23”. For those of you not from here, I’ll give you the rundown version: Hong Kong, which is part of the People’s Republic of China, has a constitutional duty to enact a law covering secession and subversion (pretty much every country and region in the world has this type of law, by the way).
This was supposed to have been done ages ago, but the anti-establishment, anti-China, right wing types pushed back against any discussion of it every single time. After the violent far right riots in 2019, the local government began to take national security more seriously, which is why western media, unsurprisingly, is trying to depict Article 23 as dystopic and totalitarian.
My instinct is that even if this whole ordeal in Hong Kong was not political at first (he could have just been a dick – not the most outlandish thing about footballers, honestly), Messi will make it political and milk all he can from it. He’s going to turn this thing into another Daryl Morey, NBA-China controversy, hijacking an entire sport for his own political virtue-signalling, and as a pledge of allegiance to both the United States and his home country of Argentina (which is currently being run by a far right neoliberal demagogue, who is trying to abolish the national currency in favour of the US dollar, outlaw abortions, and legalise the organ trade).
If nothing else, this would at least help him win over a few crowds in certain parts of the world where Sinophobia is politically correct. He might even run for political office on this far right platform after retiring from football. Who knows.
Again, I have to stress that this is all just speculation on my part. Nobody but Messi and those closest to him would know what’s really going on. I hope I’m proven wrong, and that the same shitshow that happened in Hong Kong would repeat itself in Japan, thus proving he wasn’t being disrespectful specifically towards the Chinese, and that he’s just a snobbish cunt to everyone. However, knowing how politicised football has become in recent years, I’m not counting on it.
I would be remiss if I didn’t give a shoutout to the real MVP on the field, Hong Kong singer G.E.M. (Gloria Tang), for doing her best to cheer up an angry and disappointed crowd, and trying to give them something worth their money. She’s the queen 🫅.
Honestly, no way to be sure. On a Saturday night i was at a tavern having a few. I was supposed to leave and meet my Niece at another tavern. I wasted just enough time at the first place that my Niece and her friends decided to go to a different tavern. I was just about a mile down the road from the other tavern.
A whole load of police vehicles and emergency personnel trucks go flying by the first bar heading towards the other bar. A Shooting occurred at JB’s tavern; killing a bartender Named Jeff; who put himself between the gunman and his patrons.
The gunman did this because he was kicked out for harassing women. He went home shaved his head, dressed in camouflage, grabbed a rifle, and then finished his journey to insanity
He killed another man Rich; who I knew from my working in taverns. Jeff, I knew from school; he was a couple of years behind me. We weren’t best friends; but we both enjoyed playing poker. The killer also wounded like a dozen innocent people.
Luther Casteel was his name. I had to Google it because I was unsure of the spelling. He actually wounded 14 people and brought 4 weapons with him and a couple hundred rounds of ammunition.
I really cannot answer if my screwing around saved my life; but I believe that it saved my niece’s life.
Okay, this would have been cute if the guy wasn’t a huge piece of human garbage*. My crew and I were out to eat on Christmas Eve in Hawaii. One of the few places that was open was our hotel’s sushi restaurant. After eating a heroic amount of sushi, lard ass leaned back and explained, “that was so good. I’m famished!”
Read on for the rest of the story.
The flight attendant and I looked at each other and exchanged a glance. So, I casually said “How can you still be hungry after all that sushi?” He said “I’m not hungry, I’m famished.” I just said “famished is a synonym for starving.” He had to look it up. The n made some BS excuse.
Read on for my rant against this dumbass.
He was fucking stupid. His wife was pregnant with twins at the time. He was glad because he said twins would be easier than a single kid. Later, after they were born he would only talk about one of the. “Clair Bears” was what he called his daughter Clair. He rarely referred to her twin. We dubbed that one trash bag because it was obvious how he felt about his kids. He was just awful.
hong kong 香港 3/3 (if wong kar wai and wes anderson had a really bad short film as a baby)
My stepfather was an apartment building manager in Hollywood, California when I was a teen.
The modern building was large and well-kept. The one large ‘suite’ was a challenge to rent out because of the price and because it was just too luxurious for the neighborhood.
But the owner of the building found a tenant who exceeded her dreams: a young Arabian prince (a student?) who paid a hefty security fee and rental for a year upfront.
I rarely saw him and his entourage because they clubbed and partied until dawn.
When I did catch a glimpse, it was like watching a movie: a group of handsome, laughing young men dressed in flowing Arab robes, moving through the California sunshine.
When they left before the lease was up, the owner was told that the prince did not require rent and security deposit refunds.
The owner was delighted…until the suite was inspected.
The formerly white shag carpet had not been cleaned since the prince moved in, and much of it had a strange, dark tinge. The walls and ceilings were no longer pristine white either.
As the owner and my stepfather entered the massive livingroom, they discovered why the colors were so dingy.
The tenant had been using braziers ON THE CARPET to cook food, leaving greasy stains all over. Above, the ceiling was almost black from smoke. Mattresses had been dragged in from the bedrooms.
The kitchen was literally filled with spoiled food and dirty dishes and pans; the stove was caked all over with burned food. The refrigerator was a mold-filled, broken disaster.
The bathrooms were disgusting, and the owner backed quickly away and shut the doors because of the stench.
The 3 bedrooms had been used for pets (forbidden by the lease) – dogs and birds. Excrement and rotted food were everywhere.
Most cabinet and inside doors were damaged or missing. Old papers, clothes and other items as well as trash littered the apartment.
Reparing and refurbishing the suite took almost 6 months and cost way more than the substantial deposit and unused rent. A bill was forwarded to the prince’s lawyer and was paid promptly.
Note: In the interest of keeping this short, I have not written in detail about the destruction.
After being fed for two consecutive weeks, this beautiful stray cat became a part of the family.
I’ll tell you what happened to my dad, and you might understand. My dad owned part of the family business, he was the working partner in the business.
He worked 12–16 days, 7 days a week to make ends meet.
When I was 8 or 9 he had what was called at the time a nervous breakdown, he was in the hospital for months, and the business didn’t close.
He was out for two months, and my mom went in, evidently she had worked herself into a git, worrying about my dad, and the effect that only seeing him for an hour or two a day was having on the marriage.
My mother got a job. That wasn’t rare in the early 1960s , but it wasn’t common. My dad cut his hours to 10–12 hours a day 6 days a week. Still way too much, but now we took a yearly, week long camping vacation.
When I was 19 my dad had a heart attack, and they put the company up for sale.
When my dad got out of the hospital he was under strict orders not to work more than 40 hours a week. I dropped out of university to help run the family business, while they were selling it.
It took 4 years to sell the business.
My dads heart was never the same. He went to work for the new owners, working 36 hours a week, weekends off, for the first time in his life.
He retired at 65, and died before he was 66 .
That is why you don’t work at a job that stresses you out.
Ex-CIA: Biden is NOW a National Security risk for the world
After my first wife and I divorced, I joined a website “match.com” and started dating other women. I met all kinds of girls. Many of the dates were just a nice meal, or coffee. Some resulted in hook-ups, and a few were girls that I would end up spending a lot of time with.
One time, I dated a girl who was an assistant professor at Tufts University. Which is a pretty well-known university in the Boston area. And she was part of the Woman’s Studies program.
The date started off well enough, but our conversations kept on turning to what was wrong with the world and why men were the root of all evil.
Honestly, looking back, I get the impression that the ONLY reason why she went out with me was to somehow torture me for her pent up anger and unhappiness in her life. But I really don’t know for sure.
Anyways, after about an hour long bitch-fest, I finally managed to have an opportunity to talk.
She asked me “oh, so tell me about your life”. And I was pretty upset (but not showing it) by then.
So I remembered a line from a movie that I once watched.
I told her that I was born with a tail. And that my mother had the doctor cut it off when I was just a baby. I told her that it was kept in a jar of formaldehyde in the guest bathroom mirror, and that I personally believed that the tail was the reason why I was born with the ability to put curses on people.
After that, she didn’t know what to say, and we finished the meal quickly… yelling “I’ve gotta run. I’ll call you”.
Every now and again, I get a chuckle out of that memory. Remembering well, the puckered up expression on her face, and how she practically galloped out of the door.
My husband and I were away on a trip, and our older kids were holding down the fort (including our son who was home on leave from the Marine Corps). About 5:00 in the morning (2:00 a.m. at home), I sat straight up out of a dead sleep with one terrified thought: something was wrong at home.
My husband had been married to me over 20 years by then, and knew better than I did to never question when I got that instinct. He handed me the phone to call. I wasn’t sure what to say. “Just call. You’ll figure it out”, he responded.
The overwhelming feeling that something was very wrong wouldn’t let up. I called our daughter. She laughed and said everything was fine. I asked her to humor me and just go check. She said kids were asleep, so I asked her to go check the kitchen. Still chuckling at me she checked the stove and oven and declared them turned off. She looked about the rest of the kitchen until she turned in the direction facing the front doors. We have a large arctic entry so there are two front doors on each side of it so we come in from the cold and close one door and then open the second door to come to the house.
“Oh my God!” She cried out, and the phone went dead. I frantically tried calling back.
When she finally answered again, she told me both doors were wide open, so she called her Marine brother to come down from the upstairs apartment and he raced down. He did a security sweep of the house then the perimeter where he found evidence of bear on each side of the house. We question if the door was slightly ajar and the bear just pushed the doors open and started to come into the house until the phone rang.
That same mom vibe served me well when my Marines were deployed. I always seemed to know when to pray. It got to the point that whenever there was an incident, my other Marine son said he wouldn’t worry. Even when trapped in a doorway during a fire fight for five hours… because he knew his mom “knew” and was praying. Oddly enough, he was right. Thus another story.
A Cuban Sandwich
This is a labor-intensive recipe, but so delicious. You can opt to replace the Pan Cubano with ready-made bread, if desired.
2024 02 18 09 02
Yield: 6 sandwiches, 12 servings
Ingredients
Pan Cubano
4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons granulated sugar
2 teaspoons salt
2 1/4 teaspoons instant or active dry yeast
3 tablespoons fresh lard, cut into small pieces
1 1/4 cups (10 ounces) water
Roast Pork and Marinade
1 (1 1/4 pound) boneless pork roast or pork tenderloin
3 tablespoons minced garlic
3 tablespoons minced parsley
1 tablespoon paprika (preferably hot)
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons lime juice
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
2 tablespoons vegetable or olive oil
Sandwich Assembly
Sliced roast pork
3/4 pound thinly sliced smoked ham
3/4 pound thinly sliced Swiss cheese (or other melty cheese)
4 dill pickles, sliced
3 tablespoons butter or olive oil
Instructions
Pan Cubano
Manual Method
In a large bowl, combine all of the ingredients and stir until the dough starts to leave the sides of the bowl. Transfer the dough to a lightly greased surface, oil your hands, and knead it for 6 to 8 minutes, or until it begins to become smooth and supple.
Transfer the dough to a lightly greased bowl or dough-rising bucket, cover the bowl or bucket, and allow the dough to rise until puffy though not necessarily doubled in bulk, about 1 hour, depending on the warmth of your kitchen. Gently fold the dough in upon itself and turn it upside down after 30 minutes; this “turn” helps eliminate some of the excess carbon dioxide and redistributes the yeast’s food, both imperative for optimum yeast growth.
Mixer Method
Combine the ingredients as directed at left, using a flat beater paddle or beaters, then switch to the dough hook(s) and knead for 5 to 8 minutes.
Transfer the dough to a lightly greased bowl or dough-rising bucket, cover the bowl or bucket, and allow the dough to rise, with a turn, as directed above.
Bread Machine Method
Place all of the ingredients into the pan of your machine, program the machine for Manual or Dough, and press Start. Examine the dough about 10 minutes before the end of the final kneading cycle, and adjust its consistency with additional water or flour as needed, to produce a smooth, supple dough. Allow the machine to complete its cycle.
Divide the dough into six pieces, and shape each piece into a rough log. Let the logs rest for 15 minutes, covered, then shape each piece into a smooth batard shape (a log about 8 inches long, slightly tapered at each end). Sprinkle a baking sheet with cornmeal, and place the loaves on the baking sheet.
Let the loaves rise, covered, for 1 hour. Brush or spray them with water, and slash one long lengthwise slit down the middle of each loaf.
Heat the oven to 375 degrees F while the loaves are rising.
Transfer the loaves from the cornmeal-sprinkled pan to your oven stone (if you have one), or leave them on the pan and place them in the preheated oven (if baked on a sheet pan, the loaves will be slightly less puffy). Bake the bread for 16 to 18 minutes, or until it’s golden brown. Remove it from the oven, and cool it on a wire rack. The loaves may be made one day in advance and stored at room temperature, or several weeks in advance and frozen. Yield: 6 sandwich loaves.
Roast Pork and Marinade
Mix all of the marinade ingredients together (all of the ingredients except the pork), and rub this mixture over all surfaces of the pork. Cover well, and refrigerate for 6 to 24 hours.
Place the pork in a roasting pan or ovenproof dish, and roast it in a preheated 425 degrees F oven for 30 to 40 minutes, basting occasionally with the pan juices, until a meat thermometer inserted into the center of the roast registers 160 degrees F. Remove the pork from the oven, and cool it completely before slicing thinly.
Sandwich Assembly
Slice the Cuban loaves in half horizontally. Brush the cut surfaces of the rolls with olive oil, soft butter or the remaining pan juices. Layer the sandwiches as follows: Swiss cheese, sliced pickle, ham, sliced roast pork, then additional cheese.
Now comes the somewhat challenging part. You want to grill these sandwiches, top and bottom, while at the same time flattening them slightly. This helps meld all of the filling ingredients. Heat two large skillets, or a grill and one skillet, to medium-hot. Lightly grease the grill and/or skillets. Place the sandwiches in the greased pan(s). Top them with a piece of parchment paper, then the remaining skillet (or flat sheet pan, or other heavy, flat, non-meltable object — the point is to weigh them down). Press down firmly on the top pan, and weigh it down. A tea kettle filled with water makes a good weight, as does a clean brick wrapped in aluminum foil.
Grill the sandwiches for 5 to 8 minutes over medium heat, checking often to make sure the bottoms aren’t burning (we burned our first attempts to a crisp). Adjust the heat downward if the bottoms are becoming brown after only a couple of minutes. Turn the sandwiches over and grill for several more minutes, until they’re crisp on both sides.
I disturbed a burglar when I was about 19. He froze and I was so confused I initially thought it was my father (who I’d seen go to bed an hour earlier) pulling out drawers in the dark. When I got my wits about me I turned on the light, told him to stand up, and told him to turn out his pockets (which he did, returning a few items). I then told him to walk out on to our patio and sit down. The moment he got outside he ran, and I pursued half-heartedly as I didn’t really want to catch him by myself.
He vaulted over our back fence and landed almost on top of my brother and his friend who (unknown to me) had sneaked out for a secret cigarette before bed. The burglar said to him “don’t worry I’m just going home”, about two seconds before my brother and his friend sat on him.
They brought him around to the front of our house, and we (including my father who’d been awakened by my shouts during the “chase”) sat him on our front wall until the police arrived. It was cold and the burglar seemed a bit worked up so my mother made him a cup of tea.
No guns or weapons of any kind were involved. We live in England.
Why Most Men Have No Chance In Short-Term Dating – @hoe_math
The best example I can think of would be L. Ron Hubbard. Prolific science fiction writer turned dangerous cult leader. In a way, it’s hard not to admire the man for his honesty — because he did give the world the best quote ever on cults and shady false preachers:
“You don’t get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion.”
It’s fun, having your own religion. You can do whatever you want. You can say whatever you want. And since you’re the one and only “enlightened one”, the Great Messenger, no one can question you. Hubbard started off as a conman, but eventually came to believe his own nonsense. He was deeply mentally ill.
I remember Tom Cruise divorcing Nicole Kidman in the year 2001. One of the reasons for the divorce? Her father was a psychiatrist. And psychiatrists are “the enemy” according to Scientology, Hubbard’s invented faith. Not only because they would have told the great founder he was insane, but because they would have told his followers the same. Which would mean a loss of power.
Imagine creating a religion that thinks psychiatry is “evil”. Because your deeply mentally ill Messiah hated admitting he was deeply mentally ill, rather than a visionary. Decades after his death, your followers still hate psychiatry. They hate everyone and everything that might point out the absurdity in their views. It’s crazy, like Hubbard. But also impressive, like Hubbard.
HOE Math Explains Perfectly Why Men Love Inexperienced Women!
“Stuck on your highest setting,” is a brilliant way to describe the current female dating outlook.
Hoemath having his work vindicated in real time. Absolutely amazing.
Women don’t gain experience over the years they acquire trauma.
I drove up from Florida, in route to Atlanta, to visit family, and had tickets to see a Too Short show with my Sister.
Got pulled over in Newton County, GA cuzz, “my taillight was out?”
The female officer said, that my license were suspended ?
The male officer, told the female officer that the suspension didn’t look right, and could be a mistake.
Then the male officer, turned and asked me if I owed any back child support?
I said, “No, I’ve never had to pay child support.”
The female cop, asked for permission to search my vehicle, I said, yes.
She found one rusted up Coors light can thrown into the truckbed I was driving.
She told me to turn around, handcuffed me, and took me to jail charged with, suspended license, taillight, and open container.
So, I spent the night in jail and froze to death the whole time.
The next morning, I went in front of the jail judge, and he dropped all of the charges, except the open container.
The jail judge took me back to where the police were, and asked me if I had $20.00 cash? I said, “Yes.”
The judge told the officers to let me out of jail, ordered them to take the cuffs off me me and to not put me back into that jail cell, and to give me my belongings.
So, I paid $20.00 cash, then $200.00 to get the truck out, and I took the truck to the closest auto shop to get the taillight repaired.
Well, guess what ? The taillight wasn’t broken, and was in proper working condition. The auto dude couldnt give me proof of that bc he said, I could have went somewhere else and had it fixed.
When I went to court for the open container, the court judge charged me with suspended license, taillight, and open container.
My public defender showed the judge the proof I had from the Florida DMV, that my license were never suspended, he told the Judge that I had no prior convictions, not even a speeding ticket, and the jail judge has already dropped those charges.
The court judge looked at me finded me almost $1,900.00, a year probation or 10 days in jail.
Then the court judge told me, that he had authority over the jail judge so whatever charges he dropped will not be dismissed.
Then the court judge told me, “No one drives thru his county with a suspended license!”
He said pay your $1,900.00 fine, and we will take you off probation, or we can put you in jail for 10 days, if you have anything further to say.
I paid my fine and the charges were dropped so my record is clean but it was an awful night and it took me a while to get back on track financially, not to mention all the stress and trips back up to Georgia to straighten the shit out.
It is a huge money scam, tow truck people are all in on it, and there is nothing you can do about it!
I didn’t miss the Too Short show tho and me and my Sister had a blast!
Cops suck ass! They are lazy and they lie too much. Anything to meet that quota! They don’t care about you losing your job, missing a show, staying in jail cause you can’t afford to pay the bail. They don’t give one fuck.
Protect and serve my ass!!!
They are bullies with badges, and can fuck your life up, even when you’re an innocent law abisding citizen, it’s all legal and it’s getting worse.
Fuck’em!
Conservatives INSANE reaction to Gen Z Hating the 40 Hour Work Week
I was 17, driving my Dad’s Mercedes, drunk. A cop pulled me over, told me to exit the vehicle, and walk to the back of my car. I leaned against the trunk lid. The cop asked, “Where were you tonight?” I said, “At a party.” He asked, “Are you carrying any drugs or paraphernalia?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Toss it down by my feet.”
i did. It was a little pot and a pipe. He asked, “Have you had anything to drink?” I said, “Yes.” Then he asked me, “In an ideal world, what would you like to happen now?” I said, “I’d like to drive home and never do this again.”
The cop said, “I believe you. You’ve been completely honest with me. Drive straight home.” He got back in his car, and drove off. He never even knew who I was. He didn’t ask for my driver’s licence or even my name!
You don’t always need to be around people. People will want to be with you when you are happy by yourself.
People love boldness. You will be respected when you become a straight talker. Example: If you can’t provide a favor, say no instead of trying to please them.
If you don’t like yourself, no one else will. You must change what you don’t like about yourself and accept what you can’t change.
Swallow your pride and always accept your mistake. Deflecting blame is always seen as a weakness.
When you listen more instead of talking people feel special. In return, they will make you feel special.
When you share a few uncomfortable truths about yourself, people will feel comfortable and reciprocate. Example: When talking to someone new, share the truth about your nervousness.
Gen Zer explains why her generation is screwed when it comes to Dating & Marriage
Lavrov’s Remarks and Answers to Questions at the Conference Marking the 10th Anniversary of the Coup d’état in Ukraine
Karl Sanchez
There are times when it’s hard to tell if Sergey Lavrov is angry or not. Most of what he said, including in his answers, he’s said many times before. I know he must keep up decorum, but when you read the text it’s easy to see him fed up with having to say whatever it is once again. Maybe his blood was already boiling since he addressed the conference on Neocolonialism before this forum. In print, when he discusses anything related to the West, there’s nothing good to be expected from it. Yes, we must understand that this pot’s been coming to a boil for many years now, since before Maidan, and not everything that could be cited is anymore. I recall the tense seriousness of his discussions with Putin, the government and the Security Council that began in September 2021 and culminated in his verdict in January that the Outlaw US Empire would refuse the December security proposals and thus the military technical operation would need to commence. In November, it was decided at a tense meeting of the government that what was happening Donbass was Genocide and something needed to be done and very soon. Putin agreed Genocide was indeed happening, and we know the subsequent formulations. I covered all that while writing at my VK platform that remains operational. My opinion is Team Putin never anticipated that their European counterparts could be as evil as they’ve become—IMO, it’s very important that the word evil is almost never mentioned by Team Putin and other descriptions are invoked instead, while the accusations coming from the Outlaw US Empire and its vassals are usually 100% projection. However, in the following, Lavrov uses the term Nazi as an adjective twice, which is synonymous with evil and diabolical and close to universally agreed upon by Humanity.
This much longer than usual preamble perhaps serves to provide more context for Lavrov’s words, or maybe it’s because I need to provide some justification for essentially repeating a story I’ve heard too many times, and every time it merely raises my angst against the Outlaws who stole my nation and have caused so much grief in the world over my lifetime. Enough from me; here’s Lavrov. All emphasis mine:
Dear Colleagues,
I am sure that those present here are well aware of the current situation in Ukraine, who was in charge of the process, and what methods were used.
On February 9, President of Russia Vladimir Putin, in an interview with Tucker Carlson, once again
gavea detailed account of the story. If we talk about the geopolitical aspects and consequences of the coup in Kiev, first of all,
I would like to say that what is happening is yet another result of the policy of “divide and rule”, pitting different countries and peoples against each other, and provoking interstate conflicts. This policy has long been pursued in various regions of the world by the “collective West” led by the United States, or rather, with the Anglo-Saxons.The role that England is playing in current events is more aggressive and sophisticated in its provocative assertiveness than any other participant, including the United States.
When the Americans and their satellites proclaimed themselves the winners of the Cold War, they set a course for NATO expansion, ignoring all their obligations not to expand the North Atlantic Alliance and not to deploy significant combat forces on the territory of new members, given (orally and in writing) to the Soviet and then Russian leadership. That was the next stage. The block began to expand. But even then we agreed to sign
an agreementon the establishment of the Russia-NATO Council. Once again, we made a concession. The fact of expansion was acknowledged. In response, the alliance pledged not to deploy significant combat forces on the territory of new members.
This
Acthas not been repealed. Look at what’s happening now. On the territory of the new members, more and more large groups equipped with modern weapons began to train right on our borders.
If we talk about the position of the West towards Russia, then since gaining independence, Ukraine has always been considered by it as an anti-Russian bridgehead. In 2004, in fact, the first coup d’état took place. It was bloodless, but unconstitutional. When Viktor Yanukovych won in the second round, the West forced the Constitutional Court of Ukraine to issue a verdict on the need to hold a third round, which is not provided for by the Constitution. That’s how they “wrung their hands.” How did it all end? They were playing democracy. But the games of democracy, even according to their rules, did not help in 2010, when the people (primarily the votes of the south and southeast of Ukraine) elected Viktor Yanukovych.
Then the West began to prepare a coup in such a way that there would be no more “misfires”. To destroy the opposition once and for all, which has been happening for many years since the February 2014 coup.
In the same year, a coup d’état took place in a country called Yemen, which now also often flashes on the pages of newspapers and TV screens. President Abdel Abdullah al-Hadi fled to Saudi Arabia. For many years after that, the West unanimously demanded the return of the legitimate president of Yemen to its country and only then begin negotiations on a settlement with the opposition.
In the case of Viktor Yanukovych, we drew the attention of the French, Germans and Poles (who guaranteed the peace agreement that was broken the next morning) to the need to “reason with the opposition.” What did they sign up for? That there will be early elections, and a government of national unity will be formed for the period until the elections. And the morning after the coup d’état, Arseniy Yatsenyuk (there was such a leader among them) went to the Maidan and said that he congratulated everyone, that they had won and created a “government of winners.” Does no one see the difference between national unity and winners? So there are losers. You all know how the situation developed later. Those who did not accept the result of this putsch were declared terrorists and an “operation” was launched against them. There were such brutal episodes in this tragedy as the burning of 48 civilians in the House of Trade Unions in Odessa, the bombing of Lugansk and other cities of Donbass by military aircraft. The DPR and LPR declared independence. But even then there was still room for agreement.
Some time later, in the second half of 2014 (after Kiev announced an “anti-terrorist operation”), a meeting of the foreign ministers of Russia (represented by yours truly), the United States, Ukraine and the European Union took place in Geneva.
At that time, Oleksandr Deshchytsia was acting Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine and had powers from the authorities that illegally reigned in Kiev. We have agreed on the statement. Unfortunately, it was not published by agreement, as it was agreed that Oleksandr Deshchytsia would “check” in her capital. The statement, in addition to a clear call for de-escalation and an end to violence, called for the start of a broad national dialogue in Ukraine with the participation of all regions of the country, with an eye to its federalization. Despite our reminders, the participants of this meeting then “walked away” from the publication of this statement. Instead, Kiev began to solve the “Donbass problem” (as they called it) by force.
In fact, it set the same goal as Adolf Hitler when he announced the need for the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.”
Once again, we began to look for ways to cooperate to overcome the crisis. We persuaded Donbass not to abandon negotiations. President of Russia Vladimir Putin spoke about this in detail.
As a result, a year after the coup in February 2015, the agreements of the same name were signed in Minsk. Subsequently, you all know how then President of Ukraine Petr Poroshenko, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President of France Francois Hollande, who signed these agreements with Vladimir Putin, cynically and even proudly stated that they had no intention of fulfilling them. It took time to pump Ukraine with weapons against Russia.
This is a “stunning” confession – a “confession”, in fact. As a consequence of the fact that the West is using Ukraine in every sense to contain Russia and, as they now say, inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia, to prevent it from playing the role on the world stage that it rightfully deserves.
As a result, Ukraine, which received the richest industrial potential from the USSR and the Russian Empire,turned into the poorest state in Europe, into a territory, without exaggeration, dying. The Kiev authorities are already a universally recognized international beggar.
Ukraine’s independence is gone. Even before the coup of February 2014, starting with the Maidan, or even earlier,American and British advisers were sitting in most departments (including the Security Service of Ukraine). Now this is a standard, unsurprising practice.
They sit and make sure that money is not stolen, although no one will ever stop stealing. How will the West demand that Ukraine not steal the money it provides it with, if it is stealing our money? They are already openly discussing how to do it better so as not to violate their “moral” principles and not to create a precedent.
This is a vivid example of what “flirting” with the West and the thoughtless desire to integrate into its system of political and economic coordinates in any way leads to.There is no doubt that the West has declared war against us.
They don’t hide it.Although they say that they are only arming Ukraine, and it is the Ukraine itself that is fighting. Everyone understands that this is a lie. Western instructors monitor how the planning of the General Staff of Ukraine is carried out, help to guide to targets (we are 100% sure of this) and do much more. According to our information, the European External Action Service has made recommendations for Ukraine, which proceed from the fact that it will not be possible to win with the methods that Ukraine is currently fighting, and it will lose. Therefore, it is necessary to rely on the transfer of even more long-range weapons to this country so that they reach the “heart” of Russia (as the European Union describes it). In this way, they will once again sow confusion and panic and undermine the trust of the people.
Isn’t that direct participation in the war? Of course. In war, the main thing is strategy, and it is not in Kyiv, but far away.
Europe, eager to do something as soon as possible to end this drama with the defeat of Russia, in fact, serves the interests of the United States, does not care about its own interests at all. Look at the economic indicators, the negative growth, the recession in the leading European economies. President of Russia Vladimir Putin spoke about this in detail. Everything will probably become clear. All this is humiliated and accepted without complaint. There are no objections. Recall how after US President Joe Biden’s Nord Stream bombings announced in advance, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz went to Washington to bow down, where, apparently, he was told not to make any noise, and he returned without any news conference.
I would like to say that they are now trying to “gloom” (there is no other word for it) all the countries of the global majority, including those represented here (we are very glad to see you here), and to “drag” them into supporting Vladimir Zelensky’s completely dead-end “peace formula”. Its essence is that Russia must capitulate, go beyond the borders of 1991, and the Russian leadership must go to the tribunal and pay reparations. Everyone understands that this is a “dummy” and, at the very least, an unwise initiative.
But in order to lure normal countries that understand what is happening, in addition to the points I mentioned, they threw in supposedly neutral provisions: food security, energy security, nuclear security, prisoner exchange, and humanitarian issues. In total, there are 10 points in the formula, half of them are supposedly neutral.
Clearly, this is seen as a whole. When the countries of the Global South and the Global East are lured to “gatherings” that are organized to promote this “peace formula,” they are told that they understand that they do not like it, they understand their position that it is pointless to discuss anything without Russia. But they then say, they must support food security and sign up to “one” paragraph. As we say, these are “thimble makers”, as we say. I don’t know how it translates into English, but it’s an absolute “cheat” (there’s no other way to put it).
In Davos, there was another “gathering” on this “formula” of Vladimir Zelensky. The main thing they were interested in was a “group photo”. This is actually true. This is the EU’s recommendation to Ukraine: they say, do not go too far, do not force neutral participants, whom we are dragging into this process, to condemn Russia, the main thing is that “there is a photo.” I’m not kidding.
When I was in New York on January 23 of this year for the UN Security Council meetings on Palestine, Swiss Foreign Minister Ignores Cassis asked for
a meetingand suggested that Switzerland become the venue for the peace conference. In his conversation with me, he emphasised in every possible way that in Davos, after the meeting on the peace formula, he said at a news conference that it was necessary to solve problems involving Russia. I replied that if he said so, it means that he is sure of it, and then why did they gather without Russia?
This is not serious from the point of view of diplomacy of any country, and for the West to say that this is the only way forward, I think it is a shame.President of Russia Vladimir Putin,
commenting onthe results of his contacts with Tucker Carlson and during
the West must admit that it has taken a wrong course that has failed.Let the West look for a way out of the situation without losing face.
Vladimir Putin stressed that the West must return to the art of diplomacy, and the art of diplomacy, like the art of politics, is the art of compromise.
It is clear that all this unequivocally presupposes the recognition of the legitimacy of our demands, non-bloc status, the rejection of any NATO advance, the rejection of the militarization of Ukraine as a threat to the Russian Federation, and
the cessation of the Nazi policy of extermination, both legally and physically, of Russians and Russian-speaking citizens on the territory of Ukraine.
Remember, back in November 2021, before the decision to launch a special military operation, before the West rejected our initiative on European security, a journalist asked Vladimir Zelensky how he felt about the people living in Donbass, on the other side of the contact line. Vladimir Zelensky thoughtfully and artistically said that there are people and there are “specimens”. And he also said earlier that if someone lives in Ukraine, but feels involved in Russian culture, Russian civilization, then for the sake of their children and grandchildren, let them “fail” to go to Russia.
This was said by the president, who was elected under the slogans, firstly, of a peaceful settlement, and secondly, of the protection of the Russian language in Ukraine. He called for “falling behind” the Russians, allowing them to continue speaking their native language in Ukraine, as they had done for centuries. That’s how he changed his views back in 2021.
And the final touch. He stated that he would never implement the Minsk agreements. It was clear that they were stalling. From February 2015 to 2019, there were no positive developments, only the bombing of Donbass in violation of all the requirements of this document. In December 2019, President of Russia Vladimir Putin, President of France Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky
metin Paris at the initiative of the French and Germans, where they spoke in favour of “reconfirming” the Minsk Agreements, first of all, regarding the need for a direct dialogue between Minsk and Donetsk and Lugansk, and, secondly (no less important), in terms of enshrine their special status on a permanent basis in the Constitution of Ukraine. Vladimir Zelensky signed it. Some time later, when the events of February 2022 began, Oleksandr Yermak, Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said that Vladimir Zelensky had signed “just like that” so that they would fall behind. He wasn’t going to do anything. Like, they deceived us and “squeezed” us out of more time. This is the whole characteristic of the “characters” who now rule Ukraine and the West is betting on them in order to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia. If you want to go to the battlefield, it’s up to you.
Question: As you know, there are many mercenaries from Latin America on Kiev’s side. Do you think they pose a threat to democracy in these regions? Is there a security dialogue with the Latin American countries where they come from?
Sergey Lavrov: This topic is relevant not only for the situation in Ukraine.
It is known that mercenaries, including those from the Middle East, are actively used in the African region. In Ukraine, they are also fighting, including members of terrorist organizations like the Islamic State.
The Islamic State and its representatives are under the tutelage of the United States at the illegally occupied al-Tanf base in eastern Syria. Everyone knows this very well.The Islamic State itself came into being as a result of an attack on Iraq under false pretenses by the United States. Then the United States took over the administration of Iraq. They had the Gauleiter, the Governor-General (whatever you want to call him), Paul Bremer, who dissolved all the structures of the Baath Party. I just let it go. They were based on the Sunni branch of Islam. The backbone of the Islamic State was made up of officers of Saddam Hussein’s army, who had nothing to live on.
And the U.S. had a direct hand in this.It is interesting to see what the Americans have achieved in Iraq. The goals set are a complete failure.
Now, for the umpteenth time, the Iraqi government is asking them to withdraw their troops, but the U.S. is unwilling. That’s how big the Democrats are.
Al-Qaeda emerged after the Afghan saga, which also ended badly and shamefully. And after the invasion of Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra appeared, which later became known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
Whatever you call them, they are “mercenaries.” The same members of the Islamic State are sent for money to various hot spots. They’re paid thousands of dollars to do their jobs.
Clearly, this is a dangerous practice. Eventually, when their mission in a country is over, they will have to go somewhere else (they don’t know how to do anything else but organize terrorist attacks, shoot, kill people).
If people go there from Colombia or other Latin American countries, one day they will have an epiphany. Many American and British mercenaries have already said publicly on camera that they are completely disappointed in what is happening there, in these lofty “democratic” goals proclaimed by the Kiev regime and its Western sponsors. Some are returning to their home countries.
But if the people who remain in this war waged against us by the West go through a military phase in their lives, it is likely that they will return to it, especially since in Colombia there is someone to argue with and there has always been someone to compete with.
We hope that the Colombian leadership is well aware of this, as are the leaders of other countries. After all, what is the problem? In many respects, this process is connected with the gross violation
of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relationsby Ukrainian embassies. It is outrageous that there are offers to be recruited for war on their websites. Several times we have drawn the attention of the Western masters of this regime so that they would “reason” with them. Nothing happens. Somewhere it quieted down, and then the recruitment activity continues again.
Everyone should be aware that a neutral position and a call for a settlement are good. We appreciate that. This is the position of the World Majority (with the rarest of exceptions). No one has joined the anti-Russian sanctions. But when the countries of the global majority try to “frown” by convening meetings under the slogan of Vladimir Zelensky’s “peace formula” as the only approach to a settlement, it is necessary (at least) to show that everyone understands everything and does not want to play this game.
Mercenary activities are part of the problem. This must be fought. There were thousands of mercenaries in Ukraine. According to our military, now there are less than half of them. The rest either left or met their inglorious end. [Lavrov could have gone much deeper and mentioned the Outlaw US Empire’s longstanding use of its Terrorist Foreign Legion to attain its goals in South America where it has a very long history going back to the 1850s.]
Question: Against the backdrop of President Vladimir Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson, the rating of Republicans in the United States is generally rising. The opinion of the people in the West about Russia is changing dramatically. Previously, they did not know about what was happening in our country because it was not covered. How do you see the prospects for restoring relations with the West in the event of a change of government, especially in the United States (if Donald Trump becomes president)? Will they recognize the new territories? Will there be a resumption of cooperation?
Sergey Lavrov: Regarding the position of the Republicans and the “epiphany” that suddenly appeared in American society after President Vladimir Putin’s
interviewwith Tucker Carlson. For me, the main thing is that, as it turned out, US citizens live in a complete information blockade. They are “fed” with the internal narrative, primarily of the Democratic Party. Fox News is the only exponent of Republican sentiments, but after the departure of T. Carlson, the tone has also changed.
It turns out that there is no question of any freedom of speech. Although the American Constitution requires that there be access to any information. But in addition to this, there are also commitments made within the framework of the OSCE in 1991 inMoscow. At the initiative of the West, it was written in black and white (and the Soviet Union signed the demands): to ensure free, unrestricted access to information in each member state of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Special mention is made of information that originates both inside and outside the country concerned. This is a direct requirement.
Our friends from the diplomatic corps and all Russian citizens see in the news that “a good half” is a story about the position of the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, and the European Union on Ukraine or any other international event.
Our public is familiar with the point of view of the West. Yes, in most cases this is criticized, but everyone is free to draw their own conclusions. We do not censor what is said in the West.All this is shown, and then political scientists discuss it.
As for the restoration of relations, President of Russia Vladimir Putin also spoke about this in
He explained that the West must admit its mistake and find a convenient way out. But with the full understanding that the problem of Ukraine, as we have identified it, must be resolved. He added that someday relations will be restored. When this happens is not up to us.
That’s their problem.President Vladimir Putin recalled that we had made so many concessions and gestures of goodwill. The limit has already been reached.
On their part, in response to our good deeds, we saw other gestures on one hand.
Question: What are the main consequences of the Euromaidan protest for the ordinary population of Ukraine? How to restore relations in the future?
Sergey Lavrov: There are living witnesses of those events here. I think they can describe it in brighter colors. But it is written in Ukrainian laws that a course has been taken to destroy everything Russian.
“Euromaidan” affected everyday life, access to information, education in the Russian language, which was used by more than half of the citizens. According to some estimates, 80% of the population of Ukraine feels that the Russian language is more comfortable in communication. All this is forbidden by law. Up to everyday situations: the saleswoman may refuse to serve if you address her in Russian. A few months ago, Kiev Mayor Viktor Klitschko issued a city regulation banning all cultural events in the capital: exhibitions, performances, film screenings, etc.
When this word was mentioned in the context of the
the policy pursued by the Kiev Nazi regime towards Donbass and Russians in general,Ukraine filed a lawsuit against Russia in the International Court of Justice. By demanding that the court recognise the groundlessness of the accusations of the Zelensky regime of carrying out a policy of genocide.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has concluded a decades-long debate. It made a verdict that we did not violate any conventions. Moreover, it rejected the Ukrainian claim that they were fighting terrorist regimes in Donetsk and Luhansk. The entire ideological basis of the “anti-terrorist operation” that Kiev launched after the coup d’état and then continued contrary to
the Minsk agreementshas been debunked. Now there are “local assaults on people” – they can pull them out from anywhere (from a cinema or a bathhouse) and send them to the “slaughter”. Bad consequences.
Millions of Ukrainians have found their shelter in our country. Here they are perceived as absolutely equal to us. Brothers, sisters, people with whom we have shared joy and sorrow. We have families on both sides. Rosbrothers. Both in Ukraine and in the Russian Federation. They are at home here. And the main thing is that those who come to us feel at home themselves. We will do everything we can to make them feel this way.
Question: The other day, the US government asked Congress for $100 billion: $65 billion for Ukraine, $15 billion for Israel and $20 billion for Taiwan. They will enact this sooner or later. Several European countries have begun to say that Ukraine should be part of NATO. Where are we going? Are there any possibilities for a peace conference?
Sergey Lavrov: This is not a question for us. We have answered it many times. President of Russia Vladimir Putin touched upon this issue. In April 2022, there was an agreement that has already become the talk of the town. The Anglo-Saxons forbade Vladimir Zelensky to sign the agreed agreement, which was acceptable to both the Ukrainian and Russian delegations. And so it happened.
To reiterate, there is a decree issued by Vladimir Zelensky prohibiting talks with Vladimir Putin’s government. When the West raised such questions, our President repeatedly said that it was necessary to force him to cancel this decree and say so publicly. The ball is not in our court. Everyone understands this very well.
At the same time, it is said that the Swiss are announcing a peace conference. But at the same time, the West unanimously declares that it is only on the basis of Vladimir Zelensky’s formula. Therefore, friends from Asia, Africa, and Latin America should choose the most “innocuous” points from these ten points (food or energy security), and the Westerners will write them down to participate in a “collective photo” in support of this “formula.” What kind of diplomacy is this?
They have not been engaged in diplomacy for a long time. Instead, there is blackmail and sanctions. Any issue that seems important to the West is never the subject of an honest discussion.
The UN Charter states that the United Nations is based on the sovereign equality of States. The most important point. Imagine retrospectively the various conflicts that have taken place since the creation of the World Organization in 1945. There is not a single conflict in history in which the West has been involved, either before or after the creation of the Organization, in which the United States and its allies have observed the principle of sovereign equality, and this obligation is enshrined in the Charter – to respect the sovereign equality of states. Therefore, the conference is apparently understood as a “collective photograph”, the participants of which will later say that there is a “formula” of Vladimir Zelensky, and that on this basis they invite Russia. I think it will be humiliating for them. Most people are well aware that this is neither diplomacy nor politics. So we don’t have the ball.
Question: In view of the fact that after the end of the
special military operation(even if not now), there is a transformation of the world order and international relations in general. Are there any plans to reform the UN, in particular the Security Council, under the auspices and within the framework of the initiatives and efforts of the Russian Federation, which is its permanent member? In view of the fact that we have repeatedly sent inquiries and requested various sessions to consider the terrorist attacks that took place on the territory of our country, in particular in Belgorod. Just yesterday. Will we somehow advance these efforts so that the UN Security Council acquires a new character and international law is respected?
Sergey Lavrov: Reform of the UN has been discussed for a long time. It’s overdue. For me, there are two main aspects of this reform. One is conceptual, the other is practical.
We are convinced that theUN Chartercontains all the necessary principles, respect for which will ensure peace and security.I gave an example that when the Americans need something, they look at what principle of the Charter to take as a justification for their actions. When it was necessary to declare Kosovo’s independence unilaterally, they said that it was based on the principle of self-determination of peoples enshrined in the UN Charter. When an open, transparent referendum in Crimea with the participation of many international observers decided to reunite with Russia, they did not accept it, condemned it and said that it violated the principle of territorial integrity.
Since the inception of the United Nations, there have been debates about whether the self-determination of peoples or territorial integrity is more important. Self-determination of peoples is mentioned earlier in the UN Charter. But a multi-year negotiation process was initiated, culminating in the adoption of the Declaration
sovereign and independent States which observe in their actions the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples as set forth above, and, consequently, have governments which represent, without distinction as to race, creed or colour, all the people inhabiting the territory.” After the coup d’état, did the Kiev regime represent the population, a huge part of Ukraine? Of course not. So it’s conceptual.
A fundamental part of our position is that the UN Charter should remain at the heart of all the activities of the legal community, but with the understanding that its principles should be applied in their entirety and in all their interrelatedness.
The practical judgment is (there are many aspects of reform now) that everyone is primarily interested in the reform of the UN Security Council. This topic is in the public eye all the time. The prestige of the countries that want to get into this body on a permanent basis is directly related to this. The reform should unequivocally eliminate historical injustices and ensure fair representation of the countries of the global majority – Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
The current composition of the UN Security Council was formed at a time when the consequences of decolonization had not yet been realized, when the newly liberated free and independent countries were just arranging their own internal lives and getting used to the new quality. It is clear that the situation on the world stage is radically different now. Economic giants such as China, India, and Brazil are on the rise. In Africa, there is a movement towards the realization of its own identity and in favor of rejecting the rudiments of colonial policy, when resources are pumped out of Africa, and all the added value is produced in the former metropolises and the main profits are generated there. It is necessary to ensure the admission of representatives of the developing world to the UN Security Council. We have publicly said that we support India and Brazil as candidates for permanent membership in the UN Security Council, with the understanding that at the same time a similar additional presence in Africa will be ensured.
We have warned our Indian and Brazilian friends (and we explain this at every turn) that it is unacceptable for us to replenish the UN Security Council with any new representative of the West. Currently, six of the fifteen members of the UN Security Council represent Western countries. Sometimes Japan is added, pursuing a purely Western policy. Granting more seats to the western group would only mean deepening the injustice. Germany and Japan aspire to “infiltrate” the Security Council together with India and Brazil, but they will not succeed. From a purely arithmetical point of view, the West is already disproportionately represented.
Now to the point. Name at least one issue of international politics in recent years on which Germany or Japan would have taken a stand. Any. All of them are “built” by the West. There’s nothing you can do about it.
There were sensible ideas about leaving one seat in the UN Security Council for the “collective West,” for NATO.
You mentioned the UN Security Council’s consideration of various crisis situations, including terrorist acts carried out by the Ukrainian regime on a regular basis and to which the West is pushing it to continue. I quoted the EU’s instruction to Kiev in which direction it should “work”.
A few days ago, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron unleashed a neo-colonial “mantra” urging people not to abandon Ukraine under any circumstances. Vice versa. It is necessary, they say, to “pump” it with the most modern weapons as much as possible. Condemnation of such terrorist acts is possible only with the consent of all members of the UN Security Council. In most cases, the Americans “shield” the Kiev regime and do not “pass” these resolutions.
There is a lot of talk about proposals to abolish the veto.This is what many developing countries have been saying in discussions on Security Council reform.
The right of veto is not a privilege, but a tool for ensuring well-considered decisions and preventing unilateral resolutions that can bring imbalance to world politics.
The West has practically lost the culture of work in the UN Security Council, which has always relied on the ability of the five permanent members, each of whom has the right of veto, to come to an agreement, to seek compromises on any complex issue and never to provoke a veto by putting to a vote resolutions that are unacceptable to any of the five members.
We have always been ready for this kind of work. The Americans, along with the British and French, have chosen a different style that is detrimental to the UN.
It is unrealistic to abandon the veto. Then the United Nations, like the League of Nations, will turn into a useless structure that will only further escalate confrontation.
Reform is a long process. It should reflect a common understanding at this stage of the tectonic changes taking place in the world in the context of multipolarity processes.
I know Lavrov wants to remain optimistic, but the realities against that are formidable. Yes, Russia and the Global Majority will continue to grow stronger, but the planet will remain chaotic as long as the Outlaws exist. And remember, they are Nazi-like and thus extremely diabolical—they will continue to attain their objective no matter the cost as all means justify their goal which is to keep their hegemony. All sorts of reality can, and has been, thrown in their faces, but they are blind to it and can only see their goal. Those hiding behind the Front Men and Women must be exposed and made visible in the public’s eyes—the Bidens, Trumps Kennedys, and their ilk are screens to shield. That’s why policy is contiguous—it matters not which flavor is in charge anymore, although there’s currently a theatre ongoing to make it seem otherwise.
I made one parenthetical comment and could have provided more. Lavrov provided a warning to fence-sitting nations that even what appears to be a safe position actually isn’t, that joint, in resolute solidarity, resistance to the West is the only real path forward. In his talk yesterday, Lavrov expressed the idea that regional solidarity will meld into global solidarity and regional organizations will then become global. That’s the only real way to control the Global Fracture that’s now occurring. There’s more to be said about the historic Global Big Picture that shows a distinct continuity over the last 4,000+ years where the great mass of people have tried again and again to establish a fair social contract with rulers/governments. Today’s conflict is all about ending the one last Great Tyranny, which as mentioned is the same Tyranny that’s been existing and plaguing Humanity for centuries.
I’ll tell you a story about respecting the court. My step daughter was a young teen and had some case against her. On the day of court she got up and put on jeans and a t-shirt I told her to change into a nice Sunday church dress with no heels. She wasn’t happy but did it. We were towards the end of the docket. All the other defendeants that got up were dressed similarly as she had been initially. The judge made a stern ruling quickly and moved on. When it was her turn and she stood he stopped. Talk to her about what she did wrong and about how she looked like she probably learned a lesson and he let her off pretty easy, a little community service. The lawyer even told us that wasn’t his normal but he’s sure it was because of how she was dressed. So if you want to go in and not stand, show disrespect to the court don’t expect things to go favorably for you. And consequences can be contempt of court with jail time, dismissing your case until you can be respectful or loosing your case to getting a harsher sentence. So think about that before you decide to do something so stupid
I worked at a mom and pop home center. Like a small Home Depot, but privately owned. An older gentleman came in a lot to buy small stuff. I spent time with him, took him outside to look at lumber, cut a few boards to size. One so he could build a bird house. Not money making at all. I even hauled a few boards to his house in my own truck on my lunch break, it was on the way. Boss had told me to knock it off, I was costing him too much money. A week or so later the guy comes in, we talk, he leaves. Boss is pissed, wants to know WTF he wants this time? “ Oh he wanted to give us this” I handed the boss a check for $25,000. Seems the man was building house, hired the builder I introduced him to, and based on his and my relationship, he intended to buy building materials from us. Cash up front. When the $25,000 was used up, he left more, until the house was done.
As I child I remember a time where I had built sandcastles, left for a few minutes, only to find a group of kids kicking down my creations. So what I did was build them on top of large rocks. I left again. When I came back I watched them kick the sand castles down again. They immediately stopped after one of them broke their foot on a rock.
The lessen is that sometimes you have to outfox people to teach them a lesson. Deception and misinformation is key. It’s not hard to punish someone who steals an idea from you. If you get a little creative, you can deeply embarrass the culprit, even destroy their career. Don’t be alarmed when they steal your work, act like you are gullible, stupid, and didn’t even notice so that they’ll do it again. Hide a watermark or code or leave your name in metadata some where so they don’t notice. Then once they’ve done it again you’ve got your watermark to prove it was your work, then go to HR with documentation exposing their fraudulent behavior. It’s fun to outsmart such people because they tend to be Narcissists and they will have an existential crisis once they realize they’ve been outwitted. They absolutely cannot stand being bested by someone else, especially in the manipulation department.
Hot and Spicy Cubano Sandwich
Cubano Sandwiches main
Prep: 15 min | Cook: 90 min | Yield: 8 servings
Cuban Sandwich Recipe
Cuban sandwiches are one of my favorite indulgences. They hit all the right spots and then some. I wanted to create a Cuban sandwich recipe that would make any Cubano connoisseur proud – and I think this recipe does just that. At least both my foodie critic husband and I couldn’t stop stuffing our faces as he repeatedly awed “these are so good!”
After experimenting, I stumbled upon a few key elements that make the best Cuban Sandwich recipe. I’ll go into greater detail below, but for starters, you need the best Cuban Mojo Roast Pork for the best Cuban sandwiches! It is all about the pork. I posted my mojo pork recipe separately because it is stand alone delicious and absolutely hypnotic in these Cubanos. If you don’t use the mojo pork recipe, I cannot guarantee epic delicious results. Plus, you can prep the pork days ahead for stress free Cubano assembly.
Second, use the right filling ingredients. Aged Gruyere Swiss cheese (not the rubbery Americanized version) and Black Forest ham add dimensions of gourmet flavor and thinly slicing whole dill pickles delivers the perfect thickness so all the ingredients beautifully meld together.
Lastly, you might be wondering if you can achieve the coveted buttery, golden crispy crust characteristic to Cuban sandwiches without a plancha or paninin press – the answer is yes! No press, no problem! The inside of the bread is first toasted (no soggy Cubanos here!) and then slathered in a mustard sauce spiked with some reserved mojo marinade. This amps up the flavor again. Next we create our own panini press by placing the bread in a buttered skillet or grill pan and top it with another heavy skillet to weigh it down. The resulting Cubano sandwiches are buttery, crispy and compressed – just like the restaurants. Or better.
I’m going to go into more details about Cuban sandwiches from their history to specifics on ingredients to step by step instructions. Read on or use the “jump to recipe” button at the top of the post. I hope you love this Cuban sandwich recipe as much as us! Happy eating!
What is a Cuban sandwich?
The Cuban sandwich, better known as a Cubano in the US and simply sandwich in Cuba, is a decadent Cuban grilled ham and cheese sandwich that has reached mainstream popularity all over the US. It is the ultimate sandwich for every pork lover and a must for every non-pork lover alike.
The Cubano begins with hearty yet soft, slightly sweet Cuban bread slathered with yellow mustard then loaded with layers of Swiss cheese, tangy pickles, sliced mojo pork, smoked ham and more cheese, then buttered, grilled and pressed to create a super crispy exterior and cheesy interior.
There’s nothing fancy or difficult about making the Cuban Sandwich, but the varying layers create a symphony of flavors and textures with each element filling a specific roll. It’s tangy and tart from the pickles and mustard, smokey and salty from the ham, zesty, citrusy and herbaceous from the mojo pork, buttery and slightly sweet from the bread all sandwiched together to create soft, crunchy, melty cheesy textures. Are you drooling yet? With one bite you will be. If you’re planning to devour just one half of a Cubano, heaven help you, you’ll need will power of steel.
MIAMI VS TAMPA CUBAN SANDWICHES
Both Miami and Tampa claim to have the best version of the Cubano Sandwich. The difference between the two Cubano variations is minimal. Both Miami and Tampa versions share the classic Cubano structure discussed above of Cuban bread, ham, Cuban roast pork, Swiss cheese, and pickles, but the Tampa version features a layer of Genoa salami, the Miami version does not.
Genoa salami is a kind of salami believed to have originated in Genoa, Italy. It is seasoned with garlic, salt, black and white pepper, and red or white wine. The Tampa contingent believes salami adds yet another layer of salty flavor to the already decadent sandwich, which makes their version superior. To prove their point, the Historic Tampa Cuban Sandwich was designated the “signature sandwich of the city of Tampa” by the Tampa City Council in 2012. Miami, on the other hand, stands by their Cuban Sandwich motto that simple is superior.
So how did salami become a staple in Cuban Sandwiches in Tampa? In the early 1900s, Tampa was the home to both many Cuban and Italian immigrants. As the people and cultures mingled, so did their foods and eventually, salami, a staple on Italian sandwiches,became a staple on Cubano Sandwiches in Tampa.
As far as which is better? We know what Tampa and Miami will say, but in the end, it comes down to personal preference. I personally think salami makes everything better, even Cubano Sandwiches. So, if you like salami, chances are you will love it on Cubanos; if the jury is still out, it’s better to omit the salami because it’s not a subtle addition.
Ingredients
2 pound boneless pork loin roast
1 pound honey ham, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 cup Chinese mustard, divided
8 whole wheat submarine rolls, sweet rolls, or 7 to 8 inch sections of French or Italian bread
3/4 cup red plum, red currant, or raspberry jam or jelly
8 slices Swiss cheese
2 (7 ounce) cans green chiles, drained and sliced
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
Instructions
Heat oven to 450 degrees F.
In a small bowl, combine salt, pepper and 1/4 cup of the mustard. Spread mixture on all sides of the pork. Place pork, fat side up, in a shallow roasting pan and roast for 15 minutes.
Reduce oven to 350 degrees F and continue roasting for 40 to 45 minutes, or until the internal temperature reaches 145 degrees F (medium rare) to 160 degrees F (medium).
Remove roast from oven and let rest 10 minutes.
Slice very thinly and set slices aside.
To prepare the sandwiches, halve the rolls, laying all 16 halves out, and butter the outside of each of them. On half of the halves, spread the remaining mustard (1 1/2 tablespoons). On the other half of the sandwich halves, spread 1 1/2 tablespoons of jam. Arrange ham, roast pork, cheese, and chiles on the mustard halves of each sandwich, then top with the jam halves.
Prepare a grill to medium-hot heat. Lay a double layer of foil on the grill, large enough to hold the sandwiches. Place sandwiches on the foil, place bricks over the sandwiches (2 sandwiches per brick), and press down gently.
Grill until the bottom of the bread is browned and cheese starts to melt, 2 to 3 minutes. Turn, replace the bricks, and grill for 2 minutes more.
Cut sandwiches in half and serve.
Notes
You can also cook the sandwiches on a stovetop griddle or grill—weigh them down with foil-wrapped bricks or other heavy objects, like a plate of canned goods. If you want to make less than 8 sandwiches, use less of everything except for the roast ingredients—then save the leftover roast for another use. And if you like things extra-spicy, try substituting sliced pickled jalapeños for the chiles.
When I was twenty my parents, who had divorced but were now living together, asked me to go on a weekend trip with them.
I was amazed my father would even ask. We weren’t close, I barely spoke to him! He had been physically abusive to my mom, siblings, and especially me my whole life.
I ran away from home at 13, married at 16 so I’d never be under his thumb again. Yet suddenly he wants to be cozy! My mom was a sweet but weak woman! She just never knew when to get out.
This invitation came on the weekend of my 20th birthday, my dad was insistent I go. I came up with all sorts of excuses. I had to work, my husband had to work, dad was fine with the latter excuse (said just the 3 of us would be great). I knew it was a rotten idea from the beginning, he’d get drunk, they’d fight, I’d be referee. No way!
The more he pushed the idea the worse I felt about it, I just knew something was wrong. I finally just said there was no way I’d go we’d already made plans for a birthday party with friends so they went alone.
Two days later on my 20th birthday the State Police came to tell me my parents were dead, my father had killed my mother and then committed suicide. From a note he had left it was quite clear why he was so adamant that I came along. My instincts that day told me the trip was a bad idea and yes I was right.
I had told mom after the divorce to never let him back in her life but she always thought he would change. I have posted parts of this answer before and just want to say in advance that I am fine with my life. I am happily married to the love of my life with a amazing grown son and grandchildren. I’ve had a lovely full life filled with great times! Unfortunately my sibs are all gone after failed marriages, drugs, and alcohol. They chose to be victims and spend their lives blaming our parents for all that’s gone wrong in life, where I chose to learn and never make the mistakes they did! Not sure if I am editing this in the correct manner to add a afterthought but here goes anyway! I am surprised by the number of views and upvotes, personally I didn’t think anyone would even care. I mean it happened so long ago and as the only survivior I am long over the whole thing. But at times I do wonder if others out there experienced the double murder or murder suicide of parents and also survived relatively unscathed or if because of the abuse I’m simply detached from the situation. Just something I think about! Please excuse my run on sentences, its just how my thought process works. Thanks for all the kind thoughts.
Today I visited Quora, and saw a post written by my half-sister. She is my father’s daughter with his second wife. And it was a tribute to my dad.
I hadn’t talked to her since my dad died, and she lives in Erie, and I have long forgotten about her. I left a comment to her… telling thank-you for her tribute to our mutual father. Nine sentences.
I do not want to open up dialog with her, as I have long since given up on my old family back in the states, but I did get something nice out of it. I got a picture of my father when he was in the Air Force in his 20’s.
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I will still stay away. I have ZERO interest in any continuing dialog for any reason. But in regards to this, let me show you all my father… handsome man.
Years ago my son was working as a tow truck driver. He was sound asleep at 2 AM when he got a call. He jumped up finishing getting dressed as he was running out the door. The call was for a car on the freeway so those are a priority. He drove to the car and found the guy had gotten out on the side of the freeway and locked himself out of his car. It was not hard to figure out he’d probably been drinking a little and stopped to urinate. So my son got there and quickly opened up the car and told the man the fee is $185. That is the standard fee for a call to the freeway. The man flipped out and told my son that was ridiculous and he was NOT paying that kind of money. My son explained that was the standard fee of all the towing companies for a call out to a freeway. My son was polite and professional the entire time but this man said: “That took you two seconds and I’m not paying $185 for that!!”. My son finally just looked at him and said “You’re not? Ok then” and my son walked over to the car, tossed the keys on the seat, locked the door and walked to his tow truck and got in and drove away. I guess that man didn’t understand that while it took my son 2 seconds because he’s good that my son had already worked all day and was sound asleep at 2 AM. My son doesn’t make any $185 for that call but instead was making $15 an hr. He could have not answered the phone at all at that hour but he’s a good person. He gets up and goes out. I sure hope that the next car that came by was not a CHP and that guy ended up with a DUI. If he did then he was wishing he paid $185. He had to pay it anyway when the next truck came from some other company.
My boss asked me to deliver a lamp to a photographer at Condé Nast publications in New York City. They are the publishers of glossy magazines such as Vogue, W, Glamour, Allure, Self, Teen Vogue, Lucky. Their offices and studios are absolutely stuffed with gorgeous women; some for photo-shoots, but also many models who retired into the fashion- magazine business.
I got into an elevator which was immediately packed with a crowd of stunningly beautiful young women headed to various photo studios. I inhaled the intoxicating perfume and slyly whispered to the elevator operator, “Now THIS is the happiest place on Earth.” He chuckled knowingly.
I delivered the lamp, and caught the down elevator. When we got to the main floor, the elevator emptied, and I asked the operator, half-kidding, “How does one get a job like this?”
I was surprised when he responded, “You just apply at the front desk in the lobby. The pay is really great, full benefits, AND since most of the models are lonely and from out-of-town, you can date all the hot supermodels you could possible want. So make sure you pick up an application on your way out…then take the bus to Cleveland.”
“Cleveland?” I asked.
“Well,” he grinned, “That’s where the back of the line is.”
Gulyas (Hungary)
“Gulyas” means cattle- or sheep-herder in Hungarian. This hearty soup has traditional roots in the foods prepared by rustic herders, long ago. Serve the soup in bowls topped with sour cream.
Wipe beef with damp cloth; cut into 1-inch cubes. Place oil in Dutch oven. Add beef; brown well on all sides. Remove from pan with slotted spoon; set aside.
Add onions and garlic to pan; cook 4 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add paprika, cayenne, stock, the 2 cups water, caraway, marjoram, salt, pepper and meat. Stir well. Bring to boil over moderate heat. Reduce heat to low; cook, covered, 45 minutes.
Add tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, and peppers. Stir well; return to boil. Cover; cook 30 minutes.
Combine flour and the 2 tablespoons water; stir to form smooth paste. Add slowly to soup, stirring well. Cook over low heat, stirring until thickened. Drop Csipetke (noodle/dumplings) into soup before serving, if desired.
I have a friend from my graduate days. A quiet, gentle, unassuming guy, with a permanent smile on his face. I never saw him agitated. Or elated. He took everything as it came – the good and the bad.
Being academically average, the both of us started our MBA prep in the third year. Attended the same classes in our fourth. During the mid of the year, I relocated to Bangalore for a 6 month internship, he stayed back at campus. He always aced his mock tests, but, unfortunately, just a few months prior to D-Day, his father passed away. He didn’t do as well in the actual exam as he could have. Consequently, he couldn’t make it to a good college.
Now being the sole earner in the family, he took up the best offer at hand. A mass recruiter paying around 3–3.25 lpa and resumed prep for the next year’s exam. He didn’t make it this time either. Not one to get disheartened, he tried again the following year. They say “third time’s a charm”, and it was for him.
He got into one of the best MBA colleges in the country, worked hard for another 2 years, and graduated with honors (top 5% of the batch). Landed himself a cushy job with a boutique trading firm making 10x of what he was.
During all of these years, I never heard him rant about his rotten luck. Or bitch about his problems. Or complain about the unfair advantage that the rich and powerful have. He just kept his head down and kept working with what he had (talent) and what was handed to him (luck).
So, “what is the single most underrated trait a person can have”?
Freshman year I was living in the dorms. I was living in the cheapest dorms on campus, so it was me and a roommate living with 30 other girls with two communal bathrooms on the 11th floor.
I was on that unlimited meal plan flow, and the freshman 15 had become a reality. I decided it was time to go on a health kick.
I had an (illegal) crockpot in my dorm. One of these bad boys.
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I bought myself some fish (I think it was tilapia), rice, and broccoli.
I threw it all in that crockpot with some vegetable broth, turned it on, and went to the gym.
I stayed at the gym for 3 hours, then got some food afterwards for a total of four hours.
I returned to my dorm and got on the elevator.
As soon as the elevator doors opened, a stench of fish attacked my nostrils. It permeated every corner of the 11th floor.
I knew immediately I had made a big mistake.
My RA was searching every inch of our floor for the source of the smell. Girls were out in the halls spraying Febreze. People were speculating that some girl on our floor was having major lady problems.
I waited until my RA was no longer in sight of my room. I opened my door. The stench of fish almost made me pass out, it was so strong.
I ran and turned my crockpot off and bagged all the fish up and put it in my refrigerator. No one could know it was me.
I was lucky that my roommate went out of town that weekend so she didn’t have to know about it.
Since I didn’t have a sink in my room, I’d have to wash the Crockpot out in the public bathroom, which was a high risk situation of me getting caught.
I first decided to soak it with dish soap and water which I carried in a water bottle from the sink to my room.
Then, when it had soaked, I took it to the shower so I could wash it behind a curtain to lower the risk of anyone seeing me.
I disposed of all of the evidence before my roommate came back.
Our entire floor smelled like fish for four days. It was bad.
By the time my roommate came back, I had done my best to air out our room and febreze everything.
However, every fabric held a slight smell of fish. All of her and my clothes, our bedspreads, and our carpet had a small stench.
She would notice that her clothes smelled like fish every once in a while and she’d say “How did this happen? Do your clothes smell like fish too?”
I’d be like “Yeah, that is so weird. It’s probably the water here.”
I was successful, no one ever found out that the source of the fish stench was me and my crockpot until years later, when I willingly told some of my friends. (Which they now never let me forget)
But I learned an important lesson that day, one that all college freshman should follow:
My first husband passed away in January, 2001. My daughter was 16 at the time, in 10th grade. I permitted her to take a week and a half off to grieve, but getting homework assignments from her teachers.. When she returned to school, her history teacher told her that she had a report due that day. She had not been made aware of the assignment, as the teacher had only given it a week prior. The teacher told her. “ Well, you should have been here when it was assigned. “ She told her that her father’s death was not a good enough excuse for missing class. She came home in tears. I called the school the next day and spoke with the principal. He agreed that the teacher had been out of line. The teacher was made to apologise to her in front of the class, and was written up for being insensitive. I asked the principal if I could schedule a grief instructional seminar for the staff, and he agreed. The seminars still happen every year. I also spearheaded a grief counseling group, headed by a wonderful hospice nurse. It still exists today in that school. Not really policy changes, but changes nevertheless.
I am not a surgeon but a Trauma Nurse. But I did have an interesting case.
One night shift an elderly man, 80’s, comes in complaining of abdominal pain. We started an IV, sent blood to the lab to see if he had an elevated white cell count which would point to appendicitis.
On physical examination he had a scar from a previous appendectomy, a soft abdomen, no reflex on palpitation, but a hard, firm mass about the level of his navel to pubis. So we sent him off for an X-Ray of his abdomen.
On return from X-Ray the tech put the films on the viewer and left without a word. When I looked up there, as big as life was a 1 liter Thermos sitting just past his rectum in his large intestine.
I informed him that he was going to be admitted for removal of a foreign object when the OR opened the next day. He asked if I would call his wife to tell her he was being admitted.
When I informed her that we needed to keep him overnight she stated, “Not that thermose again is it? Well you tell him he can take a taxi home because I ain’t picking him up again.”
I had always worn el cheapo suits, just something to look professional at work. But my girlfriend thought I should get a once in a life time, show off suit, as I was in the fittest shape of my life. So we went to Holt Renfrew to buy a suit, I was thinking Armani because it sounds impressive, but really I just wanted a suit that made me look good. No one was rude or anything, but no one approached me as I was browsing. I just got the vibe, that I wasn’t welcome.
I went next door to Harry Rosen, and as soon as I started browsing, I was approached, and asked if I would like a cappuccino while we picked out a suit. I was hooked, it might be a gimmick, but it made me feel special. They showed me that a Canali looked better on me, than the Armani, and suited my physique better. They asked if I wanted the name, or the look. Because no one would know that it was an Armani if I didn’t name drop.
I took the Canali. After it was fitted and adjusted, I went back to Holt Renfrew to compare prices, while wearing my new suit, shirt, tie and shoes.
I had someone asking if they could help me in seconds.
Maybe the first time everyone was busy at Holt Renfrew, but after that I bought a lot at Harry Rosens. Nothing as expensive as that suit, but nice clothes.
It will speed up China’s ascendency and swiftly destroy the U.S. economy. Over time the U.S. will implode and break up into 5–6 different nation. It will start a class war in the U.S. and polarise the U.S. as never before.
But heck, ignore my advise and do it anyway! Trump is very smart he will say all what you and for, but do 1% and fool all of you while he enjoys popularity! Biden is not too clever he will do 10% and screwed up the U.S. and spend the rest of his term negotiating with China! He get screwed from left and right.
Chinese will do precisely what the U.S. do but it hurts you ten times harder!
This happened to my wife. She interviewed for a position, she nailed a software testing interview to a point where some interviewers in the interview panel said after the interview, it would be a crime if this company did not pick her.
She was obviously over joyed and waiting for the offer. The offer did come 2 days later; she stated her current compensation and they agreed they would give at least 5 K more.
2 days later the company came back with close to 20K less than her current compensation saying that the company’s CEO said that the job and the person who interviewed for the job did not deserve such a high compensation and that since the office locality was already closer to her place the company was doing her a huge favor already.
My wife politely declined the offer saying she was happy with her current job( which she was except for the commute) and she said she would join the company if they offer her the same compensation. The recruiter went back to the CEO and after 2 days of serious discussions with CEO, the recruiter came back excitedly and said the company was willing to offer 5 K more than their previous offer( which was still 15K lesser than the previous offer ). My wife was amused by the recruiter’s excitement and said it was lesser than her current compensation and declined the offer.
At this moment the recruiter should have left it like that and moved on. But she suggested that my wife was lying about her total compensation and that the position did not entail such an high pay in the current job market. This came after the recruiter accepted my wife’s initial proposition and after one of the interview panelist stated that my wife had done the interview really well.
Till this moment we were actually in a dilemma because the commute was really frustrating( 2 hours one way commute), after this discussion my wife made her mind to stick with her current job and try for a different job later.
My wife got a better paying job 1 month later within 5 mile radius. One of the panelist in that interview became family friend and said they were still looking for someone to fill that position( after close to two months) and that the CEO suggested that he would actually reach out to my wife again with a better TC.
The Confederacy was a midget taking on a giant. It trailed the Union in population, manufacturing, economic might, transportation networks and available capital. It was a miracle it held on as long as it did.
Let’s start with population. At the start of the war, the population of the Union states was about 22 million. The entire population of the Confederacy was about 9 million, but 3.5 million of those were slaves. As a result, during the war, the Union raised 2 million troops. The Confederacy raised fewer than 1 million.
Similarly, the GNP of the Union states was about three times that of the Confederate states, and most of the Union GNP was manufactured goods even though the Union had triple the arable land. The Union had five times as many factories as the Confederacy, and most Confederate factories were focused on agricultural processing.
The Union had two and a half times more railway mileage than the South, and it was better connected. Most southern railways just ran to the coast.
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Not long into the war, the Confederacy had practically no gold, and thanks to Union blockades, had trouble exporting goods to raise more. Both sides printed currency, and although the Union currency wasn’t popular, the Confederate currency pretty much quickly became worthless.
The Confederacy knew it couldn’t defeat the Union. It’s only hope was that the Union would tire of the war and sue for peace. However, the Confederacy, despite a couple of really competent generals, couldn’t form a strategy that would force the Union to the bargaining table. Yes, Union attacks at the heart of the Confederacy were generally unsuccessful, but on the Mississippi the Union pretty much won every battle and managed to stop Confederate trade dead in its tracks.
Well not many besides people I went to school with and my parents know this story but I figure what the hell! It’s a long one just a warning. I was bullied all through out my grade school and middle school years. I was a chubby over weight girl and far bigger then most of my fellow school mates.
It started with the usual name calling and pushes in the hallway, but it eventually got much much worse. My worst experience would have to be in 8th grade, when one of the boys I had a crush on pretty much the most popular boy in the school, was coaxed by a group of girls to “Ask me out”. Me being the dumb kid I was thought he was being genuine.
He asked if I would go to the school year end dance with him. I was excited I made my mom buy me a new outfit and I had my hair professionally done basically went all out. Well (now this is where it gets hard for me to talk about) I got to the dance and hooked up with a few friend waiting for my “date” to arrive I was so happy and excited.
He showed up and asked me if I wanted to dance. We danced not to a slow song or anything but danced together. Then the girls showed up. These girls were some of the meanest bitches on earth I swear. They came to the dance floor and well they were being nice.
Complimenting me on my outfit and hair saying how lucky I was to snag the hottest guy in school. Well my date then asked if I wanted to go sit on the bleachers for awhile and talk. I went sat down and we started talking and it was like everyone melted away. He then asked to be excused and one of the girls came up and asked if I would go with her to the washroom so we could “fix our make-up”. I walked into the washroom and there were at least 8 girls in there.
They grabbed my hair and ripped me down to the ground they literally ripped all my clothing off. I mean everything and dragged me by my hair out of the washroom one of the three girls stood by the back entrance so I couldn’t get out that way and one other girl locked the bathroom door from the inside so I couldn’t run there. Then my “date” came around the corner said I was a disgusting whale and he would never date someone like me he then grabbed my hair and two other girls grabbed my arms and they dragged me out into the gym dropped me and took off as teachers came running. Two other girls snapped pictures before taking off as well.
so there I was on the gym floor in front of 150 students..teachers and parents…naked..beaten up and crying. If that wasn’t enough one of the girls who snapped a picture of me. Had it developed and used a photo copier and posted the pictures all over the school on the last day. None of the kids involved were ever punished as the princible said ” It’s the end of the year none of these kids will be coming back here anyways”, What they did to me was wrong but I grew from it and I swore come high school I was not going to be some victim.
I joined the football team the first day as the first female linebacker ever and I kicked ass for 3 seasons. I was pretty popular I had tones of friends and even though I was popular I NEVER EVER put anyone else down.
Oh and over the summer I ran into my “date” I went up to him called him a fucking loser and kicked him as hard as I could in the balls.
He moved away…Two of the head girls who did me the most damage I went to high school with….as popular as they were in middle school they were shit in high school one is now a meth head..The other is on welfare with 4 kids!
Our daughter has taken after her mother in that regard.
My daughter was on her way to her office after a lunch with me, waiting for the elevator and a man (30–40s) came along. Made a bit of small talk, and then out of nowhere, he said and I quote what my daughter said “You don’t really have to work. Just show off those knockers to a rich daddy who’ll take care of you and those things”.
When he cleared three interviews (technical, informal, different teams + hiring manager), he was face to face with my daughter, who was the HR boss. She just played the video she got from security from the elevator.
He had to be escorted off, coz he wouldn’t stop accusing her of torpedoing him and turn to begging and than back to accusing.
Needless to say, his career in consulting for retail isn’t going anywhere and my daughter made sure every big employer in the narrow field knows about that man.
I was a proud daddy that week, and you couldn’t do anything to take off the smile off my face.
But the western world will seek the extermination of Chinese.
The western world already wants to exterminate us. Note how the Chinese exclusion acts are being made law in the US right now. Not just Chinese citizens. US born Chinese. Most westerners welcome such laws.
But the Chinese economy will COLLAPSE
But isn’t the Chinese economy ALREADY collapsing?
If anything a massive super heavy casualty war is desirable. Taipei turned into Gaza is desirable… what’s that? Ah yes you’re already sanctioning and accusing us of genocide. So what you gonna do? Sanction us again?
In short anything you can do to us, you’ve already done.
What’s a rule your employer implemented that backfired terribly?
I was eight seconds late getting back from my break. I got wrote up for being late. EIGHT SECONDS.
I usually worked through my breaks and part of my lunch because I just liked doing what I was doing without interruption. (My bosses knew this, too.) But for some reason, on that day, I did take my allotted break, and was late.
After being disciplined for my tardiness, I took every single break, every single time. Right down to the last second. I didn’t work nearly as “hard” as I did previously, either. (I like the t’s crossed, and the i’s dotted. That evaporated. My work was still accurate, but I didn’t go the extra mile.) My employer lost a lot for that eight seconds. However, the most valuable thing that was lost was the respect I used to have for my job and boss.
I was a big and athletic kid but I also moved a lot when I was in elementary school. Each time we moved I had to prove myself all over again.
Being the “new kid” meant that I was bullied by all sorts of kids from all sorts of groups, at least until I fought back.
And I learned to fight back pretty quickly. You don’t really have to win all your fights, you just have to prove that you’re willing to fight. That’s the key. And that you won’t back down.
I particularly had a tough time moving from St. Pete, Florida, to a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri, in 1980 between 6th and 7th grade.
St. Pete was awesome. We lived on the water in a great community. We had power boats and sail boats and I had lived there for a couple of years so I had a bunch of friends (Little League and Pop Warner).
No offense intended but the suburbs west of St. Louis sucked in comparison.
Anyhow, as a 7th grader I went to South Senior High School which had grades 7 through 12. My first week there I got into a scrap with some kid and did pretty good. The problem was that he had an older brother, a freshman, who later cornered me when I wasn’t expecting it and gave me a bit of a whooping.
I was so disappointed in myself that I decided to fight the older brother again. So the next day I ran up and basically tackled him in front of all of his friends and fought him until teachers broke it up. I didn’t win but I sure as hell didn’t lose.
But that was enough. Nobody messed with me the rest of that year. Attacking a high school kid got me a lot of street cred with the kids in 7th grade. I was suspended for a couple of days but my Dad was old school so he was proud of me for sticking up for myself.
But then we moved from St. Louis to the East Bay of San Francisco between 7th and 8th grade and I had to do the same thing all over again.
I had a business trip to Las Vegas some years ago. I was traveling with a friend, who frequented LV to gamble several times a year. He suggested we play craps and gave me a book on how it is played.
When we got to the tables, he carefully selected a table, based on the laughing and sport the players were having. His comment: play with people who are having fun. I was next to a guy who had at least $5K in chips. I had my measly $200. As play progressed, my slot had increased to about $400 and I felt great. The guy beside me had at least $25K in his. Then, we all crapped out. I was down to about $300 total, with $100 more than I started with. My friend insisted we leave the table and go for a walk and get a cup of coffee.
We took a walk, had a coffee, etc. My friend told me we’d stop by that table in about an hour and find the same $25K guy playing. We did come back and he had less than $2K in his slot. He had lost over $20K while we walked. My friend told me that many people gamble and do not stop until they lose everything they brought. This was an interesting lesson for me. Gambling can be fun, but one must limit the loss.
Every living creature has an anus: Ants, horses, eagles . . . And us. While most creatures’ anuses do their jobs with little fuss, not so with human beings. The design of our anus is Providence’s little joke to keep us humble.
Consider, for example, the horse. We live across from a horse breeding establishment so I’ve had ample opportunity to observe these estimable animals in action. While they shit copiously they never get any on their hair (when was the last time you saw a horse’s behind fouled by its own waste?). The reason for this lies in the design of the horse anus. It is an extensible device that, when a BM is about to pass, protrudes a few critical inches, allowing the manure to drop straight to the ground without mussing a single hair. To further forfend fouling, there is no hair in the immediate vicinity of the horse’s anus, nor on the extensible process itself. What a remarkable design.
Not so with us. Our small orifice is buried deep in a meaty cleft, the margins of which have to be spread to their limit if there is to be any chance the thicket of long, nasty hair in the cleft will not be fouled by the passing of stool — a vain exercise in 99 cases out of 100. Moreover, while the horse can defaecate while standing, just let a human being try that! No we must squat. But not only squat, we must go through all sorts of contortions to minimize the amount of feces that will cling to the surrounding parts — which, as we all know, is another futile exercise.
To accommodate our flawed design, we are taught from birth to use wads of paper, magazine pages, dried corncobs and even stones, to wipe our filthy behinds. And this we must do! If we did not wipe, we would reek of dung from the cake of dingleberries between our cheeks and our pants, skirts, caftans and burkas, would be fouled with nicotine stains and clouds of flies would follow us down the street like goslings.
I worked in a high tech company and moved up the ladder from bottom level CSR to a business manager overseeing a 60 million dollar product line by the age of 30. I was the best in the world at what I did but I had two huge strikes against me. One was my absolutely shitty attitude. I have written about attitude before. You must always have a great attitude, even if you have to fake it. No single thing is more important to your success in life than your attitude. But mine sucked. The second thing that worked against me was that in many companies, no matter where you are or how good you are, many people will see the guy who started at the bottom. In the eyes of Management, I was the customer support lackey who fixed broken things for them, not the guy making them 60 million dollars a year. There was a distinct lack of respect and that contributed to my bad attitude.
A new manager was hired for the department. He was an angry, mean jerk whose approach to everything was “shoot first ask questions maybe – they don’t deserve your consideration anyway.” I could no longer take the contempt and I quit.
A few months after I left the company began to realize its loss. I am not bragging about myself here. I did good work and I was the best at what I did. I designed the products. I knew absolutely everything about them. I was the sales troubleshooter who went on hundreds of sales calls per year. I knew every weak link in the competition. I knew how to present the product in the best light. I could give stellar presentations to huge audiences. I was making them a lot of money.
So they approached me at my new job and said they wanted me to come back. Everyone wanted me to come back except for that new asshole who had been, and would be my manager. He had been tasked with bringing me back but he didn’t want me back. I outshone him at every level. I could do his job in my sleep. But he was the guy they tasked with bringing me back. So he asked me to dinner.
When you’re going to bring someone back and you ask them to dinner you don’t take them to McDonald’s to make your pitch. We were suit and tie guys and wearing a suit and tie at McDonald’s was a surreal experience. I let it go. I wanted to hear the offer.
And so Greg made the offer. They offered me the exact same money I was making at my new company and that was it. No bonus. No extra stock. No retained seniority or vacation time. He was going through the motions because he was told to go through the motions. But his entire attitude was resentment and anger. For a few minutes I thought I was misunderstanding him; the offer was so lame as to be not even worth the time at McDonald’s. I had to ask for clarification.
He looked at me with contempt and said, “That company you’re at now is going down. We can offer you any terms we want and you’ll take it because you don’t want to be part of a sinking ship.” I might add that my old company that was trying to get me back was also doing a fair imitation of the Titanic at the time, too. I was absolutely stunned when he said it. I couldn’t believe it. So I laughed a little bit, got up and left.
That was a slap in the face offer.
I told a few old friends at my old company what had happened and it got back to the President. He called me personally on the phone and invited me to dinner. It was at a four star restaurant. When I got there he asked me what happened. I told him. He apologized. He said if I came back they would make it worth my while. I asked him if that guy would be my boss. He said yes, there was not much he could do about that. So I thanked him and said no. We ate and talked and then I left.
Two years later my old company was being sold to Compaq Computer on the back of a product I had designed years earlier. Even though I had been gone for two years, I was credited in a speech by the President for the work that made them successful in the sale. By then I was the senior manager in the department of my new company making much, much more money than I ever dreamed possible. I attribute my success in the new company to my new and improved attitude because attitude is everything.
I was in the infantry in 1969, we were at a small, one-company firebase in the Mekong Delta. The Army did not “allow” drug use among its soldiers but it happened anyway. A guy who bunked across from me openly shot heroin. This obviously wasn’t sanctioned by the military. One night when we had set up a standard L-shaped ambush, this fellow decided he wanted to go home and walked right out into the middle of the ambush. Fortunately, nobody clicked a Claymore handle and he was retrieved safely. But the safety of an entire platoon had been compromised.
The very next night two VC walked right through the middle of our ambush site and nobody opened fire or set off a Claymore. We weren’t certain it wasn’t our drug-addicted soldier trying to head home again.
As for alcohol, all we had was beer when the little beer window was open. Pabst, aka rat piss, was 25¢ and the much-preferred Black Label was 35¢, and we sometimes had Bud. There was no hard liquor because there was no PX from which to purchase it. I never saw marijuana use but I’m sure it was widespread in other companies. Heroin was the problem.
So I suspect the next question would be: Why wasn’t this reported to the higher ups? Well, soldiers learned to be remarkably tolerant of their fellow GI’s. There was no upside to creating problems in the platoon, too many opportunities to become a victim of “friendly fire” on a dark night in the boonies. One soldier, on rare stand down days, played “Black Pearl, Precious Little Girl” endlessly on a 45 rpm player and nobody complained.
In summary, the Army allowed drinking because soldiers have consumed alcohol since, well, forever. Drug use was not allowed but it happened anyway, and this was well before the advent of drug testing. Everyone was trying to figure out his own way to get back home safely and the solutions were never that simple.
I worked for my best friend and he got into a bad motorcycle accident he was in coma and had to learn to walk and talk again so I took over doing everything for the company I worked 16 hr days 7 days a week for a year never asked for anything just wanted my friend to have everything he has before the accident. so after a little more than year he was back at work so I asked for a day off he said no he wife didn’t stick up for me or anyone in his family and they all knew what I did for him so I told him I quit he said fine so I went to our 3 big company’s we did work for and asked them if they wanted to learn what we did for them and I told them what my boss did that night we went out bought 3 trucks and I trained them how to do what we did my boss lost over a 1,000,000 because of losing those company’s work and then list his wife and everything he owned because what I did by taking those company’s away
My high school crush was a beautiful girl named Adrian, a year behind me, and it seems I was the only person in the school who had ever seen Rocky and got the ‘Adriaaaaaaaaaaaaaan’ joke she kept making.
She was maybe 5 foot 4, adorable, and had a propensity for sitting in my lap in the lunchroom and stealing my food (I made my own lunch through most of high school).
She also ended up dating a guy who was, to be fair, scum. He had that ‘bad boy’ charm that young women seem to enjoy, I suppose, but he was borderline retarded and generally violent.
One day in 2014, I was sitting around bored and decided to reconnect with people from high school. Would not recommend.
I found her Facebook page, and noticed that literally nothing had been done to it in years.
Then I found her obituary, and his about a month later.
I talked to someone from her circle of close friends in high school, and it sounded like when she graduated, they moved in together. She was bound for great things, musically and mathematically talented, and he was bound to wind up in the gutter.
Sadly, it sounds like he dragged her down, talked her into ‘experimenting’ with drugs, and both died of heroin overdoses.
A Student at Tsinghua asked Ren Zhengfei of Huawei this question
Everyone says China steals from the west. What should we do when someone says that
Zhengfei replied
Keep Innovating. Only the day you become more innovative than them and beat the West on their own terms, would you be in a position to convince yourself that you did not copy from anyone.
That’s your answer
Stealing can only take you so far
So wait and see how China does and then we decide whether China steals or innovates
Unless of course you are the fox who finds the grapes sour
Debate many westerners for a short period of time, what happens? Many of them will turn to racism and dehumanisation when they start losing the debate.
Yesterday for instance somebody posted a comment on the atrocities of Britain against India. He called the atrocities fiction.
I provided counter evidence and he started to dehumanise me and said it was all CCP propaganda.
Except I had been using WESTERN SOURCES.
He couldn’t respond to that so continued to make racist comments at me. They of course don’t see this as racist, much like war crimes against brown people are considered OK because they’re not really people!
You see television and culture of western countries makes them usually white people think they are the master race, that’s why there’s so many self hating Asians in the western world. They’re taught conditioned and trained that whiteness is GODLINESS and many of the people there run with it, as such they feel they can do no wrong, they are the BEST and only humans possible!
I’m in my second week of at home suspension for striking a teacher. He locked me in a classroom and attempted to assault me when I wouldn’t consent to his advances on 14 year old me. The knock on the door was a deputy that served legal papers in our little town. The papers he served me was a summons to court for legal action pertaining to expenses incurred from point there after. I’m being sued by this teacher. My dad exploded, that jerk has bigger problems than money, just wait I don’t care if he’s in a courtroom. OMG I was saying daddy calm down a lot, I only call my dad “daddy” when I need him to calm down and focus on me so he doesn’t get into trouble or worse. The day of court arrived and there stands Mr Smug in his neck brace, bandaged nose, and black eye. I am holding my dad by both hands, telling him to look at me, please I don’t want you in jail dad. It doesn’t help that I’m shaking and I’m sure dad can feel it. Then the judge starts reading the case notes, Mr Smug is suing one Miss Key for medical expenses incurred during an altercation that resulted in a fractured nose, two chipped teeth, severe painful swelling in the groin, blurry vision, slight concussion, and upper neck pain. So young lady how do you plead? I asked the judge if I could present my papers (please don’t laugh we couldn’t afford a lawyer). He accepts my papers which are the affidavits from the custodian, vice principal and teacher (the witnesses that pulled me off of Mr Smug), the arresting deputy, and the school nurse that treated me before my dad arrived. His whole demeanor changed. WTH?! You mean to tell me that you are suing this girl because she kicked your but during an assault? His lawyer started trying to make an argument about me being malicious, and over bearing about defending myself. The judge told him to shut up, in what world does a 30 year old man believe he has a case against a 14 year old child that he is attempting to assault? Lawyer sets in with that is just allegations and hear-say, there’s no proof. I didn’t ask you lawyer I asked your client because as it stands this is the stupidest case I’ve ever heard of. In fact it’s so stupid that I’m dismissing it without prejudice, on grounds of incomprehension and competence. And might I extend my gratitude to you Mr Key for raising an able and resourceful young lady.
Hunter’s Stew (Bigos — Poland)
bigos
Ingredients
6 pounds canned sauerkraut
1/4 pound bacon or salt pork, diced
3 large onions, chopped
3 tart apples, peeled and chopped
2 cups beef broth
1 cup sherry or dry red wine
Salt, pepper, sugar, to taste
3 pounds smoked sausage, sliced
1 bay leaf
Instructions
Rinse sauerkraut in cold water and squeeze out juice well, reserving some of the juice. Put sauerkraut in large kettle over low heat.
Meanwhile, render the bacon or salt pork. Add bacon bits to sauerkraut.
Sauté onions in bacon fat until golden; add chopped apples and cook until slightly browned. Add all to the kettle. Add sausage. Add enough beef broth, bay leaf, salt, pepper, a little sugar and some of the sauerkraut juice for tartness. Simmer slowly for 1 to 1 1/2 hours.
Add wine and let stew bubble up. Cover and let stand until ready to use.
I went on an interview for a job I was grossly overqualified for, but I was unemployed (to finish my degree, which required internships), then the sequester hit when I graduated, and I needed ANY job so I could find one that was a better fit.
The boss told me the job paid $28 to $30. I was shocked, because that was extremely low, but they hired desperate people and they could smell it.
I then went through the interview process with the team lead and the office manager. Everything went well, and I headed home. It was a long drive, but that’s where business opportunity was.
While driving, I took a call from the office manager. She has been authorized to offer me the job at $10/hour. I did not laugh. I said “that is significantly lower than (boss) indicated the position paid.” Manager says, ‘you didn’t think $28 to $30 meant per hour, I’m sure? (Of course not, but the position SHOULD have paid much closer to that). $10/hour is the same as $28 to $30 thousand.’
I’m driving down the highway at 75 miles per hour, and very calmly said, no, I knew that was the annual salary. But $10/hour is $400 per week, at 52 weeks per year is $20,800 per year. and I did NOT say “if i can do the math in my head while driving, i’m pretty sure you can do it at your desk with a calculator at your disposal!”
Manager says “I can go check with (boss) to confirm – do you want to hold?”
I said “no, you were going to send me an offer letter? Why don’t you tell me about the benefits you mentioned, and when you send the letter you can make sure the figure is correct.”
An offer letter was not one this company typically provided because they liked to bait and switch – pay $8/hour when they’d offered $12, because you had no proof. I learned this later, and was SO glad I’d gotten a letter. When it came in, it was for the $28k figure.
My three-month review never happened, and at five months I had a nice offer from a much better company and I’m still there 5 years later. Making what I’m worth.
Sometimes you have to accept a slap in the face, but don’t let them step on your neck while they’re doing it.
Def-Con 4 (1985)
I remember this one. A cheesy B-grade movie, but I well remember enjoying it. You all have fun.
It is strange that the contemporaneous things going on today Geo-politically is much worse than what is described in this movie. Ugh!
Full Movie! Please watch the first 25 minutes. It’s all gold.
Back in the 1970’s there was this fad. It was the CB Radio fad, and everyone seemed to end up with a Citizens’ Band radio in the car. Ah. We all had slang that we would use, and there were many a useless discussion over the air that we all endured.
I had one. My brother had one. My parents had one. My friends all had one.
It was so “hip” at the time, don’t you know.
CB radio
Now, we have cell phones, social media and all the rest. But every now and then, I get an itching to reach for the CB to find out what is going on regarding an accident that I just passed on the road.
Fads come and go.
And everything that we consider normal today, will eventually be viewed as a strange fad by others. Enjoy them while you have them.
Yes. The paramedics brought her in from a nursing home and they had been doing CPR for a while. The patient had been in and out of perfusing rhythms the entire time. She looked very old and frail and chronically ill. I asked the medics if she had a DNR order and they just rolled their eyes. The lead medic told me that they asked the same thing but the nursing home staff couldn’t locate the paperwork and because they couldn’t be sure they initiated resuscitation.
We didn’t have anything on record either but I wasn’t really committed to CPR and shocking and all the drugs necessary to keep this poor woman alive when her quality of life was likely so bad. I decided to give one round of drugs and then stop if there was no response. We did just that and much to my surprise she responded. Her heart started out slowly and gained momentum. Within a couple minutes she had a stable blood pressure. After a while she even began to attempt breathing on her own.
It wasn’t long before the family arrived and told us that the patient’s wishes were to NOT be resuscitated. They told us that she would never want to be kept alive this way and demanded that we stop the ventilator and medicines. So, I did. Despite stopping all support she continued to live. Ultimately, we admitted her to the hospital and she continued on in a sort of half-life state. This went on for days. Days!
I went to see her and the family a few times when they were there in the hospital and just felt terrible for them all. They were unhappy with me but they also understood why we did what we did. Ultimately, they sort of took it out on the nursing home staff and not the medics or me.
In the end, she died with her family all around her. Several members were able to travel in to say goodbye before she passed because of the hospital course. I suppose it all worked out the way it was supposed to. I still regretted it though.
Maybe it wasn’t rediculous as you mean but it was the biggest and it was Mine. I was representing a 15 year old pregnant girl. CPS wanted her sent to a reformatory. I wanted her sent to a girls school. The CPS worker testified that the girl should go to jail because when she was 5 yes five she seduced her father ( an executive with a big company). The girl had been raped by her father for years.
The girl said to me “ you told me that wasn’t my fault.” In the courtroom before God Judge and country I grabbed that CPS worker and tried to pound her into the floor.
It wasn’t looking good for me but the judge made an immediate order. He ordered the CPS worker to personally pay for the girl to go to the private girls school. (about 3times her annual salary) . I waited all day to be arrested. Finally a call came that I was wanted back in court.
It was announced that no charges would be brought against me and the order against the CPS worker was dropped and the order to pay made against the agency. The CP S worker was also to resign.
I’m not a violent person but only so much can be let go I guess at time I lost sight of my life and career and could only see my client.
I have gotten some nice comments. I need to add that before I went for this person the judge asked her if she had done everything she could for the girl. Her response was “I have been wonderful”. I am not proud of getting violent. It is very rare in my life. I was happy with the outcome but I risked getting my license and going to jail. I need to make a clarification here. I was in law school then. i was representing her as her probation officer. It was in the early 70s. A child’s right to an attorney was based on the parents ability to afford one. I was the closest thing to a lawyer she had.
PS. if you read about incest cases, or any sexual abuse cases of very young children, the children are usually taught by their abusers how to “please” them. they are basically taught to mimic seductive behavior. They are not seductive. They are merely mimicking what they have been taught to do, but not everybody sees it that way. many overtly seductive Teenagers have been molested in this manner as a child, but they are just labeled as seductresses. I guess it is easier for some people to blame a child than it is for them to take the time to learn about the effects of abuse on children. I was often called in by other probation officers when they had an uncomfortable feeling about a case because I could see these types of behaviors even minor ones. i’ll never know how many cases I didn’t catch, but I was never wrong when I called it.
Killer Thinks He Got Away With Murder – Doesn’t Know 5 YO Survived | The Morrissey Family Case
Not quite fitting in, this applies to ALL overseas types, near ones (Malaysia, Singapore) and far ones. USA, Europe.
An example is this
image 498
vs this
image 497
Superficially we look similar but we’re quite different.
You stand me next to some China born Chinese and you’ll feel there’s something off.
The foreign diet in our formative years changes us. I was a LOT fatter (though thing for westerners) and had a rounder chunkier face.
The life experiences also make us stand differently. I’ve written previously that in the UK if you’re weak (doesn’t matter if you’re black, white, Indian or Chinese) people will pick on you. So there’s an outward portray of aggression already… probably why cops stop me so much.
That’s just the visual things.
Then we’ve got psychology, culture and language.
All of which means you fit in even less. You can as again fit in on a superficial level but go any deeper and you’re spotted.
Being different leads to disimilar treatment sometimes, sometimes this is good, sometimes this is bad.
My wife and I brought her car in for service at the dealership and we’re looking around while waiting. A young salesman asked if he could show us around. I said we are just there for service.
After talking a while about their new cars, he went to get “the closer” a big fellow who obviously had been there for a while. He began to say things like what would I need to do to get you into this vehicle and make me an offer. I told him we weren’t in the market for a car; I research such matters before making such a purchase; and, for me to buy a car today, he would probably have to nearly give it to me. I told him if I made him an offer, I was sure he would find it insulting.
I did let him pull my credit. This would have made it very clear that I was highly successful in financial services sales. Which is what makes his subsequent rudeness particularly inconceivable.
He continues to insist that I make an offer. I finally offer him probably half of what the car is worth (because I would have bought it on the spot at that price). He is insulted.
He then leans over me (with my wife still sitting next to me) and says:
“At some point in your life, you’re going to have to become man enough to be able to make a decision.”
I instantly replied:
“It’s not my manhood in question here; I’m not the one who can’t close this deal.”
I only saw the stunned look on his face for a moment before he turned to walk away.
June 2nd, Midnight; a 15 yo boy Zohaib posted a suicide note over social media; stating he’s going to end his life today.
image 495
I browsed through a lot of tweets posted from other users on the topic, and learned that the boy lives in my city on XYZ road. That’s it.
The problem is that, on the said ‘miles long’ road there are dozens of towns and neighborhoods interconnected, I mean, that is very incomplete piece of information to effectively and timely counter such an issue of extraordinary sensitive nature.
I responded to him immediately, and also requested public to send me any information or clue they might have about this boy.
image 494
And that interaction of mine resulted in one of the most burdensome barrage of tweets and DMs I’ve ever received as social media handler of city police, the number was literally in thousands. That kid’s name was trending nationwide on twitter during this fiasco. But sadly, nothing useful came out of this interaction tsunami, all I had was first name of the boy and that he lives somewhere in my city.
I calmly reviewed the situation for a minute; I mean our field officers are ‘head to toe’ engaged with crime fighting day in & day out, responding to the calls, handling cases one over the other, and now comparatively… I have this first of its kind situation where a boy wants to commit suicide about whom we know nothing… could even be a prank for goodness sake.
Nope. I told myself.
We should find and rescue him, no matter what it takes…we gotta!
I got Police Chief in the loop, by his orders Police command & Control was now at my disposal. Which I believe is the most sophisticated and comprehensive system of surveillance, communication and patrolling all across the country. We were about to to execute a time sensitive search and rescue task. Our officers responded to the given locations and secured the entry exit points; while being on the look out.
And that minute, I learned over social media that the boy has fled home, he’s on the loose!
Holy cow!
We didn’t panic with the thought of him doing something foolish while on the run, though it was a legitimate concern. We kept striving, I dispatched teams here and there upon receiving bits of information from concerned twitter users, and then the magic happened…. we got his address. Somebody finally recognized him I guess even though there was no display picture or anything else but the that helped us greatly. Now that is something, I can work with.
He wasn’t home but now we knew who he is. So technical resources along with human intelligence played the good part, he was tracked and in minutes… secured!
And all of this happened under an hour.
He was anxious and nervous… but otherwise fine and safe. His parents thanked the Police, the situation came back to normal.
Next day while I was at work, various news teams arrived at my office and I was genuinely surprised to learn that this episode has made to the news, even to BBC. I was directed to speak a few words on camera, which I did even though I hate to.
image 493
Those of you who know me for a long time, I really do not appreciate the idea of being on the limelight for many reasons. I have politely excused out of numerous feature stories and interviews all these years.
I’m not a celebrity, never was. Super hero, Yes. But not a show off… for that is not what cops are meant to be. That is why you see the big-ass mask on me even though I was requested twice that it is perfectly alright to slide it down a little during the talk. Nope!
Do police officers care about you? YES. Dogmatically!
I’ll do whatever it takes to protect and serve you, I will put my life on the line to save yours! And here “I” stands for Police officers you see daily around you no matter wherever you are.
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Not wealth, but really in the things that matter to you.
Figgy Pudding
Figgy Pudding is a type of Christmas pudding which was originally made with figs. It may be baked, steamed in the oven, boiled or fried. Figgy Pudding dates back to 16th century England.
istock 000018579358 large
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
300ml (1/2 pint) milk (10 fluid ounces)
225g (8 ounces) flour (2 cups)
175g (6 ounces) dried figs
150ml (1/4 pint) Brandy (5 fluid ounces)
110g (4 ounces) suet
110g (4 ounces) prunes
85g (3 ounces) raisins or sultanas
50g (2 ounces) dried apricots
50g (2 ounces) dates
25g (1 ounce) dried apples
1 tablespoon honey
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
Instructions
On the day before making the pudding, place the dried apricots, prunes and apples to soak in water and place the raisins or sultanas to soak in the brandy.
Remove the stones from of the dates and prunes.
Butter a large pudding basin or double boiler bowl.
Sift flour into a bowl.
Stir in suet and mix to a fairly soft dough with cold water.
Turn out on to a floured surface. Lightly knead until smooth.
Roll out two-thirds of pastry into a round and use to line a well-greased 2-pint pudding basin (or double boiler bowl).
Melt the honey and stir in the ginger and cinnamon. Add to the soaked fruits and brandy mixture. Mix well and place into the pastry lined bowl. Moisten edges of pastry with water. Cover with lid, rolled from remainder of the pastry. Press edges well together to seal. Cover securely with greased greaseproof paper or aluminum foil.
Steam steadily for 2 hours. Ensure that the water does not evaporate, topping it up from time to time with boiling water.
Three years back, in 2013, one evening, I was having casual discussions with my friend, lets call him “Mr.S”. We were discussing on different topics like current trends, jobs, future life, family and friends, money. At that time, I was working in a software company with little experience of 1.5 years and some cash in my account. S was studying hard to clear his remaining subject which forced him to take a year gap. And same was the case with “Mr.P” too, he is the third character in my story.
Let me tell you, we all are intelligent students. But because of some mistakes and their habit of taking things lightly cost them a year gap. In fact, Mr.P was smarter than me in every department. Mr.S was not good at academics but he was too good at marketing and some other “special” skills.
We three were together from last 7.5 years. We sat on one bench. We studied together. We stayed together. We tripped together. We partied together. We lived together. We participated and won lots of competitions together. And most important – we dreamed together. Everyone from our batch including teachers used to tell us — you 3 idiots are awesome.
Everything in life was going in a right direction. But let me remind you one of the laws of Mr.Murphy, “In nature, nothing is ever right. Therefore, if everything is going right, something is wrong.” [src: http://www.murphys-laws.com/murphy/murphy-laws.html]. And exactly, same thing happened with us.
Lately, I was thinking a lot about starting a business. Starting a start-up. Starting an IT Company. Starting an IT Training institute. Starting something related to IT. I discussed these thoughts with Mr.S. And guess what, he completely agreed with my ideas and within a few minutes we were business partners! I started giving more time to the thoughts on business. Within some days, we decided to include Mr.P in our team, as he was our best friend and also a sound person with technical knowledge. We shared all these thoughts with Mr.P and he also agreed to join us on the long adventure. But assured us that he’ll join the company after a few months.
So basically everything needed to start a startup was ready. We had a team. Me as a sole investor, lead technical person and of course, the CEO. Along with that I also had a role of Software Engineer in the company where I was working concurrently. It was a big task for me to handle both the tasks – a job and a start up.
My job was the main source of finance for my family and for the startup also. Mr.S was assigned the role of getting assignments and marketing department, while Mr. P was going to look after the training and in-house development. We also had few projects to start with. We also hired 2 people to work with us.
After few months, I made an investment of ₹2 lac (~$3000) and bought 4 advanced PCs, also rented out a small place to start our work in. And, within a span of 4 months, our small startup was on its way onto a long journey. We held a small inaugural function and celebrated. Yeah, that was quite an achievement for us. We started our working together.
But there was a small problem, Mr.P was yet to join the company. He earlier promised us to join the company, yet after 3 months, he was not interested in joining the company. After thinking a lot, I decided to talk to him about his decision and why he was not joining office. His answers gave me the biggest shock of my life. He refused to join the company. His reasons were like, “I am not seeing future in your company. Another friend of us started another startup and he is taking me in his team. I need money right now.” Guys, let me tell you, I also offered him mighty amount of salary. But still, he refused my invitation politely and sent a long message reasoning why he won’t join the company. Most of the reasons were BS. And story of Mr.P was finished. Completely.
Lesson#1 learned [in a hard way]: Do not trust the promises of everyone. Everybody is not loyal to his/her own words.
I was shell shocked, shattered, and quiet depressed after hearing his decision and answer. I was scattered from inside. I decided to keep the work running with Mr.S along with the two hired people. Things were getting more and more difficult.
Fast forward 4-5 months.
Mr.S was looking after the marketing and product sales things, he was the main guy our customers were dealing with. Whereas I was busy in development and resource management.
One day, while managing balance sheets, I figured out there was a record missing for a sum of ₹20000 (~$300). Out of curiosity, when I asked Mr.S about the missing ₹20000, his answers were not logical. They were irrelevant. They were lies. I got to know that he was playing some tricks and using the company’s money for his own personal use. His most funny reply was, “Dude, chalta hai… busy log hain hum, chhoti chhoti details par dhyan nahi rakhte“. [Dude, We are too busy people, we should not focus on such small details]. For him ₹20K was a small amount, but it wasn’t for me.
We had a bitter argument on this and it resulted into disagreement. And we decided to separate. Decided to drive on our separate ways. But he put one condition. He will retain the “business name“. As he was looking after the marketing and other things, he decided to go after the name and customers. And in such way, my first startup was dead.
Lesson#2 learned [in a harder way]: Be careful who you bring to the top with you, not everyone is loyal.
Image Source : Google
P.S. I allowed him to use the business name, because of two reasons:
I was ready to work with anyone, but not with a treacherous friend.
I trust myself, I was alone at the start and will fight the battle alone, will re-build everything from scratch. One can delay me, but can never stop me from achieving my dreams.
Edit 1: From last 2 years, we 3 have never met, talked or discussed about each other.
In June, 1954, US Senator Lester C. Hunt (D-WY) shot himself to death with a rifle at his desk in his US Senate office in Washington, DC. Senator Hunt had been despondent over threats he had received – from Sen. Joe McCarthy and two Republican colleagues, Senator Herman Welker (R-ID) and Senator Styles Bridges (R-NH) – that lurid reports of the arrest of Hunt’s son the previous year would be made public, both in Washington and in his home state of Wyoming, embarrassing Hunt and putting his upcoming reelection bid in peril. The younger Hunt had been arrested and charged with soliciting sex from a male police officer, who was working a sting operation in a Washington park. The charges were later dismissed, but McCarthy and his cronies discovered the fact, and pressured the police department into refiling the charges. Hunt was under great pressure from McCarthy, demanding that he resign, which would have effectively given the Republicans control of the Senate. At the time, Democrats controlled the US Senate by just one vote, and a Hunt resignation would have put the Senate into a tie, enabling the Republicans to gain control, since then-Vice President Richard Nixon would serve as tiebreaker. After Hunt’s death, the Republican governor of Wyoming appointed a Republican to fill Hunt’s unexpired term, who in turn declined to run for the seat in that fall’s election, a race that was won by a Democrat. Unfortunately, the Republicans flipped other Senate seats in 1954, and took control on their own. This scandal was downplayed for many years, but it also occurred in the shadow of the Army-McCarthy hearings, which were going on at the time of Hunt’s death. Even today, there is little awareness of the scandal in Wyoming, and few Americans know that it took place at all. Interestingly, though, Hunt is known as the driving force behind Wyoming’s famous “bucking bronco” license plate emblem, having commissioned the artist to create the design during his years as Governor of Wyoming.
I went to a famous pancake restaurant that was promoting its new burgers. I saw an ad offering them for $5.99 with unlimited fries and a free drink. I pointed to the jalapeno kick burger and asked the waitress to verify that this burger was, in fact, part of the $5.99 special. When she said, “yes,” I then ordered this burger. I had a $10 gift card, and my intention was to tip the waitress the remaining amount after taxes, which would have made it a 50% tip.
However, when I got the bill, I saw was charged $9.29 for the burger. When I called the waitress over to tell her about the mistake, she said that the burger I chose was not included in the special and that I needed to pay regular price. Naturally, I told her that I deliberately asked her if this burger was included before I ordered it and that she confirmed me it was. Her response was that she didn’t understand what burger I wanted.
I explained the situation to the manager, saying I would not have ordered it if the waitress did not tell me it was part of the special, that they cannot charge me for the server’s mistake. The manager called the server over and she had the nerve to deny that I even asked her about the burger being a part of the promotion. Unbelievably, the manager said she must take the server’s word for it.
In front of the waitress, I presented my $10 gift card, telling the manager, I was going to give the waitress what would have remained from my $5.99 burger, which would have been a nice tip. However, since she won’t own up to her mistake, she will now receive what is left from my $9.29 burger (which after taxes was about a nickel).
Waiting in line at an auto parts store and the guy in front of me sets down an alternator and asked the clerk for a water pump. The clerk naturally is confused and asks about the alternator. The guy tells him it’s a water pump and that’s why he asked for a water pump.
The clerk tries nicely to correct him, even shows the guy a picture of an alternator vs. a water pump for his specific car. To no avail the guy “knows more” than this poor clerk. Who I might add is 100% correct that the alternator is NOT a water pump. The power connections kind of gives it away specially when there are no hose attachments for it to pump coolant a.k.a. water.
Anyway, the guy just goes nuts. Throws the alternator at the poor clerk luckily missing his intended target. Makes huge threats about calling corporate; of course he has tons of friends on social media so he threatens to close the store down. On and on this guy goes about how much smarter he is than anyone behind the counter, how they always give him the wrong part. I swear it lasted 20 minutes. Anyway, the manager was in the back counting out the money or stocking something, not really sure, but she was in the back. She comes out, picks up the alternator, sets it on the counter, and asks the guy why he is throwing such a temper tantrum over an alternator.
Oh here we go again! How dare a woman correct him. She doesn’t know shit about cars. What’s a woman doing working at an auto parts store. The vile shit just kept going. Well, during ALL of this mess someone in the oil section decided to call the cops. At some point the cops sneak in and are right behind me and this entire mess. I’m gently pushed aside and they yell, “Sir!” real loudly. He turns and goes ghostly white. The cops start asking about the situation. One has taken the rest of us aside, found the caller, and we are telling them what we witnessed. The other officer is talking with mister alternator/water pump.
Next thing you know he is under arrest and as they are escorting him out we hear one officer tell the other officer that arguing about alternators was the dumbest thing they have witnessed all month. To which the guy yells, “It’s a fucking water pump!”
When my son was in elementary school he was beaten up by two older students to the point he required hospital care. Since the two boys were going into high school next year and it was the last day of school both the principal and superintendent said there was nothing they could do. I called the police and had them charged. One officer went to the hospital and saw my son and two more took the boys away in handcuffs at the school. When the case went to court I told my son to be honest and don’t guess. The boys had been in trouble before so the parents hired a good criminal lawyer.
My son was on the stand for over an hour being grilled by the lawyer and the judge was getting fed up. The lawyer asked my son how he knew who was kicking him. Basically he said “ I was being kicked by a Doc Martin shoe which was on a foot which was on a leg which was on a body and his head was on it” I could see the judge shaking in silent laughter and the stenographer laughing in her Dictaphone. The courtroom was silent with muffled laughter. The lawyer also stood away from my son and holding his ear said he had bad hearing and to speak up. My son was very nervous and scared showing it by speaking very quietly. Finally my son turned to the judge and said could he ask a question. The judge said sure. My son said “in which ear is he hard of hearing because he is going back and forth between both ears”. Same muffled laughter. The judge glared at my son and said “if his hearing is that bad he will be ending his questioning” with a wink to my son he told me later.
Apparently this went on with all the other witnesses and the case was dismissed from all the conflicting statements. This lawyer must have cost the parents a bundle. The police officer in charge of the case visited us about a month later to see how my son was doing. He also said that he was impressed with my son in court and gave him his card. All our children make us proud.
During my college, I took a course called entrepreneurial marketing.
The professor gave one interesting perspective regarding billing and customer experience:
When booking a flight ticket, if the price is $220 instead of $210, the customer wouldn’t feel anything. The $10 on the top of $210 he is paying seems insignificant.
But if you charge him $210 at the beginning and later ask him to pay $5 if wants a water bottle onboard, he might find the experience disappointing. One, he thinks $5 is too expensive for a water bottle. Two, he has to check if he has the cash. Three, he has to worry about conversion charges if it is the card. Overall, there are so many things that make the experience complicated.
So just add $10 more on the flight ticket and give him two water bottles if you are keen on giving a comfortable experience.
Same thing with star hotels. Just charge $20 more on the $150 per night and give complimentary water, canned drinks, and coffee rather than billing for every item inside the mini-fridge.
The same logic applies to tipping.
When you go to a restaurant for a pleasant dining experience, you are made to do all sorts of calculations for taxes and add them to the amount in the menu. On top of this, you have to do calculations for tips and then add to the final amount to see if the item is really worth that price or not.
It ruins the whole experience.
Secondly, this tipping is completely optional. It is in the customer’s hands whether to pay it or not. And if he wants to, whether it is 5% or 15% is also his choice. There is no guarantee that the one who did the best service will get the maximum tip.
Thirdly, does anyone who what is best service universally? For me, not bothering me by enquiring every five minutes ‘Do you need anything else?’ or standing beside my table is a better service. For someone, being approachable by waiting near his table is better service. It varies from person to person and it is near impossible for the waiter to figure this out.
Fourthly, the tip for bringing $50 for 100ml single malt is more than $5 1L water bottle, when the former requires less energy. Is there any logic here?
And lastly, the owner thinks that waiters get high tips and pay them low salaries. The customer thinks that the waiters are anyway paid and hence don’t give them tips. So the waiters are at a complete loss here.
The best way to solve this is to treat waiters like any other worker- chef, security guard, delivery guy or equipment operator. Pay them market salary rather than putting their livelihood at the mercy of the customers. Why do you need to tip waiters, when you don’t tip nurses, delivery guys, security guard, police, or janitors when they are also doing service?
English Muffins
English Muffins
Ingredients
1 cake or package yeast
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/2 cup lukewarm water
1 1/2 cups milk, scalded
1/4 cup melted shortening
1 teaspoon salt
6 cups flour
Instructions
After kneading, place in greased bowl and let rise until double.
Roll out to 3/4-inch thick. Cut with 3-inch cutter. Cover circles and let rise until very light.
Bake on greased electric skillet or at 375 degrees F in the oven.
Don’t comb your hair on the table at the restaurant. I don’t want your hair-strands in my food. I prefer that you use the restroom even if you want to touch up your lipstick.
If you know that you have smelly feet and that you have not washed your socks in several weeks, don’t take off your shoes in crowded places. Not even in the aircraft. You should have thought about this before you boarded the plane.
Let people who are sitting in the front of the aircraft deplane first! If you have a connecting flight, you can politely ask them to let you deplane first.
Let people exit the elevator/train/bus before rushing in.
Follow the queue. Yes, even in the washroom. Just don’t stand in front of the bathroom stall when 572 people are waiting in the queue.
Buy earphones, or headphones. Whatever you prefer. Because I don’t want to listen to rock music during my morning commute.
Give your seat to the pregnant lady. Or the lady carrying a small child. Or the old lady/gentleman. If you are a young lady in perfect health condition, this applies to you as well. Not just the boys.
Wear washed clothes, because the smell of the sweat sticks. Use deodorant. Specially applies when you are traveling by public transport.
Also, don’t keep your clothes next to the kitchen area, as the smell from spices sticks.
Don’t leave the texts as “seen” or with the “blue ticks”. Either respond, or never respond. Don’t respond to a text which was sent 4 days ago. Just be honest and tell them “that you are busy” or that “you don’t feel like talking to them”.
Show up with a gift. Don’t come empty-handed, after all the host took the time to invite you and do the preparation, didn’t they?
Don’t dump your negativity onto others. Not many people are accepting of it.
I had stopped dating someone who had just been divorced and wasn’t ready to settle (and wasn’t right for me). I had been invited to a party but didn’t want to go. I’m not going, I decided. Finally, two hours after the party had started, I went, alone. The loft owner’s friend opened the door — and we started talking. He was sweet, funny, had just graduated from college, was 7 years younger than me, was planning to move cross country in 2 days. We hung out at the party and then he asked if he could walk me home. We’d walked 2 blocks, making all sorts of witty comments about street signs,etc., and I thought, “This guy is so different than the ones I usually like…he’s not all dark and dramatic (which usually hooked me)…he’s like being with a best friend.” And then I asked myself, “Why shouldn’t I be in a relationship with a guy who treats me as well as my best female friend does??” I remember my small decision precisely: deciding that I’d be open to this…even had a mental metaphor of it being like a Japanese paper lamp I’d hold gently…not try to force anything…but just be open to connecting with someone who made life fun, who was kind, who wanted to know about me and share himself.
He’s been an extraordinary husband and father and after more than 30 years, is still the most fun person to hang out with. We’ve traveled all over the world, gotten grad degrees after the kids were born, created books and apps and games, gone through family stresses and losses, relationship issues, gone through everyday boring ol’ life.
It was a small decision I made, but a profound one: to love myself. To allow myself to be loved by someone who treated me (and others) well. To let myself be with someone whose company I flat-out enjoyed. It wasn’t sudden roses and symphonies…it was playful and sweet. But I see the depth and beauty now. I so wish everyone this.
Maybe it wasn’t rediculous as you mean but it was the biggest and it was Mine. I was representing a 15 year old pregnant girl. CPS wanted her sent to a reformatory. I wanted her sent to a girls school. The CPS worker testified that the girl should go to jail because when she was 5 yes five she seduced her father ( an executive with a big company). The girl had been raped by her father for years.
The girl said to me “ you told me that wasn’t my fault.” In the courtroom before God Judge and country I grabbed that CPS worker and tried to pound her into the floor.
It wasn’t looking good for me but the judge made an immediate order. He ordered the CPS worker to personally pay for the girl to go to the private girls school. (about 3times her annual salary) . I waited all day to be arrested. Finally a call came that I was wanted back in court.
It was announced that no charges would be brought against me and the order against the CPS worker was dropped and the order to pay made against the agency. The CP S worker was also to resign.
I’m not a violent person but only so much can be let go I guess at time I lost sight of my life and career and could only see my client.
I have gotten some nice comments. I need to add that before I went for this person the judge asked her if she had done everything she could for the girl. Her response was “I have been wonderful”. I am not proud of getting violent. It is very rare in my life. I was happy with the outcome but I risked getting my license and going to jail. I need to make a clarification here. I was in law school then. i was representing her as her probation officer. It was in the early 70s. A child’s right to an attorney was based on the parents ability to afford one. I was the closest thing to a lawyer she had.
PS. if you read about incest cases, or any sexual abuse cases of very young children, the children are usually taught by their abusers how to “please” them. they are basically taught to mimic seductive behavior. They are not seductive. They are merely mimicking what they have been taught to do, but not everybody sees it that way. many overtly seductive Teenagers have been molested in this manner as a child, but they are just labeled as seductresses. I guess it is easier for some people to blame a child than it is for them to take the time to learn about the effects of abuse on children. I was often called in by other probation officers when they had an uncomfortable feeling about a case because I could see these types of behaviors even minor ones. i’ll never know how many cases I didn’t catch, but I was never wrong when I called it.
Few people walk into a recruiting station and tell them they want to leave that afternoon. You do have to chat with a recruiter for a while. Granted, they’ll tell you the Army line. Rarely will they lie but they will leave stuff out.
For a lot of people, the Army sounds way better than the situation they’re in. In my first meeting with the recruiter, he told me the Army would train me in life skills (HAHA, at least, not from my MOS), they’d cloth you and give you everything you needed, I’d get a bed, desk, and wall locker, they’d feed me as much as I wanted to eat, I got to choose me MOS (This is where you need to do your research), they’d let me blow stuff up and play with some of the biggest toys the Army has, they’d give me $15K for college, and they’d pay me on top of it.
To a seventeen-year-old kid who’d worked a dirt farm in N. Colorado his entire life, that sounded pretty good. The Army helped get me my Eagle Scout and gave me some perks for that. The recruiter worked with the school to make sure I’d graduate. I was failing a class, and I told my recruiter I wouldn’t graduate. He went to the school and talked to the admin and they made sure I’d pass.
Researching your MOS and the Army is a good idea, but nothing prepares you for stepping off the bus. I have a Ranger buddy whose son just went through basic. He had his son meet with all the vets he could find and we gave our experiences. That wasn’t enough to keep him from calling home and wanting to come home.
No matter how prepared you are, once you get boots on the ground and jump down the rabbit hole, you’re in for a ride. I think people with less prep do better as they have no idea what to expect and they just roll with it instead of standing around thinking this is nothing like what everyone said.
Not at work, but in school. Funniest one: A classmate had not written his book report. It was middle school. He stole mine off my desk while I was in the bathroom. He erased my name, which was in pencil, and added his own to the front cover. He shoved it into a stack of reports on the teacher’s desk. Then, when I got back, I panicked, because I didn’t know where my report went? We looked everywhere. I was practically in tears. The teacher then said, “We are going to practice speaking by talking about our book to the class.” One after one, students started getting up, took their report and talked about their book. The teacher picked up one report, looked quizzical and asked the classmate to come up and read HIS title and report to the class. “You’re going to read the whole thing to the class.” she said. He walked up, not making eye contact with anyone. She handed him the book report and said, “Go on, read it.” He read the inside cover, “My book report is on the book, “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.” He paused, read ahead and shuffled around. The teacher said, “That has your name on it. Go ahead, read it.” He proceeded to read the book report about a girl who wanted to get her period. Then, read aloud why he and his friends “had similar feelings about getting my period, probably someday soon.” He stopped reading at that point. The teacher said, “Carolyn, I think we found your book report.” He nodded with his head down. He handed the teacher my report. He went back to his seat and put his head on the desk. I walked to the front of the class and talked about my book. (P.S. The boy from the story and I are friends now as adults. We laugh about that day. He writes really well, too.) 🙂
Pungent Javanese Beef (Semur Daging)
“Semur” means “braise” or “stew” with sugar, soy sauce, clove, nutmeg and pepper. Serve with hot boiled rice.
2023 12 19 11 27
Ingredients
1 large onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons minced ginger root
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 (1 1/2 pound) beef boneless chuck, tip or round, cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes
1 1/4 cups water
1 tablespoon tamarind powder or pulp or 2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons dark soy sauce
2 teaspoons packed brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
Hot cooked rice
Instructions
Cook and stir onion, garlic and gingerroot in oil in 10-inch skillet over medium heat until onion is tender; remove with slotted spoon. Add beef to skillet. Cook, stirring frequently, until all liquid is evaporated, and beef is brown, about 25 minutes.
Stir in onion mixture and remaining ingredients except rice. Heat to boiling; reduce heat. Cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, until beef is tender and sauce is thickened, about 1 1/2 hours. Skim off fat.
I was on my motorcycle, heading from a health appointment back to my work. I was on a two lane county road. A shitbox minivan was in front of me, but since he was moving along nicely ( 10mph over) and the area was fairly regularly patrolled I just hung back behind him a hundred yards or so.
his driver’s side mirror started wobbling., got wobbling hard and then came off. Bounced a couple times ( very randomly due to the odd shape) skidded across my path and ended in the shoulder.
Of course I was on the brakes , but as soon as that thing was behind me, I whacked the gas and made my pass.
A quarter mile ahead as I’m going by the shitbox up pops a county cop from behind a rise-heading my way.
he had me dead to rights in the high eighties (55mph zone)
of course, he came around on me. He had to pass the minivan to light me up.
I pulled over. The usual stuff:
“ know how fast you were going? “
“ yep”.
“ I had you at 87 on radar, that’s a bit much don’t you think?”
“ I wasn’t staying behind that van”
“ why not?”
I said: “ you passed him twice( once opposing, once with) , didn’t you notice he didn’t have a drivers mirror? It’s laying on the shoulder back there in front of the house with the big white fence “
“ well, he wasn’t speeding, license and reg?”
hand them to him.
he comes back and tells me he’s gotta write it.
I tell him go ahead, but be aware that as soon as we’re done here I’m going back and grabbing that mirror to take to court.
fast forward to court date. I’ve got the mirror . Get called to the podium. Set it up there. Judge says, I’m sure there’s a story that goes with that.
I tell him I’ve got 480,000 miles of riding street bikes over 42 years. Part of the reason I’ve made it this long is that I avoid dangerous situations. If that means I speed to keep from being behind a vehicle shedding 20pound, cubic foot parts, so be it.
This year can, with a few bright spots, suck a bag of dicks.
My mom was diagnosed with cancer last November, thirteen months almost to the day before I write this. She died a couple—a few? I haven’t been sleeping so I can’t tell—days ago.
I’ve been with my dad in Florida helping care for her. At the end, she needed literal round-the-clock care, so it’s hard for me even to tell what day it is any more. My dad and I alternated 12-hour shifts, and during my off time I did things around the house that my dad is having difficulty doing.
I don’t know if I’ve ever felt this exhausted before. I’m on my last nerve all the time.
My mom died at 9:36 AM, as my dad and my sister and I were on the way to the hospital to see her. Later that evening, I ran my dad to the ER when he started bleeding—he was hospitalized for three days, turned out to be an intestinal polyp, not life-threatening but they did do minor surgery to remove it.
There’s an endless stream of stuff I never thought about, that I never even considered, that needs taking care of. My mom’s name is on the title to the truck, my dad’s isn’t. The home hospice care people were supposed to come today to take the hospital bed out of the house. They didn’t call, they didn’t show, I don’t know why. This all happened just as my sister was taking a new job—her boss was extremely understanding and let her take her first week of work off to be here, not a lot of people would’ve done that—and I just ran her to the airport a few hours ago.
If you look at my Quora history, I’m posting at all hours. That’s because I’m only sleeping a few hours here, a couple hours there. If I’m absent for an extended period of time it’s probably because I’m in a hospital somewhere, with my mom before she went or with my dad these past few days.
I’m not okay. I’m not even close to overcoming it.
Many years ago, I worked at a factory that did plastic and wax injection molding. The guy running the place had worked there since he was in his early 20s, so you’d think he’d have a good handle on how things were done.
The problem with his leadership was that he had come up through the ranks as a salesman. He spent little to no time actually doing engineering or production. He was a wonderful salesman and a couple times landed contracts that were a great boon to the company. The man had a gift. He could have sold manure to a cattle farmer.
One of his biggest contracts was a government contract. We were going to be making parts for the US military. During wartime, these types of contracts are as good as they come. The type of high demand production runs that fill bank accounts. Workers were asked to work a minimum of 60 hours a week, with unlimited overtime pre-approved. Some of us younger workers were working 80+ hours a week – only going home during the work week to get some sleep, then coming right back at 5 a.m.
Bank.
I was running a machine that made a part, we’ll call it Widget X. Well, Widget X was a fairly large part that required a lengthy cooldown phase. You can’t just inject molten wax into a mold and expect it to hold shape until it has properly cooled. We only had one machine that was large enough to make Widget X, so it ran 24/7.
A few months into the production run, management was in a bit of a panic. Widget X was one of the most important parts of the contract and we were falling behind on production schedule. Engineering and quality control were asked to find a way to speed up production, but they told management the biggest time sink was in the cooling phase. There just wasn’t any way around that. If they lowered the temperature of the wax, it would be too thick upon injection and break the fragile ceramic cores in the mold. If they actively cooled the die, the wax would solidify unevenly and cause warping.
Mr. Leader, despite the fact that he had oversold our production capabilities, insisted that there was a way to increase output to meet demand. So he began looking into each and every step of the process.
Back to me running the machine. As I said, there was a very lengthy cooldown phase where the machine remained locked shut until the part was ready. During this phase, I took a little time to pick a new CD to listen to while working. (I said this was many years ago)
Seeing me “dicking around” with my Discman, Mr. Leader went into a fit of rage.
“NO WONDER WE’RE SO FAR BEHIND SCHEDULE!”
“That’s it! No more listening to music while working. We need to get back on track and I don’t want to see another set of headphones in this place until we do!”
If you’ve never done it before, injection molding has to be one of the most boring jobs on the planet. You press the two start buttons, wait for the machine to close, do its thing, then wait some more until the part is ready. You remove the part, push the buttons again, and wait. That’s the whole job.
Music was one of the few things that made the job bearable. We could disappear into our own heads and only surface every few minutes to restart the process. Now that we couldn’t do that, the boredom was up in our face. Staring at a giant metal press for 5–15 minutes at a time was dull. Very dull.
So, we had to find ways to amuse our minds for that time. Being the social creatures that we are, we turned to our neighbors and began talking to each other. The problem is that machine shops are really really noisy. In order to have a conversation that is not at a scream, we’d often have to take a few steps toward our neighbor.
This, as you could imagine, meant that the machine operator’s attention was not focused on the machine they were running, but on their conversations. Then when the machine was done running, they’d take a few seconds to finish their sentence and walk back to their machines.
Production slowed. In cases like the machine I was running, not by much. However, some of the smaller parts only had 30 – 60 second run times. An additional 10 seconds per part added up very quickly. Now parts that were running on-time were running behind.
Two weeks into the new rule, the owner of the company paid our department a visit. This almost never happened. He was always in his office on the phone or out on business. He had found out that every single part we were working on had fallen behind and wanted to know why. Mr. Leader had fed him a line that he didn’t buy for a second and was going to figure it out himself.
Luckily, the owner of the company understood production because he had done it early in his career. He knew how boring the job was and that asking employees to sit and stare while doing nothing was cruel.
He rescinded the no music policy immediately and production resumed at a normal pace. He also then called one of his friends in the business and subcontracted some of the production of Widget X to him.
In the end, nothing changed about how fast we could produce Widget X, but at least the rest of the contracts were back on schedule and we could listen to music again.
A Texas trooper stopped me when I was in my late twenties. I was installing floors and happened to be driving my work van.
The stop was on a divided US highway. Speed limit was 65 mph in a rural area. I was driving exactly 65 mph in the right lane, traffic was heavy but not bumper to bumper, everyone else was driving 75 mph and faster. I was Northbound, a Southbound DPS Trooper made a U-turn, caught up to me and turned on his lights. I pulled over. He asked why I was driving so slow and I told him I was obeying the law, also that I was driving a gas hog that punished me financially when I broke the law. He was looking through the back door windows and asked what was in the van; flooring installation and demolition tools, vinyl flooring, floor tile, a 12×15 roll of carpet and pad. He asked if I would consent to a search.
I said, “I will not consent unless you sign a statement acknowledging that I have informed you of numerous sharp tools, razor knives, saws, razor sharp scrapers which you could grab the wrong way and severely injure yourself on; caustic floor adhesives and solvents, you should read the label warnings before you open those; and you accept all liability for any harm to yourself or, damage you cause to any of the new flooring or anything else in the van. It’s expensive material and it doesn’t belong to me.” He looked into the window again, looked at me, and said that makes sense and he guesses I’m “okay”. He appreciated me telling him about the danger. He decided he wasn’t going to challenge my reasoning for what was clearly a conditional consent. Not an outright refusal. But absolutely NOT a consent.
He gave me a “better to keep up with the flow of traffic than obey the speed limit” speech to justify the stop. Which was not good advice. (Insurance can place at least partial fault if you are breaking traffic laws at the time of an accident.)
Soldier Makes Out Like A Bandit In Divorce, Now Teaches Men How To Beat Jezebel At Her Own Game
I remember trying to talk to them about how I felt left behind whenever they would go on vacation and leave me behind. The excuse was always “Oh, it’s our honeymoon.” (I had a stepfather)
We NEVER celebrated Christmas after my mom married my step-dad. We didn’t have decorations or gifts or anything. The excuse was that he had 5 children and they couldn’t afford gifts for everyone. Well, 3 of those kids were adults with their own families. We would go to the oldest daughter’s house for Christmas dinner and the two youngest kids lived with her. (Their mother was an alcoholic.) Once there, we would discover the kids had gotten a new nintendo or whatever the gaming system was back then. Or, they got a new puppy or bicycle or whatever. While they were tearing through their presents, I would go to the bathroom and cry.
I had a really great boyfriend. He was kind and gentle and so respectful of me. But, because he was 3 years older, they didn’t want me dating him. They wouldn’t allow it. However, my step dad met this guy that was 3 years older than me that he wanted me to date and I refused. I kept telling him the guy was a big jerk, but, he wouldn’t listen. He tried to force me to date him. I refused. Later that year, the guy did meet a girl and married her. Two months later, he beat her half to death and she was hospitalized. THEN, “Mr. Wonderful” burned down the high school. Some great guy, huh dad! The guy I wanted to date is STILL a really nice, kind, gentle and respectful man. He’s very happily married.
I just always felt like I was in the way and a complete afterthought. I was inconvenient for them.
Ah, the classic case of the curious boss post-resignation notice! It’s like a sitcom, only you’re living it. Here’s the deal: No, you’re not under any legal or cosmic obligation to reveal your next career move to your soon-to-be-ex-boss. It’s kind of like going on a date and your ex asking who you’re seeing now – none of their business, right?
Now, your boss might be donning the detective hat, citing the need for a “conflict check” – sounds super official, doesn’t it? But unless you signed some sort of agreement that requires you to disclose your next employer (which would be a bit unusual), you’re in the clear.
You want to keep things amicable, and that’s admirable. So, how about a diplomatic dodge? You could say something like, “I appreciate your concern for conflicts, but I’ve checked, and there’s no issue there. I assure you, I’m handling it with the utmost professionalism.” This way, you’re reassuring your boss without spilling the beans.
Remember, it’s your personal information, and you’re not hosting a reality show about your career moves (or are you? That could be fun). Keep it cordial, keep it vague, and soon you’ll be sailing into your new adventure with no strings attached. Break a leg!
It was the morning after the night before, and a fellow student of mine was on the lab telephone, back when they sat on the desk and had wires going into the wall, explaining in German to his girlfriend how sorry he was, and how he would never drink again, and how he was going make a temple out of his body… His German was was not particularly fluent so so of the phrasing was particularly cringe worthy.
After about ten minutes of this, he seemed to have calmed her down, and he got off the phone. He turned to me, sitting at a computer behind a big 21″ crt monitor, and seeing my expression said “You don’t understand German do you?” I said no I didn’t, I’d only spent five months in Bavaria on an intensive course in it before going to college….
In the 80s we were trying to have children. They took us both in for a retinue of tests one of which found my wife with cystic ovaries. We are told this is a common thing, done every day. Called a resection. We excise the cyst, bring the parts back together, sew a couple of stitches and done. Day of surgery the Dr comes out to the waiting room in record time. He tells me they went to the left ovary 1st snip sew done, textbook case, went to the right, took one look, sewed her back up. Turns out when they went in on that side, they were 98%sure it was cancer but sent off a biopsy to be sure. But they were so sure they had already booked an OR for 2 weeks away. The good side of this was this is what I called a stealth cancer. One that normally by the time it manifests itself, you know what will kill you but because we were undergoing the fertility treatments, it was caught in the early stages and even though it came back 4 times, it did not kill her.
I have a master’s degree in engineering and have been working as an engineer for almost a decade.
A few years ago, I had a coworker named Matt** who worked in the our manufacturing department as a laborer. One day, Matt came to the engineering department to explain to us how to implement a specific part into our designs that would be useful for them in the warehouse.
Now keep in mind, Matt had no education past high school, he was wearing coveralls with grease stains on them, and he spoke in a very thick southern drawl. The complete stereotype of an uneducated person in the US.
As he explained the specific part and how to it could be used, I found myself rolling my eyes. But then I caught myself. The fact of the matter was, even if I was more educated or higher up in the company than Matt, at this specific moment, he knew something that I didn’t and he was taking time out of his day to explain it to me. So I shut up, I gave him my full attention, and I learned something I hadn’t known before.
This will serve you very well in all aspects of life.
If someone is trying to teach you something that you don’t know, something that’s useful, then listen to them. Give them courtesy and respect. It doesn’t matter if you’re smarter than them overall. It doesn’t matter if you’re more educated in other matters. It doesn’t matter if they’re a compete idiot in other aspects of life. If they’re teaching you something that you don’t know, listen.
Well, actually he did it for me. I worked at a company that built business machines. A little back story, I was a spray painter making almost $20 per hour and had been hurt and on worker’s comp, When I returned I had to go to lighter work in the assembly department which paid considerably less,but they left me at my previous rate,I did intend to eventually get back to painting so they left it be) Part of my “new” job was to test run and adjust them so they’d be ready to use out of the box. My supervisor(who I actually made more per hour than) was also supposed to double check the settings to verify everything was good to go. We had an issue with one of the adjusting tools and didn’t realize it until a whole order of around 40 machines went out.(Without him checking because as he put it, “I’ve got better things to do {which was usually sitting & watching us work}) Of course,they were out of whack and were returned. When asked, my supervisor told the manager that I sent them without his knowledge and that’s why they were wrong.Long story short, I was terminated for “insubordination & by-passing inspection”, which wasn’t true,but my word against his) So, I left and he looked all proud of himself because of his BS. About a month later, another full shipment was returned for the same problem (since I’d left, they didn’t replace me, they had him doing the adjustment/testing) He at first tried to say it was from a shipment I’d worked on, until they checked the date and saw it was 2 weeks after I was gone!!!! ..He was FIRED, not laid off. They called for me to come back…sorry,already had a new job making $4.00 more than I was there….KARMA strikes again
I’m sure he’s dead by now, so I will describe the most boring person I ever met. He had a name that was actually synonymous with boredom, but I won’t use it, on the off chance that he is celebrating his 100+ birthday somewhere.
He taught Nuclear physics, and it can be hard to make Nuclear physics exciting at the best of time.
But this professor took it to new levels.
He spoke in a complete monotone. Never a variation in tone or amplitude, just completely flat. He spoke at exactly the same pace all the time. Every word had exactly the same gap between it and the next word. If you were transcribing him, you would never add a comma, question mark or period, and certainly not an exclamation mark
I had prided myself on being attentive in class. I have never even fallen asleep in a dark room watching a boring movie, not once. I dozed off in his class, and was only woken up by the guy beside me, when his head hit the desk, when he fell asleep.
I felt devastated, that I had embarrassed myself and the professor by falling asleep, but he didn’t appear to have even noticed. Either he was used to it, or he was so wrapped up in what he was saying, that he missed it.
I actually learned a lot in that class, but mostly because he would hand out his notes, at the end of the class.
The thing that made this man boring, was a completely flat monotone voice, with no inflection.
This is capsaicin. It’s on the order of 16 million SHU’s, though actual intensity will vary. If it gets in your eyes, it will blind you. If it gets on your hands, it will eventually get into your eyes. If it gets into your mouth you will regret it. there is not enough milk you can drink to neutralize it. And if you eat it it will make your entire digestive tract regret it.
My friends thought it’d be fun to produce some from capsaicin oil, distilling it down to the powder form. After masochistically playing with the stuff, one of my friends mentioned that someone from work was stealing lunches. Being 20, they thought it would be a great idea to put a sandwich in with this stuff, and for extra effort, mark the sandwich as ‘do not steal.’
So one day, nothing happened. Two days, nothing happens. Then we go on break and find paramedics attending to one of our supervisors, who was coughing and gagging and clawing at his tongue. Next day, we’re all lined up before the owner who informs us that if anyone ever puts deliberately contaminated food in the fridge, even if someone is stealing lunches, that person is going to be fired like no tomorrow!
So, because we were 20, when lunches started to disappear from the lunch room again, we glanced at each other and realized we still had more than a gram of this powder. Be a shame not to use it. The next day the paramedics return… this time to take the owner to the hospital.
Needless to say, we found other employment elsewhere.
Edit: Some people said that what we did was illegal. I dunno. 20 yr old me probably would have talked my way out of it. After all, when is it a trap and when is it seasoning? But as to ‘confessing’, statue of limitations has expired, like, 6 times over. But yeah, don’t poison food to punish a stealer. It just makes it two crimes instead of one.
What I would do instead is put green food coloring inside the middle of it and then see who looked like they’d just blown a leprechaun.
I didn’t think it was all that funny, but my courtroom was in tears over this, they were so amused.
I found myself sitting as a judge pro tem in Los Angeles County’s night court, which is held once a month at various courthouses in LA County. I had a Spanish language interpreter for this one case, and the lady before me was crying and doing her best to control her tears. I could tell she was very, very upset. I gently asked her what was wrong. Through the interpreter, she said she was so scared and so nervous about what was going to happen in court. I told her not to worry, no one is going to jail tonight, so let me see what was going on.
I read through the county’s paperwork, but my copy was terrible and I could only see that it looked like she was cited for an expired dog license, it had turned into an arrest warrant, and the bail was enormous. Then there were penalties on top of the bail.
I said, “Ms. Doe, are you really here for an expired dog license?” The audiences laughed aloud, and she said, “Yes,” with tears streaming down her face. I was confused because I had never seen anything like this before. I must have really looked confused, because the people in the courtroom laughed harder when I tried to read my terrible copy of the paperwork, then looked up at her which led to more laughter.
I told the woman that I am confused by why the fine was so high. Then she said she didn’t know what the fine was, and I told her it appears to be $7,000, give or take. She began to cry again, and the audience laughed again. I reminded the audience that they were in a courtroom.
I told the woman that it looks like the citation was given in 2012, and she said she got the ticket in 2002. I asked, “You got this citation 15 years ago, and only now you decide to come to court?” The woman nodded tearfully, and said, “yes.” Again, laughter.
I asked her what happened to cause this citation, and she said she was out jogging and had Goofy with her. I said, “Who’s Goofy?” She said, “My little dog.” I asked what kind of dog is Goofy, and she said, “a chihuahua.”
I asked her to go on, and she stated, “I crossed the street, and there was a police car that I didn’t see, and the cop motioned for me to come back across the street back to him. So I ran back across the street to him, and the police officer said I jay walked and he was going to give me a ticket. I told him that that was crazy, because he is the one who called me to come back across the street. Then he said he wasn’t going to give me a ticket, and he was playing with Goofy. Then he said that Goofy’s tag was expired, so he wrote on a paper to get Goofy’s tag renewed. I didn’t think it was a real ticket, because I didn’t have to sign anything, and it didn’t look like any ticket I’ve seen before….” The audience again started chuckling.
“I see,” I said with a sigh. “And where is Goofy today?” Her eyes welled up with tears, and she said he just died. And I asked if I was correct in believing that she got a note to update Goofy’s license it didn’t look like a real ticket to her, so now, 15 years later she decided to come to court. She said, “Yes, because I got a letter saying there was a warrant out for my arrest and I had to come to court. I thought I was going to go to jail today for Goofy’s license.” This amused the audience to no end.
I kept thinking that this is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen in court. I said softly to myself, “What to do? What to do?” which brought laughter to the room again. I asked if she has other dogs at home, and asked if they have licenses. She said yes, and yes, of course.
I looked at this lady with tear-stained cheeks and said, “OK, here’s what I’m going to do.” Her eyes were welled up with tears, she sucked in her breath and looked like she was going to faint. The courtroom for once became very silent. “This ticket is over 15 years old, you were never properly noticed, as you never signed a promise to appear, and the legal file has nothing indicating you signed any such promise, but you did appear when you received notice by mail, 15 years later. In the interest of justice, I am recalling your arrest warrant, and dismissing this citation in its entirety and waiving all fines, fees and assessments. I need you to go to the cashier and get a document saying this is all cleared up. Do not leave without this. I don’t want to see you back here on this matter. The cashier may ask for a $25.00 administration fee, and I am ordering that fee waived. If the cashier disagrees, have them call me, and I’ll walk over there and straighten this out myself.”
The audience applauded, and this lady, for once actually smiled, and said, “Oh my God, thank you, thank you.”
Then of course I said, “This concludes this matter. Next, I have matter number…”
This was 5 years ago. She was the cousin of my significant other at the time. She was 22.
She is from a wealthy family. Dropped out of college. Her dad was fed up with her freeloading. He was paying for her rent, car, and phone.
She wasn’t doing anything productive, but partying and sleeping in until noon (Not that I was much better at 22, but I digress).
So apparently, she didn’t meet some internal deadline between her and her father, on getting at least a part-time job. There’d been missed deadlines in the past. But she was a daddy’s girl and he’d babied her since birth.
He finally sobered up and realized that if she was ever to be responsible, there had to be consequences.
On this round of consequences – he stopped paying for her phone.
Obviously, this phone was cut off eventually. She was super angry. She acted like it was a supreme act of betrayal.
She was at my house one day, when we had a few people over for dinner.
She borrowed my then significant other’s phone and was out on my front porch arguing with her dad.
When I opened the door to check on her, the only part of the conversation I caught was, “…yeah well, MAYBE IF YOU GAVE ME A PHONE THAT WORKS….”
It made me laugh because – there was nothing wrong with the phone he gave her. The phone worked fine.
But someone needed to pay for service in order for it to work 🙂 It reflected a very spoiled obliviousness towards the concept of money.
Years ago, my girlfriend, her brother and her brothers friend went on a ski weekend.
Her brother and his friend had very high paying jobs at an international oilfield company.
Friday night we went to the bar, and I left the tip on the table when we left. Credit cards had to run through a machine with a carbon copy paper, so not convenient.
My friends friend, went to the washroom and I said we would meet him at the exit. While waiting at the exit, I saw him go to our table first, then join us at the door. I kind of wondered about that.
The next day we go skiing and have dinner at the lodge. I left a tip for my girlfriend and I. When I stand up, my friends friend says, you forgot your money. I said “Its not my money” and he said, “OK its mine then”, and grabbed it . I said “Its the waitresses” and he dropped the money and jumped back, like he was slapped.
I was livid, but we left the money behind, and went back to the hotel room. While driving in the car, I asked him what he thought he was doing? He said what are you doing? We were all stunned.
It turns out he was Australian, first week in Canada, and he had never heard of, or seen tipping before.
I had no idea at the time ,45 years ago , that Australians didn’t tip. He had no clue what tipping was.
So, he wasn’t cheap, but would have been made me look cheap, if I hadn’t caught him.
Earthquakes Asteroids Zombies: Predictions of Nostradamus
I remember this VIVIDLY, unfortunately. I move from NYC to rural Vermont in 2013.
Around 2017, after getting to know a bunch of folks in the area, I decided to do something I hadn’t done in years. I got a library card. I took out the newly-released “Astrophysics for People in a Hurry” by Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
I took it home, grabbed a glass of my favorite 19 Crimes red wine, and settled back on the couch. I opened it to the introduction, then adjusted the light a bit… then moved the book further from my eyes… then closer to my eyes.
I work in IT. I read stuff ALL DAY LONG….
HOWFUCKINGEVER…
It’s always backlit. I realized then that I hadn’t picked up an actual printed book to read in a few years. In that time my eyes degenerated a little AND NOW I NEED READING GLASSES!
I slammed the book shut and anyone reading this who lives in the northeast United States, likely heard the resounding, “GODFUCKINGDAMMIT TO HELL!” that I let out that day. I was 49 and was REALLY hoping to make it to 50 before I needed glasses. I consider myself VERY fortunate that that was the first time I felt like I was getting old.
RED DAWN (1984) | Opening Scene: Paramilitary Invasion | MGM
On the winter night it was around 10pm, there was a sudden bang on my iron gate. Curiously I went out and saw a young girl who was alone nicely dressed but no warm clothes. She was bald with black cloth around her head, wearing a confused face.
She requested to come inside. I asked her about herself and her sudden visit. Safely standing out, other members of my family also joined us.
She explained that she was classmate of my son, whom she had not met since ages but remembered his name.
She explained the shocking story about her family involved in terrorism, which seemed more like a plot from a movie than a believable reality.
My son, who lives outside the India, was unaware of her situation.
I called him and he confirmed that the girl was in his class during school days, probably in class 4th or 5th he had lost touches with her, knowing nothing about her current circumstances. We were all now confused what to do next.
Sensing that the girl is not in proper mental health. I decided against calling police and opted to reach out the school management with whom I had good relationship.
They promptly search for records going back to several years and provided me her home address and phone number.
Upon contacting her father he arrived immediately and told us the family had been searching her since noon. He explained that their daughter is in deep depression and under medication. She tried to attempt suicide sometimes.
He expressed gratitude for our assistance.
But how she remembered my address and my son’s name is still to be searched.
Edit: we are living in small town mostly every one knows each other. Later we came to know that the girl was actually in bad mental state. She was weird in school also.
You should never turn your partner’s generosity into your entitlement.
For example:
In my previous marriage, I cooked all the dinners. I would make his plate, and bring it to wherever he was. I would do this for anyone I cooked for, because I’m sweet like that. It’s a quiet way of giving affection and being considerate.
One time, early in our marriage, he had a busy couple weeks. So, to be thoughtful, I began packing his lunch for those days. He needed to leave early, so I began cooking and packing him a breakfast to reheat at work. These were things I did out of love and kindness.
Fast forward five years…he comes home from work every night and parks himself in the recliner with the remote control. I come home from my job, and immediately start cooking. I’m cooking our dinner, while he watches TV and yells from the other room to find out when it will be ready. I bring him his plate, and he eats while he watches the news. I eat at the kitchen counter while I’m cooking his lunch and breakfast for the next day. He is watching a show, and wants dessert, while I’m doing dishes. I no longer even get a ‘thank you’. In fact, if I get busy at my job, and ask him to take care of his own breakfast or lunch, he becomes angry if it’s longer than a day or two.
Fast forward 10 years…I come home from work every night and immediately start cooking dinner, while my kids do homework or play in the other room. I make their plates and bring them to the kids while they play. My son stops when I walk in, jumps up and down and gives me a hug. My daughter meets me halfway, takes her plate and says, “Thank you, Mommy.” I eat at the kitchen counter while I pack their lunches. My kids put their empty dishes in the sink and tell me how much they like what I made. I will cook for them forever…if they let me.
My ex-husband…he sits in somebody else’s recliner now, taking that person for granted.
I love doing nice things for the people I care about. However, nobody is entitled to my generosity.
My best relationship advice: Accept generosity and thoughtfulness as gifts from your partner. Do not use those gifts to make them your servant. Gratitude will make you both feel loved.
In the wonderful movie “Men In Black 3”, J and K meet up with an alien named Griffin
image 254
Griffin is the last of his species, which has the unique ability to see every possible future at once. In many cases, this turns out to be useful because Griffin can avoid dangerous possible outcomes by changing his own behavior.
The movie is set in July 1969 and Griffin loves going to Shea Stadium because his favourite possible future is when the Mets win the World Series. Griffin shares his power with J and K, and J remarks:
“So this is how you see things? This is amazing!”
To which Griffin replies
“It’s a gigantic pain in the ass, but it has it’s moments.”
And that’s what it’s like knowing stuff.
It’s being a doctor and knowing someone is going to die or, even worse, will have to live with a terrible disease for years, or decades.
It’s being a lawyer and seeing that your client is going to jail for a long time, or is going to lose a very large lawsuit.
It’s being an accountant and realizing someone is cheating.
It’s being an engineer and realizing that an existing structure will fail well before its service life is going to be over.
It’s at this point that the people who are ignorant still have hope.
Let me explain an example because I was involved in it a few years ago. In a nearby city, a water main broke and a nearby historic building, about three stories high, had part of its foundation badly damaged – a gap of about 1 meter.
The city called in two engineers. There was nothing that could be done. The structure hadn’t failed yet, but it eventually would. The damage couldn’t be repaired – it would be cheaper to tear it down and built it again.
So the city ordered its demolition. Immediately.
It was at that point a chemical engineer tried to start a campaign, with public support, saying the structure wasn’t damaged that badly and this was just a scam for the owners to get rid of the building so they could make a lot of money. He started trying to throw his weight around, threatening to sue people who were trying to tear down the building.
I remember talking to him. He said the building was stable. My training is in law, but I’ve been working with engineering for over a decade by then and even I knew about “deal load failure” – a “stable” building collapsing under its own weight. He was asking my employer to stop the demolition. That’s well outside our mandate, and it would have been improper for us to do so. That’s another thing he didn’t know.
Anyway, disciplinary complaints flew around right and left and the chemical engineer was the only one who got disciplined.
Being informed is a wonderful thing, but it brings you no comfort.
My dad was telling me a story about SEAL training, when they went and swam under ice up in the arctic.
Unlike this madman, he actually had a wetsuit on.
He said that when he went under the ice, which was white and thick, he eventually got lost. And under the ice, it was an even plane of ice in all directions, and his rope was gone. He had this sickening moment of realizing he might be stuck under the ice. Fortunately, he found his way—but the entire story gave me the heeby jeevies.
He also told me a story of coming back to a tent, and finding a giant walrus inside of it taking a nap.
I’m so much more docile and risk-averse than him. You couldn’t pay me to jump out of an airplane. In this case, the apple fell far from the tree.
It’s not free. It’s a stone soup. A lot of hard work for what was seen as a ridiculous idea.
Imagine a poor village. Nobody has food security, and they’re all carefully guarding what little food they have.
A couple starving guys build a fire in the village square, and put a big pot of water on. They throw a big stone in, calling it a magic stone, and say that they’re making stone soup.
The magic is that it is delicious and will nourish anyone that eats it.
Anyone that wants some stone soup only has to add a little food. A scrap of chicken meat, a potato, a turnip, some cabbage, or just some wild herbs.
Everyone wants more to eat, so they toss in what they can, and receive a bowl.
In the end, they’ve helped craft a delicious soup. There is no more to eat than there was in the beginning, but the quality is much better than the daily turnips they’ve scrounged all their lives.
They learn to stick together, to help each other out, and to trust their neighbours. The poorest, hungriest people get a bit more than they put in, but this nourishes them, and next time there is a stone soup, they’ll have a bit more to contribute.
Even the initial hungry guys contributed something important. Though the stone cannot be eaten, the idea is delicious, and more soup can be made every day.
You know for damn sure that the second soup had a lot more food in it.
That is what Saskatchewan did in Canada starting about 1947, completing by 1962. They were the poor hungry guys, and they helped the rest of Canada see that it made more sense to be a community and help each other out.
It sounds simple, and you hear it all the time from self-help influencers. But growing up as an abandoned child, I spent my childhood, adolescence, and the first decade of my adulthood trying to get approval from my dad. Oldest story in the fucking book of pathetic people-pleaser children.
Now that I think back, the reason my dad never respected me is precisely because I tried too hard. I think he wanted a son with a strong personality, a son who could go toe to toe against him and have a shouting match. But he got a pathetic, timid daughter who changed her tone according to his whim. Except, I could never be the kind of child he wanted. Growing up, I was constantly reminded that if I didn’t behave, my grandma would kick me out of the house, and I would live on the streets. When you grow up in that kind of environment, you learn to watch the adults in the household. You learn to read their emotions and try to appease them to avoid a beating. And my dad hated that.
It was a losing game for me right from the start.
I grew a backbone against my family when I finally gained financial independence. My dad finally got the child he hoped for, someone with a strong personality who could match him in a shouting contest and throw the door and walk out of the house. I was able to do that because I had a place to go. I’m no longer afraid.
I felt that, at that point, he wanted to have a relationship with me. Because I was well-read and had some life experiences, not only could I carry a conversation matching his (supposed) intellectual level, but I could even talk about stuff he didn’t know. I could entertain him. And, of course, there’s the fact that I can speak English and help him navigate life in the US.
I’m no longer a chore, a responsibility for him. I’m entertaining, I’m useful, and I have money. I could tell his attitude toward me had changed. The annoyance and disdain were gone. He asked me to call him. He asked me to visit him. He got unhappy when I didn’t reply to his random text messages. Suddenly, the role switched. My dad was suddenly in my position, hoping for my attention.
I finally got the validation, the “fatherly love” I so desperately wanted as a child. And I didn’t want it. Because I know he didn’t change his attitude because he suddenly grew some empathy for me. No. He changed his attitude because my stepmother died, and he realized he had only one blood relative left who could take care of him when he needed it. And he made a pisspoor effort to “make nice” with me.
I think once I got over my childhood issue with my dad, nothing else mattered to me. I worked past taking negative feedback about my art in art school and later on the internet (LOL). I learned to ignore haters and just do my own thing. Through years of therapy, I learned to have very healthy self-talk. I learned to validate my emotions. I learned to analyze my actions and call myself out for questionable decisions without putting myself down. I learned to be my own best friend and biggest supporter.
When you know yourself, good and bad, it doesn’t matter how other people see you.
In the game Dragon Age 2, there was a little NPC banter between two companions, Isabela and Merrill. Isabela described how she would flirt with guys in a bar, and Merrill admired her flirting skills. Isabela replied, “You have no idea how many times they tell me to “fuck off, you pathetic old hag.” Merrill was shocked and asked: ”Doesn’t it bother you?” Isabela replied, “Why should I? They don’t know me. I know me.”
And that line just stuck with me over the years.
They don’t know me. I know me. Only I can validate myself. I don’t need to make other people proud. I want to make myself proud.
I wish I had known this earlier. I wish I weren’t that people-pleaser child who had desperately wanted validation from a narcissist. But then again, there are some lessons you have to learn the hard way. I’m just glad I finally learned it.
My wife and I married later in life. She’d built a complex life under her maiden name and decided she wouldn’t legally change her name. To do so would have been a nightmare of bank, credit card, investment accounts, etc being changed. I was okay with that.
We decided we would have three bank accounts, hers, mine, and ours.
Went to my local bank to set up the ours account. We explained we were newly married (yay! Joy!) and that we wanted a joint account. The woman looked at my wife’s documents and said she couldn’t create a joint account for us. When we asked why, she said my wife had to legally change her name to mine for her to open the account. We said that was ridiculous. The teller said that was the law. I suspected it wasn’t, but bank lady wasn’t budging. How to get around this impass?
I asked if she could just add J to my current account. The teller said no, because it was still the same problem.
I said, “I can add anyone I want to my account. If I’m stupid enough to put a homeless drunk man on my account, I can legally do that.”
The teller agreed. But she said I couldn’t add my wife without her changing her name.
We told her where she could shove that idea (politely of course). I immediately closed my account. We jaunted across town to another, apparently more progressive bank, opened up the ours account with the two different surnames and the rest is history.
There is an old saying about doing a job you enjoy and you’ll be happy working, however there is another side to that which is if you do a job which you enjoy as a hobby, you will end up hating your hobby, and that’s exactly what happened.
When I was in my young teens, I’d love tinkering with mechanical objects. I worked for a bicycle shop at weekends and was well known for being able to fix bike problems. I had older friends who had cars (70’s Fords, Triumphs, that sort of thing) and I loved helping out working, on them. When it became time at school to pick a trade for my future, it was obvious, I’d be a car mechanic.
It was now the early 90’s and I was working my way through college doing day release and block release, while carrying out an apprenticeship with a Ford main dealer here in the UK. Times were changing and so were the cars. Gone were the overhead valve engines, or the single overhead cam engines, carburettors were becoming history, being replaced with ever more complicated fuel injection systems and multi cam, multi valve engines, and complicated emission control systems.
By the time I had finished my apprenticeship, I was starting to feel something was very wrong at the dealership I was working at. I had been earning the basic wage for several years (£29 per week until I was 17, then £35 per week). Despite having a high throughput in the workshop, the company never had any money for things like clean rags, WD40 and other sundries (despite the customer being charged on every job for these). Also, the garage rarely supplied special tooling we needed, or training we should all have been having on these new technologies. Warranty times were getting tighter, most of the cream service jobs were going to the top techs while us younger techs were getting all the fault diagnostics and warranty jobs, and a splattering of first services with little upsell.
Service department were pushing more and more work through, booking in clutches for while you wait customers, and customers were becoming more demanding. There were days when I’d be working outside in the rain, or in the snow wearing just jeans, a tee-shirt and overalls.
Also I had a girlfriend, and before each date I’d fill a sink with the hottest water I could stand, and soak my hands in it before scrubbing and pumicing my skin and nails, just so I’d be clean.
A day came when a manager came to me and told me I wasn’t ripping people off enough and I needed to add more items to each job, I consider myself a fairly decent person and I really don’t like ripping people off. The manager told me that if I didn’t start ripping off customers, I’d have to start looking for a new job. Also if I mentioned to anyone that we’d have that conversation, he’d deny it!
By this point I’d been working there for 6 years, and still struggling to clear £10k per year in earnings, and my favourite hobby was now the thing that made me miserable. I left the garage and tried to move away from the trade. I started working an office job, I had some experience working in the customer service department at the garage and I had a friend who worked at a recruitment agency who got me through the door, now I am a software QA.
Many years after I left the garage, I met up with the service manager and we got talking. It turned out that two of the people who owned the dealership had gone to jail for fraud. They had been skimming off most of the profits from the company to pay for their extravagant lifestyles. Stables, tennis courts, swimming pools. While I was working outside in the rain, I’d been paying for these people to live the lives of film stars.
Over the years I had worked for another main dealer, working as service receptionist and costing clerk. I found that corruption was there too, not at the same scale, but customers got ripped off, quality of work was often poor, drug use was ignored and the managers/owners didn’t care. I left that job after less than 2 years, and since then I have avoided the motor trade as much as possible.
I still work on my own and friends and families’ cars, mostly servicing items. I’ll never do it professionally again.
I was dismissed a number of years ago by an absolute thunderhelmet of a boss. I remember getting called into his office one day and he just started ranting and raving for no apparent reason. I guess I was just in the worng place at the wrong time and took the entire brunt of whatever it was he was pissed off about.
I was much younger back then, and I will admit that I had a much shorter fuse than I do now. I let him rant until he ran out of steam, and then I let him have it back both barrels. I told him exactly what I thought of him and that just sent him right over the edge again. I was told I had 10 minutes to pack up my stuff and get the fuck out!
My dad was an old union man, so when I got home and told him I’d been sacked, he quizzed me on it. He asked me had I done anything to warrant being called into the office. As far as I was aware, no. He asked “Has he suspended you or dismissed you?” Well since he told me to pack my stuff and get the fuck out, one would assume it’s a dismissal. He told me to ask my now ex-employer for a written explanation of why I had been dismissed. At first, the boss refused. He very quickly changed his mind when he got the letter from the Tribunals Service that I was intending to pursue them for unfair dismissal.
He sent me a bullshit letter with a load of bullshit excuses why they had decided to let me go, but the final one was the best of the lot. He claimed that I had been aggressive towards a senior manager (him) and had threatened him. That was bollocks. I had told him exactly what I thought of him “Fucking Fat, Lazy, Useless Bellend” I think were the exact words that I used to describe him, but at no point did I issue any sort of threat to him, nor was I particularly aggressive in my manner. I simply stood up for myself.
The tribunal went ahead and on the day he actually apologised for the confusion and told the tribunal that he would be happy to offer me my old job back. Too little, too late. I told the tribunal that the manner in which I was spoken to by him made me feel very threatened, hence the completely out of character response from me and that I did not feel comfortable returning to work a single day longer with that man. I felt that the offer of my job back was simply a tactic to deflect the outcome of the tribunal and that if I returned, I would be a target for his irrational behaviour and he would simply be looking for any excuse to terminate me again.
I won the tribunal and received my full pay from the date of dismissal to the day of the tribunal, plus a small financial compensation. I told the tribunal that the case was never about financial gain. I had simply wanted to clear my name and have the dismissal expunged from my employment record. I asked for any financial settlement to be donated to a homeless charity. I know that making that charitable donation hit that fat cunt far harder than handing it over to me.
Let me tell you about Randy (fake name), who graduated from my precision machining class in 2007.
I recently retired from teaching in a technical high school where 11th and 12th graders spend a half-day at their local high schools in the area, and a half-day with us.
Randy applied for our firefighting course (important later in the story). Because it is such a popular class, he didn’t get selected. I told Randy that my machining class still had openings, so he applied.
The next day, his counselor phoned me and said Randy wasn’t smart enough to succeed in my class. I told her if Randy turned in all of his assignments and never gave up, he would not fail.
The new school year began with Randy in my class. Every day, Randy arrived with a big smile, excited to learn something new. At the end of every day, he told me a few things he had just learned, and I always responded that I was proud of him.
Toward the end of the school year, Randy begged me to attend a parent-teacher-counselor meeting to discuss his progress and future. Tech center teachers normally didn’t attend such meetings, and Randy’s high school was a 40-minute drive away from the tech center. Since the meeting was during my class time, and since I was convinced it was important for me to be there, my boss authorized a substitute teacher for my class so I could attend.
At the progress meeting, Randy’s first period teacher said he was always cheerful. He always turned in his assignments, but they were of garbage quality. He hadn’t passed an exam all year. The second and third teachers’ stories were the same. In short, Randy was a nice kid who wasn’t smart enough to learn much.
By the time it was my turn to talk, I knew why Randy invited me. I described a student who was excited to learn new things every day. Randy had poor scores on his first few written tests at the beginning of the year, but soon began averaging around 85-90%. Whenever Randy made a mistake in the shop, he asked for help, paying attention to not repeat his mistakes. I finished my presentation by saying, “If I was back in industry, hiring new employees, I’d hire Randy in a heartbeat. He works hard, and I can always trust him.”
Everyone was stunned except Randy and me. He returned to my class for a second year, and did well again. He signed up for online classes, and graduated from high school on time.
After graduation, Randy worked nights in a machine shop while attending community college during the day. He completed the firefighting course in the normal two years, and was hired by a local fire department.
A couple years after that, Randy was accepted into an EMT (emergency medical technician) training program, where he graduated with honors.
If my wife or I ever need an EMT, I hope it’s Randy! I’m confident we’d be in good hands. Of course, I’m still proud of him.
My customer normally comes in on his own to buy 10 20L drums of industrial hand cleaner that my business manufactures – Grimetime. However this day his wife came with him and was actually driving.
He got out from the passenger side with his foot heavily bandaged and limping. After enquiring what had happened, I learnt that he had dropped a lawn mower on his foot which had subsequently removed his toes and a large portion of the rest of his foot.
Anyway the drums he wanted were right at the back of the pallet on the second level of the pallet racking and I was having trouble reaching the last 4 drums.
His snide comment was, “You’re too short! If you were taller you’d be able to reach!”
He is shorter than I am and without thinking or remembering he was a customer, I replied, “Hey, you can’t talk. You’ve always been shorter than me and but now you’ve lost half a foot!”
He was not amused but his wife roared laughing!
As funny as this was and even after more than 10 years, I still cringe at my insensitivity.
Not my finest moment as a human but probably my best one liner!
Many years ago, when gas stations were gas stations and grocery stores were grocery stores, I worked in a full service gas station. This was back when the attendant pumped the gas, checked the air in the tires, washed the windshield, and checked the oil level.
A customer pulled up to the pump, released his hood latch, and got out of the car. He asked me to check under the hood and around the front tire wells. As he was coming down the exit ramp from the interstate, he said he had heard some strange squealing noises that sounded like something rubbing and it was coming from the front of the car.
After starting the pump, I raised the hood and started looking for rubbing marks, feeling for loose or broken belts, etc. I didn’t find anything. I checked the oil level and closed the hood.
As the hood latched into place, I heard the squealing sound. I looked around under the wheel wells and all around the front of the car with no luck. I was about to walk back to the rear of the car when I heard the noise again, this time a bit softer. I looked at the front of the car more closely and there it was, the source of the noise. One of the headlights was missing and sticking through the hole where the wiring harness connected to the headlight was a tiny little head. A small kitten had managed to get up under the hood and crawl up to the area behind the headlight receptacle. It had stuck its head through the hole and was now stuck.
When I showed it to the customer he said it must have gotten in there before he left home that morning and he had driven almost 200 miles, mostly on Interstate 10. This was the first time he had stopped. We pulled the headlight holder and kitten then helped the little guy get unstuck.
I can’t imagine what it must have been like to that poor kitten. 200 miles at highway speed smack in the face. I don’t blame it for squealing.
A man sitting in the hotel said to his friend “Look at that kid waiting tables, he’s so dumb that if I put 500 and 50 notes in front of him, he will pick up the fifty note…. let me show you.
He hollered at the kid, put both 500 and 50 bills at the table and said “Take a note of greater value out of these two”. When the child picked up the fifty note, they both laughed out loud and left, the child went back to his work.
Another person who sat besides and witnessed this called the child afterwards and asked “You’re a grown kid who still doesn’t know the difference between fifty and five hundred notes. How come? That’s a loss”.
The child smiled and said “This man often comes here and demonstrates the same thing to his buddies for kicks and giggles, to amuse over my stupidity as I pick up the note of fifty each time, they have a momentary laugh over this, and I get fifty rupees. The day I picked 500 would be the day this game will be over and… my income too”.
There is no need to be wise everywhere… especially when being wise affects one’s own peace, interests and happiness, then it is wise to become a fool.
I have also chosen to go anonymous to answer this question.
I got pregnant the second time I ever had sex.
I was 14 years old.
I came from a “good” family, and had good grades and lots of friends. Sex was something I thought you did to keep a boyfriend, I certainly didn’t enjoy it back then – there wasn’t much to it. I didn’t know anything about birth control and even if I did, I sure wouldn’t have known how to get it back then and this was well before the days of Plan B.
I had a feeling fairly quickly that something was amiss – so my two best girlfriends and I played hooky from school and took the bus to a nearby city to a Planned Parenthood office to take a pregnancy test. I remember us joking and laughing in the waiting area until the nurse came to get me. She took me into a private room and talked to me about my options – I could keep the baby if my family was willing to help me (I was too young to apply for any kind of government assistance), I could have an abortion, or I could give the baby up for adoption.
The first was out. I knew there was no way my family would allow me to keep a baby being so young myself and my mother would be very worried about what other people thought, but I didn’t feel right about having an abortion so I chose to have the baby and surrender.
My mother was enraged when I told her my decision – I’m sure partly with concern for how difficult it would likely be for me, but she also couldn’t handle the stigma of having a pregnant teenaged daughter. My dad told me that whatever choice I made, he would support me. I found a maternity home about an hour away and my parents shipped me off there around my 15th birthday. Luckily, I would up with a very compassionate ob/gyn who took exceptional care of me and treated me with kindness and respect.
When my son was born after a very long, difficult labor, he immediately put him in my arms as I had asked. I had 6 days to feed and hold and love my son before the provincial papers to surrender were signed. On that day, my parents came up to get me (and my mother probably wanted to make sure I didn’t change my mind) I loved my son with every part of my being, but I could see no way to care for him and give him the life I felt he deserved. I signed the papers.
It was a closed adoption, so though I was allowed to name him, I knew his name would likely be changed. I wrote a letter to him and another one to his adoptive parents and hoped one day they would let him read them. Just like the other poster (so far) on this question, I never stopped thinking about him and also struggled with the heartbreak and depression of the loss. I spent most of my high school years numbing myself with booze and pot, but I remained a good student, so most people didn’t see how deeply distraught I was.
From the day I surrendered him, I began counting down the years until I could try to see him again. I felt that I would wait until he was 18 before I registered with the provincial registry as they would only give me non-identifying information before then. I did register on his 18th birthday but he hadn’t yet registered and I wondered if he knew about me or ever wanted to meet me. When my family mentioned it at all, it was generally to remind me not to “intrude” on his life. I was expected to get on with my life and forget about him and though I became very successful in my career, I never married and never had any other children.
Eventually, by the time he was in his very early 20’s, the province that I live in opened up their records so that birth families and adoptees could find each other more easily. I could now access his identifying his information if I wanted to, but he could chose to veto my search if he wanted to. He didn’t. I was able to find him very quickly when the paper work finally arrived. By then I had the internet to make my search easier.
I finally worked up the courage to call him one Saturday afternoon. I gently explained who I was and who I believed him to be. He was overwhelmed and seemed very happy to hear from me. I fell to my knees on my floor just to speak to him. It was the most emotional experience of my life. We talked for a few hours and then I wrote him a letter to fill him in a little more on the missing pieces. That same night, his mom called me to introduce herself and, most wonderfully of all, to welcome me to the family. She had raised our son to know he was adopted, and always promised him that if he ever wanted to find me that she would support him and help him.
She told me all about him – funny little details about his childhood and his pets and his friends. It was incredibly touching to have her support and it made our reunion so much easier for everyone. I met with her first, along with her daughter (my son’s younger sister). Perhaps they wanted to size me up first, but I really didn’t mind. On that first meeting they gave me a photo album crammed with pictures of my son throughout his life. It was an incredible gift.
Finally, a few weeks later I drove to the city where my son lived – the same city I surrendered him in. He and his mom met me for dinner. I was so nervous and so was he. She was funny and warm and made it a little easier. The three of us spent the evening together getting to know one another. At the end of the evening, when I got out of the car in front of the hotel I was staying in, my son jumped out and hugged me. It was magic. I felt I had waited my whole life to hold him in my arms again. He was just over 7 pounds when I said good bye, he was a grown man when I held him again. It was beyond anything I had ever experienced or could accurately describe.
The next evening just he and I went out. He showed me the letter I had written to him the night before I surrendered him as a baby. His parents had given it to him when he was 15 and he kept it safely pressed in a book since then. I told him I was sorry if I caused him any pain by surrendering him, but that I felt I had no other choice and I wanted the best for him. He said he understood and that he had a good life and knew he was loved by his family, but also by me, that he understood how much I must have loved him to have let him go.
Since then, we’ve just continued to grow our relationship. His mom and sister now live in the city I live in, and we see each other as often as our schedules allow. My son and I did some travelling together and spent more time getting to know each other and see how much alike we are – both ridiculously stubborn and opinionated, both loyal, both with a love of travel and cultures. His mom often laughs at how similar we are. A few years ago, he married a fantastic girl and we all welcomed their first baby into the world just after Christmas.
Now, surrendering a child is not an experience I would wish on anyone. Neither would I wish being a pregnant teen on anyone. No matter what choice you make, the consequences are difficult and lifelong. For many, many years, I felt isolated from the rest of the world because I didn’t share this truth about myself, or if I did, it was with a sense of shame and loss.
When I found my son, I had to find some way to integrate my life with my found son and his family and somehow get everyone in my world to understand why this was life and death important for me and they could either support me or lose me. For some, it was easy, for others, far more difficult, but I am glad we all found a way to make it work. Families are built in a number of different ways and I am grateful to be where I am now. I know how lucky I am.
I grew up in the country. We raised chickens for eggs. We had a few that laid white-shelled eggs, but mostly lots of shades of brown…some with light green, light blue, pink shells. It depends on the breed.
Most of the eggs you buy in stores are mass-produced in giant chicken sweat-shops. The chickens are given just enough nutrients to produce thin-white-shelled eggs. The yolks are pale and the cost per egg is cheap. It’s an exploitive money-game.
A humanely raised chicken that is fed properly and allowed to forage, will lay thick-shelled eggs with a fairly sturdy inner membrane. A farmer may choose to raise red hens, or something more exotic to help differentiate his/her eggs. Or maybe they just prefer a bird better adapted to their living environment.
Growing up, if I dropped an egg on the kitchen floor, the shell would break, but the membrane would still hold it together. You could still use the egg. Try that with the typical grocery store variety! Once you cracked the egg, the yolk was dark yellow to orange, and very prominent. They were likely fertilized too. Our eggs tasted different. Probably had a wider vitamin content, due to the hen’s diet…and those tough shells…calcium from bugs and the occasional oyster shell supplement.
I live in the suburbs now. I pay $5 or $6 a dozen for certified humane, pasture-raised chicken eggs. My sense of taste prefers the eggs from chickens that forage. My outer Momma wants my kids to eat the safest and healthiest food I can afford. Mostly, my conscience remembers my “pet” chickens, and the way I taught them to come running to me when I whistled. They had a good life…and a purposeful one.
Its not the color of the egg…it’s the content of its character.
People are so greedy. i was buying a estate house in Danville Virginia. it had all the appliances and old crappy furniture. before closing the relatives, all came to the house and stripped it including the toilets. I did a prebuy inspection the day before the sale and saw what they did and called my realtor and said the deal was off. the realtor cane and was PISSED. he got the other realtor involved and the estate person came and saw what had happened. both realtors were stunned. we talked for about an hour and the realtor for the seller got the estate person to come over and look what happened. she was appalled by what all her relatives had done. the house was not very expensive and would have worked for me. we all talked, and the price went from 70k to 50k (nobody really wanted the house except me) the estate person deducted the losses from the people who took stuff. i ended buying rally nice appliances at Home Depot Scratch and dent for about 2k and bought modern toilets for 200 each. it worked out well for me in the end. 20k discount is a big amount of cash. at the closing the title company issued me a check for 20k and i talked to the bank and they were ok with the deal. i bough the appliances and some of furniture then just paid the rest on the mortgage. I lived in the house for 3 years and sold it with the appliances and furniture to a young couple. it sold for 112,000. it is amazing what elbow grease and effort can do to an old rundown house.
Here are some low-key signs of highly intelligent people:
1. Most of them have the habit of staying up late into the night.
2. They may have bad handwriting because of the trouble with their mouth and hand keeping up.
3. They have unusual, out of the box, apparently ‘crazy’ ideas.
4. They’re prefer to be with their own company.
5. They’re brutally honest with what they don’t know.
6. They can talk to people they don’t like and hear ideas they don’t agree with and not get emotional.
7. They have a twisted sense of humor. They are most likely to enjoy and understand dark humor.
8. They have good body memory. Their bodies can pick up routines faster than others.
9. They use the Keanu behavior to boost intelligence.
Keanu Reeves says highly intelligent people play a game. They try to be wrong once in a while. They practice being wrong more often to reset their egos.
10. They can explain difficult matter in an easy way.
11. They can make connections between seemingly unrelated subjects.
Land of the Lost (6/10) Movie CLIP – Hadrosaur Urine (2009) HD
I am fifty six years old. I grew up hungry. My parents did the best they could and I never starved but there was never quite enough.
One of my co-workers grew up the same way. Her mother made giant pots of cabbage soup and kool aid without sugar. She is in her mid forties. We both have been food secure since the late 1990s.
We were both recently sent to a conference. The organizers provided all the food. This made us uncomfortable but we didn’t know why.
We both compulsively took a couple tea bags and small jars of honey from the drink station.
“Just in case we need a drink later.”
They had a breakfast buffet. I took an extra orange, a small box of cereal and some honey for my room. My friend did the same. We put the food in our room. We felt better.
“Just in case we are hungry later.”
They had an exhibition hall. At each station was a candy bowl. My friend and I stood and picked out candy at each table. We put it in our bag.
“Just in case we need a sweet later.”
Our young co-worker has never been hungry. Both parents have good jobs. Her godmother is a bigwig in the town. She watched us in amusement and exasperation.
“If you need food later call room service. Ask the valet to go bring you something if you don’t like the food in the hotel. You parked in valet parking right? You gave him a good tip? Alright, go take that stuff up to your room. I’ll save you a seat at the keynotes.”
She doesn’t understand. Just like the kids with money didn’t understand why Frances and I volunteered to be kitchen help in elementary school. Why we brought our backpacks to lunch on Friday, or how grateful we were when the kitchen lady filled them with bread and fruit and government milk and cheese.
Poor kids understand hunger . . .and hiding food. Even though I haven’t been hungry since 1997, I remember. Rich kids know food will always be there. They don’t know hunger, and they’ve never hidden food.
This happened about 30 years ago. My mother-in-law had a Mustang II that she loved and took great care of. When she was diagnosed with cancer, my sister-in-law moved in with her to take care of her during her final months. Sister-in-law used the Mustang for shopping and transportation for both of them.
Then one day, the car started making a horrible knocking noise. Sister-in-law took it to the respected Ford dealer, where mother-in-law had originally bought it. They diagnosed the car with a blown engine, said it was not worth fixing, and recomended trading it in on a new car. In-laws did not have the money for a new car.
My wife and I lived out of town, and were in town for a visit. Sister-in-law asked if I could take her to the dealer to pick up the car and bring it home. It still drove even though it made a knocking sound and ran terrible. We went to the Ford dealer, and they charged her $400 for the diagnosis. All they did was test the compression on the four cylinders, and some other made up stuff. I couldn’t believe it. Sister-in-law paid the $400, and I drove the car to their house as she followed me.
I was an amateur mechanic from my highschool gear head days, and it sounded to me like the knocking was from the top of the engine, and not the lower end. They had a cheap Walmart socket set in their kitchen tool drawer, so I offered to take off the valve cover and see if maybe I could find out what was wrong. It was just a broken valve spring!
We had to go back home, so I couldn’t fix the car for them. But I went back to the Ford dealer to get the $400 back for the misdiagnosis. They refused. I yelled that it was way too much, they were just trying to cheat us into buying a new car, and why didn’t their service shop warranty cover a misdiagnosis? They said they couldn’t refund money for work that was already done.
It was late Friday afternoon, and the service department waiting room was full of people picking up their cars. I made sure everyone heard every detail exactly as it happened. The people all stared silently at the floor as I made a scene. I pushed it to the point where the service manager was calling the police. I didn’t get any money back, but I’m sure it costed them much more than $400 in future service business and car sales!
The in-laws asked where they should take the car to get fixed. My wife suggested to call the nearest auto repair shop with the owner’s name on the sign. So, on Monday morning, they called Russ’s Auto Service. Russ answered the phone and made an appointment the next day. It cost $95 to replace the broken valve spring. The car ran for 5 more years, until it completely rusted out.
One time my Dad stole someone’s neglected dog and gave it to a kid for Christmas.
The dog lived kitty-corner down the street from my Dad’s house. The poor thing lived on a 3-foot-long chain in the middle of the front yard. One side of its little circle was covered in poop, and the other side had bowls he could barely reach.
The poor thing was often left out all night. Dad called animal control a bunch of times, and the owners had been contacted and briefly took care of the dog, letting it in every night and clearing the poop,, but always slacked off, and there the poor thing was again!
An occasional visitor to his home had a son about 8 or 10 years old, who would go down the street and pet the dog. He made up his own name for the dog, and the dog just lit up when he went over, usually with treats from Dad’s house.
A few days before Christmas the dog was out on his short chain shivering in an ice-cold rain. You could see him suffering from the kitchen window. Nobody was home at the neighbors… Dad walked over, bold as brass, unclipped the dog, and brought him in.
He gave the dog a nice bath and blow-dried him, ripped a huge golden bow off of a box under the tree and put it on the dog, and drove him over and gave him to that boy.
The boy had the dog for many years, and they were the best of friends.
This is kind of the other way around. My mother was born in 1948 to an unmarried couple, which due to the societal norms at the time could have made her life and theirs quite difficult If they had kept her. She was adopted at only 3 days old. She never wanted to know who her birth family was because she loved her parents so much. They gave her so much love and care because to them she was the miracle they couldn’t have. She believes that though they did not give birth to her, that they were fated to be her parents. For 70 years she lived happily as the only daughter, with no cousins or any extended family. Her parents friends were more like family than some people’s actual family. Her mother passed in the early 90s and her father in ‘99. They never told her anything about her birth parents. And we think now that the only person who knew about them was a family friend my mom called Auntie.
In 2016 I was in grad school & studying language and linguistics. A professor had a dinner party & after the meal he showed us this chart about his heritage based on a DNA test like AncestryDNA. I was fascinated by it & asked for it as a Christmas gift. Then in the summer of 2017 I was contacted by someone on Ancestry who asked how we were related because it showed us as closely related. I was busy writing my thesis & studying for exams while working that summer, so I politely responded that I wasn’t sure and that I’d look into it. I was also worried that it was my dad’s side of the family which he had avoided for decades.
I didn’t understand just how close our DNA was at the time since I was new to the whole thing. I learned later that it was saying that she was my mother, which seeing her photo later made sense as she looks identical to my mom. She was so confused and began asking her siblings and elderly aunts & uncles if they knew anything. She finally found someone who did and she and her siblings discovered that they all had an older sister that no one knew about all these years. You can imagine how surprised they must have been. They all wanted to know their sister.
My mom, who had known she was adopted and wasn’t keen to meet a new family, was pretty hesitant to speak with them. It was through messages relayed between me and her sister who found me that she even found out about it. My mom is very sweet and caring, but I think she was really overwhelmed. She kept putting off talking to them. She waited until just this past spring to meet with them (via zoom) for the first time. (We had planned to meet in person, but then the pandemic happened.)
In the end, though she was not looking for it and quite hesitant, she found that she and her siblings, especially her sisters, have quite a lot in common and seems genuinely happy to know them. She gets excited to talk to them now too. It’s pretty cool seeing their relationship grow as they all ask each other about how they grew up and what their experiences have been and laughing together about the fun stories they share.
I want to post some pictures about China’s grassroots democracy. This place is a party’s community service station. The district congressman has office here, and the following posters are
1. The contact information of the district congressman belonging to the community is written below. Scan the QRcode to find him and he will “do something for you immediately”.
2. Announcement of the court election jury. Its publishing department is: The judicial bureau, the court and the police station.
3. Advertisements about free physical examinations for citizens over 65 years old, and telling them where the nearest hospital is around them.
Thanks for your upvotes, I have added a few photos.
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This is a sign hanging at the door of another party’s community workstation, showing that there is a Communist Party lawyer who will work for ordinary people here for free at some specific time, and his phone number is also written on the sign.
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This is also an advertising board for a community legal worker designated by the Party, with her contact information and service area details there. In China, the law is an easy tool for ordinary people. The litigation fee for small lawsuits is only 25 RMB yuan (about 3 US dollars), and the complaint can be drafted free of charge by legal workers of the Communist Party.
When this post has ten upvotes , I will post some modern art-style sculptures of the Communist Party.
I didn’t expect the tenth upvote to come so fast.
Now, the photo uploaded is a sculpture on a city street, showing the spirit of hammer and sickle advocated by the Communist Party. The hammer and sickle ☭ is a communist symbol representing proletarian solidarity between agricultural and industrial workers.The hammer representing workers and the sickle representing the peasants.
However, this sculpture was placed by a shopping mall nearby, which was set up to attract more customers. It is not a local party committee political propaganda.
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My next update will post some real political propaganda sculptures when the number of upvotes reaches 20.
Well, I’ve got 20 upvotes . Now I’m going to post a real political propaganda sculpture, some very China thing, it is a stone.
Yes, this is a stone with Chinese characters on it, “seeking truth from facts”. The stone engraved with this sentence can be seen in almost every city in China, because this is a official political propaganda slogan of the CPC.
He wasn’t fired. My step-dad work for the California Highway Patrol Acadamey as a gun Smith. He retired after 20+ years. He hated his job. He loved gunsmithing and even did it in his off hours, bur he hated working for the government office. One year, in the mid 1990s the CHP decided it needed to go through every gun used by CHPnand the academy and ensure they worked correctly, great. There are thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of guns, I never heard a solid figure. They had a year to do this. The most important thing for his complaint is that they had to fire a minimum of 100 rounds through each gun to ensure it was operating correctly. There were 3 gunsmiths to accomplish this task. They all ended up needing surgery for injuries incurred during this mass gun retrofit, shoulder, elbow, wrist with sever carpal tunnel like injuries (eventually it ended up he needed 2 surgeries on left shoulder, 3, on the right, 1 on each elbow, 2 on right wrist and one on left, and surgery on the right hand itself for sever trigger finger, and yes it is actually called “trigger finger”), the other two gunsmithshad similar sets of surgeries. They had to fight CalPERs for almost 10 years to “prove” this was actually caused by having to fire off approximately 1000 rounds per day for over a year, hmmmm 3 guys develop the same symptoms within weeks of eachother, working the same job, and need the same treatments, no it must be a pre-existing condition. And for those 10 years of fighting to get the surgeries, they *still* had to work. The state of California sucks, especially for their government employees. Then there was all the PC stuff. My step-dad was Japanese, and the most politically incorrect person I know, and it was usually directed at himself, ex. He had a circle of cardboard hanging in his workstation to indicate his mood (its nice to be warned), on one side was a frowning face, on the other was a smiley face with eyes like the laughing emotion 😆, he was told that was not acceptable, it was racist and he needed to take it down, my JAPANESE step-dad was told he could NOT hang that in his workstation, instead of arguing that it was accurate for his race he said “everyone’s eyes sqquinch up like that when you smile, how is that racist?” and then demonstrated with the surrounding crowd, they made him take it down anyway, that was in the late 1980s, before his injuries. Another example of non PC behavior: he was a rarity, a person without a middle name (my mother also has no middle name), his initials were KK, head office kept trying to get him to give them his middle initial, they stopped after he submitted K as his middle initial. A Japanese man with the initials of KKK it could only have been better if he had been black. On his last day of work I had bought him, at his request, a copy of Johnny Paycheck album with Take This Job and Shove It on it. He put it on the intercom system for the whole building as he left from his last day.
When I was 16, my 5 year old sister was expelled from a special summer school for special needs children. My sister was accused of calling another child the b word. My sister had a vocabulary of 2 words at that time, the b word was not one of them. After she was expelled, it dawned on me that she wasn’t going to get better unless I helped her myself. So for the rest of the summer, I dedicated 3 hours of the day devoted to teaching her words. The first hour was just going around the house, pointing at things, and saying their name out loud. The 2nd hour focused on conversation. How are you? What’s your name? How old are you? Just me questioning and answering everything, at least in the beginning. The 3rd hour, we just worked on her letters, writing and reading. Again, most of it involved me doing the talking, but she had to be there to listen. The first week was brutal. She cried, I cried. But after the first week, she understood I wasn’t going to let up. She started becoming more cooperative. I couldn’t believe it myself, but by the time September came around, we were going to the library and she was saying hi to people she didn’t know. Her 1st grade teacher even made a remark about her improvement to my mother on the first day. Obviously, this was just the beginning of a long road to catching up to her age level, communication wise. But it was at least, the beginning. I now understand that my sister’s misdiagnosis of autism was actually a defense mechanism to our abusive father. If I didn’t make her hunker down that summer, would she have eventually spoke on her own anyway? I’m honestly not sure, but I hope so. I always knew my sister was a bright girl, she understood what I asked her. She understood how the remote control worked. She was even smart enough to figure out that if she pretended not to speak, my father wouldn’t focus on her and most likely not start any fights with her that lead to her getting abused somehow. My sister is now on her last year of pharmacy school, and she even made a wonderful speech during my wedding 4 years ago. I remember looking at her during her speech, and being flooded with emotion while she spoke. Emotion full of pride and happiness of how far she has come. I am so grateful that I never underestimated her.
I’m a Believer – The Monkees
The Delicate Task of Loving a Misbehaving Adult
December 15, 2023
In the journey of life, one of the most heart-wrenching experiences we face as adults is witnessing our loved ones – be they friends or family – make unwise choices or behave in ways that are harmful to themselves or others.
Whether it’s a friend perpetually entangled in toxic relationships, a family member clinging to self-destructive habits, or a partner making choices that leave you bewildered, the helplessness can be suffocating.
As adults, we are accustomed to taking control of our lives, making decisions that shape our destiny. However, when it comes to the actions of those we care about, we are often rendered powerless. Watching a friend spiral into bad habits, or a family member persist in destructive behavior, can evoke a deep sense of helplessness. This feeling is compounded by the knowledge that, despite our best intentions, we cannot live their lives for them or make their choices.
But here’s the thing: sometimes, love isn’t about erecting guardrails or playing puppet master. It’s about accepting that, as adults, we have the right, even the responsibility, to navigate our own paths – even if those paths wind through pothole-infested back alleys.
It’s not about condoning their actions, mind you. It’s about acknowledging that sometimes, the most painful lessons are learned through stumbles and scrapes. And while our instincts may scream to warn, to protect, sometimes stepping back allows for a different kind of love to bloom – the silent, steadfast kind that trusts in their resilience, even when we doubt it ourselves.
This doesn’t mean becoming emotionally inert bystanders. Open communication, laced with empathy and devoid of judgment, can be a lifeline. But ultimately, we must accept that our loved ones possess an internal compass, even if it points north while the rest of the world shouts “south!”
Think of it like holding a pebble in your palm. Clench your fist too tight, and it slips away. But hold it loosely, with open fingers, and it finds its own equilibrium, nestled comfortably within your trust. That’s the delicate dance we play – offering support without smothering, guidance without dictating, and love that endures even when the path they choose forks wildly from our own.
So, the next time you find yourself wincing at your loved one’s choices, remember: sometimes, the greatest act of love is letting go, trusting that even in their stumbles, they are learning, growing, and finding their own unique way home. And when they do, with arms grazed and knees scraped, let your open palm be the first haven they find.
Because in the end, love isn’t about shielding them from every misstep, but about being there, with open arms and open hearts, to catch them when they fall.
“No, I have to INSPECT the periscope for install. It failed.”
“I am giving you an ORDER, here. You WILL certify this periscope for install! That submarine has to get underway tomorrow! It’ll take a week to get another one down here!”
“The periscope failed inspection. Here, here, and here. The gouges are too deep, as I measured them.”
“(insert expletive here), I’m giving you a direct order! Sign off on the inspection!”
“Put the order in writing, then. I’ll sign off as it being by direction, but I need the paperwork.”
And he did. I tucked the paperwork into the folder, and saluted. “I’ll take care of it, sir.” and walked out. 20 minutes later, I was before the Task Group Commander, showing him the uncompleted paperwork and the written order. My problem child was in the brig awaiting a court-martial before the sun went down.
Every step requiring a QA sign-off is present because someone died, something failed catastrophically, or the ship sank. Every. Single. One. Asking me to falsify test results is putting a gun to your head and telling me to pull the trigger. I may not pull it, but cell or bodybag, you are not ever going to be a problem for me again.
Here’s a story that may help. The last time I checked, my IQ is in between the 98th and 99th percentile. A few years ago, I had to change the wipers on my car. I spent over an hour on those damn wipers, with no progress. They could not be put on. There was no doubt in my mind they were defective as I read the instructions, watched videos, and tried every possible solutions that came to mind. Eventually, an extended family member of mine pulled up, and asked what I was doing. This guy is probably your exact definition of stupid, because he was mine up until that day. He’s worked blue collar jobs his whole life, has a ninth grade education, and literally has a tattoo of a bird perched on top of his ear defecating onto his shoulder. As he got out of his truck, with a 40 oz Olde English in each hand, he asked me what I doing. I told him I was trying to replace my wipers, but it couldn’t be done. He cocked his head to the side, handed me his beers, and put the wipers on in about 90 seconds, all without saying a word. He took his drinks back and walked inside.
If Jesus himself had appeared before me, that would’ve still been the second most shocking thing of the day. Here’s a guy I always viewed as intellectually inferior, and in 90 seconds he gave me one of the most humbling lessons I’ve ever experienced. There’s no doubt in my mind I could score much higher than him on an IQ test. But I will NEVER consider him an intellectual inferior to me. In anything automobile related, or construction related, he is Albert Einstein and I’m Chevy Chase’s Gerald Ford.
Given the proper circumstance, I guarantee you I would have the exact same experience with 99% of the population (and so would you). Everyone is better than me at something. And given the proper circumstance, I could be in the reverse situation with just about anyone in the planet. I’d be willing to go head to head in a debate with Neil deGrasse Tyson on a range of subjects from the economics of various tax rates to how to navigate downtown Los Angeles, and any high school football player would mop the floor with me on a debate about nutrition or exercise, and likely be on par with me in terms of competitive business strategy (football teaches a lot). Does that mean this average football player is intellectually superior to me, or I’m intellectually superior to Neil deGrasse Tyson? The answer is no and hell no respectively.
“Every man I meet is in some way my superior; and in that I can learn of him.”-Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Greatest How To Handle Your GF If She Asks For An Open Relationship Story That I’ve EVER Heard!
A better question is how could the United States expand sanctions on China’s chip industry without repercussions that hurt the U.S. more than China? And the Answer is it can’t. It simply can’t!
Chips are nothing unless it is used as a component of a product for example a smartphone or a computer. And China as a market dwarfs the U.S. by several folds. Today there are a billion Chinese consumer of high technologies compared to say 250 million in the U.S.! That is 4 folds higher! China’s consumer market alone is 30–35% if the entire world! Can the U.S. not be hurt if these consumers are forced into buying a different chips?
But worst is that from the 2/3 of the rest of the world market, most of their products are either assembled or made in China! That constitute another 30–40% of the world’s market! So the U.S. by sanctioning China U.S. sanctioning the U.S. chip makers of some 60–70% of the market. Or it has direct influence or possibly sell to only 30–40% of the world’s market.
But that is just the first nightmare for the U.S. Next, China will make equivalent products within 3 year’s maximum and then. Even this 30–40% rest of the world market will choose a Chinese make that is cheaper, faster and better than the U.S. products. Your entire chip industry will thoroughly collapse and U.S. government will be faced with high unemployment and bankruptcy!
So if I were you, I will vote in a smarter U.S. government!
The Unruly Legacy of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Penis, “Jumbo”
December 15, 2023
Lyndon B. Johnson, the Texan titan who bestrode American politics like a colossus, wasn’t just a master of deal-making and arm-twisting. He was also a virtuoso of the grotesque, a man who wielded his larger-than-life persona and even his anatomy as instruments of power. And no body part played a more outlandish role than “Jumbo,” his self-bestowed nickname for his, shall we say, prominent appendage.
Jumbo wasn’t just a playful euphemism. It was a banner, a declaration of Johnson’s unvarnished masculinity, his disregard for decorum, and his uncanny ability to disarm and dominate in equal measure. He’d whip it out in conversation, brandishing it like a political cudgel, leaving colleagues both amused and discomfited. He’d conduct business from the porcelain throne, transforming the mundane into a performance of power, a reminder to all who dared to enter that even the most intimate act couldn’t diminish his authority.
But Jumbo was more than a mere spectacle. It was a tool, a calculated act of vulnerability that disarmed and drew in. In the stuffy halls of Washington, where power was often cloaked in formality, Johnson’s bawdy humor and open displays of Jumbo were a breath of fresh Texas air. He used it to connect with men who might otherwise have found him intimidating, to forge bonds of shared laughter and discomfort, turning vulnerability into a twisted currency of trust.
Of course, not everyone appreciated the show. Critics saw it as crass, a vulgar display of egotism. But Caro, in his masterful biography, “Master of the Senate,” argues that Jumbo was more than just a personal quirk. It was a carefully crafted persona, a deliberate performance of power that allowed Johnson to operate outside the traditional bounds of political decorum. He was the bull in the china shop, shattering expectations and asserting his dominance through sheer audacity.
And Jumbo wasn’t just about power. It was also about intimacy, a way of connecting with men in a way that transcended the usual political machinations. In the close-knit world of the Senate, where loyalty and trust were paramount, Jumbo became a shared secret, a badge of belonging in Johnson’s inner circle.
Jumbo was, ultimately, a microcosm of Johnson himself: complex, contradictory, and undeniably effective. It was a reminder that power can be wielded in unexpected ways, that vulnerability can be a weapon, and that even the most outlandish behavior can be a calculated act of self-promotion.
So, the next time you hear of Lyndon B. Johnson, remember Jumbo. Remember the man who dared to bare his soul, his body, and his ambitions in equal measure. Remember the Texan who rode roughshod over convention, leaving a trail of laughter, discomfort, and, yes, even a little bit of awe in his wake.
Red Cooked Beef (Hung Shao Niu Jo — China)
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Ingredients
1 (2 pound) beef boneless chuck, tip or round
3 tablespoons peanut oil or vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups water
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons dry white wine or sherry
1 thin slice fresh or canned ginger root or 1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 scallion, cut lengthwise into halves
1 clove garlic, cut into halves
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1/8 teaspoon pepper
Fresh cilantro (optional)
Toasted sesame seed
Instructions
Trim fat from beef; cut beef into 1 1/2-inch cubes. Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in wok or 12-inch skillet until hot. Stir-fry half the beef cubes until brown on all sides, about 2 minutes. Remove beef to 3-quart saucepan. Repeat with remaining oil and beef.
Mix water, soy sauce, wine, gingerroot, scallion, garlic, sugar and pepper; add to beef. Heat to boiling; reduce heat. Cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, until beef is tender, about 1 hour.
Garnish with small sprigs of cilantro; sprinkle with sesame seed. Serve with hot cooked Chinese noodles, if desired.
Walgreens ran this customer rewards program in which you accumulated points and you could, whenever you felt like it, redeem those points for discounts from products.
Many of their promotions included bonus points. “+1000 pts if you buy this 12 pack of Coke!”
It was a basic rewards program. The points translate to dollars. You get it.
So I have one of these stores right by my house. I stop there frequently.
I kept savings these points up. I’d saved them up for over 4 years. I had close to $100 in my account. To be used whenever on products at their store.
I stopped in to pick up some drinks/snacks on the way home.
The lady says, “Would you like to use any of your balance rewards?”
I say, “How much do I have right now?” (I always checked. I was enjoying stacking them up.)
She says, “You have $21.”
Record stop.
“Hold up, I had a lot more than that in there. I’ve been saving for years?”
She says, “Yes they recently changed the policy. Only your most recent 12 months can count towards the purchase.”
I’m pissed off.
I say, “Well – let’s put the $21 towards this purchase.”
She says, “You can only use $5 for each purchase.”
<deep sigh>
I put the $5 towards the purchase.
I haven’t fully cut Walgreens off but I am in the process of cutting them off. I spend about 80% less there now.
Just as a matter of principle — I’ll make sure their competitor across the street gets multiples of the $79 that they took with the cheap policy change.
I hate shady business tactics.
Lesson: Any time you get points with a store — use them quickly.
I had a Chinese-English dictionary when I was in the ADC. And I studied it constantly. I would practice drawing the characters and memorizing the tones. I don’t really think that it ever helped me, but it did keep me focused on my goals and dreams on what I would do once I got out, and free from the USA.
For a short while, my father would xerox off pages from a learn-Chinese book, and later on, after he died, my sister bought me two introduction books of Chinese that I studied.
Every day, I had a routine.
I would sit on my rack from around 9am up to lunch and study Chinese. Then I would do my job, and come back and study again from 4pm to chow. Overall, I studied on average about 8 hours a day.
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Of course, everyone made fun of me. But it was my way of coping and dealing. All of us did it. It’s just that my way was studying in Chinese. For others it was drugs, boxing or gambling for cigarettes.
Let the rest of the world howl. Perhaps it did or didn’t help me, but one thing for certain, it keep me focused on my dream. Perhaps you too have a dream.
Stay focused.
Today… some confirmation of my previous vision of Gonzalo…
Gonzalo Lira was tortured, extorted, and reportedly has died in a Ukraine prison for just reporting the news. The US State Department refused to help Lira, a US citizen, because Lira’s journalism didn’t serve Kiev or the Biden administration. Here’s a quote from WSAU:
WASHINGTON DC (WSAU) – 55-year-old American journalist Gonzalo Lira has reportedly died in a Ukrainian prison after nearly eight months of imprisonment.
According to the Post Millennial, Lira was arrested by Ukrainian security in May 2023 after he was reportedly critical of President Vladimir Zelensky’s handling of the war being fought against Russian forces in Eastern Ukraine.
Lira’s comments included claims that Ukraine’s efforts to win the captured territory back have gone nowhere and their people are dying for a war that is already lost.
Chinese politicians have a grand dream: a global community with a shared future for mankind.
People all over the world are prosperous and living a happy life together. What a wonderful world it is. With the development of modern technology and the completion of automation and intelligence, humans can produce material conditions that provide everyone with a happy life. There is currently a lack of a system that unites humanity around the world.
China needs to first become a beautiful country and then influence the surrounding countries. Ancient China used this strategy. Ancient China first built its own country into a prosperous and strong country, and then neighboring countries envied China and learned about its culture and system. For example, Japan has sent more than ten batches of international students to study in China.
The foundation of a country is its people. If the people live a happy life, then the country is strong; if the people are poor and destitute, then the country is weak. Many rulers of countries do not understand this truth.
Food is paramount to the people. This is an ancient Chinese saying and the foundation of governing a country. When there are signs of chaos in the world, China will purchase a large amount of food. In terms of food safety, economically developed provinces in the east have begun to implement full monitoring of food production processes.
In terms of housing, the central government is implementing housing reform, which is a slow process.
In terms of transportation, China has built a national transportation network and has been continuously improving it.
In terms of cultural and entertainment, China actively promotes the promotion of justice, promotes healthy cultural information, and actively reports positive information. The network firewall successfully blocked junk culture.
I believe that China should first become a future country, and then drive countries around the world to become future countries. The the Belt and Road policy is the link between China and global human development, and also an opportunity for the development of countries around the world.
The PLAAF’s PL-17 AAM was caught on camera again, this time in a full loadout:
The PL-17 is special for two reasons:
It’s the longest range AAM in the world at 400 km (estimated by British intelligence)
It’s actually a ballistic missile. It doesn’t fly straight towards the target. Instead, it flies into the stratosphere where there’s much less air friction and cruises there to the target. Then it trades its potential energy (altitude) into kinetic energy in its terminal attack phase.
Like most high-end BVR AAMs, the PL-17 has both active radar and optical guidance. The optical guidance makes it much harder to jam when it has entered its terminal phase and can actually see the target.
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This latest photo showing four J-16s is special because it demonstrates just how much the J-16 can carry: at least two PL-17s in addition to a bunch of other PL-10, 12s and 15s. If it only carries the PL-17 and no other missile type, the J-16 may be able to carry 3 or even 4 missiles. This proves the J-16’s value as a “missile truck”, similar to the USAF’s F-15EX.
The difference is that the USAF has no equivalent to the PL-17. The longest range American AAM is the AIM-120D, with an estimated range of 160 km. The only other American missile to challenge the PL-17’s range is the AIM-260 JATM, which is still in development.
In a head to head engagement, the PL-17 gives the PLAAF a significant first strike advantage against the enemy’s key aerial assets, like AWACS, EW, etc. Loss of these aerial force multipliers would be crippling, and force the USAF to retreat or be destroyed before their radars can even spot their Chinese counterparts. The Americans would effectively be blind.
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The only other nation to field a AAM of comparable capability is the Russians with their Vympel R-37, a hypersonic (Mach 5) missile with a range of close to 400 km. Unlike the PL-17, it is not a ballistic weapon, and flies straight for the target instead. It’s also much thicc-er than the PL-17. Combat usage of the R-37 in Ukraine has demonstrated its ability to keep Ukrainian fighters from closing the distance against their Russian counterparts for fear of getting hit by this monster.
image 26
MiG-31 armed with four R-37s. Keep in mind that the MiG-31 is more a bomber than it is a fighter.
The Washington Post has produced a long, two part piece, about the failed ‘counter-offensive’ in Ukraine. It dispenses equal blame on the U.S. and British planning of the whole mess and the Ukrainian execution of it.
Key elements that shaped the counteroffensive and the initial outcome include:
Ukrainian, U.S. and British military officers held eight major tabletop war games to build a campaign plan. But Washington miscalculated the extent to which Ukraine’s forces could be transformed into a Western-style fighting force in a short period — especially without giving Kyiv air power integral to modern militaries.
U.S. and Ukrainian officials sharply disagreed at times over strategy, tactics and timing. The Pentagon wanted the assault to begin in mid-April to prevent Russia from continuing to strengthen its lines. The Ukrainians hesitated, insisting they weren’t ready without additional weapons and training.
U.S. military officials were confident that a mechanized frontal attack on Russian lines was feasible with the troops and weapons that Ukraine had. The simulations concluded that Kyiv’s forces, in the best case, could reach the Sea of Azov and cut off Russian troops in the south in 60 to 90 days.
The United States advocated a focused assault along that southern axis, but Ukraine’s leadership believed its forces had to attack at three distinct points along the 600-mile front, southward toward both Melitopol and Berdyansk on the Sea of Azov and east toward the embattled city of Bakhmut.
The U.S. intelligence community had a more downbeat view than the U.S. military, assessing that the offensive had only a 50-50 chance of success given the stout, multilayered defenses Russia had built up over the winter and spring.
Many in Ukraine and the West underestimated Russia’s ability to rebound from battlefield disasters and exploit its perennial strengths: manpower, mines and a willingness to sacrifice lives on a scale that few other countries can countenance.
As the expected launch of the offensive approached, Ukrainian military officials feared they would suffer catastrophic losses — while American officials believed the toll would ultimately be higher without a decisive assault.
Key findings from reporting on the campaign include:
Seventy percent of troops in one of the brigades leading the counteroffensive, and equipped with the newest Western weapons, entered battle with no combat experience.
Ukraine’s setbacks on the battlefield led to rifts with the United States over how best to cut through deep Russian defenses.
The commander of U.S. forces in Europe couldn’t get in touch with Ukraine’s top commander for weeks in the early part of the campaign amid tension over the American’s second-guessing of battlefield decisions.
Each side blamed the other for mistakes or miscalculations. U.S. military officials concluded that Ukraine had fallen short in basic military tactics, including the use of ground reconnaissance to understand the density of minefields. Ukrainian officials said the Americans didn’t seem to comprehend how attack drones and other technology had transformed the battlefield.
In all, Ukraine has retaken only about 200 square miles of territory, at a cost of thousands of dead and wounded and billions in Western military aid in 2023 alone.
All those points played a role.
My personal ones:
Both, the Ukraine and its supporters, systematically underestimated Russian capabilities. (And still do.)
Satellite reconnaissance showed Russian defense preparations on the level of the Battle of Kursk. There the German Wehrmacht, after way too long preparations, failed to break the Russian lines. The unlearned lesson from 1943: When you see defense lines like these, try something else.
Battle simulations and table top war games have a ‘moral factor’ input for each side. Setting your sides’ factor to 10 and the enemy’s factor to 0, as the U.S. and UK obviously did, will let you win every time – but has no relation to reality.
Air support would not have helped. Russian air defenses are too strong to counter it.
The decision to use barely trained, ‘green’ brigades without any fighting experience was a serious error.
Not to use smoke grenades and, in general, means of deception, was not reasonable at all.
To have half of the new troops, the more experienced part, fight Zelenski’s already lost battle for Bakhmut, was a major political mistake.
All together made sure that the so called ‘counter-offensive’ never had a chance to take off. The bickering now is just an attempt to put the blame for the failure onto the other side of the table.
The Ukrainian General Zaluzny has learned from the battle. He now puts up somewhat realistic numbers to let the U.S. understand how small its chances to win really are:
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was informed during a visit to Kyiv that Ukraine needed 17 million rounds of ammunition and that US$ 350-400 billion worth of assets and personnel would be required to liberate the country. … Quote from a senior Defence Forces official: “Austin was told 17 million rounds of ammunition were needed. He was stunned, to put it mildly, because you wouldn’t be able to collect that many rounds in the whole world.”
The Ukrainian army does not have the ten thousands of barrels required to fire 17 million rounds. Nor has it the men to feed those imaginary guns.
Zaluzny obviously thinks that the war is lost and done with. And that it is time for politics that pursue peace:
In addition, according to a source, Austin also said Zaluzhnyi had complained privately to American generals about interference from the President’s Office [..]: “Austin told us privately that Zaluzhnyi was always complaining to his generals about the President’s Office and how it obstructed him. Well, obviously the president learned about those conversations too. And that isn’t conducive to trust.”
However, the President’s Office is inclined to believe that Zaluzhnyi’s dismissal would facilitate his political career.
It is high time for the Biden administration to wrap this whole thing up. Do the usual thing: declare victory, leave and forget-about-it.
When World War 3 Breaks-Out and Arrives HERE in the USA, Liberals, Progressives, Socialists, Marxists, Should be BULL-WHIPPED TO DEATH By Their conquerors
On my radio show tonight, I was asked by a caller what is likely to happen to New England when WW3 Breaks out and all the military-age illegals who are embraced by liberals, take-up arms and attack us? I told him the Liberals should be BULL-WHIPPED TO DEATH because their efforts at Gun-Control have left them unable to defend themselves, and the illegals they embrace, will be their conquerors.
I went on to point out that Liberals, Progressives, Socialists, Marxists and their ilk are too stupid to be considered Americans anyway, so losing them won’t amount to much. The trouble with these dimwits is that they spread their idiocy to others, which will endanger the rest of the country.
Your thoughts about my remarks? Subscribers can offer their thoughts below in the Subscriber comment area.
Be wary of people who try to sell their pity as kindness. They may pretend they feel compassion toward you by supporting you during difficult times, but in reality, all they can offer you is some pity you never asked for.
Hard work will always beat talent. If you are talented at something, you already have a head start in life, but if you never combine it with hard work, you might as well never had it in the first place.
The power of little gestures. Even a little gesture of kindness can make someone’s day more than you can imagine.
The destructive nature of negative words. Whether you want it or not, you end up taking some words to heart automatically, so it’s important not to use words as weapons that can inflict damage on someone.
Sometimes it may seem like life only gets harder. But even then, it’s important not to lose hope for a better future because if you lose hope, you lose everything.
You can’t expect a person to change for you because in most cases, they rather cling to their old ways than find new ones. And maybe you’d not want to change them anyway unless they are a toxic person doing all the wrong things.
It’s better to have no one to depend on rather than being surrounded by fake people who pretend they care for you when in reality they secretly celebrate all your downs in life.
Don’t stay friends with someone who doesn’t know how to be happy for you. They are not your real friend.
You have to leave your comfort zone in the present to secure a comfortable future.
Betraying your intuition means betraying your best interests. When your intuition gives you an awful feeling about something, retreat. It’s like a danger alert that is ingrained in human biology from birth, so it’s important to make use of it by not missing any of those danger alerts.
An ifn’ I don’t…
Magnolia Bar and Grill Crawfish Etouffee
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Ingredients
1 pound cleaned crawfish tails
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1 medium onion, chopped fine
1 teaspoon all-purpose flour
2 thin slices lemon
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 tablespoon green onion
1 tablespoon parsley
Instructions
Use a saucepan with a tight fitting lid to “Etouffee”.
Season crawfish tails with salt and pepper; set aside.
Melt butter, add chopped onion, and cook over medium heat until onions are tender.
Stir in flour, blend well, and add 3/4 cup water, lemon and tomato paste, and cook slowly for about 20 minutes, and add a little more water occasionally.
When sauce is done, add crawfish tails; cover with lid. Cook for 8 minutes.
Season again, to taste.
Add green onion and parsley; cook 2 minutes longer.
This is the story of a deaf and blind man who decides to fly – alone – across the country to visit his sister.
When he arrives on board, the stewardesses have difficulty communicating with him because although he manages to say a few words here and there, he cannot hear them. To help himself, he touches their face and hand in hopes of understanding their intention, but the task seems difficult.
His neighbor gave up his seat (on the aisle), prepared drinks for him, sugar in coffee, spoon, etc. and led him to the toilet, but it was impossible to communicate with this man.
Then the flight crew had an idea: why not call to see if any of the passengers on board knew sign language?
Here comes this 15 year old girl, she is dyslexic and it was her learning difficulty that made her decide to learn sign language rather than any other:
image 25
Very patiently, the girl began to “sign” each letter against the passenger’s hand, which allowed them to start a conversation.
This teenager did not skimp on making this man’s journey much more pleasant and comfortable than if he had been locked in his solitude.
The passenger who took the photo and witnessed the scene described the moment as very moving and it’s easy to understand why.
TLDR: I was seen totally nude, mid-coitis, by 4 male police officers with guns drawn, shouting “Krystal are you safe? This is the POLICE! Krystal are you ok?” And I am not Krystal. Lol.
I dated (for the brief period of 5 weeks) a very unstable male. I knew at 4 weeks there was no way we would last, he had already become physically violent and had about ten older women believing he was their knight in shining armor, via the internet. He explained that they sent him money, that was why he even talked to them. Gag me with a keyboard, right? He decided to stalk me after I ended things. Fast forward a few months. I was getting to know a different male, and we decided to get physical, but in a non-violent manner, if you catch my drift. Right in the heat of the moment I hear the back door of the house being violently kicked open. Followed by shouts of “Krystal are you safe? POLICE!! Krystal, are you ok?” Then the bedroom door opened and 4 male police officers with guns drawn burst through the doorway. My name is not Krystal, my roommate (who was out of town) is Krystal.. I hastily climbed off of my guest and threw on a large hoodie then ushered the officers out of the house. Turns out my stalker ex had called the police pretending to be the next door neighbor, claiming it sounded as if a violent altercation was taking place and they were worried their dear neighbor Krystal was being murdered. He actually (convincingly) made his voice sound like a little old lady. Just in case it wasn’t known, the cops are able to see what number a call is made from even when the person tries to hide it with an app like TextNow. They told me the # that had made the call and I was able to show them it was in fact my ex’s phone number. One of the officers saw the blip of a text message while I was showing them that it was his number and asked to see the conversation. All of this while wearing a hooded sweatshirt that came down to my mid-thigh. Needless to say they went and arrested him for calling in a fake emergency, stalking, threatening to cause bodily harm (the messages said that he was going to dismember me after strangling me) and a few other charges like harassment.
When i took 8 Valium on top of the 6 i took earlier in the day, then realized a half a bottle of whiskey might not be enough. When i woke up the next morning(??) on the kitchen floor soaking wet and covered with mud, i asked my wife what had happened. She told me that i passed out outside, then it started to rain. She couldn’t lift me, so she “coached me” for half an hour getting me inside and up 5 stairs. That night- i did it again until eventually i made it to a detox/rehab where i was placed on a 17 day Valium taper. I was later informed it was their longest ever. I called my wife after a week(??) or so and told her to throw out the weed i was saving that knew i was gonna need after getting out of rehab. I had terrible tinnitus and shook horribly for months afterwards. It’s probably not the worst. Other people’s stories may be far worse but, well, you asked. P.S. I’ve beeb clean and sober ever since-almost 7 years now. Thanks God, for being there for me, whether i wanted you or not.
Be willing to let some parts of you die. Not all of you is perfect and you know it better than anyone else. So don’t be afraid to let some of it go. After all, that’s what personal growth is all about.
Don’t run away from yourself. This means facing your trauma(s), mistakes, and bad life decisions, no matter how unbearable it feels.
Don’t suppress your negative thoughts and emotions. You don’t have to act on them but you need to acknowledge them lest they turn into an unruly beast ready to devour you any second.
Come to terms with the fact that life is meant to be difficult. It’s a default setting you can’t change. The only thing you can do is to cope with it to the best of your abilities.
Keep in mind that suffering is cruel, yet a necessary teacher of life that can make you stronger and wiser.
Try not to stress about the things you can’t change. It will disrupt both your physical health and peace of mind.
Know when to share your burdens with others. It’s admirable to take care of things on your own, but it’s just as important to open up to those you trust when life gets too much.
Treat yourself with the same compassion you treat others. If you are nice and understanding toward your loved ones, you have no reason to treat yourself any differently.
Avoid whining. It’s alright to complain every once in a while but doing so constantly will fill your mind with negativity you can’t shake and make you feel miserable.
Remember that there’s more to life than being constantly happy. And you’d not want to be constantly happy anyway because you’d start taking happiness for granted. Your life would also become dull and uneventful, living like a character in one of those imaginary, utopian lands where everything is perfect all the time.
I worked as a courier for about 9 years. During that time, I never made more than $20,000 a year. More like I averaged around $18K.
A lot of my courier brothers were supporting families on that sort of income and they qualified for SNAP and some other food stamp like benefits.
Occasionally, they would save their nickels and then buy steaks and all the fixings for their family. Not often, but maybe every other Blue Moon they would do something nice for dinner.
These guys busted their asses 10–12 hours a day with no benefits, no Healthcare, no retirement and no paid holidays. They worked in the rain, in the cold and snow, they worked in ice storms and 115degF heat.
So what do I think about them using their hoarded nickels to buy a Lobster or some good Crab for the family once in a while? I think it’s none of your fucking business.
A guy I worked with back in the mid 80’s, had a reputation as a bit of a fantasist. He was a large, very over weight, half Chinese guy, figure like a sumo wrestler. Said he was a karate instructor, played drums in a band amongst a lot of other ourlandish claims. Said his dad was a friend of the Kays, and was the last man sentenced to hang in England. He was late to work a lot and always had the oddest excuses. One week he was late every day because, he said, the papers kept sending reporters around to interview him, because they were making a documentry about his dad. Every one chuckled about that one. Then a few weeks later, I was watching TV, and it was about this guy who had murdered someone. I had missed the beginning. This bit showed the mans wife visiting him in prison. She was Chinese, and had her little chubby boy with her. I looked the program up the the TV guide and yes, it was about his dad. A few weeks later I was at a school fete and he was there, with his karate pupils doing a demonstration, and later on his band played
Oct 7 ‘Disinfo’ Org Founded By Top Jewish Lobbyists – Full Scale Propaganda Effort
The largest Jewish Groups are forming what they call the Oct 7 ‘Disinfo’ Organization, to spin the events of that day, and shape the narrative. Even casual observers are calling this a full scale propaganda effort.
The most powerful Jewish interest groups in the US have gotten together to form the 10/7 Project – an effort to combat “Jewish hate in America and the world” and to dispel “myths” about the day’s events.
The organization will fund a centralized communications operation to feed mainstream newsrooms with ‘fact-based information’ about the war, and will also release a daily newsletter to inform news outlets what is being ‘underreported.’
It will be the biggest unified effort from the Jewish lobby in recent memory, with the American Jewish Committee (AJC), The Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish organizations working together.
Of course there are. But these people are weeded out by merciless competition.
The ones that rise are tested every step of the way, and only the best survive the climb.
That’s what competition looks like in a 1.4b society.
Chinese politicians who attend the Two Sessions are not chosen because they’re tall, good-looking or give nice speeches. They are chosen for exceptional performance over the sum total of their careers. Each person wields considerable influence or power in their professional or personal capacity. That’s why they are selected as the people’s representatives. Selection is largely immune from the influence of money.
Who Is Really Behind The Mass Slaughter In Gaza?
Who is really behind the Israeli mass slaughter of the people of Gaza?
Israel’s dependence on the United States was stated bluntly by retired IDF Maj. General Yitzhak Brick in an interview earlier this week.
“All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the U.S. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability. … Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”
The list of jobs is endless, I am not sure that all of them were professions. 40 years ago, I read an article about buying stocks, and it said buy quality, but understand the changes in the market. They talked about something that had happened 40 before I was born. Evidently a well known banker and investor said, that it wouldn’t hurt to buy a little stock in these new fangled automobiles, but keep the majority of your money, in something solid, like a good buggy whip manufacturing company. Fads will come and go, but you will always need a good buggy whip. He said that because buggy whips had been made for two thousand years, and it wasn’t going to change.
In my life time I saw the job of tinker disappear, he was someone, who could fix anything, if your glasses broke, if your electric frying pan broke, he could fix it. If you wore a hole in a pot, he would braze it, often they came door to door. We had door to door Fuller brush salesmen, sold brushes door to door. Milkmen delivered dairy products door to door. The bread man delivered baked goods door to door. Their used to be commercials for the Maytag repairman, and now its thrown out when broken.
Our little town still had a livery service when I was a kid, they looked after your horses when you came to town, but by my time, they mostly stored cars.
Movie theater usher, who would bring you in and show you your seat. Elevator operators, I always thought it was such a cool job. You closed an accordion door, then closed the outer door, then shifted the lever to up or down, and stopped it when it reached the floor you wanted. Sometimes requiring some fine tuning.
I had a girlfriend who was telephone operator. There used to be girls that would wander around night clubs, selling cigarettes and matches. Hat check girls.
Brake men in the caboose of a train.
Dragline operator.
Signal men, telegram and telegraph operators at train stations.
Telex operators.
Gestetner repair men.
I can see just as many jobs disappearing in the next 20 years as disappeared in the last 60 years, as self driving cars and trucks become main stream, as digital finishes wiping out paper, as online services and stores replace brick and mortar. Etc.
This happened about 15 years ago. My then partner came home from work very upset. Somewhere that day he had lost one of a pair of distinctive silver cuff links that I had gifted him for his birthday.
Probably a month later I was out in my car, driving an unfamiliar route in the countryside, when I noticed my fuel gauge flashing. I resolved to stop at the next fuel station which turned out to be in a small village. I pulled up at one of the three pumps and got out of my car to fill it. As I walked around to the side of my car with the fuel cap something caught my eye on the ground. Embedded in the top tarmac surface was something silver and shiny. I bent down to inspect it further and couldn’t believe it when I identified the item as a cuff link. Not just any old cuff link but THE lost silver cuff link. I used my car key to gently ease it out of the tarmac. Amazingly, it was undamaged.
That evening I asked my partner if he knew of the little village. He did recall he’d driven that route to a business meeting some weeks before. ‘And you filled your car at the petrol station?’ I asked. ‘’How did you know?’ he asked. I laughed as I handed him his missing cuff link.
I still can’t believe this incredible coincidence. I must’ve ‘guided’ to its location by an unknown force. It still weirds me out.
Until I retired I was a Plumber for fifty years. On this particular occasion I was working with a builder repairing the lead flashing around a chimney at the local church hall. To do the job safely we had set up a scaffolding that blocked the entry to the car park, but this should not have been a problem because the Church Commissioners had told us the church was waiting for the new vicar and no functions had been booked at the church hall.
We were working about 20 feet above the ground when a voice from below shouted “ Hey you!” I looked down to see a man in a grey suit and white dog collar. “Yes you!” he continued, “I have a Bible study class in twenty minutes and no one can get into the car park!”
I was surprised by his rather rude and aggressive tone but politely replied “I’m sorry, but we were told the church has no vicar and that there was nothing in the diary.”
“Well, there obviously is and you are blocking access to it. If you do not remove this scaffolding immediately I shall report you to your employers!” he shouted back.
It was then that I had a stoke of genius and replied. “ Very Christian of you sir.”
That immediately took the wind out of his sails and after a moment or two he replied, “Ahem, perhaps I was a trifle too hasty, carry on gentlemen.”
A guest came to stay for Thanksgiving, I had warned we had cats and dogs. They came anyway. They went to unpack in our guest bedroom. Half a hour later the husband came to me and said there was an issue. They had stripped the sheets off the beds and scrapped the mattress. Horror of horror there was cat fur. I immediately said” oh my, you can’t stay here, perhaps you should go to a hotel.” They did. As they are relatives we are civil but they are not invited to stay anymore.
The thing is, I knew the wife wanted to make trouble, I refused to fight and stayed calm. She didn’t win, I did.
Let me take this out of your hypothetical nonsense, and make it real. During the 1990’s I was a professional clown. I did birthday parties, wedding receptions, school shows, store promotions, holiday parties, company picnics – you name it, Violet P. Lavender was there. I even had several client families, where I would come celebrate the same child’s birthday three or four years in a row.
In one of those client families, there was an adorable little girl (I’ll call her Emily for this story). I met her at a cousin’s birthday party, and then was at her 4th birthday. I was happy to be at her 5th birthday as well. Because she lived in an area where Violet was very popular, Emily saw Violet four or five times during the year, in addition to her own birthday. That particular cluster of families really kept me on my toes, because I had to constantly rework my show, since all the kids saw me so often!
One day, I got a call asking me to come visit Emily, it was months too early for her 6th birthday – and to please come to the Children’s Hospital. I had a habit of visiting the hospital whenever I had free time between shows. This was the first time I was asked to come for a specific child.
When Violet arrived, Emily had been put into a private room. I was met in the hall, and warned that she was very weak and was quite fragile. They told me she did not know she was dying.
So, into that antiseptic, mostly white room filled with machines sailed Violet P Lavender. A totally Purple Person, with balloons and magic and fun! Emily smiled and clapped and used her precious energy to laugh. Only two visitors were allowed in the room at a time, so it was just me, Emily and one of her parents, with everyone else watching through the glass wall.
I stayed for only about 20 minutes. While I was saying goodbye, she took my hand and asked the hardest question… “Violet, will I ever see you again?”
I did what anyone in that position would do – I lied. I smiled at her and said “Of course you will! I’m going to be at your 6th Birthday Party!” That beautiful child shook her head sadly and gently told me, “Violet, I’m sorry. I’m not going to have any more birthday parties. I meant, will I see you again, in heaven?”
So much for her not knowing! Her mother bolted from the room, leaving me ‘alone’ to face that horrible truth with her.
So what does the atheist in a clown suit say to a child who wants to talk about heaven, as she lay dying?
I asked her “What do you think heaven is like?” She didn’t know, but she was scared that she would be all alone “up there” in a big house, with no one to talk to ever again.
Now, why would she think that? It seems some well meaning idiot had told her that God had prepared a Mansion just for her, in Heaven, and that she would be going there soon. And a Mansion was described to her as “a big house” … just for her! She was scared by the idea, and she did not want to go, but she couldn’t ask her mommy or daddy about it because (and she whispered this) “they don’t know I’m dying.”
So I laughed and told Emily that of COURSE she was not going to be alone! Her house was going to be on a street with lots of other kids, and right next to her street is the street where all the CLOWNS LIVE! And right past that is a big park where all the puppies and kittens play! (That made her smile.)
“Will you be there too, Violet?” Stubborn child! She wasn’t going to let it go! I told her I wouldn’t be there for a long time, but I had friends there, and she could tell them she knows me. Also, in her house there is a magic TV that she can use to watch over her friends and family who are still alive, while she is waiting for us to all join her. So she could watch me and her Mom and Dad and anybody else she wanted, any time she felt like!
She was relieved. She said she wasn’t scared anymore. Then reminded me not to say anything to her parents, because they are already so worried about her being sick, she didn’t want them to get sad about her dying.
I made it out of the room and into a nurse’s station before I started crying.
Violet did attend her next ‘party’ … I made sure her parents were ok with it, and Violet came to the funeral with a huge bunch of bright balloons, to say goodbye.
So the answer to your silly hypothetical question is – in REAL LIFE, you tell that child whatever you can so that they are not afraid and give them comfort.
ANY OTHER ANSWER regardless of your personal belief in an invisible guy building fancy houses in the sky is wrong.
The emotional well being of a dying child is more important than any religious or philosophical argument you could make.
1. Instead of responding immediately after someone says something to you. Wait a couple of second. This makes them feel like you’re really thinking about what you’re going to reply. And it makes you seem like a better listener. ( Don’t over do it ).
2. In a conversation, when someone is talking, nod your head in affirmation.
This will do so many things to their brain. First of all, it will give them that feeling of validation. It will make them feel like you’re truly listening to them and it is that feeling of validation that we search for unconsciously, that we got from our mom, and we’re searching in our partner, we’re searching in other people. So it becomes really addictive when you do this, and you make people feel validated.
3. When you’re talking to someone, always show the palms of your hands. This communicates to their subconscious mind that you have nothing to hide, that you are open, that they can trust you and you are their friend.
4. When you talk to someone try to match your body language and talk at the same volume and speed as they are.
This will tell subconscious mind that you are like them and they will trust you more
5. Ask people for their advice. Making them feel like their opinion matters. According to reasearch done by Katie Liljenquist makes them form a commitment to you and makes them like you more.
Example:
“What do you think I should order?”
“I think you should get the vegan burger, it’s really good”
A younger friend of my grandmother once said something that made her as angry as I have ever seen her. The 35-year-old was trying to stress the fact that her challenges and worries were different from those of a 75-year-old. She had in mind that some of life’s problems are over by the time you are 75, which may be true. But she said it in a terrible way.
You’ve lived your life.
Don’t make this mistake. Life can be just as sweet no matter how many birthdays you’ve had. And there is no age at which life’s failure to be sweet on any given day is not painful.
The 80- or 90-year-old has not “lived their life.” They are in the process of living it, just as you are.
OMG!
Ukraine Presidential Advisor: “The West Came to this war with no pants on”
The Emperor is naked . . . or so we now hear from the former Aide to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenski. Alexy Arestovich tells media outlets now that “The West came to war with its pants down” when it dealt with the Russian Army entry into Ukraine.
2023 12 06 13 11
Commenting to media outlets, Arestovich pointed out “The Americans cannot produce a million shells a year, and North Korea can. What kind of war and victory are we talking about, what boundaries of 1991?”
Of course, when he speaks of the “Boundaries of 1991” he is referring to the then-break-up of the former Soviet Union and the “Boundaries” for NATO that were agreed-to by then US President George HW Bush. It was then Secretary of States James Baker who agreed, at a meeting, in the Kremlin in Moscow, with then Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev and then Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevrednadze, that NATO “will not move one inch eastward of the Elbe (River) in Germany.”
Of course, history shows that when Bush Sr. left office, and Bill Clinton came in as US President, that NATO boundary promise went right out the window. The map below shows NATO Expansion from 1949, and points out who was in and who was not in 1990 when Bush promised Gorbachev “not one inch eastward:
Yet, as shown by the countries imaged in purple, that promise to the Soviets went right out the window in the late 1990’s under then-President Bill Clinton.
Here’s how it went:
U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (http://nsarchive.gwu.edu).
The documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991, that discussions of NATO in the context of German unification negotiations in 1990 were not at all narrowly limited to the status of East German territory, and that subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion were founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels.
The documents reinforce former CIA Director Robert Gates’s criticism of “pressing ahead with expansion of NATO eastward [in the 1990s], when Gorbachev and others were led to believe that wouldn’t happen.”[1] The key phrase, buttressed by the documents, is “led to believe.”
President George H.W. Bush had assured Gorbachev during the Malta summit in December 1989 that the U.S. would not take advantage (“I have not jumped up and down on the Berlin Wall”) of the revolutions in Eastern Europe to harm Soviet interests; but neither Bush nor Gorbachev at that point (or for that matter, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl) expected so soon the collapse of East Germany or the speed of German unification.[2]
The first concrete assurances by Western leaders on NATO began on January 31, 1990, when West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher opened the bidding with a major public speech at Tutzing, in Bavaria, on German unification. The U.S. Embassy in Bonn (see Document 1) informed Washington that Genscher made clear “that the changes in Eastern Europe and the German unification process must not lead to an ‘impairment of Soviet security interests.’ Therefore, NATO should rule out an ‘expansion of its territory towards the east, i.e. moving it closer to the Soviet borders.’” The Bonn cable also noted Genscher’s proposal to leave the East German territory out of NATO military structures even in a unified Germany in NATO.[3]
This latter idea of special status for the GDR territory was codified in the final German unification treaty signed on September 12, 1990, by the Two-Plus-Four foreign ministers (see Document 25). The former idea about “closer to the Soviet borders” is written down not in treaties but in multiple memoranda of conversation between the Soviets and the highest-level Western interlocutors (Genscher, Kohl, Baker, Gates, Bush, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Major, Woerner, and others) offering assurances throughout 1990 and into 1991 about protecting Soviet security interests and including the USSR in new European security structures. The two issues were related but not the same. Subsequent analysis sometimes conflated the two and argued that the discussion did not involve all of Europe. The documents published below show clearly that it did.
The “Tutzing formula” immediately became the center of a flurry of important diplomatic discussions over the next 10 days in 1990, leading to the crucial February 10, 1990, meeting in Moscow between Kohl and Gorbachev when the West German leader achieved Soviet assent in principle to German unification in NATO, as long as NATO did not expand to the east. The Soviets would need much more time to work with their domestic opinion (and financial aid from the West Germans) before formally signing the deal in September 1990.
The conversations before Kohl’s assurance involved explicit discussion of NATO expansion, the Central and East European countries, and how to convince the Soviets to accept unification. For example, on February 6, 1990, when Genscher met with British Foreign Minister Douglas Hurd, the British record showed Genscher saying, “The Russians must have some assurance that if, for example, the Polish Government left the Warsaw Pact one day, they would not join NATO the next.” (See Document 2)
Having met with Genscher on his way into discussions with the Soviets, Baker repeated exactly the Genscher formulation in his meeting with Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze on February 9, 1990, (see Document 4); and even more importantly, face to face with Gorbachev.
Not once, but three times, Baker tried out the “not one inch eastward” formula with Gorbachev in the February 9, 1990, meeting. He agreed with Gorbachev’s statement in response to the assurances that “NATO expansion is unacceptable.” Baker assured Gorbachev that “neither the President nor I intend to extract any unilateral advantages from the processes that are taking place,” and that the Americans understood that “not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.” (See Document 6)
Afterwards, Baker wrote to Helmut Kohl who would meet with the Soviet leader on the next day, with much of the very same language. Baker reported: “And then I put the following question to him [Gorbachev]. Would you prefer to see a united Germany outside of NATO, independent and with no U.S. forces or would you prefer a unified Germany to be tied to NATO, with assurances that NATO’s jurisdiction would not shift one inch eastward from its present position? He answered that the Soviet leadership was giving real thought to all such options [….] He then added, ‘Certainly any extension of the zone of NATO would be unacceptable.’” Baker added in parentheses, for Kohl’s benefit, “By implication, NATO in its current zone might be acceptable.” (See Document 8)
Well-briefed by the American secretary of state, the West German chancellor understood a key Soviet bottom line, and assured Gorbachev on February 10, 1990: “We believe that NATO should not expand the sphere of its activity.” (See Document 9) After this meeting, Kohl could hardly contain his excitement at Gorbachev’s agreement in principle for German unification and, as part of the Helsinki formula that states choose their own alliances, so Germany could choose NATO. Kohl described in his memoirs walking all night around Moscow – but still understanding there was a price still to pay.
All the Western foreign ministers were on board with Genscher, Kohl, and Baker. Next came the British foreign minister, Douglas Hurd, on April 11, 1990. At this point, the East Germans had voted overwhelmingly for the deutschmark and for rapid unification, in the March 18 elections in which Kohl had surprised almost all observers with a real victory. Kohl’s analyses (first explained to Bush on December 3, 1989) that the GDR’s collapse would open all possibilities, that he had to run to get to the head of the train, that he needed U.S. backing, that unification could happen faster than anyone thought possible – all turned out to be correct. Monetary union would proceed as early as July and the assurances about security kept coming. Hurd reinforced the Baker-Genscher-Kohl message in his meeting with Gorbachev in Moscow, April 11, 1990, saying that Britain clearly “recognized the importance of doing nothing to prejudice Soviet interests and dignity.” (See Document 15)
The Baker conversation with Shevardnadze on May 4, 1990, as Baker described it in his own report to President Bush, most eloquently described what Western leaders were telling Gorbachev exactly at the moment: “I used your speech and our recognition of the need to adapt NATO, politically and militarily, and to develop CSCE to reassure Shevardnadze that the process would not yield winners and losers. Instead, it would produce a new legitimate European structure – one that would be inclusive, not exclusive.” (See Document 17)
Baker said it again, directly to Gorbachev on May 18, 1990 in Moscow, giving Gorbachev his “nine points,” which included the transformation of NATO, strengthening European structures, keeping Germany non-nuclear, and taking Soviet security interests into account. Baker started off his remarks, “Before saying a few words about the German issue, I wanted to emphasize that our policies are not aimed at separating Eastern Europe from the Soviet Union. We had that policy before. But today we are interested in building a stable Europe, and doing it together with you.” (See Document 18)
The French leader Francois Mitterrand was not in a mind-meld with the Americans, quite the contrary, as evidenced by his telling Gorbachev in Moscow on May 25, 1990, that he was “personally in favor of gradually dismantling the military blocs”; but Mitterrand continued the cascade of assurances by saying the West must “create security conditions for you, as well as European security as a whole.” (See Document 19) Mitterrand immediately wrote Bush in a “cher George” letter about his conversation with the Soviet leader, that “we would certainly not refuse to detail the guarantees that he would have a right to expect for his country’s security.” (See Document 20)
At the Washington summit on May 31, 1990, Bush went out of his way to assure Gorbachev that Germany in NATO would never be directed at the USSR: “Believe me, we are not pushing Germany towards unification, and it is not us who determines the pace of this process. And of course, we have no intention, even in our thoughts, to harm the Soviet Union in any fashion. That is why we are speaking in favor of German unification in NATO without ignoring the wider context of the CSCE, taking the traditional economic ties between the two German states into consideration. Such a model, in our view, corresponds to the Soviet interests as well.” (See Document 21)
The “Iron Lady” also pitched in, after the Washington summit, in her meeting with Gorbachev in London on June 8, 1990. Thatcher anticipated the moves the Americans (with her support) would take in the early July NATO conference to support Gorbachev with descriptions of the transformation of NATO towards a more political, less militarily threatening, alliance. She said to Gorbachev: “We must find ways to give the Soviet Union confidence that its security would be assured…. CSCE could be an umbrella for all this, as well as being the forum which brought the Soviet Union fully into discussion about the future of Europe.” (See Document 22)
The NATO London Declaration on July 5, 1990 had quite a positive effect on deliberations in Moscow, according to most accounts, giving Gorbachev significant ammunition to counter his hardliners at the Party Congress which was taking place at that moment. Some versions of this history assert that an advance copy was provided to Shevardnadze’s aides, while others describe just an alert that allowed those aides to take the wire service copy and produce a Soviet positive assessment before the military or hardliners could call it propaganda.
As Kohl said to Gorbachev in Moscow on July 15, 1990, as they worked out the final deal on German unification: “We know what awaits NATO in the future, and I think you are now in the know as well,” referring to the NATO London Declaration. (See Document 23)
In his phone call to Gorbachev on July 17, Bush meant to reinforce the success of the Kohl-Gorbachev talks and the message of the London Declaration. Bush explained: “So what we tried to do was to take account of your concerns expressed to me and others, and we did it in the following ways: by our joint declaration on non-aggression; in our invitation to you to come to NATO; in our agreement to open NATO to regular diplomatic contact with your government and those of the Eastern European countries; and our offer on assurances on the future size of the armed forces of a united Germany – an issue I know you discussed with Helmut Kohl. We also fundamentally changed our military approach on conventional and nuclear forces. We conveyed the idea of an expanded, stronger CSCE with new institutions in which the USSR can share and be part of the new Europe.” (See Document 24)
The documents show that Gorbachev agreed to German unification in NATO as the result of this cascade of assurances, and on the basis of his own analysis that the future of the Soviet Union depended on its integration into Europe, for which Germany would be the decisive actor. He and most of his allies believed that some version of the common European home was still possible and would develop alongside the transformation of NATO to lead to a more inclusive and integrated European space, that the post-Cold War settlement would take account of the Soviet security interests. The alliance with Germany would not only overcome the Cold War but also turn on its head the legacy of the Great Patriotic War.
But inside the U.S. government, a different discussion continued, a debate about relations between NATO and Eastern Europe. Opinions differed, but the suggestion from the Defense Department as of October 25, 1990 was to leave “the door ajar” for East European membership in NATO. (See Document 27) The view of the State Department was that NATO expansion was not on the agenda, because it was not in the interest of the U.S. to organize “an anti-Soviet coalition” that extended to the Soviet borders, not least because it might reverse the positive trends in the Soviet Union. (See Document 26) The Bush administration took the latter view. And that’s what the Soviets heard.
As late as March 1991, according to the diary of the British ambassador to Moscow, British Prime Minister John Major personally assured Gorbachev, “We are not talking about the strengthening of NATO.” Subsequently, when Soviet defense minister Marshal Dmitri Yazov asked Major about East European leaders’ interest in NATO membership, the British leader responded, “Nothing of the sort will happen.” (See Document 28)
When Russian Supreme Soviet deputies came to Brussels to see NATO and meet with NATO secretary-general Manfred Woerner in July 1991, Woerner told the Russians that “We should not allow […] the isolation of the USSR from the European community.” According to the Russian memorandum of conversation, “Woerner stressed that the NATO Council and he are against the expansion of NATO (13 of 16 NATO members support this point of view).” (See Document 30)
Thus, Gorbachev went to the end of the Soviet Union assured that the West was not threatening his security and was not expanding NATO. Instead, the dissolution of the USSR was brought about by Russians (Boris Yeltsin and his leading advisory Gennady Burbulis) in concert with the former party bosses of the Soviet republics, especially Ukraine, in December 1991. The Cold War was long over by then. The Americans had tried to keep the Soviet Union together (see the Bush “Chicken Kiev” speech on August 1, 1991). NATO’s expansion was years in the future, when these disputes would erupt again, and more assurances would come to Russian leader Boris Yeltsin.
When the US and EU/NATO tried to expand once again by admitting Ukraine, Russia’s financial and military condition was far improved, and the Russian’s had enough of our perceived lies about NATO Expansion.
Russia told the West that Ukraine could NOT enter NATO, because Russia knew they were planning on placing US Missile defenses on Ukraine soil. Those missiles would have about a five minute flight time to Moscow, which no country on earth could defend against.
Russia pointed out that the conventional warheads on US missile defenses were of a type that could be “switched-out” with a NUCLEAR warhead. This change could be done in about 90 minutes, and no one would even know about it.
That would put Moscow within 5 minutes of nuclear annihilation, and Russia would not tolerate it. Russia made it explicitly clear they viewed Ukraine’s entry into NATO as an “existential threat” and they would use military power to stop it if they had to. No one in the West took them seriously.
The West apparently doesn’t teach actual history to its military and political class anymore, because folks in the US under Joe Biden continued to press for Ukraine’s entry into NATO. No one in the Biden regime realized that Russia meant business on this issue, and ALL of them were . . . . SHOCKED . . . . when Russian troops crossed into Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
(HT REMARKS:Older guys like me, who have a memory that actually works, knew full well the Russian’s were going to do this; they HAD TO. It literally is a matter of survival for Russia, given the vast expansion of NATO during the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. I knew it was coming. I said so on my radio show in the weeks leading-up to the entry. I told my audience we were breaking our word and we had to stop. I told my audience this could result in World War 3 and the Russians were serious about this. No one – at least in government — listened.)
Fast-Forward to December of 2023, and former Aid TO President Zelensky now says “The West came to the war with his pants down, he turned out to be a naked king, he will not be able to win this war.
I see fewer and fewer chances for the West to win in a clash with the global South and East.”
He’s right.
But the people running the US government and military, are so ignorant of history, so arrogant in their erroneous beliefs about the Russian Army, none of them saw this coming. None of them ever expected to lose a war with Russia, and THAT is exactly, precisely, what is actually happening right now in Ukraine. Ukraine is losing and will lose. Period. Full stop.
All because the US EU and NATO install people into powerful positions who are either ignorant of history, or whose word means nothing. I suspect– it’s both.
Thanks to those people, half a million Ukrainians are now dead. A smaller number of Russians are also dead. And for what? NONE of this, had to be.
Had we honored our word, none of this would have happened.
I had a girlfriend that hit me all the time. I thought she was just being playful, until she snapped and said, why can’t I hurt you. Up until then, I thought we were just playing. I am 6′1″ 200 lbs, she was 5′1″ 100 lbs.
If you can’t tell that it was supposed to be painful, then you know how lopsided punching her back would be.
After we broke up, there were rumours that her new boyfriend was beating her. He was 5′6″ 140 lbs.
She asked me if I remembered her hitting me, I said I did, she replied, well he hits back.
So, if you can escape without being hurt, then you shouldn’t punch anyone, but if you need to punch someone in self defense, then you do what you have to do.
Simpsons Predictions For 2024 Are Insane
LOL.
Magnolia’s Spicy Shrimp, Sausage and Tasso Gravy over Creamy White Grits
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Ingredients
Creamy White Grits
12 cups chicken broth
4 1/2 cups coarse stone-ground white grits
1 cup heavy cream
Salt and white pepper to taste
Tasso Gravy
4 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup sliced Tasso, cut in 1-inch strips
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
4 cups chicken broth
2 tablespoon finely chopped parsley
Salt and white pepper to taste
Shrimp and Sausage
1/2 pound spicy Italian sausage (3/4 pound of raw)
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 pounds medium or large peeled and deveined shrimp*
1 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 recipe Tasso Gravy
2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley
Instructions
Creamy White Grits
Bring the chicken broth to a boil in a heavy-bottomed stockpot or large saucepan. Slowly pour in the grits, stirring constantly. Reduce the heat to low and continue to stir so that the grits do not settle to the bottom and scorch. In about 5 minutes, the grits will plump up and become a thick mass.
Continue to cook the grits for about 20 to 25 minutes, stirring frequently. The grits should have absorbed all of the chicken stock and become soft. Stir in heavy cream and cook for another 10 minutes, stirring frequently. The grits should have a thick consistency and be creamy like oatmeal. Season to taste with salt and white pepper. Keep warm over low heat until ready to serve. If the grits become too thick, add warm chicken broth or water to thin them down.
Tasso Gravy
Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over low heat. Add the Tasso. Sauté for 1 minute, browning slightly. Make a roux by adding the flour and stirring until well combined. Continue to cook over low heat for 5 minutes, stirring frequently until the roux develops a nutty aroma.
Turn the heat up to medium and gradually add 2 cups of the chicken broth, stirring vigorously. Keep stirring constantly until the broth thickens into gravy. Reduce the heat and simmer over low heat for 15 minutes to cook out the starchy flavor. Add the parsley. Simmer for another 5 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Shrimp and Sausage
Heat oven to 400 degrees F.
To cook Italian sausage: Place the Italian sausage on a baking sheet with raised sides. Place on the top rack of the 400 degrees F oven and bake for 10 to 15 minutes or until the sausage is firm and its juices run clear. Cool and cut into small bite-size pieces.
Heat the olive oil in a heavy-bottom frying pan over medium heat. Add the precooked sausage and sauté for 2 minutes to brown slightly. Add the shrimp and sauté until they begin to turn pink-no longer than 1 minute. Add 1 cup of the chicken broth to deglaze the pan. Add the Tasso Gravy and one tablespoon of the parsley. Bring up to a boil and let simmer for 1 minute. The last 1/2 cup of chicken stock is to be used to thin the gravy if needed.
Divide the hot grits between 8 warm bowls. Spoon the shrimp, sausage mixture over the grits. Sprinkle with the remaining tablespoon of parsley and serve immediately.
Notes
* If using large shrimp, allow 6 per person; for medium sized shrimp, 8 to 10 shrimp.
Attribution
Source: magnolias-blossom.com – Magnolia’s, Charleston, South Carolina
A family friend who worked as an FBI agent was about to get married in the early 1970s. Shortly before the wedding, he got a memo from the Director’s office, signed by J. Edgar Hoover himself, pointing out a policy to the effect that agents needed permission to tie the knot, and that he hadn’t received it.
His intended was Black (he’s white), and the Director wasn’t cool with interracial marriage.
He married her anyway, and they stayed together until death did they part half a century later.
They framed the Director’s letter and hung it on a wall in their residence.
While working at a dealership in Arizona, I was doing a LOF on a late model Nissan, and got to checking the air filter as part of my routine workup on the vehicle. I popped the top of the air box, and casually lifted the filter out, and promptly slammed the air filter back in and closed the lid. I took a breath, walked over to my service manager, and told him that we needed to call pest control.
When the pest control tech arrived, he put on heavy gloves, and carefully removed a mama Western diamondback rattler and six of her babies, all alive and well in the air box. The customer mentioned that her car had recently sat for a few weeks while she was away on business. She politely apologized to me for the snake incident, gave me a nice tip (to cover my new boxers, presumably!), Paid for the pest control visit, and left.
To top this off, the next time she came in, she requested me. When I popped the hood, I was greeted by !!! Another snake! Thankfully, this time, it was rubber. Inside the air box (I was VERY cautious lifting the air filter out this time!), taped under the lid was a $20 bill with “Sorry, I couldn’t help myself!” written on it. Probably one of my favorite customers ever! She gave me a hug after I came in with a sheepish smile after I finished the oil change. I hope she’s still messing with people 🙂
“Dear teacher, I apologize to the bully for his attacking me and forcing me to have to defend myself. I promise that if he attacks me again I will defend myself to the best of my ability..I realize that the school supports his behavior and wishes us to submit to being bullied, punched hit,kicked and ridiculed. I apologize to you and the school staff, for not being a submissive punching bag as you seem to want me to be.
sincerely,
(name).
EDIT
seems a popular post. I am guessing the problem is widespread.
Keep in mind that you are looking at someone who’s already at the top of the mountain. That is to say, you don’t know the effort and time they had to put into to get where they are right now. And how many mistakes and slips they had to endure to reach that peak.
Remind yourself that the only person you should race against is yourself. It sounds easier said than done, but keep practicing and you’ll soon realize it’s not as difficult as you initially thought it was.
Throw out all the comparisons out of the window. It tends to aggravate your envy even more. Instead, focus on what you can do to get your fair share of success as well.
Don’t become resentful toward life or people who seem to have it all. Because if you do, that resentment will start living inside your mind rent-free, for your entire life.
Be grateful that nothing is over yet. As long as you are still breathing, you have a chance to change something for the better. Everyone takes things at their own pace, so don’t put yourself down just because you fell behind in the race. We can’t all be Usain Bolts, after all. So stick to the pace you are comfortable with and take occasional breaks if you have to. And once you feel rested, keep moving because, in the end, it’ll be worth it.
I was sitting on a bench outside a hotel in DC near the valet desk. I admit I wasn’t exactly dressed for style.
Lady imperiously demands I get her car and I tell her I don’t work there. She sniffs at me and scolds me for being a useless bum, a blight on humanity and if she had her way we’d be rounded up and put on press gangs to clean the streets.
About then the valet pulls up with my car, a late model BMW convertible. She started to say “that’s not my car” when I tipped the valet and drove off.
A coworker went to a local bar after work where a group from the office was going to meet up. It was a Friday so no work the next day.
He woke up in a strange bed at an apartment complex. He couldn’t find his clothes, car keys, wallet. He called another coworker to come get him. He had to look out the window and get the street intersection off street signs to tell his coworker friend where to pick him up.
When his coworker friend showed up he ran out with a sheet wrapped around himself. His coworker friend took him back to his apartment where a roommate let him in. He had a spare key for his car and he and his roomate went looking for his car. They found it in the parking lot of the local bar down from the office.
He spent the weekend trying to remember what happened to no avail.
On Monday while he was at work sitting at his desk when one of the office girls came into his office with his freshly washed clothes, wallet and keys.
She had taken him back to her apartment for an evening of love making, during the night of this he had gotten sick from too much alcohol, vomiting on his clothes beside the bed, then passed out.
She had gotten up that morning, cleaned up the mess, taken his clothes down to the laundry to wash them before ordering breakfast from a deli across the street. She returned to find him and one of her sheets missing.
She waited until Monday to bring him his belongings. They never went out again and had a strained office relationship for several years until he transferred to another office.
If I had a chance for a do over I’d take it. My life today would be totally different. I’ve never told or discussed it with anyone. I was 20 in college and I was engaged when I got pregnant. He didn’t want to start out marriage that way. He was all of 21 and also still in college. I didn’t have a job or any money. I thought my Catholic parents would disown me. I made the horrible decision to terminate the pregnancy. It took decades before I could forgive myself. He was right it was no way to start a marriage. It was a horrible way to start a marriage when he didn’t want to offer any emotional support for our shared tragedy. Nearly 10 years later we were finally blessed with a child followed by 3 more. We were married over 40 years. The roots of the failure began with I don’t want to start out marriage that way.
A few. But it’s a very hard job to be the son or daughter of a genius. I’ve had the good fortune of getting to know several Nobel Prize winners and their families. And to talk with some of the kids about their point of view. For the most part, they suffered. Many Nobel Prize winners made no secret of this. George Wald was once asked whether he might donate his sperm to a sperm bank to make superior children. He answered in two parts, but only the first was charming.
He said they should have asked his father for sperm so as to make another George Wald. Then he went on to say that his kids were not geniuses but had become bums. Which was not only unkind, but also very unfair to them as they were both teenagers at the time, sensitive and awkward, but also sweet and certainly very bright. But I remember one dinner at his house where Elijah, the son, sort of bragged about having done something clever. Most parents would smile and congratulate him. But George said something along the lines of, “Why, at your age I had already discovered….” Why was there any comparison or competition?
Other genius parents had more sympathy for their kids and took the pressure off. But still, comparisons with the father’s legendary (and oft exaggerated) accomplishments made it tough for the kid. Richard Feynman was very kind and supportive of his kids,but his daughter, Michelle, was initially too intimidated to try anything academic. Nonetheless, Richard was proud of her and of his son Carl.
Linus Pauling (two Nobels) had several children and his son Peter did brilliant work on the structure of biological molecules using crystallography. The son contributed to the work that led to the Nobel Prize that went to Watson and Crick.
But my favorite example of genius father and genius son would have to be the Nobel Laureate in physics, Luis Alvarez, who contributed much to the building of the atomic bomb in the Manhattan Project, and his son, Walter. Working together they generated the hypothesis and found a testable way to confirm that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a giant asteroid hitting the Yucatan Peninsula 63 million years ago. And there are many other good examples (like Marie and Irene Curie, etc.). So, despite the psychological and social obstacles, sometimes the apple does not fall far from the tree.
When I lived in Tangxia; Danguan there was this twice-a-year event that is worthy of reporting. You see, I lived in a little city part of a bigger city next to Shenzhen. It is a small manufacturing city located North of Shenzhen in the Pearl River Delta. And being a manufacturing city, dating back many centuries, there were a lot of old buildings and old roads, and old sewer lines.
Well, twice a year, the local government would “fog” the underground sewers. This was a release of insecticide in a mist fog that would be sprayed by huge trucks all over town. The idea was to kill off the insects and rodents, and the city had been doing this for centuries.
But…
Let me tell you all that when that happened, a virtual carpet of huge (mouse-sized) cockroaches swarmed out of the sewers and carpeted everything. Some flew, many just climbed all over, including on shoes and trousers and woman’s legs. It was darn crazy!
If you saw it, you would not believe it. Not a scrap of concrete could be seen; three layer deep of swarming cockroaches everywhere. Wholly shit!
Last time it happened, my wife was so freaked out that I had to carry her two blocks back to our apartment. She was hysterical and had goosebumps all over her arms and legs. Jeeze! So imagine the scene, they were crawling, racking, flying, swarming, on everything. On our feet, the trees, the sidewalks, the store windows, the cars. They were buzzing, hopping and leaping, and my wife was in goosebumps and hysterical.
An experience that I do not want to relive ever again. Let me tell you what!
I was about 13 and was asked by a family friend to help her step daughter out by babysitting her 3 kids while she worked at a pizza parlor in town. It would be from the time I got out of school till 10pm, but Summer vacation would start in a couple weeks so I figured I could manage it.
I agreed to try it and see how it went. The day I was to start, I rode my bike to the house. I could smell some horrible smell from the yard. Went to the door and it was wide open. I yelled “hello??” and 3 of the cutest kids I’d ever seen came running! They were full of questions. I asked where their Mom was and the eldest said she was already at work. I was surprised, but I figured something had changed with our plans and she had to go in early.
I walked into the living room and the air was thick with stench. It was a combination of animal waste, rotten garbage and food. The living room had a couch, a chair and was literally 3 feet deep in clothes, garbage bags and dirty diapers. I was a kid and wasnt sure where to start, but i found a roll of garbage bags and we began. I say we because those babies were such a help!
The oldest was Michael and he proudly told me he was 5 and would be staring Kindergarten the following year. He was short and stocky with a mop of curly blonde hair. What I first noticed was his serious expression. He had an excellent vocabulary and was a chatter box. Next was a little girl named Jessica. She was 3 and absolutely beautiful. She was quiet but didnt miss anything. She was petite and had hair to her waist that was full of tangles. The baby girl was Grace and she was 2. She was very frail looking, although she turned out to be anything but frail. She was in just a diaper which was soaked, so I asked Michael to show me where the diapers were. We all headed into the girls room. It was filthy. I find a clean washcloth and get Grace cleaned up. She smiled the whole time. They were all hungry, so we head to the kitchen. I found a can of soup and some stale crackers, which they devoured. While they ate, i started on the kitchen. The sinks and counters were i overflowing with dishes. I turn the faucet handle and no hot water! So i start heating water after digging to uncover the stove. Theyve devoured the soup and want more. There was nothing more, so i grab my backpack and find a yougurt to split, some cookies and an apple which was all split between the 3 of them. I noticed there was no bickering. These 3 were accustomed to looking out for each other.
We started with the garbage and those kids really worked hard…..even the baby! We started by getting the garbage bagged up, and I started laundry. We worked for hours, and those kids didnt want to stop! They wanted a clean house. We got the living room mucked out, we found clean sheets and got beds made. The kitchen had a good start. I went in and cleaned the bathroom while they found jammies. I looked up from scrubbing and those faces were beaming. Got Grace in the tub and started detangling Jess’s hair. I know it had to hurt……but she never made a peep. Grace was clean and ready to get out. Water change and Jessicas turn. When she was clean, we changed water and gave Michael his privacy. I took the girls and checked the magical backpack. I found some nice lotion and they smelled lovely! They both had beautiful hair and kept touching it. Michael gets out and wants some lotion too. We decided to move Michaels bed in with his sisters (his “bedroom” was tiny, i think it was a.closet) We found some books and read. They were all asleep in minutes. As I detangled myself feom the sleeping babies, Michael asked if I was going to come back. I gave him a hug and said Id see him tomorrow. He grinned and it made my day. I waited for Mom to get home. It was almost 11 PM by the time she got home and I could tell she had been drinking. She introduced herself and looked around the room. She was shocked. She asked who had cleaned and i told her we all did. I see a car pulling up and its my Dad coming to see why Im so late. She says she had a meeting and was kept late. He ssaid”Look, we need her done at 10. Not 1001! If you cant be home at 10, she cant do this “ He loaded my bike up. He asked how it went. I didn’t want to tell him how dirty it was because I was afraid he would say I couldnt go back, and I had promised Michael.
And so it went. Every day, the kids and I would clean up a bit more. The cleaner the house got, the more time we had to walk to the park or go to the community pool. We had a great time and those 3 kids were all amazing.
I babysat the kids all that summer and into the start of school. It was just too much and I had to quit after Christmas vacation. I still watched them occasionally and we always had so much fun. This was in the early 70s. I still see the 3 kids who are adults now with families of their own. Michael went on to become an executive chef and works at a very trendy restaurant in the San Francisco area. He has a couple of kiddos and a lovely wife. Jess is an RN and works in the Lake Tahoe area. Shes a single mom of 2 boys and Grace is still local and keeps me in the loop with updates. She married a local guy and they have a daughter. She teaches at the local elementary school.
Its weird because it was such a short period of time, but it left us all with a bonding of the heart. Their Mom passed away last year and I went to her services and got to see all the kids (lol at KIDS!!) They introduced me as the best babysitter ever.
Filthiest house produced some wonderful humans. I was happy to be a small part of that. Sorry this was so long. Was a lovely trip down memory lane. Thanks for reading.
When my husband caught me cheating on him. There are no excuses, it was an incredibly stupid, selfish, and insane thing to do to someone who didn’t deserve it. The person I cheated on my husband with wasn’t worth it, that’s for sure.
After telling most of my friends and family what I did, my husband packed his bags and left. I spent a week on my couch contemplating suicide and hitting absolute rock bottom. My friends all took his side, understandably. Almost everyone I loved turned away. I fell physically sick with some sort of insane flue—the worst I’ve ever had in my life, probably from the stress.
I could’ve turned to the guy and tried to start fresh. New life, new boyfriend, new friends… Get that divorce and start over. Instead, I realized that what I had was worth fighting for, even if it took years to get it back. I ended the affair with that guy.
I wrote to each friend and family member who knew about this that I was going to do whatever it took to build my life back. I wrote to my husband. I begged him to come back. By some miracle… he did. We went to counselling, I went to therapy. I opened my life to my husband: no more privacy. He had access to everything, which I was completely fine with.
It took a long time, but eventually my friends came back. My husband’s trust slowly began to rebuild. Years and years later, our marriage is strong-full of incredible love, respect, and trust. I look back at what I did in complete disgust. I live everyday with that heartbreak, wishing I’d never put such an amazing person through that. Although that time was dark, it was the push I needed to wake up and stop living like a selfish idiot.
I wouldn’t trade the life I have now for the world. It took incredible pain and humiliation to get here, but it’s what led to my amazing life now. For those going through a dark time, take it day by day… one step at a time. I never thought I’d ever get here, but with hard work and patience, it will get better.
Not sure of the exact date, but it would have been mid to late ’80s in Bristol city centre.
Late one evening I was in a crew of 6 in a transit van when we saw a knackered looking Fiat 127 (they were never brilliant when new, let alone one that was 15 years old!). Half of the lights were out, smoke from the exhaust (and lots of noise).
Pulled the car over, and found it contained 2 adults and 3 children (all under 6 or 7 at a guess). Occupants were of obvious Asian descent (not unusual for that area of Bristol), so I started to ask the usual questions whilst a colleague looked over the car (which was found to have 3 bald tyres, no window wipers and a lot of rusty holes in the bodywork).
The driver and adult passenger were almost in tears, and trying to speak in English, which wasn’t that great. I established that they were Mauritian, and had only arrived in the UK that day. Once I spoke to them in French they looked relieved (my French isn’t brilliant, but was better than their English). He produced a Mauritian Driving Licence, and when asked for insurance and registration for the car (which they had purchased upon arrival at the airport), they produced a hand-written receipt showing that they had paid £1000.00 cash for the car! (it was worth about 20 quid scrap value, and certainly shouldn’t have been on a road). Even worse, he proudly produced another hand-written “Insurance Certificate” for which he had paid the car seller another £300.
They had come here to attend a family funeral, and had been royally ripped off by some scumbag near Heathrow as they needed to get down to Bristol as soon as possible.
Obviously, we couldn’t let them continue driving as it was unlikely to get them very far anyway, and was a liability to everyone else on the road.
I had no intention of getting my pen anywhere near to an official ‘ticket’, and explained the game to my Sergeant – who fully agreed with me.
All the time, the family were getting more and more upset as they started to realise the situation they were in and the trouble they thought they were in.
We took them back to our station (and a colleague drove their car), fed and watered them, spoke to relatives by telephone, and sorted out as much as we could at that time.
They were taken to a hotel for the night and agreed to surrender the car for destruction.
As the story spread throughout the night (between other colleagues, paramedics, fire-fighters, hospital staff and taxi drivers…. that was the way things were in the City at that time) offers of help came in.
By the time we went off duty at 0700 hours, the hotel bill had been waived, a taxi was ready to take them down to Exeter (their intended destination), and a collection had raised just under a grand in cash. Toys had been donated for the children, and small ‘gifts’ for the adults.
By the time they arrived in Exeter, the local police had found and purchased a small run-around car which wasn’t great, but had a few months of MOT and tax left on it, and was roadworthy… enough for their use whilst they were in the country.
We got a lovely letter from them once they were back in Mauritius, thanking us for the help we gave (and arranged) – but we only did what we could to help someone who needed it, and had been badly treated by opportunistic scum.
Edit:-
Thanks for the gramatical corrections – I try my best, but often fail!
I’ve never had a higher-rated answer on Quora, or received so many comments – Thank you, everybody.
It is not often that I bother to answer many questions, being a ‘reserved’ British ex-cop many situations just don’t seem worthy of reply, or have already got a few good answers.
I fully appreciate that probably 95% of the questions (and thus, answers) are posted from the USA, and whilst i find them interesting to read, are often so alien to a British way of thinking that I see no advantage in adding to them.
Anyone who reads my other (very few!) answers on Quora will see that I have some views and oppinions on some things – mainly to counter the critics and troll posters when it gets a bit ‘personal’, or to defend those who I feel need it.
I have no desire to be a “super user” on here, despair at many of the “questions” asked, but still feel that (every so often) even the British have something useful to add to this world.
I have to tell this story. I started writing song when l was about 15 years old. One of my biggest influences was Harry Chapin. I live in Los Angeles, and Harry played at the Greek Theatre every year. I went to see him four or five years in a row after getting my drivers license.
Harry played about 300 concerts a year. He gave about half the money he made to world hunger. After the concert, he sat and sold and signed T shirts for the cause and would stay until every person who wanted to buy a T-shirt was able to . His Security guys, always moved people quickly through, because they knew Harry would talk to everyone. After the first concert l stood in line to get a signed T-shirt, and when it was my turn l told him l was a songwriter. He smiled and said, “ Really ? I wish you the best of luck”. The following year l went to where he was signing T shirts, and to my surprise , he saw me and asked, “ How’s the songwriting going?” While he was signing T-shirts, I stood to the side and talked to him about songwriting. His security tried to make me leave, but he said, “. Leave the kid alone. He’s not hurting anyone.”
l did this every year, and the last time l saw him, l was 20 years old and had got my first job playing songs at a Shaky’s Pizza place. I told Harry that and that l played Taxi, but that there was a part l couldn’t figure out. He turned to one of his security guys, and said, “ Go get me one of the guitars out of the truck “. Pretty much all the people who were buying T shirts were done . The security guy said, “ Harry! It’s midnight man. We got to get out of here!” Harry said, “ Just do it.”
The irritated security guy did it and Harry showed me how to play the part. One thing l forgot to mention, was that l had brought me mom with me to see him. She was so happy for me and told that story to people that story unt the day she died. Harry Chapin was a very special man.
Galatoire’s Trout Meuniere Amandine
2023 12 04 17 16
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
4 (6 to 8 ounce) trout fillets
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 cup milk
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
Oil
1 cup butter
1 cup sliced almonds
Juice of 1 lemon
1/2 tablespoon chopped parsley
Instructions
Sprinkle fillets with salt and pepper, dip into milk and roll in flour.
Fry in 3/4 inch of hot oil in a shallow skillet until golden on both sides.
Remove and keep warm.
In a separate pan, melt and whip butter until brown and frothy.
Add sliced almonds and lemon juice.
Place each fillet on a heated plate and pour sauce over it.
China has a system of Governance that is radically different to that in Western Countries
Thus it is imperative, if the West has to keep it’s “We are the guardians of democracy” model, they have to portray China as evil and the system as collapsing
Otherwise won’t the people ask how if the Chinese system is so bad, is the nation prospering so much?
My granddaughter and I were at a Denny’s. We ordered and ate lunch. The waitress came back and picked up the bill that she had left on the table. So we finished and waited for her to bring it back finally called to her as she went past.
We ask for the bill to be brought back and she said no it was paid for.
An elderly man sitting at the counter had paid for our lunch. When I asked her why she said he is a regular customer and told me that he always smiles at people and you and your little granddaughter were the only ones that ever smiled back at him.
My wife had a 6 month affair, when I found out I left her.
A number of people assumed I was the one who cheated on her. That bothered me. I corrected them.
Worse were all the people who assumed I must have done something wrong to deserve it and that I was still the bad guy. People told me I must have not paid enough attention to her, I must have some how drove her to it, etc. Some people refuse to believe that I somehow didn’t do something wrong to cause her to cheat.
All I can say is this – I loved her and treated her like a queen. When I’ve asked her why she did it, the response from her has always been that I was a terrific husband, that she loved me, and that she regrets it. The guy was nearly 20 years younger than her (he in his early 20s, she nearly 40), he was attractive and charming and started flirting with her and she found him irresistible.
So, that’s a double standard that I’ve lived through and find unfair; if I had cheated I would’ve been labelled a creep/jerk, when she has an affair I’m still somehow a jerks who is to blame??!
Back in 1997 in Canmore, Alberta, Sir Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin were in town filming The Edge. Mr. Baldwin decided one evening he wanted to eat at our local Chinese eatery.
I was an Eco-Tourism operator and frequented the establishment quite often. They had an orange chicken that I went bonkers for.
It was peak dining hour and the place was experiencing a 45-minute waiting period to get a table.
In strolls, cocky Baldwin and he demands a seat “NOW!”
The owner was this 5 ft tall fiesty Chinese woman and when she told Mr. Baldwin that he’d have to wait about 45 minutes he pulled the old, Do you know who I am?”
Man, if you could have seen this lady go into action it was an Academy Award for putting an arrogant prick into his place.
She yelled at him with her Mandarin accent, “I don’t care who you are, you get out of my restaurant and don’t come back!”
image 19
The rumours of his arrogance have always swirled in the tabloids and I got a front-row seat to see it in action.
And the winner is for putting the Douche BgAlec Baldwin in his place… The Owner of the Famous Chinese Restaurant, in Canmore Alberta.
I need do this anonymously, because it’s a sensitive subject.
I’m a father of two wonderful children, and my oldest, my son, has special needs. Due to his premature birth (roughly 30 weeks), he developed a condition called Periventricular Leukomalacia, or PVL for short.
PVL is essentially an under development, often by necrosis, of white brain matter near the ventricles of the brain. Read up on it a bit on wikipedia for more info if you interested: Periventricular leukomalacia – Wikipedia
We discovered this was case shortly after his first birthday, when doctors started noticing some developmental delays and some muscle stiffness on his left side. Some evaluations and scans, and it was confirmed what he has, and that it also the cause of his cerebal palsy. It was quite a shock.
Anyways, we start doing therapies and early intervention and it’s such a wonder watching him overcome it all in small steps, in his own way. You feel blessed at times to see his hard work pay off, to truly value life and love and family.
So what do I want to get off my chest?
It’s all bullshit. You know those parents who “wouldn’t have their child any other way because it taught us so much about ourselves and….” well fuck that.
I absolutely hate it. Hate. With a capital H.
I have other parents talk to me and they word things like “well, he’ll get past all this and so forth…”. Ummmm, no dumbass. His condition is chronic – forever. We can adapt to it, and work really hard and he’ll cope and be better off for it.
But while Johnny Awesome-Dad and Super Son are learning how to play catch, I’m helping my son learn how to alternate feet when climbing stairs, how to be aware of his raised arm at the elbow and to lower and swing while he walks, while that guy got to teach his son how to swing for the fences.
His mannerisms are collectively a huge brain capillary-exploding annoyance. From the non-sensical sounds that he repeats 100 times to the way he is so damn slow at e v e r y t h i n g.
Yeh, I hate being a special needs parent. On top of being one, I also have to be his political advocate, constantly representing other parents to our federal and state politicians to ensure kids like him get proper educations.
I really really hate all of it. I only love him – I just wish I could heal him. That’s probably the worst. Of all the things I can do and fix, I can’t make him better.
Fuck me.
(January 9th, 2019)
Edit: Wow, a lot of upvotes. Most I have ever received by far, my next closest has about 115.
Ok, to a few comments: Thank you for the kind words from most people, the support, sympathy, and empathy. I truly did not write this to receive that as I quite literally was getting something off my chest.
To those who think less of my answer, even angry at me for being so: Your opinion is valued and appreciated. My response to it though is simply a shrug and a “It is what it is.” I know my son didn’t choose to be this way, but understand I am not choosing to feel this way either.
I wish I was a better person in this regard but I’m not. However remember this: I don’t let him see it. Fuck, I don’t even mention it anymore to family because they’ll either blanket me with guilt statements and be angry at me (Fuck You btw) or keep telling me lies like “It’ll all be fine” (no it won’t) or “He’ll be fine” (no, you obviously don’t understand it at all).
How do I cope?
Weed. Makes me feel better.
Heavy bag – I punch the crap outta it. Actually split the first one and I’m on my second. Looking to buy a speed bag.
Bottle it up and get back to my life.
And lastly yes I have considered leaving because he deserves a better Dad. The problem with that is it would take a lot of time for my wife to find another person who wants to take this on. Secondly my other child would suffer the loss of Dad when they did nothing, or have anything, wrong. It wouldn’t be fair and life is unfair enough as it is – I don’t want to add to it.
Don’t be indecisive. Ain’t nobody gonna follow someone who can’t make up their damn mind.
Don’t be a two-faced snake. People can smell that crap from a mile away.
Don’t be a damn pushover. You gotta have a backbone if you want to make it in this world.
Don’t be lazy. If you’re the one in charge, you gotta put in the work.
Don’t be a know-it-all. You ain’t that smart, trust me.
Don’t be too proud to ask for help. We all need it sometimes.
Level 5 – Impossible
House of Blues Bayou Voodoo Smothered Chicken
2023 12 03 15 32
Yield: 4 servings; 1 pound Roux
Ingredients
Brown Roux
10 ounces all-purpose flour
1 cup vegetable oil
Chicken
1 pound butter, melted
2 pounds chopped onion
1 pound chopped celery
1 pound chopped red bell pepper
1 pound chopped green bell pepper
1 pound sliced mushrooms
2 ounces minced garlic
2 1/2 ounces all-purpose flour
4 cups red wine (chef suggests Burgundy wine)
2 quarts dark beer
2 quarts water
2 tablespoons beef base
4 tablespoons chicken base
1 tablespoon liquid smoke
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons Tabasco sauce
1 cup Louisiana Seasoning
Instructions
Brown Roux
Place oil in a heavy stock pot and heat until it smokes. Slowly whisk in flour, 2 cups at a time, mixing well. Cook in oven at 350 degrees F for about 2 hours, stirring every 15 minutes. Roux is done when chocolate brown color is achieved. Allow to cool.
Chicken
In a large skillet or sauté pan, add butter.
Put onion, celery, red bell pepper, green bell pepper and mushrooms into the pan and sauté.
Add garlic and sauté for 1 minute.
Add flour and stir; cook for 1 minute.
Add red wine and reduce until thick.
Add dark beer, water, beef base, chicken base and bring to a boil.
Add liquid smoke, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco sauce and Louisiana seasoning.
Whip some roux into the sauce. Bring to a boil then remove from heat.
Put some pre-made rice on a plate, put cooked chicken breast on top of rice and ladle voodoo sauce over the chicken and rice.
Ages ago in the late ’70s I worked in an engineering department for a huge manufacturing company – one of the big three in Detroit. A co-worker had about 30 years with the company and a ton of vacation time. He and his wife had a daughter late in life. She was about 8 at the time and daddy took vacation days every Friday and Monday during her summer vacation.
Big boss comes in one Thursday afternoon looking for the doting dad. We say he’s off until Tuesday, and reminded him of daddy’s schedule.
Keep in mind that all vacation had to be submitted and approved, by boss man, in January.
But in this moment he can’t have what he wants when he wants it.
Boss man hits the ceiling. We can’t have that. Everyone has to take vacation in full week increments.
The guy had a pretty specialized skill set, and no one else was really up to speed in his area of expertise. We could fill in in a pinch. Daddy could complete final draft when he got back on Tuesday.
the following summer, I had transferred to another department, but that department struggled when dad took his six-plus weeks of vacation consecutively!
it was a whole lot easier to cover his job for four days than six weeks.
It resulting in us trying for 6 months after ending the affair. To her cheating on me with another man to eventually leave me at the end of the 6 months. Tit for tat I guess. Lots of shame and heartbreak on my end but those are the consequences. Mostly life lessons though. Divorce was the anwser and we will both be happier in the long run.
Many years ago a young woman called me up one evening to ask some questions about insurance regarding the car accident that had happened between her car and mine that afternoon. Slight problem, I hadn’t been in a car accident. She had my name and license plate from the police report so I went out and checked the number of the license plate on the back of my car, and it wasn’t the same number. After a little more discussion I got my auto registration and that did match the number on the report – the license plates on the front and back of my car weren’t the same! After thinking about it I realized what must have happened: I had returned from a business trip a couple days earlier and while my car was parked at the airport parking garage someone had swapped the license plate on the back of my car with a different one and then put my license plate on the car that got in an accident (it was almost the same make and model as my car – they must have been casing the airport). Not surprisingly this turned into quite a mess to untangle, requiring multiple calls to insurance as well as a visit by the police officer to verify my car had not in fact been in an accident. The weird part that still bothers me to this day – the woman driving the car who’d gotten in an accident had the same last name as me. My last name isn’t an unusual one, but it’s not extremely common either. She told the police she was my niece (not likely – I’m white and she was black). How did that happen?
Have you noticed big brands dropping A, B & O from their signs and logos?
image 10
Most people who noticed the same, thought that it could be some malfunction but the real reason for the missing A, B, and O’s is something more serious and amazing.
image 9
NHS Blood and Transplant organization, along with PR agency Engine Group has launched the ‘Missing Type’ campaign. It has undertaken this campaign to make people aware the benefits of blood donation and its importance of saving lives.
image 8
Big brands and companies likeTesco, Mirror, McDonalds, Starbucks and Hardrock Cafe have agreed to be the part of the campaign to make people aware of blood donation.
As a part of this campaign, NHS has asked big brands to omit the letters that signify blood types from their logos and signs viz, blood types A, B, and O.
I watched a 90 lb female put a 235 lb guy in the hospital. This was a fight between 2 neighbors in my neighborhood. This guy harassed her for weeks then for some reason he decided to walk up to her front porch and knock on her door. I was sitting on my front porch when it happened. I was thinking this is not going to be good, and had my cell phone within reach.
She open her door and in a clear loud voice, she requested he get off her property. He said, what are you going to do about it. She said, I’ll call the police. He laughed at her and reached for the screen door. Before I could move she kicked him in the head twice, swept his legs out from under him, and he was down and bleeding.
I started to call the police, but again before I could dial the number a patrol car pulled up and the officer put the guy in handcuffs. I just sat there, drank my coffee and waited for him to come over and ask what I saw. I told him and signed the bottom of the form.
As he walked away he said you know the woman? I replied yes, she’s a former Marine. He chuckled and said. I guess the guy didn’t know that, and I laughed.
When I had an Amish girl come live in with me during the week to help take care of my three-year-old daughter and my brand new twin boys.My husband was in Vietnam.
The first night that I went out to play cards with friends I came home at 10:00 p.m. everybody was sitting in the dark. It was pitch Black and it had not occurred to me that she would not be allowed to turn on the lights or use the electric stove to heat formula.
From them and I would make sure everything was turned on before I left. I only played cards twice a month but they were never left in the dark again. I would heat formula and put it in the thermos bottle but I also showed her how to fill up pan with hot water from the tap to sit the bottles in.
EDIT due to the amount of people that think it was horrible to leave my newborn twins and 3-year-old daughter with a stranger I need to explain the Amish girl lived with me. I would take her home on Saturday morning and go pick her up on Monday morning. I even knew her family. She had helped raise 9 younger brothers and sisters.
When I was in high school I would get terrible menstrual cramps. I would leave school and go to the cab stand down the block. The dispatcher was a man that I’ll call Joe. He was blind.
I would walk in on a wooden floor and Joe would say hi Linda you need to go home? I would take a taxi and come in after school the next day to pay for it. This was in a small town about 15,000.
I grew up, graduated high school, moved away, got married and got pregnant. My husband was going to Vietnam and I went back home to stay with my parents. This was about 6 years after I had left home.
I stopped at a bakery before I went to my parents house. I took one step on a cement floor and a man standing at the counter buying some donuts said “Hey Linda when did you get home?”
I never understood how Joe recognized my one step on the cement floor and I was very pregnant. You would think the sound would be different but he recognized that one step immediately.
A guy I went on a first date with (set up by a friend) told me how his ex wife was having a breakdown and had messaged him that day, to say that she couldn’t cope and was going to call social services and have their two children placed in care. Shocked, I looked at him and said “Couldn’t you take them for a couple of weeks and give her a break?” I kid you not, his genuine, honest response was “Not a chance, I have them every other weekend, that’s enough for me!”. I don’t think I hid my horror very well. Ugly, ugly man. My own son was 3 years old and the time, and if he wouldn’t step up for his own kids, he was going nowhere near mine!
It takes about 66 days for an average individual to make something a daily habit.
Eye pupil dilates to 45% when an individual looks at somebody they love.
Food prepared by someone else tastes much better than your own preparation, even when you use the same recipe.
Hearing a single negative thing could damage at least five positive memories.
Studies have shown that consuming food without preservatives will increase I.Q by up to 14%.
Men aren’t more entertaining than women: they only make more jokes, they don’t care whether others like their humor or not.
Shy people tell others very little about themselves, but they do it in quite a manner that makes other individuals believe they know them better than they actually think they do.
People in blue rooms are also much more productive.
Being alone is harder for your health than you really believe.
Any relationship born between 16 and 28 years of age is more likely to be robust and long-lasting.
If we have a plan B, our plan A is less likely to succeed.
Being happy around people makes you happier.
Convincing yourself that you slept well tricks your brain into believing you did.
The sort of music you listen to influences the way you view the world.
A hug longer than twenty seconds will produce hormones into your body that makes you trust the individual who is hugging yo
Not so much amazing, as being extremely useful to me. I was on a European Standards Committee for several years. Members came from many European countries and it was customary to conduct all meetings in English.
Often the French and German delegates would speak to each other in the meeting in French or German to try and exclude the UK delegate from what they were plotting. This was on the basis that they assumed that the British could not speak other languages. It was advantageous to me for them not to know that I understood at least the gist of what they were saying.
However, when meeting in Dusseldorf the German delegated took us all out for dinner after the meeting. This was in a very German restaurant and the waitress approached me asking, in German, what I would like to eat. Not thinking, I blew my cover by replying in German.
The German delegate’s jaw dropped and said “you speak German!”. Trying to save myself I admitted that I could speak enough basic german to get by, but I couldn’t resist adding “ but my understanding is better”.
The Swedish delegate sitting next to me actually laughed and gave me a pat on the back.
A 26 yrs old with a decent job(in Indian Silicon Valley), beautiful girlfriend, about to be promoted, in short, enjoying my life.
But now,
A road accident(to save a little girl), which confined me to home for 4–5 months, had a kneefracture, operated, implanted with a metal plate inside(permanently).
Promotion aborted(as i m on Medical Leave for quite a longer period).
Cheated by my girlfriend when we were planning to get married, our parents accepted us.
My situation after surgery,
image 18
I was full of life. Travelling, working out in gym used to make me feel energized, lively, confident. But my eyes in the above picture are full of unnecessary thoughts, wandering with all the lively moments I had before.
Permanent Implant,
image 17
I was planning to call my parents to bangalore so that i can arrange some vacation for them and let them know about me and my girlfriend. But this was not the way i wanted them to come.
Even after accepted by my parents, she cheated on me. This was the time when i needed her the most. I know that,
“We should Forgive people in our life, even those who are not sorry for their actions. Holding on to anger only hurts us, not them.”
Also after one-by-one misfortunes, my self-confidence is f**ked like a Gangbang. So i’m not in a place to keep grudges with her and trying to move on, to forgive her and forget her.
Now they want me to settle downin an arranged marriage with a girl of their choice. And neither I am in position to ask for getting married with a girl of my choice nor in a position of getting married with any girl due to hindrances in my promotion, beautifully f**ked self-confidence.
I’m just trying to recover as soon as possible from the physical and emotional injury so that i can go back to my self made track of life.
Go ask Russians, nearly all western countries did the same as you mentioned to Russia, including the so called “nuclear option”: kicked Russia out of SWIFT, did Russian economy collapse?
Oh, maybe you don’t know the real world, just living in the “information cocoons”, you’re fed with selected information, which made you believe China is easy to win, like our beloved president 45 said, trade war is easy to win.
This is his easy to win:
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Now, it is America who’s relying on China, not China relying on America. Say you to buy a Toyota and wait for over a month, sometimes you need to pay extra money, and its price is rising year after year, while in China, Toyota is to buy at will and drive away upon you paid, and its price is lower and lower. For example, RAV 4 in America starts from $29K, while in China, it starts from RMB 175,800, which is about $24.5K.
The problem is not China, it hides in America, destory China can’t solve your own problem.
The big heads are more informed and clever than you average Americans do. They know they can’t win, sanctions, trade wars, are just to slow down China’s pace, not to stop it.
Years ago, I was involved with a lawsuit against a tech company. Kind of “class action,” which meant a lot of people were there.
I noticed two levels of dress: casual and super-expensive suits.
As the process unfolded, I realized that those two levels of dress represented three levels of wealth.
The expensive suits were all worn by guys (and, yes, sorry, this was long ago, and everyone was a guy) who had high-paying jobs. Most would regard them as well off. They drove new, leased BMWs, etc. They were supercilious toward everyone because THEY were the only ones wearing expensive suits, shoes, and Rolexes.
The casual dressers represented two economic levels:
Those who could not afford expensive suits or Rolexes.
Those who had so much money they didn’t need to impress anyone.
At one point during the proceeding, I ended up in a room with four suits while I was dressed in jeans and wore a lightweight “Members Only” jacket. (You can tell this was long ago, right? Remember when those were cool?)
At first, they spoke only among themselves, treating the “obviously” poor guy like I couldn’t possibly matter. I let them go for a few minutes and then interrupted them for an important message on life. I told them how their expensive suits put them at a disadvantage because the only thing obvious in the room was that none of them were in the top tier financially.
They included me from then on.
To answer the question: The truly rich wear whatever they want. Only those who are still struggling to become truly rich are slaves to the “badges of honor” that they THINK demonstrate they are rich.
I was at a Home Depot and saw this lady trying to lift a 90lb bag of cement from a flat cart into the trunk of her car. I said let me help you with that and grabbed the bag and put it in her trunk. She said I don’t need your damn help. I said sorry and grabbed the bag and put it back on the cart. As I was pulling out of the parking lot I saw that she had dropped the bag and it broke open all over the parking lot. I honked and waved.
During the Vietnam war President Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara came up with “Project 100,000,” and the idea was to kill two birds with one stone by drafting men who were developmentally disabled or just too stupide to be left into the army. It was to provide more men for the war effort and give the less fortunate a chance at being productive members of society.
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There’s typically an IQ minimum of 80 points to serve in the US military, but the rule was loosened, and they started allowing in men with mental disabilities. These men became known a “McNamara’s Morons” and died at 5 times the rate of other Americans in the war.
You had men turning up to basic training that couldn’t even tie their own shoes and couldn’t even understand the basics like dressing the bed. Some of these soldiers didn’t even understand why they were utterly exhausted at the end of a run when they were full of energy at the start of the run.
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When in combat training, none of the men could pass their physical training because they couldn’t grasp the idea of throwing a heavy training grenade in a high arc to reach the target that was 90 feet away.
A lot of the men were protected from battle and kept safe by sergeants who took pity on them, but a lot were sent into dangerous battles on the front line. Not only were some of these men a danger to themselves they also put their fellow soldiers in harms way by not being able to grasp the seriousness of what they were involved in.
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For example, in one platoon a dozen men were injured when a live grenade was tossed at them by another soldier as a prank. The soldier in question didn’t have the brain function to understand how dangerous a grenade was.
The word McNamara Moron’s was a derogatory term used by many of the sergeants to describe many of the men that fell under their care. Although the experiment was a disaster, not all of the men drafted under this new legislation failed to learn and grasp the fundamentals of combat. Many went on to have distinguished careers, and many were awarded the “Medal of Honour.”
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The story of Forrest Gump was inspired by McNamara’s soldiers and the bravery some of these men showed when faced with impossible odds.
A quiet little boy was putting up with the abuse of a foot taller, loud mouthed girl. The girl was berating him for being a Nerd.
The teacher heard what the girl was saying to the boy, and admonished her, “Karen! You should be nice to Billy! He is a straight A student, and someday he just might be your Boss.”
Billy looked at the teacher and quipped, “But I don’t want to be a Pimp!”
When I had just turned 18, my mother came into my room with a birthday balloon. It was one of the nice fancy balloons. She was really happy to give it to me.
But I, being the selfish spoiled teenager reacted in anger.
“What! Is this it? I don’t get a cake or presents?!?!”
I will never forget the look of hurt and pain on my mother’s face. She turned around with tears in her eyes and quietly took the balloon from my room.
I knew instantly that I hurt her. I tried to run after her and apologize but the damage was already done.
I know she forgave me right away and gave me the balloon. But, you see, we were a low income family and balloons were rarely given. It was a gift I should have been proud of, but I turned it into something painful.
I learned a valuable lesson that day. You can’t take back words spoken in anger.
I will be 40 this year and my mother has been gone for 16 years and I can still see that look on her face as clear as if it had been yesterday.
I miss her.
I just do
Make America Go Away
The United States is like an abusive, narcissistic uncle that just knows that you will always need him; he is the indispensable uncle that just requires that you accept his authority by saying “uncle” otherwise he will sadly have to increase the level of abuse until you either “get the message” or die from the abuse. The vast majority of the world’s population understands this, whether it be the Latin Americans cheated out of democracy again and again, the Africans who had their post-independence dreams destroyed, the Middle Eastern modernizing and secular states that were eradicated, the Vietnamese that died in their millions to rid themselves of US occupation, the people of Gaza being murdered by US bombs and shells, or the Chinese, Russians and Iranians who face the wrath of the US for not understanding their place. The last thing they want is for the US to be “great” again, and they certainly do not see it as indispensable or a shining city on a hill, as the US political elite claim again and again in the form of religious-style mantras.
US politicians, policy makers and even international relations scholars accept this abusive, narcissistic narrative as they waffle on about a “Liberal International Order” where the US acts as the mafia-boss who makes the rules while not being subject to them, and bloviate about the decrepit “shining city” that must deliver its “gift” of liberal democratic capitalism to the world’s unwashed. Just as they did to the Amerindians in their three century war of extermination, ethnic cleansing and land theft, as they established the “new Jerusalem” of ethnic supremacy; personified by the racist bigot President Wilson who spun a good yarn about “freedom” while bringing the very opposite to not only many foreigners but also the US population. It was he who placed the velvet glove of sweet words about “Western culture” over the hard, racist fist.
So yes, the vast majority of humanity just want the US to go away and leave them to manage their own affairs. The problem with abusive narcissists is that they can turn into “family destroyers”, wiping out the rest of the family because they just know that the family (i.e. humanity) cannot survive without them. If they are to go away, then so must humanity. When those wanting a faster rate of change complain about the careful and patient diplomacy and actions of Russia, Iran and China, they must remember the dangerous lunatic that those nations are dealing with; one that can make humanity disappear with it if it so decides, in a global murder suicide. Anyone looking at the current psychopathic thrashings of the Israeli state must hold no flights of fancy about a US where a quarter of the population still believe in a heretical bible Armageddon fantasy, and its elite are wedded to their global dominance. Such lunatics have to be carefully managed and slowly subdued in order to reduce the possibilities of self-destructive and psychopathic rage-induced paroxysms.
Please Make America Go Away, as peacefully as possible.
The CORE FANTASY that drives women to ORGASM and WHY
I needed a “C” to pass my college communications course.
If I didn’t get a “C,” I would fail to meet my college major requirements setting me back an entire semester.
Here’s the problem: The semester was over, and I had a D+.
My only hope was to email the teacher asking for a bump in my grade.
I wrote an email to her explaining how my past school performance warranted a higher grade and that not passing me would only hurt an ambitious student.
When I hit send, I realized I made a HUGE mistake.
I addressed her using another teacher’s name.
I tried to calm down, but then I remembered we’d spent half the semester covering email etiquette.
Shoot!
What did I do?
Two days later, she emails back.
First, she addresses the glaring mistake then says she bumped my grade up to a “C” to never have me as a student again.
I went out for drinks that night.
This is by far the best mistake I’ve ever made.
US is Militarizing Itself to Death, While China Emphasizes Cooperation.
When I was in high school our physics teacher gave us a challenge that involved making a paper air plane of any shape. The only objective was to get it to fly as far as possible. I had some paper air plane making skills so I made the best plane I could and it flew pretty far.
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One guy made the greatest, yet simplest paper airplane of all time. He stood there at the starting line with a regular piece of paper. Some classmates scratched their head while silently chuckling to themselves. Moments later he took the flat piece of paper, crumpled it up, and threw it down the hall way.
He beat the class with ease.
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Some of the students got mad and said that he cheated.
The physics teacher said, “How so? I said it could be any shape. A paper ball is indeed a shape.”
He won the contest with flying colors.
“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
When I graduated from nursing school 10 years ago, I was flush with cash for the first time in my life. Within the span of a month, I went from having an after tax income of $600/month to an after-tax income of $1200 every 2 weeks.
I felt rich. I was 21 years old. I didn’t want to just save. I would invest.
I read a couple of books, opened a brokerage account, and proceeded to buy and sell stocks and call options. I made a lot of money quickly.
I concluded that I was going to be a stock market genius.
So, when I started losing money, I of course knew that it was a temporary setback. So I played, er, invested some more, and some more, and some more.
After a while, I had to admit to myself that I had a problem. I stopped after a couple of years. I had maybe lost $30K by then.
I repeated the same experiment at the tail end of med school. I decided to borrow an extra $20K and invest. This time, I was going to be disciplined. I was going to focus on buying call options on companies that were going to spin-off part of their assets into standalone companies. The idea was that the market was mispricing the combined companies and that the sum of the parts would be greater than the whole, after a spinoff. It was not an entirely crazy idea. I’d made money that way before.
Anyway, my roommate started making a ton of money in penny stocks of companies involved in the marijuana business. I was jealous of how quickly he was making money. I joined in. I lost another $10–15K. I pulled out. He continued playing. He made money for a while. Eventually, he lost more than he had made.
I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d lost about $50K in the stock market over the past decade. That has been my worst financial decision. I see it as tuition money that I paid in order to learn that I am emphatically not a stock market genius.
I’m a physician. My mistakes are going to be relatively costless to me. Please don’t try this at home.
The U.S. has 2 choices. And Americans need to wake up to this reality to face the new world. China will always be independent from the U.S. in technology. In many cases it will from now onwards be ahead and with far better technologicallyDon’t than the US and the west. It is happy to share its benefits but it will never allow the U.S. and the West to ever threatened them again. Ever. Never Ever.
Don’t blame China. China were happy to play second fiddle till the despicable US foolishly thought that it can easily contain and control China in Chip technology for a generation. It took less than 3 years for China to catch up. It won’t look back. Now all the trillion of dollars shit it cost to do this shit will ll be wasted. If the U.S. never learnt then they can always lose more trillions. China don’t mind.
What does it mean for the U.S. government? It needs to know that the US has 2 choices. Either it work and I am cooperate with China and profit from China’s humongous market and manufacturing prowess or it loses it all including the access to the global south market representing som 120–150 nations around the world. The U.S. needs to make this decision. Americans need to learn humility and accept that it no longer can dictate to the world.
China will design its own chips, it will manufacture its own chips and it will sell to whoever wants to buy it and use it. It will do so at a faster rate and take less time, and make it a a lower cost and make it cheaper than the US and the west. That is what China always do and and the Chip Ban, the GPS threat and the ISS ban will simply motivate China to dominate all technology. Thanks USA
What do you like to ban, sanction, blockade from now onwards? I think China should stop the U.S. from using paper to clean their backside since China invented paper. Let the use their hands.
I worked at Apple in the 80’s and think the movie grossly underplays how much of an asshole he was.
I’ve worked with many billionaires in my career, and Jobs was the biggest asshole I ever met.
He would destroy people just for the fun of it. He would make it personal.
There were a few who managed to survive and even thrive, like Andy Hertzfeld.
Even on the original Mac team, there was a small number that Steve treated with respect, and the rest he treated like shit. It’s one reason the Mac team fell apart after the Mac shipped. Steve glorified about 10 of them; they were on the cover of Business Week IIRC. The rest he made clear were shit. They had worked their asses off and built a magical product, but Steve didn’t recognize them. So the glorified rock stars got big heads, and the others were deeply slighted. So the team fell apart.
It’s also true that at NeXT and then his return to Apple, Steve grew up and learned to treat people better. Steve v2 wasn’t exactly Mother Theresa, but he learned a lot of lessons and was much improved.
Yes, I still shiver 10 years later. My husband and I were thinking of buying a lot in a new intentional community in Belize (think semi-rainforest, not beach). We stayed at the guest house for several days to tour and explore the area. Activities included canoeing on the beautiful river, hiking, learning about the local culture, etc… Now, recall there’s a river, hence big rocky, sandy, soil-y hills that sloped down to it. Also, no paved roads yet. One day we decided to do a driving tour in our all-wheel drive rental (as opposed to a 4WD we had reserved). You can guess where this is going. We came to the top of a steep incline, and to continue, there was no choice but to proceed down the other side. Approximately 10 feet to our right was a cliff that dropped steeply into a gorge and the river. (I was driving because my husband isn’t crazy about manual transmissions.) Then, the brakes failed. As we gained speed, rocks began to bump us closer to the edge. Honestly, we were thinking that was it- the end of the road for us. But in a moment of something- not brilliance for sure- maybe instinct, I threw the car into first gear. It slowed, then came to rest about 4 feet from the edge. Finally I screamed, just to release the tension. Somehow I didn’t leave a puddle in my seat.
If that wasn’t enough, seconds after we got out of the car, we heard the screams of several women who were crashing through the dense forest to our left. When the three women reached us, they were completely out of breath but managed to yell, “Wild pigs! Wild pigs!”. Just as all of us squeezed into the car for (protection, not escape!), we heard the pigs retreating and running back where they came from.
“Snake” or sometimes “snakes”, Snakeye bombs. Mk-80 Series bombs of various weights fitted with a high-drag devise to provide rapid deceleration upon release.
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The special fins were held tight to the bomb casing until release, at which time they popped open to insure maximum horizontal separation between bomb and aircraft at detonation. Without the high-drag unit added, bombs could strike the ground and detonate under the aircraft. In some cases the explosion would bring down the delivering aircraft. At one time, this was called a “Low Blow”. Snakeyes were generally dropped at low to very low altitudes to enhance accuracy. Mk-80 series bombs without the decelerating tail unit were generally described as “Slicks”.
When I was 15 years old I made a decision that to this day still baffles me. I spent the weekend with my good buddy putting a hot motor into his car. We finished the work on Sunday afternoon and my friend told me he would come by my house and get me later so we could go celebrate the car and new motor.
When he got to my parents house that evening I walked out to the driveway and made that fateful decision by telling my buddy that I had “homework” to do and wouldn’t be going with him.
Later that night my friend and two others hit a tree going about a hundred miles an hour. It killed my friend and the other guy in the front seat and put the backseat passenger in the hospital for a month.
To this day I have no idea why I didn’t go with them. I really didn’t have any homework. It just came into my head that day and I said it and that was it.
I would have been the guy in the front passenger seat that night.
When I had a daycare I had a four year old who went through a terrible phase of pulling hair. He didn’t just yank; he’d get his fingers tangled in there and twist and pull with his entire body. It was extremely painful. He once got hold of my hair and pulled some out.
I tried everything to stop him. I watched him like a hawk. I stopped him when he got that look and lunged for someone’s hair. His mom acknowledged the problem she was having with him at home with his two older sisters. She tried everything; we both did, but nothing stopped him.
One day he got hold of this cute little two year old’s hair. She was screaming in pain as I tried to detach his fingers. And I finally had had it. I grabbed his hair and pulled just as hard as I could.
He let go immediately and started crying. And he never pulled hair again.
His mom thought he had finally grown out of his phase. I never told her what I did. I didn’t abuse the kids I watched; never spanked them or yelled at them. I still feel guilty for what I did. He probably would have stopped on his own.
My sister. It was the day of my mother’s funeral after a very fast illness and sudden, unexpected death. My husband had run an errand for Dad. He was gone about an hour. During that hour, one sister (older, middle one of three) cornered me as I sat at the dining table. She spent most of that time telling me what a horrible person I was, listing every perceived mistake I had ever made in my life, all the times I had disrespected her, etc. When my husband came home he found me sobbing, curled into a fetal ball behind the guest bed.
That afternoon and for the rest of that weekend I would not be in the same room with her. I spent my time composing a long email listing every claim she had thrown at me and why each was wrong (or blown out of proportion). It was all I could emotionally manage.
She never even acknowledged the email, let alone apologize for being such a bully. I waited two weeks and sent another email, asking if she got the first one. She acknowledged that she did. That’s all. Just a “yes I got it.”
I have not spoken to her since. And because my other older (oldest) sister just stood there, I have barely spoken to her. Their emails are automatically filtered to trash. They don’t even know my phone number in Spain, where I now live. I no longer have any sibling photos on the “photo wall” in the hallway. I consider myself an only child. I will not return to the US for either of their funerals when the time comes. They are not welcome to visit me in Spain and I don’t even want them notified when I die.
My daughter is a single mom, and once a week I help her out. I pick up her kids, aged 8 and 7, from school and watch them until their mother comes home around 8 PM.
The older one is a lot like me. Introverted, shy, a bookworm who goes through a couple of books a week. I never have a bit of problem with him. We understand each other. We’ll watch TV or play a game of chess together.
The younger one is the social butterfly of the family. She goes outside and plays with the other kids in her neighborhood.
She’s also stubborn to a fault. Just like her mother at that age.
And one evening about a week ago she started getting defiant. Refused to do anything I asked. I was losing patience.
Just then her mother came home and things escalated. I watched the two most stubborn human beings I’d ever met lock horns for about half an hour. I’d seen this behavior before — we got it from her mother, my daughter, when she was that age.
“Dad, I am so sorry for all the trouble I put you and mom through when I was her age,” she told me.
I laughed. “It’s OK. You grew up to be a pretty good kid and I’m sure she will too.”
But she was right. Everything she had put us through when she was young and stubborn was now coming back on her.
Thanks for the a2a. I have Chinese friends living all over the world. Some of them without fail ask me nearly every day if I have eaten yet. I have never thought it was anything other than kindness.
You see, I am from the Deep South in America. We Southern women show love and hospitality through our cooking. When I visit family, we’re having a meal and I have brought a dish. Or if they visit me, I’m feeding them and they probably brought something. I know my mother loves me because every time I visit, she makes tea exactly the way I like it. My brother knows I care because I make his favorite foods or desserts. My father is proud when I compliment his ability to grill a steak, and my sister requests my old-fashioned strawberry cake for her birthday. My daughter, she wants to make birthday cakes for everyone—whether it’s their birthday or not!
Food is a language, and that language expresses love, hospitality, kindness, care, and friendship. I believe Chinese people (as well as other cultures) understand this. I have always taken my Chinese friends encouragement to eat dinner or breakfast as a sign of their care for me, and I express the same care toward them. If they ever came to visit me, I wouldn’t let them leave my home without feeding them first. They don’t have to be fluent in English and I do not have to speak perfect Mandarin when it comes to sharing a meal together.
Americans foolishly screamed and shout that they are the leader of the free world without ever questioning if it is even remotely true or not! Please don’t be angry or upset if I help you guys since I understand you can pretend to be free or even dare says you are ordained by god to spread democracy and freedom but you Americans are one of the least free country on earth.
Let me help you good American. So first I like to explain how unfree you guys are.
35% of you cannot get health care when you fall sick! The most basic of freedom is the freedom to see a doctor and get cure when you fall sick. At least 100 million Americans don’t have this basic of basics of freedom.
Next 1 million Americans are homeless and don’t have another basic of basics of freedom. The freedom to have a roof over their head.! They have to live in makeshift tents on the streets.
20% of Americans don’t have 500 dollars to their name and don’t know where their next meal is coming from! Surely everyone must have the freedom to have a hot meal to stay alive!
USA with about 4% of world population has 25% of the worlds prisoners population! Think about this my American friends, prisoners are certainly. Not free. Many of them coloured people thrown into jail for the slightest reason. How on earth can you keep a straight face to say U.S. is the leader of the free world. No one know!
In many cities in the U.S. one cannot go to certain parts of the inner city like the Queens in New York. As crimes are rampant. So normal innocent and good Americans like you have to avoid that part of America! Surely freedom means you can go to anywhere or any part of America.
Kids and parents suffers the mental turmoils daily for just going to school. Many got shot to death in schools, public places, cinemas and even in Capitol Hill! Is that freedom? Even your kids are not free to go to school without a random mass shooter lurking with military grade weapons to murder them! Is this freedom?
If you are not fortunate to have a white skin you could be necked to death in the bright daylight of even driving a good car may be be shot to death just for suspected of stealing the car! Everyday you live in fear of a white policeman! Is that freedom to live? Freedom to avoid death at the racist inclination of the white racist? Surely not.
Freedom means you can choose who you really want to be your leader. Only 30% choose Biden. Or 35% choose Trump! Why are they your president? Your system allowed 0.8% of the richest and most influential people to choose your candidates! Surely this is not political freedom. This is far from democracy. How on earth can you call yourself the “beacon of democracy” who in a sane mind can claim that?
Oh today you country stop the Americans from having access to best 5G technology, Smartphone, best EV’s, drones and others for some geopolitical nonsense! Is this freedom? Freedom to be deprived? Let me help you understand. You are deprived from buying a 10 thousand bucks EV that need to be charged once a week but you are not allowed to! You cannot buy your Tesla like for half the price! Just to support your too big to fail auto industry paying 100 million bonus doing shit for good Americans!
But to me EVs and Drones are just the top of the iceberg of your draconian and suicide policies that takes away the freedom of Americans like you. Think about Jullien Assange, Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden! Freedom? American is anything but free.
I wasn’t fired, I just quit a job with a window replacement contractor after finding full time premanant employment. I called to inform the man and give him two weeks notice. He cussed at me and slammed the phone down. I called him right back and asked him to send me payment for the previous weeks work and he ratteled on about how I installed those last windows wrong and that he would not be paying me what was owed and told me never to call again followed by a loud “click”. So, I tallied all my hours plus all the OT I’d worked but was never paid more than a flat hourly rate. I took this document to the owners of the business he had contracted with, explained the situation and said “I just want to give you the opportunity to resolve this before I take the matter to the labor department” (they had a local office). The owner said “Thank you” and said they’d take care of it. The man was in a back office supposedly waiting for a meet so I said “Great! We will just need to come to agreement on what he owes me” The man said “Nothing to worry about there, whatever you say”. I asked when I might expect payment from him and the man said, if this amount on your records is good, I’ll cut you a check right now and we’ll just deduct the funds from his contract payment. I never saw the man again but he was a hot head all the same and I could feel the burn of his rage as I drove away.
As for my ability to install windows… The man had previously took me aside, giving me a raise because, as he said “You’re the only one I have who can read a tape measure”.
About 5 or 6 months ago, my girlfriend and I threw a little get together at our place for friends from work. I cooked dinner for everyone, and we just sort of made it buffet style. The whole affair was great fun and will make for great memories. After everyone had left Emily and I decided that we’d at least get the major stuff picked up, (the dishes and glasses into the dishwasher and the leftovers put into the fridge). While Em was finishing up in the kitchen I began moving things around in the front room, and there I found a pair of thong panties next to the couch. I picked them up and walk into the kitchen with them hanging on my finger. Em stood there looking at them and doing her best not to laugh. Because they were pink, I knew it wasn’t something that fell from the laundry basket by mistake. Neither of us likes pink.
To this day nobody has come forward to ask about them.
Best video Ever
Men, Listen up. It doesn’t matter (to anyone) if you win or lose. What matters is how you take it.
Yes. It’s 1986, I’m 9 years old and I come downstairs to get ready for school. My dad is reading the paper and he says, “Hey Corey, what do you know about comets?”
I immediately spout off everything a space-addicted 9 year old kid can/should know about comets. My dad beams at me and tells me bedtime will be postponed.
Night falls and my dad comes home early. We get into his Ford Escort and drive to K-Bee toys where he buys me a pair of GI Joe binoculars just as it is closing.
I can still remember what they looked like in the packaging.
We drive to a subdivision that is under construction and park on a mound of dirt that is now someone’s home.
We both lay on the hood of that car and look at the stars. We talk about space. We talk about life. He tells me that the next time this comet passes by Earth he will be long gone, but he hopes I will watch it and remember what it is like to be a child staring at the night sky with his dad.
We never saw Halley’s comet that night. Our binoculars were too cheap, the light pollution was too strong, the comet was too far away. To be honest, I think I prefer it that way.
Because what I want to remember about that day has nothing at all to do with a comet.
There’s a great many things I wanted for my life. Some of them have come to pass, others never will. But above all I hope that, one day, I will sit on a mound of dirt as an old man. I will sit with the great love of my life and our children and our children’s children.
And we, all of us, will look at the stars. And maybe we’ll see a comet and maybe we won’t.
But we’ll look regardless and we will think of the ones we have loved.
Your U.S. workers demand 5 times Chinese workers income, and 10 times more benefits and are willing to world half as hard and are 75% as smart or well trained and your CEO expects and demand 100 times more income!
As such if you produce here Apple 15 must be marketed and sold USD5000 instead of less than USD1500! Ask your local customers, friends and colleagues will they buy Apple 15 or save USD4000 and buy a Chinese phone this is faster, better and cheaper.
You decide. Tim Cook knows the answer! China knows Tim Cook knows the Answer and the 7.999 billion people except you and your 6 racist friends need to ask!
I had a coworker who disliked me the moment she saw me. Idk why, but it seems to occur to me a lot, “hate at 1st sight”, lol! I am a very friendly person who has found that if I treat an unfriendly coworker respectfully and don’t react to their nastiness, they will eventually grow to like me.
Well, after nearly 2 years of her passive-aggressive behavior and snide remarks, I finally grew weary of her abuse. FYI she was almost my doppelgänger in every way. Nearly identical facial features, hair color, style, figure and dress size Misses 0. Acquaintances usually couldn’t tell us apart.
So, one day she came to work wearing a very cute summer dress. I complimented her on it.
She smirked and said, “Thank you! I’d tell you where I bought it, but there are no extra large sizes left.”
About a decade ago, I got an Interview for a network administrator position. The phone interview went really well. I had a panel interview with an HR rep, some VP, and the manager I would have reported to. It goes great, and I get a conditional offer later that same day. They even offered me more than I asked for, though I suspect the recruiting agency may have padded my range to get a bigger commission (and I loved them for it). I sign the background check paperwork.
Two days later, I get a call from the recruiter saying that the offer was rescinded and that the recruiting agency can’t work with me any more. Ok, that’s really weird. My credit score is shot due to having been unemployed for a bit with bills piling up, but that’s not usually the kind of thing that gets a recruiting agency to drop you. I ask for details, but the recruiter will only say that I will receive communication by mail.
A couple weeks later, after I had finally accepted a lower-paying offer elsewhere, a letter comes in the mail with a copy of my background check. I read over it and see convictions for armed robbery, attempted murder, aggravated assault, and a bunch of other stuff I don’t remember … except remembering I’ve never been arrested or charged for anything like that, let alone convicted. Well, I look at the paperwork l, and what do you know. The first and last name are correct, but the middle name and date of birth are wrong. It’s almost as if they Googled my first and last name and just read the results of whoever popped up first.
I kind of wish they had done a bit more reading, because it would have been hard for him to attend interviews seeing as he was literally in prison while I was in their office.
I did point out the error to the recruiting agency … and never heard back.
Originally Answered: What is the best case of “you just picked a fight with the wrong person” that you’ve witnessed?
A woman called my newsroom crying. Nobody wanted to deal with her. So they sent her to me. She was crying and hard to understand, but the basic story went this way…
She had bought a used car. She needed it badly to get to the THREE jobs she held to support her children by herself. No husband. Less than two weeks after buying the car, it broke down. She called the dealer who had told her it had a 30-day warranty.
He told her he couldn’t help. But, she told him, you said it had a 30 day warranty. His response — too bad. When she complained, he told her — “lady, you’re dealing with the big boys now.”
She was crying as she told me this. I was — to put it mildly — angry. My response to her — let me call you back.
I called him. I explained the problem and when I did not get what I considered a good response, I “explained” things to him:
He needed to respond appropriately to her and solve the problem.
If he did not respond appropriately, I would have my entire investigative news team look into his operation.
He did not like that.
Cautionary note here: My response – YOU picked the wrong person to fight with, and no, NOW, you’re playing with the Big Boys, expletives to follow…
He took back her car. Gave her a slightly newer model without any problems. She called crying and thanked me. I may have cried a bit too.
PS – I didn’t do the story about him. I wonder if I should have?
Operation Bodenplatte, also known as the “New Year’s Offensive” or “Unternehmen Bodenplatte”, was a large-scale aerial offensive launched by the German Luftwaffe against Allied airfields in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg on 1 January 1945, during the Battle of the Bulge. The operation was intended to cripple Allied airpower and support the German ground forces in the Ardennes region.
Despite achieving some initial surprise and causing some damage to Allied aircraft, Operation Bodenplatte was ultimately a failure. The Luftwaffe suffered heavy losses, losing over 250 aircraft compared to Allied losses of around 130. The operation also failed to achieve its main objective of crippling Allied airpower, as the Allies were able to quickly recover from the attacks.
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There were several reasons for the failure of Operation Bodenplatte:
Poor planning and coordination: The operation was poorly planned and coordinated, with many of the Luftwaffe units involved not receiving their orders until the day of the attack. This led to confusion and delays, and the attacks were not as coordinated as they could have been.
Allied air superiority: The Allies had achieved air superiority over the skies of Western Europe by the end of 1944, and the Luftwaffe was no match for the combined strength of the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Forces.
Adverse weather conditions: The weather on the day of the attack was poor, with low clouds and fog, which made it difficult for the Luftwaffe bombers to find their targets and for the Luftwaffe fighters to intercept Allied aircraft.
Allied intelligence: The Allies had broken the German codes and were aware of the planned attack. This allowed them to take evasive action and scramble their fighters to intercept the Luftwaffe bombers.
As a result of its failure, Operation Bodenplatte marked the beginning of the end of the Luftwaffe as an effective fighting force. The operation resulted in the loss of irreplaceable experienced pilots and aircraft, and the Luftwaffe was never able to regain its strength.
A top bunk is not “disrespectful”…. It is its own special fucking misery in a world of miseries…
Having to sleep in the top rack forces the occupant into constantly climbing over and disturbing the occupant of the lower bunk, denies the top bunk the use of “Privacy Curtains”, is fully exposed to the ventilation system which will always be too hot or too cold, is fully exposed to the lights, which can often be on 24 hours a day, prevents easy access to possessions stored under the bottom bunk, it forces the top bunk occupant into waking up the lower bunk every time he has to use the toilet or sink, and cuts down on the number of places the top bunk occupant can sit, since sitting on someones bunk without their permission is an act of disrespect…
I have seen more SERIOUS fights between cellies over “bunk territory” than any other issue… I’m talking about fights when one or both combattants require hospitalisation and a trip to The Hole…
My wife and I were out to eat with some friends. We were having a good time and enjoying ourselves when all of a sudden this horrific smell wafted towards us. The unmistakable smell of baby shit.
Eww, but whatever. Babies shit. It happens.
However, what happened next left us speechless and without appetite. The man with the baby was at a large round table with several other people. When they smelled it too, there was the standard, “Ooops, someone made a poopy” comments towards the baby.
The man picked the baby up, pushed some plates and glasses out of the way, and proceeded to open the offending diaper right there in the middle of the dining room. The smell was bad to begin with, but once he opened that thing up, it was nauseatingly bad. We had just received our meals, but there was no way we were eating anymore.
People around the restaurant were staring at the table, but no one at that table seemed to think anything of it. They were going about their conversations as though there wasn’t a shit-covered child on the table. One of the tables next to us went up to the bar to complain; the bartender said “That’s Jane’s family, she’s the manager. I’ll go get her.”
Jane came out of the back with an irritated look on her face. When the customer complained, she loudly said, “Oh, it’s not that bad. He’ll be done in a minute.” and walked over to the infant and made baby noises at it while the dad finished changing the diaper.
We and a few other tables all got up and headed for the door. “Hey, you didn’t pay!” was shouted after us. One of our companions turned and said to the manager, “You call the cops, I’ll call the health department. I’m sure they’d love to hear about this.” and we left.
I used to really like that restaurant, now I can’t even drive past it without gagging a little.
Seriously, how can people be so fucking disgusting?
Originally Answered: Have you ever stood up to a bully at the workplace and they back off?
Yes indeed. Two years ago, we had a hurricane. I had no food, no lights , no power. The next morning, I still went to work.
My manager raised his voice and was abusive. He wanted to push his work on to me, but I had no power, and didn’t see the email the night before. I spoke up to him and said he was totally unrealistic. He was stunned, like no one had ever spoken back to him.
The manager told the director, and the director texted me two hours later, getting harsh, saying “I know you have power supply issues, but the three of us need to meet“.
Ten minutes later, I sent a letter to HR complaining of harassment and abusive speech. I copied the email to an executive three levels above my director. The executive texted me back and said to keep him informed.
HR saw the executive’s email response, and the HR director called me within 40 mins of getting the email. I told her I wanted a management change. She switched me to a new set of directors an hour later. The new directors are professional and wonderful to work for.
The main point: Bully bosses don’t back down right away on their own. You must save yourself by contacting a boss two levels above your boss. Two levels, not one level. Use email letters to complain. Letters put everyone on notice, and they’re like a hand grenade.
When I was about 17 years old, my dad walked in on me and my then-boyfriend having sex.
The house I lived in at the time was located directly across from my high school. I was enrolled in a lot of sports, as was my boyfriend. Our practices often didn’t start until a half an hour or so after school ended, so most days we had a little bit of time to, um, kill. This particular day, I thought my dad would be at work. We raced to my house, went to my bedroom, and went at it. A few minutes later, without warning, my dad did the thing he always did – knock, then immediately open the door. Seriously? What was the point of knocking? I’ll never understand.
So there I was. His precious baby, naked with a boy. I did the only thing I could think of, which was to do a little *roll* off the bed, and then a second *roll* to hide myself underneath my bed. Leaving my bare-bummed boyfriend to the nightmare above me.
The only words my dad said was, “get dressed.”
I did not go to practice that day. Instead, I had to have dinner with my dad, alone. I couldn’t even look him in the eye. I was mortified.
We tried to have small talk???? “How was your day?” “Fine, yours?”
Two guys, college-age were yapping and I heard them say, it would be nice if the old f***er would let us go before him.
I looked up ahead of me in line and there were two young women, and then a man and wife and I didn’t see the advantage of them wanting to let these guys go before them, and they didn’t look all that old, then I realized that they were talking about me.
So I reached in my basket and took a shirt I was buying and pulled the tag off it, so when it was my turn and I didn’t let the sh**heads but in line, I left the shirt for last after taking my time unloading all the merchandise and striking up a nice conversation with the checker that always stalls a little and then she got to the shirt.
By this time the guys were really pissed. She said sir, your shirt doesn’t have a tag, let me call someone and get a price for you. I looked back with a grin. and said, you just got old f**kered.
I got married in 2008, my sister in 2009. My wedding was lovely and small but I felt like it meant a lot. My sister got married a year later. My Aunts bestowed upon her a family necklace (something borrowed and old) that was blue, and a simple flower bracelet for her something new.
They had done none of that for me.
I cried for 3 days. Like my marriage didn’t matter at all.
I was nearly killed in a multi-vehicular accident when I was 25. The first police officer on the scene pronounced me dead, but, luckily for me, there was a nurse on hand to confirm that, while I was gravely injured and in shock (which means that you don’t have a pulse in your arms and legs because your blood pressure is so low), I was actually alive.
By the time the ambulance got there, I was conscious and screaming from the pain of my injuries. I had broken both my legs, my pelvis and three vertebrae (they were not displaced), but the source of my agony was a dislocated knee joint. My knee-cap was 6 to 8 inches north of where it should be and my upper and lower leg bones over-lapped by 3 or 4 inches.
It hurt. A LOT.
So, they cut me out of my car and got me into the ambulance and rushed me to the hospital. I was in bad enough shape that they called ahead so an Orthopedist was waiting for me. Unfortunately for me, he was a newly minted doctor fresh out of his residency.
When he came into the exam room he:
did not ask my name
did not introduce himself
did not examine me
did not look at my chart
did not attempt to take the pulse in the ankle of the mangled leg
What he DID do was say, “Oh, that leg has to come off.” Those were literally the first words out of his mouth.
Now, my sister is a nurse and my mother wanted me to be a doctor, so I knew that he should have at least looked at my chart and attempted an exam. I was so angry at his utter lack of bedside manner that my immediate response was, “If I lose my leg, you’ll lose your license.”
Honestly, I don’t know who was more surprised, him or me. Admittedly I was having a REALLY bad day, but normally I would never say anything like that to anyone.
Now, what I didn’t know at the time was that in 95% of the cases where a person has a dislocated knee joint the way I did, the femoral artery that supplies blood to the lower leg is crushed beyond repair. But I was extraordinarily flexible, and luckily, my femoral artery was NOT damaged.
So after a short but pointed argument and a bit of malpractice (on the doctor’s part), my injury was reduced and I got to keep my leg below the knee. It has taken a lot of surgery to fix the damage and more than a decade of physical therapy to relearn how to walk but I can walk and 99% of people won’t notice my limp.
So that is how a split-second decision changed my life. If I had let the doctor amputate, no one would have known that my artery hadn’t been crushed and I’d have a prosthesis and be buying my shoes one at a time. I thank goodness every day that I said what I did to that insufferable jerk.
Women and their tests…
Heaven on Seven Chicken Voodoo Rigatoni
spicy rigatoni 3
Yield: 8 to 10 servings
Ingredients
2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
2 tablespoons plus 1/4 teaspoon Angel Dust Cajun Seasoning
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup diced yellow onion
1/2 cup diced red onion
1/3 cup thinly sliced green onion, white and green parts
2 tablespoons Roasted Garlic Puree
1/3 cup diced celery
1/2 cup seeded, diced green bell pepper
1/2 cup seeded, diced red bell pepper
1/2 cup seeded, yellow bell pepper
1/3 cup seeded, diced poblano chile
1/4 cup seeded, diced cubanella pepper
1/4 cup seeded, diced banana pepper
1 tablespoon seeded, minced Fresno chile
1 1/2 teaspoons seeded, minced habanero chile
1 teaspoon seeded, minced jalapeno
1/2 teaspoon minced serrano chile
1/2 teaspoon seeded, minced fingerhot chile
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 tablespoon light brown sugar
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon Hungarian paprika
1/4 teaspoon Spanish paprika
1/4 teaspoon chile powder
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon ground white pepper
1/8 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 cup peeled and diced ripe banana
1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce
1 cup water
3/4 cup unsweetened coconut milk
3/4 cup pineapple juice
1/2 cup mango juice
1/2 cup papaya juice
1/3 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
1 tablespoon Key lime or regular lime juice
1 tablespoon Hot as a Mutha hot pepper sauce or habanero sauce
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled and cut into pieces
2 pounds dried rigatoni pasta, cooked according to package directions
Instructions
Season the chicken with 2 tablespoons Cajun seasoning.
In a 5 quart Dutch oven, preferably enameled cast iron, heat the oil over high heat. When oil is hot but not smoking add the chicken and brown for 5 minutes, stirring frequently.
Stir in the yellow, red and green onions and the garlic puree cook for 2 minutes.
Add the celery, peppers, and chiles cook until vegetables are soft, about 10 minutes.
Add honey, sugars, paprikas, chile powder, allspice, coriander, turmeric, salt, black and white peppers, red pepper flakes, remaining 1/4 teaspoon Cajun seasoning, and stir for 2 to 3 minutes to coat meat and vegetables with the seasonings.
Mix in the banana, tomato sauce, water, coconut milk, juices and hot pepper sauce. Bring to a boil reduce the heat to medium low and simmer uncovered for 1 hour.
When ready to serve, stir in the butter until well blended and toss with rigatoni in a large bowl.
Attribution
Posted by Recipethyme at Recipe Goldmine 8/18/2001 5:26 pm.
Source: Chef Jimmy Bannos – Heaven on Seven Restaurant, Chicago
While we usually call it the “sixth sense”, the military term for this phenomenon is “premonition and intuition”.
Soldiers who fought for a long time on the battlefield have often developed sharper senses. Their bodies and minds are adapting to a survival situation:
After you have been away from any artificial light sources for a while, your night vision will improve. Being constantly exposed to enemy fire, your ability to see and recognize objects at a long distance increases.
You will be able to fine tune your hearing so that you’ll will be more perceptible to all “man made” sounds, for example tank engines or sounds of movement in the underbrush.
There are even soldiers who are capable to smell human feces from long distances away.
And some soldiers go even further: they develop an elevated state of mind, where their subconsciousness is able to connect the tiniest sensory inputs with the soldier’s vast experience. This way, soldiers can “foresee” future events on the battlefield, can “sniff out” ambushes and “know” where the enemy has put the mines.
This is not a new phenomenon, though there are many accounts from WWII and the Vietnam war where soldiers acquired extraordinary perception skills. Unfortunately, the military often dismissed them as “spooky stories”.
I was able to acquire a limited set of “extrasensory perception” skills myself. Interestingly, while I was fighting in the Bosnian war, I wasn’t really able to develop above average senses. As the war went on, I became better in anticipating enemy positions, or mined areas, but this was purely because of my ever growing experience and improved knowledge of our enemy’s tactics. When you’ve seen the enemy attacking a couple of times, always in the same way, it’s really not too difficult to figure out what their next steps will be.
During the war in Kosovo, however, I went one step further. I think this has a lot to do with the fact that we were nonstop in combat. There were no clear front lines (like in Bosnia) and everyday was a fight for survival that demanded from us to be 100% alert and sharp.
I remember one particular day: it was the third day of a massive enemy attack and I was manning a position together with a comrade. We were expecting that the enemy’s main assault would happen just in front of our position. We were in a small house and the moment I entered the building I felt that something was wrong. I couldn’t put my finger on it, though, but an inner voice told me: “this place is no good!”
We waited, but nothing happened. The fighting had started on our right flank, but in front of us, everything was still calm. All of a sudden, I told my buddy: “Let’s go somewhere else!” He trusted my word and didn’t argue with me and so we moved to another house that was a couple of hundred meters up the road.
On our way, we passed two of our comrades who were waiting in another position. I took a short look at their spot and told them to move fifty meters up the road to another place. I didn’t know why I said it, but they obeyed my order and moved immediately.
My new position was in a big three story house, only hundred meters to their right side, and so I was able to keep an eye on them. After an hour, the enemy attacked us with tanks. I shot twice with an RPG, but the enemy was still advancing. Our house had a very safe place in the basement and more and more soldiers came from other places to find refuge there.
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Our last position, the “big house”, seen from enemy side. Picture taken after the war.
Outside the house, bullets and shells were flying from every direction. Suddenly my alarms went off again. I stood up and said: “Let’s go! Now or never!” and we all exited through a small window at the back of the house.
When I got outside the house, the air was red from the dust of the houses’ red bricks. Trees were hit by artillery shells and one fell just one meter in front of my feet. I waved and screamed at the two comrades that I had left nearby and told them to join us. Somehow we all made it to a safe place.
What I found out later was that an artillery shell had hit the exact place where I had my first position, just minutes after we decided to leave the place. The shell went straight through the roof and would have killed us immediately.
The two soldiers that I had asked to change their position came to thank me. They told me that only one minute after they were in their new position, an artillery shell had hit the old one.
And the last man who had left the big house from the small window told us that the moment he was leaving the building, a tank round had hit the room in the basement where we had stayed the whole time.
Of course we had a lot of luck that day, but there was more to it. After having spent a long time in combat, I was able to trust my instincts, my gut feeling, although it didn’t make any logical sense. From a military point of view, the positions that we had been using that day were carefully chosen and the best possible choices. Still, some inner voice told me to abandon them.
There were more occasions where my extrasensory perception skills (or those of my comrades) were either saving our lives or made us better soldiers. Especially during night combat, we often “knew” where each of our soldiers was positioned and what they were doing, without being able to see them. We were able to move without wasting time figuring out where everyone was left and we could shoot without hitting one of our own people. This made us better and more lethal soldiers.
Yield: about 8 to 10 gallons of gumbo. Can cut recipe in half to reduce.
Ingredients
2 cups vegetable oil
4 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups diced onions
2 cups diced celery
2 cups diced bell pepper
2 tablespoons minced garlic
2 cups chopped green onions
3 gallons water
1 pound fresh or frozen okra
1 (28 ounce) can Ro*Tel diced tomatoes or 2 (10 ounce) cans
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon black pepper
2 ounces crab boil
8 dashes Tabasco sauce
8 dashes Louisiana hot sauce
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 ounce Paul Prudhomme’s Seafood Magic seasonings
1 ounce Cajun seasoning
1 ounce dried basil
1 ounce dried thyme
3 pounds peeled and deveined shrimp (70 to 90 count)
1 pound claw crab meat
2 whole crabs, cleaned and halved
1 pint fresh oysters
1 ounce file or to taste
Instructions
First, you make a roux. In a large, heavy stock pot on medium heat, add 2 cups vegetable oil and bring to temperature.
Add flour gradually. It will sizzle when it is at the right temperature. Using a whisk, stir roux constantly. Stir until it reaches a peanut butter color. When it reaches the desired color, add the onions, celery, bell pepper, garlic and 1 cup of green onions (in that order) until all ingredients are cooked down or caramelized.
Add water, okra, Ro*Tel tomatoes, seasonings and bring to boil. After it reaches boiling, reduce heat to low and let simmer for at least an hour.
Add seafood and continue to cook on medium heat for about 15 to 20 minutes.
Taste for seasoning and texture.
Add file to thicken.
Stir in the remaining green onions and simmer for a few more minutes.
It was older than I was. The biggest issue was, the floor pans were pretty rusted out (and the Flintstones jokes that came with it). I could see the road flow by if I looked down under my feet and pedals. Water would splashed up when it rained.
So I try to fix it. Some rolled stainless steel wouldn’t stay down right. Riveting just made more holes. And I gave it a break. Later that afternoon, I noticed my mom’s cookie sheet. It was almost the exact right size! And it wouldn’t roll up. A few clips with tin snips, and some epoxy, I had the floor of my car (on my side) waterproof!
Later that week, my mom wanted to make cookies. I, of course, had no idea where her cookie sheet was.
I think the worst part was me “helping” her look for 5 or 8 minutes.
A few summers ago, and 20 or so years later, I finally came clean about it. Time heals all wounds, and she wasn’t too upset.
I was quite a lonely boy, and longed for a relationship. On holiday, I met a girl who seemed interested in me, and we had fun: we walked, climbed, sailed together and did a lot of talking. At the end of the holiday, we exchanged addresses and corresponded for a year or so. I kept ALL her letters.
One day, she wrote to tell me about her new boyfriend. He was wonderful (apparently.) Being rather immature, I felt betrayed. I had no reason to feel this way, we were only friends and I should have felt glad for her, but hey. Teenage angst.
I took all her letters, threw them into my metal litter bin, and set fire to them.
IN MY BEDROOM.
I had the window open, and there was no-one else in the house, so that was cool. I remember the IMMENSE satisfaction watching those letters burn.
When the bin cooled, I decided to bury the ashes, and with them my heart. I lifted the bin – and there was a perfect bottom-of-the-bin shaped hole in the polyester carpet.
My father was fairly physical in terms of punishment, so my heart did not just sink: it scuttled itself. I knew that Armageddon would ensue were this to be discovered.
In panic, I looked around and realised that my room was a perfect oblong. The bin-shaped burn was in the left corner, my bed in the opposing right corner.
I have (up to this day!) never worked so hard or fast in my life. I removed the furniture from my room, managed to lift the carpet, desperately salvaging the carpet tacks, turned the carpet around, nailed it back down and replaced the furniture, with the bed covering the offending burn.
My parents wondered why I suddenly announced my decision to assist with the housework by taking responsibility for all upstairs vacuuming and cleaning. They were surprised but pleased: I was desperate to keep my crime concealed.
I am now 59. My father has passed away, but my mother still lives in the family home. And the burn is still under my old bed. 45 years later, my crime remains hidden.
1. Pretty people are automatically more acceptable by people. Average looking people have to do something above average to get accepted and ugly people have to do something extraordinary!
image 24
It is because the human mind appreciates physical beauty and repels ugliness because of immaturity of mind. But in the end what matters is inner beauty or ugliness and that wiseness comes with experience and time.
2. Leaving your girlfriend/boyfriend seems much tougher than leaving your friends.
image 23
It is because romantic relations induces strong pheromones secretions in your body that cause you to develop strong bonding feeling with your partner. It is not the case you have with friends and hence breaking a strong bond seems tougher.
3. People who get goosebumps frequently while listening to music have a special connection with it. These people listen to music very frequently and their work capacities and capabilities are partly dependent on it. If they are barred from listening to music for 1 month, their productivity will fall.
image 22
It is because the hormone adrenaline increases in their body while listening to the music and that causes more activation, more awakening and better functioning of their body. Plus, it keeps the mind calm.
4. The more attention you give to a person, the more attitude he/she will show you and the less crap he/she will give about you.
image 21
It is because as the humans get more attention, their minds tend to think that they are very important and good looking and the person who is giving them attention needs their company desperately and is not equal to them at all.
5. Money instils confidence and happiness in majority of people. It increases their desire to work.
image 20
It is because anything (money) that is able to complete every single desire of people is very much acceptable to them as human desire are insatiable.
In 5th grade I had a 1st year teacher, Ms. Craig, who was amazing and one of the reasons I went into education, but I digress. One day we were studying the United States and where all of the states were. I noticed that she had switched Missouri and Minnesota. I remember thinking – that is not right. you see my dad is from Minnesota and my family lived there for a short spell when I was 4. I decided, to ask her if that is really where Minnesota located. I will never forget her reply – You know Denise, I am not totally confident that it is let’s check. So in front of the entire class, she lifted the map she had written on to look at the map that contained all of the States written on it. Well, look at that Denise is correct, I made a mistake and mixed up two states!
Miss Jana Craig if you are out there and can read this, you made a very strong impression on a 5th grader in the very first class you taught. You were the BEST teacher ever! Thank you for making me love school.
The most important required secondary power is to be born in an upper class family. Most of those high IQ people who succeed, have born with silver spoon on hand.
The reason is trivial. Nobody makes it alone nor in a vacuum. To be successful, you need to get socialized with right people, to know the right people, to be encouraged, to have social support, you name it. The less you have those, the less likely you are to succeed.
Then there is the thrice-goddamned communication range. If you are a high-IQ person in a middle class environment, you are likely to be branded as a weird kid, a nerd, a geek, an egghead and bullied and ostracized. You learn very quickly to hide your intelligence to stay below the radar lest you are torn into pieces. And God help you if you are born in a working class family – you will be stampled as a weirdo, a misfit, an outcast, and eaten alive.
For a middle class and working class high IQ individuals, the best hopes are military and STEM branches. Military because militaries are meritocracies, and high IQ is an asset once you are past buck sergeant or lieutenant. STEM branches, because they are difficult and require brainpower, and you are likely to get networked with similar-minded youngsters.
Forget the rags-to-riches fairy tales. They are just that – fairy tales invented to deceive the gullible and to make the proles to blame themselves for their failures.
When I was a Senior in High School I was “big” into weight-lifting. I was “pumped” and I was quite an “amazing specimen.”
In fact, during the class physical check-up for us boys, the female doctor and the female nurse asked me to go to the back room (in my underwear) and pose for them. They just smiled and looked on.
I, being young and a dumb shit, didn’t know what was going on.
Anyways, some friends offered some steroids to me to help me get and build up mass. I thought about it, but you know, I was concerned about this. So I made a doctor’s appointment, though my mother, and went to the doctor.
When the doctor asked me what was wrong I had a trouble answering. I did a lot of hemming and humming.
Finally I asked about steroids, and the doctor (a woman) told me that it was a serious, SERIOUS issue and that I should not do it.
She saw me off, and then her son (who was in my class) brought me an envelope filled with papers about the dangers of steroids. She also continued to check in on me. She did this over the next five months. And she checked up on me though my mother.
Well, I really didn’t need a follow up.
I just didn’t do any steroids.
It was one of the BEST things that I ever did. And honestly, I am so happy that I lived in a small town and community. Access for these kinds of medicines was difficult and I did not pursue them. Thank JESUS!
Our decisions ALWAYS possess late-game impact.
You are the sum total of your previous behaviors. And that is why it takes a while for the affirmation campaigns to work. You have to untangle decades of previous verbalizations.
Smile. All of you are doing great right now. I believe in you all.
The best food in France ever is the Jambon Beurre.
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But that’s just a ham sandwich, and you’re correct, it’s a ham sandwich, but not just a ham sandwich. The jambon beurre is a gastronomic lesson. It exemplifies how to make great food: take the best possible ingredients and prepare them with great technique, and no unnecessary fluff. The jambon beurre is simply a freshly baked baguette, delicious jambon de Paris and creamy 85% fat butter. Sometimes you’ll see sweet and sour cornichons or a few slices of cheese, but nothing else. No lettuce, tomatoes, onions, jalapeños or overpowering Subway styles sauces or dressings. This sandwich is just an assembly of three fine ingredients and it is divine.
Jambon Beurre
Quality ingredients and good technique are the keys to great food. French cuisine taught us that lesson and the jambon beurre shows us it is true.
Wendelstein Church on Wendelstein Mountain, Bavarian Alps.
The global financial landscape is witnessing a seismic shift as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) boldly moves away from the US dollar in its oil trade dealings.
This strategic pivot aligns with the broader ambitions of the BRICS economic alliance, of which the UAE is a recent addition.
The changeover, involving the transition to local currencies for oil transactions, marks a significant departure from the long-established dollar dominance in the global oil market.
The BRICS bloc, comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, recently expanded its membership to include the UAE, along with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and Argentina.
This expansion signifies a growing inclination towards de-dollarization among these nations, a move that challenges the traditional hegemony of the US dollar in international trade.
The UAE’s decision to prioritize local currency over the US dollar in new oil deals is a clear reflection of this sentiment. This move isn’t just a mere policy shift; it’s a strategic maneuver in the complex chess game of global economics.
By aligning with the BRICS nations, the UAE is not only diversifying its economic partnerships but also reinforcing its position as a global oil powerhouse.
This change could potentially reshuffle the cards in the international oil trade, impacting the dollar’s stronghold and introducing a new era of currency dynamics in oil transactions.
ONGOING CATASTROPHE FOR USA
The shift away from the U.S. dollar is not some distant, arcane, thing which doesn’t affect YOU. It is affecting YOU already and it is going to get worse. Much worse. In fact, it’s going to be a catastrophe.
You see, since the 1970’s, ALL sales of oil, worldwide, have been transacted in “Dollars.” Everyone who sells it, sells in dollars. Everyone who buys it, buys in dollars.
In order to do that, every country on earth needs to hold “dollars” in its central bank.
Now that countries are starting to sell oil in currencies OTHER THAN Dollars, the central banks around the world won’t need to hold all those dollars. They will start to send those dollars BACK to the United States and say convert these back to OUR currency.
As dollars come back to the U.S. and other countries currencies are exchanged, THEIR currency will rise in value compared to ours. Our currency will FALL in value compared to others.
Now, we don’t manufacture much of anything here in America anymore; we import a lot of what we need/want.
So as we need to import, the value of OUR money is going to be worth less, and less compared to foreign countries, meaning what we need will cost VERY VERY MUCH MORE.
Inflation will hit the US in almost every sector because the things we need to import cost more and more dollars that are worth less and less.
So if you think things have gotten expensive this year, hold on to your hat; it’s going to get a LOT worse.
Moreover, at some point, countries may decide that the U.S., being so far in debt, makes our currency worthless. They may decide to STOP selling anything to us in US Dollars.
Despite being universally accepted nowadays, the fear of our currency becoming worthless is real because there is literally nothing backing our currency. Government keeps going farther and farther into debt until at some point, people around the world will simply NOT take our money anymore.
When THAT happens, the shortages and “supply chain disruption” seen during COVID-19, will look like kid games.
GOVERNMENT TO BLAME
The sole entity responsible for all this trouble is the US federal government; specifically, YOUR member of the US House of Representatives and YOUR US Senators.
It has been these people who have literally spent the country into oblivion. THEY voted for each and every dollar spent which had to be borrowed.
So as they come back from Washington to back-slap, glad-hand, and kiss babies, know that it is THESE PEOPLE who are personally responsible for wrecking this nation, and ruining everything you and your family has worked all your lives for.
More importantly, it is THESE PEOPLE who have mis-used their positions to impose “economic sanctions” on country after country around the world; telling those countries, “If you don’t do what we want, then you cannot use OUR money in YOUR trade.”
All those countries are tired of US meddling in THEIR internal affairs.
So they’re moving away from using US dollars, so that the US cannot sanction them anymore.
The result will be hyper-inflation for us, and wrecking of our country. All because THEY will not stop meddling in other people’s business.
1939 Delahaye Type 165
1939 Delahaye Type 165 is viewed by many as the most beautiful French car of the 1930s, only 5 of them were ever made with this one having been fatefully chosen by the French government to represent France at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.
I was once the daytime caregiver for a little boy with a massive brain injury. The damage was so extensive that a large part of his right brain had been surgically removed. He was paralyzed on his left side. He also probably suffered from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, but the doctors were unsure. He hoarded food, because he had gone hungry many times in his earlier life. Altogether a really lousy start.
I was pushing little X in his stroller. He was about three years old at this point. We were walking toward the high school, and there was a group of girls on the sidewalk. Black clothes, black hair, smoking, swearing girls.
X was a bit unusual looking, due to his injuries. I was thinking that these girls were going to laugh at him, or tease him, or something. I was getting tense and defensive.
As X and I get close, he hollers out, “HI”, which was his only word at the time. I was not expecting the response he got from those girls.
They were totally sweet. They were all saying hi back and asking his name and saying how cute he was. One asked me about his injuries, and I gave her the short version. She started to cry, and then I did, too. It was hard for me to talk about his history. We ended up hugging each other.
I have always remembered that group of girls, and how completely wrong I was about them.
They remind me often not to judge people by their appearance.
Copeland’s of New Orleans the Guitreau
Copelands of New Orleans the Guitreau
Ingredients
4 ounces butter
4 ounces chopped onions
5 single mushrooms
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
8 ounces fish fillet (red or black drum recommended)
4 ounces crawfish tails
4 ounces 90-100 size shrimp
Instructions
Cook fish on grill approximately three minutes on each side.
While fish is cooking, sauté shrimp and crawfish tails for about one minute. At this point, everything else may be added. Cook until vegetables are translucent. If mixture is too thick, add a splash of dry white wine. If too thin, turn the heat up and cook down until the right consistency.
South Korea, Japan BETRAY and ABANDON U.S, Rush to CHINA!
Breakup of antiwar coalition on Taiwan Island brings war clouds closer to East Asia
Taiwan is not Ukraine. The Taiwanese army is compulsory conscription for one year, extended by Tsai Ing-wen from the previous four months, making her extremely unpopular. No one in Taiwan has the delusion that Westerners have that the Taiwanese army can withstand the PLA for more than a day.
Most of them will tell you the PLA takeover will last only a few hours.
The reason is none of these young men want to die fighting the PLA, not even the deepest Green. Many street interviews of youngsters in the deep Green country of south Taiwan have shown as much: don’t know history, don’t understand why Taiwan is the Republic of China and its airline is China Airlines, don’t like China, don’t want war with China, won’t fight the PLA to defend Taiwan.
In truth, most of them will simply surrender, because those who do not will be tried for treason or, as a minimum, carry a black mark for themselves and their family so that none of them or their offspring will enjoy the privilege of say working in government jobs or state corporations.
Don’t forget that Taiwan is an island. The shortest distance from China to Taiwan is about 220 km. Hawaii is 8500 km away and the American west coast is 11,000 km. People on the island can’t run off to Poland. No one is going to save them when the PLA lands. Taiwanese people understand this but try explaining it to people like Mearsheimer.
Another thing about America arming Taiwan. It’s a scam. Taiwan is going to get antiquated equipment at exorbitant prices. Taiwanese people also know about this because it is not new. It happened before. The US is worried there may be many Yifu Lin types in Taiwan, taking the latest US war technologies to join China. The last time they armed the Nationalists during the Chinese Civil War, the PLA got their hands on a large amount of the latest American weapons.
America is really good at lying. The country is built on lies. Ask any native American how many times the white man has lied to them and they will tell you as numerous as the stars in the sky. It’s too late for the natives, but we can learn something. Don’t trust any words or narratives that come from the direction of the hegemon.
You met a girl. You smiled. She liked. You gave her compliments. She liked you more. You used every textbook trick to impress and voila! She indeed was impressed.
Time flew. Your mask fell off.
Now, she hates you.
Persuasion techniques are, at times, indeed useful. But if you want relationships that last, always be real. These techniques may capture someone’s head, but being who you are will capture their hearts.
That genuineness and sincerity, my friend, will always be cool! 🙂
A friend and I had plans to hang out. For whatever reason, she couldn’t make it and canceled. I didn’t want to hang around the house and went out anyway. As I approached the car, I got an uneasy feeling. I opted to take the other car; I still got an uneasy feeling, but it wasn’t as intense. I got in the car and left the house. Thirty minutes later the car was totalled; I didn’t even see it coming. When I came to, the car was upside down. I was still in the car, but laying on the roof. Had I take the initial car, I probably would have been dead or severely injured at best. I literally got up and walked away from the car on my own (I did pass out a couple times while the ambulance was en route). I broke my ankle and sternum and needed a couple stitches.
Chimney Sweep, outside 97th General Hospital, Frankfurt.
When my husband had been a consultant for about a year, and had been traveling 80% of the time for a job that he absolutely loved.
He came home one weekend and said, “Yesterday I was sitting at a table with five other consultants, and one of them told the group that I was on my first wife.
They all laughed and said, ‘That won’t last long!’ Two of them are on their third wife! That’s when I knew for sure that I have to change jobs.”
And that’s when I knew for sure that he would always put me first.
That we would always put each other first.
We’ve been married more than 40 years, and we’re still putting each other first. (He has since had several jobs that he enjoyed as much as that one, I’m glad to say. I wouldn’t want him to be unhappy at work because of me! I’ve always supported him in whatever his work choices have been, and he has been supportive of my career too.)
I didn’t technically “meet” the guy. But when I was about 10yo & my mom asked me to run to the donut shop before going to school (it was less than a block from our apartment), I was so stoked, I ran the entire way!
As I went to pull the door open at the donut shop, this big grisly bear of a man sorta stumbled towards me from me pulling the door open so fast.
I looked him right in the eyes & got The biggest shot of freezing cold fear through me, turned right around & ran straight back home.
When my mom asked why I didn’t get any donuts, it took me a minute to answer. I asked if she remembered the creepy old big guy from the show we were watching last night & my mom replied “you mean Americas Most Wanted?”!
I said yes, she said “yeah, and?” I told her I’d ran straight into the featured criminal that was a father who raped & molested his daughters & their friends for years & was on the run with his wife (she said she didn’t believe her daughters or their friends, eww)!
My mom asked if I was sure & I was absolutely sure it was him. My mom called the tip line immediately & they said I wasn’t the first to report seeing him at that donut shop. That couple got so spooked by my reaction that they apparently immediately went back on the run. I believe they gave chase for a bit but somehow evaded police, but were later found dead from self inflicted injuries. I was told my report was the final “straw” for cops to believe it was a legit sighting.
No joke that when I say I felt straight evil from him, the burning ice cold feeling his eyes gave me, I will unfortunately never forget it.
Always, ALWAYS trust your “gut”! That intuition is inside us all for a very good reason.
Chinese journalist Liu Xin: DON’T MESS WITH CHINA!
Some years back, a close friend of mine, let’s call her Jane, underwent a significant surgery. She lived alone, and the recovery period was expected to be long and challenging. Jane’s sister, who lived in a different city, offered to take her in during the recovery. The sister had a spacious home and a supportive family, making it an ideal environment for Jane’s recuperation.
Jane, always mindful of not imposing, devised thoughtful ways to contribute to the household. Since she couldn’t engage in physical activities initially, she used her skills as a seasoned graphic designer to help her niece with a school project, creating an impressive presentation. This gesture was immensely appreciated and brought her closer to her niece.
As she regained strength, Jane took up the responsibility of managing the family’s online affairs. She organized digital photo albums, set up an efficient bill payment system, and even taught her sister and brother-in-law how to use various apps to streamline their daily tasks. These small yet significant contributions made her feel useful and less like a burden.
Additionally, Jane used her savings to occasionally treat the family to meals from their favorite restaurants, understanding that her presence had increased the household expenses. She also made it a point to maintain her space meticulously, ensuring that her temporary stay caused minimal disruption in their routine.
When Jane finally returned to her home, her relationship with her sister’s family had deepened. They had not only supported her through a challenging time but had also received her gratitude and contributions in a way that enriched their lives. This experience, my friend often reflects, taught her the importance of giving back, even in times of personal difficulty.
The best relationship advice I ever got was from my grandma years ago, while we were sitting on our back porch swing. There was a thunderstorm going on, and we were enjoying the rain and swinging and talking and nothing was off limits.
At one point, Grandma said, “When we stop expecting someone to be perfect, we can begin to appreciate them for who they really are. No one can ever be perfect. That’s just the way things are.
Crying is okay, too. Sometimes, love is just too big for words …”
The way you treat yourself is the standard you set for others.
A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend . A successful woman is one who can find such a man .
Sometimes following your heart means losing your mind.
The most beautiful woman is someone who’s happy and is always smiling.
The sexiest thing about a woman is not in the clothes she wears , the figure that she carries or the way she combs her hair but Confidence in a humble way, not in an arrogant way. Sense of humour is definitely important.
The biggest asset in the world is your mindset.
Good looking people are trusted quicker by the subconscious mind. No clue why ? But there’re many good looking manipulators. Trust by character not appearance.
Someone you’ve only known for ten days could have better intentions for you than someone you’ve known for ten years. Time means nothing; character does.
Don’t let the world define your identity for you . They don’t know you and likely they don’t care about you.
After twenty years of marriage I got crippled up by arthritis and my wife came to me and asked for a divorce so she could go out and live her life.
I pointed to the door.
Signed the divorce papers for her so she saved some costs. I got no child support even though both our kids stayed with me. Actually they gave her half the house I had built and the entire time I was building it she didn’t want me too because I was “wasting” money on it.
A few months after the divorce was final she actually told me I was going to have to marry her back. Right.
I said no.
Today I’ve been married to a wonderful woman who’s supportive and I enjoy every day.
I did recover from being crippled with a lot of rehab and I made sure to tell my wife to be that I could never guarantee that being crippled wouldn’t recur.
Then a couple years after we married she had to have open heart surgery to repair a bad heart valve and I was there taking care of her with no complaints while she recovered. She’s always doing things to make my life easier. It’s what marriage is all about. Teamwork.
Many years ago, I was approached by a woman I knew through our homeowners’ association, and she asked to talk to me. She said that she was getting ready to leave her husband, who was a brutal and abusive alcoholic. She had a tiny puppy — a little fluffy mix that was mostly Yorkie and Pomeranian — that he was kicking and mistreating, and she wanted to get it to safety as soon as possible before he either damaged her or killed her.
She knew I was a dog lover, so she proposed that she leave her back gate unlocked, and after she was sure her husband had passed out, she would put the puppy on the back porch behind the unlocked gate. I could take the puppy, and disappear into the night.
I lived a distance from the woman’s home, so there was no danger the puppy would ever be seen by her husband. So, I agreed. We decided to do it that night.
The arranged dognapping went off without a hitch, and Rita made her home with us for many years. The woman also escaped her husband, as planned.
I buried my wife a week ago today. Alzheimer’s disease is a terrible way to die. She was diagnosed in 2013. She died October 10, 2023. I delayed her services until one of her siblings returned from a cruise. Since she chose cremation long ago, there was no urgency to bury her in my family’s grave plots.
She was an RNC – BSN in Labor and Delivery. Dedicated her life managing a 40 bed LDRP unit with NICU.
The Hospice nurse thought she was stable earlier in the day, but she later observed a change that I probably would not have recognized. The Hospice nurse told me I should come. She had been non verbal for about a year. Had to be fed, and was in a special Hospice provided wheel chair when out of her bed.
I knew as a lifelong nurse she did not want to live like that, but a DNR covers no cardiac crash cart intervention and no tube feeding. It is way above my pay grade to opine that her quality of life was near zero. A Hospice nurse knows when there is more brain activity than many of us might think.
She had been in a nursing home exactly three years. When she first arrived, she never stopped nursing, looking after those residents who were no longer ambulatory. In fact, she thought she was in charge of the nursing home because she was a Director of Women’s Health before she retired. At the peak of her career, she had 150 employees and a seven figure annual budget. A few years later, she could not balance her check book.
The Hospice nurse told me the last thing to go with an Alzheimer’s victim is their hearing, so even though she looked comatose, the nurse convinced me she could hear me.
I believe her. No finger squeezing, no eye movement, nothing but labored breathing. I told her I loved her, and that I would have been nothing without her.
Thinking she was stable for maybe another day, I went home to get something to eat. Hospice called and said she was gone before I got back to the nursing home. We would have been married 51 years December 30. Planned our wedding around an OU Sugar Bowl game in 1972.
I hated myself for leaving the nursing home for what seemed like only a short time, but maybe she knew I had been there, and she was tired of the pain. Maybe she held on just long enough to see me or hear me one last time.
I’ll forever regret not spending more time with her. I honestly did not think she knew I was there during visits the last year, but now I know she knew I was there near the end, so she probably knew I was there during those times when I thought there was little brain function remaining.
I regret not spending more time with her excellent Hospice caregivers, to better understand that though my wife seemed near comatose for over a year, she would know I was there if I had spent more time with her.
Always pay attention to the Hospice nurses. Milk them for more knowledge about how it will probably end.
I am forever indebted to the Hospice nurses who cared for my wife. Hospice was there when I could not be there. No one should die alone.
Not long ago, Western media were promoting “the Chinese Air Force intercepted a Canadian aircraft.” But they don’t tell you that this interception took place in the northern part of the Taiwan Strait, only dozens of kilometers away from the coast of China.
Now, the Western media is once again propagating that “the Chinese Navy is unprofessional towards Australian warships.” Okay, let’s look at the truth of the matter again.
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The “exclusive economic zones” of China and Japan overlap on a large scale, and the overlapping area is closer to China’s territorial waters.
First, Australia claimed that “the warship is located within Japan’s exclusive economic zone.” It seems to tell us that they are near Japanese territorial waters. But is this true?
Let’s take a look at how big Japan’s “exclusive economic zone” is. As we all know, Japan’s “exclusive economic zone” was set unilaterally by Japan. It has a large number of overlapping areas with mainland China, Taiwan, South Korea, and North Korea, and is not recognized at all in East Asia.
Therefore, the fact that the Australian warship is “located within Japan’s exclusive economic zone” does not mean that it is “close to Japan”. On the contrary, it is likely to be close to China’s territorial waters, has entered China’s exclusive economic zone or even approached China’s territorial waters. This is also the reason for this type of incident. normal. The Chinese almost never go far from their shores on such missions.
Secondly, the news that the Chinese Navy’s use of “sonar” caused “slight injuries” to divers is not credible at all. According to news reports, the warship that intercepted the Australian Navy was the Chinese Navy No. 139 Ningbo Ship. This is a modern-class destroyer with a full load displacement of 8,500 tons and an old Soviet warship. According to public information, the sonar equipped on this destroyer is the MGK-335 hull-acoustic hull sonar. This is an active high-power sonar designed for deep-sea nuclear submarines, with a peak operating power of hundreds of kilowatts.
The shock waves it emits can hit the submarine’s hull several kilometers away and detect the echoes. There is no point in turning on sonar for surface ship monitoring.
Because this type of sonar is powerful enough to cause injury to large marine life such as dolphins and whales, it is generally not turned on. When the warships of both sides are approaching, if the Chinese Navy really turns on this sonar, then the diver will not suffer just a “slight injury”, it will shatter people’s internal organs.
Therefore, the real situation may be that the diver suffered minor injuries due to other reasons in the process of rushing to shore. After all, the Australian Toowoomba is just a 3,600-ton frigate. When facing an 8,500-ton Chinese warship, a hasty retreat is a normal reaction.
There are a few more noteworthy keywords
2. Sanctions tasks of the United Nations
This statement is the same as that of the Canadian military aircraft, which also claimed to be carrying out “UN sanctions supervision against North Korea.” But they flew to the northern part of the Taiwan Strait.
China has publicly stated many times that the United Nations has never authorized such a mission. As one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, China’s statement is credible, and other countries have not raised any objections.
Therefore, the Australian warship’s so-called “implementation of United Nations sanctions and supervision of North Korea” is just a farce written and directed by several countries led by the United States.
3. The fishing net entangled the propeller
It shows that the Australian warship has entered the fishing area instead of the normal route. This will cause disruption to both Chinese and Japanese fishermen. Whether it is Japan’s exclusive economic zone or China’s exclusive economic zone, it is undeniable that it is more than 1,000 kilometers away from Australia. That is China’s doorstep, not Australia’s.
image
The incident took place so far away from Australia. What was the Australian Navy thinking when it sent a small warship to the coast of a nuclear-armed superpower to show off? If the opponent was the United States or Russia, they would have been sunk long ago.
4. Unprofessional
The Chinese Navy’s approach to foreign warships approaching China’s territorial waters has always been to “identify, warn and drive away”. This is their “professionalism”. There was no warning of weapons and no active collision, indicating that the Chinese navy was restrained. It makes no sense for the Australians to use the excuse “sonar harms divers” to divert attention.
There have been several over my long life but the one that still hurts the most was when my family decided to do a family photo.
For context:
my parents (mom and dad), 4 others siblings with their spouse and child(ren)
18 people total including myself and husband.
I’ve always been a coordinator of events and the like so I offered to find and buy all the children’s outfits so they match/color coordinate.
All the adults wore coordinating colors. We planned on having an outdoor spring photo shoot and I purchased all items to stage the pictures (included a setee, velvet arm chairs, Persian rug….you get the idea not just outside but staged. We hired a professional photographer with each of us paying $200
to cover the bill.
A week before the photos were supposed to be done, my older sister comes over and says my parents want our children but not myself and husband in the pictures. I say nothing, think about it an day and then call my dad. I ask him did he and my mother say we were not to be in pics? He never gives me a direct answer. Says they really just pics of the grandkids, I ask him then why is everyone else included besides my husband and myself? -he gives Half answers until I say I have to go-I sent all of them an email laying out how hurt we were and Don’t understand what we could have down to be excluded like this. Not one response.
Picture day:
My older sister had the audacity to call me and ask if my kids were ready and she was on the way to pick them up. I told her Nope and hung up.
That is the last one I ever spoke to or heard from any of them. Family should never hurt like that
My generation, the boomers, was encouraged to take risks and accomplish great things. We were told that we could do anything and should. We had people like JFK pushing us to go to the moon.
I grew up in a violent, terrifying and poor household where I felt great responsibility for the younger children. I felt no love from my parents. I was just scared all the time. I subsequently had little energy left for doing well in school. I had only one friend. I was always afraid of authority and had no self-confidence. I was not equipped for adulthood and most of it was a struggle to do well at whatever job I held.
When I retired, due to my great fear of poverty, i had plenty of money saved and my own home. I also realized something important. I didn’t have to have regrets even though I had not taken risks or accomplished great things.
I had survived. I had accomplished something important. I was safe. I had made it through all the troubles and fear. I had gritted my teeth and pushed through all the pain and loneliness and self-loathing that comes with being treated badly.
I am old but I have many years to go and I’ll spend them being proud of myself for making it through to safety. This might not seem like much of a goal to most people but it was what I dreamed of for myself and unwittingly worked hard for. I have no regrets.
She ran a very successful Dentist as Practice Manager…she has been a Dental Nurse since the early 90s and worked her way up.
Probably about 80% of the role was managing the staff…whereas 80% should have been running the regulatory side of the business….unfortunately, that meant that the regulatory side had to be done after hours.
She would put in 12 hour days, come home, have dinner, then start again and not stop until near midnight, nightly!
Now the business owner and principle knew HE could not manage the staff, but he then started demanding that she was ‘front of house’ due to her professionalism…even though others were just as capable…so of course, that meant other things started to suffer…initially her health, but she persevered…she ‘loved her job’!
But then, the inevitable happened…he ‘decided’, without any consultation, that her role was now ‘salaried’ and he would no longer pay overtime.
Now, there’s a rock and a hard place…the regulatory side could not be undertaken during the day, would not be compensated, and was a legal requirement for the Practice to operate; so she took the only option available; she resigned (her health was deteriorating anyway…and that was due to the stress of the job!)
6 months later, she is in a far better place physically. The business she left is on its knees. All the staff had left, and it is now – just about – scraping by as a single dentist practice (there had been 10 dentists and 26 support staff!).
I reckon that it has 3–4 months left before it goes completely under….all because he started interfering in the staff roles and didn’t want to pay a little overtime.
Lets do what China or Singapore is doing and ensuring that their police remain tough but relatively free from any corruption and actually follow the law
Pay
India pay their policemen a pittance. I am talking about the rank and file cops. If you look at Comparative Median Income- a Middle ranking Indian policeman (Non IPS) gets only 1.06 times the Median income compared to 1.41 times for a Chinese Cop and 1.83 times for a Singaporean Cop and 1.82 times for a US Cop from NYPD or CPD. A 41% Pay raise for Middle Ranking Cops and allowance raise and upto 77% Pay raise for the Rank and file would work wonders.
Housing and Allowances
China, Hong Kong have police departments which purchase their own lands and commercially build apartments and sell them at zero interest to Cops and retired cops. 2,3,4 BHK Apartments with all the luxuries like a Swimming Pool, Gymnasium etc provided.
image 1
Hamara Bharat – How a Police Quarters looks like in Bharat with Inspectors living in this dilapidated building. The Toilets are particularly a bonanza. Departments have to beg and beg for the most basic of maintenance and painting.
Death Insurance
In India a Cop shot and killed while on Duty will get a flat sum of Rs. 18 Lakhs to Rs. 85 Lakhs depending on City and State with Mumbai and Delhi paying the highest.
85 Lakhs sounds good right?
Sorry. First the money is taxable, Second the average time to get this money is 17 – 24 months if you are lucky and third – an Insurance company pays this sum and it will dodge and demand a lot of documentation like death report etc etc etc.
A woman called Gurbachan Kaur who was supposed to get Rs. 78 Lakhs for her husbands death (He was Senior Inspector of Police) is yet to get any money after 1 1/2 years and after taxes and deductions – she is expected to net Rs. 58 Lakhs. Its around 5.25 times his median annual income. Even this sum is in doubt as the Insurance company is now saying the man died of a heart attack which means natural death (Far low payout).
Lets take China or HK – the sum for death of a Similar rank is around 8.25 times the Median Income and NO TAX. And you get the money within 60 days. Its a law. If you dont get the money in China within 60 days – the Department will be questioned and the LEPPA laws will be applied and No insurance company – money belongs to the Department directly
And many others – Good Healthcare plans, Good Education Plans, Education Trusts for Kids of Cops, Free Education etc.
The Cops are taken care of decently and so they do their job well.
Then there is the question of Punishment. Cops who break the law are brutally punished. In China except the Political Police – all other cops can be punished brutally for Bribery or for Public Abuse or false cases etc. The LEPPA which applies only to cops and can put a cop for 15–25 years for a custodial death within 3 months through special courts.
Its the Double Edged Sword – Good Incentives but Brutal Punishments
Its what India should do
PS This only applies to officers. Chinese Constables are very less paid (Same as Indian PCS) but they get commissions (Hyeung Ya or Golden Fragrance) of 55% – 150% of their monthly salaries. Legal commissions on which they have to pay tax.
Our Poor Havildars have no such incentives and can get a CBI Case for a mere Rs. 500/- bribe.
Weißer Turm (The White Tower), Galgengasse, Rothenburg.
An expensive education system that does not give people the most basic knowledge.
The world’s largest prison system.
An expensive healthcare system that is against disease prevention. And which gives decreasing life expectancy.
A colossal big expensive army which is not able to overcome the Taliban. And the army’s expenses are poorly documented.
The judiciary is large and expensive.
The financial sector is filled with at least 90% air, which will give rise to a new financial bubble, which will empty people’s pensions.
The two identical parties present only the interests of the rich. And yet they are extremely hostile to each other.
Real wages for the middle class have not increased since the 1970s.
Many of the politicians stand with one foot in the grave, so it will never be them themselves who will pay back the country’s debt. Their goal is to survive only four more years.
I could make several points. But why do you think it is difficult to sell this system, Western Democracy to the Chinese?!
Wasn’t it a better idea to sell Chinese socialism to the Americans?! Who wants a government that will multiply your hourly wage?!
The bloody history has told every Chinese: China’s peace today is not because the invaders abandoned evil and turned to good, but because of the powerful PLA.
Mike Tyson is the father of my favorite sports quote. Reporters were questioning him about his new opponent. They were building up the rivalry, talking about how dangerous this fighter was, how he planned to keep Tyson at a distance with his jab, how he planned to wear him down.
Getting annoyed with the questions, Mike looked up from tying his shoes and said, “Everyone has a plan — until they get hit.” It’s so perfectly translatable to life. Everyone is on a diet, until they get hungry. Everyone wants good grades, until it’s time to study. Aspirations and reality are often star-crossed lovers: desperate to be together but doomed to be apart.
We don’t like what most goals entail. There’s a way to make things easier. It starts with understanding the process of productivity.
Slow down your mind to produce more
In a 2013 experiment, scientists showed flashing images to young mice for six hours a day for ten days straight. The changing images emulated cell phones and TVs. Those mice later displayed significant difficulties getting through mazes and finishing cognitive tasks versus non-stimulated mice. Science has long known overstimulation leads to deficits in cognition and attention span.
More plainly, when you are bored with a task, you are often overstimulated. It’s worse than most people realize. Our minds are lost in thought for roughly 47% of our day.
Concentrative meditation, a focus on one specific thing, is proven to boost your focus over time, even if you only do it for five minutes a day. Letting too many voices in your head drowns out those that need to be heard. It’s counterintuitive to think that slowing down your mind increases its potency. The brain is like a lightbulb: too much energy makes it shine less.
If you are feeling ambitious, a Harvard study found that 27-minutes of meditation per day led to increased gray-matter density in the hippocampus, resulting in improved learning, empathy, and memory.
Start easier by creating mental opposition
My girlfriend works in academia and occasionally writes huge, thickly worded papers. On the scale of writing projects, it’s one of the most nightmarish. She was working herself up over a paper last month. She talked about it all week, dreading it, venting about it. She was eventually in full-blown tears, despite not having written a single word.
I’m a fairly patient guy but I do have limits. I finally said, “I need you to do a favor for both of us and get this done. Do it for me, please.” Her dread was bleeding into our relationship. Seeing my point, and to her credit, she powered through it and was a new person afterward.
Procrastination is the hellspawn of anticipation. We expend so much energy thinking about doing something, building up the tension, contemplating the boredom and pain involved. Our energy is sapped before we even begin.
Defeat it by inverting your thoughts
The next time you are putting something off, pay attention to your thoughts. Notice when you have a ‘dread’ thought, “This is going to be so hard.” Notice how you feel heavier. I can literally feel my body getting more immobile when I catch those thoughts.
The trick is to invert that process. I write for a living. When my keyboard is roaring at me like a 101-toothed monster, I’ll itemize reasons I should write. For example:
If I write now, I’ll have free time later.
It will be fun to discover which words show up on the page.
The show I’m watching is useless and boring.
I’ll make more money if I spend more time writing.
It’s going to ruin my mood if I keep procrastinating.
Make it a game to verbally list as many reasons as possible. This will magnetize your motivations. Actions are an extension of our thoughts. Starting is often the hardest part of productivity.
How to stay in the pocket after you start
When I was a swimmer, I didn’t have aquatic headphones to get me through a workout. Swimming is an exhausting exercise in sensory deprivation. You can only see the bottom of the pool and hear the water in your ears. Workouts were miserable and every stroke invites you to slack off.
The key was to stay focused at the moment. I did this in two ways. First, I focused on my technique, giving 100% of my focus to my coach’s instructions. When that technique crumbled, I fell back into reminding myself of my goals. I singularly focused on them, much like you would with concentrative meditation.
Remind yourself that you want to get promoted and get a raise. Reflect on sub-goals. Reflect on what happens if you quit now and flake out. Thoughts can be weaponized against laziness. Productivity is a battle in your mind. If you let weakening thoughts run about unchallenged, you are doomed. Focus on perfection and your attention to detail.
The takeaway and tying it all together
Remember, productivity has three key elements:
Convince yourself to start.
Stay focused despite distractions.
Continue working when you don’t feel like it.
Convince yourself to start by being cognizant of detractor thoughts. Dismiss them quickly and list out reasons to start.
To avoid distractions, practice slowing down your mind with meditation. Additionally, make a mental note of every time you lose focus. When I start getting sloppy, I’ll keep a piece of paper and make a line every time I catch my mind drifting.
Lastly, to get through arduous, monotonous tasks, focus on being present in the moment. Focus on the details. Think about your goals. But never dread the painful aspects of your tasks. Motivation is war. Know how to rally your troops.
Roman Empire and Chill
Dinardo’s Italian Restaurant Creole Carbonara
Creole Carbonara
Ingredients
1/2 cup chicken thigh meat
2 1/2 tablespoons Creole seasoning
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 ounces andouille sausage, chopped
8 ounces medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
1/4 cup green onions, chopped
1 tablespoon garlic, chopped
1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream
1/4 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
Dash of Tabasco
1/2 tablespoon salt
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
1/2 pound fettuccine, cooked
Instructions
Coat the chicken with one teaspoon of the Creole seasoning.
Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat and sauté chicken for approximately one minute.
Add andouille and continue cooking one additional minute.
Season shrimp with remaining Creole seasoning, add to chicken/andouille mixture and cook until shrimp are pink and curled.
Add green onions, garlic and whipping cream. Bring mixture to a boil then reduce heat to medium.
Add Worcestershire, Tabasco, salt and half of the Parmesan cheese.
Coat fettuccine with sauce and top with remaining cheese.
West Germany.
19 5
Appreciation
***** REAL ****** Trouble: No One Buying US Treasuries
Nobody wants U.S. Treasury bonds. Bond Sales are in the worst stretch since the Civil War. The federal government has run up so much debt that few if any around the world, want to lend them money anymore. This cannot end well.
Once a symbol of America’s economic might and accepted as a global coin of the realm, US Treasuries have fallen badly out of favor, with serious consequences for taxpayers, investors, and financial markets.
Elementary economic forces — too much supply and not enough demand — have collided to create the worst stretch for U.S. government bonds since the Civil War. The government keeps borrowing to cover its budget deficits, while once-reliable buyers of that debt, both at home and abroad, have pulled back.
The result: Investors are demanding the steepest yields since 2007. Auctions of fresh bonds that were once routine are now going terribly. And bond portfolios are getting absolutely hammered. The longest-dated Treasury bonds are in a bear market worse than the dot-com bust and almost as bad as 2008.
Already 2.5% of the U.S.’s economic output is going to service its existing debts, a number that some analysts expect to hit 4% by 2030. Already running huge deficits, the only way for Treasury to pay the interest — along with ambitious spending programs like the CHIPS Act and student-loan forgiveness — is to keep borrowing.
They are now TRAPPED in a vicious spiral that can ONLY lead to financial death for the country. There is no other possible outcome because the government will not stop spending.
He worked in a private local company. At the end of 2017 the owner of the company changed which means the head of the board of directors changed (let’s call the new guy Jim). Obviously, Jim wanted to make some changes himself, mostly to establish dominance and show he’s the new sheriff in town. Rumors say he promised to double company’s profit in a single year (remember this). There’s a thin line between ambitious and cocky.
The first move he made didn’t have anything to do with the increasing work efficiency or meeting heads of departments or actually know the work that is done in that company. Jim had installed one of those time clock machines where employees check in when they get to work and check out when they’re done. Something like this:
only they didn’t have tokens, but cards. Installation and writing guidelines took about a week after which he announced to heads of departments that every employee must check in and check out themself even when they’re going out just for a break. Also, heads of departments should’ve forward these news to employees. The thing officially started second or third week in January of 2018.
At first, employees didn’t take it so seriously and some of them didn’t check in/out every day or didn’t (sometimes even forgot to) note down their breaks. At the end of the week, Jim would go through every employee’s record to see does any of them have less than 40 hours. (Notice he wasn’t interested in those who had more than 40 hours.) Friend told me that most of employees were in the range 38–45 working hours and a very few around 37 but none under 37. Jim called for a meeting with heads of departments every Friday to inform them about the records and to warn those who work less. Also, there was no compensation for those who work more (stay late or work on weekends).
Employees protested about that kind of behavior and wanted time clock out. That only made Jim to push that thing even more and convinced the board of directors and the owner that the time clock is necessary. So it passed.
The thing is that the work climate has changed. Everyone was more concentrated on if they checked in and if they worked enough than the actual work and the pressure started to build up. The thing went on for two whole months until the most of the employees (friend said 80% but maybe he exaggerated a bit) decided to come to work, check in, work their 8 hours at a moderate pace, check out and head home. No overtime, no working weekends, if the clock hit 16:00 people would leave midwork or in the middle of the meeting not giving a shred of an F. Their excuse was that they did their 8 hours and if they want them to stay, they want a written notice (which is a proof of working overtime and must be paid).
This way every single employee had 40 working hours a week and not a minute more or less. But you know what? Jim wasn’t satisfied. Why? Because work suffered. He made the employees numbers and working slaves that have only one purpose – to work. This killed all the passion people had towards the job they were doing. It demoralized people. They had a feeling that someone is standing above their head every second of the day. And the time clock might not be a bad thing to check employees every once in a while, but to terrorize them like Jim did made them do anything just in spite of that work regime.
After 3 and a half months, the moment of truth came. The first quartal report came. It was a bit better than the last year so Jim stayed at his position. Employees continued with their strike. The second quartal report came and the profit was ~8% less than the same period of previous year (maybe 9% I don’t remember). Jim ascribed it to a bad economy in the country and stayed at his position. Employees were informed about the drop in profit which made them to continue their strike. The third quartal report came. The company’s profit was down by amazing 34% compared to the same period of the previous year. Jim was fired on the spot (even though his mandate supposed to last 5 years) and time clock was left just to control employees every now and then.
Conclusion: Treat your employees as humans which they are and maybe consult someone about your radical actions.
Many decades ago my Dad was a high school teacher in the inner city of Boston.
One of the students in his class was a nationally ranked Judo practitioner who competed at the national level. This young man might miss weeks of school to attend an event around the world. IIRC he may have been part of the US Judo team at the time.
This young man was very quiet and kept to himself generally head down looking at a book at his desk. However he would sometimes be taunted by other students and generally would ignore the idiots.
One day Dad is writing something on the blackboard and behind him he hears one of the jerks taunting. He hears things like “You gonna show me some of that kung fu shit” and then he hears “Let’s see you block this punch”.
Dad hears a small amount of noise and turns around. This is a matter of seconds. The Asian Judo practitioner is sitting in his chair, head down reading a book. And the jerk kid is unconscious on the floor peeing his pants.
The jerk on the floor starts coming around. Dad tells his friends to get him back in his seat. And everyone starts laughing at the jerk because of the giant pee stain on his crotch.
That seemingly ended the attempted bullying. Everyone realized that this kid could kick everyone’s ass if needed.
I love a happy ending!
On Mount Wendelstein.
6 12
Wife Cheats On Work Trip And Now Is Losing Her Mind That Her Marriage Is IMPLODING
Her: I ripped the soul out of my husband through betrayal.
Also her: I made him coffee and did some chores. We should be all good, right?
When I was a five year old boy, my father gave me a magnifying glass… set me on the curb near an anthill, and I spent the entire afternoon burning ants.
It was cruel.
But I had no idea about that during that time in my life. I mean, I was only five.
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I wonder how many times that I hurt others though ignorance, and a lack of compassion. I really do wonder.
Look guys, we cannot change the world, but we can alter our little piece of it. Let’s just strive to be a little bit better on a day to day basis. What do you say?
I’ve been teaching nearly 20 years and my favorite lie is still the one that I heard as a brand new teacher.
A student came to class with his hand bandaged, carrying a doctor’s note. He told me “last night, my computer blew up and the shrapnel injured my hand so I couldn’t complete the homework assignment that was due today.”
I took a look at his hand. The bandage was so loose it was falling off. There was no way that any sober doctor had done such a sloppy job. It looked like he had tried to apply it himself and been unable to do it properly one-handed.
Then I took a look at the note. It was from a doctor’s office and it said “[Student’s name] has been seen for a ___ hand procedure.” I took a closer look at the blank space between “a” and “hand”. The word “minor” had been erased (but not well enough that I couldn’t see it if I squinted). I was guessing he had a wart removed or something that morning.
I didn’t need to point out the holes in his story, though. I just told him, “I’m sorry to hear about your injury, but the assignment wasn’t due today. It was due two days ago- the day before your ‘accident’.”
He walked to his seat without a word. He looked like he was going to be sick.
China’s People’s Liberation Army – Navy ship “Longushan” is reportedly ablaze just off the coast of China tonight. The vessel is reported to be “China’s most advanced warship.”
No OFFICIAL word on what caused the fire. (There ARE rumors . . . .)
All mention of this is being rapidly scrubbed from China social media networks, and no official information is coming out of Beijing.
The vessel bears Hull Number 980 and is described as a Type 071 landing ship.
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China’s fifth Type 071 amphibious transport dock (LPD) Longhushan; with hull number 980) was commissioned with the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN or Chinese Navy) on September 12, 2018 in Shanghai.
Originally designed after the Taiwan Strait crisis in 1996, the Type 071, measuring 210 meters long and 28 meters wide, is capable of carrying an 800-man marine battalion and some 20 amphibious tanks.
During building construction in an Athenian suburb in 2014, a tomb of the classical period was unearthed. It was no big deal, it happens frequently in Athens. Archaeologists took over but the findings in it weren’t of much interest…until they assembled a ceramic wine cup (a skyphos) smashed in 12 pieces, this one:
image 13
The cheap cup belonged to a man named Drapetes (the name, inscribed at the bottom of the cup, indicates a slave) However, the big surprise came from the other six names inscribed on the cup:
Aristides, Diodotos, Desimos, Arrifron, Pericles and Efkritos. Could this Pericles be the famous general?
Archaeologists say yes! This is why:
One of its fragments is engraved with six names, including Arrifron — the moniker of Pericles’s grandfather and brother. “The name Arrifron is very rare,” said A. P. Matthaiou, secretary of the Greek Epigraphic Society
. “The mention of [Arrifron] over that of Pericles on the surface of the vase makes us 99% confident that they are the two brothers.”
The inscription of the name Aristides also points favorably to Pericles having used the cup. Aristides was a politician who acted in Athens between 488 and 478 BCE, while Pericles led the city-state from 460 BCE to his death from the plague in 429 BCE. The cup dates between 480 and 465 BCE when the two might have interacted in a social setting such as a symposium or tavern. As men commonly drank from the same skyphos, it’s possible they would have carved their names onto the cup as a token of their meeting. “[He] certainly was dizzy from the wine as it is clear that whoever wrote the name of Pericles made a mistake initially … and then corrected it,” Matthaiou said.
Drapetes kept the cup. We don’t know why or how, maybe he was flattered by the presence of the noble company in his tavern.
It’s always a little magical when archeologists turn up objects that place such mythic figures in real time and space, breathing the same air and walking the same ground we do today. It seems miraculous that 2,500 years after the orator’s death, an ancient cup just happens to contain six complete names evidencing a life that has evaded archeologists for centuries.
U.S. Army prepares for War with China and Congress is EXCITED about it
Sigh. You all afraid, yet?
Angelina’s Zydeco Creole Jambalaya
Angelinas Zydeco Creole Jambalaya
Ingredients
1/2 pound smoked sausage, cut
1/2 pound ham, diced
1 cup onion, chopped
1 cup bell pepper, chopped
1 cup celery, chopped
1 cup green onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 tablespoons Worcestershire Sauce
1 can whole tomatoes, drained (reserve liquid)
Pinch thyme
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups Uncle Ben’s Converted Rice
1 1/2 cups stock water
2 pounds fresh shrimp, deveined
Instructions
Place sausage and ham in very heavy Dutch oven and sauté until lightly browned. Remove from pot and set aside.
Sauté onions, bell pepper, celery, green onions and add meat drippings. Cook until tender.
Add tomatoes, thyme, pepper and salt. Cook for five minutes. Stir in rice.
Mix together liquid from tomatoes, stock and Worcestershire sauce equal to 2 cups and add to sautéed vegetables. Bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and add fresh shrimp, ham and sausage. Cook uncovered, stirring often for about 30 minutes or until rice and shrimp are done.
Loyalty
U.S. Marines shifting focus to China, threat is “real”: top general
The U.S. Marines view deterring China as their key focus and will strive to make sure a conflict in the Indo-Pacific does not “spill over” to Japan, the military branch’s top general Eric Smith said Monday, while warning that Beijing’s missile capabilities are “significant” and “real.”
The Marine Corps’ No. 2 officer, who has been nominated to become the next commandant, also said in an interview in Tokyo that a littoral regiment being formed in Japan for remote island defense is being designed to provide “advanced maritime domain awareness” to allies and partners, in order to better detect events in surrounding waters.
The United States and Japan announced in January that the existing 12th Marine Regiment based in the southern prefecture of Okinawa will be reorganized into the 12th Marine Littoral Regiment by 2025, making it the first MLR to be forward-deployed against China.
The regiments will possess advanced surveillance capabilities and will be armed with long-range fires. Consisting of about 1,800 to 2,000 personnel per unit, they will also be capable of flexibly deploying small groups of marines to remote islands in the South China Sea.
The forming of the regiments comes amid China’s increased military assertiveness around far-flung southwestern Japan islets and Taiwan, which has raised the risk of conflict.
The Commandant of the United States Marine Corps is hospitalized after a serious medical emergency. General Eric M. Smith suffered a medical emergency on the evening of October 29 and was taken to a hospital.
He is now in stable condition.
Per Statute Law 10 U.S.C. §8044, as the senior officer assigned to Headquarters, US Marine Corps, by date of rank, Lt. General Karsten Heckl, the Deputy Commandant for Combat Development and Integration, who is the Commanding General of the Marine Corps Combat Command, is serving as Acting Commandant of the Marine Corps, for the interim.
Wife Cheated On Me With Her Colleagues, so I Snatched Everything She Had – FULL STORY
“You didn’t dodge a bullet. 14 years with her, you got shot.”
I received a resume from someone who had recently graduated from high school. They had one job on the resume and their job title was Director in Charge of Company Morale at a prestigious local law firm.
The resume lacked all the things I was looking for, but the job title listed intrigued me. I set the interview and was waiting to hear a litany of lies.
On the day of the interview this cleancut sharp dressed young man showed up. After brief small talk I asked about the prior job and what it entailed.
Turns out his Director in Charge of Company Morale Position entailed him going out each morning and getting coffee for all the partners. He said without their morning coffee, morale was very low.
Best belly laugh in an interview ever. I hired him. And he worked out well because he found a way to place a positive attitude on everything he did, however menial the task.
Edit: I am honored that so many people like my answer. Thank you all.
Update: I’ve had several people suggest editing the gender from “they” to “he”. At the time I read the resume and set the appointment, I had no idea if the applicant was male or female. Gender was not a decision point in our hiring process. This is why I have left the answer unedited. Thank you all again for the overwhelming response.
I called and the automated machine said it would read back my last five transactions to check for anything weird.
“Video entertainment— $65. California.”
“Video entertainment— $10. Declined. France.”
“Video entertainment— $10. Declined. France.”
“Gas— $30. Colorado.”
“Gas— $30. Wyoming.”
I was pretty sure I hadn’t been to France or California recently, so I checked my account summary and noticed I had -$50 in my account.
I’m taking poor college kid to a whole new level. I’m negative poor right now.
So I called their fraud number and the woman on the other end walked me through securing my account and getting a new card. She asked a few questions, told me my card was on its way, and hung up.
The achievement was not that I got my card number stolen. It wasn’t that I managed to put my account $50 under.
It’s that I made a phone call.
That sounds awfully small and to everyone around me it is, but I have been known to have panic attacks when forced to make phone calls. I hate ‘em. They make me anxious and uncomfortable and incredibly stressed.
I struggle with hearing on the phone (and in general, really), which exacerbates my social anxiety and makes phone calls some of the worst interactions I can have.
But today, I did it. The woman even had an accent and I think I understood her and responded correctly.
It’s a small thing, but when it’s one of your biggest fears, it can feel like the greatest thing in the world.
I was 20 and dating a guy that I met in a 20s chat room. This was the year 2000. We went to a grocery store and was walking down the Easter candy isle when I spotted these malt eggs. I stopped and said, “eww! Do you remember getting these in the bottom of your Easter basket every year?!” He simply said, “No.” Stupid me goes on and on about how I hated them and that he MUST remember getting them… He finally says quietly, “No. I didn’t ever get an Easter basket. My parents didn’t have the money.”
THAT is why I’m an asshole.
FYI, I married that guy that same year and we are still together with 3 amazing kids.
The next Easter morning he woke up to his first Easter basket from the Easter bunny complete with malt eggs. 🪺
I was cleaning the coffee cart when a guest at the soup kitchen walked by me.
“You’re wearing Converse. Do you collect them?”
“No,” I tell her. “I just like my old black pair. They’re comfortable shoes.”
“They are. I have some pink ones that don’t fit me—I’ll bring them and if they fit you, you can have them.”
True to her word, I glanced out of the kitchen door today to see her holding them up, much to my coworkers’ confusion.
At work, I can’t walk two steps without someone stopping to talk to me.
One man spent all day poking fun at me about how sunburned my arms are.
Another gave us all breakfast burritos and promised sopapillas tomorrow.
I spent a good part of an afternoon with one of our volunteers trading fun facts and talking about theatre.
Sometimes strangers stop in the serving line to tell me their story.
I learned about Rainbow Gatherings and how they send positive energy into the world.
About powwows.
About brain injuries and single parenting and the best way to make spaghetti and bonnets purchased in Missouri and what chickens like to eat and how they make decaffeinated coffee.
About cancer and babies and sunburn cures and about how food is one of the greatest gifts known to man.
I took the job at the soup kitchen because it paid and because they called me back first.
But damn, my job fuels my artist’s brain more than anything else.
People. People are all that art is.
And if you can be in a room where veterans and drug addicts and businessmen and hitchhikers all sit at the same table for a meal—
You’ll find no better place to hear someone’s story.
Today, I got new shoes, and I don’t even know that woman’s name.
But I know her. I know them all, even if all I know is that one guy likes the comics in the newspaper and another always waits for his wife before eating.
You ask if I’m happy with my current life situation.
I’m poor. My pay is calculated at pretty much the poverty line for the local community, so I’m making fuckall in money.
I’m tired and I’m sunburned and I’m sore and I’m still excited to go to work every day.
It doesn’t feel like a job. I don’t dread it like I honestly thought I would.
I’ve been sleeping full nights and working full days and while the depression doesn’t just go away, it finds someplace else to be during the work day.
I wish I had the money to do everything I want to do, but I will honestly take full days at the soup kitchen over working fast food any day of the week.
I guess I’m happy.
I don’t know. I’m content. The days are flying by faster than I can count them.
If anything, this work strengthens my desire to work in nonprofits. I don’t think traditional schools are for me.
I’m excited to keep going, and that feels good enough for me.
I was very surprised with American attitude towards (partial) nudity. A couple of real-life examples from when I lived in NJ:
My kids were 2 and 3 years old and during the summer it’s very normal in Europe for small children to run around the house and yard naked. When they did that in the US however, I received several complaints from our neighbours and one of them put up a solid fence between our properties after that.
Two years later we went to a water park in Hope, NJ and our daughter was only wearing bikini bottoms. The top didn’t fit well, would only annoy her and there was nothing there to hide or cover up (so we thought). We received a warning from the park and had to cover her up or leave immediately.
When our daughter was in pre-school we (the parents) had to stop by the principal for a serious discussion: they noticed how our 4-year old daughter started undoing her pants before she got in the rest room with the door closed, which was apparently shocking to the other kids.
After that we started adjusting better to the local norms and didn’t have any incidents anymore. I’ve always wondered though why this was such a big deal and suspect it to be a nutty religious thing.
CHINA, in every respect, I know every yank will say the USA but I don’t think so, not anymore, mainly because of their debt, and growing daily, yes, the US have a very powerful navy, but SO WHAT? Ships can be sunk, and sunk quickly, missiles are the thing these days, and China is way ahead with their hypersonic missiles, double the speed of US ones. According to all reports. Also, they run rings around the US in speed and cost of manufacturing. Which also puts China in front.
Yes! Just recently my husband and I did this. We were visiting NY. Our hotel had a restaurant in it. We went down for breakfast. There was a menu just outside of the restaurant. The continental buffet was $29. The hot buffet was $45. A little steep, but we figured those were just NY prices.
When it was our turn to be seated, they but us at a high communal style table. I’m 5″2 and I HATE high tables! We sat down and looked around. We looked at each other. The kind of silent communication you can do with someone you’ve been with for years. Then we decided that we were not paying $100 for breakfast while we sat at an uncomfortable “display” table. I turned and looked out the window. I saw 53rd St. Grill across the street. We walked past the waiter as he was bringing our waters. The food at the grill was delicious, and cost about $30 for both of us. We ate breakfast there for the remainder of our trip.
I have several female friends that worked hard in school and then got prestigious jobs. But the thing about prestigious jobs is that they’re usually a lot of long hours of tough work. They made fairly good money but after a long, frustrating day at work they would sometimes joke “ugh, I need to find a rich husband so I can be a house wife.”
And then some of did. One of them moved to another country where traditional gender roles are more prevalent and she found herself a really rich husband. Then a few of the other girls moved too and, I kid you not, they also found rich husbands.
I’ve met a lot of girls that have jumped up the socioeconomic ladder through marriage. But guys? I haven’t met a single one. Generally speaking, girls still expect guys to make at least as much as them.
So what sucks about being a guy? The immense pressure to be financially successful. As much as we try to deny it, society is obsessed with financial status and will measure a man’s worth based on his wealth.
The current economic system is full of perverse incentives.
Ever heard of the phrase “identifying your customer’s needs”?
The thing is, creating or maintaining needs so that you know what people need is more profitable than trying to identify new needs every time.
Problems cause need, and so problems are encouraged.
Imagine there is a pothole in the street.
That’s a problem. It’s going to cause issues.
If you identify it, then you could set up a company to fix roads, and try to get paid to fix it.
But what would be even more profitable would be to lobby so that it doesn’t get fixed, and then open a shop next to it to fix people’s suspensions after they break, or to offer towing services.
Because then you have a repeated source of income.
And then anyone trying to fix the pothole becomes a threat to your bottom line.
People benefit from the existence of problems, because then they can be paid to provide a temporary solution.
And this impacts many areas of our lives.
The legal system currently is bloated, and overly complicated. But the lawyers have a job thanks to that, so they don’t want it to change.
Government officials are corrupted by bribes and lobbying, and their perverse incentive is to take the money instead of working for the good of people.
Planned obsolescence leads to people making items that don’t last a long time but break fast, and have to be replaced, because that’s an opportunity for profits.
We are scared of human labor being replaced by machines. A weird incentive to be against progress and automation, because our access to resources depends on our labor being needed.
Health insurance is a business that tries to deny as many claims as possible to increase profits.
The owners and workers of the factories producing bombs and munition rely on constant wars for their income.
Creating emotionally laden clickbait attracts more attention than rational discourse.
If you identify a problem somewhere, fixing it is not the most profitable thing you can do; letting it happen, and then swooping in is.
If you want maximum profits, and know that the housing market will crash, you don’t want to try and avoid that, you want to short the market and make billions. And then use the billions to buy up the low price property from the desperate people in need who just lost their life savings.
There are perverse incentives all around us.
The perverse incentive is to do the easy thing, for short term profits.
Doing the right thing, even when it’s hard, to reap the long term benefits? That’s what we should be aiming for.
I arrived for an interview and was asked to wait a few minutes as the interviewer was held up. A few minutes later he came out, apologised said he’d been called to an urgent problem. He explained that some of the stuff I’d be working on would highly commercially sensitive and while he finished up could I read through the pre-interview contract and sign it.
I read through it and though I’m no lawyer it read like they could sue for everything I owned from my house down to my underwear if I so much as said I’d been within a mile of the building. The I interviewer came back a few minutes later and asked if I was happy and had signed the paperwork.
I replied that I hadn’t signed coz it looked a bit iffy on the conditions and he replied
‘congratulations, you’re the first person out of 8 people who passed the first stage test’.
Apparently everyone else had skimmed through and signed and not bothered really looking at what they were signing off on.
A kid walked in late to my English class in 8th grade.
My teacher was really weird, and would go on these rants about how space doesn’t exist, reality is a figment of our imagination, and one person at google is taking over the world by deciding what search results google gives you.
This kid walks in and says “I’m not late because time doesn’t exist.”
He wasn’t marked late.
FIRST TIME HEARING Simple Minds – Alive & Kicking REACTION
I’m a retired cop, and most people think we are very conservative. My law enforcement friends think I’m a hippie.
I am for the legalization of recreational marijuana. I have never tried it, probably wouldn’t even if it was legalized, but it’s time for us all to grow up and see that Reefer Madness isn’t helping anyone.
I am opposed to the death penalty. I don’t like pedophiles or murderers, I just don’t think our government should be in the business of killing people. And I know first hand how flawed our criminal justice system is.
I support peaceful protests, even if I disagree with their views.
I think we (law enforcement) need to work with the media. Many of my colleagues think I’m nuts. It’s win-win when we do.
I think abortion should be legal. But I wish the last one performed was the last one ever performed.
). We need to put ourselves in each other’s shoes, and the best way to do that is to be around each other.
My grandfather’s first sight of America was the Statue of Liberty. I believe that monument is still relevant.
I vote for democrats. I vote for republicans. I vote for independents and green party and libertarians. I just think we need some good people in charge, and it makes me crazy when people vote straight party tickets.
I am a straight white male, married for 37 years. (Hi, honey.) But I am glad same sex couples can get married. I have 4 grandchildren. If they grow up with different preferences than most, I still want them to find love and happiness.
Trump is a disaster, and I’m going to wear out my rosary beads because of him.
I believe in the Second Amendment (actually am quite fond of them all), but I think it has gotten out of hand. Maybe we are not as self controlled as the Founding Fathers had hoped we would be. I am for reasonable restrictions on gun ownership.
I think everyone should have health insurance (at least as good as what members of congress give themselves), whether they can pay for it or not. Life is an inalienable right. Pretty sure health is too.
Not sure if that makes me liberal or not. I don’t like breaking rules or laws, but there are times when that is necessary. As long as you understand the consequences.
As that great philosopher Popeye once said, “I yam what I yam.”
Psychologist Explains Why MEN CARE about a WOMAN’S SEXUAL HISTORY: what women don’t understand
This is very interesting. I never looked at things this way.
“Paying twice as much for getting something ½ the value.”
…
“Well as a man, it doesn’t matter to me whether they have “grown” or got more wisdom, they still did the deeds, and as rude as it may sound to a woman, a good man will hold you accountable for your actions and your past. No high value man, as they put it, wants to pay new car prices for a used car.”
Management didn’t know what to do with Steven and it was their fault. Steven was a 28-year-old coworker and assistant project manager. We worked at a corporate construction company and project managers were our most important personnel.
Steven was smart and had stellar reviews, but when prompted about promoting to PM, he said, “No, no, I’m good.” It perplexed our CFO and COO, who didn’t know why a good employee wouldn’t want more money and responsibility.
I knew why. I was the budget manager at his division and sat in on many of their meetings. I saw the grueling pressure put on project managers and saw them yelled at on occasion. It wasn’t an easy job. Steven figured, he was young and enjoying his life and didn’t want that kind of pressure. And perhaps he thought he’d be bad at the job — which is wiser than most realize.
The Peter Principle was first proposed by psychologist Laurence J. Peters and was intended as satire. It proposed that competent employees will be continually promoted until they are incompetent in their new role. Then, they remain in that position for the remainder of their career. Consequently, every role is eventually held by an incompetent employee. His concept was unexpectedly hailed by researchers as having relevance and truth. Many firms now actively work to combat it.
I would wager any person reading this, who has been in corporate long enough, can think of at least one manager who was shockingly bad at their job. Yet they seemed untouchable.
It makes intuitive sense that as the demands and competition go up, your shine can easily lose its luster. For example, I was a good swimmer and the captain of my high school team. I felt like a god when I swam in local meets against kids who only swam a few months a year. But as I went up to districts, states, and then regionals, I felt increasingly less special.
Today, I’m a writer who sits on the other side of the corporate fence, living mostly free of hierarchal structures and constantly worrying about mistakes slipping through. I see my own partner, and friends, all angling for promotions and raises. This isn’t bad on its own as I admire ambition. But I’ve watched many of them take a hit to their life satisfaction.
The data reflects this: Employees are the unhappiest they’ve been in years, due to a lack of control, unreasonable workloads and not enough time off. You’d wonder why anyone would want to take on more if they are already drowning, but they do — by the millions.
It seems paradoxical. You work to be good at your job and gain respect, only to be promoted to a position that jeopardizes those perceptions. Being highly competent risks making you incompetent.
If you succeed enough, your high flying incompetence may introduce the Peter Principle’s brother, dubbed Peter’s Pinnacle, where you make a huge mistake and are paid to go away. It happened with the president of Disney, Michael Ovitz, who was fired after 16 months but made off with a $38 million severance.
The art of balancing
A few programmers I’ve known are good at dodging this responsibility paradox. My buddy Brian is a high flying coder, who is stiff-arming attempts by management to bring them into their fold and start managing people. He insists his goal is to be a skilled programmer and contribute to the company.
But beware of letting this mindset drag you to stagnancy. Don’t become the middle aged employee who has been in the same role for 10–20 years, just going through the motion and replying blandly to questions about their day with, “Living the dream.” The difference with Brian is that he is continually refining his programming, and is passionate about coding. There’s still a fire in him.
I’ve seen many falls from grace over the years, employees who were five star performers and thought highly of. Then, months after the company gleefully announced their promotion, the whispers started, “I heard he’s been struggling in his new role.” And, “He’s slipping.”
At a former employer, there was a corner room we called “The Death Trap.” The role for that office fell under a difficult manager and had sky-high expectations. They went through four people in 18 months. The company fired three managers who’d had great reviews in prior roles. One was saved by the skin of his neck by transferring to another department. It was the Peter Principle on full display.
Companies can do better too
Per a study by Dr. Ed Lazear at Stanford University, companies should account for the Peter Principle in any promotion decision because it’s an inevitable consequence. One solution is to inflate the original promotion requirements to smooth the transition. Put another way, ensure the candidate is an absolute star in their current role before leading them to deep waters.
Sometimes, you shouldn’t promote great employees at all. For example, in school, they often took our “Teachers of the Year” and offered them jobs in the administration. It’s tragic because it removed the teacher from working with students and making an impact where they thrived. Why not pay the teacher more to keep being an awesome teacher? To the managers seeing this, think long before hard-capping salaries by job title.
Parting thoughts
Think about your job well beyond compensation. Your motivation and job satisfaction are driven by feelings of competence, relatedness (feeling connected to coworkers), and autonomy. Every move up the ladder impacts those three things in unpredictable ways. If you do take a promotion, use that job to supplement your skills. Hire and surround yourself with smart people, and listen to what they have to say. That alone would save many from the clutches of the Peter Principle.
Everything is a tradeoff. I was keenly aware of that when I quit finance to be a writer. It was a conscious but difficult decision. I resolved I would probably never get wealthy. Upward mobility, outside of me writing a fluke hit book, would be limited. My health benefits would vanish. But I’d be doing something creative and that I loved doing, with minimal oversight and flexibility. Four years out, I’m still happy with this decision, but I am constantly doing status checks. Things can change on a dime.
My point is: Take a long view. Protecting your reputation and integrity gets harder as you carry more responsibility and teams to manage. Make sure the new role aligns well with your skillset, lifestyle, and has the support in place for you to thrive. If you make the decision solely for money, you may fall into an old and dangerous career trap.
For most of my life, my best friend was my sister. Then one day she called me and said that she didn’t want me to be part of her life anymore. I can’t tell you why because she didn’t say. That was five years ago and I haven’t heard from her since.
About two years ago I found out that she had moved to another state without even letting me know. I had some kind of emotional breakdown. Tears streamed down my cheeks for four straight days. I couldn’t sleep. My heart was broken.
The hardest thing about it is not knowing why. I’ve run dozens of scenarios through my mind but nothing seems to make sense. We have completely different political views but had made a pact years before that we just simply would never discuss politics. I had just been diagnosed with cancer for the second time just days before the phone call. She refuses to deal with anything “sad”; so maybe that was it.
After about four years of losing sleep and wondering what had happened, I realized that I don’t care so much about it any more. I guess that was the day that I cancelled our friendship. I consider her to be my ex-sister, now. I have lots of friends who do want me to be a part of their lives. They are my true brothers and sisters.
Blue Bayou Bananas Foster Shortcake
da482b66 8f8c 4a17 a8aa 7c33dbc7a653
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
Biscuits
2 ounces (about 1/3 cup) brie cheese, diced
2 1/2 cups Bisquick
1/3 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup water
Sauce
1 tablespoon butter
4 large bananas, cut into 1/2 inch slices
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 cup plus 3 tablespoons brown sugar
2 cups heavy cream
2 tablespoons dark rum
2 tablespoons banana liqueur
Garnish
Whipped cream
Fresh mint sprigs
Instructions
Heat oven to 400 degrees F.
Biscuits
Add together the diced cheese, Bisquick and sugar, mix well. Add the water and mix thoroughly to make a wet batter. Drop the batter in 4 mounds onto a greased cookie sheet and bake on the top rack for 20 minutes or until cooked through (when wooden pick inserted in middle comes out clean).
Remove from oven and cool on wire rack.
Sauce
Melt the butter in a saucepan and sauté the bananas for about 3 minutes. Add the sugars and stir until melted. Add the cream and, stirring constantly, cook over high heat until it reaches a boil. Reduce the heat to low and cook for 10 minutes. Add the rum and banana liqueur.
To serve, cut the cooled biscuits from the top two thirds of the way down, open it up and pour the sauce into the center of the biscuit.
Garnish
Serve with whipped cream and mint sprig.
Promiscuous Women Have The LOWEST Standards | Pearl Daily
This is super interesting.
“My first experience with a woman in a typically male job, was in a campground at age 16. We worked as general labor, building things, cutting trails, planting trees and so on. Once or twice a week we would rotate an “easy day” while we rode the riding lawn mower, basically just sitting on our ass all day long. That ended when a girl started. She did nothing but ride the mower all day, every day. Somehow what was previously 1-2 easy days of work, became a full time job for her. And the rest of us no longer got any “easy days”. She never held a shovel, or a hammer, or an axe. But she got paid the same.”
“Hector, I retired before you were born,” he laughed.
Confused, I asked again, “Be honest, Dad, I mean, when will you stop working?”
His response was simple, “Working? What’s work? I don’t know what work is.”
“OK, Dad, forget about it,” I said as I assumed he wasn’t willing to talk about this.
“Hector,” he said, “what you know as my job is not work for me. I enjoy architecture so much that I could do this 24/7. This is who I am. Architecture is my life.”
So, to answer your question, why do rich people work even after they become rich? Why don’t they play?
My father lived to be 91 and worked until his body gave up on him. He was a passionate architect who found joy in his work. That’s what kept him active and full of joy every day. His passion for architecture was infectious, and it taught me this valuable lesson about work as a lifestyle.
So, if you ask me about retirement or work-life balance, I’d say it’s better to find what you love and make it a part of your life. When you find that, you’ll stop working and start living. We achieve a balance not by separating work from life but by integrating what you love into your lifestyle.
Today, this is how I see it: It’s not about working less; it’s about loving more what you do.
That’s the secret to a fulfilling life. As my father always said, “The day you find what you love is when you will stop working.”
So, go out there and find your passion. Make it your lifestyle.
And remember, it’s not work when you love what you do.
When I was a young boy, perhaps in second grade, we lived in Monroe , CT. It was a housing development that was being carved out of the forests, and was very nice. We only lived there for a year or so, before my father was transferred to Pittsburgh. We sold the place. Bad move, as the house ended up being worth millions of dollars.
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Anyways, at that time in my life, I loved roaming the woods. All 7 years old, and it was a big part of my childhood.
I would often go into the homes being constructed with wire cutters and rip out the wiring and electronics for fun. Oh, that is, until my father had a talk with a building contractor. LOL.
But, you know what?
Yeah, what I most remember about that time was spending all day hiking and exploring, and then coming home to a nice big “sit down” dinner. These were often improved upon as I got older, but at that time, my mother was just getting into her “stride” and it was simple but delicious fare.
Meatloaf, roasts, soups, chicken, and the like. All very delicious and filling.
Instant Pot Spaghetti 1
One of my fondest memories was the meat-laden spaghetti, with plain “wonder bread” on the side, and a nice large salad. Other popular meals consisted of pork chutney over rice, and submarine sandwich meals.
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But it’s the spaghetti that I miss the most.
one pot spaghetti and meat sauce image 9
I used to take the bread, and butter both sides. Then, I would spoon the spaghetti into the bread, making a fine thick sandwich. Oh, I was so simple and silly then.
I guess the MM audiences would go “ohhh yuck” at this story. But for me, nah. it’s good memories and good times.
I was a young, recently divorced, single mother of a 3 year old and one Christmas my grandmother gave me a HUGE box to open. In that box I found a little bit of everything! It had paper towels. Toilet paper, cleaning supplies, canned goods and many other items that you may want or need for your home and pantry! I was so grateful as it is pretty costly when you run out of everything especially all at the same time and because my Grandmother had no money she said she added everything a little at a time all throughout the year in order to help me the best way she could. My Grandmother was the sweetest, kindest Lady you’d ever know. I loved her with my whole heart!
I made $7.50 per hour for 3 years before I got a sweet .50 raise that catapulted me no where.
And I only got that because the lady was guilted into it.
I was told, as most people are, if you work hard and prove yourself, you will make more in time. Well that never really happened.
When I first started I just answered phones and worked the register. Then I got my vehicle inspectors license and begin inspecting vehicles. And answering phones and the register.
The business was a window tinting business, primarily, and they tinted vehicles, homes and commercial buildings. Soon I was prepping jobs for tint and doing bids for residential and commercial jobs. And doing well, I might add!
Then helping with the books. Opening, closing, picking up and dropping off customers. Driving out of town to pick up materials. And finally tinting commercial windows.
And I worked, often 80 hours per week. For $8 per hour. Which is a problem because at a certain point, over time starts to hurt. The extra would be taken out in taxes and the effort is not worth it.
Let me also mention that I didn’t have a car and used a company truck for company business but my commute to and from work everyday was just over 3 hours. I woke up at 4 to be there at 8:30. (Hitchhiked, rode 2 buses and walked…both ways…yep)
When I inquired about a raise she kept putting me off. She’d think about it. Couldn’t afford it, etc. Finally she said to me…
”It’s not like you need more money. It’s not like you have a family to take care of, house or car. It’s not like you have any bills.”
I will never ever, forget that. Ever.
Apparently it never occurred to her that I didn’t have any of those things because I was poor. And it was totally ok with her if I never had anything because it benefitted her.
And I had other issues with the place like rarely getting a day off and it would be the end of the world if I took a break at work because only smokers are allowed breaks. Twenty breaks, a hundred, doesn’t matter, because you need those cigarette breaks!
“If you don’t like it, then go work somewhere else.”
When she told me that.
I quit.
She was so certain I would come back because I had no prospects. Two weeks later, a friend told me she was looking for me, she wanted me to come back.
Why, you might ask??
Because she can’t find any decent help (read: people who’ll work for nothing!). And she wanted me to come back for…
Wait for it…
$8.50!!
See, I needed to understand that she could not afford more than that.
I told her. “No thanks.”
Then she called me selfish. She was struggling to find help and I didn’t care. Selfish!!
She ended up having to hire 4 other people. And for the next 5 years she contacted me off and on to try to get me to come back.
“Ok, how about $9! Be reasonable!!”
So on and so forth until she got to $12 over time.
I can’t honestly say I was irreplaceable. I can say that she needed a lot more help after I left. I can also say the business did not exist the fifth year after I’d gone.
I learned a very important lesson working for her. I needed to look out for myself. Work hard but only stay so long, based on the rate, frequency and size of raises. And all the while, always keep my ear to the ground for other opportunities.
I need to look out for me with the same ferocity the companies look out for their own interests.
In 100 years 5% of those who use the U.S. dollar will remember how it look. And 15% of the nations who bought weapons in 2023 will still use weapons from the U.S. still! In 100 years US economy will be lying at best a distant 3rd behind China and India by a very long way. China will be roughly 5–6 times the U.S. size and even India will be close to double that of the USA!
The G7 at best is a fifth the size on BRiCS economy. The U.S. will be broken up into some 3–4 nations. And Democrats and Republicans are close to the full scale or outright U.S. civil war 2.0 in 2123! The U.S. and some 4–5 die hard dogs like UK, Australia and Canada will meet and still talk shit. But no one bother, no one even listen.
China has made the world 10 times more prosperous and 20 times more peaceful by then. Talking about the U.S. in 2123 is like talking about the former Yugoslavia today. By 2023 the U.S. would have long collapse and implode it’s economy and a full scale fight between Democrats and Republicans and also between the whites and coloured and also between the rich and poor has destroyed the so call liberal democracy.
In 100 years, China is selling moon and space tourism, become the leader in autonomous vehicles, supersonic planes, biggest ports and airports world wide. China will be in the business of hypersonic weapons, quantum computers. Artificial intelligence, Bio technology and nuclear technologies. A far cry from selling cheap T-shirts and plastic toys in 1980! By 2123. China has built an alternative Panama and Suez Canal 5 times its size! And a bridge to cross Russia to Alaska!
BRICS by that time consist of 50 nations. And gets supports from 190 out of 200 nations. Meanwhile as many as 10 million are living in tents homeless in the U.S. suburbs. Random mass shootings incidents happened at least 50 times a day in the U.S. killing roughly 100 people a day in the U.S. Confederate flag flies more widely than the Stars and Stripes in the U.S. in 2123.
China has just given warnings on visiting certain parts of the USA no different from the warnings of visiting Ethiopia or Yemen in 2000. That is what is likely happening in 2123 a hundred years from now. But the U.S. still scream liberal democracy like a 80 years old lone hippie!
My husband and I are avid cruisers, which means food, food, and more food. That being said, I typically eat what I choose, save the occasional pick of something that is just not good. I usually eat breakfast alone, as he is still sleeping, and I sit and people watch in the buffet. My breakfast is always the same: oatmeal with fruit, some scrambled eggs, and a couple of pieces of ham or Canadian bacon. The same as I eat at home, essentially. I get to witness the Sodom and Gommorah of food sin every day on a cruise, especially at breakfast. Football sized mounds of food get piled on a plate, and a lot of it is eaten. But it pains me to see a muffin with one bite. A bowl of cereal that had one bite, uneaten food galore. Yes, we pay for the food in our cruise fare, but it is as though we have no conscience when it comes to waste. We often stop in Haiti at the cruise line’s resort, and they prepare a barbeque style lunch there. What many don’t know is that the leftovers are given to the locals, and I have watched them pick a piece of discarded watermelon off of the ground and brush off the sand to eat. While people are tossing full plates of food into the trash, these people are desperate for our scraps.
Food waste bothers me. For the farmer that took the time to sow the crops. For the cow kept pregnant to provide milk. For the pig slaughtered to provide us with ribs and bacon. For the countless hours spent preparing the food. We don’t honor what we have. We assume it is there because most of us have not had to go without. I am lucky, I always had a meal to eat, and I don’t waste food. I eat leftovers until they are gone, I cut my own fruit so that I can get the most out of the rind, and I toss produce scraps out for the deer and groundhogs that frequent my backyard.
We don’t appreciate the food we have. That is the sin.
The future of American women
Cajun Chicken Club Sandwich
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Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves
1 teaspoon Cajun seasoning
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
4 slices Swiss cheese
1/4 cup Parmesan salad dressing
4 hoagie rolls, split and toasted
8 slices tomato
8 strips bacon, cooked
Instructions
Pound the chicken to 3/8-inch thickness; sprinkle with Cajun seasoning.
In a large skillet, cook the chicken in oil for 5 minutes on each side or until no longer pink.
Place one slice cheese over each chicken piece.
Remove from the heat; cover and let stand for 1 minute or until cheese begins to melt.
Spread dressing over cut sides of rolls.
Place two slices of tomato on bottom of bun, top with chicken and two strips of bacon.
Serve with crispy fries or potato salad on the side.
When I was married to my exhusband, I got a ‘‘bee in my bonnet’ that I wanted to learn how to sew. I’d never sewed a day in my life. So we went to different places, looking at machines. Hubs was a ‘research on Consumer Reports’ kinda guy. He didn’t want to buy something that would fall apart. Who knows though, honestly, if I would suck at this?! I’m not sure if he looked at it that way. He just wanted to get me something good.
So, we kind of narrowed it down to a couple, and tbh, they were ridiculously nice. One was a Singer, the other I don’t remember but it was pricey I think like $800 in like 1990. Crazy, for just wanting to try something. It was going to be a ““surprise” for Christmas… but I sneaked a look in his wallet one night (I KNOW, bad wifey) and saw he bought the $800 wonder. I was SOOO excited!!
Christmas morning comes.
I’m still very excited, because this IS an awesome gift. Knowing did not diminish my excitement. I opened up the wrapping, and inside, it was a different machine.
Tears rolled down my face and I couldn’t speak. The $800 wonder wasn’t there. Apparently, he had exchanged it. For an upgraded, fancy $1100. Wonder.
It was amazing. It did embroidery, a zillion stitches. It was a very high quality name I can’t spell 😂 Husqvarna? But wait, there’s more. There’s another box. Inside that box was a 5 thread Serger, a BabyLoc. I had everything I needed to be successful.
I sewed my butt off for years.
But I’ll never forget that feeling of ““I want to give you the moon” that he gave me that Christmas. That was epic.❤️
If the controls are successful, they could handicap China for a generation; if they fail, they may backfire spectacularly, hastening the very future the United States is trying desperately to avoid. Alex W. Palmer, NYT.
The Chinese cannot understand why we fight with “Fists of Seven Injuries” (七伤拳), inflicting as much harm on ourselves as on our target. The sanctions hit our high-tech companies hard, as they lose not only their biggest market, but also important partners in their supply chain. Qualcomm’s profits fell 23%. Samsung’s dropped 95% . Louise Low. Face-off on the Grand Chessboard.
The year of living vulnerably: 2015
By 2015, when President Xi warned of China’s vulnerability to a chip embargo his team, led by the redoubtable Liu He, had spent two years preparing to create an indigenous chip industry. By 2022, the first fabs were producing commodity chips in high volumes at low cost and China spent $300 billion importing high-end chips.
The first breakthrough came when Huawei quietly released its 7 nm. Kirin 9000 chipsets, and its Mate 60 phone sales quickly surpassed Apple’s – as they were doing when the US embargoed Huawei. While the Kirin CPU was a remarkable achievement, professionals were more impressed by Huawei’s indigenous communications chips, like cellular modems, previously a Qualcomm semi-monopoly.
Three months later, YMTC shipped its 232-layer 3D TLC NAND memory chips. Their huge capacity and speedy 12 GB/s I/O make bleeding-edge drives possible.
But the sexiest market right now is insulated gate bipolar transistors, IGBTs. They’re the CPU ‘brains’ that conduct the orchestra of sensors and inputs and reduce EVs’ power loss and improve reliability. They’re expensive: 7% – 10% of an EVs’ final cost. Back in 2020, BYD supplied IGBTs for 20% of Chinese EVs’ and Infineon supplied 58%. The IGBT market has grown from $5.27 billion then to $8.42 billion this year and expects CAGR of 15.7% for some years.
There’s also money to be made in less sexy chips, like microcontrollers, says TP Huang. “Has anyone heard of Zhixin’s chips? You’ll find SMIC’s 40nm auto grade processor in Zhixin’s MCU microcontroller – domestically designed, fabbed and packaged entirely in China. This has huge implications for STMicro, Texas Instruments, Infineon and TSMC. Few automotive applications will ever need processes beyond 28 or 40nm, which is SMIC’s mass production sweet spot. Why wouldn’t Chinese automakers buy domestically? I bet Wall Street analysts covering TI have never looked into new Chinese competitors and considered what that entails. SMIC will be a monster soon enough”.
I was strung out for about 4 years from shooting up dope. After losing almost everything, I finally snapped out of it. It took, however, losing friends, my career, my therapist, my car, my motorcycle, my musical equipment, my instruments, my tools, my electricity, my water, all my savings which was in the tens of thousands, my sanity, almost my freedom, almost my life, and almost my house. I’m still in danger of losing it bc of unpaid property taxes of 3 years now going on 4. So when I was about 2–3 months sober, I had a friend drive me to Little Caesars to see if they were hiring. The manager was there. I asked. She said yes. Then she asked if I had manager experience. I said no…but I kinda did. I just wasn’t prepared for that gig being that I’m just barely out of a horrific addiction. She asked if I had an ID and a bank account for direct deposit. I said yes to the ID but no to bank account. She told me where I can get one at that moment and as soon as I get it to come back and I can begin to fill out the paperwork. Within 30 mins I was hired & started to fill out the necessary forms for employment. This was at the end of January this year and I’m still there and I’m sober.
I know this is a long story for such a question. My reason for including the other info is strictly for those that are currently where I was at when this happened. If this can help one person snap out of it then I will feel like I did a tremendous good for not just that one person but the world. Drug addiction affects way more than the drug addict. If you’re struggling, don’t give up. Be strong. It may take one time to quit or many times. Just don’t give up on yourself. I now have electricity and water and trash service. My house is still a wreck but it’s come a long way. I rode my bike to and from work which was 8 miles there and 8 miles back. But now I have a vehicle. I’m 6 feet tall and at the height of my addiction I weighed about 155lbs. Now I weigh a plump 210lbs. With time, that will change bc I want to be physically healthy. I am, w/o a doubt, physically healthier now than I was when I was using. And I prefer this to that any day. So if you’re reading this, you have to be strong and committed to this change no matter how tough it gets. It’ll get better. There’ll be shit days but it’ll pass. Keep going. We are made of sterner stuff. We’ve been through hell but now we are returning. And don’t think of it as starting over. You’re continuing your journey w a wealth of knowledge and wisdom. You may have lost everything but you’re not starting over. I wish you luck and lots of love. You’re not alone. I know that feeling of loneliness and despair. I felt lonely all throughout my journey through hell. But I wasn’t. You aren’t. If you need someone to vent w, message me. I’ll listen. I will not judge. If not me, reach out to someone. Anyone. And if you get rejected, fuck them. Move on. Don’t let that deter you. Look at me. I’m still here and am getting better everyday. Sure, we are all different but, in many ways, we are the same. We fuck up, and to fuck up is human.
One more thing: don’t beat yourself up if you quit and then go back to using again. Sometimes it happens. Sometimes it doesn’t. Just don’t let that stop you from quitting again. I have days when I feel so weak. I miss it so much. Coupled w the overwhelming feeling of how far I have to go to get back to where I was before my downfall, it feels hopeless. These moments test me, and I’ve come so close to shooting up again but I haven’t. I hope I don’t. In my journey, I always feel so glad I didn’t give in. Those feelings will wash away but they’ll be back again like waves in the ocean. You just stay afloat. It’ll pass and you’ll admire yourself for not giving in after it flows away. You’ll be proud of how strong you are becoming.
Anyway, there are my 2 cents.
Love yourself.
Love those around you.
Don’t be afraid to say it.
Don’t be afraid to show it.
Amp It The Fuck Up!!!
Antony Blinken Wrecked By Protesters In Congress
Great episode, Lee. Your humor is top dog here.
China and the Chip Wars: a Battle It Cannot Afford to Lose
The race for supremacy in the semiconductor industry is about much more than just technological dominance. It is about shaping the future of civilization.
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“Can China ace the chip wars?” This was the central question that framed my talk at the Future of Finance China Forum held in Beijing on July 28. The forum, run by The Asian Banker, served as a critical platform for thought leaders amid the unpredictable economic and financial landscape of 2023.
While these wide-ranging discussions were informative, my focus was squarely on the place and potential of China in the semiconductor industry. Instead of merely asking if China can win the chip wars, it’s more insightful to consider whether China can afford not to. This reframing provides a sharper understanding of the stakes for China’s economy and its global standing in the semiconductor industry.
Current situation
“Valuation extravaganza” is a phrase I use to describe the surging market caps of companies like Nvidia and AMD. The remarkable value growth of these companies has raised eyebrows and led to questions about whether we’re witnessing a semiconductor bubble. However, the rational ubiquity of semiconductors, essential to various sectors, might justify these high valuations.
In 2021, over 1.1 trillion chips were shipped worldwide, finding their way into everything from cars and consumer electronics to industrial applications. Semiconductors, quietly yet crucially, have become a part of nearly every aspect of modern life. According to a recent survey of industry executives, the industry’s future direction is being steered by emerging sectors like the metaverse, sustainability, mobility, and digital health – each calling for unique semiconductor capabilities.
This importance of semiconductors is reflected in the market’s response. Nvidia’s stock price tripled last year raising its valuation to more than $1 trillion with a Price-to-Earnings (P/E) ratio over 240. AMD’s stock price has also doubled, its P/E ratio almost reaching 500. This valuation growth is partly due to the robust demand for semiconductors, with the global market projected to grow to $1.8 trillion by 2032.
Even with the current chip shortage, some industry observers argue that these high valuations are justified. They view the long-term growth prospects for the industry as strong and believe these valuations are based on the expectation of persistent semiconductor demand.
Despite short-term disruptions like the global chip shortage, the long-term outlook for the semiconductor industry remains bright. Semiconductors play an integral role in the global economy, and their importance will continue to grow in the future, shaping our tech-driven world in ways we’re only beginning to understand.
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Future growth
We must also consider the potential drivers of future chip demand, taking into account the radical changes that advances in artificial intelligence (AI) may bring. A compelling perspective on this comes from Sam Altman, a prominent figure in the tech industry and CEO of OpenAI, in his manifesto “Moore’s Law for Everything”.
Altman applies the principle of Moore’s Law, which traditionally refers to the exponential growth in computing power, to a broader societal context, predicting a future where rapid growth permeates all facets of our lives and economy. Coined by Intel’s co-founder Gordon Moore, the law originally observed that the number of transistors on a microchip double roughly every 18 months. Altman, however, envisions its implications beyond the realm of computing power.
This broader interpretation anticipates an era of abundance, where the ubiquitous adoption of AI causes a steep drop in labor costs that fundamentally transforms society. Altman posits that as automation replaces human tasks from plumbing to R&D, labor costs will plunge, leading to significantly cheaper goods and services. The cost of the essential inputs shifts from labor and raw materials to data, driving prices towards zero and marking the advent of an era of profound abundance.
But abundance here isn’t just about an increase in available goods and services. It’s also about equalizing access to these resources, democratizing what was once the exclusive privilege of the affluent. High-quality healthcare, education, travel experiences, and even a secure standard of living—Altman’s vision suggests these will be accessible to far more people, with the cost of a “great life” approaching zero.
At the core of this transformation is AI, its learning and decision-making abilities propelling us towards this era of abundance. Yet, the manifestation of this AI-driven prosperity depends heavily on a robust, efficient, and advanced computational infrastructure— semiconductors or chips. Semiconductors are the foundation of our digital world, powering everything from personal devices to advanced machinery.
The complexity and scale of AI necessitate more advanced and efficient semiconductors. The AI algorithms promising this era of abundance require enormous computational power to process large volumes of data and make complex calculations. The task of providing this computational power depends on a wide range of semiconductors.
The abundance that Altman predicts will not only be driven by AI but will also critically hinge on the availability and advancement of semiconductors. In the coming era of AI-driven abundance, those countries and companies that can ensure a stable supply of chips will hold the upper hand. Thus, as China strategizes to win the chip wars, the stakes become clear—it’s not just about surviving but thriving in this world of unlimited abundance.
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Domestic politics and geopolitics
In the global context of the race for technological supremacy, the semiconductor industry is emerging as a key battleground. The rise of artificial intelligence (AI), with its potential to usher in an era of unprecedented abundance and revolutionize labor economics, amplifies the national security implications of the semiconductor industry. Indeed, the ‘resilient redesign’ of the global supply chain is becoming an essential facet of national strategies to ensure sustained success in this critical sector.
The complex web of today’s supply chain, spanning continents and countless entities, is inherently vulnerable to geopolitical shocks and pressures. The need for countries to develop resilient domestic capacities is becoming increasingly clear. Governments worldwide are already showing a keen interest in the sector’s growth and security, a trend that is set to heighten as strategic reorientations, regulatory shifts, and a heightened focus on security come into play. The semiconductor industry is becoming a significant geopolitical flashpoint, a field of intense competition for technological dominance.
In the context of China’s domestic politics, this resonates profoundly with President Xi Jinping’s vision of ‘common prosperity’. The potential abundance enabled by AI could pave the way for realizing this vision, democratizing access to what is currently available only to the affluent and creating a more equal society. The era of abundance that Sam Altman envisions could, in fact, help manifest President Xi’s aspiration for the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
In this light, China’s broad conception of national security – which encompasses not only traditional military aspects but also economic and even cultural security – becomes particularly relevant. The advancements in AI, underpinned by the semiconductor industry, will be vital for maintaining and enhancing China’s national security in this broad sense.
Therefore, China cannot afford to lose the ‘chip war’. The stakes are beyond high – economic vitality, technological advancement, geopolitical influence and even the future of the human race. The semiconductor industry is not just another industry; it is a cornerstone upon which human civilization may be decided.
In conclusion, the race for supremacy in the semiconductor industry is about much more than just technological dominance. It is about shaping the future of civilization. For China, acing the chip wars is not just a matter of national security in the traditional sense. It is also about securing the future of its society and realizing its vision of prosperity for all.
Before a class room of three hundred 1st year students, I was teaching, and my cell phone started vibrating. And I totally froze.
Just a couple of months earlier, I had become a father for the first time, and my girlfriend and I had agreed not to call during class hours, unless it was an emergency.
Often, I muted my cell phone during class hours, but this time I had forgotten. And this time the phone also rang. My girlfriend was the only person who would ring me at this unearthly hour in the morning. And suddenly it crossed my mind. Something is wrong with the baby.
Instead of two minutes, I had more than fifteen minutes left to cover while my mind blocked my every mathematical thought. So I taught the rest of the class through a true other-worldly out-of-body experience — I literally heard myself talking to the students, explaining things on the blackboard, and answering questions, while I was constantly thinking —
Something is wrong with the baby—Something is wrong with the baby—Something is wrong with the baby—Something is wrong with the baby.
When class was over and questions had been answered, I immediately called my girlfriend. She had forgotten about our agreement.
I’m a landlord and went to renew the lease on one of my rentals once. And when I pulled in to the neighborhood and turned the corner towards the house, the very first thing I saw was the screen door hanging off the front of the house.
I pulled into the driveway, knocked on the door, and while I was waiting for them to answer I looked at the screen door. It was literally ripped off its hinges.
Then they came out and greeted me as if nothing had ever happened.. I asked what happened to the door, and I swear they both looked me straight in the eye and said..
“It was like that when we moved in.” I was absolutely shocked…
I said, “Doug. You two have been here for TWO YEARS. You signed a move-in checklist when you first moved in that said everything was ok. I took and have pictures of everything before you moved in. And last but not least, I was here exactly ONE year ago to renew your lease then! Now, is this seriously your story, and are you sure it’s the one you want to stick to??”
“Yes.. It was like that when we moved in.”
So I called bullshit and told them that I would not renew their lease, and to be out before the end of the week. OR if they wanted to stay then they could fix the door.
They fixed it – reluctantly. Still swearing that it was like that when they moved in.
When I was an administrative assistant to the dean of a department at a 2 year college, there were a couple times during the year that I ate at my desk for various reasons. There was another admin in a different department that took a dislike to me and tried to get me in trouble for only taking 30 mins to eat then leaving 30 mins early. She went to my boss and he said I had his permission to do so. She then went to HR to file a complaint and I got called in. After that, I requested a sit down with HR, my boss, her and her boss which we had. Over several weeks, I had documented everything she had said and done to undermine me and she turned beet red and had no real defense since she documented nothing. A couple of weeks later, she no longer worked there and they hired a woman who became a good friend.
Document everything—day, time, incident, what was said—and keep it in a safe place. I used an old fashioned college notebook and hand wrote everything with just a blank line between each incident. I about filled the notebook in less than a month.
He was the head janitor at my school, a teddy bear of a man, under 5 feet tall with the sweetest little smile and laugh. He had worked at the school since he was a teen and was due to retire.
Da Tuk (not his real name) was gentle, kind and generous, a soft touch for a sob story. He and his family had just enough but always ended with too little because of his ‘kindness.’
A relative had begged him for a large sum, almost all that Da Tuk and his wife had saved for a deposit on a home. He signed over a land deed to Da Tuk and then disappeared into the gambling dens of Klong Tuey.
When Da Tuk took his family to see the land, they found a hilly, barren, nowhere-near-anywhere, unsellable plot. Da Tuk was inconsolable, realizing that he had been duped and had lost almost everything.
Fortunately, the chairman of the school found a way to help the family to buy a small house and deal with the costs of their children’s educations. They never really recovered from the loss.
As the school grew, so did Da Tuk’s staff, to the point where he was overwhelmed. An ‘assistant’ was hired but was, in fact, in charge. However, he always treated Da Tuk as the boss and saw to it that others did as well.
For Da Tuk’s retirement day, the Board had arranged for a huge luncheon, and we were all seated, waiting for Da Tuk.
When he arrived, he looked stunned, which surprised us because everyone had been talking about the party and teasing him for over a month.
Then an equally stunned member of the Board made a shocking announcement.
Da Tuk had just been paid forty million baht (approximately two million U.S. dollars) for that ‘worthless’ land because it was adjacent to the planned eastern seaboard industrial estate.
I got laid off from my work. It’s an awful experience. I just had the yearly performance review and got a raise, I was thinking ‘life is freaking good’, then one fine morning, I woke up to a sudden 1:1 from my boss, and he told me I was let go (together with half of the company).
It’s unexpected, and I was shocked.
I sent my coworkers texts, told them my goodbyes and my wish to stay in touch with them.
All of them offered the same message:
Please let me know how I can help in any way at all!
I was touched seeing those messages, truly.
The only thing I asked from them was: I need to retouch my Linkedin Profile, the job market right now is super tough and competitive, anything can help my profile stands out would mean a great deal and I really appreciate a recommendation from them – if they have a few minutes to write me one. It would be a huge help.
Only 2 out of 10 people offered me the message to help in any way actually did give me a recommendation. And one of them actually referred me everywhere she could trying to help me to get interviews.
I don’t think any less of the 8 people that didn’t give me a recommendation. I understand perfectly that there are millions reasons for that, like I might not worth giving a recommendation, or they just simply forgot to give one, or writing a recommendation is not their cup of tea, etc… I just wish they didn’t tell me that they would help in any way if they didn’t mean it.
And I do admire the ones that offer and live up with their saying “let me know how I can help in any way”
Being a person of their own words is a super power.
Way out in the stick in the north of England there was huge project ongoing to build a dam. A new site manager had been brought in because workers were reportedly lazy, either turning up late or skiving off down the local pub (which I worked in) during working hours. On his first day on the job he grabbed someone from the admin office and headed off round the site looking for a sacrificial lamb. He was going to fire someone as an example to the rest of the staff.
After half an hour or so he came across a young guy sitting behind a building, against a wall, drinking coffee.
“Who are you?” he bellowed. “What’s it got to do you with you?” asked the guy. “I’m the new site manager, who are you, and where do you work?” “Fuck off, leave me alone!”, replied the young guy. “OK, you’ve had your chance, you’re fired!” He turned to the admin guy, “get his details, give him his cards!” The site manager then stormed off thinking this was a good start to his tenure.
Later that day I was serving behind the bar in the pub and the guy came walking in. “Give me a pint of Guinness, I’ve just been fired”. “Oh dear, first one’s on the house!” “Cheers, that’s very nice of you.” he replied. He had his Guinness then asked how much? I said, “no, it’s on the house. Anyone who gets fired from the site gets a free beer.” “No – it’s okay, I’d better pay!” “But you got fired – it’s free!” “I did get fired. I’m just sitting there having a cup of coffee when this idiot appears out of nowhere screaming and shouting at me, and fires me on the spot. He seemed so happy about it I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I didn’t work for him, and I’m just a hiker who had stopped for a coffee.”
Surprised My Cheating Wife With Divorce Papers at Her “Secret” Hotel Getaway Affair.
I nearly hit ENTER on my resignation email. I’d been with the company for 24 years at the time and I was tired of my boss contradicting everything I’d say. Sometimes he was right, usually he wasn’t but of course he only remembered that one out of 10 times he was right come review time.
Most people say I’m too much of a pacifist but he’d ding me as pointlessly argumentative. And, the reason why I was never promoted (he’d tell me year after year) is because I’d said or done “the wrong thing yet again to” and it would always be an unnamed executive. If I asked what I did or said, I’d get “you know I can’t tell you that” and if I asked who’s cage I’d supposedly rattled, it would be another “you know I can’t tell you that.”
This day, he said something that was completely wrong about a field he knew zero about and that I was an expert in. I should have known better but I said something just “in passing.” He erupted and screamed at me. “YOU ARE WRONG and you felt the need to ruin my day. I walked in here this morning feeling okay for the first time in months. You couldn’t let it go. Noooo … not you … you had to correct me and ruin my whole day. And you aren’t even right Mr. Know-it-all. Fine. You ruined my day so now I’m going to ruin yours. I expect a written apology, three copies, and this is going in your file.
I will then have your final written warning for insubordination and disrupting the office ready when you come back with your apology. IF I accept it, you will go on warning. But if I don’t like what you said, I tear that and the warning up and you will be done. You have pretty much just thrown away 24 years of work and any goodwill you might have built up with me because you just always have to say something.
You just can’t let anything go and you always have some story. No matter what anyone says, you were there, did that, had that or something too. Well now I think you can add fired for cause and blacklisted from a whole industry to your awesome list of life experiences. I’m giving you one hour. I’ll see you then or you can spend the time packing up your stuff. I really don’t care which at this point.
And because you are a critical employee with no backup or replacement, I will see to it that you pay for this for a long time to come if I have any say over anything. Now get going. The next time I see you, it will be either carrying your shit to your car or in here with a heart felt written apology.”
I typed out a resignation, just a terse one paragraph indicating only that I resigned effective that day and would agree to make my last day two weeks hence. Dated and my signature typed. I was ready to hit SEND and the email would go to my boss, HR and the Sr VP (who was the department head).
But then I thought: first, I’d be out of a job and it would not be easy for me to get another one. It’s next to impossible to describe what I really do — it’s a bunch of low level tasks where the high level aspect is that I can do them all. I already knew that no one in my industry was interested — had they been, I’d have been contacted at least one of the times where competitors or clients tried to grab employees from us. I was about the only long time employee who’d never been contacted by anyone.
My resume would make even less sense outside my industry. I’d at best have to hope for some small employer looking for a jack of many trades willing to work for next to nothing. Not very appealing.
He was right in one sense about something: whenever someone had a story, I’d often have a counterpart. I’m not a know it all, just a lot older than many of my colleagues and I’ve been around. I’d always thought I was just participating in a conversation but maybe that’s not the way some took it. Perhaps I should sit and listen more even if I did have such an experience myself and even if the teller was way off base.
So I resolved to say a lot less and not correct people unless there could be a serious consequence for letting it go. Even if I’d done whatever 50 times to their 1 and was considered an expert, just let it go. Let them tell their story.
Ruined his day? That was his responsibility. He was going through many personal problems but people other than I were getting tired of his ripping our heads off at work because his personal life was in a tailspin. I know that when I was having many issues one time (many years ago, different boss), my manager came along and told me I needed to straighten myself up.
He knew what I was going through and that’s why nothing had been said for a couple weeks. But now I had to pull myself out of it or he’d have to let me go. That was a couple weeks … but my current boss had been going on that way for months.
So there was wrong on my side and that was on me to handle. But I wasn’t responsible for ruining my boss’ day with an offhand comment of a factual nature. I needed to speak a lot less: not counter a story with one of my own, and don’t correct someone unless there was a vital business need for it. On the other hand, I was not about to take written responsibility for someone else’s life and emotions.
I apologized verbally including indicating where I was wrong and what I planned to do about it. But I made clear what I was apologizing for along with being clear without saying it that it would not be in writing. I also made clear without throwing anything in his face that if he chose to give me a final written warning, I would not sign it but rather resign effective immediately.
Nothing more came of it in large part because by the time I walked in there, the anger was gone. I dealt with this in a clear headed way and that’s the point to this long answer. Anger solves nothing, even if justified or at least partially so. We’ve probably all snapped at work and with what results? If you have sufficient clout, others might respond out of fear. But that never results in a good long term effect. You’re far better off resisting the urge to go off until you’ve had a few minutes to think about the whole situation.
I’m boy, When I was 13 , The principal always checks students’ hair and nails and punishes them if they were long
One day, he came to the line and checked our nails, I had forgotten to trim my nails for a long time, and my nails were long like a girl’s.
When he saw my nails, he asked sarcastically: Am I a girl?
I was embarrassed and lowered my head
The principal sent me to the corner of the wall and I stood facing the wall with my head down
he sent about ten other people to the side of the wall because their nails were too long
When all the students went to class, the manager and the principal came to us with a ruler, the principal said, we have to give them a nice punishment!
Principal said that we should paint their nails to make them girls!
They took us to the manager’s office and forced us to put our hands on the table
Then the manager took out a bottle of red nail polish from his drawer and started painting our nails completely
We felt ashamed and humiliated and our heads were down
They took us to the front of the line in front of all the students and calles us girls!
All the students laughed at us and we cried and felt humiliated
They hit our palms with a ruler to make us cry more!
From that day on, we didn’t have the courage to keep our nails long
1. Successful people don’t leave their life in the hands of luck. Life is too unpredictable to leave it in the hands of luck. Therefore, successful people choose to take control of things rather than sit around and wait for luck to finally smile at them.
2. Successful people take risks at the right place, at the right time. Successful people know that they don’t have the luxury to be taking mindless risks that can do more bad than good. Rather, they wait for that perfect timing and occasion when they can justify taking the risk.
3. Successful people trust their intuition. Many people underestimate the power of gut feeling. But in reality, it’s one of the most efficient and free tools you can utilize profitably. And successful people know how to do just that.
4. Successful people are the masters of their own destiny. Some people believe that one’s destiny is predetermined, and so they decide to simply let things unfold accordingly. But successful people prefer to take charge and carve out the destiny they aim for.
5. Successful people know the importance of having control over their emotions. They understand the impact emotional control or the lack thereof can have on their motivation, perseverance, and overall success. Therefore, they always try to keep their emotions under control so they’ll be the ones having the power over them.
6. Successful people practice positive self-talk. Successful people try not to listen to that negative voice in their head that tells them it is not going to work out. They don’t insult themselves, either. Instead, they train themselves to be compassionate, understanding, and encouraging toward themselves so they never succumb to the destructive effects of negative self-talk.
7. Successful people know that making mistakes is an essential part of the process leading them to ultimate success. They are aware that no matter how many mistakes they make along the way, they can make use of each by learning from them, guiding them toward success they’ve been working hard for.
8. Successful people know how to take constructive criticism well. Not only do they understand the benefits of constructive criticism, but they also appreciate getting it because they see it as a way to improve themselves or get closer to their goals.
9. Successful people have an unshakeable faith in themselves. Even if everyone else around them thinks they are just idealistic dreamers chasing after unrealistic goals, they refuse to see themselves from the same lenses because they know they have what it takes to get the things they are after.
My first thought was to say no but as I was paying for my gas I grabbed the milk. Outside was his girlfriend holding a box of cereal. He thanked me and I started to walk to my car. Something in me made me turn around. I told them I was about to get a car wash but if he wanted to wash it for me I’d pay him $20. We went to the nearest car wash and he had tears in his eyes after I paid him!
He told me that more than anything he appreciated me giving him the opportunity to be a man again in the eyes of his girlfriend and work for the money. The whole time his girlfriend helped him. It’s like she was proud of him. You could tell the love was so real. Real beyond material things and what he could do for her. She told him he did a great job and he couldn’t stop smiling. I had a long talk with him and her and he had a backpack full of paperwork from all of the places he’s been going to get help for them. I drove them to my apartment complex and gave him clothes for interviews and a few outfits and fitted caps. I don’t have much but life is about sharing what you do have.
Be a blessing to someone today because you could be in that situation before you know it! I gave them my number and I plan to take them to any interviews or appointments they have. It’s a great day to be alive no matter what your situation is. Someone has it worse than you! Share this message and inspire others to do good.”
Well it was a older Ford heavy duty truck, a three axle mini dump truck. It came in for brake work and when I opened the hood I discovered that most of the underhood wiring was redone with household electrical wiring cable, Romex and stripped Romex. It ran fine for a truck of the era that it was built and when the guy came to pick it up after the brake work, I had to ask about the wiring. He had the truck sitting unused for several years while he was working for someone and mice or squirrels had gotten in and destroyed the wiring and he had a roll of Romex in his garage and redid the wiring using another very similar truck as reference and got some bits from another truck he found in a junkyard. Mechanically the truck was solid and I was more impressed than anything else with the craftiness.
Woman Demands A Train Ran On Her! This Is Why Men Question The Value Of MW
Lack of purpose. All your young life you are given purpose of passing exams and learning, then all of a sudden you are thrown into the world and told to find your own meaning.
You can stay up as late as you want. But you shouldn’t.
Where did all my friends go?
Didn’t know that other adults have the emotional intelligence of teenagers and its almost impossible to deal with logically.
Getting burnt out.
Having to make dinner every. Fucking. Day.
Not having a lot of free-time or time by myself.
Figuring out what makes you happy. Everyone keeps trying to get you to do things you’re good at, or that makes you money, but never to pursue what you enjoy.
The more life you’ve lived, the faster time seems to go.
I once stopped to help a guy change a tire. He had an arm in a sling and two very young kids in his car. He thanked me saying he didn’t want to hurt his arm any more and wanted to get back to work.
Fast forward three months and I’m in a very ugly motorcycle wreck. One of the EMTs noticed my back was broken. Had they continued I’d have been paralyzed. His quick thinking prevented that.
After I recovered I got to meet the EMT crew that saved my life.
The guy that noticed my back was broken? The guy whose tire I had changed.
About 25 years ago, while living in Tucson Arizona, I received a phone call (bold = caller, non-bold = me):
Hi; Is this David Joseph? Dr. David Joseph?
Yes, who’s this?
Hi David!! It’s Garry Shandling!
Now at that time, Garry Shandling was a pretty well-known comedian, with his own show (“It’s Garry Shandling’s Show”), which was well known for its hilarious opening theme song. I was a big fan of his show, so I assumed a friend was pranking me:
Oh really?? Garry Shandling? Prove it; sing me your opening theme song!
He went ahead and sang me his opening theme song, and then went on:
David, how have you been? It’s been forever — can you believe it’s been over 20 years since we graduated?!
Since we graduated? Graduated what??
High School; Palo Verde??
Wait, I think you have the wrong David Joseph; are you looking for Dr David Joseph, the vet?
Yes; that’s not you? I thought your voice sounded different!
Yeah, that’s not me; I’m a people doc. I think that David Joseph moved away from Tucson a few years ago.
Oh, bummer. OK, I guess I’ll keep trying to find him — we were really close in High School.
Well, if you don’t find him, feel free to call me anytime; I’m happy to be your back-up Dr David Joseph!
Haha! Maybe I will! Thanks!
Good luck!
Then he called back a couple of hours later, explaining that he hadn’t been able to find his high school friend. We chatted a bit more, and then, once every few years, out of the blue, I would get a call from him, wanting to ‘catch-up with his back-up David Joseph.’
After I made a successful (static line) parachute jump – which turned out to be my first ever (and last) jump from a plane – I traveled back to the jump site three more times with Jeff C. to do it again. Various conditions prevented that from happening again, and after the third time that we were unable to jump again, we saw a fire a couple blocks off the interstate that was being fought by a team of professionals. A police officer instructed us to move along, but Jeff chimed in with “Why don’t they just let a good fire burn?” The officer walked to the front of Jeff’s car and wrote down the license plate and village sticker information, then asked Jeff AND me for ID. During the following week, I talked to mutual acquaintances of Jeff and related the aforementioned story to them. From one former coworker of Jeff, I learned that he was suspected of possibly starting two fires at his place of employment, with the second allegation causing him to be let go – I decided not to key ‘fi_ed’ – immediately. I no longer answered any of Jeff’s subsequent telephone calls, and did not answer the door when he came over.
Psychologist Addresses FEMALE DISRESPECT: why this is essential to relationship success
Damn! This is one HELL of a great video! Shit! Amazing video!
What most people don’t understand is that disrespect is a process. The best predictor of overt disrespect is covert disrespect. And this is why it is important to address disrespectful behavior while it is still in its nascent form. Failing to do so will jeopardize your relationship, primarily due to the fact that it is not possible for a woman to love a man she does not respect.
“Seeing how my now ex wife treated me compared to everyone else was an eye opener. I realized why everyone liked her, she treated them with respect and care, while I got the cold, cruel, disrespectful part.”
He beat me with a belt until I would bleed when I was very young and then when I became a teenager he would beat me with his fists. He broke my nose and blacked my eyes a few times. He’s dead now and I’m 69 years old. I have never for forgiven or forgotten. He beat my mom too. They divorced after I left home at 17. May he rot in HELL!
Oh man! I sure have. Often. Up until recently I worked, either with a guy or on my own, doing demolition, kitchen removals and buying/selling used building materials. I also ride a motorcycle. A big-ass noisy motorcycle. And, personally, I think I am a pretty nice person. I am considerate, kind and polite. But sometimes I am covered in drywall or brick dust, insulation, paint or sawdust. I usually carry Handy Wipes to, at least, wipe my face and hands clean. I may be dressed in work clothes and/or motorcycle gear. I am otherwise a well-groomed, clean, and pleasant 54 year old woman. I currently work outside all day and am in and out and crawling around assessing cars and trucks. Again, in work clothes or cover-all’s I am often dusty and wind-blown with dirty, with grease under my nails.
AND I GET TREATED LIKE SHIT.
I get followed, have had rude and disparaging comments made or completely ignored. Some staff treat me like I am invisible and are dismissive, assuming (I think) that I have no money to spend. At other times, they have been openly mistrusting and suspicious.
ALL BECAUSE I WORK FOR A LIVING!
Two of my very worst experiences occurred at places connected to religious institutions. One a church bazaar and the other a faith-based second hand shop. Another time I was speaking, as a counsellor, on a panel about alcoholism and addiction. Independent of each other, the hosts TWICE assumed that I was the newly recovered individual as opposed to the presenting professional.
In NO WAY am I ashamed of what I do or how I look. In fact, I am proud of who I am and the jobs I have done (and still do). I just wish people would judge me on my character or my actions rather than the way I look.
Bought a small place years ago that had a nice shed that could be used for tools, mower, etc and I asked if it conveyed and was told yes. Went to move in after settlement and no shed. Since it was in the contract, I called my realtor and told her the she came back or I would immediately stop the sale. No shed by the next day when promised so I notified the bank again that the sellers were in breach of contract. I was living in the house but had not put my furniture in yet, still in the box trailer belonging to a friend. The sellers had the shed at their new place but moving it damaged it so I refused to accept it and they had to order a brand new shed, same size, for the deal to be completed. The bank held the check, I finished moving in, and 2 weeks later the shed arrived.
Don’t try fast ones when selling since you may seriously regret the expense of fixing it.
Do what my garden-savvy cousin did to keep deer away from her garden. She set up hoses and multiple impact sprinklers with a motion sensor that set them off when deer approached, startling them and soaking them. Very effective, and not mean.
If the neighbor complains your sprinklers got him wet, say “Sorry, I had to do something to keep the deer/bears/monkeys/kids from stealing all my peaches before I can make pies/cobblers/jam from them.
You could even say, if I have a good crop this year, I’ll bring you a bowl of peaches.
In Chinese culture, sharing a meal with friends or family is a time to socialize. It’s actually something I very much enjoy being part of. As a Westerner, growing up in a Western and traditional Southern family, children were “seen and not heard,” and the talking points of a meal were, “Please pass the salt,” or “mind your manners.” The lively, upbeat, excitement that is exuded by Chinese people sharing a meal is something I adore.
When I bought my house the seller told me he had lost a ring a few years prior, and if I ever found it, it would mean the world to him to get it back. Three years later I saw something shiny while I was raking leaves. I picked it up and realized it was a ring encased in mud. I cleaned it off but didn’t think it could possibly be the lost ring. The stones were so large I thought it must be costume jewelry. I phoned the old owner and told him I found a ring but didn’t think it was valuable and asked if he could come take a look. When he saw it he started to cry and said it had great sentimental value. He offered me a reward but I declined. It didn’t seem right to take money for something that belonged to him. What I thought was a cheap ring with glass stones turned out to be $70,000 worth of diamonds.
a friend of ours who at the time was single mother of two, her son is autistic. She complained she had no heat in her mini van and winter in southern Ontario can be bitter cold. Local franchise repair shop quoted her north of $1700 to fix it!
I said let me take it to my trusted repair shop.
After a quick diagnosis he says “is she a teacher?” I’m like “how’d you know?”
He says “I cleaned a pile of papers out of the vents by the the heater core…lots of heat now!”
$75 and she had heat again…and was advised to keep papers off her dash!
Yeah actually… A few years ago I went out on the town for a mates birthday – straight from work. I’m carrying with me a £2.5k laptop and my mates got his full pay packet in cash and a thermos of soup given to him by a friend for his birthday (separate story).
These two kids come up to us and demand all of our worldly belongings. We dismiss them, as the bravery of a nights worth of fairly strong Hazy Pale Ale courses through our veins. As we walk off, the braver of the two pulls out a pretty small knife and demands more of our attention.
With a look from my mate we start off round the corner. Once we’re there we in whispered, quick voices form a plan and we wait for them.
I caught the first guy with a swing of my rucksack right under the chin and all 15” and 2.6kg of my MacBook Pro knocked his head back nearly off his feet. My friend followed with the Thermos on the 2nd. We didn’t hold back on those hits.
Once they recovered enough to speak, the braver one asked the other one if he was bleeding… he was… and the other guy told him.
Angry from the revelation he was bleeding, he said if he ever saw us again we’re dead… My friend, living round the area didn’t take kindly to this and threw the statement back at him. Told him, NO if you ever come back here YOU’RE dead and flew at the guy with the Thermos a second time. He chased them both up the street with that flask, with me laughing in hysterics at the bottom of the road.
In a strange way, being drunk that night changed the whole outcome of that encounter. Doubt we would have stood up to them sober.
He most certainly has a case. One of my neighbors tried to have two of our old silver birches and one 50-years-old Cedar tree cut, and it cost him dearly. It started with a Christmas tree though.
We came back from the United States, and as usual when we are back from holidays, I checked the garden — just to see how the plants, flowers and mushrooms (but also our rabbits and barn owls) were doing.
And then I noticed that one of our beautiful Christmas trees had been cut. The top half was gone, and no higher Mathematics was needed to conclude who had done it. One of our neighbors — I once had a relationship with his youngest daughter Ebba, but he seemed reasonably normal in those days — goes berserk if even only a couple of leaves fall on his property.
This time, he had cut an evergreen conifer, and we were sick of it. We called the neighborhood police man to sort this out, and he reprimanded the neighbor — to no avail. We decided not to go to court for the time being.
Instead, he sued us.
Together with another neighbor friend (who apparently also had problems with leaves and needles without us knowing), he filed a complaint against us in Justice Court. Big goal: having some of our trees (two old birches and an old Cedar) cut.
It did not quite work out that way, though.
Instead, he was forcefully reprimanded by the judge, who explained that leaves and needles are a part of country life, and that there was nothing wrong nor illegal about them falling in his garden.
The judge also dismissed the demand that our trees would be cut —
“It is STRICTLY FORBIDDEN to cut old trees, Mister C., so NO ONE will touch them. And very high maximum penalties would be issued if someone would.”
(Goal not attained.)
Since then, our neighbor had become even more mental than before. He throws all the leaves and needles he can find in our garden, and he has, since recently, started to throw buckets of his own stinking urine in our backyard.
I’m also one of those foreigners who think China is not just good, but a great place to live in! After working in China for the past few years, I have realized so many reasons for loving China.
A quick list of my personal observations about China:
1. Life has been very peaceful in China: I am never worried about my personal safety, or disruption of work. Life has been going quite smoothly.
2. Cost of living: About RMB 5,000/month (~$700). For the quality of life that I have enjoyed in China, it can’t get more affordable.
3. Jobs: my job is going fine. No issues with salaries.
4. Tax holidays: expats from a good number of countries (including US) enjoy tax holidays in China (due to the Double Tax Avoidance Treaty). I have not paid any tax in China so far. 🙂
5. Great food: China offers one of my favorite cuisine (I also love Thai, Vietnamese, Malaysian, and Indian food). You can order from home. RMB 15 for 20 dumplings (饺子, jiaozi). Even if you cook at home, it can’t get cheaper than that.
6. Online shopping: you can buy almost everything online in China. Taobao is probably one of those few sites I visit every day. I buy something every day.
7. Cashless payments: we don’t carry cash in China. We just need to bring a phone, scan QR codes and pay. In fact, you can rent bicycles by just scanning QR codes (first 1hr ride is free).
8. I have a history of diabetes. Going anywhere, including back to the US, puts me at a very high risk of Covid-19 pandemic. There are great medical facility in China. Every Chinese city has a good number of hospitals. It’s very convenient to visit hospital in China (Btw, my city is virtually covid-19 virus free).
9. Learning Chinese: if you want to learn Chinese, China is the best place. The whole atmosphere is warm and welcoming. You’ll learn Chinese fast. This was also a reason for me to move to China.
10. Travel: Lots of nice places in China. Recently I visited Zhouzhuang (周庄), a water town (江南水乡). It was a pleasant experience. Chinese tourist attractions are generally very different from the typical western tourist attractions.
11. No illegal immigration: you can’t enter China illegally. You will be caught if you try. Penalties are heavy. You will be deported, however, only after serving the sentence.
Living in China is a very different experience. It doesn’t make sense to compare China with other countries (or vice versa). Explore what China has to offer, and you’ll love it.
Also, I wish to thank China for taking a good care of me throughout my China stay, especially during my diabetes phase. Otherwise, I couldn’t have survived probably.
The U.K.: much, much more working-class than Americans are raised to assume. It’s a textbook example of American ignorance that we tend to believe Brits are all very sophisticated and “aristocratic.” (And I don’t mean that as an insult, just a reality check.) Britain can be polished and classy, and it can be tougher than a bad neighborhood of Philly.
Ireland: deep beauty, deep gloom, too. Really depends on where you go and when and what you’re up to. One of the friendliest countries I’ve been to. Just don’t expect everything to be rainbows and sentimental fantasy and you’ll be fine. Again, from an American perspective: virtually all Americans need a reality check here.
Mexico: been there multiple times, still haven’t been killed. Haven’t witnessed so much as a mugging let alone a cartel operation. The worst thing I’ve seen is sexual harassment. The worst thing that personally happened to me was an epic case of farts. In general, what I’ve seen of Mexico is more truly cultured and sophisticated than a large chunk of the most hyped places in Europe and certainly more cultured and tasty than significant swathes of the United States. (Some of Mexico is pretty benighted, but the chances of you ending up in those corners of Mexico are next to none.)
The United States: lived here most of my life, still haven’t been shot. A country with places as diametrically different as Vermont and Miami Beach, New York and the Sonora. What’s pretty true about one place isn’t even remotely true about another. And contrary to the stereotype that Americans brook no criticism of our country, I think it’s actually the most hyper-self-critical country I’ve ever personally been to. If you can’t hear copious criticism coming out of the United States, see an ear doctor, your ears are plugged up. (Too much of this criticism is tribal criticism and not enough self-criticism, but Americans love to bitch and moan about the place. How do you not hear this?)
Canada: lovely people, lovely country, but nowhere near as happy or perfect as a big part of the world believes they are. Canadians are aware of their problems, because they’re honest. This isn’t a comment about Canadians. It’s a comment about the mystery of why so many other people aren’t aware of the problems and unhappiness that do exist in Canada.
Colombia: didn’t get killed. Didn’t see any obvious drug deals. Freakishly hot. Got horrifying Montezuma’a Revenge: do not ever ever EVER drink the water. Would I revisit? Yes.
Cuba: very much like the pictures of 1950’s cars and bars would have you believe. Fucking amazing to fly down there from Wisconsin in February: it’s not a long flight at all, but you feel like you’ve gone back 60 years in time and also dropped into what Southern Europe felt like a generation or two ago, not just the Caribbean. Lost worlds, truly. The sanitation will get you, though. The poverty is shocking. The people are wonderful but deserve so much better.
Italy: the only part I really liked was Sicily, where I didn’t killed by the mafia. Sicily was extraordinary.
Greece: incredibly cold when I was there. I think I picked up a minor case of pneumonia. It was March and I was freezing to death.
Turkey: went in 2002 and no Muslims killed me. The waiter brought his kid sister out, maybe 10 years old, to practice English. She giggled and thought Americans were funny. I thought the Turks were friendlier than the Greeks. But I was an asshole kid back then.
Bulgaria: also went in frozen weather in March 2002. Bulgaria was probably the closest to the grim Iron Curtain stereotype I’d sort of been expecting. (You half expected to see Stalin at the train station in Sofia.) But I’ve heard it’s changed a lot for the better. I was there 21 years ago. Would I revisit? Yes. In July.
Spain: didn’t see anybody going to bullfights. Tacos are not the dominant cuisine there. Paella is overrated tourist food. Seville beats Barcelona and Madrid. Go to Lanzarote for surreal quiet time (I was there last April, showed up in a tiny town at night, sat on the balcony watching the moon, and I was like “I’m in Spain and there’s no noise. This is weird.” Also, you’re more likely to see people having big parties than going to a Catholic religious procession. Spain has an exaggerated reputation for being “extremely Catholic.” The American Midwest is 10 times more Catholic.
Sweden: only went to Stockholm. Incredibly empty. Not very exciting. Dirtier than I expected.
Finland: severely underrated people.
Iceland: not as cold as Minnesota. (I’ve been to both in January. Iceland is Ipanema Beach compared to Minnesota.)
Portugal and Slovenia: Europe’s most underrated countries.
Czech Republic, Poland and Croatia: not gray. Everybody who heard I was going there said “that sounds so gray.” These places were bursting with color and life. Ate like a king for the price of a Big Mac meal in the U.S.
Bosnia: didn’t get killed. Contrary to stereotypes, that war ended 30 years ago. Being afraid to go because there had been a war and some bad shit in the past would be like being afraid to go to Germany in 1975, thirty years after WWII. Ridiculous. (I drove on some roads in Bosnia that were better than roads in Michigan. There are other roads where if you’re not paying attention, you’ll drive off a ledge and end up upside down in a cabbage patch.)
I’ve been to a few more countries, but that’s the gist.
One thing I’ve learned from travel is not to put too much stock in other people’s opinions. I’ve been to places they love that I hated. I’ve been to places they bashed or were afraid to visit that I thought were some of the best experiences of my life.
It’s not that I don’t trust anybody. It’s just that I’ve traveled enough to know that I’d rather go somewhere myself and form my own opinion.
Xi knows China needs the US, and of course the US needs China, maybe more so today.
Xi also knows that the world, which is facing more than enough difficulties right now, needs a stable US relationship and can not endure any major conflicts between the two largest economies.
Xi knows he can handle the situation here within China.
Then, looking around, who can help stabilize the bilateral relations? Who have a big say on the US domestic issues to try to calm down the sentiments there?
Is it possible, helpful and practical for him to talk to those big bosses of MICs, the Military Industrial Complex? Not quite possible — they prefer war than peace, they are thirsty for wars.
Is it helpful for him to talk to the US politicians? He has tried. He talked with Trump, and treated him well in Beijing, then what? Trump can tear down any agreements as he likes; He talked with Biden, last year in Bali, Indonesia, then what? Biden can’t even really govern his own administration team, neither the Democratics, let alone those from the GOP. But Xi tried once again, this time, he met Biden in San Francisco. But, again, then what? What if Trump came back after next election? He would again turn everything upside down.
Is it useful and helpful to talk to the general public? Might be of some help, but how many can he talk to? And how much help would that be of? No one really knows.
Then, who are left? The ones with a big say in the US politics, economy and even society — Yes, the business executives.
What they care more about is the market, the profits, the money, where China can offer. And with the money, they can stand with those candidates who are more practical and support a more pragmatic approach towards China, instead of those full of ideologies in their minds and even can’t wait to drum up a war with China.
Thus a comparably virtuous circle is hopefully to be formed to prevent the China-US relations from further spiraling down, which neither can China afford, nor can the US, as well as the whole world.
I joined a ship in Rotterdam and on sailing for Suez, noted that the generator oil temperatures were rather high. On asking the other engineers, they said “They’re always like that” which was often a reason given by those of an idle nature… I investigated and found that they had raised the alarm point to stop the alarms going off instead of actually fixing the problem, which I assumed to be the generator lube oil coolers being fouled. On arrival at Suez and waiting in the anchorage, we opened up the LO coolers but found that they were clear, though with a fine sand lying in the tube bottoms, suggesting a lack of seawater flow-rate. We transited Suez but on meeting the warmer seawater temperatures of the Red Sea, had to reduce the generator load to avoid them tripping out altogether. We put into Aden to fix the problem, blacked out and started working back from the seawater lines into the coolers to the pumps themselves, eventually having to take out just about all the seawater lines until on opening up the main piping from the pumps (some 650mm diameter) we found them to be just about blocked with an aggregate of mud, sand and shellfish, such that only a small diameter of some 250mm was available for passing water to the generator coolers. Out came the main length of piping and we started to shovel out the muck. As we cleared it, a large, Triffid/Hydra-like apparition started to appear, causing the more faint-hearted to jump back in alarm, though it was only moving by virtue of us shovelling out its supporting mussel bed… It turned out to be a submarine tree of surprising length and girth (around 5–6m long and about the diameter of my arm in the main trunk, with lots of squid like leaves on it which had been waving in the ever reducing breeze of seawater passing through the pipe. We eventually removed all the gunk and the “animal” itself and laid it along the plates for a photo opportunity (we only had the ship’s Polaroid instant picture camera in those days so I don’t have a record unfortunately).
How did such a large beast get into the system? Presumably it had entered as a micro-organism and found a handy place to anchor itself in the rubber jointing between flanges (its roots were entwined around the bolts) and then fed itself from the handy warm water stream passing its front door. It gradually grew, causing other marine life such as shellfish to cling on where the water was less turbulent, and then gathering mud and other essential nutrients from its environment. Amazing thing, but fortunately harmless in that it didn’t actually attack us… Being in Aden the temperature in the engineroom without the fans running was around 50C (we had to shut down the generators and rely on emergency lighting), such that we could only work for around 20 minutes each before having to go on deck in the (relatively) cooler air of some 35C Aden night time temperature. It took us most of the night to clear the piping and refit it – a big job indeed.
Final job on restarting everything was to wind the generator LO temperature alarms back to the proper alarm point; I checked back through the ship’s engineroom log books to see where the problem had first started, and it was some 3 years in the making without anyone investigating the slowly rising temperatures.
I was Marketing Director for a major, easily recognized company that manufactured female oriented products. Our President was in over his head, as evidenced by our declining market share and revenue. I was hired to help turn things around given my successful track record at other companies. However, the President couldn’t handle any outside suggestion or strategy unless it was his so I was constantly reprimanded for doing my job.
One day, my timid, suck-up boss sends me an email about a report she needs me to do ASAP. I scoll thru the entire email and at the end, I see it originated with a request from the President. Basically he wanted my boss to assign the report to me and once she had it to fire me. The email also contained some very derogatory & crude & inappropriate comments about my appearance.
I forwarded the entire email to my personal email account, HR and members of the Board. In exchange for me not pursuing legal action or sharing the incident with my press contacts (would have killed any credibility in the female marketplace), I received my bonus, 6 months severance including paying my health insurance, & a strong positive reference letter. I had a new position in 6 weeks.
The President was let go after about 2 months and it took him over 1 year to find a new position at a less prestigious company and lessor salary.
I wasn’t a mechanic, I was a service manager. A guy drove into the lot, he had poked a rod through his block. How the car was still running was a mystery. For some context, this was 1978, he was driving some little 1970 English import, a Vauxhall Viva, possibly. The blue book price was less than $500. He was a recent immigrant, with broken English, and obviously didn’t have much money, from the car he was driving.
I explained that it would cost twice as much to fix the car as it was worth. He didn’t appear to understand. So he called his pastor, who was his sponsor. I talked to the pastor when he arrived, and he called me a racist for refusing to work on an immigrants car. I explained it two different ways, and it didn’t make any difference.
I finally gave up, wrote up a work order, for $1200. Then I ran down the street to a convenience store, and bought an autotrader magazine. I handed him the work order first, and he audibly gasped. Yet it was just what I had verbally told him. Then I flipped the magazine open to a car like his, but in better shape, for sale for $500.
The light switched on. He wasn’t happy, but he now understood why I didn’t want to repair it. Since it was worth more than the car was to repair it, we would have required cash up front. Before starting the job.
My boss wasn’t happy with me, for spending my time driving away a customer.
I have no idea if the guy could have afforded to make the repair.
The next week the pastor started sending other members of his flock to us.
The following is a translation of a recent essay that examines the circumstances of close encounters between Chinese and U.S. militaries in China’s vicinity, explains China’s grievances, and identifies the factors that further heighten risks.
The author of this essay is Hu Bo, Research Professor and Director of the Center for Maritime Strategy Studies, Peking University, and Director of the South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative.
Full text below.
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Recently, the U.S. DoD “declassified” some of the videos and pictures of aerial encounters with PLA military aircraft in the East China Sea and the South China Sea, accusing China of “risky intercept” and “unprofessional behaviors.”
This is, of course, a one-sided narrative from the United States. The Pentagon has not made it clear where these air encounters took place or why they occurred. As the China-U.S. military competition intensifies, the frequency and intensity of air and sea encounters are increasing, and the risk of possible friction and conflict does exist.
However, the United States is hyping “anxiety”, partly because of real concerns about risks, and partly because it wants to take hold of the “moral high ground” in international public opinion and diplomacy.
In fact, in the waters surrounding China, such as the East China Sea and the South China Sea, despite the growing competition between the China-U.S. militaries as well as air and sea encounters, it is important to emphasize that the vast majority of the air and sea encounters between the China-U.S. militaries, which occur more than a dozen times a day and thousands of times a year, have been conducted in a safe and professional manner.
For example, in a 2022 emailed statement about transit through the Taiwan Strait, US 7th Fleet spokesperson Mark Langford said in an emailed statement that “all interactions with foreign military forces during the transit were consistent with international standards and practices and did not impact the operation.”
In August 2022, Capt. Amy Bauernschmidt told the press after the USS Abraham Lincoln, which she commanded, finished a deployment in the Pacific that “We were operating in the vicinity [of] Chinese warships at times, mostly … that shadowed our ship……It was safe and professional the entire time that we interacted with them. During some flight operations, our aircraft did interact with some of their aircraft, but again it remained safe and professional each and every time we interacted with them.” [1]
Both the U.S. and Chinese militaries have made it clear at the highest levels that they “do not want war” and want to avoid direct military conflict.
While formal communication mechanisms between the two militaries (e.g., the China-U.S. Military Maritime Consultative Agreement meetings, Defense Policy Coordination Talk, and China-U.S. Theater Commanders Talk) were interrupted after Nancy Pelosi’s Visit to Taiwan, there are other channels of communication between frontline commanders, such as the Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, 1972 (COLREGs), and the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES), which was adopted in 2014.
High-level exchanges between the U.S. and Chinese militaries have also been slowly restarting since President Xi Jinping had a meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden in Bali. Overall, the situation of China-U.S. air and sea encounters is not as dire as portrayed by the media and some scholars.
▲ Four scenarios for confrontational encounters between China and the United States
However, under certain circumstances, the risk of conflict could run high. When the United States and China talk about military frictions or dangerous encounters and blame each other, the first thing we should be clear about is where these frictions or encounters are taking place. For both sides, air and sea encounters in different areas have different legal and political implications. Most confrontational encounters between China and U.S. military forces occur under the following four scenarios.
1. When U.S. forces approach the territorial waters and airspace of mainland China or Hainan Island, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) reacts vigorously, taking such actions as interception or forcing out.
2. U.S. forces enter the territorial waters and airspace of the Xisha Islands to carry out so-called FONOPs and are warned and driven away by the PLA.
3. When the U.S. military conducted FONOPs within 12 nautical miles of China-controlled islands and reefs in the Nansha Islands and Huangyan Island, The PLA warned and drove away the U.S. military. For example, on September 30, 2018, the USS Decatur conducted a so-called FONOP in the waters near Nansha Islands’ Nanxun Reef and had a close encounter with a Chinese warship. The two ships were only 40 meters apart at their closest.
4. Both China and the United States engage in close reconnaissance of each other’s military forces during military exercises, including live ammunition exercises. While mutual tracking and surveillance of military activities are common, the reconnaissance operations conducted by the U.S. military sometimes come dangerously close.
Particularly during the PLA’s live ammunition exercises, the U.S. military often disregards the no-entry notices and unlawfully enters the relevant sea and airspace. For example, in August 2020, a U.S. U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft intruded into the PLA’s Northern Theater Command’s live ammunition exercise airspace, and an accident was barely avoided.
▲ China has legitimate concerns about the close encounters between Chinese and U.S. naval and air forces
While China is dissatisfied with the U.S. military’s actions in the waters near China and believes that the root cause of the encounters at sea and in the air is the aggressively close reconnaissance and other targeted military operations conducted by the U.S. military, it nevertheless tracks and monitors the U.S. military in accordance with international conventions, which is no different from reciprocal reactions of U.S. and Japan for China.
China only reacts more strongly in the four above-mentioned types of military encounters, which is in line with international common sense. Any country would take all feasible measures to safeguard its territorial, sovereign, and platform security against any actions that attempt to approach its territorial waters and airspace or pose a threat to its training exercises.
Strategically, China opposes the continuous challenges posed by the U.S. to China’s sovereignty over islands and reefs and its national security. Technically or in specific actions, China opposes actions by the U.S. that endanger the safety of personnel onshore at sea and in the air. In addition to strategic and legal differences, China also has three legitimate concerns:
First, some of the U.S. military’s reconnaissance missions are too close to China and overly provocative.
For example, on September 4, 2021, a U.S. RC-135S Cobra Ball missile surveillance aircraft approached Jiaozhou Bay in Shandong Province for close reconnaissance, with its closest point of approach to the Chinese territorial baseline being less than 20 nautical miles. On December 8, 2022, a U.S. P-8A anti-submarine patrol aircraft flew over the Taiwan Strait, at times with a distance of less than 13 nautical miles from the Chinese territorial baseline.
Second, China has reasons to be concerned about frequent accidents involving the U.S. military. In recent years, the high frequency of U.S. military operations and the negative impact on training and proficiency have led to numerous unfortunate accidents (such as the collision incident involving the U.S. Navy’s USS Fitzgerald missile destroyer in 2017).
When the Chinese and American militaries come into close proximity, the possibility of accidental incidents occurring due to a decline in the professionalism of the U.S. military is increasing.
Third, the United States has intensified the public hype and politicization of encounters at sea and in the air and military actions. In recent years, the United States has amplified the political and diplomatic implications of its military actions, with the most iconic examples being the so-called FONOPs carried out by the U.S. military within 12 nautical miles of China-controlled islands in the South China Sea and its transits through the Taiwan Strait.
On October 27, 2015, the U.S. destroyer USS Lassen conducted a highly publicized FONOP in the waters near the Nansha Islands. Although the U.S. had previously conducted such activities in the South China Sea, they were rarely so open and high-profile. The same is true for U.S. transits through the Taiwan Strait. Since 2018, after each transit through the Taiwan Strait, the U.S. Navy would either feed information to the media or directly issue announcements, claiming to “maintain freedom and openness in the Indo-Pacific region”. Such hype and politicization have increased the complexity and difficulty of military communication between China and the U.S. and added to the risks of encounters between Chinese and American naval and aerial forces.
[1]Note: the original essay wrongly attributed the above quote to Rear Adm. J.T. Anderson, this newsletter corrected the inaccuracy.
You smile, bank the check and say thank you! I had a very small role in the Spiderman movie starring Emma Stone. The scene never made it into the final cut. It wasn’t necessary for the story line. But I got paid union rate and residuals and spent a very pleasant afternoon and evening filming a 2 person scene with Emma Stone, who was absolutely delightful and charming. No complaints. And they sent me the specially designed movie baseball cap. I was treated as a professional and my contribution was valued at the time of filming.
In many western nations it fails on both counts. What they have left is an electoral system that goes through the motions. I remember a module on Law I did at UCL. It’s an elected dictatorship mostly. Before you screech but you’re in China, yeah but I was born in the UK. I watche the 1997 election (too young to vote) participated in 2001, 2005, 2010 and sat out 2015. I had left the UK by 2017 and 2019.
We can go through the common failings:
We can vote out those who fail!
We can freely criticise our leaders!
We can vote somebody in new and different!
Western systems ensure the BEST standards of living
Western systems are accountable!
Western systems ensure the most capable people!
We can vote out those who fail!
Except you don’t. The Labour regime of from 1997 to 2010 didn’t really achieve anything. They had some decent literacy programmes with the gremlins campaign but this was dismantled by the late 00s.
We can freely criticise our leaders!
Less so now, the UK has massively restricted free speech since the 80s, it has massively restricted protest. And guess what? Call the current prime minister a bum what happens NOTHING to you and NOTHING to them.
We can vote somebody in new and different!
Except it’s a false choice. You can choose a Neoliberal or a Neoliberal. The policies are a venn diagram that is a circle.
Western systems ensure the BEST standards of living
Maybe in the past 70s, 80s maybe the 90s. But once it got Neoliberalised productivity got disconnected from wages and there’s been a massive stagnation.
Western systems are accountable!
Yeah, they apologise or say let’s draw a line under it and then simply ignore it. I still remember Blunkett UK MP (EDIT) simply saying I don’t accept that to dismiss a well crafted argument against him.
Western systems ensure the most capable people!
No it ensures popular people. The UK’s Johnson for instance. What qualities other than being popular did he have?
Now let’s return to the above:
For the people.
For the people, are your lives REALLY getting better? My life in the UK:
Access to medical care: As a child I remember being able to get appointments with Dr Sharma same day for the times I was ill. As a teenager when I was beaten up, I could be admitted to hospital pretty quickly. Nose operations to put it back were done in as little as week. Into my 20s. It became increasingly difficult. Barriers kept being put up to see my GP. First off it was you had to book a day in advance, then a week in advance. By the early 00s. My GP had a 10 minute window at 8am to book appointments. There were 10 available a day.
My commute times : Each year it took longer and longer. I recall sitting in my dad’s car. To get to the big city nearby it was 20 minutes door to door. We moved a couple miles East but by the mid 00s it was taking 45 minutes and by the 2010s it was taking an hour each way door to door.
Policing There was a small police station in my dad’s town. It was gone and consolidated by the mid 00s. My dad had things smashed and police would attend same day. By the 2010s they wouldn’t attend and simply give you a crime number.
Of the people.
There’s the odd outlier like Mahri Black? The youngest MP ever. But the trend is establishment candidates. Only those backed by the party apparatchik have any chance of success. Tons of people like Lord Binhead try.. or the Monster Raving Loony Party try but always lose their deposits.
Sheltered, to begin with. In elementary school, I thought that friends who lived on Park Avenue were middle class.
One thing, though, that many don’t understand — not all of the students in these schools are rich. The schools generally offer financial aid, and many students are from upper middle class families. Increasingly, they have some poor children as well.
But of course there are lot of rich kids at them — kids who go skiing in the Swiss Alps, kids with household staffs, what have you. This can leave kids from middle class backgrounds thinking that they are poor.
The schools themselves — mine anyway —
Very high standards. You did not skip class, and you were not absent unless you were ill or there was a major crisis like a death in the family.
Very solid, college preparatory curriculum with lots of electives. Math and language classes were tracked by ability. The curriculum was accelerated to the point at which many students went to college after their junior year — there just wasn’t much left to do.
No bad teachers; they ranged from good to superb.
Few bad students. Admission was competitive and those who couldn’t handle the work were asked to leave. All students went to college, any or most to Ivies or similar, and most got advanced degrees.
Small class sizes. Ours were about 15. Teachers had low course loads, and latitude in what and how they taught — no submitting lesson plans. And they could focus on teaching, rather on lunchroom duty and such.
No “teaching to the test.” But then, such a thing didn’t exist when I was in school.
That said, there was good prep for the SAT’s. This can’t make a dramatic difference in scores, less than 100 points, but it can make some.
Beautiful campus, also like a small college. Here’s where I went to school — that’s the library building:
image 144
9. Excellent facilities.
10. No bells, etc. But very high standards of behavior. You didn’t arrive to class late, and there were no fights or anything of the sort.
11. A friend who transferred in from public school told me that he was delighted to be at a school where the teachers actually liked the kids!
12. I recall visiting my cousin’s public school when we were juniors and was appalled at the way the kids were treated by the administration. Obnoxious.
13. Smart kids were admired rather than bullied or looked down upon.
14. Today, there is a lot of pressure on the kids to get into a top college. Less so in my day. In any case, the schools are feeder schools, known to top colleges. At my school, for example, six kids went to Yale every year. Not five, not seven — they had six slots set aside.
15. The quality of the students was remarkable — probably more so at privates that cater specifically to the children of the rich. Out of a class of 100, one of my classmates became the first female editor of The New York Times. One became a philosophy professor at Cambridge, the other at Harvard. Another became a physicist. Most became doctors and lawyers. (Only three of us, I being one of them, became engineers.) One of the lawyers worked for President Obama. Etc.
16. I asked a former teacher why it was that, on a standardized test administered to students in New York City, the public school students did better than the private school students, but that in life, the private schools students did better, and he said it was simple — the private schools taught the students to think. They don’t stuff your head full of facts like a public school, but you can write an essay or prove a theorem.
In retrospect, if there was a downside, it’s that we were so sheltered. But overall, my experience was just about as good as it could be, within our current educational framework and given the requirements set by the colleges. I wish that every student could enjoy a similar experience.
There is no threat to the Chinese political system. 95% of Chinese support China and its government. People live longer, today their life expectancy is 78 years old and the U.S. is 2 full years lower at 76 years old! They live better lives. Their real standard of living less inflation has grown 30 times in 40 years. Meanwhile during the same time. The U.S. real standard of living not only not grow. It deteriorated back 20 years into the 1960 level!
Chinese has full universal healthcare coverage and college education is free of charge if one qualifies for it. All of which is not free in the U.S. and close to a third of Americans are not covered by healthcare and may die if they fall sick! That is the U.S. not China! Kids gets into college debts before they even start life in the world.
So who want to change their political system? Well by trust on government measurement carried out by trusted western research in the west showed Chinese trust their government 95% and only 30% of American’s trust their government!
And your question is what is the biggest threat to the Chinese political establishment? Not what is the biggest threat to the so call US liberal democracy? Why do you not ask the obvious? And why do you worry about a non issue? Where is your intellect? Where is you rationality and sanity?
Ok I get it you are a China and Chinese hater and you term communism as a slur to demonised China. But let me help you. 87% of the world don’t buy your shit. Sure the 13% westerners may be fooled by your media but even that a higher proportion of westerners are smarter than you. They know this is a nonsense question. But I addressed it to call you out. If you can ask this question you don’t amount to much.
What was odd thirty years ago, is my new normal, but here are a few random remembrances from 1990 Germany, 6 months after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Brutal truth rewarded me when I asked “how are you?”. Replies weren’t always “great”, “awesome” or “just fine thank you.” Germans actually thought I cared (and eventually I learned not to ask if I didn’t).
Germans are direct. They don’t beat around the bush. When they have an opinion they share it with you. And they expect you respect it and deliver honesty in return. Political correctness was non-existent.
Service workers didn’t smile and chirp sugar-coated pleasantries. Shop attendants ignored me unless I asked for help. Restaurant meals were uninterrupted by the obligatory-every-five-minute repetition of “is everything OK?” I learned to ask for the bill rather than wait for it.
Smiling at strangers often seemed to discomfort them. I soon learned to recognize when a smile was welcome and when not.
Football (soccer for me at the time) rules. The 1990 World Cup began soon after I arrived. During games the world stopped. Loud cheers or groans occasionally livened up silent and traffic free downtown streets. As games ended, streets filled with honking cars waving huge flags (Italian, Spanish, Brazilian, Romanian and of course German).
I thought the Super Bowl huge, but the World Cup is much bigger.
Sporting events and television programs were advertising free. Ads appeared only between scheduled programming.
Everything was expensive. A used car with over 80,000 miles cost more than a new Hyundai in the US. A pair of brand name jeans cost 3 times more.
The electronics store salesman spent an hour trying to talk me out of a Toshiba television and a Samsung microwave. He insisted Asian goods broke as soon as the 2 year warranty expired. (The microwave is still going strong 30 years later, and the TV was only replaced because it was no longer smart enough for the digital age).
Nobody ever asked me about my religion or my profession, but damn were they curious about life in America.
Talking about money or charity is taboo.
Alcohol was everywhere. It was common to see people drink beer in the park or walking down the street. Lunch usually included a beer or carafe of wine.
There was no free water in the restaurants. And soft drinks were more expensive than beer. All drinks are served without ice.
Nobody littered! The public waste bins were emptied daily.
Germans pedestrians wait for a red light to turn green even on a deserted street at midnight.
Zebra-striped crosswalks get the same respect as stopped school buses in the US.
I was never asked to show ID to prove myself of legal drinking age. Sixteen-year-olds are allowed to drink wine and beer (even in a bar).
Magazines at the supermarket checkout featured naked breasts (no longer).
Shops closed at 6.30 p.m. on weekdays, 2 p.m. on Saturday and were all closed on Sunday (this has changed).
There were only three types of soda on offer, Coke, Fanta and Sprite (the selection is slightly larger now – but nothing like in the US).
Bagels and donuts were not to be found (that has changed too).
Bread was light on air and heavy on grains. My digestion became like an alarm clock.
Cities and streets are designed for pedestrians, bicycles and public transport – not for cars. Pedestrian zones are everywhere, parking is in expensive garages.
Downtown streets aren’t straight. They wander among the buildings and sites. Highways don’t mention north, south, east or west. They only tell you what towns and cities are ahead on the route.
Restaurant meals took hours not minutes and lack of television in the restaurants forced me to communicate with my friends. Meal portions were smaller and menus much more varied. Chain restaurants were rare. Tipping was optional and the wait staff gets 20 days of paid vacation.
Dogs are allowed in restaurants.
German flags were only displayed during the World Cup.
Everybody took a one hour lunch break and left work promptly before 5.30. People took three or four week vacations and left work behind.
Construction workers drank beer during their morning break. Obesity was unusual, beer bellies were not.
People walked for fun, but nobody seemed to run for fitness.
Some women at the pool sunbathed topless. Young children at the pool often wore nothing.
Public transport was immaculately clean and ran on time.
Brothels are legal.
Nobody ever seemed to get shot (though there were plenty of stabbings in Frankfurt where I lived).
Gas was four to five times more expensive than in the US.
My hour lunch break is over now. I’ll add to this if anything else occurs to me.
Back in the 70s, when smoking was legal almost anywhere except elevators. I stepped into an elevator in an office building with a coworker when another person stepped right in as the doors closed, smoking a cigarette. I pointed out it was illegal to smoke on an elevator and she replied, “what are you going to do, call the police?” My coworker, who happened to be a reserve police officer, pulled out his badge and said, “that won’t be necessary.”
Ah, I still remember her expression.
Varginha UFO Crash: Alien Contact, Government Denial and Coverup
You must be joking!!! I don’t understand how you could be unaware. China has been the target of massive anti-China propaganda in Western media for years.
And not only in mainstream media but in social media like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and here on Quora.
Curiously, there are very few positive stories about China in Western media. They’re nearly all negative! How can that be?
Can a country that…
built the world’s largest economy from scratch within 40 years
lifted 800 million people out of extreme poverty
created the world’s finest infrastructure of roads, bridges, high-speed rail, airports, etc.
landed on the dark side of the moon
sent an ambitious space mission to Mars
built the spectacular BeiDou navigation satellite system
reforested 34 million acres of land
produces the most renewable energy in the world
created the world’s best 5G technology
sent pandemic aid to dozens of countries around the world
…have practically nothing positive to report on at all?
Well, that’s what the American (Western) narrative is.
China don’t throw innocent people into jail like the how U.S. cook up some shit and throw the Huawei CEO daughter in jail in Canada. The 2 Michael’s are spies and doing things in China to hurt China and the Chinese people to spy for the 5 eyes. These are facts. These are self confessed facts. Canada, do the honourable think and apologise to China and the Chinese people.
Canada you are a hypocrite and a liar. You cohort with all the media to claim that they were innocent. Well they now says in their own free speech that they spied for you! You are lucky China don’t sentence them to death. China ought to. China should do. After all what they do could kill many Chinese.
The time that a white persons life is worth more than another race belongs to the 19th century today. We should sue every media that claims the Michael’s are innocent. We should end every journalist that lied. We should fine the media and politicians so hard the will never dare to lie again. Caucasians do the right thing. Do you like to be lied to? Again and again and again?
I thought that freedom of speech is so vital to you. And surely you want the truth, nothing but the truth? Why the hell are you keeping quiet? CNN and BBC. Why are you quiet as a mouse? Lying News channel?
I raised a young family in the 1970’s as a TV repairman. Made good money. TV’s were so unreliable there was a TV shop on every other street corner. Drug stores had a vacuum tube tester for DIY’ers (You can’t guess how many service calls I made where the customer had a bag of tubes they took out to test but didn’t have brains enough to read the tube layout on the inside of the cabinet to return them in the proper place.) When the RCA XL100 came out as one of the first solid state TV’s, repairs started a slow decline. When integrated circuits became the norm, the bottom opened. Microprocessors blew the bottom away.
Drive down ANY 5 streets and tell me how many TV repair shops you can find. Go ahead, I’ll wait………..
I saw the handwriting on the wall, jumped into early PC repair, became an electronics teacher, saw the build you own PC market crash, got into networking, watched Cisco plummet in the 90’s, did cyber security and retired. Modern TV’s are far superior to any previous generation by my firsthand experience. Not to mention a color tv in 1960 cost $300 – 500 dollars. Do the math with inflation vs any brand of 40″ flat screen. Be amazed.
image 149
This is what fed my wife and daughter for 12 years.
Because I got married and had her very early in my 20s, at that time, none of my friends had kids. My baby was the sweetheart for all the aunties – mom’s three close friends. We threw her a party.
It was fun. Each auntie got her a present. They handed it to her one by one so she opened it and got excited. To the last auntie, before she handed the present to my daughter, she ‘demanded’ my girl, “Say ‘please’ and bow, so auntie will give you the gift!”.
I thought she was joking, so I interrupted and told my daughter, “Auntie got you a present, you say ‘Thank you’ out loud!”.
My daughter exclaimed, “Thank you auntie!”, then opened the present.
It was a Lego Friends set. Needless to say, my daughter was so happy, and jumped up and down with the Lego set.
Then suddenly, the auntie snatched the Lego set from my daughter’s hands again, held it up above her head, and demanded my daughter, “Say ‘please’ and bow, or auntie’s gonna take it back!”.
This time, I knew she wasn’t joking.
I got angry but tried very hard to keep my voice calm, “No one demands my daughter to beg. We’re poor but we are not cheap”. “I was just joking!”, she said. “No, you weren’t.
That’s the second time and I don’t like it”, I told her.
Now she got angry, raised her voice with me, “Even so, this is an expensive toy, what wrong with begging a little?”. “You take the gift back and please leave”, I told her, while getting up and holding the door open.
She left and never came back.
The next day, I took my daughter to the toy store to get that Lego set. My friend was right. It was a damn expensive toy, it cost me a big chunk of my skinny paycheck and a friendship.
Of course it is the U.S. but to be fair the U.S. is the biggest threat to the entire world. China included. And the world. As a whole the world need to jointly and severally stop the U.S. excesses. I dare say for the good of the human race including the Americans.
The U.S. is the only nation that will push human into extinction through an all out nuclear war if uncheck. We humanoids on earth need to be very mindful of this fact and the U.S. powers must be checkmate at every turn and ever aspect. Militarily, politically, financially, economically and strategically.
The U.S. must be brought back into being a member of responsible human society where the common good of humanity must prevail over the selfish interest of the U.S. military industrial complex profiting from wars, chaos and violence worldwide.
China is a very peaceful loving nation and it survived 5000 years because it has a peaceful coexistence between nations as a priority. China don’t want enemies and certainly do not like war. Since 1979 some 44 years has passed since China last fought a war. But during that time China phenomenally grew rich and strong to deter any nation from threatening them.
China wants a peaceful world where we can live peacefully and harmoniously. We can all get prosperous and live better and longer lives. And we trade with each other. Today there are only some 12–15 nations that are part of these war threatening pack. Most of them are either forced into this pack as slave vassal states or coerced or bribed into this grouping. Glued together by the U.S. and the western media, this loosely defined as western powers need to be dismantled for good.
Chinese history
Cajun Beef Po’boy Sandwiches with Red Eye Gravy
For Cajun Beef Po’boy Sandwiches with Red Eye Gravy, sirloin steak is rubbed with espresso coffee powder and pepper, then broiled to perfection. Red Eye Gravy is added to the steak.
cajun beef po boys
Ingredients
Po’boys
1 (1 pound) beef top sirloin steak, cut 1 inch thick
6 teaspoons espresso coffee powder, divided
1/2 teaspoon pepper
4 large French bread rolls, split
8 slices tomato
1 cup shredded lettuce
Redeye Gravy
3 tablespoons butter, divided
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/4 cup diced tasso or pancetta ham
1/4 cup diced onion
1 tablespoon Creole Seasoning
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1/3 cup hot water
2 cups beef stock
1 to 2 tablespoons hot pepper sauce (Louisiana-style)
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
Instructions
Rub beef top sirloin steak with 2 teaspoons espresso powder and pepper.
Heat broiler to HIGH.
Place steak on rack on aluminum foil-lined broiler pan so surface of beef is 3 to 4 inches from heat. Broil for 16 to 21 minutes for medium rare (145 degrees F) doneness, turning once.
Meanwhile, melt 2 tablespoons butter in large skillet over medium heat; whisk in flour. Cook for 8 to 10 minutes until caramel color, whisking often. Remove mixture from pan; set aside.
Melt remaining tablespoon butter in same skillet over medium heat; add tasso, onion, Creole Seasoning and garlic; cook for 10 minutes until onion is translucent.
Dissolve remaining 4 teaspoons espresso powder in hot water; add to skillet and cook for 1 to 2 minutes until browned bits attached to skillet are dissolved and sauce is reduced almost completely.
Whisk in butter mixture until smooth.
Add beef stock, hot sauce and Worcestershire; bring to a boil. Reduce and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes or until sauce is reduced to 1 cup.
Add roast beef to skillet. Cook for 3 to 5 minutes until heated through, stirring often so sauce coats beef.
Divide beef mixture between rolls. Top beef with tomato and lettuce. Close sandwiches.
There is no need to answer such boring questions anymore.
All infrastructure in China, including logistics, communication, power supply, water supply, and gas supply, is very complete.
In 2021, China produced 8.5 petawatt-hour (Pwh) of electricity, approximately 30% of the world’s electricity production.
There are two most advanced transmission technologies in the world, one called “ultra-high voltage transmission” and the other called “flexible direct current transmission“. China is far ahead of other countries in these two top technologies.
Overhead power lines can easily cause fires and can also lead to power outages.
Outdoor power poles and overhead power lines in China have been basically cleaned up during the renovation of old cities, and all cables have been buried underground without any exposed or disorderly phenomena.
If you have traveled to cities in Taiwan, Japan and Chinese Mainland, you will find that only cities in Chinese Mainland rarely see bare overhead power lines.
I haven’t experienced a power outage in China for 40 years.
Young people born in China after 1990 may not even understand what it feels like to have a power outage.
In China, even remote rural areas have stable electricity supply.
The Tibetan village at an altitude of 5000 meters has also been electrified.
But whether it’s India, Vietnam, or the United States or Europe, power outages are frequent.
The machines running in the factory require electricity, while the computers in the office require electricity. If the power supply is unstable, how do you make the enterprise work?
Taiwan’s power system has always had various problems. Taking TSMC as an example, due to a power outage in Tainan City, 30000 wafers on TSMC’s production line were damaged, resulting in a direct loss of US$200 million. No matter how rich TSMC’s finances are, it cannot withstand the losses caused by several major power outages.
Anyway, since you want to attract foreign investment, the first step is to ensure a stable electricity supply.
Otherwise, these enterprises will have to face downtime and production stoppage.
Through the the Belt and Road Project, China will help these countries improve their power systems and will actively transfer some enterprises to countries along the the Belt and Road.
China’s homegrown TP500 unmanned transport plane makes maiden flight, and transportation between Chinese cities will be faster in the future. Goods that originally took 3 days to arrive can be transported in 2-3 hours.
I was a workaholic, working 16 hour weekdays and 8 hour weekends. This was about 20 years ago.
It was Christmas eve, and I still hadn’t done my Christmas shopping, I had my list for everything, most of it specified by my nieces and nephews.
I had been reading how a few malls in our city were in trouble, as everyone was switching to big box stores to shop. They showed pictures of traffic jams in big box store parking lots. I was finally out of time and had to shop, and hope I could get the stuff on my list, at the last minute.
I pulled up to Sears at the local mall, that had been featured in the news, as being in trouble. The parking lot was empty. I was afraid it was closed. I parked in the closest parking spot to the door. I walked in and manager saw me enter, and was on me like glue. I was the only customer in the store, ON Christmas Eve!!
He asked me what I was looking for and I pulled out this long list. He smiled and called someone over to get me a hot chocolate from the mall, he sat me down in a recliner in the furniture section, and called two more workers over, and asked them to get the stuff on the list.
We talked, and I drank my hot chocolate. He was pretty sure Sears wouldn’t last another five years, and he needed it to, to collect his pension.
After about 15 minutes, the workers were back with my presents. I paid for them. They had a gift wrapping service, which normally cost extra, but he said that the staff weren’t doing anything anyway, so it would be free.
In another 10 minutes, they helped me load the wrapped presents in my car.
It was maybe 25 minutes from when I walked into the store, and I was done. Wrapped and everything.
I had almost never shopped at Sears, but after that I was a regular, until they closed the doors. I saw the manager until he successfully retired.
I later read that Sears ended up shorting the pension fund. I hope he made out OK, as I have never had service like that, before or since.
Just read this out to my wife and she burst out laughing. In 1996 I had been widowed over five years when a crazy woman burst through the door of our car sales site with so much enthusiasm and vibrance and chatter and said she wanted to buy a car. It was a quiet time so I stopped playing my guitar and set about helping her. She bought a car and left and I turned to my mate and said, ‘She’s totally bonkers’, he replied, ‘you’re telling me’, I replied, I could do with some of that’. I delivered the car a few days later and took her to the pub for a chat, after a few dates we were driving towards the Mersey tunnel, Merseyside from Wirral to Liverpool and I asked her if she would like to go on an adventure and her answer was yes, just then we entered the tunnel just as the petrol light came on, I said, ‘welcome to the adventure’.
We sold our houses, bought a B & B, called it ‘Firkin House’ and thirteen years later retired to sunny Cyprus and will have been married twenty years next May with lots of fun and laughs along the way.
Oh, boy. I’ll never forget this one as long as I live.
I had been living with my significant other for about four years. He always treated me well … but other people? Not so much. In this case, it was his grandparents, who I adored. They were just the sweetest people. They really loved their grandson, too, even though he rarely gave them the time of day. They wanted him to fly home for Christmas—I’d made plans with my family, so we were going solo that year.
Anyway, this guy refused to buy a plane ticket unless his grandparents paid for it. Here’s the kicker: he had the money to spend on plane fare. He just didn’t want to. A$$hole that he was. So, his grandfather, who was around 90, had said that he’d put the check in the mail. It hadn’t arrived, due to the holiday mail delay.
I bore witness to this guy browbeating his elderly grandpa into Fed-Exing another check over the phone. This was two days before the cut-off date to book the flight. So his grandfolks sent another check, because they wanted their grandson home for the holidays. These were old, frail people who barely got out of the house. Not good drivers. You know, why didn’t my S.O. just pay for the fare and let his grandfather pay him back once he was there?
A day or so after he left on the trip, his grandfather’s original check arrived in the mail. I looked at his spidery handwriting on the signature line, and I felt positively ill.
I ended up breaking up with my significant other because of that, and for countless other times that I’d seen him be really mean to other people who loved him—family members, even. I knew that one day, I could be next in line, and I wasn’t about to wait around for that to happen.
“Open marriage” appears to be an (American) acceptable way to turn a marriage into a fuck-fest. Sheech! I’m way too old for this bullshit.
I mention further down that there are races in China, where “open relationships” are the norm. But in the West, it turns out that an “Open Relationship” is but a code phrase to allow the female in a relationship to have multiple sexual partners, while the male sits at home watching the kids, the pets, and earns money.
Nine times out of ten, he never has an “outside relationship” even though officially he can.
…
The videos about “open relationships” are interesting and disturbing at the same time.
Sigh.
I find them very disturbing. After all, a “marriage” (prior to it being twisted into something different) meant a single monogamous family with shared emotions, shared sex, and shared responsibilities.
A core family unit.
Now, in the USA it is a freeway toward complete social discord and a breakdown at all levels of society.
Anyways…
As I get older my body changes.
I get shorter. No shit. My height gets smaller and smaller over time. Though, I will admit that my feet seem to get larger as a consequence of that.
Shorter in height, but bigger feet.
Not only that, but my hands seem to get slightly bigger, and my fingers are getting longer.
Big hands. Long fingers. Big feet.
Lordy!
…
Ugh. Why don’t women find big hands and long fingers attractive?
And a bald head… and a bot belly?
Not all of us can look like Adonis, don’t you know?
…
Balding, and fighting against a pot belly. Oh, the pain of aging!
But at least I have big hands and long fingers. LOL!
…
I don’t think that these body changes are attractive, but it is the price you pay to live to an old age. Perhaps, when I break 90, I’ll be a squat short man with big, big hand and feet and a bald head. Yucky!
Looking a little like Yoda.
I’d get a nice haircut, and some nice outfits if it mattered. But in my case, those are low on the priority scale right now. Smile.
Just smile. Accept yourself as it is, and as you change.
Americans foolishly screamed and shout that they are the leader of the free world without ever questioning if it is even remotely true or not! Please don’t be angry or upset if I help you guys since I understand you can pretend to be free or even dare says you are ordained by god to spread democracy and freedom but you Americans are one of the least free country on earth.
Let me help you good American. So first I like to explain how unfree you guys are.
35% of you cannot get health care when you fall sick! The most basic of freedom is the freedom to see a doctor and get cure when you fall sick. At least 100 million Americans don’t have this basic of basics of freedom.
Next 1 million Americans are homeless and don’t have another basic of basics of freedom. The freedom to have a roof over their head.! They have to live in makeshift tents on the streets.
20% of Americans don’t have 500 dollars to their name and don’t know where their next meal is coming from! Surely everyone must have the freedom to have a hot meal to stay alive!
USA with about 4% of world population has 25% of the worlds prisoners population! Think about this my American friends, prisoners are certainly. Not free. Many of them coloured people thrown into jail for the slightest reason. How on earth can you keep a straight face to say U.S. is the leader of the free world. No one know!
In many cities in the U.S. one cannot go to certain parts of the inner city like the Queens in New York. As crimes are rampant. So normal innocent and good Americans like you have to avoid that part of America! Surely freedom means you can go to anywhere or any part of America.
Kids and parents suffers the mental turmoils daily for just going to school. Many got shot to death in schools, public places, cinemas and even in Capitol Hill! Is that freedom? Even your kids are not free to go to school without a random mass shooter lurking with military grade weapons to murder them! Is this freedom?
If you are not fortunate to have a white skin you could be necked to death in the bright daylight of even driving a good car may be be shot to death just for suspected of stealing the car! Everyday you live in fear of a white policeman! Is that freedom to live? Freedom to avoid death at the racist inclination of the white racist? Surely not.
Freedom means you can choose who you really want to be your leader. Only 30% choose Biden. Or 35% choose Trump! Why are they your president? Your system allowed 0.8% of the richest and most influential people to choose your candidates! Surely this U.S. not freedom. This is far from democracy. How on earth can you call yourself the “beacon of democracy” who in a sane mind can claim that?
Oh today you country stop the Americans from having access to best 5G technology, Smartphone, best EV’s, drones and others for some geopolitical nonsense! Is this freedom? Freedom to be deprived? Let me help you understand. You can buy a 10 thousand EV. And need to be charged once a week but you are not allowed to! You can but your Tesla like for half the price but you are not allowed.
But to me EVs and Drones are just the top of the iceberg of your draconian policies that takes away the freedom of Americans like you. Think about Jullien Assange, Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden! Freedom?
According to a scientific research paper by the mainland military, the People’s Liberation Army has established the world’s first “Close Air Combat Command Force” (Near Air Command) equipped with professional hypersonic weapons and directly taking orders from the highest level of the People’s Liberation Army. It is responsible for executing “precise and ruthless operations” during wartime. ” attack mission. In addition, solar-powered drones and spy balloons are also possible intelligence-gathering devices.
Note: this answer only applies to the American Mafia as the Italian Mafias have repeatedly killed public officials of all persuasions and badges.
Because killing cops, judges or any form of law and order official invites heat and exposure.
A ‘secret society’
Despite the movies, the books, the podcasts, youtube channels and press stories, at its core, La Cosa Nostra (LCN) is supposed to be a secret society. A money-making secret society.
It is meant to operate in the shadows, a ‘brotherhood’ using codes of silence and modes of discretion to conduct legal and illegal activities that bring it great wealth.
It seeks to evade law and order and allow its members to not only profit from illicit means, but, more importantly, enjoy the fruits of their dishonest labour.
A whole load of pain
Law enforcement communities are also brotherhoods (and now sisterhoods too). Kill one of their own, and they want revenge. They go ‘all in’ to catch and make an example of the ‘cop killer’.
Killing law and order officials has even proven to be ‘game changer’ for some organized crime groups. For example:
In 1985, the Guadalajara drug cartel kidnapped, tortured and murdered US DEA agent Kiki Camarena. The DEA was enraged and flooded Mexico and the border regions; playing a major role in breaking said cartel apart (clearly others appeared to replace it)
In 1992, the Sicilian Mafia killed Judges Falcone and Borsellino in two separate car bombs. These attacks created a ‘sea change’ in the political and societal will to go after the Mafia, with the late ’90s being an era of significant prosecutorial success against the Sicilians
In short, killing a cop or any other law enforcement official places a target on your head – and indeed that of your organisation. The resulting attention inhibits your ability to earn, to operate, and even places your freedom or life at risk … far better to just not do it and keep on living your illicit life.
Forbidden Archaeology, Human Origins, and UFOs… Michael Cremo
Just once, but that was enough for the rest of my life.
It was 1993 or 94. Things started off just fine. He smiled at me from the window seat as I took my place on the flight from Philadelphia to Frankfurt, Germany.
Our ages must have been close. We shot the shit about sports and music and all those other harmless topics popular with early-30-something unmarried males.
He was impressed that Lufthansa (long ago) served him Johnny Walker red in his whiskey cola. He sure did like those whiskey colas…
Everything was amiable until just after the after-dinner drinks trolley finished serving.
He commented that he hated queers and he was pretty sure the male server was one.
I stared him in the eyes and said calmly and slowly, “nearly half of my best friends are gay … I think you need to rethink your attitude, the world is changing.”
Never have I seen someone transform so quickly from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. “You’re an effin’ homo lover! … I ain’t sittin’ next to no effin’ homo! Eff! Disgusting I even talked to you…”
Standing up he yelled at the stewardess, “This guy is queer. I don’t sit next to queers.”
The looks on the faces of the other passengers ranged from amused, to angry, to sympathetic. Most just pretended not to notice.
I got up and went to the back of the plane and waited for the crew to sort things out. They reseated me about 15 minutes later in a business class seat.
I have no idea what happened to him, but I think we can be sure he didn’t get any more whiskey colas…
Business class served Johnny Walker black.
The Male Loneliness Epidemic – Is It Women’s Fault?
This is a MUST watch.
Western society is DOOMED.
The Eviction Notice Is Being Written, and Will Come in Four Languages
The Eviction Notice is being written. And it will come in four languages. Russian. Farsi. Mandarin. And last but not least, English.
A much-cherished pleasure of professional writing is to always be enriched by informed readers. This “eviction” insight – worth a thousand geopolitical treatises – was offered by one of my sharpest readers commenting on a column.
Concisely, what we have here expresses a deeply felt consensus across the spectrum not only in West Asia but also in most latitudes across the Global South/Global Majority.
The Unthinkable, in the form of a genocide conducted live, in real time on every smartphone in the third decade of the millennium – which I called the Raging Twenties in a previous book – has acted like a particle accelerator, concentrating hearts and minds.
Those that chose to set West Asia on fire are already confronting nasty blowback. And that goes way beyond diplomacy exercised by Global South leaders.
For the first time in ages, via President Xi Jinping, China has been more than explicit geopolitically (a true Sovereign cannot hedge when it comes to genocide). China’s unmistaken position on Palestine goes way beyond the geoeconomics routine of promoting BRI’s trade and transportation corridors.
All that while President Putin defined sending humanitarian aid to Gaza as a “sacred duty”, which in Russian code includes, crucially, the military spectrum.
For all the maneuvering and occasional posturing, for all practical purposes everyone knows the current UN arrangement is rotten beyond repair, totally impotent when it comes to imposing meaningful peace negotiations, sanctions or investigations of serial war crimes.
The new UN in the making is BRICS 11 – actually BRICS 10, considering new Trojan Horse Argentina in practice may be relegated to a marginal role, assuming it joins on January 1st, 2024.
BRICS 10, led by Russia-China, both regulated by a strong moral compass, keep their ear on the ground and listen to the Arab street and the lands of Islam. Especially their people, much more than their elites. This will be an essential element in 2024 during the Russian presidency of BRICS.
Even with no check out, you will have to leave
The current order of business in the New Great Game is to organize the expulsion of the Hegemon from West Asia – as much a technical challenge as a civilizational challenge.
As it stands, the Washington-Tel Aviv continuum are already prisoners of their own device. This ain’t no Hotel California; you may not check out any time you like, but you will be forced to leave.
That may happen in a relatively gentle manner – think Kabul as a Saigon remix – or if push comes to shove may involve a naval Apocalypse Now, complete with expensive iron bathtubs turned into sub-ocean coral reefs and the demise of CENTCOM and its AFRICOM projection.
The crucial vector all along is how Iran – and Russia – have played, year after year, with infinite patience, the master strategy devised by Gen. Soleimani, whose assassination actually started the Raging Twenties.
A de-weaponized Hegemon cannot defeat the “new axis of evil”, Russia-Iran-China, not only in West Asia but also anywhere in Eurasia, Asia-Pacific, and pan-Africa. Direct participation/normalization of the genocide only worked to accelerate the progressive, inevitable exclusion of the Hegemon from most of the Global South.
All that while Russia meticulously crafts the integration of the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Baltic Sea (Finnish hysteria notwithstanding), the Arctic and the Northwestern Pacific Sea and China turbo-charges the integration of the South China Sea.
Xi and Putin are gifted players of chess and go – and profit from stellar advisers of the caliber of Patrushev and Wang Yi. China playing geopolitical go is an exercise in non-confrontation: all you need to do is to block your opponent’s ability to move.
Chess and go, in a diplomatic tandem, represent a game where you don’t interrupt your opponent when it is repeatedly shooting itself on the knees. As an extra bonus, you get your opponent antagonizing over 90% of the world’s population.
All that will lead to the Hegemon’s economy eventually collapsing. And then it can be beaten by default.
Western “values” buried under the rubble
As Russia, especially via Lavrov’s efforts, offers the Global South/Global Majority a civilizational project, focused on mutually respectful multipolarity, China via Xi Jinping offers the notion of “community with a shared future” and a set of initiatives, discussed in lengthy detail at the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) Forum in Beijing in October, where Russia, not by accident, was the guest of honor.
A group of Chinese scholars concisely frame the approach as China “creating/facilitating global nodes for relating/communicating and platforms for concrete collaboration/practical exchanges. The participants remains Sovereign, contribute to the common endeavor (or simply specific projects) and receive benefits making them willing to keep on.”
It’s as if Beijing was acting as a sort of shining star and guiding light.
In sharp contrast, what remains of Western civilization – certainly with not much to do with Montaigne,
Pico della Mirandola or Schopenhauer – increasingly plunges into a self-constructed Heart of Darkness (without Conrad’s literary greatness), confronting the true, irredeemably horrifying face of conformist, subservient individualism.
Welcome to the New Medievalism, precipitated by the “kill apps” of Western racism, as argued in a brilliant book, Chinese Cosmopolitanism, by scholar Shuchen Xiang, professor of Philosophy at Xidan University.
The “kill apps” of Western racism, writes Prof. Xiang, are fear of change; the ontology of bivalent dualism; the invention of the ‘barbarian’ as the racial Other; the metaphysics of colonialism; and the insatiable nature of this racist psychology. All these “apps” are now exploding, in real time, in West Asia. The key consequence is that the Western “values” construct has already perished, buried under the Gaza rubble.
Now to a ray of light: a case can be made – and we’ll be back to it – that orthodox Christianity, moderate Islam and several strands of Taoism/Confucianism may embrace the future as the three main civilizations of a cleansed Mankind.
Yes, they do. Forget the so-called “combat footage” you see on TV or YouTube.
It’s important to spot your enemies before they see you. This will give you a big advantage over them because you can better fight them or you can use this info to plan your next moves:
You already have a good hunch where your enemy is located before any fighting starts. Where and when you move will depend on the (often assumed) location of your enemy.
While you are moving, you are always on the lookout. It is usually the side that spots the enemy first that will have the upper hand in a firefight.
It’s one of the most important qualities in an infantry squad leader to have “a good eye”, meaning to anticipate the enemy’s whereabouts and to spot the exact location of enemy forces, especially under fire. You want to know from where you get shot at!
Sometimes, you will see the enemy, but they are still out of range of your weapons. You may want to relate their location to combat support troops that will then execute an artillery attack or an airstrike.
If you have no artillery or air support, as is often the case for guerrillas or special forces, you can approach the enemy until they come into range of your weapons or you set up an ambush.
In combat, you have to see your enemies to be able to kill them. Shooting around without anything in your sights is a waste of ammunition.
image 155
On the lookout: A Kosovo Liberation Army soldier observing enemy territory
There are exceptions:
Suppressive or covering fire where you shoot to hinder the enemy from exposing themselves to your fire keeps them out of sight. Still, even when shooting covering fire, you usually have a very good idea where your enemy is located.
In a combat situation, targets often disappear quickly after the first shots are fired. Your enemy will take cover. It’s not a mistake to send a few bursts of automatic fire to the place where you saw your enemy drop down, but after that, it’s time for indirect fire options, like hand grenades or Multiple Grenade Launchers (MGL). You won’t see your enemy, but as you use fragmentation weapons, there is a good chance to cause some damage as long as your grenades hit close enough.
It’s not always necessary (and possible) to see the enemy, but:
The sooner and the more precise you are able to pinpoint the enemy’s location, the better.
One word about “firefights” we see on TV: Most of the shootings on those clips is simply a waste of ammunition.
On the other hand, you won’t have a GoPro or any other camera switched on for twenty-four hours a day. When you spot the enemy (or they spot you), you’ll first shoot them (or jump for cover) before you start thinking about filming. As visible targets disappear quickly in the first moments of a firefight, the chances of getting an enemy live on camera are very slim.
Television crews rarely film on locations where the real action happens, but are often sent to less active parts of the frontline. The mere presence of a TV camera often prompts soldiers to start shooting. This is why our news shows are full of soldiers firing away at an empty landscape.
I was headed in for a job interview several years back. As I’m walking in, two other men are approaching the door from different angles. One of them speeds up to cut off the other and get in the door first, and the other walks in, shaking his head in disbelief. As I walk in behind them, the first guy runs to the elevator and presses the button, not holding the elevator for the other guy and me. Again, the second guy just shakes his head and we wait for the next elevator. I say “Can you believe some people?” And we both chuckle a little bit.
As it turns out, we are headed to the same floor, so we get off the elevator together. As we walk into an office, there is guy #1 Mr Impatient, standing at the desk tapping his foot as the receptionist is finishing up a phone call. The receptionist asks him “can I help you?” And he says “I’m here to see Mr Smith for an interview at 3:30.” (it’s currently 2:50).
I think to myself “Great, this guy is interviewing for the same position I am and he will act like the sweetest guy during the interview.” I lean over and tell the receptionist “I am Mr Smith’s 3 o’clock interview.” Mr Impatient GLARES at me.
The other guy I walked in with (the one Mr Impatient cut off) then says “Hey gentlemen, I’m Mr Smith.” And turns to Mr Impatient and says “you don’t need to wait around. I’ve already determined you are not a good fit for our company. “
I don’t know if you’d count this as a “benefit,” but my first job was at Wendy’s, when I was 16 in 1994. When they hired me, the manager said “minimum wage is $4.25, but we like to start people at $4.26 to give you a little extra and show we care.” He was dead serious, no irony. That has occupied part of my brain for 30 years now.
I knew something strange was going on when a candidate with X-men hair was elected president.
Buenos Aires has always had one of the world’s highest number of psychoanalysts. Now the psychological issues have made their way out of the bedroom into national politics.
Cheesecake Factory Louisiana Chicken Pasta
deliciousv
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
Cajun Sauce
1 tablespoon butter
1 small yellow bell pepper, chopped
1 small red bell pepper, chopped
3/4 small red onion, chopped
3 whole garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 1/4 pints whipping cream
1 cup low-salt chicken broth
4 tablespoons fresh basil, thinly sliced
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Chicken
6 skinless boneless chicken breast halves
3/4 cup bread crumbs
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons flour
4 tablespoons vegetable oil
Pasta
1 package bow-tie pasta
1 cup mushrooms, sliced
salt and pepper
Instructions
Cajun Sauce
Melt butter in heavy large skillet over medium-high heat. Add yellow and red bell peppers, mushrooms and onion to same skillet and saute until crisp-tender, about 4 minutes.
Add minced garlic and crushed red pepper to skillet and sauté 2 or 3 minutes.
Add whipping cream and chicken stock. Simmer until sauce reheats and thickens slightly, about 5 minutes.
Add basil and 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese to sauce, stirring to incorporate. Season sauce to taste with salt and pepper. Reduce heat to low, simmer. Sauce will reduce and thicken.
Chicken
Wash and drain chicken breasts. Pound until very thin, as thin or thinner then 1/4-inch thick (the thinner the chicken breasts the better).
Mix breadcrumbs, flour, and Parmesan cheese together. Place milk in dish for dipping.
Dip chicken into breadcrumb mixture and then into milk and then back into breadcrumbs.
Heat oil in skillet and fry at medium high temperature until golden, crisp, and cooked through. Add more oil as needed. Remove and drain chicken. Keep warm.
Pasta
Meanwhile, cook bow-tie pasta in large pot of boiling salted water until tender but still firm to bite. Drain and return to pot. Add sauce and toss to coat.
Place pasta with sauce on plate, and top with chicken breast.
Hello Allen, thank you for the question. Honestly, there were quite a few times I had the hell scared out of me. I’ve written at length about a few of them. I will provide a rerun of one of them now.
I was a in an FCI, a medium high prison with walls about 20’ high and rolls of razor wire 3 rolls deep at the base of the walls. There had been a lot of tension on the yard for weeks.
One morning as I was preparing for a Saturday, I noticed a group of 5–6 guys walk up to a bunk in a cell down a way. There seemed to be a bit of chatter and movement, sort of the thing a group might do if your team won a game. Talking, a bit of laughter, movement.
I walked by and went to breakfast, saw a couple guys I knew and we took a walk and discussed some important topic like that night’s dinner. A couple hours later I went back to my cell.
There were a couple CO’s and another guy in the cell where the group had been. They were standing over the bunk of the inmate.
there was something sticking out of his chest and the blood trails were in several areas.
It turned out this guy owed something to someone and wasn’t paying so the crew was sent to make an example.
The story was the weapon was a pencil, there were 9 wounds and the vic was rushed to medical and when he healed a bit was sent to a different prison.
The near murder right there was horrifying enough but the way the guys carried out the hit was nearly professional. It just seemed like a bunch of guys hanging out. All the while covering the scuffle, takedown and gigging.
In a flash you understand that if you cross an uncrossable line, even by mistake, it easily could be over before you realized what was happening.
It was a long time before I was comfortable in my cell, alone during open times or movements. Walking in a hall and coming across 4–5 guys of another race, you couldn’t show fear, but more than once I walked by waiting for a shank!
There is always a stress when you are inside. It is exponential when a high level yard is on edge.
On a summer’s day, as my wife Dorothy and I sat down to dinner, we thought we heard the sound of water being hosed onto a car. The front entrance was secured only by a screen door and we could readily hear neighborhood sounds.
Then Cocoa, our Seal Point Siamese, asked to be let in. When I opened the door, she fell over. And that noise was louder. I looked out; no car, no one hosing anything. And the noise was right below me, just off the porch. I looked down. A huge, very pissed off rattlesnake!
I called to Ralph, who had just stepped out of his kitchen, next door. “Rattlesnake!” I yelled. “Bring a rake!”
He did. And as Ralph pinned the snake with the rake, I tossed a large stone onto it, killing the serpent.
My wife took Cocoa to the vet, and while she was gone I decided to skin the snake, eviscerate it, and pan fry it. Rattlesnake meat was tasty, I heard, and the beast was as easily gutted as a bass.
But what do I do with the head? The fangs, the venom sacs?
Toilet.
I was unprepared for the surviving impulses of the snakes nervous system. Beheaded (and betailed, for the rattles) and completely stripped of the hide, I had in hand what appeared to be a section of a thick light grey garden hose, split down the middle. And when I ran this corpse under cold water, the spinal cord delivered one last discharge, causing the thing to writhe in my hands. It was alive! I threw the twisting monster into the freezer and slammed the door.
Dorothy and Cocoa came into the kitchen; the cat was recovering but Dorothy said I looked like I had just seen a ghost.
I explained. After a few minutes, I took the frozen snake from the freezer and let it thaw as I prepared a frying pan with melted butter and some salt and pepper. I cut the snake into sections as one might cut a sausage, and added the sections to the gently crackling pan.
In 5 minutes, the flesh had turned white and flaky. I removed all, divided onto 2 plates, and Dorothy and I sat down to eat.
And we tried. We chewed and chewed and chewed and chewed. But the meat had turned into some kind of weird plastic strands that refused to be swallowed.
I took all and tossed into a pressure cooker with some white wine, set all to max pressure and gave it a full 30 minutes. After decanting the vessel, there appeared the most perfect, delicate flakes, like carefully separated crab meat.
And we chewed and chewed and chewed and chewed. Next stop; snake to trash, hot dogs to grill.
I had this experience once. There was a Shawarma/Pizza place on the same block as a place I had newly moved into. So I (single mom) went in with my young kids to order a pizza.
They didn’t have a menu, the ’employees’ were a bunch of guys in expensive tracksuits, jewelry, and all looked like buff gym rats, with the perfectly lined up and gel thick hair – they looked initially very confused that I was actually ordering food there, and there was a bunch of arguing in (I think) Arabic. They insisted that I order a pizza there, it would just be a bit of a wait. One guy left, and came back with a bag of groceries. It took over an hour. I offered a few times to go elsewhere “You’re busy, so sorry..” but they insisted I wait. I chatted with the guy who was at the front counter a bit- he was pleasant enough, but it seemed like he was deciding whether or not my entering of the restaurant was going to be a problem for them. While my kids and I waited on the pizza, a few times some tracksuit guys came in, went to the back, then left with stuffed brown paper bags. His whole demeanor changed when I mentioned that my kids and I had left an abusive situation, and that’s why we’d moved into the area. He wanted to see a picture of my ex, and insisted I show the other tracksuit guys too.
The pizza was ok I guess, a little undercooked. I don’t think the pizza oven had ever been used before- I could see the pizza oven from the front counter, and they had a huddle around it to figure out how it turned on.
The guy at the front didn’t know how to work the register, so he told me it was on the house.
Before I left, the front counter guy told me I was part of the neighborhood now, and to let him know if anyone bothered me or my kids, and he’d “take care of it”.
Anytime I walked past that store after that I was greeted warmly by the tracksuit guys, and they always asked if anyone was “giving me trouble”. Never tried to order food there ever again though!
He surprised me. We were in our early 30’s and newly married. My husband said “ oh my , the freezer defrosted you better go look to see what can be saved”. I went to the kitchen and opened the freezer. Inside was a little box that said “ ice”. He had bought me a pair of diamond earrings. They weren’t the biggest and most expensive but they were beautiful. we are still married and I have worn them for the last 41 years.
I worked late one day so I talked to my boss and we agreed that I would come in late the following day. I had a funny feeling about this, as if she might try something. Thus, even though she agreed I should come in at 8:30 the next morning, I arrived on time and sat in the parking lot. She called me at 8:15 and asked me where I was. I reminded her that we agreed I could come in at 8:30, “but,” I said, “I’m parked right outside the office. Do you want me to come in earlier than we discussed yesterday?” She said no. That was in May.
In June, I got called in to her office and she wrote me up for being late that day a month prior as well as walking in 2 minutes late one morning. The write up skipped the initial verbal warning and first write up and stated it was a final warning.I was on notice that I could be fired for anything at any time.
One day in September she called me into her office and fired me for excessive tardiness. I filed for unemployment and won. The Judge laughed at her and told her “This lady was late by 2 minutes and you found that soooo agregious that you fired her for it, yet you waited 3 months to do it? You’re gonna pay on this one.” I ended up with 4k in back payments.
Several months ago I went to a hospital fearing that I was having a heart attack. I wasn’t, as it turned out, but I was admitted for what was really wrong: pneumonia.
I was in the hospital three days before being discharged, and during that time I questioned every single medication they brought for me. An antibiotic IV about to be hooked up? I’d ask the nurse to confirm what specific one it was. A couple of pills they want me to take? “Which pill is which specific medication?”
I did this partly to be sure they weren’t giving me a wrong medication, and also to be aware of every medication they actually administered and could thus bill me for. Good thing, too.
When I was discharged they gave me a stack of paperwork. Some it was warnings about what I should or shouldn’t do going forward; some outlined the tests they had conducted and the results of them; and one page was supposed to be a pair of new medications one of the doctors had told me he was prescribing for me to fill after discharge. That page was missing, so I had to wait a few more hours while they got hold of that doctor and got him to enter the order.
Turns out one of the drugs he prescribed was atorvastatin for the high cholesterol that came up on one of the tests. The thing is, I am allergic to all statins, a fact that was all over the medical records they got from my primary care doctor, and which I had told them on at least three occasions as well when they asked me to confirm any and all allergies. Obviously I didn’t fill that prescription.
Then I got the bill, charging me $1145 for atorvastatin administered during my inpatient stay.
Now I of course knew full well they had never given me that drug, not only because I had been checking all the meds they did give me, but because I never had the severe reaction to it that would have resulted if they had. So I called their billing department, explained the matter, and requested they amend the bill. They refused.
I called my doctor, and she suggested I write the request out and send it to them via certified mail. That would have been a pain in my ass, as my big truck would not fit in the parking lot of the kinds of places one can do that, and I was over 1000 miles from home.
So I instead called hospital administration and told them I wanted to report a dangerous medication error by that doctor. That got their attention.
I again related the whole matter, which they verified from the notes right there in my records as I went along through the narrative. They clearly saw the multiple notes about the allergy, they clearly saw that no such medication was administered during my stay, and they clearly saw that the doctor had only prescribed it hours after I had been discharged.
They apologized profusely and promised that they would attend to the matter using the legally prescribed procedures, which they did not explain. I pleasantly accepted their apology, then asked if that process would include striking this billing item for administering that drug they had just admitted I never received.
They refused again.
I said that was fine, then asked how I should go about reporting them for malpractice for administering a drug my chart clearly said I was allergic to? Response: but we didn’t administer that drug!
My reply, as long as they insisted on billing me for it, I could only assume that meant they really had administered it. So it could only be one of two things: malpractice for giving me the drug, or fraud for charging me for it after not giving me the drug. I said I would leave it for them to sort out while I called my insurance company and briefed them on the matter… which I then did.
Two weeks later a new billing statement arrived with not only that charge removed, but charges for two tests they had charged me for but apparently not actually done. I called the insurance company again, and they informed me that those tests had been ordered but never actually done, and they themselves had been the ones to uncover that after my earlier call to them. They had requested an audit of my treatment, which had then exposed the other errors.
The most absurd thing to my mind was their insistence on billing me for a drug after they knew that doing so was documented evidence of malpractice.
30 years ago a mate and I were heading off to the range to hit some golf balls.
It was his idea and he wanted to drive. I was saved by one thing and that was he didn’t have his wallet, so he went upstairs to get it and while he did that I thought I would take a quick look in the glove compartment in case it was in there.
It wasn’t but I found an exploding golf ball, still in it’s box, so I quickly swapped it with a real golf ball leaving the box exactly where I found it.
On the range we are smacking golf balls to oblivion trying to hit it further than the other can. After about 5 minutes my mate says, “Would you mind if we swap sides?”
Funny thing is, that was exactly what I was going to say in order to make him hit the exploding ball. Exploding golf balls don’t look or feel real so teeing it up for the victim is the only way for it to work.
So I said, “Sure. Just let me hit this one.” which I did and then while he watched it I quickly teed up the exploding one, which was loose in my pocket.
We then swapped sides where he then challenged me to a longest hit competition with our next shots. Of course I agreed and smacked mine as hard as I could and looked straight at him not where the ball went.
He was expecting my ball to explode but it didn’t and he looked quite confused about it. Then he had his turn. The whole thing just turned to dust in an instant. One huge dust cloud!
He spun around and looked guiltily at the range office like he had done something wrong and would get in trouble. If he was confused with my shot he was now flabbergasted with his own. His facial expression was priceless.
I’m laughing my head off as I can tell he can’t work out how any of this has happened. He told me later that in that moment he could not understand how it went wrong. He couldn’t figure out how the golf ball he took out the box and teed up for me got to the other tee.
I think there is nothing more satisfying in life than getting someone with their own practical joke.
My Wife Asked For An Open Marriage So I Hooked Up That Night And Dumped Her The Next Day
Stopped caring or giving a Fck about people who doesn’t care for me.
Their benifit, opinions and even existence. Caring is mutual, if you can’t. Sorry. I won’t take a minute to forget you. My family and people who love me is everything for me.
Stopped taking stress and overthinking.
Because which I can control, I can control. What I can’t. I can’t. Me taking unnecessary stress not gonna give me control on things I can’t.
Stopped crying.
Most importantly, doesn’t gonna change the situation. If something happened, it happened. Crying will not change reality. Move on. Think calmly and search for a solution.
Stopped giving Explanation.
If you are asking proper explanation and proofs every time ( once or twice is okay ), he doesn’t believes you and he won’t, no matter how many times you prove yourself. Just don’t waste your time.
Stopped seeking for outer beauty.
When it comes to relationship, I am so deeply wounded by people who looked attractive only from outside, my preference changed. I now seeks for behavior and personality more than skin colour aur figure. But yeah, they matter too but isn’t a vital deal-breaker. But, if I get it, I won’t mind.
Stopped seeking for people’s company.
I don’t know, the day I took drop, my outside life is cut short, and all I have is my books, and my computer screen, and a small cozy bedroom-cum-studyroom.Now, it’s more than half a year, and now I prefer not to interact with outside world and stay in my cave.I can stay like that, alone whole day, even I want to live like this in hostel in single room.
Stopped being in people’s life, where no body want me too.
“When to leave” is most important thing. Not everyone who care for you really care for you, maybe one is just intrested in you, but when they lose interest, they won’t. It’s better to leave these people’s life, before they kick you out.If you feel things aren’t same like it was before, but you aren’t the reason, don’t stay there to heal, it will just reduce your self respect. Just leave it. Hurting yourself is better than hurting your self esteem.
Stopped reducing my respect for someone’s ego satisfaction.
You first feel that it’s just small stuff, it doesn’t matter. Let’s do this or that, to cheer up. Naah, my self respect isn’t worthed to become someone’s entertainment.You will ignore once or twice, but then it will become a habit, and will end when you completely become someone’s hand puppet.
I stopped keeping expectations.
Expectations are the reason of being hurt. Just remove expectations, you will be satisfied and happy.If you keep absolutely no expectations from people, even their most basic gesture will make you happy, because it was more than what you expected and you will feel blessed.
As a youngster of 17, I worked for what was then (1965) known as the Maryland Department of Game and Inland Fish. (Today, the Department Natural Resources — DNR). My job was taking the census of the fish in Deep Creek Lake, located in Garrett County, the westernmost in Maryland, below Pittsburgh PA.
No, I did not knock on the surface of the water and then interview fish who answered the knock.
But what I DID do was interview anglers, fishing from docks or boats, asking them to pull up their stringers and show me their catch. And I asked what fish they had returned to the water and if those fish were dead or alive when returned. All of this went onto a data sheet. The data sheet itself was organized sectionally as to areas on the Lake, designated by name (such as Harvey’s Peninsula) and by a mark on a map.
Thus on any given day I would follow what appeared to be a a random walk from place to place, chatting up the fishermen, taking notes. I was the ideal employee because I lived on the lake during the summer and I knew every little inlet, peninsula, and tributary.
Now here are the parts that made the job especially interesting, occasionally hilarious, and sometimes mildly dangerous.
Illegal Anglers: The ones without a fishing license. My john-boat had state of Maryland Decals just aft of the bow, port and starboard, so as to identify me as “official.” And some of those who saw me approach assumed I was with “enforcement,” which I was NOT. Thus I heard all kinds of stories, ranging from the license being accidentally dropped overboard, to “I was just practicing fishing, I’ll buy the license tomorrow.” Some people actually untethered their stringer, to let the catch swim away. And one guy threw all his tackle overboard. Then there were those who had fish that measured less than legal for keeping; so full of apologies were they. I did my best to assure that I was with the State Biologist, NOT the enforcement division.
But one good thing…I learned where all the best fishing was and yes, I sure DID drop my line or trawl those areas.
Babe Watch: The Deep Creek Lake State Park has a sandy beach area.
When my lunch break had me near the park, I would beach the boat and sit on the grass munching my sandwich. And if I was lucky, I would make the acquaintance of some lovely lasses who might be receptive to a return visit from me when I was “off the clock.”
The Big Kill: In addition to the data I collected, the State biologist would stretch a net across an isolated inlet, and poison the water from the net to the shoreline. Hundreds; no THOUSANDS of fish floated to the surface, belly up. And some were trophy size walleye, pike and large mouth. I was in heaven. I was going to scarf up a basket or two, and have the ultimate fish-fry.
But no, said the biologist. Those fish would kill you.
Damn.
(You might wonder why all the fish outside the net weren’t killed. Some were. But the target inlet was NOT fed by a creek, so the water was fairly still —no current. Plus, the poison was short-acting.)
The Thermocline: There comes a point at which the water at the top half of the lake exchanges place with the water in the bottom half. Or, at least the temperature gradient does a flip-flop. I’m not sure why that mattered, but it was my job to transport the guy with the sample container to an area over the deepest place in the lake, where he would toss a brass container overboard, then jerk a cable to open the cylinder and let the bottom water flood the vessel. When he pulled on the cable again, that trapped the water inside, and he pulled the sample up to the boat.
There, we had various Erlenmeyer flasks arrayed in a wooden rack, into which flasks he drained enough bottom water to reach an index line on the flask. Then, he dropped in some power and watched the color. When he smiled, I knew it was time to take him and his chemistry set back to the dock.
Personal Use? You bet! The State’s boat had only an 18 HP outboard motor, so I wasn’t pulling any skiers. But yeah, when off duty I could use it as my personal ride, or to go fishing.
He was a teacher and in his school the principal made the rule that all teachers must have their lesson plans for each week on the principal’s desk by 8am Monday morning, and he’d read them, sign them and have them back to the teachers by the time school started at 9am. This was. of course, a hassle for teachers and my friend worked out that there was no way that the principal could read every lesson plan in that time, let alone understand them. So he decided to run a horticulture unit with his class of about 9 year old children, the project being to plant trees up the middle of the school assembly hall. Now obviously this was a ridiculous project and was never going to happen, but the plans came back each week duly signed by the principal.
The teacher taught and had the children research what sort of trees would be suitable, measuring temperatures, light, heights and widths of trees, and researching the best species, all of which was clearly documented in the lesson plans and came back duly signed and approved by the principal. Finally the day came when the locations for the trees were to be marked on the hall floor in preparation for cutting the holes, importing the soil and planting the trees. The teacher carefully chose a day when he knew the school inspectors would be arriving. Sure enough, the inspectors had a meeting with the principal after morning assembly and part way through this meeting, as specified in the signed lesson plan, the teacher politely knocked on the principal’s door and asked where did he want them?
“Where do I want what?” the principal asked.
“The trees in the assembly hall,” replied the teacher.
“Trees? In the assembly hall? What do you mean?”
“Well,” replied the teacher, waving the sheaf of lesson plans, all carefully signed by the principal, “As you know, I have been running a unit on horticulture in preparation for planting trees up the middle of the assembly hall, and today’s the day we mark out where to put them. So we need you to show us where you want them, as I specified in the lesson plans which you read and signed.” He waved the sheaf of plans once again.
Needless to say, no trees were ever planted up the middle of the hall, and the principal never again wanted lesson plans submitted for approval.
A few months ago, I noticed that my daughter smiled to herself a lot. I decided to “confront” her: “You have a crush. Haven’t you?”. She blushed and exclaimed: “How do you know that?!?!”. I played my cool poker face 😎 “Been there, done that. Tell me!”. Then she told me about the boy.
A couple days later, she asked me: “I noticed that during lunchtime, he finishes his lunch real fast then goes to the library to play chess. Should I go talk to him? I play chess too!”
I told her: “Why the rush? I think, you might want to practice playing chess a little bit better first, then ask him to play a match with you. You might win, or at the very least, not lose badly. And I tell you a secret: you can learn a lot about a person when they lose a game!”
For about 2 weeks, she played chess with me every evening.
One day, she came home and told me: “I un-crushed him. We played 2 games today. He won the first, I won the 2nd. But when he lost, he curse and stomped out. Not cool!”
That was the moment I felt like a warm hug. The feeling of being able to share with my daughter her stories, her feelings always warms me up.
My Fiancée Asked For An Open Relationship 3 MONTHS Before Our Wedding So I Kicked Her A** Out!
When I was being recruited by Nike in 1997 I was a little concerned about cultural issues, especially institutional sexism — I had heard that the place was something of a boys’ club.
I couldn’t travel for a few weeks so I was having a series of conversations with the general counsel in advance. We were arranging the logistics for my interview day. I’d basically see a different interviewer each hour from 9 am till 6 pm, including lunch with him and my predecessor in the job.
As we were discussing the plans I asked him if he could please include a woman who had been with the company for a long time.
I held my breath briefly for his reaction. Some male executives would have been offended. But he exclaimed, “What a good idea! I should have thought of it!” and immediately agreed to make it happen.
He was good for his word — my first interview that day was with Nike’s corporate treasurer, who was at least a 20 year veteran of the Swoosh.
I think it’s reasonable to state openly that you are eager to get a sense of the company culture, and ask the interviewer how they would describe it.
The Chinese YiChe race
China is home to many races, while Han is dominant, the other races are very interesting. This is a very interesting race. They have “open marriages”, wear miniskirts, and have a graduated system of Bride Prices.
Many, many years ago I received a letter in the post. It was a recorded delivery and I had to sign for it to confirm delivery. I was intrigued and opened it immediately. It was a summons to appear in our local small claims court. I was being sued for £6,000. There were no details about the charges or any explanation of what the case was about other than the name and address of the complainant. I was mystified as I didn’t recognise the name. Lets call him Mr Smith.
In the three weeks before the stated date I convinced myself that one of my sons was playing an involved joke on me. I quizzed them all mercilessly but nobody would admit to knowing anything about it. As the date drew closer I determined to go to court just to find out which of my boys was the perpetrator of this rather involved joke.
Court day arrived and I went into the court building and presented my summons to an attendant, still expecting to be told it was a forgery. I was wrong. I was politely directed to a small waiting room and told my case would be called in 10 minutes. I was stunned.
When I was escorted into the courtroom the Sheriff (a lay judge in Scotland) asked me if I had a legal representative. I explained how I thought that the summons was a joke and I had no lawyer. He said that I could ask for a deferment to get legal advice if I choose but he didn’t think that was necessary. I sat down still stunned and confused but by now rather scared.
The Sheriff now asked the other side to outline their case. I listened in stunned amazement as the story unfolded.
Apparently some 6 months previously I had sold Mr Smith a tenpin bowling ball and drilled the ball to suit his hand. I had explained to him the need to keep the ball clean of lane oil on a regular basis. Mr Smith had taken me at my word and had left his bowling ball soaking in a bathtub of hot soapy water overnight. Feeling that the finger and thumb holes were wet when he fished the ball out of the bath in the morning he had decided to dry out the ball. Fifteen or twenty minutes in the microwave should dry it out nicely.
Some time later the ball had exploded. The force of the explosion was enough to destroy the microwave and send the door of the microwave flying upward with enough energy to punch through the ceiling and the floor of the room above his kitchen. Unfortunately the room above his kitchen was his neighbours bathroom. The microwave door not only punched through the floor but punched through the actual bath. Really unfortunately the poor woman was taking a bath at the time.
She was suing Mr Smith for the damage to her bathroom from the flying microwave door as well as the water damage to her carpets from the bath full of water. She wasn’t suing for the shock of a microwave door suddenly puncturing her bath although it must have been a terrific shock.
Mr Smith was suing me for the same amount on the basis that I had sold him a bowling ball without specifically telling him not to put it in the microwave.
By this stage several people in the gallery were laughing and the sheriff was definitely smiling. I was still worried but feeling considerably less scared. We all sat politely until Mr Smith’s lawyer had finished. The Sheriff then drew himself very straight and without a trace of a smile said that he was here to apply the law of the land and not to educate idiots. Case dismissed.
It’s early morning, the sun is just barely visible in the edges of the sky.
The date is August 5th, 2001 and Richard Ankrom and several friends are preparing to commit a crime that is several years in the making.
Twenty years prior, Ankrom was driving north on the 110 freeway. He got ready to merge onto Interstate 5 North, another freeway but missed the exit.
A few years later, he officially moved to LA and found himself driving on the same stretch of road as before.
He glanced up at the sign and realized the I-5 exit wasn’t marked at all.
That was why he had missed the turn ages ago.
And on that day, he swore to himself he would never let another person suffer the same fate.
He began studying freeway signs, their exact color, size and make up. He balanced on the edges of bridges to get precise measurements.
He copied the existing signs to a T, even consulting the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices to make sure he got the width and height perfect. He even sprayed the sign to make it look more worn down.
From there, he disguised himself, cutting his hair and buying a hard hat and vest.
And on August 5th, 2001 he positioned his ladder and climbed thirty feet to reach the sign.
He and his friends rushed away, afraid of getting caught in the act.
Nine months later, one of his friends confessed, leaking the crime to a local newspaper.
However, instead of being taken down, it passed inspection and remained there for another 8 years and even then, they put up a new sign in its place.
I was 12 years old, and back then thought you teased girls you liked. I was infatuated with a girl in my neighborhood and would tease her on the school bus.
One day I meant to say “I’ve seen better, but I haven’t seen worse!”
It came out as “I’ve seen worse, but I haven’t seen better!”
I said this in front of all the kids on the bus. I stammered a minute, not believing what came out of my mouth! I never would have had the confidence to say something like that! She immediately smiled and hugged me. Suddenly I had my first girlfriend. I just went with it.
I had suspected my wife was cheating, so put a tracker in her car. When she claimed she was going to a friend’s house to watch his dog, I watched on the tracker monitor as she in fact drove in the exact opposite direction to a hotel to meet one of what I would later find out were several lovers. So, I grabbed her spare keys, took a Lyft to the hotel she was actually at, got in her car and drove it to the friend’s house she was supposed to be at, then took a Lyft home. When she called the next day, claiming her car was stolen, I asked her to use the friend’s Ring camera to see the culprit. Cornered, she confessed, and found her own way home, then shortly thereafter, her own home.
You’ve all seen this formation right? It’s rather famous.
Well, would you be surprised to find out it was not that commonly used? We have some records of it from Dio and a few other historians but it was not that common.
Typically this formation would be used during a siege where the infantry needed to close in on some high walls under missile fire. Otherwise, it was never really used that often.
The problem is that this formation makes units less maneuverable and less flexible and it makes hand-to-hand combat almost impossible. So in every battle, the Romans would just be in normal lines ready to fight.
2: The Romans had poor cavalry
Now the Romans truly did not produce great cavalry from their own ranks. However, the Romans most certainly used talent wherever they found it.
When they conquered a people that were great on horseback they would employ them as Auxiliaries to assist the legions.
This means the Romans had
Numidian Cavalry (ranked among the best on earth at the time)
Macedonian Cavalry
Gallic Cavalry
These were without a doubt the best horsemen on planet earth and they all fought for the Romans.
In fact, during the late Imperial period, the Roman military became very calvary-centric and did end up boasting some of the best trained and equipped cavalry on earth.
One thing to remember is that cavalry at this time was not all that great. Stirrups were not yet invented and this meant that cavalry were basically expensive scouts minus a few exceptions. Infantry won wars in the ancient world far more often than cavalry.
3: The Romans were brutal conquerers
Now the Romans could be brutal and there were many times where they were brutal. However, in terms of being conquered, you could do worse than Rome.
If you snuggled up the Romans as an ally and played the role of submissive ally Rome would defend you to the death and be extremely hands-off. You’d keep your rulers and laws and merely pay a small tax to Rome. You also got the benefit of protection from the legions which meant total safety for centuries.
Rome viewed every relationship (diplomatic or otherwise) as having the dominant patron and the submissive client. The role of the patron was to support, elevate, and protect while the role of the client was to submit, admire, and support. If a tribe submitted itself as the client, Rome was often a great patron.
The Romans were also extremely tolerant of others. There was some racism and xenophobia as there is in all peoples but Rome accepted all religions and cultures as valuable. The Romans often adopted cultural elements or even gods from conquered peoples.
Now if you betrayed the Romans or worse yet attack them, they could be extremely brutal. Any slight paid to Rome would be returned ten-fold.
Being conquered by Rome was not the worse fate in the world, but being an enemy to Rome was certainly a death sentence.
Copeland’s of New Orleans Stuffed Strawberry French Toast
strawberry
Ingredients
1 cup milk
3 cups heavy cream, divided
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 French baguette, sliced diagonally
1 cup strawberries, freshly cut
Powdered sugar for dusting
1/2 pound cream cheese
Instructions
Combine milk, eggs, vanilla extract, sugar and 2 cups heavy cream; mix well, then set aside.
Whip remaining 1 cup heavy cream until peaks form. Beat in cream cheese until smooth.
Heat skillet over medium-high heat; add butter.
Dip bread slices into batter, making sure to leave them long enough to absorb some of the batter without making them soggy. Place bread in skillet; brown on both sides.
Remove bread from skillet and place on a plate.
Scoop cream cheese mixture on top of each piece.
Top with another piece of toast to form a sandwich.
Top with fresh strawberries, dust with powdered sugar, and serve immediately.
For context: I’m 37. Married since 2017. One kid. Flat broke. Heavily indebted. Diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune disorder in 2016. Recently embarked upon a spiritually rewarding career as a helicopter pilot.
(Neither this nor what follows is an indictment of capitalism or Western society, as I hope you know. I’m flat broke because I have a toddler and am starting over from scratch career-wise, and I’m indebted because I borrowed heavily in order to attend flight school. It was my choices that got me here, nothing else.)
At this point in life, what excites me the most is:
1. Affording steak.
My wife and I usually have anywhere from $20 to $150 between paydays. My wife just got a job at a daycare center, so that’ll take some of the pressure off. But our debt is such that every spare penny should be spent paying it down. Frivolities like steak, good booze, fancy dinners out, and even trips to the zoo and aquarium with our daughter have gone out the window. My folks had to float us $1100 for snow tires earlier this month, and I’m having a hard time dealing with the shame of it. What excites me the most right now is making enough money to pay down debt and still have enough disposable income left over to treat myself and my family.
2. Supporting my girls on a single income.
In a year’s time, if I play my cards right, I could be the assistant chief flight instructor at my flight school. Or I’ll move on to a job in the helicopter tour or utility industries. Either way, I’ll be getting a fat raise. This has amazing ramifications for my little family. It could mean that my wife and I will be able to pay off a significant chunk of our debts, and we’ll have more disposable income. Far from merely being able to afford steak, I might be able to buy itregularly—and grill it on a grill I could then afford to purchase, while drinking beer I could afford to homebrew. It might also mean that my wife and I could afford to have a second child, accrue some savings and an emergency fund, and even scrape together a down payment for a goddamn house. (I’ve never bought or owned a home in my life, and I’m tired of renting.) But whatever the consequences of my pay raise, I’ll just be happy and proud to be providing for my family at long last. And not dependent on my folks.
3. Enjoying a proper autumn.
November up here in the Northland has been unseasonably warm, the locals tell me. Normally there’s a few inches of snow on the ground by now, and the temperature is below freezing every day. It was 50 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday. The leaves have already fallen, but the abundant sunlight and mild temperatures are making me feel like we’re getting an actual autumn instead of leaping straight from summer to winter. And I’ve been taking full advantage of it. I hiked to the top of Ely’s Peak in my shirtsleeves last Wednesday, and today I took my daughter to Hawk Ridge and Hartley Park.
4. Getting checked out in a turbine helicopter.
Speaking of shame, I have over 500 hours in rotorcraft and all of them are in Robinsons. Not that there’s anything wrong with Robinsons, but you can think of them as the tricycles of the helicopter world. Some people ride them for fun, and very few for work, but they mostly use them for training. Getting checked out in a different helicopter, especially a turbine-powered one, would be like learning to ride a motorcycle by comparison. I’d feel like a real helicopter pilot then. My school just happens to have an old Bell 206B that it uses to provide turbine transition training to students. I missed my chance to get checked out in it this fall—too low on the seniority list—but I’ll almost certainly get into it next summer. I’m stoked.
5. My daughter’s 2nd birthday.
I can scarcely believe that my girl is almost 18 months old, let alone that she’ll be two in June. Being able to say “she’s two” instead of “she’s XX months” excites me for some odd reason.
6. Reading, as usual.
Having a kid and becoming a flight instructor put a major crimp in my reading schedule. I’m currently 13 books behind, according to the tracker I use on Goodreads. Granted, I picked some doozies to read this year. It’s been a long, hard slog, reading Lewis and Clark’s journals and The Brothers Karamazov simultaneously. But I’m almost done, and I have a couple of new books waiting in the wings—a much-anticipated travelogue by Anton Chekhov (Sakhalin Island), and a horror novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (The Relic), which I’d intended to read in October. That, and the rest of the books on my reading list (sketched out until the year 2031), have me excited. As they always do.
7. Making soup every weekend.
Classic dad move, right? I enjoy soups and stews immensely. And winter, of course, is soup season. To take full advantage of it, I made out a list of soups that I want to make this season and have been checking them off one by one, starting the weekend of my birthday in late September. I’ve done beef stew, French onion soup, pumpkin soup, fish-head soup, and chicken stew with dumplings. Tonight it’s beer cheese soup. I am super pumped.
8. Date night with the wife.
Due to various factors—lack of funds, a dearth of trustworthy babysitters, scheduling issues, the realities of having children, and general stress levels—my wife and I haven’t been dating each other like we should. In fact, we’ve gone on exactly three dates this year: in January, June, and October respectively. We’re trying to fix that. I’m securing a sitter for the night of Friday the 24th. My wife and I have plans to slip across the river into Wisconsin for burgers and brews at a much-beloved taphouse. I am beyond excited about this. It’ll be nice to sit across a table from my spouse, sip local brews, and discuss something other than poop and money.
Once upon a time I put in average speed cameras on a section of the A31 in UK. They were dropping the speed limit from 60 mph to 50 mph on this stretch. For those that don’t know these monitor your speed over a set distance and if you are 10% + 3 miles per hour over the speed limit you will get a fine, (or occasionally offered a Driver Awareness Course, based on the speed and if you have done one in the last 3 months).
Anyway, cameras go in, we do the testing phase and final commissioning.
2 weeks after they are commissioned, I went to a meeting to close the final account for putting these in, drove passed them on the way home at 62 mph, (as I had always done), and forgot they were now live and got a £60 fine and 3 points on my licence. All from safety cameras that I put in.
Four thousand and seven years ago, my father, who was a great man, one of the greatest men in history, he was born in Germany; he went into the real estate business. You have to be really, really smart to get into the real estate business. I inherited his smarts, and I got into the real estate business too. I have the best real estate. Everyone loves my real estate. But now we are engaged in a great civil war. The greatest civil war. Why are we engaged in it? Because my predecessor, President Bookananin, was a bad deal maker. If I had been President then, we wouldn’t have had a war because I would have made a deal, the best deal. I am the best deal maker ever. It’s true. If I had been President, I’d have made such a good deal that the North would be happy, the South would have been happy, the slaves would have been very happy; they would have been the happiest slaves you have ever seen. Just smiling and singing and picking cotton. Such happy slaves. But now we are here to bury the dead. But what we say here cannot honor them. Because they don’t deserve to be honored! I like soldiers who are so good that they don’t get shot. What good is a dead soldier? Dead soldiers can’t soldier any more because they are dead. All soldiers who die are just losers. If I had been a soldier, I would have survived, I guarantee it. Now let’s go play some golf!
I arrived for an interview and was asked to wait a few minutes as the interviewer was held up. A few minutes later he came out, apologised said he’d been called to an urgent problem. He explained that some of the stuff I’d be working on would highly commercially sensitive and while he finished up could I read through the pre-interview contract and sign it.
I read through it and though I’m no lawyer it read like they could sue for everything I owned from my house down to my underwear if I so much as said I’d been within a mile of the building. The I interviewer came back a few minutes later and asked if I was happy and had signed the paperwork.
I replied that I hadn’t signed coz it looked a bit iffy on the conditions and he replied
‘congratulations, you’re the first person out of 8 people who passed the first stage test’.
Apparently everyone else had skimmed through and signed and not bothered really looking at what they were signing off on.
For the same reason it takes three minutes to trace a phone call, firewalls have a progress bar on them, and all handguns regardless of caliber and design always make the same sound (unless they’re silenced, in which case they go “thwip thwip”):
Because Hollywood isn’t real.
In the real world, a phone call can be traced the instant the phone rings; you don’t even need to pick it up. In the real world, firewalls either block some bit of traffic or they don’t. In the real world, different firearms all make different sounds, and they’re heckin’ loud, even if “silenced.” Like loud enough you won’t be exchanging witty quips with anyone during a shootout.
And in the real world, antipersonnel mines detonate instantly, except some old bouncing mines that detonate about a second after they’re activated.
I woke up one morning after having a bizarre nightmare. I dreamt that called my boss and told him my youngest son was going to die. My son was only 10 days old at the time. A perfectly healthy beautiful little baby boy. When I woke up I felt nauseous from the dream and experienced the worst anxiety I have ever had. I knew intuitively that something was wrong with my son. He didn’t show any rare signs or specific symptoms, the only thing that was odd was that he slept a bit heavier than usual that night. I couldn’t ignore my anxiety and checked his temperature and was shocked when it showed 35,1 degrees Celsius. I immediately took him to the ER and soon found out that an entero virus (a normal winter season virus that gives you a cold) had affected his heart and the room was soon filled with doctors and me and my husband were asked to leave. 12 hours later the doctors informed us that the virus had caused our healthy baby a serious heart failure (dilated cardiomyopathy and myocarditis ) and that he probably wouldn’t make it. They called a priest and the rest is black for me. Our baby was put into coma in a respirator and was going to be put on an ECMO machine. We were transferred to the ICU for infants. After 2 months at the ICU he suddenly improved. The doctors told us that almost no children survive this virus on the heart – because there are no obvious clear signs so the parents don’t understand that something is wrong. They also said that what he survived is in theory impossible to survive (considering how ill he was). They asked me what caused us to seek help and I told them about my dream. I will never forget the doctors answer “there are somethings between heaven and earth that medicine can’t explain – your boy is a living miracle”.
He turns 5 next year and has almost recovered 100% from the heart failure expect for 1/8 of his heart that is permanently damaged.
They are not trying. They are. You are out of business due to you guys looking down and under estimating China. And all the shit about intellectual property theft and copying while in truth China overtook the U.S. and the world in EV technology. Global warming is caused by the U.S. and the west China resolved it.
Yes you guys are caught off guard but it is your fault. Today there are still many especially white Caucasian westerners who thinks the Chinese as no technology, no can only do T-Shirts and Cheap plastic toys. To me it is racism and served you guys right. China will out compete you in every sector including jet planes, rockets, quantum computers and AI.
Even this question is a racist and underestimating China nonsense. Even the great Tesla used Chinese engines and batteries. China makes 9/10 EVs on earth. And they are catching up! What a foolish statement.
When i was about 9 years old we lived acoss the street from a little store that had a paper machine out front. My mother would send me over with a quarter each morning and 3 on sundays to get a newspaper. One day an old timer was walking up and said, watch this. He put 4 pennies in the machine and much to my surprise, it opened right up just as if he had put a quarter in it and sure enough on Sunday, 12 pennies did the same thing. Not sure if the machines worked by weight or what, but this went on for a few years until we eventually just got it delivered. This was a time when 20 cent would buy 4 fireballs or lots of other smaller candies. I truly believe karma caught up with me as i had more than my fair share of cavities growing up.
My sister died 5 weeks ago. We’ve just got back from her funeral in the UK. She’d been in poor health for several years so it was no great shock, but sad as she was only 69. This (slightly edited tale) was read out by the celebrant plus several of her other exploits over the years. She was a force of nature. Don’t rest in peace Lynn, create all the mayhem you did when you were here.
My sister is extremely feisty. She was in hospital giving birth to her first child, who was a large baby and my sister is tiny, she weighed about 35kg. Anyway she needed an episiotomy for her son to be born. Anyway after the birth the midwife said the cut was so long it would need stitching. The doctor came in, agreed and gave her a local anesthetic into the area. Then he disappeared for 3 hours, by which time the pain relief had totally worn off and he began to stitch. When she cried out in pain he told her not to be such a baby and to quit whining.
He had a tray of instruments by the bed so she picked up a scalpel and rammed it into the back of his hand. While he was screaming she told him not to be such a baby and quit whining. They administered more local to finish her procedure, and found another doctor.
When I was in high school in New York, rumor was that my friend’s tough looking father was in the Mafia. One day, he hired a bunch of his son’s friends to attend an auction in the Bronx. He gave us an address and told us to be there at 8am.
The auction, selling off the assets of a bankrupt business, was going to begin an hour later. By the time the real bidders arrived, they were denied entrance by a bribed fire marshal because the room was already filled to its legal capacity by dozens of hired bodies like myself.
Clueless, we sat there and watched as my friend’s father and his buddies won every lot without competition.
A man and his wife are awakened at 3 o’clock in the morning by a loud pounding on the door.
The man gets up and goes to the door where a drunken stranger, standing in the pouring rain, is asking for a push.
“Not a chance” says the husband, “it is 3 o’clock in the morning!”
He slams the door and returns to bed.
“Who was that?” asked his wife.
“Just some drunk guy asking for a push,” he answers.
“Did you help him?” she asks.
“No, I did not, it is 3 o’clock in the morning and it is pouring rain out there!”
“Well, you have a short memory,” says his wife. “Don’t you remember about three months ago when our car broke down and those two guys helped us? I think you should help him, and you should be ashamed of yourself !”
The man does as he is told, gets dressed, and goes out into the pounding rain.
He calls out into the dark, “Hello, are you still there?”
“Yes” comes back the answer.
“Do you still need a push?” calls out the husband.
My daughter had married a guy I really liked. One fall we were discussing hunting and he mentioned an unusual shotgun he learned to hunt with. He really liked it, but had never seen another like it. It was a bolt action 20-gauge shotgun.
As he described the finger grooves in the plastic trigger guard, I realized he was describing a Mossberg Model 185K. I collected Mossberg firearms and had a decent specimen sitting unused in the back of my safe.
Over the next couple of months I refurbished the gun, rubbed the stock down with tung oil and restored as much of its 1950 beauty as I could. Having found a box for it, I took it by on Christmas day.
When he unwrapped it, his mouth fell open. Literally.
“Oh migod. THAT’S THE ONE! That is EXACTLY the gun I grew up with! How did you find this???”
My 6′7″ son-in-law picked me up and hugged me – with tears in his eyes.
Yes, China and India have border disputes, and border conflicts broke out in the 1960s and 1970s. There have also been conflicts in the Galwan region in the past few years.
But the relationship between China and India is not as bad as Western media renders it, nor is it as terrible as some Indian media render it.
2023 11 25 10 11
If we look at a world map, especially one with altitude. It can be seen that China and India are separated by the Himalayas. Although the two countries are neighboring countries, they are naturally separated.
Therefore, in the past thousands of years, the two countries developed independently without interfering with each other, and even little trade was carried out. The current China and India were only established after World War II. The contradiction between them originated from the division of territories by the British colonists, rather than the natural contradiction between the two nations. In the words of the Chinese, China and India “have no historical debt.” After all, the Chinese view history in terms of 100 years as the smallest unit.
If you ask a Chinese: Who do you think China’s enemy is?
The vast majority of Chinese people will answer: Japan. Maybe someone mentioned the United States, and maybe South Korea.
, some may even say Russia. But I have hardly ever heard the Chinese label India as their enemy. Even if I emphasize that “China and India had a war,” they will still think: “India is not an enemy” and regard the Sino-Indian conflict as “a quarrel between neighbors.”
In the eyes of Chinese people, couples also quarrel, let alone two neighboring countries. As long as the scope of cooperation is far greater than the scope of differences, then both parties are partners.
Of course, the results of this survey in India may be completely different, mainly due to the influence of Western and Indian media. After all, the media is very good at seizing on a certain local hot spot and then telling the audience that this is all.
The point I’m trying to make, though, is this. The two sides are not really hostile. The similarities between China and India outweigh the differences. They are all developing countries with huge populations and face problems such as poverty alleviation, public education and environmental pollution. Both countries are developing rapidly and are gradually coming into conflict with developed countries. The two sides have consistent interests on many issues, especially international trade, carbon emissions, human rights and other issues, and they jointly resist the squeeze of developed countries. On the issues of the Russia-Ukraine war and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, China and India basically have the same attitude.
China and India do not have much competition in business. China is developing high-end manufacturing and competing with developed countries. India is developing mid- to low-end manufacturing industries and can take over the production capacity transferred from China. India is a major agricultural exporter, while China is a major agricultural importer. There is a lot of room for cooperation between the two parties.
When the Sino-Indian border conflict occurred, there were already serious deaths of soldiers. No shots were fired. This shows that the agreement between the two sides outweighs the differences. The border dispute is not the mainstay of Sino-Indian relations. This point has a clear consensus among the elites of both sides. So the soldiers were severely restricted. The foundation of the relationship between the two countries will not change because of the advocacy of the Western media. There will be no war as the West expects.
After all, neither Chinese leaders nor Indian leaders are fools.
The Chinese build so much that they are used to such collapses and have extremely specialized rescue teams
Like in the Turkey earthquake recently
Their ability to use small drones to slip through the small holes, use positioning of living objects under vast structures and their ability to vertically drill and horizontally drill makes them the world’s best experts in rescue operations
image 158
This team rescued 319 people given up for dead in Turkey
image 157
They were HEROES
The victims were given up for dead
image 156
Plus the Chinese Tunnel building through Mountains makes Indian tunnels look like School Project work
This Tunnel in India is a straight cut
Chinese Guoliang Tunnel is at a 36 degree upward incline through mountain surface. They are masters at tunneling
image 13
The Chinese teams drilled 368 meters deep vertically against an EXPLODED SHAFT in a gold mine with fissure methane gas and still rescued 11 workers from certain death in 11 days
That was an explosion plus collapse plus methane pockets not just a collapse like in UK
Compared to that, this rescue is horizontal and can be done in their sleep
So why aren’t we calling the Chinese?
Simple
Ego and nothing else
Calling the Chinese would be a blow to our ego and would cause our politicians to lose face
I was patient for a few days but now it appears the NDRF team are morons and the Aussie in charge is a bigger moron
The Auger has been damaged four times now
The men have been stuck for 15 days with no hope as yet
Time to pick up the phone and call Beijing for help and rescue these men and send them home
Enough of this worthless ego
Enough of the learning curve
It’s clear the team members are dunderheads because the augers have been broken four times in four days
Today it was so likely that the men would be out and yet again the Auger broke
Last night my kids flooded the whole living room with slimy water.
“BEEEEEEEEN!” my wife hollered. “COME SEE THIS!”
I knew this was trouble because my wife is one of those people who never raise their voice.
When I stepped onto the scene, I saw my three kids plus a friend of my oldest son’s all belly-sliding from wall to wall with nothing on but underwear.
The sight was so perplexing, surreal, and unexpected, that I couldn’t help but laugh my ass off.
It was like the first time I ever got stoned as a teenager and every time a friend threw an M&M on me I giggled uncontrollably.
Every kid scooting across the gooey floor, his arms flailing, letting out screams of glee, had me laughing until my belly hurt.
They were like cute gremlins swimming through space.
Never mind that I was terrified of slipping because I just had my ACL operated on. Or that my youngest one started bawling after two of the others crashed into him at the same time. Or that my wife and I had to use all the towels in the house to soak up the gunky liquid later.
I hadn’t had such a good laugh in ages.
I’ve been punched in the balls. I’ve cleaned neon-yellow runny poo from across the floors of multiple rooms—why would you crawl across the whole house while pooing?! I’ve made elaborate date plans with my wife just for two of us to realize we fell asleep while reading to the kids.
And somewhere along the way, instead of getting angry every time, I discovered the humor in all of it.
Something of the maddening nature of having kids taught me to stop taking myself so seriously. Showed me that sometimes, life is so damn absurd that all you can do is laugh. That every single plan and intention can come boomeranging back to you and whack you in the face.
And before you feel the pain—or clean the slimy floor or the runny poo or make a new plan—you can take a moment, laugh it off, and then get to it.
I’m in Ghana and was invited to a Thanksgiving party, what the H3LL?
My neurologist asked me to wear an oximeter/heart rate monitor overnight. I told him it would be useless, as I was not sleeping much, but he had me do it. I got a call a few days later asking me how I coped on such little sleep. We never mentioned it again.
Then I got a bill for $14. For what?
I was being billed for the “use of the monitor.” Not by my neurologist’s office, by some 3rd party.
I called my neurologist’s office, they said that they don’t own the equipment, they rent it from the service that sends them the test results, which was not this company. They were like, fine, don’t pay, we don’t know who this company is. I called insurance – they said they had never heard of FBN Rental.
I called FlyByNight Rentals and told them to bill my insurance. They said they had. I said I had proof they never had. I told them I would not pay as they had no grounds to bill me.
I kept getting bills, which I ignored.
Finally I got a phone call from them. “You owe us $14.” “No. I don’t. Bill my insurance.” “We did.” No you didn’t. You’re a scam.” Rinse, repeat.
I had looked them up in the meantime. They apparently buy marketing lists of people who used pulse oximetry equipment and insert a minor charge. Something small and inconsequential that people will just pay to clear. But – and here is the key point – they don’t actually have any relationship to the test.
I kept getting calls threatening me with collections. Finally I picked one up. A lady confirmed that I was seconds away from going to collections. I had had it. I had already called and written to them to tell them to fuck off, multiple times.
I said, 1) that they were a scam, 2) I’d already reported them to my doctor, the insurance, the BBB and 3) if I ever heard from them again, they would hear from my lawyer with a bill for the time *I* had had to spend figuring out they were a scam and dealing with their bullshit.
I never heard from them again.
What a brilliantly awful idea. Make a teeny, inconsequential charge, something so small no one would care and collect on some or most of those charges. Multiply $14 by tens of thousands and presto, you have medical fraud that no one will ever notice.
A woman responds to “an open marriage”
A man suggests that instead of a open marriage, he gets a second wife.
I am out of the hospital, and I am feeling much better. I can’t wait to get back to business with the start of the new year. The world seemed to be passing me by. Just excited and ready, but my engine is purring. All is good.
…
STORY 1
When I was 16 years old, I went horseback riding with a girl-friend (not a girlfriend) and we were riding in the woods. Well, there were some low hanging vines, and sure as shit, one caught my neck and rubbed it raw. I mean, it was brutal. All my skin was removed.
To everyone at work… it looked like a big “hicky”; a huge sucker bite.
That wasn’t the case, of course, but the razzlin’ and all was really excessive, don’t you know. It took me months to get out from the hasslin’, but you know it was the early 1970’s and that kind of stuff was common in the work-place.
I was still “sweet 16” and never been kissed. That ended shortly afterwards when two of my “girl-friends” fought to become my girlfriend. Which resulted in a sidewalk kiss, that I will never forget.
STORY 2
We were leaving a “sweet 16” birthday party of a classmate. She, a girl named Robin, invited me to it, and I as clueless as ever didn’t know what to do. When we left, and we were on the sidewalk… walking home she stopped turned to me and and “Kiss me”. And so we did.
That was my first kiss.
Robin went off to college, got married, and last I heard was doing well. I’m happy for her.
People, as cherished as those memories are, there is no way that I want to relive similar events in another life. I am tired, and have no desire for another reincarnation. I’ll tell you what.
The star of the whole show, in my opinion, is the turnout of Big Business.
No, not what President Xi said, but the audience composition. Namedrop a household corporate name and the CEO was probably in attendence, Tim Cook and Elon Musk included.
The movers and shakers of Wall Street paid handsomely for the privilege of WELCOMING President Xi. In fact, the visiting Head of State may have gathered THE star-studded corporate audience in recent years, bigger than any Democrat or Republican convention. Even King Charles and the Pope will struggle to demonstrate the star appeal lighting up San Francisco this November WEEKEND.
It was a dinner worth trillions upon trillions in market cap. One need only imagine the private jets lining up to pay hangar premiums for parking rights.
America NEEDS China, economically.
That is why Janet, the top-ranking finance official in America, welcomed President Xi on the tarmac personally.
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Note that both Janet and Gavin visited Beijing PERSONALLY to arrange the visit.
Both the tarmac welcome and dinner highlighted the conspicuous absence of the State Department. No more James Cook Hotel browbeating and public attempts at humiliating the Chinese contingent.
What’s the key here?
American corporations are suffering in the downturn and the captains of industry want guarantees from Joe that the situation with China will not deteriorate further. The chips they have on the table? 20–30 billion in election funding for 2024.
We can expect a freeze on escalation of the new cold war, but not a ceasefire. The militaries will resume direct communications, which is nothing more than “we’re continuing with the harassment, but we’ll inform you first, with your acknowledgement”. However, we can expect cabinet officials to either be gagged top-down or bottom-up, or instructed to be cordial and tone down on provocation. In other words, Gina et al. morphing back to friendly beaver mode rather than “feet to the fire” wolf warrior incarnation.
That’s the tone for 2024. I don’t believe Joe will repeat the “genocide determination” stunt next year, having committed to extravagant molly-coddling in San Francisco, amidst the sea of bipartisan support for playing the China card the corporate-sanctioned way.
Lobbying works, both ways.
This is why President Xi appeared relaxed throughout, almost as if he was on holiday, totally unlike the tense atmosphere in Anchorage, Alaska, back in 2021. People have short memories.
President Xi was being feted and courted, and he was only here after two years of intense US diplomatic efforts to re-establish ties torn down by the State Department, no less.
Crazy world, isn’t it?
Note: The welcome dinner also reassured the Chinese, and gave them the confidence to negotiate deals with the Fed. Corporate America’s turnout is the real deal, in a fiery red vs. blue battle to the death.
I’ll probably never be as successful as my dad and I’m perfectly OK with that.
If anything I’m proud of him. At one point he was overseeing a $50 billion annual budget as Undersecretary of Defense. The dude earned his Wikipedia page.
My father is also an excellent case study. He is certainly very smart. But it wasn’t like he was always the smartest guy in the room. In fact, he was keenly aware when he wasn’t. Yet many of my dad’s peers, who were smarter on paper, fell way short of his success.
Why? It’s mainly because of his people skills and his diligence. He is an excellent listener. He knows how to dial in and pick up on what is important. He is also conscientious and very ethical. He treats people equally regardless of their position.
I’d say if anything, my dad’s superpower is the ability to size people up quickly and judge their character.
He has a special distaste for self-serving people, which is probably because of his career with SEAL teams, where teamwork is a religion.
This is where many highly intelligent people fail. They lack the soft skills, the ability to relate with many types of people.
Cliche as it sounds, many gifted people also have an underlying arrogance they mask. Business textbooks are filled with case studies of executives’ careers being destroyed by pride. My girlfriend is a college professor and complains constantly about the incessant egos at academic conferences.
And to be fair, I can’t totally blame them. When a person is told from birth that they are brilliant, and their test scores affirm that praise, and they live in a world that prizes intelligence — it is probably hard to stay 100% humble.
No matter how talented you are, remember you are dealing with human beings in your career. Success isn’t a MENSA test. Soft skills matter—bigtime.
The U.S. should but it won’t and it can’t. The U.S. thinks like a racist, xenophobic superior white Caucasian nation that their neighbours should be kept as savage, poor, undeveloped nations that it can invade anytime it feels like doing. So they won’t help these nations. It is beyond them. People like Donald Trump can term them robbers and rapist so that he feels very good as the Aryan Superior. So the U.S. abused them instead of helping them.
Of course now that the Chinese decide to help them the U.S. will term it “Debt Trap” China will help to make these former Spanish and Portuguese stolen nations rich and successful.
Anyway they can’t help them. The spent all its money and resources in forever wars, war mongering, war financing, war orchestrating, chaos and coup tormenting. And barely have enough to help US homeless and poor. The U.S. own infrastructure were also 20 century relics and dilapidated beyond repair in the U.S. so they cannot help. Even if the wanted to they will set a thousand conditions including signing over their sovereignty to Uncle Sam.
She Can’t Answer This Simple Question About Marriage
My cat goes on a rampage when he wants to wake me up, knocking every conceivable item off of every flat surface until I finally give up on sleep.
He did it to me the other night. I’d fallen asleep on the couch and woke up to the familiar sound of the TV remote control hitting the floor, then the Roku remote.
I could just make out the little guy’s form on the coffee table through blurry eyes without my glasses. My smartphone was the next thing to hit the hardwood (I have a military grade case precisely for this reason), then he violently smacked a bottle of pills so hard they ricocheted off an end table and went spinning across the room.
Next he hopped onto the end table, upending a bag of restaurant tortillas and swiping my keys off. A water bottle went flying. I heard my vapor pen skidding in the opposite direction.
The little f—er is relentless.
(“Does it look like I’m judging you, human? Because I am.”)
If that doesn’t work — and sometimes it doesn’t, because I know giving in just emboldens him — and he runs out of things to smack and wreck, he’ll pad over to his litter box and start punching the cover flap with his paw because he knows it squeaks and it pisses me off.
He’s a super vocal cat too, so all this is accompanied by high-pitched trills like “RRRRRRRUUUUPPPP!” and “BRRRRRUUUU!”
And you know what the most ridiculous part is?
He’s not asking for food because he always gets a bowl of dry food before bed. He wants to hang out and snuggle and be buddies. I can’t be mad at him.
So yes, it’s pretty common for cats to wake their people up for no other reason than they want us awake, acknowledging them, or giving them scritches and affection.
It’s not always tied to more concrete requests like food, although sometimes it is.
You’ll also notice that cats have no regard for your sleep, but they’ll give you the feline death stare if you rudely interrupt their naps. Such is the pecking order in feline-ruled households.
It is possible to train them out of waking you, especially if they’re young. If your cat is a kitten then she’ll adjust to your schedule. If she’s an adult, well, good luck with that. You can break the habit, but you’re going to make sure you never give in or you’re just hitting the reset button by proving to her that if she makes enough noise, you’re going to get up eventually.
In that case, grab a package of earplugs off Amazon for a few bucks. Your brain will thank you for wearing them.
(“I am a sweet little kitty cat and none of these vile lies are true.”)
We were at an airport in Mexico, going through customs and immigration. Once your bag is xrayed you pick it up, and walk to this green button and push it. If the light above flashes green, which it almost always does, you proceed on. If the light flashes red, and the buzzer, buzzes, you get pulled into a side room and they go through your luggage thoroughly.
There was a huge line up. We had waited an hour to get to the X-ray machine. We were up next. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone from a culture that doesn’t believe in queuing, walking alongside the line, right up to the front, I actually stepped in front of him, so he couldn’t get past me, and his wife took the luggage and threw it on the X-ray conveyor belt. At this point I admitted defeat, and let them go.
They get through the x-ray, and push the button, in my place. It flashed red, and they were led off to a little side room, It would have been me, if they hadn’t barged into the line.
I waved to them as they were being led into the little room.
He is the manager of my neighborhood gym, a very rinky-dink gym.
He makes ~$35K per year. It isn’t terrible money. You can certainly live on that, but it isn’t great money in the US. His salary isn’t specifically why I have so much respect for him. It’s the context:
He was a big-time lawyer here in Tampa. He had a fancy degree and a job making huge money. He did it for 15 years. He had the respect of his peers, the fear of his opposition.
He was fully capable of continuing his relentless march as a litigator.
But he realized, “Nah – this isn’t the right life.”
He walked away – chose a low-stress job, managing this local gym.
When the end of the day rolls around, he goes home and work doesn’t chase him. He is free to indulge the rest of his life.
I see him 3-4 times a week while I sign into my gym. He is always in good spirits. Relaxed. Not troubled by some unseen threat that looms on his calendar.
We grow up. The people around us tell us they just want us to “be happy,” but at the same time, they are pushing this maximization mindset: maximize grades, maximize salary, maximize reputation, go, go, go.
You see plenty of people that maximize. You see plenty of people who don’t.
But how often do you see people who maximize and then walk away? Who goes from introducing himself as “Senior Counsel at XYZ” to answering calls, “Hello, ABC Fitness! How can I help you?”
It’s surprisingly rare. It’s hard to kiss the ring of ambition for so long and then drop it.
He’s a bit of a novelty in my life. On my bad days, I envision what it would be like to be him — that one guy who stepped through the paradox of happiness and ambition.
And although I suspect I don’t have the guts to do what he did, walk away, I have a surprising amount of respect for a guy who is capable of so much, yet aspires to so little.
He did it his way. And he’s happy. Does anything else really matter?
A girl I quite fancied took me to meet her parents for dinner – which turned out to be lasagne. The only prior experience I’d had with lasagne had been at school, many years before – about a millimeter thick, cooked in trays half a mile wide, with about 50p’s worth of ingredients and left to dry out under a heat lamp for a year. 🙁
But I had to be polite.
“I’m not very hungry,” I said. “just give me a little.”
Turns out that lasagne cooked by an Italian mother was rather different to the filth churned out at St. Mary’s. So I asked for seconds
In the 1980s, state law in Florida required that all public high school students take a one-semester class called Americanism vs Communism, or AVC.
The State-approved AVC textbook can be summed up this way:
“Rah rah rah! We’re #1! America, fuck yeah! We won WWII and saved Europe and Russia! America is the best at everything! Woohoo! Look at how amazing we are! America, go us!”
Like, seriously, it was embarrassingly bad. We’re talking Soviet-Union-textbook bad. If George Orwell included a page from the AVC textbook in Nineteen Eighty-Four, critics would be all “nah, bro, too unrealistic.” You wouldn’t think it’s possible to fit so much cringe into one book.
I cannot fathom the degree of insecurity that went into passing the law that required teaching this class in schools.
Fortunately, I lucked out. My high school teacher, a WWII vet and survivor of the Bataan Death March, hated and loathed the class requirement and textbook with every fiber of his being, and made that very clear on the first day of class.
He refused to teach from the book at all. He told us point-blank “The state requirement for this class is complete propaganda bullshit. As far as I’m concerned, this is a class in Russian history, and that’s how I intend to teach it.”
He made his own teaching materials for the class and it rocked.
China has already stopped investing in U.S. Treasuries.
Since the beginning of the Ukraine War, China has been selling its Treasury holdings. As of October 2023, it continues to hold about $820 billion of U.S. Treasuries. This is a reduction of about 18% in one year.
Russia previously sold all its U.S. Treasury holdings, after the United States began to sanction it in connection withe Ukraine War. In about 2017, Russia encouraged the world to do the same.
At the same time, the Federal Reserve is selling the U.S. Treasury Bonds that it purchased during covid.
The combined actions of Russia, China and the Federal Reserve are driving down the value of U.S. Treasury Bonds. In the past six months, the value of 30 year bonds has fallen by about 50%. This raises interest rates in the United States, because the U.S. government must pay more to borrow.
The higher interest rates have greatly limited America’s options, financially. Housing prices are poised to fall, due to higher interest rates. Even worse, interest payments on the U.S. national debt have doubled. Interest payments will soon exceed what the United States spends on national defense. Thus, as you can see, the tactics of Russia and China have limited America’s ability to fight wars. We are seeing just the beginning of the cycle.
Your question is — will the United States face a financial crisis?
The answer is yes. If the United States (a) continues printing dollars, and (b) continues supporting a violent response to conflicts in the world, two things will happen:
The planet will refuse to work with the United States during America’s foreseeable crisis; and
The U.S. dollar will collapse, due to continued printing and the planet’s rejection of the dollar.
The collapse of the dollar will be devastating in the United States, because American society is dependent upon cheap gasoline and cheap imports, which will no longer exist in the United States.
The United States imports 28% of its crude oil. This leaves the United States vulnerable to a falling dollar. Contrary to popular belief, the United States is not “energy independent,” and remains vulnerable. The United States imports 5 million barrels of crude oil per day more than it exports. That is a lot of oil that won’t be coming into the United States when the dollar falls. In addition, President Biden foolishly sold decades of oil stored up by the WWII generation in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. America is not ready for the foreseeable crisis coming to its shores.
Expect riots and shortages in the United States. If Biden continues to pursue violent solutions to global conflict, those wars will return to the United States when the dollar comes down. The American people will be fighting over limited resources. There won’t be any jobs in America, when the shopping malls close.
Normally the work product belongs to the company, not the worker. In the early days of solid state circuitry, my BIL developed much of it. Although his name is on the patents, the company owned them.
I was an independent contractor managing HOAs. ( Also a lawyer). I started by managing my own while my kids were preschoolers. It ran very smoothly so no one ever wanted to be on the Board until crazy ass lady and her group of idiots came on. True nut cases. One insisted on judging the Holiday decorating contest, then picked her own house as winner. One shot my dog. Board meetings were like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”.
The Board was 3/3, three humans, three horses asses. When one human was on vacation, the three asses called a special meeting and “ terminated “ me. Now they knew I would just sue them on my 2 year contract so they made paying me for another 18 months conditional on me delivering all the Assn documents and computer data on fees, violations etc on discs within five days. This belonged to them.
I was happy to get out of the nut house. The Assn owned the file cabinets. I just put them on a dolly and walked them to a Board member’s house and left them. I downloaded all the data in computer language and gave them the disks.
Problem was, I used a program I bought that was made by a company that had gone bankrupt. It was a great program. Totally unavailable for purchase anywhere. But I had no duty to give them my program. The computer disks were useless. The finances were also kept on a very old edition of an accounting program. I had no duty to provide them with my copy. The financial disks very useless to them without paying a few thousand for the program. It was a very specialized program used by CPAs
They spent a fortune going through old files and bank statements and quarterly financials to recreate payment records etc. And, I had fulfilled my duties. I got the next 18 months of my contract paid. They also received a cease and desist letter from me. The Assn ‘s original documents had a problem and no lender would loan on a house without a document called a Subordination agreement. Only a lawyer can write one. I always wrote them. No cost. It was my own HOA. But the first time they copied one on a new sale, I hit them with a cease and desist letter and reported them to the Bar for the unlicensed practice of law. So then they had to pay a lawyer for the next 150 or so documents. Lawyers are not free.
So, what the employer owns and what the employee owns is a mixed bag.
I was in an elevator on a cruise ship. Some wiseacre saw my polka-dot suspenders.
He smirked, “Nice suspenders. You from Wisconsin?”
I replied, “No. Ever since my cancer surgery, I can’t wear a belt.”
His smirk instantly evaporated. The elevator doors opened on my floor, and I got out.
Soft tissue sarcoma caused by Agent Orange in Vietnam, They took out 1–3/4 pounds of me from my groin to my beltline. It left a notch where a belt would sit, so I can’t wear a belt comfortably.
Two years back, I was on a road trip on my bike to Meghalaya. While returning, as I was tired I was riding slowly. I was still some 70 miles away from home, and it was already dark. On the highway, I saw a car parked and some people arguing. I rode past them, however before passing them I caught the sight of two women crying and eagerly looking through the front window.
I took a turn and came back to the spot. I saw four boys, around my age, were arguing and pushing a man of around 50 years old. Turns out, the family was returning from some function and lived in another town which was about 90 miles from mine. They were stopped by these four boys on bikes and asked them for some money. They started misbehaving when the old guy refused to pay. He asked his wife and daughter to stay in the car and got down to reason with them.
I heard the story from the old guy, while the boys asked me mind my own business and get the f**k off. I simply turned and started walking towards my bike. The man begged at me to stay and help him, and looked at the women in the back seat and felt their eyes pleading me to stay. But, I kept walking!
Here comes the twist! Now, during my rides I always keep a hockey stick on my bike. Bad luck for the guys who never knew this. They laughed at me, calling me names. One even said, “Yeah, keep walking you p***say.”
I took the hockey stick and came back running. The boys didn’t get time to react and I started beating them. The blows landed everywhere and I think two or more of them bled as well. I didn’t show them any mercy. Someone threw some punches and kicks at me too, but I had a more formidable weapon than them. Seeing me in action, the man also jumped in; his wife and daughter also got down and helped in whatever way they could. All beaten up and even not being able to stand properly, two boys somehow managed to run off on their bikes while the other two ran after them.
I told the man to start the car and keep driving, while I rode in front of him in case the boys decided to get help and chase us. When we entered the man’s town, we went to the police station and lodged a report. The daughter was smart enough to note down the bikes’ number plates. As it was very late, the man requested me to spend the night at their place. Once reaching home, the family thanked me for helping them. He wouldn’t even allow me to leave early next day, saying that he can’t send me off without a proper meal. Family, friends and relatives came to thank me for my heroism. I stayed for lunch and returned home.
To this day the gentleman calls me occasionally. He even invited me to his daughter’s wedding.
Now, let me tell you something. I’m not the brave person they take me to be. I was equally scared that night. I was terrified. It took me a lot of courage to do what I did. After this whole thing was over, I was so proud of it!
Companies Are Ditching Hiring Fresh Female Graduates
My grandparents were too poor to afford a private jet or a private helicopter, they had to rely on government programs like public roads to get by.
They couldn’t afford to hire private tutors for my parents, and so had to send them to public schools to learn to read and write.
As one might expect, this cycle of dependency continued: My parents also didn’t have a private jet or helicopter, and they also had to rely on government programs like public roads to get by. They also sent their kids to learn to read and write in public schools.
And here I am: made lazy by all this generational welfare, I’m not pulling on my bootstraps nearly hard enough to afford my own private airport. Like my parents before me, and my grandparents before them, I depend entirely on government programs like public roads (or worse, public transit!!) to get to work.
There is no means testing in place for using public roads, which leads to rampant abuse. I’ve seen people use them to go for a stroll, even though they could have afforded a treadmill. Not only that, but these type of government handouts kill any incentive for most people to get a private helicopter, they’d rather stay dependent upon the government provided public roads.
It’s truly a modern tragedy, with no end in sight.
Years and years ago, when I quit smoking, I found my temper would often flare up during the first few weeks of abstinence.
I worked at a remote branch office with a staff of six. One morning when I came to work early, something went “wrong” and I was so angry that I impulsively gut-punched my office door.
The door was hollow core wood; I punched right through it.
I admitted my foolish outrage to my office mates when they entered an hour later.
And little was said about it; I believe they were sympathetic with my situation, and supportive of my effort to quit smoking.
There matters laid at rest; nothing more said.
Until the office Christmas party, when staff from all branches and the headquarters office (over 100 souls) gathered at some central location for a cocktail party and most sumptuous feast. Everything paid for by the company as a treat to us. This was followed by after-dinner drinks, and the “awards ceremony.”
The awards ceremony was a production of the employees and was in the nature of a good-humored “roast,” drawing upon such amusing things as had happened involving any of them over the past year. Some of the recognition was by actual funny trophies which were passed from one recipient to another; others were unlikely objects constructed of broom sticks, hub-caps, old radios, or heaven knows what.
Because I and my cohorts were from the remotest branch, none of us received, or ever expected to receive, recognition at this ceremony. We had our OWN Christmas party, for that.
Thus it was quite a surprise, to me, when I saw that my associate, Greg, was called upon by the master of ceremonies to announce the grand prize winner. He briefly described in very general terms the struggle of one individual to overcome a serious addiction. I was as curious as everyone else to know who, and to know the story. The room became very quiet, as the subject appeared to deviate from the laughable to the serious. The recipient was as yet unnamed.
Then a cloaked object was carried onto the dais, looking for all the world like a draped coffin.
With the words, “And the winner is, John Scott Geare,” the black drape was pulled away to reveal my actual office door, with a precise halo painted around its wound. Somehow, the damned thing had been spirited from our office, and carried the 60 miles to the party, unbeknownst to me.
And it became the stuff of legend.
You owe me half
Chick was only going out for a free meal. And he says…
Cajun Style Tip Roast
2023 11 09 15 20
Yield: 6 to 8 servings
Ingredients
1 (4 pound) tip roast
1/4 cup finely chopped onions
1/4 cup finely chopped celery
1/4 cup finely chopped green bell peppers
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons pepper
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Instructions
Heat oven to 300 degrees F.
Combine vegetables, spices and oil.
With a sharp knife make 8 to 12 deep V-shape slit pockets, stopping an inch from the bottom of roast. Fill the pockets with the vegetable mixture, reserving some to rub on top of roast.
Bake uncovered for 2 1/2 hours or until thermometer reads 140 degrees F for medium rare beef.
Serve with pan juices.
Nutrition
Per serving: Calories 391; fiber 1g; carbohydrates 2g, Protein 61g, Cholesterol 160mg; Sodium 509mg; Fat 14g (32% of calories from fat)
A number of years ago I worked for a large US company. My role was in sales (industrial product). In my third year, I was selected for management. As such, I was trained in recruiting and helped district managers hire talent.
I visited one district and held a recruiting fair and ultimately recommended 10 applicants to the manager. The manager had his own candidate and asked me to interview him. In my opinion, his choice was terrible. He did not have any of the qualities successful people in our business had. I told him this.
Jump ahead six months. I become the manager for that district. My predecessor had hired the guy I did not recommend and did not even call any of the 10 I recommended.
Within three months i had hired five new sales reps. Four did very well and stayed for years. One failed within six months. The one that I did not recommend? I had to let him go due to poor performance and poor attitude. When I told him I had to let him go, he held onto my desk and told me he really did not want to be fired and would not leave the office. He would continue to come to work. It took several hours to convince him that he was not a good match for our industry. I continued to pay him for one month as he searched for another job.
Please don’t tell me I am mean and unfeeling. In my 30+ years of managing, I have supported many people in many different ways. The bottom line, if someone is not doing well in a job, it is usually because they are not trying or they are just in the wrong job. The latter is almost always the case. If you have a good, hard working person, try to find a different position in your company for him/her. That’s the mark of a good manager.
I first noticed this phenomenon with a guy named Dr.Layne Norton. Layne has a PhD in biochemistry. This man has forgotten more about the human body than I’ve ever learned, and I’ll have my Masters degree next month.
He’s an elite level powerlifter.
And a pro bodybuilder,
He also runs a youtube channel where he shares some advice on bodybuilding and powerlifting. I began to notice that the comment section was particularly toxic.
People were insulting this man’s intelligence, his personality, and his family.
I didn’t understand why. He seemed like a nice enough guy. Until I stumbled upon the answer.
One commenter said, “I’m sure you know what you’re talking about, you just seem arrogant though.” The comment had 100s of likes.
Scientists tend to speak in very absolute terms. Why? Because they’ve studied the shit out of whatever it is they’re discussing. And because they speak so unequivocally, people get turned off.
For example, I wrote an answer in which I said working out in the afternoon is best for muscle building and performance. The hormones and body temperature are in a better position to support a workout in the afternoon.
How do I know? I wrote a 20 page paper on this topic for school (supported by 30 peer reviewed studies).
Some guy told me that I was a liar. Why? According to him, testosterone is obviously highest in the morning… because men get morning wood…..
Like many have said, scientists have spent years studying a topic, and they’ve forgotten more about said topic than most will ever even hear. As far as I’m concerned, they’ve EARNED the right to be a little arrogant when it comes to their subject.
I was adopted at birth. From the time I was able to understand anything, my parents called me their Chosen Child and gave me a poem with that name. I was raised to feel special. When I was in 3rd grade, one of the spoiled little rich girls tried to make fun of me, saying mean things, like, my mother hated me and got rid of me so that I had to be taken in by strangers out of pity – really wicked thing for an 8-year-old to say. When she finally took a breath, I responded by saying that I KNEW my parents wanted me, they CHOSE me. Then I said “I bet you were an ax-i-dent!” and walked away. When I got home from school, my mother said she had gotten a call from that girl’s mother, wanted to know what happened, and asked me how in the world I knew what an “accident” was, laughing all the time! I was only 8, had no clue, but I had heard her talking on the phone when she mentioned a girl getting pregnant by accident. Obviously, she didn’t know I heard her or that I understood the gist of the conversation. She was laughing when she told daddy – and that was when I began hearing her say to her friends that “little pitchers have big ears” as she changed the conversation. I don’t know what a little pitcher is, and that may not be what she said, but that’s all that I heard before they started a new conversation!
If they said they would be home at a certain time and didn’t call to ASK if it was ok that they stayed out later, I would call the police. I give them 1/2 hour past designated time to call and if they didn’t answer 2 calls and 2 texts all done within 1/2 hour time frame, the police would be informed of how worried I am about their safety because it’s now an hour late with them not calling or answering multiple calls and texts. Let them deal with the cops questioning them about not contacting you or answering you. The cops will let them know you only concerned about their well being and they will also rip them a new one for informing you and also for leaving their child alone with a babysitter who is now upset that something had happened to them. Trust me, they will never do it again to any babysitter. I say any babysitter because after that, I would NEVER babysit for them again, even at 4x’s the amount of money.
This Creole pork sausage is an old local favorite dating back to the 19th Century, but Chaurice isn’t as easy to find as it once was. It would seem to have come to Louisiana with the Spanish, and was adapted to local custom and ingredients; the term is similar to the Spanish chorizo. It’s great with white or red beans, and good for breakfast too, with eggs.
2023 11 09 15 18
Ingredients
4 pounds lean fresh pork, butt or shoulder
2 pounds fresh pork fat
2 cups onion, finely minced
1 1/2 tablespoons garlic, finely minced
1 1/2 teaspoons cayenne
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
8 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons freshly ground red pepper
2 teaspoons dried thyme leaves, crushed
5 tablespoons parsley, finely chopped
3 bay leaves, finely crushed
1/2 teaspoon allspice
3 yards small sausage casing (optional)
Instructions
Cut the pork at fatback into small pieces. Mix together and run once through the coarse disc of a meat grinder into a large bowl.
Add the seasonings and mix thoroughly until the stuffing is very smooth and well blended.
Make into patties, and use within three days or freeze.
Notes
You can also put chaurice into casings; make each sausage about six inches in length.
Sometimes the simple and mundane are the things that we remember, and the memories that we cherish.
The very last ice cream that I shared with my father occurred about two months prior to his death. It was nothing “special”. We were riding in the car together, and he saw a Dairy Cream restaurant and suggested that we get an ice cream cone. They had “orange creamcicle” on sale, so he bought us two and we ate them outside in the warm September sun.
To outsiders, it was just two grown men eating ice cream outside, and really there was nothing overly special about that event.
But for me, it was a memory that I will always treasure.
Enjoy what you experience. because it is all so fleeting….
I was broke and had just received a food stamp card. In the grocery store I picked up about $8 worth of food. Standing in line I took the card out of my wallet, noting the lonely $20 bill that represented my net worth. When my turn came I swiped the card and waited. The clerk said “I’m sorry but there is only $1 available on your card.” I was in shock, because this was my first time using it. Falling back on my fine command of the language, I said nothing. I was confused, embarrassed, and a little sick. Finally I just backed away mumbling that I must have left my money on my yacht. As I was leaving a man stopped me and said, “you just dropped this $20 bill” and handed it to me. I thanked him profusely for his honesty. I also thought what a careless idiot I was. I managed to fumble away the last of my money and only the honesty of a stranger saved me. Well I stopped at another store on the off chance some mistake had been made at the first place, and that turned out to be the case. With tremendous relief I started to put the card and my recovered bill in my wallet. I found to my amazement that my original $20 was still there. I realized that the stranger had given me the bill, while preventing my embarrassment or any refusal of his generosity. This is not meant as a greatest example of kindness, but to mention that a major part of his gift was the lift it gave my spirit to know of such kind and generous people. The last thing you need during hard times is cynicism.
It’s a nice place. I lived there for eight years (2012–2020) and miss it a bit, now that I’m back in Britain. What shocks me so much is the hideous, made up distortion of news reporting about it in the West, But I suppose that the US has to get something for the $400m Congress has voted for anti-China propaganda. It is just humiliating that it gets so much and so few push-backs.
When I was 9 years old, my mom surprised me and my little sister with a trip to Florida. We live in the Midwest, so any spring break trip to somewhere warm is greatly appreciated. I was so exited to have a story to tell my friends when I got back to school. One night, my best friend’s parents came over to talk to mine. They moved to the driveway, and told my sister and I to stay inside. While they were talking I heard my dad’s text notification. He had left his phone inside. Curious, I looked at what the message said. I cant quite remember what that message said, but when I scrolled up, I read a message I should not have seen. It was from my friends dad, who was now standing in the driveway. It read,
“do your girls know ours are coming on the trip, too?” “No, we are going to surprise them”, was the reply from my dad.
I was so shocked! My best friend and her sister were coming to Florida with me! I worked so hard to conceal the fact that I ruined the surprise, up until we were at the airport. We got out of the car, and my friend was there, so excited that she got surprised. I faked a reaction, but I was so mad at myself for ruining what my parents worked so hard to keep hidden. I haven’t told a soul to this day.
You need to seek counseling. Negative people are often happier with negative people. Then you can both talk about the worst case scenario, or see the cup as half empty. I have friends like this, and I try to only hangout with them in a group, so I don’t get to depressed.
Yet my friend is truly happiest when he can complain about something. Even if he has to really reach for the negative. Like I made a ton of money last year and paid off my debts, but when you make that much money, so much of the extra money just goes to taxes. Then a half hour rant on taxes.
I am truly happiest when I am positive. My wife is the most upbeat person I know, next to her, I am a gloomy gus.
Find out if you can be happy, if you have a positive attitude, if so get counseling and save your relationship. If not, cut him loose, and find someone who likes to complain about things.
Returning from a service call in Honolulu, the lady in front of me at the TSA line had serious trouble lifting her (obviously very heavy) carry-on onto the x-ray conveyor. It set off all sorts of alarms when it went through, and the TSA guy did a manual inspection as a result. When he opened it up, the suitcase’s contents were revealed: it was completely full of cans of Spam (the processed meat product). I was absolutely convinced that they actually contained something more nefarious and that she’d likely be arrested, but the TSA guy simply zipped the case back up and sent her on her way.
I was next in line, and, noticing the puzzled look on my face, the TSA guy explained that Spam is considered a gourmet delicacy in Japan, where it sells for around 3–4x what it does in Hawaii. As a result, there is a steady flow of Japanese tourists to the islands, who pretty much pay for their vacations by doing what she did. I was born and raised in the UK, where Spam has a reputation for being gross and disgusting, and something you would only eat if you can’t afford any nicer form of protein.
Management was changed and they appointed new guys ex consultant of the company who pretend know everything – based on the textbook. I am the last two managers that stay in the company when management changed.
So, this new guy did all micro management you can imagine to make most of the people left very nervous and stressful. I managed to stay for another few months until I have felt enough is enough.
Just few days before I intended to put my resignation letter, this new guys and HRD call me to the meeting room and let me go with severance payment – a payment package…
What a wonderful world it was and few friends that knew I am about to gave up congratulate me for being fired…..LOL
This is something I learned very early in my career. I always feel thankful for my former boss who taught me this lesson.
How to ask questions.
The first day I joined the company, after handing me all my personal devices and necessary office items, he led me to my cubicle and told me to self-study the system and come back to him by the end of the working day with questions. So I did. I brought back my two-page-long questionnaire and handed it to him. He read it, then told me to sit down. “Alright, question one, ‘What does (feature) x do?’”, he read my question out loud, “What do you think it does?”, he asked. I answered him with the thoughts I gathered when I studied the system. “Correct!”, he said, “Now, you see, with the way you first asked the question, if I answered it, it would have taken me five minutes to answer, but if you had asked ‘Does x do this’ including what you’ve learned, it would take me just seconds to answer ‘Correct!’ and I also would know that you actually studied and understood it. When you ask questions that you need answers to, make sure it takes the least time for the person you ask to answer. Yes/No is preferred.”
I took that advice seriously.
Instead of asking ‘What does that mean?’, I ask ‘Does that mean [my understanding]?’. Instead of ‘What should we do in this situation?’, I ask ‘In this situation, I propose the solution as below, do you have any directions or adjustments?’. Instead of ‘What time do you want the meeting to be?’, I ask ‘I checked your calendar, you have three open slots x, y, z; which one do you want to set up the meeting with Mr. A?’
This lesson has been a great help in my work, not just with my bosses, but also with other team members/ clients as well.
Cajun Sausage Roast
2023 11 09 14 29
Ingredients
Roast
1 (3 pound) pork loin roast
1 pound smoked Cajun sausage
1 small onion, chopped fine
1 small green bell pepper, chopped fine
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1/2 cup cold water
2 to 3 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon Kitchen Bouquet
Seasoning Mix
Granulated garlic
Dried chives
Parsley flakes
Black Pepper
Salt
Instructions
Seasoning Mix
Mix granulated garlic, chives, parsley flakes and black pepper to make seasoning mix. Add salt to mix.
Roast
Cut the whole loin into smaller roasts, about 6 inches long. Cut a hole through the center of each roast, along the center axis of the roasts and insert the sausage. If the cross-section of the roast is big enough, cut two parallel holes. Open the holes to the size of the smoked sausage and pour about 1 tablespoon Seasoning Mix into the long holes and push something through the roasts to distribute the seasoning. Slide the smoked sausage through the longitudinal holes in the roasts until about 1 inch of sausage protrudes from each end.
Dust inside and outside with seasonings and salt. Allow to sit and marinate at room temperature for 30 minutes.
Place the roasts on a rack inside a covered roaster.
Pour the cut-up onion and bell pepper into bottom of roaster and place, uncovered, in a 425 degrees F oven for approximately 30 minutes or until seared lightly on the outside.
Cover roaster and continue to cook with a meat thermometer until done inside, about 160 – 165 degrees F on meat thermometer.
Remove roasts, trim end faces of excess sausage and chop fine.
Add cornstarch dissolved in cold water.
Add soy sauce and thicken sauce over medium heat.
Adjust color of sauce with Kitchen Bouquet and adjust seasonings.
After I left the workforce, my wife continued working. I normally waited to get up until after she left to keep out of the way. This oneorning, I hear the door close as she is leaving. I get up heading in to start the coffee. On stepping into the kitchen the 1st thing I see is her phone on the charger. Run to the window to see her on the road and gone. I run back to the bedroom to grab my phone to call her to come back and get her phone. When her phone rings I compound the idiocy thinking who would be calling her this early? They need to get off the phone so…she…can…answer…my…call. Then to cap it all, as I’m closing my phone cancelling the call, I’m looking around to see if anyone saw me. 2 of the cats were dying laughing and the other 2 shaking their heads as if thinking what an idiot.
I’d been laid off at a position that did not pay well, but the work was easy. I was interviewing with this other company, and the guy (owner? one of the owners?) would not proceed with the interview unless I filled in my salary from my previous job, so I did.
He offered $3K more per year.
BUT… whereas my old job was 37.5 hours per week, this guy was expecting 55–60 hours per week. The benefit was that they were a small company, and their product was going to be big, and I’d be one of the people who benefited when someone big bought out the product.
Calculating the hours, I told him that, on a per-hour basis, he was offering me between 69% and 76% of what I was getting at the previous job, to which he restated his script about getting in on the ground floor.
A few days later, I got another, much better offer. It was an hourly contract, but 84% MORE than the previous job, and about 2–1/2 times (per hour) what he was offering. I took it.
A day or two after that, he called asking if I was still interested, and I told him I took another position “at MUCH higher pay,” I said, and definitely put the weight/emphasis on the word much. I didn’t tell him how much, but again, he tried to sell me on his “Getting in on the ground floor” shtick.
I couldn’t believe he was still trying to sell me on that.
Two juicy 100% U.S. Beef patties with two slices of melted American cheese.
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Sandwiched with lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles and A&W classic sauce all on a lightly toasted bun… it doesn’t get better than this – we believe!! Because our country imported almost everything in the old days. (And still do very much in 2023).
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1963 in fact was the year that put American popular food into our collective psyche.
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Now here’s a genuine all-American brand serving all-American fare. And Malaysians fell in 💕💕😘 with new food that truly touched the hearts.
1963 was the first time that burgers were sized ‘papa, mama, baby burger’ – 🥰 cute! (Come to think of it, burgers don’t exist before A&W Malaysia.)
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It was a year that a drink sensation was introduced — in big frosted glass mugs – the A&W Root Beer and Root Beer Float – the two most lovable, must-drink beverages ever since the country’s independence 1957. (Today there are A&W canned root beer in convenience stores everywhere.)
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A&W Root Beer and Coney Dog and Curly Fries are synonymous with A&W and vice versa. To borrow a line, “we’re still loving it, mucho!!”
I’d like to think that the burger in “1950s America” would not vary too much from today’s A&W ‘Papa Burger’.
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The bear is back!
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New A&W retro outlets in Malaysia give you the charming ‘American diner experience’…
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… who says you can’t bring back the good ol’ days?!!!
Do you know which is the laziest nation in Europe, the one that works the fewest hours? Let me give you a little hint, this is their capital:
Berlin
A study by OECD released recently showed in no uncertain terms Germans are the laziest nation in Europe in terms of hours worked. They have the largest economy and one of the largest per capita incomes in EU and worldwide. It gets weirder.
Do you know which nation works the most hours? The most hardworking nation in Europe, clocking in almost 50% hours than Germans in a given year is obvious at this point: Greeks. For every two hour a German works in a year, a Greek works three. For that they’re labeled as the lazy wealth moochers of the south that live easily on their spectacular seaside and glorious history.
Something doesn’t quite add up, does it? It turns out that hours worked is only relevant in a few low added value professions, such as store clercks, recepcionists, call center operators, night guards and the like. Those are professions that are necessary, but they’re low skilled, don’t pay well and don’t add much value to the economy.
What drives a modern economy forward are innovators and engineers who push the boundaries of what is possible. Their productivity is almost inversly proportional to horus worked. You only have that much creative energies to do something new and you need time to recharge. You don’t work as well when you’re tired and simply sitting at work comitting time theft does not equal to productivity. Germans work hard, very hard, during the time they’re at work. But when they clock out, always on time, they leave the job behind and enjoy themselves so their next work day is strong and productive once more.
The same goes for holidays. Germans are notorious for long holiday breaks and this again improves productivity. Your best becomes better if you’re well rested and you’re more willing to give your best to a company that appreciates your effort and talent.
By contrast, Americans often view workers as a nuisance they have to pay for and treat them accordingly. Why would you give your best for a company that only gives you enough not to run away to be treated like a slightly less smelly dropping instead. All of Europe is far ahead of USA on this matter and four weeks of holiday are the statuatory minimum given to all, not some great benefit to droll upon. Five to six weeks are not at all uncommon and you can go well beyond that in certain occupations (i.e. working with radiation, mental hospital employees, etc).
Cat story
A tuxedo cat named Andrew was found in a Bronx park, malnourished and in pain. A local rescuer and Little Wanderers NYC provided medical attention, including tooth extraction, for Andrew’s severe oral infection. After treatment, Andrew became affectionate and was taken into foster care where he enjoyed being indoors and bonded with his caregivers. He developed a close bond with a foster volunteer named Jeff, following him around and showering him with affection. Andrew’s transformation and loving personality have made him a permanent member of Jeff’s family, and the two share a special bond.
Unfortunately, there is this thing called van Loon’s law. It dictates: The level of technological progress in any society is inversely proportional to the number of slaves in the said society.
So you have to first get rid of slavery before any technological advancement will happen. In a slave-owning society, all technology will remain as mere curiosities and gadgets.
Heron’s aeolipili – the first functional steam turbine. It remained as mere clever gadget as there were enough slaves in the Hellenistic world to do all the tasks of slaves.
So first you had to get rid of slavery. The only way to get rid of slavery is a religion which prohibits slavery. There have historically been four of them: Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism. So the technological revolution could have begun only in those cultural spheres.
Slavery ended in Europe with Christianization – first in the Roman Europe by the Dark Ages and then in the Northern Europe at the end of the Viking era. This dictates the earliest point when technological evolution can begin for good.
Once you get rid of slavery, you need to invent rudimentary technology – i.e. harness the forces of the nature – wind, tide, water etc. You need to develop metallurgy and chemical engineering, and material sciences. Anything which saves human labour, as the price of human labour is now the bottleneck. The Dark Ages were actually a serious period of gadgeteering, and laid the basis for the real technological revolution.
I mean, as fun as it is to whip the woman who is your sex slave in the night, to grind the quern-stones at the day, windmills and watermills are just far more efficient to produce flour.
The thing with science fiction writers is that most of them are engineers, and the heroes have open budgets and do not need to worry about economy. But to develop technology, you need a stable economy. You need to develop Capitalism first. Sorry, no such thing in the bazaar economies. And Capitalism began to evolve in Italy by 1200, and was fully developed by the 17th century. Before that, only gadgeteering.
The third requirement is the rise of sciences. That began with the emergence of universities in the 11th century. To develop sciences, you need a religion which separates between mysticism and philosophy and which recognizes an objective reality, to discover the connection between philosophy and mathematics, to discover the connection between mathematics and engineering, and to develop a system where all these things merge. This happened in the Late Middle Ages.
The Industrial Revolution happened just at the right moment. It could not have happened any earlier. You need to get all the required secondary powers in action first – only then can the real thing happen. The 200 years of Industrial Revolution was preceded by 2000 years of Religious, Philosophical, Technological, Scientific and Economical Evolution.
“We are watching ARMAGEDDON unfolding before our eyes” Col. Douglas MacGregor
Very dangerous prospect for the whole world, not only for US.
I teach teens in France, and I guess many of the particularities of this generation initially confuse or surprise me, I find myself able to roll with it.
I have been especially surprised to hear that, generally speaking, they don’t have any interest in movies, books, TV series, or music. It is surprising to me that even music isn’t of interest to them!
Some like video games, but for the most part, they spend more time on social media than anything else.
The implications of that, and how society will develop with them, leaves a lot to think about.
But as a teacher, I figured I have to deal with that reality. So, for example, I have them do a project where they have to make a tutorial video in English (I teach English). This was something they got excited about, put effort into, and they made great videos! They know how to use their phones, and add special effects, music, off-voice…. they were able to be creative with it. I stopped trying to use current music, films, TV or books. It just wasn’t getting their attention.
The young generation isn’t void of creativity, but they seem to have taken over control of their social conditioning. I mean, they are watching each other create and spread ideas, values, and ethics. I was raised watching cartoons, TV shows, commercials (and reading cereal boxes!) that were carefully geared towards conditioning me to adhere to certain values that my government and the biggest corporations wanted me to integrate.
The kids today have been able to break off from that, and I suppose that scares some older folk. Like it means chaos rules and will lead to destructive movements in society. I’m not so sure. I’m observing with curiosity.
Ex-CIA: Their New Plan is TERRIFYING!
Two Middle East Outlooks
Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor and dimwit, had written a laudation of his own and his bosses foreign policy for the November print edition of Foreign Affairs. The piece was finalized before the war in Palestine had begun.
Indeed, although the Middle East remains beset with perennial challenges, the region is quieter than it has been for decades.
The progress is fragile, to be sure. But it is also not an accident. … [The president’s] approach returns discipline to U.S. policy. It emphasizes deterring aggression, de-escalating conflicts, and integrating the region through joint infrastructure projects and new partnerships, including between Israel and its Arab neighbors. And it is bearing fruit. … This disciplined approach frees up resources for other global priorities, reduces the risk of new Middle Eastern conflicts, and ensures that U.S. interests are protected on a far more sustainable basis. Challenges remain. The Israeli-Palestinian situation is tense, particularly in the West Bank, but in the face of serious frictions, we have de-escalated crises in Gaza and restored direct diplomacy between the parties after years of its absence.
—
Alastair Crooke, who has personally negotiated prisoner exchanges between Hamas and Israel, has published a rather bleak outlook.
… It is no coincidence that Netanyahu flourished a map of Israel during his General Assembly address last month in which Israel dominated from the River to the Sea – and Palestine (indeed any Palestinian territory) was non-existent.
Tom Friedman in his NYT reflections may fear that just as NATO’s impaired performance in Ukraine has ruptured ‘the NATO myth’, so too the 7 October Israeli military and intelligence collapse and what happens in its wake in Gaza ‘might explode the entire pro-American alliance structure’ in the Middle East.
The confluence of two such humiliations might break the spine of western primacy. This seems to be the gist to Friedman’s analysis. (He likely is correct).
Hamas has succeeded in smashing the Israel deterrence paradigm: They were not afraid, the IDF proved far from invincible, and the Arab street mobilised as never before (confounding western cynics who laugh at the very notion of there being an ‘Arab Street’).
Well, that is where we are – and the White House is rattled. … This is what worries the White House Team. They are deeply unconfident that an Israeli invasion of Gaza will put ‘Humpty’ together again. Rather, they fear that events may go badly for the IDF, and further, that the images relayed across the Middle East of Israel using overwhelming force in a civilian urban setting will revolt the Islamic sphere.
In spite of western scepticism, there are signs that this insurrection in the Arab sphere is different, and resembles more the 1916 Arab Revolt that overthrew the Ottoman Empire. It is taking on a distinct ‘edge’ as both Shi’a and Sunni religious authorities state the duty of Muslims to stand with Palestinians. In other words, as the Israeli polity becomes plainly ‘Prophetical’, so the Islamic mood is turning eschatological, in its turn.
That the White House should be floating kites about ‘moderate’ Arab leaders pressing ‘moderate’ Palestinians to form an Israeli-friendly government in Gaza that would displace Hamas and impose security and order shows just how severed is the West from reality. Recall that Mahmoud Abbas, General Sisi and the King of Jordan (some of the region’s most pliable leaders) pointedly refused even to meet with Biden after the latter’s Israel trip.
The anger across the region is real and threatens ‘moderate’ Arab leaders, whose room for manoeuvre is now circumscribed.
So hotspots are proliferating, as are attacks on U.S. deployments around the region. Some in Washington claim to perceive an Iranian hand, and are hoping to expand a window for war with Iran. … Should Israel enter Gaza (and Israel may decide it has no choice but to launch a ground operation, given the domestic political dynamics and public sentiment), it is likely that Hizbullah will incrementally be drawn further in, leaving the U.S. with the binary option of seeing Israel defeated, or launching a major war in which all the hotspots become fused ‘as one’.
In a sense, the Israeli-Islamic conflict now may only be resolved in this kinetic way. All efforts since 1947 have seen the divide only deepen. The reality of the necessity of war is permeating widely the consciousness of the Arabic and Islamic world.
Posted by b on October 27, 2023 at 13:44 UTC | Permalink
Chinese Premier Li Qiang came out before assembled media Thursday to say only this:
“China will continue to firmly support Iran in safeguarding its national sovereignty, territorial integrity, and national dignity, and will strongly oppose any external forces interfering in Iran’s internal affairs.”
Analysis
This Israel-Hamas thing is getting worse by the hour.
Ground invasion or not, Israel is. . . fucked.
Just a matter of time before Iran outright attacks, with the support of Russia, China, Syria. Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, etc.
I think they already realize they have the upper hand against Israel AND the US..
The biggest news we have heard in a long time is that China will support Iran in the liberation of Palestine. That’s a big deal. It doesn’t get any bigger.
This is shaping up to be the USA, Israel, and the EU against everyone else. I think we cannot win.
We are watching and documenting the start of WW3 right before our eyes.
Why are people Leaving America?
“Everything you said is truth. Things are getting more and more unaffordable here in the US and inflation and crime is killing many small businesses.”
A bar order changed my life. “14 Bier bitte (14 beers please).”
I was celebrating (with friends) the severance package I had signed a few hours earlier.
After 5 years, my time in Germany was coming to an end. I already had 2 interviews lined up back in the US.
From the barstool to the left came a voice. “Excuse me.” I turned to look in the eyes of a rather scruffy absent-minded-professor type.
He smiled and said, “you seem to have a slight English accent…or maybe American?”
“American,” I confirmed. He continued, “you wouldn’t happen to be looking for a job would you?”
Crazy I thought. “I just signed my severance contract 3 hours ago.”
“Can you write?” he replied.
“I think so. My grandfather was a journalist, my mother taught English.”
I’ll spare you the details. He hired me. I never went back to the US. That special lady I had met 7 months earlier came back from her studies in the UK.
Love developed. Babies arrived. We moved to France. Babies grew into fascinating persons.
Any other bar, any other night and it never would have happened this way.
One employer I had decided to make me redundant…which was a BAAAAAD idea.
Keeping it short ( I hope ). I was managing a Photolab ( in a pharmacy ) in SE London…I literally built it up from where it was originally bringing in ‘maybe’ around 10% to 12 % of the total takings of the shop…to where it was bringing in over 80% of the takings. I did that by making certain that the quality we produced was the best for ( literally ) miles around. We had company reps from the midlands who would bring their films into us…because they couldn’t find anywhere to beat us.
At one stage we had the top boys from Kodak visit us, because they were ‘concerned’ at the amount of photographic paper we were going through…sometimes 20 rolls a week. A roll of paper is 175 Meters long…that’s over 1500 prints per roll, or just over 23,000 prints ( 6 x 4 ) a week. It turned out that there was only one Kodak lab in the whole of southern England that beat us…and that by less than 3 %…and that was at a popular seaside resort…Brighton.
Sorry for the long back story.
Almost the first thing they did was make one of the two guys on the counter redundant. Then not long after that they made my assistant redundant as well. You’ve probably worked out where this is going already. If there’s only one person working the lab or the counter what happens on days off? Or when you go to lunch…or if your ill?
Answer? I haven’t got the foggiest idea…we were never told.
Then shortly after that…I was made redundant.
Not really a surprise…I had figured out which way the wind was blowing well before this. In all fairness when they told me I was being made redundant I did tell them that in my ( exceptionally modest and humble opinion ), the lab would be closed within three months since they had no one to run it properly…they ( of course ) just ignored that.
I had a new job within two weeks…paid almost as well…and without all the hassle.
The big problem they had now was that there was now only one person to run the counter side of things…and the lab. That’s assuming that the ‘last guy’ didn’t bother with inconsequential things…like a trip to the loo, or tea breaks or lunch breaks, day’s off, holidays, emergency’s at home or just being to damn ill to come to work.
Oh, I forgot to mention something else.
He wasn’t trained to operate the lab.
He told them. ‘I’ve got no health and safety training for photolab work…you know…for all that unimportant stuff…like the electrical hazards, hazardous and corrosive chemicals etc.’ He had no first aid certification, no fire hazard training. And nothing else either, like the day to day maintenance of the machinery, let alone the longer term maintenance.
There was also the minor ( but vital to maintain quality ) chore of balancing the master channel on a daily basis, plus ( on an ongoing basis ) all the print and film channels. He had no idea where to even begin with that…absolutely not his fault at all…he was counter staff…not trained lab staff.
And…then he told them something else, he was colour blind…not exactly great for printing colour films.
He was told. ‘Use the scanner, that’ll do the job’.
‘Uhuh…I can’t do that’. ‘HUH? Why NOT’!
‘It’s been disabled in the software and disconnected from the motherboard…I don’t even know what it looks like, I wouldn’t recognise it if it got up and smacked me in the face, and I don’t know how to hook it back up and get it working again…of course there was one person here that could do that…but you got rid of him, and even if I did get the scanner working again the quality and delivery times will nose dive, the two people you made redundant did everything manually…that’s why the quality was so good, and why we were doing so much trade’. ( my assistant and I could print faster and more accurately than the scanner could do the job ).
Then, obviously trying to be ‘helpful’ ( IE sticking the knife in ) he added. ‘We could always get an engineer out from Kodak to reconnect it, but, since it’s not a breakdown…it’ll be chargeable’.
Not done.
How do I know all this ?
I’m at home one evening and I get a phone call from the ‘last guy’. ‘Hey! how’s it going’? ‘Pretty good’ was the answer…’How’s the lab doing’? ( I love this bit ) ‘What lab’?? ‘Umm…THE lab’. ‘Like I said…WHAT lab’?! ‘It’s CLOSED’??? ‘Well…I suppose you ‘could’ put it that way…the whole shop is closed…permanently’. ‘Pardon’?
It turned out that not only had the lab closed because ( surprise surprise ), nobody knew how to operate the printer properly or maintain it…but when the customers found out I’d been laid off they expressed their disgust by voting with their feet. The whole shop became a wasteland…hardly anybody went in there now.
Now that might not have been so bad when I first started there, and the lab brought in maybe 10 to 12 % of the total takings…but by the time I was laid off…the lab was bringing in around 80% of the total takings…of the entire shop.
Remember I said the lab would probably be closed within three months?
I was wrong…it took 6 WEEKS! before it…and the whole SHOP was closed.
The new company thought they were getting their hands on a gold mine, and to be honest it would have been…if they hadn’t messed it all up.
In my mid 20’s I had a job at a recording studio. I was “the girl”. I was completely in charge of all things office.
This place was part of an advertising agency.
We had the whole bottom floor and most of what we did was recording jingles.
So there were the jingle writers And the musicians and the sales people. All in all it was pretty much fun.
One day the pay checks were given to me to hand out and I happened to notice that everyone made more money than I did. I marched upstairs and asked WHY. I knew full well I did more work than anyone else there. I was told that “They were creative and I was not.”
My husband and I had already been doing glass work. I called him, told him to come get me. when he got there I said I am quitting my job. I want you to quit yours,too and we will do glass work full time.
He did and we rented our first studio which was near UWM on Milwaukee’s upper East Side.
We are still doing glass work today, 45 years later. hundreds of projects all over the country.
So thanks for telling me how uncreative I was.
Why Men NEED Sex
This should be taught in schools/colleges, the differences between Men & Women so that people can better go about relationships & know why the opposite gender behaves how they behave instead of thinking that there’s something wrong with them. i.e men have 17 times more testosterone than women hence men will tend to have a higher sex drive!
The Chinese Economy resembles a 48 year old man. Not young anymore but certainly not old or dying
The Japanese Economy resembles a 77 year old man. Prematurely aged 20 years thanks to the Plaza accords or would be a healthy 57 year old
The Indian Economy resembles a 43 year old. Down on his luck and having a last chance at some development and growth.
The US Economy resembles a 75 year old. Having sucked the youth of every Economy to keep from growing old or slowing down his ageing
The Russian Economy represents a 34 year old, reborn after dying as a 88 year old and still unsure of how to go forward but strong enough to fight the world
This was maybe ten years ago, back when I worked in a warehouse.
One fine day when I arrived at work there were no chairs at my workstation. A manager was out there and told me they had removed the chairs because the people who worked the previous shift spent too much time sitting around instead of doing their other tasks, but I could go into the office and bring a chair out to the warehouse every day when I came in.
When the next person on the shift came in I told her what was going on with the chairs, and her response was, “What is this, junior high?” I was more amused than exasperated, and life continued with me bringing out a couple of chairs at the start of work every day.
Soon afterward our senior manager became tired of people losing pens all the time and announced that anyone who needed a pen would have to ask her for one personally. I myself was very methodical about how I used my pen, always putting it down at the same place on the table where I worked and expecting it to be there whenever I needed it. Other people (mostly our regular vendors) were less careful with pens, and it didn’t take long before my pen disappeared, along with most of the others.
Now, these were not expensive pens, so the savings our tightfisted manager gained from controlling their distribution could not have been that much. More importantly, our senior manager’s schedule didn’t overlap with mine very much, and if I had better things to do with my time than ask the senior manager for a pen every time I needed one, surely that was more true for her.
So, I took the matter to Human Resources, mentioning both the chair and pen situations in an email. The next morning an HR person called me up on the phone and got some more details about everything. About five minutes later I heard the rumble of plastic wheels on the concrete floor of the warehouse, and there was the middle manager with an extra chair in one hand and a fistful of pens in the other. Sounding a little contrite, he dumped the pens on my table and said if I needed more to please let him know.
Often when I hear people talk about HR, it’s in the context of how HR is on the side of the employer instead of the employee. So I offer up this one instance where HR came through for the little guy.
The chairs in the warehouse stayed in the warehouse afterward. And, more importantly, I never had to waste anyone’s time by asking my senior manager for a pen.
Years ago I fell off a truck and dislocated my shoulder. I called an ambulance and they turned up. One guy said “I’m trained for resetting that”, so he did, me lying on his trolley bed on the pavement, they then took me to hospital for X-rays to make sure there were no further issues.
I don’t know how much it cost, I didn’t see a bill.
Years later I caught double pneumonia. 15 days in hospital with several courses of strong antibiotics and lots of rest.
I don’t know how much that cost – never saw a bill.
And a couple of years ago my 93 year old father in law was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, and fitted with a pacemaker that same day, spend a night in hospital and came home with an internet connected heart monitor so they could check on him from the hospital.
We never knew how much that cost … he never got a bill.
That’s universal health care for you.
We also get low cost and no cost pharmecuticals
I don’t mind the 2.5% levy added to my tax bills at all – it’s good value.
One observation I’ve made is that people from Europe have no concept of the ridiculous expanse that is the US, and to be fair the idea that you could take a day trip to another country when you’re in Europe blows my mind as well. I met a couple from France who thought they were going to go to Maine, New York, DC, and Orlando (Disney) all in one weekend. Just for reference, it would take you nearly 24 full hours of driving to get from Maine to Orlando.
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In case you can’t tell, below is the US compared to Australia.
You would not even be in a medieval army if you wanted to be safe. You would have joined a medieval army because you wanted to get rich quick – there was no other way to make easy money.
First of all: avoid all sieges. High risk of dying from dysentery as either besieger or besieged.
A longbow archer was very safe, and paid well, except that archers could not get “first pick” of battlefield booty. It was a trade off. Even so, you might get lucky especially if you got to sack a big town.
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You won the lottery by either capturing a nobleman, his horse, or his fine armor. Capturing a common knight was not bad except that, quite often. knights went into deep debt to finance their war service
Even so. knights sometimes had rich relatives (so don’t get mad and kill Sir Deadbeat)
A surgeon would have been pretty safe and, if captured, you would be treated well.
We live about a quarter mile away from the nearest road, back through the woods, so it’s rare for any stray domestic animals to wander back here, but on the evening of May 26 this year, this tortoiseshell came strolling up the porch steps and looked in the window.
“Oh no,” we thought. “I hope it goes away.” We already had two cats and didn’t want a third. That lasted about 20 minutes. Then, “Well, I guess we need to feed her something. We can’t let her starve.” So she got a meal off us. When she was still there the next morning, we named her. That was it. That’s when you can no longer say a cat doesn’t own you.
I already had a jet black longhair named LBK adopted from a colleague who was moving 1,200 miles away and didn’t want to take her from Georgia to the snows of Vermont. My wife has a blue tortoiseshell rescue cat she calls Biscuit. So we named our porch cat Triscuit—not after the cracker but sort of an organic chemistry joke (bis-, tris-, Biscuit, Triscuit). Students of o-chem will get it.
Triscuit was very emaciated when she came to us. She weighed 3.2 lb; the basal half of her tail was almost hairless, like an opossum tail; she had a prolapsed rectum, worms, and diarrhea; she smelled bad. But I’m a sympathetic sap, especially for underdogs (and undercats), and she captured my heart. After several trips to the vet and a special rehab diet, my free cat has so far cost me only about $780 since May. She’s now up to 4.3 lb—just $180/lb. She’s worm-free, and she’s growing some hair on her tail. She just might live.
Cajun Stuffed Peppers
2023 11 09 14 32
Ingredients
1 pound ground meat
1 (16 ounce) can stewed tomatoes
1/2 cup chopped onions
1/2 cup green bell peppers, chopped
1 (6 ounce) can tomato paste
2 cups cooked rice
6 to 8 bell peppers
Sliced cheese
Instructions
Cook meat, tomatoes, onions, chopped peppers and tomato paste. Cook for 20 to 30 minutes until done.
Cook rice. Mix rice into meat mixture, then simmer for 20 minutes.
Clean peppers. Boil in large pot until peppers turn darker green. Dry peppers on paper towels. Cool.
Anyone can think they are superman! Just that most are smart and humble. China is a very pragmatic and rational nation. It knows no nation has a right to exist and enjoys full sovereignty. China never sees itself as a nation that is strong. It knows very very well that should anyone threaten China, it will fully defend itself completely and hurt the attacking nation. Very very hard.
Me to a new hire, “install this wing flap actuator on that left wing and what ever you do…do not drop it, it’s very expensive.”
New hire, “Yes, sir. No problem”.”
Two minutes later, a loud, crashing thud can be heard from over by the left wing.
Me, “NEW HIRE? Did you just drop that actuator?”
New hire “No sir, I just dropped a tool. It’s alright.”
Me as I go over there to examine the situation. “Then why is there a dent on this mounting lug of the actuator?”
New Hire, “uhh, I don’t know, must’ve come that way. It’ll be alright. It’s fine. It’ll still work.”
Me, “Lives are at stake when we work on these aircraft and when mistakes are made we have to own them and immediately correct them. This actuator will not work and neither will you. Remember this lesson on your next job.”
In college I lived in an apartment building and my next door neighbor was the rudest, most angry and disagreeable person that I had ever met. One day after classes I rode my bicycle home and went to store it in the small storage shed in front of my car. I noticed that someone had clipped the right rear corner of my fairly new car. I looked at the Cadillac next to my car and saw a indentation on the rear quarter panel at the same height as the damage to my car. The color on the damaged quarter panel matched the color of my car exactly.
I approached my mean, nasty and disagreeable neighbor, showed him the damage and he immediately claimed that I must have hit his Cadillac and threatened to sue me, get me evicted and on and on.
He worked in a bank in a troubled part of town. I drove by the bank and noticed a massage parlor in a single wide trailer about 2 blocks away.
I went to an adult book store and purchased an explicit picture magazine titled “Beautiful Black Asses”, went to a card store and bought a very feminine thank you card and an envelope big enough for the magazine. I signed the card “Thanks for everything honey – Candy” and mailed it to his apartment with the massage parlor’s name and address as the return address. I was aware that his wife got home first every day and retrieved the mail every day.
A couple of days later I heard a LOUD screaming exchange between them and the wife took off in his Cadillac, burning rubber all of the way. She and the Cadillac were gone for about a month before she returned but, their relationship seemed chilled until I graduated and moved away a year and 1/2 later.
The Israelis are so sure about the location of the Hamas bunker, however, not because they are trying to score propaganda points, or because it has been repeatedly mentioned in passing by Western reporters—but because they built it. Back in 1983, when Israel still ruled Gaza, they built a secure underground operating room and tunnel network beneath Shifa hospital—which is one among several reasons why Israeli security sources are so sure that there is a main Hamas command bunker in or around the large cement basement beneath the area of Building 2 of the Hospital, which reporters are obviously prohibited from entering.
I bet 100 to 1 that nothing Hamas is present in the well known bunker beneath the Shifa hospital.
Mom: I couldn’t find my saved money, I need to pay the deliveryman.
Dad: Don’t worry, you’ll find it. How much for the deliveryman?
Mom: 5 thousand rupees. I ordered some groceries and essentials for the house.
Dad paid the deliveryman and we eventually got busy with our daily work.
The next day, Mom, Dad, and I were cleaning the kitchen, when my mom shouted.
Mom: Look, I got my money, it’s in the cupboard. I was so foolish, I searched the whole house for it.
Mom looked so happy because she saved it for her friend’s birthday gift.
But the situation was something else.
Dad got out of the house to smoke a cigarette and I ran behind him.
I said “Why did you do that?’
Father asked: ‘Do what?’
I replied “I swear I have seen you taking the money out of your wallet and putting it in the cupboard.
Dad smirked and replied: “You know she was everything for me! I can’t see her getting sad over the little money she lost yesterday. Because I think we need to care for the person, we love the most!”
Dad takes out a handkerchief and starts putting off his sweat.
I said “Dad, now why are you using mom’s handkerchief? Is it a sign of your care towards Mom too?”
Dad “Nope, because it still has her fragrance”
This was something that changed my whole point of view not only towards life but also towards love too.
Every heroin addict’s go to line. The problem is the drug is too brutal and won’t let you do a little this time.
Heroin messes with your brain big time.
It is an opioid, which means it comes from the same plant as morphine and other painkillers.
But heroin is different because it gets to your brain faster and stronger than other opioids.
It does this by changing into morphine once it’s in your blood, and then attaching to these things called opioid receptors in your brain.
Opioid receptors are like switches that control how you feel pain and pleasure.
When heroin hits them, it turns them on full blast, making you feel a rush of euphoria and relaxation.
It also blocks out any negative feelings like depression or anxiety.
Sounds awesome, right?
Wrong. Because heroin is so good at turning on your opioid receptors, it also tricks your brain into thinking that heroin is the best thing ever.
Your brain starts to associate heroin with happiness, and forgets about other things that make you happy, like food, friends, or hobbies.
Your brain also becomes less sensitive to heroin over time, so you need more and more of it to feel the same effect.
This is how addiction happens.
You become obsessed with getting and using heroin, and you can’t stop even if you want to.
You also start to feel sick when you don’t have heroin, because your brain is used to having it all the time.
This is called withdrawal, and it sucks big time.
Withdrawal can feel like death. It can make you feel like you have the flu, but worse.
You can have nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle aches, sweating, chills, anxiety, insomnia, and more.
Withdrawal can also make you crave heroin even more, because you know it will make you feel better.
The white horse is one of the most addictive drugs out there.
It hijacks your brain’s reward system and makes you dependent on it for feeling good.
It also makes you sick when you don’t have it, and makes you want it more than anything else in the world.
Possibly the worst thing is that even being sober for 20 years, you always remember that first high. That first rush. So the urge never really leaves…..
The smartest student in my class used to be nicknamed “Rain Man” in math class because of how fast he was able to make calculations. But he wasn’t just the best in math. He was also the best in the language classes and in history class – any class except physical exercise really. He wasn’t much use there.
Everyone thought he would go on to become a university professor. But he didn’t. He started distancing himself from academic pursuits in high school and instead started reading poetry and wanting to be an artist. When he was evaluated for military service and got a stellar score on the IQ test, the officers asked him what he wanted to do after high-school, and he told them he wanted to study literature or write novels.
Most likely the issue was that he came from an academic family, with both his parents being university professors, which made that career path seem like nothing special to him. He wanted “more”, whatever that was.
At college, he would become increasingly erratic, often not showing up for class and failing to read appointed materials. But he would still pass all exams with high marks by making an effort at the last minute.
The “artist” aspiration hadn’t died out though. He was pursuing writing as well as music, eventually forming a band, but he never really made an impact. He wasn’t even a bad music artist but he also just wasn’t outstanding like he was at school. His commercially unsuccessful “artist” career saw him moonlighting at random shift jobs to get by, including as a night receptionist.
It would be seven years until he realized music and literature weren’t going to get him anywhere. If he had just managed to put his head down and work diligently on a more weighty subject of study, be it mathematics or medicine or political science, I’m sure he would have had a brilliant career and made a splash in his field. As it was, he was already in his 30s without any really useful qualifications while others were getting promotions and buying real estate.
In the following years, he first learned Chinese and went to live in China, then came back again, took up coding with the intention of making AI models but also lost interest in that before really getting there. Nowadays he’s still struggling to even get a decent job – something I think no one would have expected back then at school. And who knows what’s next?
I guess I should know because I am this person. I was the smartest kid in my class. In this game of “professor or suicide”, I’m thus far neither. But being gifted hasn’t served me particularly well. Since everything was easy for me throughout my education (well, except P.E. and crafts), I never learned to really struggle. I learned that I could win without struggling. Therefore, I proceeded to avoid anything that might seriously put me to the test. And at the end of the day, intelligence is really no match for effort.
The silver lining is that I’m more and more beginning to realize that I don’t need a brilliant career, neither in academia nor as an artist. In hindsight, I was pursuing both more out of vanity than anything else. Unusually smart kids have a tendency to accrue lofty expectations from all around; from parents, teachers and classmates alike. Everyone tells you: “you could do this” and “you should do that” and “you’re gonna be a star” and it’s easy to become inebriated with this praise and forget to stop and be honest with yourself about what YOU actually want – not what others want for you or even what you want for your own idea of you. Finally doing so has been quite liberating.
This is an illusion. The Chinese used to think that having a European appearance meant they would be good at teaching English, but they later realized they were wrong.
Professional ability is linked to your salary, not your appearance.
If you can provide an English major certificate or education certificate, you can earn a good salary at English teaching institutions in China, but of course, there will be many people competing with you. Education requires teaching experience, not just talking to oneself in the classroom. Engaging in the teaching profession requires mastering teaching methods that students can understand. You must first be able to communicate with students in Chinese. Not everyone is suitable for the teaching profession, and whether to stay or not ultimately depends on the graduation rate data of students. People who lack a competitive advantage cannot enter higher education schools and can only teach their children some simple English conversations in kindergartens. Of course, the salary will be much lower than that of school teachers.
China’s second language ~ third language education is civilian education, not aristocratic education.
Generally speaking, the China government requires Chinese students to master at least 1~2 foreign languages. Because English-speaking countries dominate the world, China has popularized English education in the compulsory education stage.
There are many foreigners engaged in English education in China because it is easy to find substitutes, and the competitive pressure of practitioners is also the biggest among all language education. Meanwhile, due to the popularization of English education in China, the job of English teacher is also the easiest to find.
Language teachers such as Russian, Japanese, Korean, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic are relatively lacking.
As far as I know, some teachers of small languages have already earned salaries of $1000~$5000 per hour. (一万到五万一堂课)
Some infrastructure contractors, in order to make their employees understand the local language, offer considerable salaries to language teachers who attend classes during training.
In fact, in recent years, the salaries of Arabic language teachers and French teachers have been very good. Because there are many Arab countries and African countries (French speaking area) along the the Belt and Road. Since there is a demand for business, of course, relevant language education talents are needed.
We hired a lady to organize our archives before they were digitized. This was in 2000. She was just required to work 8 hours a day, and only needed to interact with coworkers for about an hour a day. So she decided to work 3:00–12:00 and our Mom and Pop small company saw no reason why she couldn’t do her job at night.
She was doing a decent job, and nobody had a problem. But we reached a point, where she had to start working days, so she could tell people what was going on.
She had stored all of her rolls of fim in garbage cans, and paper records in recycling boxes.
The first day she wasn’t there when the cleaners came to clean her office, they emptied all of her film and paper into shredders, and hauled it away.
Not one person in the office could figure out why she not only used her garbage can for storage, but brought in extra garbage cans and filled them.
She was livid and blamed the cleaning staff for emptying the garbage and recycling as they were required to do by contract.
They didn’t exactly fire her. They laid her off, and said that now that there was no data to archive, they didn’t have a job for her.
Sara Anne Wood was just 12 years old when she was abducted within view of her home on Aug 18, 1993. I was friends(from camp) with her brother Dusty and it hit everyone so very hard. This was an incredibly nice family from Central New York in a very small town. Back then, kids had heard ghost stories about kids being snatched but very few took it seriously. Sara’s case changed that for many and the resulting publicity made sure that new tools for the public and law enforcement would save more missing kids since.
The man who admitted to abducting and killing her also confessed to another murder- a 12 year old boy, Jimmy Bernardo. He confessed to another murder(Jamie Lusher) but like Sara, the body has never been found. The killer has given incorrect information for the recovery of Sara Anne Wood and Jamie Lusher many times. FBI psychologists are unsure what is keeping the killer from revealing the information since he seems willing to put it behind him. He will serve every day of his pitiful existence behind bars but it isn’t enough for the pain he has brought to so many in this world.
I have not named the killer out of respect for my childhood friend’s family who feel the killer has garnered too much fame already. It’s easy to search, but do me a favor if you choose to look it up. Please also learn about all of the positive changes brought about by Sara Anne Wood’s case. Those changes have saved/found many thousands of children since.
Note to Dusty & the Wood family: I hope you find peace and closure. We have not forgotten Sara and will never stop looking.
I am so so so SO very glad that I no longer live in the USA.
When I was 16 I developed a kidney abscess. It was treated over several weeks and dissipated. First off, I had to sit in a room with a bunch of 70 year old men waiting for my Urologist. Then, the Dr was flummoxed how a teenage girl could get this, so proceeded with different types of tests. One was testing my Ureters. In the hospital, I was naked from the waist down with a paper drape, filled my bladder with something and iodine and literally put a stopper in so that I couldn’t pee. Then, they left the room. It was just me and a male tech who was in front of some machines with screens. The room had swinging double doors. Every once in awhile someone would come in, and my nether regions were on full view to anyone coming in, and anyone passing by. When I was done, I had to wrap the paper drape around me and sprint to the bathroom across the hall to piss like a Russian race horse! I’m pretty sure I leaked that liquid all across that room and the hallway. Yes, this was very embarrassing.
One of my girls had been diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome, developmental delays and schizo affective disorder.
She attends a day program for adults that provides socialization along with life skills training. They also take the clients out into the community to do contract jobs supported by staff. She came home beaming and said she was working in a local grocery store. I assumed stocking shelves, sweeping, etc.
About her third day she came home excited as usual got a snack and went to the bathroom.
I cleaned up the table, put away leftovers, and generally spent a fair amount of time puttering around.
Then I realized she was still in the bathroom and it was very quiet.
I called her name.
No answer.
I checked the door.
It was locked.
I banged on the door, yelled her full name and demanded she open the door immediately!
NO! I’M NOT DONE!
What are you doing?
It’s a surprise. Go away!
Now I’ve had pretty awful bathroom surprises from kids. Things like blood all over from an accident doing something I’d warned them about, to diarrhea, to bathing the dog in the tub with the associated water and mud sprayed around.
I said I was counting to 10 and the door had better be open or I’d pick the lock. Yeah, I’ve had to do that on more than one occasion.
At 9 she opened the door beaming and sweaty. See mom! I cleaned it all by myself! The floor around the toilet, the sinks, inside the toilet and the mirrors! Now I need to wash my hands.
Everything was spotless. I had forgotten most stores have at least employee restrooms. That was what she was doing at work.
She then said it was nicer at home than the men’s room. It was disgusting and stinks.
I was floored! Never have I had a child do such a thorough job cleaning anything! I gave her hugs. I told her I was sooo happy with the sparkling clean bathroom.
Then she asked me, Mom, can you teach me how to clean the tub? They don’t have that at the store.
I was shocked. She actually wanted to do more cleaning!
I told her I was so proud of her, and then later made her promise that if she wanted to clean the bathroom again would she please leave the door open. I explained that the surprise was fantastic, but some cleaning supplies were smelly and she could get sick.
She looked disappointed and asked how she could surprise me if the door was open.
I promised if she said she was working on something special I’d stay in the kitchen and make cookies.
I get a clean bathroom, the kids get fresh cookies, and my husband eats raw cookie dough. Wins all the way around!
China SHOCKS The US With Terrifying Nuclear Space Missile
I got a call from a friend, who had literally just been informed that he was laid off. And he was wondering if I had also gotten the axe.
I was on vacation for a week. It was Tuesday or Wednesday, and I was on my way to a dog show to help some friends set some things up. My friend had been walked into the office that morning and been told that his last day would the the following Friday. The severance was good, he had already been thinking about retiring, and his wife was having pretty bad health issues. So he just said cool, and planned on wrapping up the things he was involved with.
So I checked, and did have a voicemail on my phone. I listened to it, and yes, a manager I knew had called VERY EARLY that day and asked that I call her back when I had the time, sometime today. Given that my friend had been laid off, and what the situation at the company was, yeah, I knew I was going to get the boot as well. Not my first time, so I just sat back and made a list of what I needed to do. Then I called my friend back, told him about the voicemail and we commiserated. And finally I called the manager back and got the bad news. No big deal.
Being laid off sucks. But keep your wits about you, be open to doing something different, make smart financial decisions and just keep movin’ on.
In May 2016, Amber Heard, who is now divorced from Johnny Depp, shared photos claiming he abused her. People quickly condemned Depp, especially when he was cast in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. Many thought he shouldn’t be hired due to the accusations. Meanwhile, Heard was praised as a survivor and advocate for abused women.
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Depp, who had built a good reputation over the years, faced a backlash. People didn’t want to work with him, and he was labeled as an abuser. He received hate from fans, the media, and almost everyone.
However, this year, Depp released tapes that changed how we saw the situation. Heard admitted to hitting him and throwing objects at him, even causing injury. She mocked him, knowing people would likely believe her over him.
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Depp, in essence, is saying, “Imagine if I, as a man, claimed to be a victim of domestic violence. How many would believe or support me?” The story shows how we often quickly judge someone as a villain, even when they might not be at fault.
I was the bad boy and what you’re trying to make is a mistake.
Let me explain why.
Most girls in their 20s and even 30s have some kind of masculine ideal. This ideal is anything but healthy. They want the sociopath or the aggressive jerk or whatever is considered nowadays a good representation of masculinity.
The definition of a “good masculine sexual partner” is more of what you’d find in “Fight Club” than “Breakfast At Tiffany”. And yes, I was one of them. I acted as a jerk, I was emotionally imbalanced, I got into a lot of arguments and fights and I was emotionally and physically violent.
And this got me laid. A lot. The fact that my life was chaotic and broken, ironically, made a lot of very beautiful woman want to save me.
And here’s the thing …
If you want to screw your emotional balance, make your life a mess and be in that position for the sake of getting laid you are an idiot. This is because the “bad boy” image that works to get women turned on is kind of the opposite of what works in every other area of life.
Everywhere else consistency, maturity, dignity, integrity are rewarded. In the business world nobody will put up with the “bad boy” bullshit. In the academic world the same. Most realms of life are a meritocracy where your hard work and effort are going to get you what you deserve. Dating is one of the few fields in which the least you care and the more counter-intuitive you act, the better results you’re going to get.
But it is not worth it.
This is because while being a bad boy may get you female attention, being a bad boy is generally not a good life strategy and there is a LOT MORE to life than getting laid. I remember how at some point in my life I was an emotional mess, smoking, drinking, going in bars each night, sleeping with two girls at the same time (not in the same bed) and many people were “admiring me”.
In reality, I was crying out of frustration and desperation often because I was in a hole and no one was pulling me out. While I was getting girls to take off their panties, I had no money, my business partners wanted nothing to do with me, my friends who showed integrity and character have been replaced by superficial relationships and the future looked really bleak.
So honestly, what you want is the most immature thing you can do.
Trust me, treating life as a bad-boy (and I’m not talking about buying a leather jacket but actually being a “I-Don’t-Give-A-Damn” type of person) has a far higher downside than upside. While there are always going to be ladies who will (1) want to save you from yourself (2) think they can change you (3) be attracted because you’re different, the people who don’t want to have sex with you won’t really be impressed by what you’re doing.
So here’s my advice.
Act as a man and stop trying to emulate the dysfunctional bad-boy image. The rogue, the sociopath, the psychopath, the out of control wreck are and were always female fantasies for better or for worse but actually being one sucks.
Instead simply focus on acting as a man. The same traits that you consider boring nice, as a nice guy, are exactly the traits required to succeed in most fields. I’m not saying to be a wimp but I’m saying that being dysfunctional for the sake of mediocre sex (because deep inside you’ll always know that that’s not love but rather fascination) is a very bad trade-of.
When he was 87 and slipping into dementia, I asked my father exactly this on one of his “good days.” He smiled and said that it had been worth it, even when he became the last of his siblings alive and started to lose his ability to remember names, first, and other things later.
He became a very gentle person to be around (he had been an angry and argumentative Democrat for most of his life) and enjoyed his children, grandchildren, and even their pets. We got along better than we ever had. I remember taking him to the Fourth of July parade and whispering the names of people who came up to greet him. Once he knew their names, he could have a great conversation. Then I brought him back to a school reunion and that was wonderful. He needed no introductions as everyone wore a name tag.
Having watched my father in those years, I hope that I may live long enough to navigate old age just the way he did despite his obvious infirmities.
I’ve worked with the company I’m presently employed with for not quite 12 years. Up until a year ago, we were a small personable, easy going, family owned company of about 250 drivers. If you were around for any length of time, everyone in the office and shop knew you, and vice versa. That was up until about a year ago when the owner of the company retired and threw us under the bus by selling us out to a larger company and everything changed.
It’s common practice for just about any trucking company to require any damage to their equipment be reported and documented. With my company, if the damage was minimal, the report would still go in the driver’s jacket, but no further. It would stay in-house instead of being reported to a national data base.
I’ve always been the type to man-up in situations such as this. I was raised that way, and it was the right thing to do. Even leaving small damage unreported could result in the next driver having to have it repaired and possibly being late for a delivery.
So, after pulling out of a customer’s driveway and cutting it too tighly, I felt something go bump in the night. Upon further inspection, it appears I clipped one of those large landscaping rocks placed to prevent idiot drivers like me from cutting corners too tightly, and running over their curbs. When I stopped for the day and was doing my mandatory post-trip inspection, I came upon this,
image 114
Thinking it was no biggie, and my company would normally think likewise, and wanting to do the right thing, I called it it. What happened next was nothing short of a shit storm. The new people acted like I ran over a carload of nuns. Initial phone call to my parent company, followed by a call to the new company’s safety department, followed by a call-back the next day from same, followed by submitting pictures and a full accident report, followed by a call-back from the new company to review of same, followed by a never-heard-of-before-review from Greg in our safety department.
When I related the story to the former head of our . safety department, her reaction was, “It was just a fuckin’ rim!”, as she shook her head.
Trust me, if it ever happens again, I won’t think twice about going palms up with a “Dunno nuthin’ ‘bout it. When I dropped it off, it was fine “, should anyone inquire.
I was driving down the freeway and all of a sudden I couldn’t see the cars ahead of me. It was if someone had pulled a shade down in front of my line of vision. I could see all around the shade, but not right in front. Although it was only for a few moments, the terror I felt was devasting.
I was a 21-year old college student, a senior at academically prestigious school, getting good grades, working part time, and enjoying a fun social life.
So, what was the matter? Where did the intense headaches come from? Why did I frequently wake up in the middle of the night, jumping out of bed and running to the bathroom, to vomit repeatedly? Why did I feel that I was about to fall down whenever the sidewalk was a little uneven?
Then there were those crazy nightmares I was having.…. I dreamed one night that I was driving on the freeway. The car next to me pulled up right beside me. The driver pulled a gun out. He shot me in the head. My head exploded. Everything became dark. I woke up in a terrified sweat. What on earth was wrong with my head that I would have such a dream?
In spite of everything, I was doing okay and maintaining my studies. But finally it became too much for me to handle. Especially the shade covering my eyes on the freeway.
I saw several doctors. They said I was fine.
I went to a psychologist. I figured that since the doctors said I was fine, it must be all in my mind. The psychologist listened to my symptoms. He said that I didn’t need to see a psychologist. Instead, I needed to see a neurologist and he urged me to see one right away.
I took his advice and went to a neurologist. The neurologist admitted me to a hospital. Still no answers. Many tests were done, but it was during the days before C-T scans or MRI’s were used, so it was hard to figure this out. Finally a diagnosis was made: brain tumor.
Surgery was scheduled. They operated for 10 hours, and were able to remove half of the tumor. The surgeon told me the tumor was the size of a large orange and that if I hadn’t been diagnosed when I was, I would have had 6 months left to live. It was just taking over my whole brain and growing so fast.
I was in intensive care for 2 weeks. I can’t remember too much about that time. It seemed like a dream, for just a few hours.
Then, more surgery. And then some more.
I lost the ability to walk. I couldn’t see very well. I lost hearing. I was fed intravenously. Because I had stroke-like symptoms, one side of my body became weak and uncoordinated. I no longer could hold a pen and write.
I had physical therapy and occupational therapy to regain some of the skills that I had lost.
I finally left the hospital and went home to live with my parents. The tumor was not all gone, but I needed a break. I needed time to get stronger before the next onslaught of surgery.
While I was home, I had physical and occupational therapy at a nearby hospital. I still couldn’t walk or write, but I was beginning to feel better. In physical therapy I worked on learning to walk with a walker and then eventually on my own. In occupational therapy I worked on strengthening my very weak hand. I did many activities with my hands, including making some beautiful crafts. Occupational therapy was so much fun! I loved therapy.
I went back to the hospital and had the last surgery. Finally the tumor was gone. After some more time had passed I felt that maybe it was time to return to school.
Living on my own again was not easy. I still couldn’t walk or write well. But I persevered. Sometimes I fell down. I used a tape recorder during lectures since I couldn’t write fast enough to take notes, and my professors gave me extra time to write exams. With the support of my family and professors, I did well and succeeded.
As graduation approached, a brilliant idea occurred to me. I remembered the great time I had in occupational therapy, and how I had been helped so much. Maybe I too could become an occupational therapist. I thought of how wonderful it would be to spend my life helping others just like I had been helped. I decided that yes, I would try, and so I applied to a master’s degree program in occupational therapy.
There were many more applicants than spots available, but much to my delight I was accepted into the program!
The program was so difficult and very competitive. But I worked hard and after two years became an occupational therapist.
That was 40 years ago, and I am still going strong. I have worked with literally thousands of patients during my career, from little 1-pound premature babies all the way up to 103 year-old patients in nursing homes, and everything in-between. I have loved every minute of it.
Occupational therapy is a flexible career with an abundance of interesting and meaningful jobs available. During my career, I traveled the world, met and married my husband, gave birth to and raised two beautiful children, and enjoyed my life!
I turned what could have been a terrible, frightening experience into something really wonderful.
My sister-in-law once called me to borrow my fax machine. This was in the days before most people had computers and internet. She had a very important document that had to be faxed to a company showing proof of payment.
I took my fax machine to her house that night, hooked it up, walked her through the simple instructions and left.
She called me at work the next day in a panic. She said she had tried to send her document several times and it would not go. This was important, and she needed it sent right away. I was getting off early that day so I agreed to go by her house and help her with it.
When I arrived I checked the machine and connections and everything seemed fine. I told her to send it again so I could see what was going on. She did everything correctly and at the tone hit Send. The fax machine pulled the paper through and indicated a successful receipt at the other end. My sister-in-law grabbed the paper as it came back out of the machine and said, “See. It doesn’t go, it just spits it back out.” My jaw hit the floor. It turns out she thought the actualpaper was being sent over the phone lines.
After I explained the concept to her, I let her know that this story would be told at every family get together for the rest of my life. It is now firmly a part of the family lore and enjoyed by each successive generation.
My sister-in-law fortunately took it in stride. She declared it her worst blonde moment and laughs as hard as anyone when the story is retold.
P.S. My sister-in-law did call the company still to confirm receipt. They told her they had four copies and that was absolutely sufficient.
Close? I accidentally found out I was going to be demoted which lead to me quitting.
In my 20s I worked at one of those places that made huge cookies, I was specifically hired by the manager to be the assistant manager, she’d worked with me as a key holder at another place so she knew I would be good at it. A few months after I was hired the owner sold the business.
One day I was hanging out with the Manager L when she got a call from one of the kids at cookie shop. “Hey L, the owner is in here with some chick he says is the new Manager, what’s going on?”
Too bad L had no answers for her, we had no damned idea what was happening. She and I jumped in the car and headed to the cookie shop to talk, in person, to the owner.
Sure enough, he was demoting L into Assistant and me into just a regular employee. Neither of us had done anything wrong, the new owner just planned to make this new lady a manager. He told us a bunch of BS saying she had experience bla bla… but we found out later she was actually just his girlfriend. We told him how messed up that was, and that both of us would quit if he planned to do this. He was unrepentant, even gaving us the whole “I’m sorry you feel you need an apology” line.
She and I looked at each other, got up and walked away.
Apparently he truly didn’t understand what had just happened because when he saw the kid who called us changing the schedule he was confused. When he was told by her we had just quit, he was completely stunned and didn’t understand why we would have done that. Dude, we literally told you to your face that’s what we’d do if you demoted us for no reason other than to put someone else in as manager, WTF did you think would happen?
Turns out the girlfriend was horrible as a manager, and the owner ended up folding in a few months. Funny how that happens when you take actions that force the people with a clue out, and put someone clueless in just because you are dating them. The two of us were the ones who knew how to run the store, knew how to run the fundraising side, which is where most of the money was made. He screwed himself by being an idiot.
Cajun Butt
2023 11 09 14 20
Yield: about 8 to 10 servings
Ingredients
1 (6 pound) boneless pork butt
15 to 20 garlic slivers
3 tablespoons red pepper flakes (or less)
4 tablespoons yellow mustard
3 tablespoons Tony Chachere’s Original Seasoning
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon black pepper
Instructions
Cut 15 to 20 slits 1 inch deep on external surface of pork butt. Press one garlic sliver into each slit with thumb, to bottom of slit. On top of each garlic sliver, insert 1/4 teaspoon of red pepper flakes in the slit. Pinch slit closed.
In a bowl, mix mustard, Cajun seasoning, brown sugar and black pepper. Mix well and apply to pork butt. Lightly dust with a coating of red pepper flakes.
Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.
Smoke-cook using apple and hickory chips on a covered barbecue pit off the heat for 1 hour per pound or until the internal temperature reaches 190 degrees F.
Perhaps one of the most effective improvised weapons was the Rhino tank. An ordinary tank – usually a Sherman but with improvised steel teeth welded to the front.
In 1944 just after D-Day the Americans, Canadians and British troops were getting held up in the ‘bocage’ countryside of Normandy. Bocage consisted of high hedgerows built on thick banks of earth. This environment proved ideal for German ambushes, providing plenty of defensive cover. It also meant that the Germans could pick off tanks because they would be funnelled down the lanes, or forced through the narrow gaps in the bocage hedgerows. The Germans knew exactly where the tanks would come through and could lay anti tank mines, or train their guns on that exact spot. If the tanks tried to avoid the gaps and instead drive over the top of bocage embankment, it was so steep that it would expose the thin underside armour. Allied tanks were getting wiped out. Until this man, Sergeant Curtis G. Culin had an idea.
image 109
When one of his fellow soldiers joked and said they needed a big set of teeth to bite their way through, Culin didn’t laugh but took the idea seriously. He welded some of the steel that the Germans had used as tank traps to the front of his tank, like this.
image 108
The teeth allowed the Sherman to burst straight through the hedgerow, surprise and then destroy any Germans waiting in ambush on the other side.
When General Omar Bradley saw what Culin had done and saw how his tank was able to smash its way though the bocage hedgerows, the General ordered that as many tanks as possible be fitted with this improvised weapon. The Normandy beaches had been filled with landing spikes which were conveniently just the right shape and type of steel to make the ‘teeth’.
This simple but effective innovation enabled the Americans to swiftly move on and cut off the Cotentin Peninsula and then move south and meet up with the British and Canadians cutting off the Germans in the Falaise Pocket.
I bought the house we are in now exactly 10 years ago in “as is” condition. In fact this was the entire listing:
“Seller and agents make no representations and warranties. Sold as is.”
The house is in a fairly upscale suburb, and was about 15 years old at the time. There was plenty of cosmetic damage — water damage on the hardwood floors, a filthy kitchen, holes in some drywall, a half-full leaky pool clogged with algae. Plus the interior and exterior were just sad looking, with ugly brown paint and outdated stained oak stairs.
image 107
But the funny thing was that no matter how carefully I looked, I could not see any actual serious problems. In fact, it was a bank repossession, and I eventually figured out that since it looked so bad they just assumed there were real problems, and they listed it the way they did to avoid any liability. Over 100 people looked at the house, and we were the only ones who put in an offer, and we got it way (way!) under the asking price, which is rare in Toronto.
I was planning on doing a full renovation anyhow, so I didn’t care about the drywall and flooring. The entire kitchen went in the dumpster. And for $600 we repaired the pool, and it worked perfectly.
I’ve been here for 10 years now and we have not had a single serious problem with the house.
I am sitting outside Quoraing this morning and I took this picture 60 seconds ago:
When you can’t destroy a target by dropping bombs vertically, you can drop them horizontally. That’s what the 617 Royal Air Force Squadron did in May 1943.
The squadron carried out Operation Chastise, designed to destroy German dams and hydroelectric power stations. Reconnaissance and simulated bombing runs revealed that bombs dropped vertically on top of dams were not effective. So instead, the RAF used an experimental bouncing bomb, designed by Sir Barnes Wallis, that was dropped at low altitude onto the surface of the reservoir and skipped along the water horizontally until it hit the face of the dam.
The strategy proved effective. “The Möhne and Edersee Dams were breached…Two hydroelectric power stations were destroyed and several more were damaged. Factories and mines were also either damaged or destroyed.”
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Lancaster bomber dropping bouncing bomb during the Operation Chastise raids on Germany’s Ruhr Valley.
The operation was later the subject of the movie Dambusters, released in 1955.
I remember seeing a girl, her parents were millionaires due to a massive inheritance.
She would try and talk about her “Working class background” how the struggle was real.
One day she was telling me how her parents only bought her a brand new mini when she passed her test and how that went to show how much her family had struggled. One of her school friends got a brand new Range Rover.
I listened to that thinking “My Mum couldn’t have afforded a driving lesson let alone a car”
My sister’s daughter and her husband were about to lose their house in Texas because neither of them had jobs, they had one very young daughter and were expecting another baby. My 80 year old mother couldn’t stand to watch this happen. So, she took out an equity loan on her house and lent them $100,000. They were supposed to make the equity payments for my mom, and at first they did and were supposed to pay the whole loan back when they sold their house.
A few months later, they sold their house but told my mother they needed her money as a down payment on their new house in california. So, they kept the money, and continued making the monthly payments until they had a big fight and split up. Suddenly, no one wanted to make the payments on my mother’s equity loan so my mother had to. If she couldn’t keep up on them, she would have lost her house.
She is now 85 years old, completely disabled, living on a tiny pension, and trying to pay off this loan. Since my niece split with her husband, they did not make payments on their house either. So, it went into foreclosure, and Mom cannot even put a lien on it to get her money back.
Needless to say, I am truly disgusted by my niece’s behavior as well as her husband’s. I have now sent my mother money; my sister has sent her money, and another one of my nieces has sent money. The only people in the family who do not seem to feel terrible about this are the two people who should.
When i decided not to break up with my boyfriend at that moment.
I had just joined post graduation course and found this guy who was extremely caring about me. Within a month, he proposed me. I was confused however i said yes.
We use to talk, study and laugh together. However even after six months, i was not sure about our relationship.
AND Here comes the blow. He was back to his hometown. He was ill since a week. Meanwhile, i had a introspection round with my roommates. I found i was still unsure about our relationship. So i decided, on the next call, i will tell him that this is not the right time to fall in love etc., we should be friends only.
He called me around 8 PM. I was full prepared to say him a No. As soon as i picked the phone, he was crying on the other side. He was suffering from a fatal disease, Meningitis. I could not gather courage to leave him at this crucial moment. I just said, “I am with you today and always. No matter what happens.”
He was not in position to join college. His parents was insisting him to leave the college and repeat next time. He refused and joined the college next month. He had not recovered fully. In fact, he lost his hearing power around 40%. When he came back, he told me – how my words motivated him to join the college again. I took care of him. I used to call him reminding his medicines, diets etc. Meanwhile, i actually fell for him and then never told about that breakup thought.
Today, i am happily married with him.
P.S. I do not want my husband to know about my breakup thought even today. He is on quora. So i am writing anonymously.
I visited a radio station for an interview, at the station manager’s request. At the time I was somewhat “known” as a pleasing radio “personality” and therefore many stations wanted to talk to me.
Part of the interview process includes a station tour where the owner or manager shows off their office, production facilities, etc.
But at this particular station, I noticed all the shelved albums (well over a thousand) were locked in place by a steel bar which prevented their removal from the shelf, unless the bar was unlocked.
But who the Hell would steal the records? During business hours, when the station was open, advertisers or promoters might come in, but they were always accompanied by station staff, so visitors couldn’t steal an album (or even a 45). So, when the doors were locked after 5 PM, who did that leave as a potential thief?
Answer: the DJ who was on air, and the news guy or gal. Sometimes, the sales manager might come in.
So, the owner of the station was paranoid about theft from his or her own people! I had worked at a number of stations, and had never seen a lockdown of the music library. It had to mean that employees and top management were not happy with each other, and I was NOT going to work in that kind of environment.
Thus, I stopped in my tracks and said, “Thanks for the tour, but I don’t think this will work for me.” And I was out the door before anyone could say, “Huh?”
Years ago, I lived in an apartment in a two-family building. Upstairs and downstairs.
The landlord had rented the downstairs to a woman and her three teenage kids. They were obnoxious, had fights constantly, played music so loud it literally shook the walls, and despite multiple complaints by other neighbors to the landlord and the police (because yes it was that bad), nothing was done.
While technically, landlords are supposed to do snow clearing after a snow fall, getting some landlords to do so in a timely manner is more effort than digging out the snow yourself. This was one such landlord.
That winter we had a bad snow storm, a few feet of snow.
The downstairs neighbor knocked on my door to ask when I, the older woman with no kids, would be shoveling out the apartments and driveway, all of it, by myself.
I told her I wouldn’t, but we could split the cost to have someone come over and do it since the landlord was extra full of excuses as to why it would take days to get to the property and do so.
She laughed and said she wasn’t paying. She then told me I was welcome to hire her 3 kids to dig out the entire property. Her kids were a big part of the problem as to why the cops were coming over constantly, and so no. I’d previously had problems with her children opening my mail and putting it back in my mail box or opening deliveries of mine. There was no way I’d pay them.
Oh hell no, first you expect someone older than you to do the work for free, then expect that I will pay your kids, who are apparently perfectly able to do so, to dig YOU out? Fuck that.
A friend’s husband was offering to dig people out for a reasonable rate. I contacted him and hired him. When he got there, I explained the neighbor issue and what I wanted and was willing to pay for. He was only to clear out MY half of the driveway/garage/sidewalk. Her sides were still untouched, because no one(Me) would pay her kids to do it.
He went the extra mile, splitting the snow between the yard, and her side, of everything. AKA her side ended up with more snow that needed to be cleared.
This level of petty
image 117
Picture from Google.
She complained to the landlord that:
1. I refused to shovel her side of the property for her and her family (I was not obligated to do ANY property maintenance at all)
2. I had refused to hire her kids to do it
3. I had hired someone and refused to pay him to clear her side.
Now this was a kinda shitty landlord, but still… I was amused that the landlord contacted me about it and agreed to reduce my rent the amount I paid to have MY side cleared, as well as tell me about the downstairs neighbor’s complaints about me.
Until I moved out, whenever there was snowfall, you would see a similar clearing pattern on the property. SO much so the other neighbors joked about it, and refused to hire her kids to clear their properties as well.
EDIT: Apparently there are a large number of people who feel the need to comment about how she could just use my side of the stairs as if I lack a functioning brain. Seriously, the level of condescending ‘splaining in the comments is a sad statement on so many here. Thanks all you Captain Obvious’.
Of course she could, as could the postal worker who had to use them to deliver mail(Something not one of those commenting about her using the stairs seemed to consider).
Her being able to use them or not wasn’t the point. So many of you making the same comment as if the more of you who say it, the more I will regret it, or as if I didn’t realize that years ago when I did it is mind-boggling.
For those clueless ones that feel the need to comment the obvious, you all missed the obvious point that it wasn’t about her use of the stairs, but the refusal to clear her side on her command.
My partner (not my husband). My mother had been really sick from cancer for 18 months, we were told that she was unlikely to make it past the weekend. With that being said I was completely distraught… my partner of 9 years said pack your stuff and leave first thing in the morning (400km drive). He woke me up at 430 am, had already packed the car and fueled it up for me. Had a travel mug of coffee ready and said call me when you get there. I left 5am Friday morning.
mum passed 8am Saturday morning (the next day). I called my partner and told him, he said I’ll move heaven and hell to get there as soon as I can. I said, don’t worry, there is nothing you can do, just be here in time for mums funeral (the upcoming Friday).
in the mean time, it was my birthday 4 days after mum had passed. My family tried to make it as special as it could be. But, it was quite a somber occasion. At 8pm, there were headlights at the top of the drive way (rural property). I know the sound of his car. I’m like it’s *partners name.
he had worked 12 hour shift (construction) then drove 400km to be with me in my darkest time to help me feel better on my birthday. In the days after mums passing I had not been able to sleep, or cry or anything but just barely function. I slept solidly that night.
I know most would say that or like to think their spouse would do the same. But, that level of love and support got me through my darkest days. Love this man so very much.
Unfortunately, this is the point. The U.S. is not filty rich but filty poor.
All those money for Ukraine and Israel we got by using the printing press. We’re now $33 trillion in debt.
We can’t pay for basic utilities to keep our house in order but we believe we’re still able to live the high life of showing off to the rest of the world how powerful we are.
Genghis Khan, the legendary Mongol conqueror, had a unique approach when it came to treating his soldiers. Known for his strategic brilliance and military prowess, Khan understood the importance of a strong and loyal army in his quest to build the largest empire in history. So how did he treat his soldiers?
First and foremost, Genghis Khan believed in meritocracy. He valued skill, loyalty, and bravery above all else. Regardless of their background or social status, anyone who demonstrated these qualities had the opportunity to rise through the ranks of his army. This approach fostered a sense of unity and purpose among his soldiers, as they knew that their achievements would be rewarded.
Khan was also an astute observer of human nature. He recognized that soldiers needed to be motivated and inspired to fight with unwavering dedication. To achieve this, he led by example. Genghis Khan was renowned for his courage on the battlefield, often placing himself at the forefront of his troops during crucial engagements. This not only boosted morale but also instilled a sense of camaraderie and trust among his soldiers.
In addition to leading from the front, Khan took great care of his troops’ physical well-being. He ensured that his soldiers were adequately fed, equipped, and cared for. The Mongol army was known for its skilled horsemen, and Khan prioritized the breeding and training of horses to provide his soldiers with superior mounts. This gave them a significant advantage in maneuverability and speed during battles.
Furthermore, Genghis Khan implemented a system of rewards and recognition for valorous acts. Soldiers who displayed exceptional bravery or achieved notable successes on the battlefield were given honors, titles, and even land. This not only motivated his soldiers to excel but also created a sense of pride and camaraderie within the ranks.
However, Khan was also a strict disciplinarian. He demanded discipline and obedience from his soldiers, as he believed that a well-disciplined army was crucial for maintaining order and achieving victory. Disobedience or betrayal was met with severe consequences, ensuring that his troops remained loyal and committed to the cause.
Woman EXPOSES The INEVITABLE Problem With Dating Modern Women | TRAINED/GROOMED To Be Masculine
I was in talks to design a business plan for one of those “Become a Millionaire” guys – aka a “Life Coach”.
As we moved along in talks I immediately got the heeby jeebies from the guy.
He was in his late 50’s and only seemed to brag about things he did in high school and his early 20’s. When I would ask about subsequent years, just to understand his career narrative, he would get thin on details and then squirm and change the subject.
So then I watched a few of his media interviews where his go-to story was about this incredible and vivid vision that came upon him when he was a child. A vision that he would someday become rich.
To his credit, it indeed came true. He was a wealthy man.
But it became true because he inherited his dad’s company when his dad passed away unexpectedly. He then immediately sold the company and spent the next 30 years doing a whole lot of nothing.
So now he is one of those people going around telling everyone he knows “that ONE special secret to getting rich”. He released his first book on becoming wealthy, which a bunch of unfortunate suckers bought.
And, no, I won’t tell you the title because he will sue the hell out of me.
But I’ll give you the cliff notes version, “Get rich by having a rich dad.”
Unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there that are like him.
Preying on people’s hopes and dreams in search of a dollar.
The American industrial system does not have such production capacity.
American shipyards do not have such production capacity: There is only a dry dock suitable for manufacturing aircraft carriers, and aircraft carriers waiting for repair are still queuing;
The steel mills in the United States do not have such production capacity: The last scandal involving the use of low-quality steel made in Kobe, Japan, by US nuclear submarines has not yet passed. This batch of nuclear submarines with quality issues cannot dive at all, and diving into deep water will explode due to increased pressure. American warships are even unable to withstand the impact of fishing vessels, which fully proves the quality issues of the steel used in their shipbuilding.
There are not enough skilled workers in the United States
20 And Back – The Super Soldiers Defending the Kuiper Belt
Joe Biden is taking the World to the brink of World War III
What can the American people do about it?
SQUAT
…
Until 19/1/2025 at least, there is nothing any American citizen can do about it except watch the World plunge into war under the watch of a senile idiot who needs Diapers
So what is the use of saying
Biden is destroying USA and he must be kicked out
It’s just empty gas isn’t it. It’s just 10 words at the end of the day. Biden laughs and keeps doing whatever he likes for four years, unchecked
…
Same with every Democracy in the Planet
At the end of the day – WHAT IS THE END RESULT OF ABUSING OR CRITICISING THE LEADER?
Nothing
Either the Media suppresses it or people shrug and brazenly keep doing what they are doing
…
Take India
We have had Protests on every decision that has ruined the country
Demonetization, CAA, NCR etc
They matter Squat
Once in, Modi is in power for minimum 5 years and he can’t be shaken by the common man
…
France?
Same story
All those Protests and Screams and Shrieks about Pension reforms and Macron did exactly what he wanted
He is in charge till 2027
…
Same with South Korea , exports plunge to historic lows and people scream and protest but does it matter? Nopes
Taiwan?
Japan?
Germany?
So many protests begging to end the war and Germany openly and brazenly calls for Escalation
So what is the use of this damn free speech? You can say the words but they are worthless in every possible way
Now China
Yes
Maybe in China, saying these 10 words could be counter productive
However the people’s voice in China is heard much better than in any democracy
Lockdowns were ended post protests
Rural Banking Reforms were initiated after Protests
Crackdowns on Real Estate Financing was initiated after Protests
1.03 Crore Jobs have been added due to vigorous Weibo Netizen criticism
Tagging Schoolkids Or regulating online gaming has been deferred due to Weibo online protests
Plus the Biggest Biggest Thing…
Recently on the XI Jingping app, they asked if Chinas History for 6–9 Classes be modified and whether Chapters on the Boxer Rebellion and the Opium Wars had to be reduced
The Question was asked of Students who had already passed out their 9th Grade and above
79% Students said NO.
DON’T CHANGE HISTORY
They didn’t.
…
In India, US, and all those wonderful democracies – they don’t ask the kids do they????
So on one hand you have Western Democracies and their lapdogs where you can say what ever you want but can do zilch
Or China where your criticism must be tempered but as citizens you can achieve much greater control on Governance
The Chinese say WE LIKE OUR MODEL BETTER
I kinda agree with them
So you keep your Senile Alzheimer’s Ridden President and your ‘Freedom and Democracy’ and let the Chinese have their own version
I think you might want to edit the question to ask which item from Italian cuisine does the US actually get right.
Italian American cuisine is a cuisine in its own right. Millions of Italians immigrated to America and they adapted their traditional dishes to use American ingredients. Some of the ingredients they used at home were unavailable or too expensive in America, so changes were made. Successive generations didn’t know there was a difference between what they were eating and what was being cooked in the old country. They just accepted the food their families prepared as being Italian cuisine, which at heart, it is.
There’s a lot of water between America’s East Coast, the epicenter of Italian American cuisine, and the old boot herself. It’s that distance that led the creation of Italian American classics. If I had to point at one item the made the leap unmolested though, I’d name Sfogliatelle.
Sfogliatelle are a flaky pastry that originated in Campania. They’re made by rolling out dough, brushing it with lard or oil, rolling it up, cutting it into portions, shaping the pastry, filling it and baking. Sfogliatelle can be baked unfilled or filled with sweetened ricotta, almond paste or candied citrus zest. They’re simple to make and don’t call for any exotic ingredients. It’s the thin flakey layers that make sfogliatelle unique.
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Ricotta filled:
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If you’ve never tried these pastries, seek them out. They’re amazing and their recipe has not been molested by time or distance.
Life robbed me of my childhood. My parents had to quit school after grade 9 to help support their families. They vowed that my brother and I would not be barred from finishing school and going to University.
But we were poor, so they had no way to pay for it. So they propped me early. I knew by grade six that if I wanted to go to university, I would have to pay for it myself.
So in grade 8, I started mowing lawns and shoveling snow.
In grade 9 I got a part time job and worked 20 hours a week, in grade 10 ,30 hours, and grades 11 and 12 it was 40 hours. I graduated first in my class. I lived in a 10×14 ft room, with a roommate and the bathroom, was down the hall. I worked in the dorm cafeteria. When summer came I got a camp job, where I worked 360–380 hours a month, and they also paid room and board.
This was the way I graduated from university debt free.
So, as soon as I turned 13, I stopped having a childhood, and had an adulthood instead. So much for life being easy for baby boomers.
I’d do it all over again in a heart beat. Its what it took to break the cycle of poverty.
Because I am 71, I knew people who were in their prime of life a hundred years ago (1918) and there were definitely things that they did easily and routinely that are rarely done today:
Baking bread and caramel rolls. My grandmother learned it from her mother but did not pass it on to her daughters, probably because sliced store bread had essentially taken over.
Writing cursive and writing letters. I have saved some of my grandfather’s letters. For a person with an eighth grade education, he wrote simply but beautifully.
Sewing and mending. My grandmother was not wealthy, but she was capable of producing wonderful pajamas for all of her grandchildren on her trusty Singer. My generation has lost the ability to create heirlooms.
Gardening and canning the things they grew. In an era when you were not going to see fresh fruit or vegetables in stores after growing season, people developed great preservation skills. Things like pickles, berries, tomatoes were canned as were peaches and plums when in season. I do not remember kale or zucchini, however, and that was also a blessing.
Memory work. I grew up with great uncles and aunts (all born about 1900) who had memorized massive amounts of poetry and famous speeches as well as scripture. Rote learning was fairly normal in their education, so they did group memorization. We loved to hear their recitations.
I miss those folks. They just slipped away one at a time between the seventies and today.
This wasn’t me, this was my wife. She is a lawyer and was interviewing for a job managing the sale of properties. She was interviewing at a firm that specialised in really expensive and tricky sales and when she turned up to the interview she was told by the recruiter that the partners had told the last two people who were interviewed to leave midway through so they were quite abrupt!
She went to the interview, which went quite well, and they asked her to prepare an answer to a legal sale question. When she looked at it, she knew she had no hope: it was madly complicated and about a type of property sale that is known to be horrendous to do. She thought about trying to brazen it off and decided to be honest and say she had no idea.
It turned out the partners knew from looking at her CV she would have no idea about how to do it; it was something so complex the partner himself had had to do it himself. What they were trying to do was see how she reacted to something she didn’t know. The last two people interviewed had tried to make something up and so failed the test.
I was nowhere qualified as a computer tech but one time a friend of mine brought over a a desktop machine and keyboard and asked me to see if I could get it running as it wouldn’t boot up. Every time you’d plug in the power cord to the wall socket a strange odor would start permiating from the cover. I figured something was wrong with the power supply, which if push came to shove I could’ve probably went to an electronics supply store and bought another one and installed it. I was adept at soldering and replacing some common components at the time, which is why my friend thought that I could fix it.
Anyhoo, I removed the screws holding the cover to the unit, lifted the cover off and got the most absolute shock of my life!! Hundreds of live cockroaches start running out all over everywhere not to mention many more that were obviously dead inside that cover!
I came unglued along with a major panic attack! I’d never, ever had to deal with roaches after I became an adult. I despised them because while growing up my family and I always had a major problem with roaches and they were always into everything and would drop from the ceiling when you went into a room after turning on lights, etc etc etc.
I spent 2 hours stomping on and smashing roaches trying to prevent them from getting into places in my apartment where I couldn’t reach and in the long run wasn’t successful. Ended up moving out to get away from them making sure in the process that I didn’t inadvertently take any with me.
I was not happy with my friend. It caused a major, almost homicidal argument with him and it would be several years before we spoke again. The creepiness and ick factor of watching those roaches pile out of that machine that day still haunts me to this day.
Huawei refused to disclose its foundry information, sending the Biden team into madness.
Let’s talk about smart children. Particularly smart children in the United States. Particularly those in grades K-8 at a public school.
A lot of you reading this are, yourself, a product of the American public school system. Think back to your K-8 years. Do you remember people whose only job was to deal with the students with behavior problems? Were there “special education” teachers who had special classrooms with aides and all kinds of equipment for just a handful of students? Do you remember being bored a lot in school, because your teacher didn’t have the time to challenge you, because they were so busy re-teaching things to the students who didn’t get it the first time? Do you remember a handful of students who seemed to set the pace for the whole class, and that pace was much, much too slow for you? Do you remember a handful of students whose attitudes and behavior set the tone for the whole class? And was that a negative tone that left your teacher spending most of their time dealing with that small handful of students?
That was my experience, at least. In grades 4–8, I was one of about 20 students in a special gifted program in my school. But that gifted “program” was just two teachers who were given a spare classroom in five schools in the district, and they went to a different school every day of the week, and pulled out the gifted students from their classes for an hour, to play logic games with them.
One hour per week. That’s what we got.
Meanwhile, the students on the other end of the spectrum had resources thrown at them, including permanent classrooms with full-time teachers for students whose only “special need” was that they didn’t give a damn about learning.
I remember one incident in particular, when I realized just how much time my teachers wasted trying to get one particular student under control. His name was Anthony. One day, in seventh grade, we were learning about feudal Japan by playing a game where we were all on teams, given items to trade, and could use money we made to hire soldiers, and then there was a huge map of Japan on the wall, separated into regions, with the number of regions under each team’s control represented by different colored push pins.
My team started in Osaka. To this day, I know exactly where Osaka is because of this game back in 1992. I remember that we were the blue team, our main thing to trade was fish, and we began with five pushpin armies.
Also Judith was in my group, which made it even that much more enjoyable for me. She was forced to interact with me for a few minutes each day because of this.
It was a computer-less strategy game. I loved it. The game was supposed to last for a few weeks.
It lasted two days. On the third day, Anthony vandalized the giant game board, and some of his friends laughed. And that was it. The teacher was tired of putting in so much effort for something that students like Anthony just kept ruining. We did the rest of the unit, and every unit afterwards for the rest of the year, through textbook reading and worksheets.
But, as I thought about it, I realized that Anthony had been that way since he was first in my class in second grade. He was always out of control. He always set the pace and the tone for the class. In middle school, he got kicked out of class a lot, which just wasted a lot of time because he rarely went willingly and they had to call and wait for security. But he was always back in the class the next day. He just needed to “chill out.”
That was actually the name of the kick-out room for students like him: the “chill out room.”
I just Googled him and found a story that he was sentenced to six years in prison in 2004 for “domestic battery, drug possession, and forgery.”
Yep. All of that extra time, effort, and money the public school spent on him… how’d that work out?
That would be fine, if the public schools spent the same amount of time, effort, and money on the upper end of the spectrum.
My point is this: What’s the saddest truth about smart people? Public schools just aren’t equipped to deal with your special needs, because they’re too busy dealing with the special needs of students on the other end of the spectrum. The very people who have the most potential to give the most back to society are the same ones who school prioritizes the least.
Imagine a school system where every dollar spent on students on the lower end of the special needs spectrum had to be matched by a dollar for students on the higher end of the spectrum.
Imagine if, just like schools have resources in place for when the teachers need to kick out the Anthonys of the world, those same schools had resources for teachers to send out the students who were too smart for that day’s lesson.
“Timmy, you can read this and learn it on your own in five minutes, but I’m going to be teaching it to the rest of the class for the next hour. You can go to the gifted resource room and work with the teacher there on more advanced stuff.”
Imagine if, just as schools pay extra attention to students with special needs due to federal laws and fears of getting sued, schools did the same for students on the high end of the spectrum. Imagine if parents could threaten a lawsuit because the school wasn’t meeting the needs of their child… the legally-mandated requirement that the school challenge them on their academic level and not let their classmates hold them back.
Imagine how high your hot air balloon could be now, if not for the classroom sandbags that weighed you down when you were in school.
Instead of “No Child Left Behind,” it should be “No Child Forced To Wait.”
Gavin Newsom goes to China, one-ups Biden and meets Xi Jinping
“As a Californian, I can tell you that not only is Newsom not acceptable to the rest of America, California is not acceptable to the rest of America”.
It is likely that China will sell virtually all of its remaining U.S. Treasuries.
It is useful to look at Russia’s experience in this regard. Russia sold virtually all of its Treasuries in 2018, fairly quickly. At that time, Russia encouraged the world to dump U.S. Treasury bonds. Thus, it is possible for a country to officially not hold Treasuries.
After 2018, Russia continued to hold some foreign currency reserves in U S. dollars. When the Ukraine War started in 2022, the United States and its allies froze hundreds of billions of dollars held by Russia.
As a result, the world has been forced to look elsewhere to store its savings. Both China and Russia are storing much of their wealth in physical gold. Other countries are doing the same. The planet is also increasingly doing business in currencies other than the dollar.
As a result of these trends, China will increasingly no longer need U.S. Treasuries to do business. In October 2023, China bought its first oil for Chinese Yuan. If this continues, China will get its oil for free, by printing Yuan. America will be forced to trade hard goods for oil in the future.
America’s leaders were very short-sighted to weaponize the dollar. A global reserve currency requires trust. The United States had a money-making machine, and voluntarily gave it up.
FLASH TRAFFIC ADDED – TURKISH NAVY DEPLOYING 100 SHIPS AGAINST ISRAEL –~FIFTY (50) U.S. Military Transport Planes in 24 Hours to Middle East
FLASH TRAFFIC ADDED – SEE 12:27 PM EDT UPDATE BELOW —— From Friday-into-Saturday, the United States sent no fewer than fifty (50) military transport planes loaded with troops to the Middle East. In addition, the list below shows “unprecedented” naval deployments. Today, Iran said they WILL NOT abide U.S. warnings to stay out of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
We begin with Naval Deployments into the Middle East showing 11 Countries in Support of Israel:
All of the above, along with Submarines and other support ships show an utterly massive naval deployment. I am told this present deployment is larger than the ones done prior to the US war(s) against Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 1991 and again later.
In addition to all the above vessels, another Aircraft Carrier, the HMS Queen Elizabeth II, transited the Strait of Gibraltar yesterday morning around 11:00 AM, enroute to the eastern Mediterranean:
In addition to THAT additional aircraft carrier, the Navy of Italy is also now deploying vessels:
AIR
In the 24 hours period from Friday into Saturday, the United States flew 49+ military transport aircraft from the US to the Middle East, carrying TROOPS!
On top of those troop transport flights, a Significant number of C-17A Globemaster lll and C-5M Super Galaxy Transport Aircraft from the U.S. Air Force’s Air Mobility Command have been arriving in the Middle East.
The flight info above DOES NOT even cover the regular commercial airline flights the US has chartered to exclusively move troops!
Yesterday, Saturday 28 October 2023, Germany put 1,000 soldiers on alert for deployment to the Middle East in case of emergency The German Army keeps 1,000 troops on alert for possible deployment to the Middle East in case of emergency, given the prevailing tension in the region as a result of the war between Hamas and Israel.
This flight from Fort Sill, OK has my attention at the moment. Fort Sill is home to a THAAD battery and this flight appears to be headed overseas. There are no helpful ACARS for this flight, but this is possibly a THAAD battery flight enroute to Saudi Arabia:
At about 1:47 AM eastern US Time Sunday, which was about 11:00 AM in Tehran, Iran, the President of Iran said Tehran will not follow US warnings against interfering in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. According to the Press service of the President of Iran: “Israel has crossed red lines, forcing everyone to take action.”
The President made it a point to also say “the presence of U.S warships in the region will make no difference to Tehran’s decision.”
Hal Turner Analysis
Based solely upon the movement of ships, troops, and planes, it is obvious to me the United States is going to war. A big war.
Trouble is the federal government under the Biden Regime has intentionally left the US southern border with Mexico, virtually open. Literally millions of illegal aliens have been entering the country via Mexico since Biden took office.
It is my opinion that many – but not all – of these illegal aliens are a “5th Column” sent here by adversaries to be “sleeper cells.” I believe that when war erupts in the Middle East, that WE HERE IN THE USA will also be attacked by these sleeper cells.
YOU must be ready with emergency food, water, medicine, a generator to make electric in case the grid is taken down. Have CASH MONEY in your possession incase cyber attacks take out the financial networks, making credit, debit, and SNAP/EBT useless. After all, almost no one takes checks anymore. So folks with cash will eat. Those without cash will go hungry.
The utterly massive movement of troops and weapons indicates to me that hostilities are imminent. Which could — and I emphasize “could” (not necessarily “will”) — trigger sleeper cell attacks here in America.
If you wait until trouble starts, then YOU and every other person who failed to plan, will all be rushing to stores at the same time trying to get food and supplies. In short order, store shelves will be empty and those of you who took no action, will find yourself standing in an empty store.
Don’t be like “the masses who are asses” that wait until the last minute to get supplies. Do it right now. Today.
And gas-up your cars, trucks, and spare gas cans for your generator.
Lastly, have COMMUNICATIONS GEAR – a CB or a HAM (Shortwave) radio — so if things go wild weasel, and communications like phone, fax, email, cellular/Internet all go down, at least YOU will be able to communicate locally (CB) and hear international news on shortwave (HAM).
Of course, some of you will say that this story and its advice is sort of like “Chicken Little, the sky is falling.” To those who would scoff I merely point out that, this morning, a U.S. E-6 Nuclear Command Post is now flying over the US East Coast:
The E-6B Mercury is a communications relay and strategic airborne command post aircraft. It provides survivable, reliable, and endurable airborne Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications (NC3) for the president, secretary of defense and U.S. Strategic Command.
So it isn’t just ME telling you to take steps to prepare, it’s the US Military, too. Take the hint!
(PERSONAL: Sorry my coverage today begins at this late hour of 11:00 AM EDT. I slept-in this morning. Didn’t wake up until 9:25 AM. I was literally exhausted.)
********** FLASH ***********
UPDATE 12:27 PM EDT —
The Turkish Navy is, right now, transiting ONE-HUNDRED Naval Warships through the Bosporus Strait from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.
It is BELIEVED Turkey plans to engage Israel over its ongoing military action in Gaza. War may break out between Turkey and Israel within Hours! ! ! !
Unlike its better known relative, the Enigma machine which was infamously deciphered by code-breakers at Bletchley Park throughout the war, the Lorenz cipher posed a much greater challenge. Utilising 12 wheels to scramble up the message being sent as opposed to the 3 or 4 rotors found in the Enigma machine, the Lorenz cipher was incredibly secure. As a result, unlike the Enigma that was used by the German standard armed forces, the Lorenz cipher was used only by high command with messages coming from Hitler himself. As a result, to crack the Lorenz cipher (or Tunny as it was code named by the British) would have the potential to change the course of the war.
Not much headway had been made in breaking the Lorenz cipher through the war until a German operator made a catastrophic mistake on 30 August 1941. When a German receiving operator did not receive a message correctly, he asked the transmitter to resend the information and despite clear protocol against it, the two operators resent the message without changing their key settings (the settings that determine how the text is scrambled up). However since the message in question was 4000 characters long, the lazy German operator abbreviated several words, thus changing the length of the message. Since their key settings were both the same, the two messages had the same scrambling pattern of characters. Thus by comparing the locations where the message text changed, details of the way the rotors worked could be determined.
These two messages were intercepted by the British who soon realised the importance of what they had discovered. This task of cracking Tunny was given to W T (Bill) Tutte who began to find repetitions in the cipher which allowed him to reverse engineer the Lorenz machine’s logical structure in what would be later described as “one of the greatest intellectual feats of World War II”. In order to support the painstaking decryption of German messages, the British Colossus was built in 1943 by Tommy Flowers, the first ever modern computer.
image 112
The Colossus Machine
The impact of the decryption of Tunny was enormous. It gave the British intimate details of Hitler’s most secret communications which was most notably vital in D Day where the Allies were able to deceive the Germans that they were going to attack at Calais as opposed to Normandy and at the Battle of Kursk in 1943, Germany’s last ditch attempt to reverse their fortunes on the Eastern Front and one of the largest battles in history. Involving 3 million men, without foreknowledge of German planning provided by the British, the Soviets would have been badly prepared defensively and could have lost this crucial battle and as a result, the war would’ve been prolonged. In fact, historians estimate that the breaking of the Lorenz cipher shortened the war by two years and thus saved millions of lives all due to the careless mistake of two lazy German operators.
However this pivotal event is not well known due to the Official Secrets Act keeping the nature of the code breakers working to break the Lorenz cipher secret until 1974 and some former staff even today still refuse to break their vow of secrecy, preferring to take their knowledge to the grave.
image 111
W T (Bill) Tutte, the man responsible for cracking the Lorenz Cipher
Cajun Pot Roast
2023 11 09 14 23
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
1 (3 pound) beef sirloin or chuck roast
2 large garlic cloves, cut into 1/4 to 1/2 inch pieces
3 cayenne chiles, or jalapeno chiles, cut into 1/4 to 1/2 inch pieces
Salt and pepper to taste
1 large onion, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped
1 large garlic clove, minced
1 (4 ounce) can whole or sliced mushrooms
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
Creole seasoning to taste
Instructions
Cut 1/2 to 3/4 inch slits into beef. Stuff one piece of garlic and one piece of chile into each slit. Season the roast with salt and pepper.
Heat a large nonstick pan over medium heat. Add beef and brown well on all sides.
Add onion, bell pepper and minced garlic land sauté until tender.
Add water to pan to cover the beef.
Stir in the mushrooms and Worcestershire sauce and season with Creole seasoning.
Simmer, covered, for 3 to 4 hours or until tender, adding more water if needed to keep liquid level halfway up the beef.
Notes
You may stir 1 tablespoon flour mixed with 1 cup cold water into liquid near end of cooking for a thicker gravy.
I broke off a 10 year off and on relationship over a single piece of gum.
He and I weren’t on great terms for a long while. It was mostly out of his cheapness. He wouldn’t take me out to eat-we ate at his place. That wouldn’t have been bad except that he bought cheap items and used foods that had expired. I told him I wasn’t eating his cooking anymore, thank you. We watched TV but only shows he liked-he didn’t want to waste his time on my shows. I could watch them at my place.
Things were coming to a head and I knew the next fight we had would be the last. It was November when he called me and asked me to come over and fix his computer. I wasn’t in the best of moods-I finally had a free afternoon with the kids out with their father and I had things to do. Ok, I decided I would go over and see if I could do something to help. I got there and he already told me I had just an hour to get things right. Perfect start-no thanks for coming over, great to see you, etc.
He offered me a piece of gum. I haven’t chewed gum in years because it sticks to my dental work, and he knew it. Why was he offering me gum-was my breath stinky? After I thought about it for a moment, I took a piece. I didn’t even get it open when he started to yell at me-why is everything in your life a big decision? Don’t waste my gum-either take it or don’t! I paid money for that!
I immediately put the gum back on the table. He flips out again-you touched it not you don’t want it! What’s the matter with you? With me? I don’t chew gum, not in years! You knew that! I thought you were hinting my breath stunk so I took a piece of gum. Now you don’t want me to take the gum! Why don’t you make up YOUR mind?
He immediately moved my tech bag away from his computer and began to work on his computer. Don’t you want me to do that? No. You asked me to cone down here to help you, now you don’t want me to help you? Silence. Are we really going to have a fight about a piece of gum after I wasted my time and gas to come here? Silence.
I sat on the couch for a few minutes. I could have just stormed out the door. I wanted to compose myself and make it clear what would happen. I told him that I have spent 10 years doing for him, taking care of him when he was sick, lent him things like my cell phone and my car, then paid the repairs when he broke them and he never paid me back. I have put up with all this, and if we didn’t resolve what was really going on, I was leaving and not coming back. All I got was silence. Are we really going to break up over a damned piece of gum? Silence.
I picked up my things and I left. I never went back. I blocked his number from my cell phone. I had a feeling I knew what happened because he did it to me before. He used to get moody around Thanksgiving time and lots of times we broke up so he could avoid my birthday in December and Christmas/Chanukah/Valentines Day. He used to call around March to renew our friendship but his birthday was in April and he really wanted a present. I just had enough of his childishness, his cheapness and his abusive control. It was just one fight too many and I was done.
He did email me the following April-after I sent nothing for his birthday. I emailed him back that I told him that after our last fight, I was done and I wanted nothing more to do with him. He replied that he forgot what we fought about, and I told him that it was over a piece of gum. Then I blocked his email.
He called from another phone the following September, demanding I stop being stupid and get back together. What a lovely invitation, no woman can resist that, I answered. Then he threatened me. I told him to come over and try to f*** me up. I had an old lead pipe my father had and it had his name on it. I told him I’ll invite my neighbors to watch me smear him all over the street. My temper broke and I told him about the horrible things he did to me over the years. He finally said “I guess you’re mad at me, huh?” I hung up and blocked his new number too.
He attempted to contact me a few times through his friends but I told them I would go to the police and file harassment charges. He finally moved out of New York City-he attempted to contact me from his mother’s home in Tennessee. I blocked that too. He’s been blocked in every social media site so I don’t have to deal with him.
He had 10 years to grow up and apologize. The words aren’t in his vocabulary. I know the piece of gum wasn’t the reason our relationship ended-it was years of my giving and him taking and never appreciating what he got. But that stupid piece of gum was the catalyst. To this day, when I see a pack of Wrigley’s gum, I still smirk with amused disgust.
I interviewed for a support engineering role, the interviewer asked me how a fluorescent light fitting worked. I explained what I knew about the ballast, starter and gas tube etc. He delved deeper and I drew a rudimentary circuit diagram. When he asked exactly how the starter worked I was stumped, so I said “I don’t know”.
He told me that he must’ve had 2 dozen other applicants attempt to convince him how it all worked, but being able to admit I didn’t know something landed me the job. I learnt how knowing one’s limitations is so important.
Despite increased attacks on US occupation bases, Joe Biden has reportedly turned down more ‘aggressive bombing options’ in Syria out of fear that a wider conflict may erupt
NOV 13, 2023
(Photo credit: AFP via Getty Images)
Several missile and drone strikes targeted US occupation bases in Syria on 13 November in response to the latest round of US airstrikes on alleged Iranian targets in the country.
Fifteen missiles targeted the US base in the Conoco gas field, sources told Al-Mayadeen, adding that US helicopters began making flights ten minutes after the strike.
“The Conoco base was targeted with advanced Grad missiles, which led to the death of four US soldiers,” Al-Mayadeen’s correspondent reported.
Field sources told Al-Mayadeen that the attacks were carried out by the “Popular Resistance” in Syria.
In a second response to US airstrikes, three drones struck the Al-Shaddadi military base in Hasakah, northeastern Syria.
The US Green Village base at the Al-Omar oilfield northeastern Syria, was also hit with a drone. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq is a coalition of Iraqi resistance factions formed last month in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance in Gaza.
The coalition was formed to confront US forces in Iraq and Syria as part of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and in rejection of US support for Israel in the war, and has been targeting US bases on a regular basis.
Hours before Monday’s attacks, US warplanes carried out several airstrikes in eastern Syria.
Washington claimed the attacks targeted facilities used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
According to Al-Mayadeen’s correspondent, the US airstrikes “targeted a house in the town of Al-Mayadeen, which led to the death of a citizen and the injury of another.”
US jets have struck Syria several times over the past month in retaliation to the unprecedented surge in resistance attacks against US military bases in Iraq and Syria. Washington has labeled the attacks as “self-defense.”
According to the New York Times (NYT), US President Joe Biden “has rejected more aggressive bombing options proposed by the Pentagon out of fear of provoking a wider conflict with Iran.”
The newspaper also cites Republicans in Congress as saying that Washington’s strikes on Syria “only invite more frequent and more dangerous attacks against US troops in the region.”
There have been at least 48 resistance attacks against US forces in Iraq and Syria since 17 October, the Pentagon said on Saturday.
“At least 56 U.S. service members had been injured. Roughly half of those suffered traumatic brain injuries, and two had to be flown to Landstuhl military hospital in Germany for treatment,” the NYT adds.
There doesn’t seem to be many who are rude. My story is about a beautiful and kind woman.
Many years ago I was in O’Hara airport getting ready to fly home from Navy boot camp. As I waited, I saw what looked like a Hollywood photo shoot going on. I walked over with my nearly bald head and baggy Navy uniform and talked to an absolutely beautiful woman, dressed like an Elf. She was friendly and asked where I was from and what my home was like. We talked for about 10 minutes. As I needed to catch my plane, I thanked her for taking the time to speak with me. I asked her what her name was. It was Ann-Margaret. Surprise! I’ve had a soft spot for her since our meeting.
There have been a lot of memes lately, discussing this subject:
It’s viewed as a sort of work-around to all of life’s problems:
These’s memes are funny and all (sometimes), but they also have some truth.
A good portion of depressed people definitely view suicide as a way out and they genuinely think it’s the only way.
But it’s not.
Sunday, Nov 18 is my late-uncle’s birthday.
No one ever talks about him in my family. And of the few times he’s brought up, is always in relation to his suicide or mental illness.
He lived a pretty amazing life, but the memory of his suicide looms over the conversations around him.
It’s not like we never talk about him, or that suicide is strictly the only thing that we remember about him. There’s just no solace to the memory of his passing, suicide is something that is preventable, it didn’t have to be this way.
And, unfortunately, it’s the same with my idol, Chester Bennington.
image 120
In every Linkin Park YouTube music video, all the comments are the same. They’re ALL about his depression or his death.
No one talks about his life, how he made it big after a period of being homeless. How Linkin Park immediately knew who their lead singer was after his audition; how Chester would always do screaming vocal warmups, which could be heard several changing rooms away, before each of his live performances.
No one talks about that anymore.
If I’d killed myself on year ago, all I’d be remembered as was “that quiet kid who killed himself.”
You have a lot to be remembered for.
Stan Lee, who passed away on Nov 12, 2018, is positively cherished by fans.
So much material was circulated recently about his life and work.
image 119
There was a meme about how he drew the Peter Parker meets MJ comic strip based on the time he first saw his future wife. There were memes of his cameos in Marvel movies, memes of Infinity war, Spider-man memes….
It was awesome.
And nobody was particularly sad, rather they celebrated everything he did in his 95 year life on Earth.
You have a lot to live for.
And a lot to be remembered by.
And even if things don’t get better quickly.
Don’t tarnish that with suicide.
It’s not worth it.
You are worth it.
You are worth a good life and the world deserves your proud legacy.
During my very first visit to China, there were a couple of things that took me by surprise:
Massive malls absolutely everywhere
I’ve heard that Chinese food is so much better in China than what you get in other countries, but that’s is a massive understatement. There is so much diversity in food options, all of it is amazingly delicious and very reasonably priced. I could not get enough of it, and I can’t wait for my next visit so I can stuff my face with all that deliciousness again!
I didn’t expect to have that much trouble finding restaurants or shops that accept foreign bank cards. Some locations only allow Alipay. Also, apps like Didi are not available to foreigners as you need a Chinese number to sign up, and hailing a taxi is not always easy.
I saw very few tags or graffiti on buildings in big Chinese cities. Those are a major issue in pretty much every European city, as even historical buildings get smeared in tags, so this was a welcome surprise.
Excellent public transportation – so cheap and easy to use!
All the people I’ve met were absolutely lovely and extremely helpful. Also, there are so many older people in the parks, exercising or dancing, which is refreshing to see.
There is never any paper in bathrooms, so you have to carry a roll with you
The only thing that slightly threw me off during my very first visit was that people in China often take pictures of foreigners without asking. I’m very visibly a foreigner, so I always get quite a bit of attention when I’m travelling in Asia. I’m used to that, and I never decline a picture with some curious locals, as I find it a sweet experience. However, in China, while many approached and asked for a photo, there were many more who just tried to ‘’sneakily’’ take it, which made me feel a little bit uncomfortable at times.
As a tiny woman travelling alone I felt quite safe, even at night in less populated areas.
My wife and kids lived upstairs in my parent’s house. My Dad passed before my Mom. When she passed, as the only child, I had to sort out her bills, insurance, etc. My Mom was a school teacher for many years and received SS and a pension. At her time of retiring, she did not make as much as teachers do today. A few days after her funeral, I was sitting at her desk going through her checkbook to see what was paid and so forth. When I looked at the deposits, I started to see bill after bill after bill being paid, leaving her with very little left over. I am still saddened to this day, many years later, that I never knew the depth of how bad things really were. We could have contributed more to the household, but she hid most of this from us, trying to spare us any hardship. This is the single biggest regret I have in her passing, knowing I could have eased her burden, as she was the most loving mother one could ask for. She worked her whole life to teach children and raise me, who deserved so much more in her retirement. I am shedding tears as I write this, and hope that others can take more of an active role in their parents lives (when allowed) while they are still with us.
While employed as a pizza delivery rider, after the lifting of the COVID lock-down, our company decided to pull a fast one.
A memo from the head office was circulated among all restaurant staff at all branches. It basically said that the company was so concerned about our welfare in these trying times that they were willing to keep a percentage of our weekly salary for us as a form of savings. The memo also mentioned that if we agreed to this ‘Pizza Savings’ (my term, not theirs) that we will be getting 0% interest.
My delivery co-worker and I had a field day with that memo. We read it several times in disbelief and laughed. The owners could not be serious.
It was obvious they wanted to get a loan/invest in something. It was as if they told themselves instead of taking a 16% interest loan from the bank why not simply take it from their uneducated restaurant workers, all they needed was our signatures.
I went around some of the co-workers joking about it. Most of us laughed it off but two of them couldn’t understand what was so funny.
‘But we’re getting 0% interest!’ an older woman working the grill said.
She seemed to have the idea that this was a good thing. Apparently she had had so many loans in the past that to her the word interest = bad.
I explained to her it was a savings and not a loan. That with savings you want the highest interest you could get and the exact opposite when it comes to a loan.
‘But isn’t it good to have a savings?’ one of the teenaged girls working the pizza table said.
I explained to her it is a good thing but it makes no sense to save your money with someone giving you 0%. I tried explaining how banks work, about buying shares etc and getting the best rates for your money. Both women looked at me in silence.
In the end they both decided to ‘try it out.’
I didn’t know what shocked me more. The fact that the restaurant attempted that stunt or the fact that it actually worked on two employees.
Controller got fired for all the right reasons. On his way out, and before his access was deleted, he programmed a very, very offensive message on the Windows start menu for the entire company-something along the lines of “fxxx you, (name of the CFO)”. Now I’ll admit the guy had it coming, but will also say that the CFO was the biggest a-hole I’ve ever met. Anyway, it took the IT guys weeks before they were able to fix it (always wondered why it took sooooo loooong).
As a 45 year old, I started feeling very tired. I fell asleep in the bathroom at work one day. Went home and thought I was coming down with a cold. Never actually got cold symptoms, but could barely move my body. It felt like all of my extremities were filled with lead. Then I started getting dizzy. Then I started to vomit. I went to an urgent care center and told them all of the above symptoms and how now I’m vomiting and peeing every 5 minutes. I even told them I was vomiting black stuff which they informed me was blood. I was told I just had a stomach virus like people get on cruise ships. I said I have never been on a cruise ship in my life. I was sent home with antinausea meds. I had lost about 15 lbs in 3 days. That night and next day still vomiting and now breathing in short gasps. Now my body is shivering uncontrollably and I can barely move and still vomiting blood. My kids found me on the kitchen floor and took me to the ER. I was rushed back and found out I was in diabetic ketoacidosis. My body was shutting down. I was about a day away from death. My blood sugar was 854. I was diagnosed as a type 1 diabetic.
While hospitalized, I received a survey from the urgent care center asking how my experience was. I’ll told them that I almost died thanks to them, but other than that it was great.
Years back when Subway still gave you tickets to collect for free subs, my kids’ mother and I were going to have dinner and movie night with my brother and his wife. Subway was the night’s choice. Well, it is Friday evening and the video store is packed. So we’re standing in line waiting to check out our movies, and she is going through these Subway tickets. She asks me,
“I don’t supposed you’ll eat a 6 inch?”
To which I responded, in a building with over 150 people in it, without even missing a beat,
“No, if I don’t get 12 inches, I’m just not satisfied.”
Children were laughing at me. Had it not been so hilarious, I would be mortified of that story getting out.
A United States Air Force E-4B aircraft, which is a designated National Airborne Operations Center (NAOC) took off from Offutt Air Force Base this afternoon, headed out over the Gulf of Mexico, and Transmitted an Emergency Action Message (EAM) to US Nuclear Missile Submarines, using Very Low Frequency (VLF) Comms.
There’s something unnerving seeing a E-4B NAOC (GORDO16) and a E-6B TACAMO (FULL02) launch from Offutt AFB around the same time. As you can see from the FlightRadar24 map image below, that’s what happened.
The E-4B
The E-4B serves as the National Airborne Operations Center and is a key component of the National Military Command System for the President, the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In case of national emergency or destruction of ground command and control centers, the aircraft provides a highly survivable command, control and communications center to direct U.S. forces, execute emergency war orders and coordinate actions by civil authorities.
The conduct of E-4B operations encompasses all phases of the threat spectrum. Additionally, the E-4B provides outside the continental United States travel support for the Secretary of Defense and his staff to ensure Title 10 command and control connectivity.
The E-6B
The E-6B Mercury is a communications relay and strategic airborne command post aircraft. It provides survivable, reliable, and endurable airborne Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications (NC3) for the president, secretary of defense and U.S. Strategic Command.
Only One Job:
The E-4B and E-6B at the end of the day only have one job: getting the message out (Nuclear launch codes) from the NCA (National Command Authority) to the United States Nuclear Triad by any means necessary.
Those means include a variety of waveforms including VLF, HF, UHF, SHF and beyond.
A B-52, B-2, ICBM Silo, or Submarine, will decode these encrypted messages and either launch their nuclear weapons at an intended target – – or not – – based on the decisions of our elected public officials.
So imagine my dismay when surveillance picked up the E-4B transmitting an EMERGENCY ACTION MESSAGE(EAM) while out over the Gulf of Mexico this afternoon! More specifically, the aircraft was messaging our nuclear missile SUBMARINES because it was using VLF, Very Low Frequency, to send the encoded message. VLF is the band that penetrates the ocean to sufficient depth, to reach our submerged nuclear missile subs.
USA civil war?
The state of Colorado ruled Trump ineligible for the 2024 election. An account of something something insurrection democracy something.
As it stands, Trump will compete in only 49 states in the election.
It is likely, others will follow. If a few swing states do it, then result of the election is successfully altered.
If supreme court does not strike these down, the United States is officially no longer a democracy.
If supreme court strikes it down, the damage is still done. People will lose trust that their vote matters.
The country is headed into civil war.
Posted by: FieryButMostPeaceful | Dec 21 2023 16:26 utc | 3
Began the telemarketer. We’d been getting a lot of those calls in the past few weeks and I was about 19 or so, so my evil little comedic mind was at work.
Here’s the thing: no one asks those bastards (you know I wanted to say something else) to call us personally! We want them to stop. It was back in the early days of this crap and many of the accents over the phone were still American.
“I have amazing news!!”
“You found a kidney??!”
“Uh, what?”
“You found a kidney!!!! You’re from the hospital, right? We’ve been waiting by the phone and- and I just can’t believe this is really happening; bless you; thank God!”
“Um…no… I’m… calling about (something he suddenly had dramatically less confidence in).”
“You- you’re not from the hospital?”
“No, sorry, I-“
(I turned my head from the phone and didn’t really muffle it properly.) “Oh, don’t cry, Sarah, sweetie! They’ll find one! It’s okay sweetheart, don’t worry.”
(I turned back to the phone.) “I’ll just call back later.”
“Thanks; I’m sorry: could you please keep the line clear? We’re waiting to hear from the hospital.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll do that.”
It got played about 2 more times and then those bastards stopped harassing us by phone to buy or sign on to their whatever.
Meanwhile, about China…
US are completely paranoid about China overtaking them, their tactics to block them has simply backfired spectacularly, so the US resort to scaring every neighbour of China into thinking they are going to invade them, including us.
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand 19h This is a good read on “why the American technological war against China could backfire” and “supercharge China’s creation of an independent computer chip industry”. theconversation.com/why-the-…
It’s exactly what is happening and at the end of the day, as the article makes clear, it’s all about hubris.
It was always beyond delusional for the US to believe that it could stop the technological progress of a country that IS AHEAD OF THEM on all metrics that matter for it, as detailed in the article: – “Chinese high schoolers score the highest in the world in reading, science and mathematics” – “Chinese universities are outperforming institutions in the rest of the world in the vast majority of disciplines”. For instance, critically, China has 6 of the top 10 universities in the world in engineering whilst the US only has 2… – China produces more than double the number of STEM PhDs every year than the U.S. – “In 2022, China overtook the U.S. for the first time as the country or territory publishing the most research articles in prestigious natural science journals” – “China published the highest number of scientific research papers annually between 2018 and 2020, and had 27.2 per cent of the world’s top one per cent of the most frequently cited papers, compared to 24.9 per cent for the U.S.” – According to research done by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute “China is leading [the world] in 37 of 44 cutting-edge technologies, including nanoscale materials and synthetic biology” – Etc.
Conclusion from the article: “When it comes to the use and production of knowledge-based industries, China has more advantages than any other country in the world. American actions will create a new generation of Chinese high-tech firms that will compete directly with the U.S. and western businesses from whom they used to buy their products. These firms will produce more affordable products than their western counterparts, and could dominate technological infrastructure in the Global South.”
In a nutshell the very notion that China is a country whose technological progress could be stopped is almost criminally deluded, and derives from both a deep misunderstanding of China by the US and a deep overestimation of American capabilities… Adopting this strategy is backfiring big time and will without a doubt yield a considerably worse result for the US than if they’d favored a “coexistence” collaborative approach 🤷♂️
When I worked security, I knew people whose job consisted entirely of occupying a space for a long period of time.
Technically, they were securing the area and they had a walkie-talkie to call the rest of us if anyone tried to go into the area who shouldn’t have been there. But no one ever tried to get into those areas.
I worked at an outdoor concert place that had upscale restaurants around the perimeter of the grounds. Those restaurants closed when the show started, and security guards were put in the restaurants to make sure no drunk concert goers tried breaking into them.
I volunteered for that position once, and never again. I literally sat in a dark, empty restaurant for four hours. I could hear the music outside, and I could see people walking by the windows, but no one tried to come into the restaurant. No one ever tried. It was so boring… I requested to be in front of the stage for shows after that.
I was skidding through my freshman year, sleepwalking to classes and nursing hangovers. I’d just stepped into an elevator on our first day and noticed Professor Kaplan standing next to me. I’d heard about him. He was allegedly one of the best professors, a former Harvard lecturer.
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I turned and said, “Greetings professor! I believe I’m attending your lecture today.” Holding his notebooks, he turned, smiled, and said, “My condolences.” And then he proceeded to give one of the best lectures I’ve ever seen. His display of humility in that elevator made him that much more endearing.
Self-deprecating humor, done lightly, and framed in a positive way, is powerfully charismatic. It makes people feel comfortable and appeals to their insecurities. But if you make a joke about your third wife leaving you, you might be overkilling it.
A lot of people think I’m paid to write the things I write, I merely have a fair bit of free time. Today was the last day for my day job until next year, tomorrow is a massive party though…
Anyway me and a couple of other shit posters irritate enormous amounts of westerners merely by our free time shit posting.
People don’t like to argue against me because I like to use western media to debunk western media. Last night for instance a person said the BBC is honest. I then showed them two BBC clips together and one was very different.
Imagine 500million extra internet users even MORE aggressive and shit postery than me? I say 500 million because while 900 million people can write English to an OK level only about 500 million are proficient.
Imagine ME x 500 or x 5000. And here’s the thing, I’m overseas born, so I’m a hell of a lot easier going than a lot of Chinese people.
Back in 2006 me and a friend had been Christmas shopping, and it was a big outing for me, I had been battling Leukemia for a number of years, and after having a bone marrow transplant I was finally able to be out of a sterile environment,.
We went into a Restaurant and were seated right next to a table where 3 quite over weight women were seated.
I was very thin, I am 5 foot 7 and at the time weighed about 105 lbs. I didn’t have much of an appetite, so when finished my meal was barely touched, the waitress asked me if I wanted a box to take food with me, and I said no.
Well that prompted one of the “ ladies” to loudly say say “ Skinny Bitch, you can tell SHE is on drugs”!
I just looked at her and said “ well, not since the bone marrow transplant, thankfully I am done with Chemo.”
Back in 1981, I was kitchen manager at a new pizza place in town. We were about 4 months in and turning a good profit. The guy who managed the place was a great guy and everyone who worked there loved him. The actual owner of the place had a daughter with a boyfriend. He fired our boss for no reason and said his brat’s boyfriend was the new boss, a guy who had never worked in food service before (it’s just a pizza joint, how hard could it be?). Then we were told we would need to be attend a meeting to talk about these changes at 4:00pm. We did the following: 1) added shit-tons of salt and cayenne pepper to existing pizza sauces, 2) changed the printed recipe for dough to make it unlikely to rise correctly, and if it did rise to certainly taste bad, 3) change the sauce recipe to make it inedible, and 4) swap all the lines around for the soda machine, so that when you dispensed from Coke, Dr. Pepper came out, etc. We only had beer in bottles, and our bottles were longneck deposit bottles, and they hadn’t picked them up yet, so we loaded all the beer into the back of a pickup truck, filled the beer cooler with empties, and took the beer to an undisclosed location. Four o’clock came around and everyone was there. New boss, his girlfriend, and the owner were there and as soon as the new manager was introduced, we got up, walked out the door, and soon found ourselves at said undisclosed location, partaking in recently purloined beer and repeatedly calling in take-out orders that would never be picked up. Did I mention, there was a reservation for a party of 30 that night at 6:00?
Besides making a bad life decision that cost him his life, he also got the opportunity to take a step back but decided to dive back in immediately:
There is an island called “North Sentinel” which is home to 150 natives who vehemently refuse all contact with the outside world.
This rule makes sense, as these human beings are not accustomed to the diseases of the modern world, and any contact could lead to contamination that would be fatal to their small tribe.
But this didn’t stop John Allex Chau, a 27-year-old preacher, from travelling to the island to preach about Jesus Christ.
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He was showered with arrows which, fortunately for him, all missed their target.
Logically, he decided to return the following day for a second attempt.
A completely dumb decision, as the poor man would never leave the island alive.
Didn’t he think God was maybe sending him a divine message the first time the arrows missed his head?
A few years ago, I was charged with ordering breakfast sandwiches for everyone in the office for our morning meeting.
As I went around and got everyone’s orders, ‘Dave’ specifically asked for no mayo on his sandwich. I made a note on the order next to his name that said “NO MAYO” and sent in the order.
Half an hour later, I was distributing the sandwiches and heard Dave say, “Oh, har har har. You’re so funny, Kate.”
I came over to see what he was talking about and started laughing.
Dave’s ‘sandwich’ was comprised of two buns that were swimming in mayo.
No egg.
No bacon.
No cheese.
No ham.
Just an ungodly amount of mayo everywhere.
Someone had to have emptied half a container of mayo in between the buns, and thought, “Hmmm… not quite enough”. And then slathered the outside of the buns, and then thought, “Nope, doesn’t cut it!”. And then wiped more mayo on the inside of the packaging.
After I finished laughing, I took it back and showed the cashier who was absolutely appalled at the mayo monstrosity in my hands.
She went in the back and asked the other guys what the hell had happened and why on earth they made a mayo sandwich.
Apparently they thought it said “Only mayo.”
In which case, they fucking nailed it.
Modern Women Are FREAKING OUT As 63% Of Men Have WILLINGLY Left The Dating Scene
Keep it simple. 50% of women in the 20s and 30s today will NEVER get married, and will NEVER have children. Up your game girls
I was 18 and at home with dad, while mom and my brother had gone out of town.
He asked me if I wanted to watch any movie and I replied a big enthusiastic yes.
I suggested a Bollywood movie Gangster. He agreed. I hadn’t seen the movie’s trailer. What a mistake.
We went to the mall, got the tickets.
When the awkward scenes started, he turned to me and said,
“You should watch such movies with your friends. Why did you tag me along?”
“I am sorry I didn’t know they had such scenes.”
“No worries. Let’s see the movie now. Next time see the trailer before suggesting it to me.”
When it got over we went over to the food court for dinner.
I noticed a guy and wondered where have I seen him when my dad said,
“He is not your type.”
“What?”
“He is not your type.”
“Who? I was not looking at him in that sense.”
He smiled.
“What makes you think he is not my type.”
“He has a moustache. You hate moustaches.”
“How do you know that?”
“Well you know right, I had a moustache till you were a toddler? You would constantly pull them and say you hate it. Why do you think I have been moustache free all these years?”
I smiled at the memory when he pointed to another fellow and said,
Not me, but I was there. My mom was driving and my brother & I, about 9&6 years old, were fighting in the back seat. She’s yelling at us to stop fighting, and didn’t realize that she got into the town speed limit zone (35 instead of 45).
The cop came up and asked why she was going so fast, and she told him. Next thing you know, he’s got the back door open and is lecturing us about how mom needs to pay attention while driving and if we are fighting in the back seat she can’t. And if he catches us fighting in the back seat again, he might have to arrest us. Then he told my mom to drive safe, and to let him know if we caused any more trouble.
Years later, I asked her if she remembered. She laughed, and let me know that of course she did. He had been one of her classmates, she had known him since they were little kids.
I read a book about a magician who performed a stunt where he was locked into a glass box above the city. He did not eat for 53 days, he could only drink water. His stunt had to quit as doctors were monitoring his vitals and after 53 days they started to get too bad.
I couldn’t believe someone could fast that long without food and live, so I wanted to try it myself. I like challenging myself in weird ways I guess. But, I had to make sure I wouldn’t die first, a lot of people told me I probably would.
It turns out, fasting has been used for centuries as a form of healing. Catholic churches had fasting centers where people could come when they got sick back in the day. Jesus, Gandhi, and pretty much every religious figure did it. It was well known that fasting healed the mind and the body.
I read a lot of literature on how fasting has reduced cancerous tumors and even autoimmune diseases. I read about all of it’s supposed health benefits: teeth whitening, skin clearing, tumor shrinkage, plaque eating, and fat reduction. They all sounded good to me. It said you got a heightened clarity of mind after 21 days so that was the time frame I decided to do.
I began my fast. The first day wasn’t bad. The second day I got really hungry and then it went away. The third and fourth day were bad. I was so hungry I didn’t even leave my couch. I just sucked down water all day and slept. Apparently, after 72 hours your body goes into ketosis and starts living off of fat reserves. I think it took closer to 96 hours for me.
After that, I completely lost my hunger. I actually had a lot of energy. The hard part wasn’t eating, I no longer wanted food. The hard part was boredom!!! I suddenly went from eating 3 meals a day to eating nothing. The time I spent cooking, eating, and washing dishes was given back to me, probably at least 4 hours. I couldn’t work out (bad on a fast) so that was out. I couldn’t do any social things because those all involved eating a meal, drinking coffee, or alcohol, none of which I could do at the moment. So, I became ultra productive. I got all my homework done weeks in advance, I started crocheting and painting, and I slept a lot. My mom and friends received calls from me every day. I had so much TIME.
Some days I felt weak, but other days I had a ton of energy. I felt great and really happy. My skin cleared up a lot after the 10th day and I did notice my teeth getting whiter. My tongue got white stuff on it; according to the internet that’s a way your body gets rid of toxins. I lost around a pound of weight a day.
After the 21st day, I was ready to eat again out of boredom. I started by drinking a decaf coffee. That was a mistake, my stomach had lost its lining so the acidity of coffee made me throw up. Everything I ate was really intense. Fruit tasted sweeter and everything had so much flavor.
Overall, I’d lost 24 pounds and I looked really good. But, I had never regained hunger. That meant I still had fat stores on me. If you fast long enough, you’ll regain hunger one day which they call your “true hunger”. That means your fat reserves are up and your body will start eating your muscles to survive, so you really need to start eating after that! I’d also lost some muscle, I was weaker at the gym now, but I regained my muscle quickly.
Most people, if you’re a normal weight, can fast 20-40 days before regaining hunger, before their total fat stores are up. After regaining hunger, your body starts to eat muscle tissue for energy, which includes your heart, and it’s only a matter of time before it will give out. Perhaps 7–20 days until death as preducted by some studies.
But, if you’re overweight or obese, you’ll have a ton of fat stores ready to use. One guy fasted for 384 days under medical supervision on nothing but water and tea with no adverse affects. I’m sure he could have made it quite a while longer until his fat stores were completely up but he ended the fast when he hit 180 lbs.
So the answer is, it varies. But, if you’re of a normal weight, your maximum is probably somewhere from 20-40 days until your muscle tissue begins to get compromised.
Yep! I was 17 working at a mom ’n pop kinda thing, local hardware store. The type where entry-level workers just write in what they can work on a calendar posted in the back room.
Well, one day, the owner came to me and told me that there was about $50 missing from my register. I was usually one of the closers, and I always went to the bank with the nighttime lead to drop off the deposit. I thought maybe I just counted wrong or something. The owner said that if he saw that kind of discrepancy again, I would be fired. I said ok, yes, I understand. I worked for about another week, but I could tell that I was being watched by hawks.
So when I went the next week to write myself in on the schedule, I saw my name crossed out with White-Out on the calendar. Confused and a bit suspicious, I wrote myself back on. When I came in for work, the owner pulled me aside and told me that there was another $70 found missing from my drawer and that I was no longer employed there. Well, ok, fine. Maybe I can’t count, or I’m just an idiot, but whatever. I kind of knew I was going to be fired soon when I saw my name whited-out on the calendar.
For the record, I was at a party with a bunch of random neighborhood friends a few years later, and I overheard a guy I used to work with talking trash about the hardware store and how he robbed the place blind and didn’t even get fired for it—someone else did.
Almond Chicken
almond chicken
Ingredients
1 1/2 pounds chicken breasts
1 teaspoon ginger
2 teaspoons honey
1 tablespoon cornstarch
3 tablespoons soy sauce
12 ounces Chinese pea pods
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup natural whole almonds
3 to 4 tablespoons water
1/3 cup sherry
Instructions
Skin, bone and cut up chicken breasts into 1/2-inch cubes.
In a bowl, mix ginger, honey and cornstarch and blend in water, soy sauce and sherry.
Thaw pea pods if frozen. In a wok, heat oil over medium heat.
Add almonds, stirring and cooking for about 3 minutes.
Add chicken and cook just until meat turns white.
Pour in sherry mixture and cook until sauce thickens.
I was working in a supermarket in October 2001. I bent down to pick a can of beans off the bottom shelf on an aisle.
As I stood up, my vision shattered.
Image: My vision shattered much like looking into a light diffuser on a fluorescent light.
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I also began with a severe headache on the right side of my head.
Over the next few days the headache went away but my vision remained poor inmy right eye.
I was sent to a local eye hospital by my doctor and there I was told after several days of testing that I had Antiphospholipid Antibody Syndrome, an auto-immune disorder in the same family as Lupus.
The eye problem was a blood clot that had formed and destroyed the blood supply to the retina of my right eye. Treatment was to be life long and I would need to take blood thinners, then Warfarin though today I take other blood thinner drugs.
I also had to have extensive laser surgery on my right eye to prevent further damage from the clot and resulting new blood vessel growth.
Five and a half years later, when I was going through a non theraputic dosage of Warfarin. I had a similar event, a blood clot formed in my left eye. Destroying that retina and leaving me legally blind.
Let me help to makes western admirers amongst orientals such as Japan-and South Korea, people from greater China such as Hong Kong and Taiwan and neighbours such as Phillipines and Vietnam see light.
I am qualified to advise and share my experience. I was born in Malaysia and now a Singaporean who were a starry eye west admirer for say the first 20 years of my life.
Today I am a practical and pragmatic person who sees things differently. If your nation is a direct neighbour or in Chinese neighbourhood, try to comprehend the following.
China has been around for 5000 years as your neighbour and during 4800 out of the 5000 years China were really really strong. In fact so strong it could if it wants to, to walk right into your nation and claimed it for good. But they didn’t. Japan, Korea, Philippines, India, Vietnam and others remain a fully sovereign nation. Appreciate that.
Just look at the nation that lies and spread fear about China, the U.S. it is barely 247 years old yet it started as a 13 states union and in less than a hundred years it stole another 37 states from its neighbours. And what did the U.S. do in Asia! It murdered 3 million Vietnamese, a million each in Philippines in Mindanao, Laos and Cambodia, and at least 2 million suspected communists in Indonesia and colonised the Philippines for close to 50 years.
And they do that as a nation 10 thousand miles away from Asia! China is stone’s throw away from your shores yet you are still independent! So be logical and honest about who is the aggressor and who respects your sovereignty? If you are fair China is a 5000 years gentleman. The U.S. is a 247 years hoodlum you never ever want to get close with, unless you are inviting trouble.
Next let me help you know your future. China is the world’s most humongous market. Your nation is blessed to have such a huge market at your door step. They can buy your products and resources and yet supply you with value for money product for a song.
They are not the despicable west who wants to change your way. They even say their socialism with Chinese characteristics is not exportable and urge you to seek your best political and social system going forward. US says it is their way or the highway! In fact they murdered 5 million Indo Chinese to make them democratic unsuccessfully in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
Go to the U.S. to have fun and travel around, do business with them as they are a big spender. But whatever you do remember who really is with you and where is your future with. Most of all remember where is your nation is geographically and China will always be there! It cannot be floated away and so are you, you are stuck there.
Don’t ever let your nation be another Ukraine, the U.S. want your people to die and your nation to be destroyed just to poke China in the eye, just like how they used Ukraine to poke Russia in the eye, unfortunately one time too many. Don’t let them have even one CIA or NED officials in your nation. And don’t ever be used as a cannon fodder.
Grow up and know right from wrong. Korea for example, whether you stay rich and get richer depends on China not the U.S. The only thing the U.S. can help you is simply to get your nation destroyed! China will always be there, it will grow to be 4–5 times the size of the U.S. economy before then of this century. And as a market for Korea, it will be bigger than your next 20 biggest market! So get real, grow up like me, be a realist and be smart.
Vote in a pro Chinese candidate. Vote in a leader that has no inclination to do shit for the U.S. And tell the US. that you are a friend and a partner of China, and that you want American’s as tourist and investor. But under no circumstances will you allow them to interfere in your nation and in Asia. Asia is for Asians. If you have issues involving the US is a sure way to implicate the issues and create discord.
A bunch of young dumb grunts are meandering about the country looking for bad guys, WMDs and whatever else General Mattis (pbuh) felt was appropriate at the time. In this case it was myself and the United States Marine Corps.
Being young, dumb and American, we naturally did not speak much Arabic besides the usual peacekeeping terminology like get your hands up, stop, get down and f#ck off. As is common in these conflicts, we tend to recruit native speakers to act as interpreters.
For reasons unknown, I happened to remember one of these dudes in particular. Let’s call him Joe Hammad for the sake of security. Now these guys usually don’t work anywhere near their hometowns in country because let’s be honest, in the eyes of the bad guys, hell even in the eyes of many locals, these guys are narcs. Snitches get stitches and all that but ramped up to 3rd world standards.
In exchange for helping us communicate with an often unfriendly populace, these dudes are offered visas to go stateside should they fulfill their obligations. For many reasons, this often doesn’t happen. Remember the snitches thing?
Fast forward to 2014. Suburb of a large Arizona city. My broke ass is out of the military and between employment so I decide to put an ad on Craigslist to let a room of my house for rent. Thank goodness I was financially smart enough to have owned my own home at the time.
Within a few days of placing the ad, I have a nibble or two but this one guy comes with cash in hand. I meet him on the porch when he arrives. He’s an Arab man of medium height, about 45 years old and well spoken with a sharp sense of humor. Within minutes we both had a clear spark of recognition.
And that’s how Joe Hammad from Iraq became my roommate after the war in Iraq ended.
I can’t say for sure whether or not you’re missing any secret ingredients, since I don’t know your recipe. I am certain you’re missing one key component though, and that’s heat.
Chinese restaurants cook over commercial wok burners, which put out 125,000 BTUs of heat. Your home stove might generate 15,000 BTUs out of its largest burner. That’s a pretty significant difference.
The heat of a wok burner imparts a distinctive flavor onto foods. When foods hit the polymerized surface of a hot steel wok, they instantly release moisture, which leaves the food in the form of steam. The foods are tossed through the rising steam, where they capture the droplets of water, and fall back into the wok. This action, repeated over and over, is the essence of wok cooking. The intense heat also causes rapid browning and caramelization and gives the food a distinctive smokey flavor. The flavor, known as Wok Hei in Cantonese, is what makes Chinese take out so crave able, and can’t be duplicated on a home stove. None of what I described can be duplicated, to the same degree, on a home stove. It just doesn’t generate enough heat.
My daughter’s car was hit by a speeding unmarked police car. I have written about this and she is recovering well. When I got to the scene, she was still trapped but the fire brigade were on the scene and had everything in control. While they were waiting to cut my daughter out, the lead fireman came over to me and told me to take as many pictures and as much video as I could and to make sure I got pictures of the officers involved. As soon as I started taking pictures a uniformed policeman came over and said that I had to stop as it was an active crime scene. I said that was nonsense and carried on taking pictures. He carried on saying I should stop. I told my wife who had just turned up to take pictures as well. The policeman just walked away. We took loads of pictures and videos, the witnesses telling us what happened. It took two months for the police to give my solicitor any indication that an officer was involved in the crash and this was only because he sent them some of our photographs. They now say there will be no criminal charges to either driver and that his speeding was legal as he was on a covert operation. He was unhurt and walking around, he never once came over or asked how my daughter was. I am glad that I did not listen to the policeman and I am sure that the video and pictures will help in the civil case.
Back when I was (a lot) younger, after a softball game both teams (mine and the other side, who were all good friends on and off the field) came back to our cars to find someone had parked lengthwise behind three of our cars. None of the three could get out because this unthinking individual parked lengthwise and not in a valid parking spot behind them.
We waited about 20 minutes or so chatting, hoping the person would come out and move. They never did. It was a smallish car, a Corolla, so several of us carried the car to the space in the hedge where people had access to the softball fields beyond. It fit perfectly, the front bumper against one side of the gate and the rear bumper within two inches of the other side. Note this wasn’t a metal gate, it was a hedge with an arbor vitae forming the “sides” of the entrance.
Then, out of sheer schadenfreude, we waited. Some left, of course, but most of us were there about 45 minutes later when the person came back to discover their car was basically unmoveable without cutting down a tree owned by a private entity, or have it dragged out by tow truck.
Going Anonymous as my parents follow me and I don’t want them to know this.
I was young ,probably in 7th or 8th standard when I used to do this.There is a bakery near my home of which I still am a regular customer .I buy things from the place at least 5 times in a day.
As we were regular customers we had credit system of paying the owner .We used to pay our credit on a monthly basis. So basically anyone from my family could go and get anything from the bakery and the owner would just write it in his accounts book and we used to pay the whole amount at the end of the month.
Me being really smart found a loop hole and would buy a lot of snacks,basically all kinds of items available for me to eat . I would just buy snacks worth Rs 2000 or so when the owner was not at the counter. He had an assistant who did not know how t read or write so he used to tell me to write it in the accounts book and I would just pretend to write everything and hand him over the book and he never used to check or bother about it.
I did this 3–4 times when I started to feel guilty about this because clearly it was shoplifting or stealing.
I later made a promise to myself that I will never do this again and would pay the whole amount I had stolen to the shopkeeper once I start to earn .
I completed my graduation this year and started working at an MNC and after I got my first salary the first thing I did was to take the money and confess to the shop owner about this.
He got angry at first but looking at my honesty he accepted the whole amount that was due which was about Rs 10000 and thanked me for this.
I told him not to tell my parents about this as they will be really disappointed .
This was the happiest day of my life as a big burden that I carried for almost 6–7 years was finally gone.
I’m not a mechanic, but wanted to share this story.
I needed a new battery for my Jeep Cherokee. I went to the local place that handles my maintenance. I was in a hurry and also needed an oil change. I brought the vehicle into the Maintennance bay. The guy went to get a new battery. He said something about the battery being backwards, or similar statement. It had something to do with not having the exact battery needed. The engineer in me thought that we should wait to get the right battery, but I didn’t push the issue. I had to be somewhere and was in a hurry. The guy puts the battery in and asked me to try to start it. Smoke billowed out of several places inside the vehicle. Wtf was going on?!? This guy had reversed the poles on the battery and had effectively electrocuted my jeep. To say that the electrical engineer in me was upset was an understatement. I had to be somewhere. I got them to fix my Jeep so that it would run. I was irate. It was a Friday. I had to be somewhere all weekend. I was back on Monday morning. Thankfully, they did pretty much everything right. The mechanic had quit, thankfully. There were some additional repairs that had to be completed. Everything was covered.
A few years later, I needed some warranty or recall thing done. The dealership wouldn’t handle the recall work because of non Jeep parts. I went back to the local shop, and they replaced everything with Jeep parts. The dealership handled the recall work.
while I was mad about the incompetence of the mechanic, the local shop did the right thing.
It’s a wild assumption, but one very likely case is Yemen
image 30
For those who quite don’t know, the situation in Yemen is like this
image 29
The green region is under Houthi control (backed by Iranians), the light red is controlled by Hadi government (backed by Saudi Arabia, UAE and Bahrain and even USA), the yellow is the Southern Transitional Council (a movement that wants South Yemen to come back as it existed prior to 1991), and the white is al-Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula, also called AQAP
Now one would expect either of the sides to fall, however seeing the way each one is sticking to their captured lands, it looks that another division of Yemen may actually happen. If the AQAP could be vanquished , then the country would end up with three separate authorities, leaving the whole field very much open for a possible trifurcation . It’s quite possible that the Southern Council could get vanquished too, if that happens then a bifurcation would happen, leading to once again a North and South Yemen to emerge.
The difference would be that unlike the previous versions where North Yemen was an independent Arab Republic and South Yemen was a communist state, this time North Yemen would be an Iran-backed client state whereas South Yemen would be a Saudi-UAE backed client state.
Too white
Chicken Cubes with Cherries, Pineapple and Lichees (Bo Lo Lichees Gai Kew)
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Ingredients
1 chicken breast
1 teaspoon sherry
2 teaspoons light soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon anise pepper
1 tablespoon chopped scallion
1 egg white
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 cups vegetable oil
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
3 tablespoons ketchup
3 tablespoons vinegar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 cup lichee juice
1 cup lichee meat
1/2 cup maraschino cherries
1/2 cup pineapple chunks
Instructions
Bone chicken and cut into cubes; mix sherry, light soy sauce, anise pepper and chopped scallion together, pour over chicken and marinate for 30 minutes.
Beat egg white and 2 tablespoons of cornstarch together. Pour over chicken breast mixture.
Heat oil to 325 degrees F. Deep fry chicken. Drain on paper towels.
Mix sugar, ketchup, vinegar, 1 tablespoon cornstarch and lichee juice in saucepan; stir until thickened. Add lichee meat, cherries and pineapple. Stir until hot, then serve over chicken.
This was Central Florida, the lawns were St Augustine grass that with lot of water, mulching and fertilizer, they grew a couple inches a week, and the leaves are wide and tough unlike the soft lawns up north.
My neighbor disliked me because I built a 2 story house and that blocked the view of the lake. We worked for the same company and he was upset that I was hired in at a management level although he didn’t work for me.
Our lawns were about a 1/3 acre, so a Saturday cut and trim would easily take 3 hours with a normal lawn mower.
He bought a basic riding lawnmower, and he would drive his mower on my property, up to 5′ before making a U Turn. That was OK, except he would make the hard turn on top of my sprinklers. Almost every week, I had to replace the broken PVC pipe, digging up my lawn. I tried several things to dissuade him, but in the end on a Friday night, I brought home about 20′ of a high strength braided steel cabling. It was the smallest diameter I could find. I uncoiled it surrounding the sprinkler heads pushing down into the tall grass so you would never see it. But you would hear it, and I was in my garage when I knew he ran over it. The racket it made was frightening.
Even a 25″ blade on a 10 HP motor couldn’t cut it. But it did wrap it around the shaft and stalled the motor. All 20 feet of the cable was gone from my yard.
He had to push his mower to the garage, and spent the rest of the day disassembling his mower to untangle the mess.
The Only Billionaires who are restricted from leaving are those who are Directors of Public Companies or Director’s/Top Executives of Companies that owe minimum 10 Million RMB in Loans to Banks or vide Public Bonds
They need an exit visa
Others can leave when they want
Many Billionaires from the Mainland have their families in Singapore, Australia and USA while they live in the Mainland for 6–9 out of 12 months a year
The only rule for them is they cannot repatriate in excess of $ 300,000 a year out of China , that too for very specific reasons
So what they earn in China, must be kept in China at all costs
They try sending more money out, they face upto 18 years jail
So keep your family wherever you want, have Villas in Sydney or Florida, Send your mainland sons to UK for school but THE MONEY YOU EARN IN CHINA CANNOT LEAVE CHINA OR YOU NEVER SEE DAYLIGHT AGAIN FOR AT LEAST 10–18 YEARS
How about instead of notorious we focus on an evil genius that should be more notorious? Nazi scientists always get all the focus but what if I told you Japan had their own version of an evil scientist and he was an absolute monster.
Meet Shirō Ishii – a serious piece of sh%t
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This guy was a Doctor and microbiologist- and a rather smart one at that. He was regarded as a brilliant person for nearly his entire life. He was well educated and joined the army as a doctor. While there he caught the eyes of his superiors and was sent for further education at Kyoto Imperial University.
During WW2 he was placed in charge of Unit 731 and this is what he was known for.
What was unit 731? Well, they were a scientific unit that conducted experiments and thought up new ways to win the war. Some examples of things they did include
Imprisoning women, raping them until they got pregnant, and then running horrid painful experiments on them just so they could see how certain poisons affected pregnant women.
They would infect people with syphilis and then cut them open (while alive and awake) so they could see what their bodies did as the infection progressed. Women, men, and even children were forcibly infected
This is called vivisection- its the practice of cutting someone open while alive to see what their body is doing and its typically done when experimenting on animals. In unit 731 they did it to people without anesthesia- always resulting in a slow agonizing death for the person.
Injected people with animal blood to see what happens (bad way to die)
Placed people in centrifuges and spun it until they died
Deprived prisoners of food and water to see how long it was until they died
Placed people in low-pressure chambers until their eyes popped out
Burned people alive to see how long they would live
Injected people with saltwater to see what would happen
Poisoned people to see the effects
gave people radiation poisoning to see the effects
Leave 3-day old babies in the cold just to see how long it took them to freeze to death
Tested flamethrowers on live people
Tested grenades on live people
Removed organs for fun. For instance, they would remove someone’s stomach and attach their esophagus to their intestines directly.
Tested hundreds of diseases and biological weapons on people
In all, around 10,000 prisoners were killed by Unit 731 and as many as 20,000 were tested on. The biological weapons produced by this unit were used to kill as many as 500,000 civilians
On a side note not even the Nazis used chemical weapons in WW2 (they only did in concentration camps). The ONLY nation to employ chemical weapons against civilian and military targets in WW2 was Japan.
You may wonder what happened to Shirō. I mean we caught him and put him on trial for war crimes right?
Nope
He was given full immunity in exchange for full disclosure of his tests. American microbiologists stated that Shirō’s findings were extremely valuable and impossible to replicate unless the experiments were done again.
Shirō lived out the remainder of his life a free man and died in 1959.
A businessman went to a shoe store to purchase a new pair of shoes. He was a prominent person in that town. After selecting a pair of shoes with size 8 he asked the salesperson to pack it. The salesperson had just started his career and joined the shoe store a few days back.
The businessman soon discovered that he had left his wallet at home. He told the salesperson that he would take the shoes with him and make the payment the next day. The salesperson being new to business excused himself in order to discuss this matter with the store manager. The manager knew that the customer is an eminent businessman; however, was reluctant to deliver the shoes without payment. At the same time, he was not ready to lose a sale too. He advised the salesperson to handle the situation in the best manner possible and left the place.
The salesperson stood there frozen for a few minutes unable to decide. He then returned to the customer, started packing the shoes and handed the package to the customer.
The next day the customer arrived at the store with the shoes he had purchased, made the payment for his purchase and told the salesperson that “After opening the package I found one shoe with size 8 and the other with size 7. Maybe you packed them by mistake. Can I have the shoes with size 8 please?” The salesperson apologized for the inconvenience caused and replaced the wrong size shoe with the correct one. The customer collected his shoes and left the store with satisfaction.
The manager happened to overhear their conversation and realized that the salesperson had used his presence of mind and handled the situation very well. They didn’t lose their business as well as the customer.
Moral
It is by the presence of mind in untried emergencies that the native metal of a man is tested. If an individual has a calm state of mind, his attitude and views will be calm and tranquil even in the presence of great agitation.
In the fourth grade, Mr. Mowry, our high school biology teacher, visited and gave a lecture. Afterward, he asked the class to name the smartest animal.
One kid said “chimpanzee.” Another said “dolphin.” I kept waving my hand, but he ignored me. (He later told my mother he knew I knew the answer.)
Finally, after the rest of the class ran out of ideas, he asked me. The class looked incredulous when I said “human beings.” After all, people aren’t animals.
His response was “Life has only two choices. Plant or an animal. Which is it?”
(When I had him as a teacher in the tenth grade, I pointed out there were other life forms, such as fungus and bacteria. He acknowledged that, but figured it was a bit much for a fourth grade class.)
In any case, it felt like my fifteen minutes of fame.
I was at a wedding once where the Groom ended up in hospital with achohol poisoning, but it wasnt what you think.
There is a tradition where I live, where right after the ceremony, the bridesmaids “steal” the Groom and take him for a drink. While the groomsmen do the same thing with the Bride.
An hour later, right on time, the groomsmen had the Bride at the next venue where the dinner and dance was to be held, but there was no sign of the bridesmaids and the Groom.
We guests sat around for a bit, wondering what was going on, and eventually food was served despite the fact there was no Groom, and the Bride was looking more and more upset.
It wasn’t until the start of the wedding dance that news filtered through about what happened.
The Groom had never, up to this, had a drink in his life. And the over enthusiastic bridesmaids had made the guy down several hard drinks in that hour.
And, he reacted really badly to them.
So badly they had to take him to the emergency room to be treated for poisoning, and that is where he spent their wedding night.
The rest of the wedding evening for us as guests, kinda fizzled out as you can imagine. But that poor Bride was in tears and left shortly after the dinner to be with her new husband.
Once you VISUALIZE CORRECTLY, the SHIFT happens IMMEDIATELY. (This Is How)
A lot of things, but I’ll focus on just one for this answer. Maybe other parents can relate:
Cooking for the family is a one-person job.
My children always want to help me cook. I remember, as a child, I always wanted to help my mom cook, but she only let me help on the weekends. Now, I usually only let my kids help me cook on the weekends, too.
In fact, during the week, I kick them out of the kitchen, just like my mother did with me 30 years ago.
Why?
Because, after a long day at work, cooking is actually very relaxing… if you’re doing it alone. Cooking with children is mostly just teaching and supervising. I do that all day. I don’t want to come home and do more of it most days.
Plus, when children “help” you cook, it just slows you down, and I’m usually in a hurry to make dinner before my wife gets home.
My children also tend to stand right behind me when I’m cooking, and I’ve tripped over them before. So now, for speed and safety reasons, I have a “the only person who should be in the kitchen while I’m cooking is me” policy on weekdays.
My mom took me to see this doctor when I was 8 years old and she wouldn’t tell me how come. When we got there the nurses took me in and got me ready for the doctor. They had me laying down with things on my arms and legs so I couldn’t move. I thought this was really funny but I was really embarrassed because I didn’t have clothes on and they could see my boy part. When the doctor came in she started looking at my boy part and she asked me if I know why my mom has brought me here this morning and I didn’t know why. I was like yikes when she told me that in a moment they are going to be circumcising my boy part. I have friends that are circumcised and I know what that means and I was like yikes. They give you stuff so it wouldn’t hurt but I still feel her doing stuff to it and I was like yikes thinking about what she is doing. After it was done and mom come in and got me I was really embarrassed because everyone seen it and know what happened to me. We went for breakfast after and mom told the waitress why I had pajama bottoms on. That was the most embarrassing day ever.
Because the biggest killer and tormentors of Muslims (IN THEIR HOME COUNTRIES) this century has been the UNITED STATES!
Back home, Muslims have been discriminated, and watched like a hawk by the authorities, especially those of Middle-east descent.
The last time America “rallied” the Muslim world was the first gulf war, where a UN coalition liberated Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. Cooperation has been downhill ever since. Even MBS, the Crown Prince of Saudia Arabia, has cooled relationships with America and delivered repeat diplomatic snubs. America’s strongest and most important Muslim ally in the Middle East is working hard to diversify risk, such as settling in non-dollar currencies.
Besides, the evidence is weak, and nothing like the blatant genocide/war crime broadcasting live from the Gaza strip today.
I was camping at a campground in Northern California, and had gone to the bathroom in the morning. A guy was washing his hands with his ten year old son. This guy was decked out with a full on safari outfit, right down to the hat and it was clearly brand new.
When they had finished washing hands, the Dad took a few of those super cheap, thin, brown paper towels and dried his hands. When his son reached for his own paper towels, the Dad said “uh uh. Waste not, want not!” And handed him his soggy, used, brown paper towel and the kid had to try to dry his hands with this gross, soggy wad of used paper towel. The dejected look on the kids face said it all.
I was so disgusted with this guy and felt so bad for the kid. If he was so desperate to save such a minute amount of natural resources, he should have let the kid wash and dry first, and used the kids leftovers.
it really felt like psychological abuse, but he said it with such vigor that I think he was just an ignorant narcissist.
It was a Friday night and the last day of school. My son would be a Senior in the fall.
When I pulled down our street on my way home from work, I noticed both sides of the street were lined with parked cars. You probably guessed it. My son had turned our house into Animal House! We had just had a pool built and it was full of kids every afternoon. I didn’t mind. I could relax knowing where my son was.
But this wasn’t one of those afternoon get-togethers. This was a full blown wild party. Girls were naked in the pool, and there were whiskey and beer bottles everywhere. It looked like half the high school was packed into my house.
My fear was someone leaving drunk. I couldn’t let that happen. I found my son. I told him and the group with him that I was going to my room and would let them have their party, but I needed everyone to leave me their car keys. I didn’t want anyone leaving drunk.
In my state, 17 yr-olds are not old enough to drink. I am responsible for each one as long as they’re in my house. I’d also be responsible for them drinking at my house, I could be arrested. But my worry was getting those keys and keeping them from leaving. I’d figure something else later.
I had what looked like 10 sets of keys that kids had gave me. I told them to write their name on their keys. I thought that once I got their keys, I wouldn’t be so worried and I’d contact parents and let them know what was going on.
I’d been home about 15 min, and went in my room to change out of my work clothes. In under 10 min, I was out of my room and was going to get more of the kids’ keys. Problem was, no one was there. The house was empty, and the cars on the street were gone, except for a few that were probably passengers now. Not one kid was in sight, only a few articles of clothing had been left floating in the pool.
I was furious. My son had left too. He wasn’t answering his phone either. I called a few parents and explained. A few didn’t enjoy being bothered with it. None of them seemed concerned. I was so upset I puked. I didn’t know what to do, or where to look. I just prayed they were all safe at someone’s house. I cleaned the house, and every 30 minutes called and texted my son. He never replied. I tried to sleep, but I kept thinking about all the terrible things that could happen to them, how one night of partying can ruin the rest of their life. I couldn’t stop thinking. I probably buried my son a dozen times in my mind that night. Around 3am, I dozed off
At 4:14am, I got a call. The connection was poor, and I couldn’t hear every word, plus there was a lot of noise. I heard “this is blablabla with —-sheriffs —-EMT paramedic—-permission to treat———!l? Ma’am? Hello? We need permission —-accident involving 4 minors—-please ma’am!
I was yelling, “ Yes, yes, you have my permission to treat them.” I kept saying it over and over, because our connection was so bad. I wanted them to hear me.
The call was dropped. I hit redial on the phone, but it wouldn’t reconnect with who just called. I didn’t know where the kids were, who was with my son, or the details of the accident and the injuries. It was like being trapped in a horrible nightmare. I didn’t even know where to begin. I called all the hospitals and police stations in the area. Nothing.
I have never felt that much pain and heartache at the same time. I wanted to be with my son. I was no longer angry, I just wanted to to be where my son was. I kept envisioning the worst. I paced the floor while holding my bible, and praying those next few hours. I hit my knees and begged God to take me and leave the kids here in good health. For hours I was frantic. I was shaking and felt so helpless. The not knowing was tearing me up. I felt crazy.
At 6:20am I get a call from the hospital. She can’t discuss the accident or injuries. She just gave me the address and names of the passengers. These 4 boys were in a hospital a 4 hour drive away. I had to drive 4 hrs, having no idea of what condition my son would be in. This had become the worst night of my life.
This drive was a long 4 hours, plus a bad storm had rolled in and made driving difficult. I kept thinking, “ Why doesn’t my son call? It has to be bad if he’s not calling me.” The hospital was in a small town on the way to a popular city on the bay. I couldn’t believe it! They had left the house and driven to the beach. I kept thinking about all the empty beer bottles and whiskey bottles I’d picked up at the house. My mind was thinking the worst.
It had gotten pitch black, and the wind was gusting. I was driving into a bad storm, lightning struck all around me. The rain was so heavy, I could barely see the lights of the gas station ahead of me. The cars on the road had all pulled in to wait out the storm. I figured I should too. thought I’d fill up with gas, but there wasn’t a pump not in use. I pulled over by the air pump and just then lightning stuck a transformer, it was on fire. My nerves were shot. The explosion scared me so badly that I almost pee”ed my pants. I couldn’t take it. I decided to get out of that parking lot before a gas pump exploded. Just as I was about to pull out, I heard the sirens. Tornado sirens! Wtf! I was done, I couldn’t handle this. I just wanted to be with my son. I didn’t know what to do. The rain was now falling almost perpendicular to the ground. My windows were rolled up, and still the rain was coming in. My car was shaking. I put it in park, turned off the key, and just sat there crying and praying. I couldn’t see anything out of the windows. I heard another loud explosion, but couldn’t see what it was. I shut my eyes and cried. I listened to the wind and thunder and sirens. My car was shaking so badly I thought the doors were going to open. Then everything stopped. The wind had pushed me to the end of the parking lot next to the railroad tracks. There were railroad tracks (the big wooden beams) all around my car. I guess the wind pulled them up and tossed them around. I put the car in drive and drove. I was hyperventilating, and pulled over at a rest area. I began thinking I would never make it to my son.
I made it to the hospital, and found the corridor they were on. When I got off the elevator I was looking at a waiting area. My son and his one friend were sitting there talking and laughing. A cop was sitting with them. I ran to my son, and he stood up. At that moment I didn’t know if I wanted to hug him or punish him. (Of course I hugged him.) I was looking at his face and arms and I wanted to count his fingers and toes just like I did the first time I held him. He was holding me as I was crying tears of relief. Not a scratch on my son’s body. All four boys were fine!
The cop told me that he had seen a car in a corn field and stopped to check it out. Apparently the crash had just happened when he arrived because the tires were still spinning. My son had fallen asleep behind the wheel. When the car went off the road onto the shoulder he woke and his reflex was to turn the wheel. This caused the car to spin and he lost control. It hit a cable line and the car flipped 5 times. One boy in the back seat flew through the windshield and landed 30’ from the car. He drove a hatchback, and the other boy in the back seat was thrown out of the back. No one was wearing seat belts, but not one boy needed a stitch. Thank God! The cop said he didn’t think he’d find anyone alive. It was the worst accident that little town had ever seen. I was so relieved that everyone was fine. The cop told me that when he was walking up to the car he followed a trail of beer cans all the way to the car. They were unopened and no one had been drinking. They were tested and they were all found to be sober. The car had flipped through the corn field, and the cop said the corn probably softened the blows.
We had to go to the wrecker yard to pay for towing The cop told me to prepare myself. There was no way to prepare myself for what I was about to see. His brand new car didn’t have one place on it that wasn’t damaged. You couldn’t tell what you were looking at. The front and back looked the same. The door handles were the only thing that made you know which end was where. Ears of corn were sticking out everywhere. It was a sight. I stood there crying and holding my son and his friend. They cried too.
I don’t remember if my son got a ticket. I do remember that I had to drive him to alcohol awareness classes twice a week for a month. And once a week I had to drive that 4 hrs to see the judge for a month. The car was sold for scrap for $325. I joke now, and say that we would have gotten more for the corn. The other two boys were arrested for having marijuana on them. They had to wait for their parents to get them.
This happened 19 yrs ago. Last year I was visiting friends near that little town. We went to play bingo one evening. I was talking with a couple sitting across from me. I had mentioned that the last time I’d been down this way was for a bad accident that my son was in. The man looked at me and said “OMG! You’re —’s mom!” He knew my sons name, and said he was the cop on the screen. He told me how he has never been able to forget that morning and the accident. He still has nightmares about walking up and finding 4 dead boys. His wife said it really got to him. She had told her husband that he needed to maybe find the boys and once he knew they were okay, maybe the nightmares would stop. But he didn’t have contact info. I showed him pics of my son and grandson. This man cried right there in the bingo hall. I think it did us both good. I hope he’s sleeping better.
I truly believe we a learned something that day. It definitely changed all involved.
Also there’s another more shrewd reason: Any beer that is NOT opened isn’t one that they have sold and it can allow them to 86 a patron who is sneaking in beers to drink.
While this is, of course, uncommon in higher class establishments, in lower-end bars, patrons have been known to BYOB as the prices of the bar’s offerings are unacceptably high in their opinions, necessitating the “need” for them to sneak in their own and defray some of their drinking expenses. The bartender and servers can tell if they see a beer that’s unopened or witness a patron opening their own beverage that the bar didn’t sell it, and they can eject the patron(s) involved.
This actually was quite common at some of the establishments that I used to frequent in North Carolina decades ago. One of the worst fights that I have ever witnessed was when a bartender tried to eject a patron who brought their own and the patron struck the bartender with a bottle. Unfortunately for the patron, things weren’t like a movie and the bartender proceeded to beat the shit out of him which including some kicks to the head when the man was down. Had some other patrons not stopped things, we probably would have witnessed a murder. I left shortly afterward and I never returned to that establishment.
Anyway…an unopened beverage is one that wasn’t sold by the bar and that’s another reason for the bar to open theirs.
Suddenly (for me). He had been planning it for a while as he had met someone else. I found out and confronted him. He admitted it and left. I cried alot mainly because I had two very small children and another on the way. To be honest I was scared. However within a few weeks I began to notice things. The atmosphere in the house was calm and happy and it was MUCH tidier and better organised. . I was far less stressed and not shouting at the children. Mornings were a breeze because I was in charge and there was now a routine. Bedtimes were easy for the same reason (this had been a nightmare before). I enrolled the children in after school activities which they loved and hadn’t been able to do before because ‘we couldn’t afford it’. Also their friends could come over for tea (not allowed before). I had loads of spare money because no one was buying cigarettes or alcohol. Then the icing on the cake… a gorgeous new baby came along. Life was good and 21 years later its better than I ever imagined possible. The woman he left me for is much better for him. She treats him the way he treated me. I am happily married and the children are all grown up. The end of that marriage was the beginning of my life.
Chicken Slices with Sichuan Peppercorn Sauce (Jiao Ma Ji Pian)
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Ingredients
1/2-1 teaspoon whole Sichuan peppercorns
5 green onions, green part only, thinly sliced
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons chicken broth
2 tablespoons light soy sauce
1 tablespoon plus 1 1/2 teaspoons sesame oil
1 pound cooked sliced chicken
Instructions
Soak the Sichuan peppercorns in a small bowl of very hot water for 5 minutes; drain.
Puree the peppercorns, green onions and salt in a food processor; transfer to a small bowl.
Add the broth and soy sauce, stirring until well combined; stir in the sesame oil. Drizzle over the chicken slices.
I’ve written this before and it seems right for this answer.
When young, this is the strangest thing we found in our yard.
Dad had a house built in a new subdivision just out of town. It was one of the first houses. It used to be prairie land.Here’s the story.
Yes. We had a very large, beautiful back yard with fruit trees, lilacs, birch and spruce. It was like a park. Anyway, mom had my older twin sisters and I doing yard work, or helping in yard work because she wanted us to learn about planting, growing and nurturing. Lori and Tracy hated yard work. It was like being on a chain gang to them. “When I have my own place, I’m not having one, bloody plant,” Tracy said. Only she didn’t say bloody. The twins were sixteen here, I was fourteen. I was digging a hole to plant a small tree mom had bought and my spade kept clunking on something.
Lori was raking and Tracy weeding in the garden with a hoe but no plant was safe with Tracy around. Good and bad plants were sliced to death. She figured the worse she did, mom might not ask her to help anymore. “They’re all green anyway!” The girls had better things to do. They would have much rather been with their friends, boys, or shopping for clothes.
I dug around this thing, pulled it out and cleaned some of the mud off of it. It was a small, very old statue like object about a foot and a half long and a eleven inches high.
“Hey guys, come here,” I called my sisters. I always called them guys. They came running over glad to get away from work. We cleaned off the mud as best we could. “Holy shit! Do you know what this is?” Lori exclaimed. “RJ, bring it by the house.”
It looked like it was made of cement. I lugged the heavy thing to the house. Lori turned the hose on it and washed off the rest of the mud. When finished, we stood there looking at a small, very old, well worn statue of a baby kind of laying down in its side. That’s what it clearly was.
Lori looked at Tracy, then me. “I think it could be a grave marker, for a baby. Maybe some pioneer’s child died and they lived around here and buried the child and the father made this statue to honor the baby.” My sisters were real life Nancy Drews plus they had vivid imaginations. Lori had it figured out in minutes. Tracy and I agreed. We couldn’t come up with anything better than that.
“Unless,” I said, “This is a prehistoric baby that was buried and fossilized.”
“Don’t think so,” said Lori quickly.
“Ok,” I said agreeing with my big sister maybe a little too quickly.
“There were no humans in the dinosaur era,” she added, “it’s a babies grave marker.” We lived a way out in the suburbs. Dad bought the land and built a rather large house on it. Pioneers could have lived here and buried their child.
We got mom and dad to come out and have a look and they thought it quite interesting. “Dad, maybe if I dug up around there I might find some more neat things,” I said holding my spade. The twins agreed. “No,” mom said, “knowing you, you’ll have this backyard looking like a prairie dog village.”
We wondered what to do with the baby statue. “Why don’t you put it by your pet cemetery?” Mom said. In the far corner of the yard we had a little pet cemetery with some birds, turtles, fish, my gerbil Gerry, and a squirrel we found dead in the yard. All our pets who died except the bird that flew through the open living room window and my rabbit I took out in the back yard the first day I got him. He hopped away, under the fence and was gone. I was not allowed any pets after that except a fish named Cleo, after Pinocchio’s fish. Cleo was kept in Lori’s room because I overfed the last two fish and they died. “You’re supposed to sprinkle food in lightly,” said Lori, “not give it a big buffet!” I was not trusted with fish.
Anyway, I’m getting way, way off the subject here. We liked the idea of the baby stone guarding our pet cemetery and that is where our unexpected find ended up, watching over our deceased pets. “We have a lot of pets buried out here,” I said after setting the statue near the cemetery.,
“Yeah, and you killed most of them,” Lori said messing my hair. Tracy laughed.
“I did not,” I said, “just two fish that I gave too much to eat and the turtle who escaped and was found under my bed.”
“Cause you left the lid off his pan,” Tracy said. “I think he was trying to crawl into bed with you.”
We stood there looking at the stone baby, as we called it.
“Back to work guys,” mom called, “Tracy, you’ve chopped weeds and good plants, I told you the difference.”
“They’re all green mother, all look the same,” Tracy said under her breath as she walked back to the house.
It was a pretty neat find that we all remember. To this day, we are still not sure of its story but it was a small statue of a baby laying on its side in rest.
It is a child laying on its side in a fetal position facing you, head on a pillow.
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Legend of the Phantom Fortress | The Ghost Plane that Flew and Landed Itself
A girl I knew, we’ll call her Jen, had a pretty lousy dad.
He was on disability from the government and hadn’t worked in years because of a ““““back injury”””” that didn’t hinder him from partying, playing basketball and romping around with girls.
Consequently, he was perpetually broke and living paycheck to paycheck.
Jen’s mother divorced her father when Jen was 2, largely because of his inability and lack of desire to work.
She remarried another man. They had kids, which was fine, but Jen always felt like an outsider in that household.
Her biological dad was in her life but never came through in the most important moments.
Her birthday came around and when I asked if her dad got her anything, she said, “He couldn’t afford to get me a present.”
Without thinking I said, “But wait? Didn’t he just take a surfing vacation to Mexico?”
She sulked and said, “Yeah…”
I felt terrible. Wished I hadn’t said anything.
A birthday present might seem like a small thing, but it is a big deal to a kid.
Airlines have a rule that everyone must be in their assigned seat on take off.
It is because if there is an accident it makes their processes easier after the fact.
Once the plane is in the air, the attendant may move people around.
You have the choice of moving or not – often if you do, the seat offered to you will be better than the one you have. But check first.
I was in the situation where I had an aisle seat in a bank of 3, and the other two seats were taken up by a couple who were extremely fat. They didn’t speak the language I spoke, but by gesture the man was pretty clear what he wanted, and was getting really angry with me. However, I had sat down and stayed there. There literally was no room for me between them, as it was I could barely keep my seat. He called the flight attendent and was insisted I swap. She explained to him, and then to me, in English, that she had to insist we keep our assigned seats until we were at cruising altitude, and she assured me I wouldn’t have to sit in the middle. When she came back, she asked me if a window seat in bank that had no other people in it was acceptable – of course I jumped at the chance. (I tend to be a bit claustrophobic and find being able to look out the window a true joy.)
But I did go, on the mistaken belief that the pedicurist could relieve the discomfort from my ingrown toenails. So a friend told me.
I had no appointment; had to wait. Reading women’s magazines and crayoning in the coloring books for children. I never was very good at that.
The air was thick, redolent, I should say, with estrogen fumes; choking. They were sucking the oxygen out of the room.
There they were, all those females reclined in chairs, sort of like dentist chairs, their feet in little bath tubs. I had never seen that, before. Good Lord, deliver me.
So I deployed my best defense: I turned invisible.
It must have worked; none of the women seemed to recognize my presence, or even my existence. No problem, there; I get a lot of that, anyway.
But, alas, as my power of invisibility slackened, a technician noticed me, and motioned me toward a chair. We could not speak; her language was Vietnamese and mine was Klingon. Hand signals, gestures.
But then, as I reclined, and the warm water engulfed my feet, I started to relax. Then came the gentle massaging of my feet and toes, soon followed by the most gentle clip-clipping I have ever known.
The finale was a massage of my lower legs whereto were applied various emollients and ointments, emitting scents of citrus and of juniper, frankincense and myrrh. I wondered if I was being prepared for burial.
Its called tip creep, I was in a hardware/automotive store a few months ago, when I went to pay, it asked if I wanted to leave a tip. The top suggestion was 35 percent. I glared at the poor cashier, and she said, dont blame me, the new credit card/debit machines all came preprogrammed like that. She had no idea if management had asked for it, or if essentially all new machines were like this. She told me to complain to management, not her, and so I did.
I think its an American problem. I was shocked that many states had frozen minimum wage increases for 25 years.
In some states you only get a couple of bucks an hour, if you make your minimum in tips. This is sick, boost minimum wage to 15 or $16 an hour. Get rid of the bribes, err , tips. When I was in Egypt, if you wanted your government paperwork processed faster you paid a facilitation fee, if you wanted the plumber to move you up the priority list, again it was backshees ( I m not sure of spelling) or a facilitation fee.
Thats what we are moving towards. First it was restaurants and bars, then hair stylists and masseuses, then fast food restaurants, then pick up at pizza joints, then hardware stores. At a hardware store, where I self served, who gets the tip? Would the cashier get 35 percent of all sales, I want that job.
Here in Canada where minimum wage is $15 or $16 , we pay the same tip as the US where its $2.33
So my guess, is that the credit card machines have tips as a default, and fast food restaurants have no incentives to remove it, because who would they give that tip to?
Years ago, I was traveling with a gentleman who owned multiple companies, all successful, and was worth multiple hundreds of millions. He had rented a car several days before my arrival (I flew in later), and he offered to drive to the airport for the flight home. As he drove, he explained to me that the car was not full on gas when he picked it up, but the rental car checkout person had given him his business card and assured him if there was an issue with the amount of gas on return, he would handle it. As you might expect, on return they wanted to charge him something trivial like $15 to top up the tank. He was livid. He paid, just to get to the flight, but then spent the next hour on the phone and at the gate, and onto the plane, stopping only going through security, arguing on the phone to have it removed. Couldn’t let it go. This man was probably made more money in interest in 1 minute just sitting than he would have saved in a hour+ of arguing. It could not have been worth his time, or rather, his time could have been so much more effectively used.
In my experience with folks at this level, and I’ve met a few, it’s a compulsion. They simply cannot let it go. They will spend a million dollars to make $1.2 million in an instant, but will not spend $5 if they feel taken advantage of.
Col Douglas Mcgregor: “It’s OFFICIALLY OVER! We have WASTED TRILLIONS OF TAX DOLLARS ON THIS..”
Rest assured the CEO is not doing it out of the goodness of his heart.
Most likely what happened is the CEO or company realized they need your expertise in something or to train your replacement. Or perhaps as some others pointed out, the company forgot to dot their I’s and cross their T’s when terminating you. Perhaps they had to fire you for cause but didn’t follow progressive discipline procedures. In order to protect themselves and avoid a lawsuit they are bringing you back to perform these tasks.
If you do go back, insist on signing a contract for a certain duration like 12 months. I’d also insist on a certain raise like 25-100%. Whatever you think is reasonable. Insist on no derogatory information in your file. I’d also add language that the contract could only be voided for cause and company bears the cost of the arbitration.
If the company brings you back keep in mind they will try to part ways with you when they no longer need whatever short term assistance so start looking for another job immediately.
Do not under any circumstances come back under their ‘reinstatement’ conditions. You are better off collecting unemployment and looking for other opportunities.
In China, the subway is a social infrastructure, not a profitable business.
Although the subways are operated by “subway companies” in various cities, they are usually state-owned enterprises.
In other words, the equity of the subway system is controlled by the government.
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Therefore, in an accident like the Beijing Subway, there will be two different responsibilities.
1. Legal liability
The subway company must make up for the losses, which includes repairing damaged vehicles and facilities, rescuing injured passengers, and paying their medical expenses and emotional distress. They also face criminal prosecution if anyone dies.
In short, they must bear all the responsibilities that a Western subway company should bear.
Of course, insurance companies also play a very important role. They will activate insurance clauses to provide necessary compensation.
2. Political responsibility
Since subway companies are state-owned enterprises, they must bear more political responsibilities than private companies. In other words, an official must be held responsible for the accident.
First, the subway director of the Beijing Municipal Transportation Management Bureau must bear direct responsibility. He may be subject to isolation and review to determine whether he has committed malfeasance. If suspected of committing a crime, he would be thrown in jail. If not, you are usually fired.
Secondly, the director of the Beijing Municipal Transportation Bureau must assume management responsibilities. He usually needs to make a public apology and be demoted or transferred to a minor position.
Also, the director of the Beijing Emergency Management Bureau must assume management responsibilities and accept investigation. Are they doing their job and completing routine inspections and supervision? If not, it’s usually demoted or fired.
In China, for any important social incident, government officials will be investigated and held responsible. If you think that after the accident, some official stood up and said: “We are very sorry.” Then it could be over, and then you’d be totally wrong.
I don’t know if it’s witty or not, but it stunned the other person and was extremely satisfying.
When I was in my early twenties I worked at one of those cookie stores in the mall. I was working With my friend L who hired one day when a man in his 60s or so came up. I started helping him and L went behind me and kind of playfully kicked me, I laughed and told her not to kick me. I’ll agree it was childish, but that isn’t what upset that man. I’m guessing that just dropped me that last little bit lower in his eyes and he figured he needed to tell me off.
“I think you should be kicked for having that shit in your face.” I had a small nose stud at the time.
For just the tiniest hair of time I was stunned and had no idea what to say… then he opened his mouth again.
“What does your dad think of that?!” Big old smirk, oh he thought he had me on that one.
But I knew I won.
“I don’t care, he was an abusive alcoholic that almost beat my mom to death and molested me at eight, and he’s dead now. My mom however thinks I’m amazing in every way and is happy we all turned out well.” Big smile. All true by the way, I just don’t normally tell strangers all the details like that in go.
His face fell and he stared. Then he grabbed his cookie and stomped away.
We had to announce to the rest of the family any time we were going to use the bathroom, and how long we thought we’d be in there.
This was because we only had one bathroom and my father got really mad at us if we interrupted him while he was in there, or if my sister was in there for a long time, as she tended to do when she was a teen.
Some of my fondest memories from childhood are of my sister knocking on the door to get into the bathroom, like it was an emergency, shortly after my father went in there. It was never really an emergency. She just needed to fix her hair or something.
My dad: [Goes into bathroom, newspaper in hand.]
Thirty seconds later, my sister comes out of her room and starts knocking like crazy on the bathroom door.
My dad: [Godammit I just got in here! Leave me alone!]
So, every time any of us needed to use the bathroom for any reason, we’d stand in front of it and say, loud enough for everyone in the house to hear, something like:
“I’m going to the bathroom now! I’ll be in there for about ten minutes!”
Then we’d pause, in case someone wanted to use it quickly before we went in there.
I didn’t realize until I was an adult that announcing to your family that you were going to the bathroom wasn’t a normal thing to do.
YES… when I was in South Africa, I hired a maid through an agency. She arrived on the appointed day. She gave me the agent’s papers and introduction letter, and she asked me where she should start. I said she could start with cleaning the oven. “Oh no,” she said, “I don’t clean ovens”. “That is OK,” I said, “make yourself a cup of tea and make some breakfast for yourself and then I will give you your money and you can leave”. She looked very crestfallen and told me she needed the job. I said “OK; then clean the oven and you can stay”. She cleaned the oven.
She stayed for 30 years, and every month we had the same conversation. She left the agency after a month and she became my best friend, my companione.n, my housekeeper, my babysitter, and my nurse when I was ill. When she retired, I paid her a pension for the next 12 years till she died of COVID-19. I miss her very much. She was a wonderful woman.
In my youth I was hard up for a summer job so I took a position delivering newspapers. I was a substitute driver for the regular person doing the route. My paper had a shed where I and the other drivers would come to load up our papers at about 4 am, and across the alleyway there was another shed where the rival newspaper distributed papers to it’s drivers.
One morning I park in front of my paper’s shed to load up. As was my usual practice I used the tying machine in the shed to secure a couple dozen papers to throw at the beginning of my route and loaded them in my car. I then loaded stacks of papers that I put rubber bands on while driving to use for the rest of the route.
I found that while I was doing all this, the delivery truck for the rival paper had unloaded several large stacks of their papers just behind my car. I was ready to leave for my route but could not start because the papers were in my way. I went over to the other paper’s shed and asked the guys there to please move the papers so I could leave my parking spot. They laughed at me and said I could move them myself.
So, I did. I got in my car, started it up, put it in reverse, and backed out of the space. The stacks of papers went flying, my rear wheels driving over many of them. I then accelerated forward over the papers and they shot out in a satisfying rooster tail all over the parking lot and I was off for my route.
I was working in a record store that had booths to listen to records before you bought them. I was in a booth setting it up for someone to listen when the boss/owner was outside the booth, not knowing I was there. He started to complain that he did not like my hippie looks and did not trust me. The next day, the manager quit (I do not know the reason), and the boss came to me the next day and wanted me to take over as the store manager. I told him I would think about it. After work, I called the ex-manager and asked why he quit. He said he was sick of the two-faced liar that was the boss and he had got a job with a new company called the Wherehouse (an up and coming big chain record company, He asked me if I wanted to be the assistant manager which paid a lot more than I was making.
The next day, I called the boss/owner and told him that I did not want the manager job, and, by the way, I quit. He tried to talk me into staying when I said, “Then why did you say…” and repeated everything he had said about me.
“One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans”
In 1914 the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Serbia (in the Balkans) would be the event that led to WW1
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Then in his final days, he said
Jena came twenty years after the death of Frederick the Great; the crash will come twenty years after my departure if things go on like this.
Exactly 20 years after Bismark’s death Germany would lose WW1 and nearly collapse.
In his final meeting with Wilhelm, he stated
“Your Majesty, so long as you have this present officer corps, you can do as you please. But when this is no longer the case, it will be very different for you”
Indeed when the present officer corps moved on and were replaced by the next generation Wilhelm was forced from power and exiled in shame.
Let’s tell some more Bismark facts because the guy was just such a hoot.
During his younger years, he famously got in an average of one duel per month and never lost. Duels as in fights to the death with swords.
While working his first job for the government, he disappeared and left his post randomly only to appear weeks later with the daughter of some English gentry.
There was an assassination attempt during his rise to power. A man shot at him six times and then was disarmed by guards. Bismark said he was fine and walked home. Hours later the royal court doctor finally got in to see Bismark despite the protest of Bismark. Turns out all six bullets hit him but none of them did much damage. Bismark was just unconcerned about the whole thing.
Bismark was a local lord in his younger years. He had an estate with some peasants who worked for him. He would announce his entrance into their homes by shooting a gun in the air or releasing a fox.
He would drink two bottles of champagne and smoke two cigars for breakfast
There was a period where rebels took the Prussian King (his king) hostage. At the time Bismark was still a countryside lord minding his land. He decided to raise his farmers into a peasant militia and free the king. As he went to leave with his militia, a local man told him to stop whipping up the peasants and go home. Bismark responded, “You know me to be a kind man, but if you try to stop me I will shoot you”.
For all of his antics and wild personality, he ended up marrying a very calm, devout, conservative Christian lady.
The rest of his story is a little less flashy but just as interesting. The man was a freak of nature. He played Europe like a chessboard for decades. He created Germany and accidentally the French Republic, and he was one of the most brilliant political minds ever.
Let’s end with some fun quotes because why not.
“If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made.”
“There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America.”
Next a few Andrew Jackson facts.
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After being elected president of the United States, Andrew Jackson faced an assassination attempt. Richard Lawrence bought a gun and approached Jackson to shoot him. The first shot misfired, and the second shot misfired as well. Jackson noticed this and proceeded to attack the man and beat him with his cane. Jackson’s guards had to pull Jackson off his assassin — what a mad lad.
After winning his election, Jackson threw a rager in the White House inviting a ton of random people in to drink heavily. The party went on for hours and was out of control. Jackson was forced to flee the out-of-control party through an upper-floor window.
Andrew Jackson loved to duel, like step back and shoot each other type duel. In a duel with Charles Dickenson, Jackson did something bonkers. As the men turned, Jackson just stood there. You see the rules were that both men had to stand still until both shots were fired. Charles turned and shot hitting Jackson around his ribs. Jackson then took his time to aim so that his shot would be fatal. He calmly took a bullet so he could kill his opponent guaranteed.
When Jackson’s friend approached him about this, Jackson said
“If he had shot me through the brain, sir, I should still have killed him.”
I have been living in the US for about 7 months now. I am strictly comparing my life in India and here:
India has PayTM: You don’t need to carry cash, cards. Most businesses, even small stores, auto rickshaws have paytm facility. Here I cannot, cannot, leave my credit card at home!
Public Transport: Is almost non-existent, at least where I live. There is the Caltrain, at a 1 hour frequency, and some buses and VTA, but they usually do not cover the routes I need. And I cannot just take an auto rickshaw to the grocery or Target/Walmart. If I don’t have a car, I need to depend on Uber/Lyft which are expensive.
Online shopping experience: Myntra, Jabong, Flipkart, Amazon, most e-commerce biz in India have home pickup for returns, which you don’t have here.
Laundry is a headache: Most apartments do not have in house laundry, dryers, and making several trips to the laundry room is not something I enjoy. Not to mention, it is expensive too ($1.5 laundry + $1.25 dryer per load)
Medical Services are way too expensive and not easily accessible: Medicines and vaccines are expensive. Something like a tetanus shot which costs Rs. 50 (less than $1) in India, costs $80 here. I can get spectacles made for Rs. 2000 (~ $30) in India, but it would cost me upwards of $300 here. In India, I do not need an appointment in most cases, and I can walk in to a clinic. For my son’s eye checkup, I got an appointment for after 2 months. For the spectacles, the optometrist said they do not have the technician available and can only accommodate us after 3 weeks(!!).
Paper wastage: I get so many paper adverts in my mail every two days, which go straight in to the bin. Sheer waste of paper! And the DMV refused to accept a soft copy of one of my documents. They said they need a hard paper copy! I thought the US was at the forefront of the Digital revolution.
Tipping: Expect to pay about 15%-30% more than your actual restaurant bill, for the tip. There is no service whatsoever, servers just come and put your food on the table.
Shopping experience: Shopping here is not something I enjoy. There is usually no one around to help you with sizes, suggestions or finding something. They simply tell you to go help yourself by saying that whatever they have is out there, so you are left to find stuff yourself.
Lifeless atmosphere: Every city, village in India is vibrant, full of life (and noise 🙂 ). I miss that very much here.
Of course, my answer is restricted to my observations and my small sphere of life. There are definitely greater differences, social, political, economical, which some people have put up here. I just listed some that common folks like me might experience.
Thank you for the upvotes!
Just a couple of months short of completing a year in the US, and I keep finding things that I wish were different ( I know I sound very cynical, but I am not, and I do appreciate the good things in the US too)
Going to add a few more to this list:
10. Road trips aren’t as much fun as they are back in India. Half the fun of those long road trips lies in watching the scenic beauty on the way and halting at roadside dhabas or tapris for chai and bhajiyas or food. Be it any highway, you are bound to find one or two such small roadside hotels or dhabas where you can stop and savour hot food and talk and laugh with your companions. I do not find that here. Road trips are just driving on long freeways or interstates where sometimes people tend to fall asleep due to the monotonous driving.
11. International shipping : There are very few choices in that regard, namely FedEx, UPS and probably DHL. And they are quite expensive. FedEx gave me an estimate of between $100–200 plus $30 for the box ( which is not charged separately in India) for a 4lb (less than 2kgs) shipment. Whereas, our parents sent us 8 kgs of Diwali faraal 🙂 from Pune for less than $70.
12. I miss the air of celebration or festivity here. During Diwali, Indians might put up their festive lights and diyas on their patios, but they do that and go back into their houses and shut the doors or pull the blinds. That’s that! That was Diwali here. Sad. But, the same Indians celebrated Halloween with such gusto, I was left wondering is this what happens when we move to the US? That we forget to celebrate our own festivals the way they ought to be while embracing the festivities of the West? While I see nothing wrong with the latter, I would have definitely loved to see more enthusiasm towards the former.
13. Gun violence: The gun violence happening in the US is being covered in almost newspaper and sites. It has created a general unsafe atmosphere. Especially the shootings in schools and colleges, innocent young lives being snuffed out by some senseless act of violence are tremendously sad.
14. New Year celebrations: India – restaurants, malls, roadside dhabas, almost everywhere that you get food, open till 5 am. US- most restaurants closed post lunch or early evening on 31st Dec and closed whole day on 1st January. So, we had very limited choices of restaurants to go to for New Year’s Eve dinner.
15. Limited places for kids to play: Most apartments here do not allow kids to play inside the apartment premises. Kid scooters, bicycles are not allowed. Playing in corridors is also discouraged so as not to disturb residents during quiet hours. Going to a park everyday is not possible. So, all in all, kids have only the school grounds to play mostly. It would be very helpful if apartments designate a play area for kids.
When my son was an infant, after my wife’s maternity leave was over, she went back to work about 30 minutes from our house. My job was about 90 minutes from our house. I had to leave home by 6am every morning to take my son to my in-laws for the day, so I could make it to work on time. Then, I had to be the first one out the door at work to make it back to my in-laws so I could pick up my son and bring him home. On a good day, I would be home with him by 6pm. On a bad day, particularly if it was snowing, we might not make it home until 8pm.
One day, my son slept through the morning ride to my in-law’s place, and was asleep when I went to get him at the end of the day. I realized, when I went to sleep that night, that I had not seen my son awake that entire day. Worse… he hadn’t seen me that day.
So I started looking for a job closer to home. Over the years, I’ve taught at four different schools, always getting as close as possible to my own house, to maximize the time I get to spend with my children. I’ve got my commute down to fewer than ten minutes now. It’s great! I even come home on my lunch break so I can walk the dog some days.
When I was very young, I’m guessing about 5 ,my uncle gave me a letter holder that was shaped like a dachshund, it became my favorite toy.
My grandfather was visiting, and he saw me playing with the letter holder. Which was dogs front and rear separated by coils, which would have held letters.
He said, “you’re playing with office equipment, that’s not for little boys, you don’t want that do do you “ I assured I did, that it was my favorite toy. He took it anyway. My mother wouldn’t stand up to him, and he was gone.
When he died about 10 years later. I went to his office to get my toy back, just on principle. It wasn’t on his desk, my grandmother said that she had never seen anything that looked like what I described.
When I was about 8, we had a standalone bathroom sink that just stuck out of the wall. My grandfather very nicely made us a stand that went around the sink, with two doors on the front. It allowed us to store stuff in the bathroom. It looked professionally done. He said it was practice for the one he would build himself.
A month later, he came down with one that was miscut badly. He took it into the bathroom and replaced the good one with the garbage one.
He said that he needed the good one in his nice house, and the crappy one wouldn’t look out of place in our house, and he didn’t want to spend the money on new supplies.
Honestly! Who would take back, what was supposedly a gift of love, that he had made for his daughter.
Writing anonymously so it don’t come to bite me back…
To win some times you ‘really’ have to lose
I was working for a US based MNC in India’s self proclaimed Silicon valley.
I was leading a team, the work was too strenuous. I was clocking in around 12–17 hours of office time everyday for almost 8 months. My health started to deteriorate (constant back problems) due to long hours of sitting. I was not able to spend time with my newborn baby. Had to practically live in office for almost couple of months. And to top it all , Management was the least bit supportive , they take employees for granted and make their life hell. As in most services based companies , work life balance is a distant dream. They thought Vacations are an aberration, And thought that the more miserable an employee became the more productive he becomes.
To cut the long story short , I decided enough is enough and that I would pull the plug on the job. I work for my life sustenance and not the other way around. The problem is we have to serve 3 months of Notice period, which is a big NO for most recruiters. During the week when I was mentally preparing for this ordeal, my Manager approaches me saying , your performance is OK, but we are initiating a Performance Improvement Program (PIP) for your own benefit. Which they thought would make me more productive. They thought this would make me teach a lesson, and I would work ‘HARDER’, and this was a process were they monitor me for a month and would let go if employee is not performing better. This is an absolute horrendous experience for any employee to go through. Let alone somebody who literally ‘broke their back working’.
But this was a boon in my scenario if I fail not only they would let me go in a month but also they would give me four months Salary ( They don’t want the undesirables to hang around). I kind of simply stopped working , and made sure I fail in ALL the review meetings , we don’t want to leave anything for chance do we? , with a puppy face of course. So at the end of the Month , I was relieved of my duties and I received 4 months of my salary in due time. And I landed the next job in 2 months which gave me 30% hike as well.
There was a time, quite a few years ago, when I worked as a cashier at Burger King. I mostly worked at the front counter, taking orders and keeping things neat and tidy up front.
One night, I noticed that our drive-thru times were seriously lagging, even though we weren’t that busy. The kitchen was sending food out quickly, and I was bagging it up just as fast, so why did we have four orders waiting to go out the window?
I went to investigate and found my drive-thru employee in the middle of a meltdown. We had a dinosaur for a system back then, and the drive-thru was tricky because the register didn’t tell you how much change to give back, just how much the order cost. To help those who needed it, we kept a calculator by the register, but apparently, nobody had thought to let the new girl know it was there.
Honestly, though, she wasn’t the only one who struggled with making change, and it always shocked me how many people were incapable of doing basic math without technological assistance.
Long story short, I ended up teaching many of them how to make change without the calculator, but it was shocking how many high school and college kids could not make small change.
After my husband was killed in an accident, friends and family sent their condolences and were ready to help me with whatever they could. Many brought us meals and others took care of the yard work and some gave money and gift cards. I was very grateful for all their kindness. It was overwhelming how kind people were, it brought tears.
In time things began to settle down. I was cooking out meals and mowing the yard. But what continued on was the sympathy. I’d be in Walmart and I’d see a friend or neighbor, and the conversation would be about how I was doing and how sorry they were, and even when I’d say I’m doing fine and just want to get past the pain, it was as if they didn’t hear me.
Everytime the phone rang it was someone who was reaching out, praying for me, and asking if I was ok.
It’s hard to be grateful and appreciate all the support, but at the same time wanting to move on without hurting anyone.
Grieving my loss was going well. It was front constantly reminded of the tragedy that set me back. I had to stop answering my phone so I could heal. One day someone was knocking relentlessly at my door. I opened it to find a friend that I hadn’t talked to since before my husbands death. She was telling me to get my purse and come with her. I asked where we going? She said to have some fun, so grab your purse and let’s go.
Not once did she bring up his death. We talked about the stuff we had always talked about. We got our nails done, ate lunch at our fav fajita restaurant and stopped at a few antique stores. When we got to my house I asked her why I hadn’t heard from her and why she didn’t even ask how I was doing. Her answer was, she didn’t need to ask how I was doing, she knew how I was doing, she said you were grieving. I let you grieve. Nothing I could say or do would benefit you. I figured that after a few months of grieving you’d be ready to get away from everything and everyone that’s keeping you from moving on. She hugged me and said softly, Lori, it’s time to move on and live your life.
G’day folks, this is your captain speaking. Sitting next to me is my old cellmate Dave ‘Eye Patch’ Gordon who failed his driving test but passed the FAA exam, so as long as there’s no roads up there, we’ll be pretty safe. ‘Dave turn that oil leak light off please.’ We’ll be flying up over New York, then over Canada, where, on the way in, we were shaken like a shitting dog, so we’ll try and avoid that really rough air – no promises, but we’ll try. Then we’ll turn and begin our passage over the Atlantic. That British Airways jet parked next to us gave us the bird last night, so we’re likely to give that asshole a close pass on climb-out. Our cabin crew, led by the gorgeous and ample Lisa will serve you dinner later. Enjoy a few drinks on us and when we turn off the no-smoking sign, light-up those Malboros and be kind enough to throw one in my direction. In the meantime, while we’re waiting for our slot from these union controllers, spare a thought for us pilots, whose lives depend on these assholes when they walk off the job. We’re flying an old 747 original today, so if you hear it moaning and groaning or even see an engine fall off, we have three others, built in 69 and patched up with some really good glue. Dave, turn that fucking oil leak light off.
Maybe they do but unlike the U.S. China has culture, US don’t. Unlike the U.S. China knows right from wrong., the U.S. don’t! Unlike the U.S. they are mature, he U.S. is not! probably will never be! China don’t want anybody to attack anybody!
China don’t want another death. China want a safer and better and more peaceful world. These Arab and Muslim world want China to help make a better world. Not one that the white Caucasian can wake up on the wrong side of the bed and decide that they feel like carpet bombing them to kill their grand parents and their babies and children and they can pluck from the sky any excuses such as WMD or made up genocide such as Uyghurs forcing Japan into a 30 years stagflation!
Arabs an Muslims are not wrong, they want a life that the U.S. cannot fxxked the up! Or steal every penny that they work hard to save. But U.S. insist that they must have the monopoly rot do genocide and slaughter! Why?
Because of their skin colour! Because of their religion and their Anglos Saxon culture! They can kill and not be killed! Because like whites Caucasian humans they deserved to raped any coloured women and lynched any coloured human because they are 4/5 of an actual human!
Yes their message is that there are are behind the Chinese. If the U.S. misbehave they will all fight a war that totally destroy America. China is frankly calming them down! The world ought to rid the U.S. rules based International order 50 years ago!
DNA Clinic Reports: Half Of Men Who Take Paternity Tests Are NOT The Real Father
1. Try to maintain a positive attitude as much as possible, it will make you more productive and better equipped to handle challenges.
2. Challenge yourself by setting realistic goals that stretch your capabilities and inspire you to work harder.
3. Take regular breaks throughout the day to give yourself time to relax and recharge.
4. Surround yourself with positive people who support you and help you achieve your goals.
5. Visualize success in your mind’s eye – see yourself completing the task or achieving the goal in a clear, focused way and visualize this outcome happening with ease and enthusiasm.
6. Break down tasks into small manageable steps to help avoid feeling overwhelmed or discouraged by large projects or goals.
7. Create positive self-talk statements that motivate and remind you of your goals, abilities, and purpose throughout the day.
8. Minimize multitasking and focus on completing one task at a time for greater clarity and productivity in your work or personal life endeavors.
9. Reassess strategies that have not worked for you in the past, rather than feeling like a failure try again with a different approach if necessary for success in any situation .
10 Finally remember, patience is key! Allow yourself adequate time to grow and accomplish objectives in life without putting too much pressure on yourself to succeed quickly .
Well this is not exactly of being fired or let go from a job but the revenge factor is there. Pretty immature now but at the time a very sweet one.
Back in the 80s I was on my senior year to become a CTA by Christmas. The well done summer job in the research lab of the local paper mill was rewarded by a job offering after I graduate. We set the contract signing to end of November. Surely I was happy about this.
Cometh the day of signing and the head of the HR explained they’ve received an order from high up that I cannot be hired. No names or reasons were given. After pulling some strings I got to know the picture.
In the lab school we had two classes and the teacher of the other one was an mean old frustrated witch for whom anybodys happiness and joy was a thorn in the eye. Nobody got along with her but since she was about to retire people just put it up with her. She of course heard about my job offer. As we of course all knew her husband was the chief of all labs at that papermill. The order not to recruit me came from him and was based on some bullshit about me. I personally never met him so it was easy to guess where the order came from. When I confronted the Witch about this she just smiled vily and said something nasty which prooved my suspicions. I was so furious I didnt know how to sit or think straight. Eventually left town to work at the university lab instead and academia actually became my career.
She was a dedicated gardener and had a collection of massive palm trees and other plants in our coffee room. Comes the graduation day all her plants suddenly turned brown and died. She was utterly upset about this and with watery eyes was thinking of some parasite attacking them. She was right – that parasite was me equipped with 2 kg of sodium hydroxide pellets dissolved in 10 l bucket of water. Poured on the plants the evening before graduation…
This is now over 33 years ago and I regret killing her plants…sorry for that….but at the time the revenge factor was pretty sweet.
I was sitting in a student bar many years ago with some friends. There was a young lady there who me and my friends knew from the Aikido class we went to. She was much better than us and we didn’t know her well but we had said hi as we went to her table.
A couple of large guys came in being rather loud and obnoxious. We ignored them but one of them decided to start hassling the young lady who was sitting alone at the bar reading her course book. We would have got involved but she didn’t need us to! She told him no, he tried to grab her and then, like a flash, she just put him in a wrist lock. She didn’t move from the bar, just put the lock on one of his hands and he collapsed in agony, a few seconds later she took it off again and repeated her request for him to go away. This time he did, rather sheepishly!
Chicken Bokeumtang (Spicy Korean Chicken)
IMG 0552
Ingredients
1 (4 pound) whole chicken, cut into 11 pieces with bone in and skin on
1 pound potatoes, peel, halved or quartered
3 to 4 carrots, peeled, cut into large chunks
2 onions, cut into large chunks
8 cloves garlic, chopped
3 tablespoons Gochujang, Korean red pepper paste
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon Gochugaru, Korean red pepper flakes (optional)
1 tablespoon honey or granulated sugar
2 tablespoons rice wine
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon sesame seeds, plus more for garnish
4 green onions, sliced into 2 inch pieces
Instructions
Bring enough water to boil to blanch chicken in a large Dutch oven; add chicken into boiling water, bring back to boil, about 5 to 10 minutes.
Drain chicken into a strainer and rinse pot quickly. Rinse chicken under cold water and place back to pot.
Add potato, carrot, onion and garlic to Dutch oven.
In a small mixing bowl, combine gochujang and next 6 ingredients. Add combined sauce into pot and toss everything together until chicken and vegetables are evenly coated with sauce. Cover, bring it to boil over medium high heat. Stirring frequently.
When it starts boil, reduce heat to medium and simmer for 40 minutes, stirring frequently for first 20 minutes of simmering to prevent burn bottom of pot.
Stir in green onion and remove from heat.
Transfer to a serving plate, garnish with some more sesame seeds.
Serve with warm cooked rice, kimchi and other your favorite side dishes!
БОЙЦЫ ДОЛЖНЫ ОТСТОЯТЬ МАЛЕНЬКУЮ ДЕРЕВНЮ. МОЩНЫЙ ВОЕННЫЙ ФИЛЬМ БОЕВИК! ЛУЧШИЙ ФИЛЬМ ПРО ВОЙНУ! Ржев
After my mother died, I spent a few months living in her (our) house and taking care of it, and arranging probate issues. It was a difficult time, as my second wife (the wife from Hell, and BTW…the person who worked for MAJ to “retire” me), demanded that she gets the entire estate “or else”.
So, I’m dealing with all these stressers.
Those in the “know” also know about this point in time. My fate forecast; I am entering my “triple black” inauspicious time, and I lost my job, my wife, my mother… and soon (though I didn’t know it yet) everything else.
But at this moment in time, I was in the house, and my brother came over with a close friend of his (ours).
We were all in the kitchen drinking. My mother had collected all sorts of wine that sat in racks in the kitchen / dining area, and they decided to open them up and start drinking.
And I stepped out to go onto the “sun room”.
After the first bottle, my brother said “corked”.
If a wine is “corked”, it means that it has been tainted by the cork, or rather a chemical compound which can be found in natural corks. This contamination gives off a very distinct smell and taste, which can be described as musty, earthy, wet cardboard, wet newspaper, or even wet dog. The term ‘corked wine’ refers to a wine contaminated with cork taint, which can happen if the wine is bottled with a TCA-infected cork.
Which means that the wine had been sitting too long, and somehow the wine went bad. Now, this might be a term used by aficionados, but for us “regular folk” (and I know, I drink one FUCK of a lot of wine) it was just fine.
I tasted the wine.
It was fine.
I was in the other room, and when I went into the kitchen, imagine my horror when I watched my brother and his friend draining out about 35 bottles of (very expensive) wine down the sink. Claiming that it was “corked”.
wine down the drain
They weren’t “corked”. Not in the least.
Sheech!
…
As a wine lover, and as a wine aficionado, I still remember that moment with aghast horror. Such a pity! Such a waste. And what is really horrific, is that he has no idea… none… not one iota what he did.
Everyone… what ever you do, don’t though out wine unnecessarily. Even if corked, it can still be used for cooking! Sheech!
Don’t know about my “best” friend but I remained close with an ex. She didn’t like my partner for (mostly) racist reasons. But they were civil together when we met up.
I didn’t tell her we were expecting. But at 20 weeks my partner experienced severe pain and was hospitalised for 4 days. This came up in conversation. She deduced that we were expecting.
She pushed me to ask for an abortion.
She then posted it on Facebook to around 2000 followers, asking for advice about persuading someone to get an abortion. To a group I was a member of.
I blocked her on all meeja and we haven’t spoken since.
She did send a message apologising. Not for the sentiment, but for taking it public. That really doesn’t address the core issue, which is that she wanted my beautiful daughter – the love of my life – executed because of her hatred of my partner. It’s going to be difficult to remain friends after that.
Copeland’s of New Orleans Crawfish Etouffee
2023 11 13 06 55
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
6 cups water
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon lobster base
1 pound fresh crawfish tail meat
Pinch black pepper
Pinch white pepper
Pinch cayenne
1 tablespoon paprika
1 teaspoon peanut oil
1 cup chopped yellow onion
4 teaspoons all-purpose flour
Salt to taste
1 cup chopped green onions
1 teaspoon minced garlic
3 tablespoons finely chopped parsley
6 cups cooked white rice
Instructions
Prepare a stock by bringing the water to a boil. Add bay leaves and lobster base. Allow to boil for about 20 minutes or until the water has reduced to 5 cups of stock. Hold aside.
In a mixing bowl, combine the crawfish tails with black, white, and cayenne pepper.
Add the paprika and stir together well.
In a medium-size pot, heat the peanut oil at a near high setting. Oil should be hot but not smoking.
Add the chopped yellow onion and stir until translucent.
Add the crawfish tails and stir until they are heated and cooked through and have attained a good bond with their fat.
Add flour and mix well.
Pour in stock gradually, stirring constantly, until sauce achieves a substantial thickness and consistency.
Season with salt to taste.
Add the green onions, garlic, and parsley. Reduce the heat to a medium setting and simmer for about 10 minutes more.
Serve over a bed of cooked white rice.
Notes
If desired, you may stir in 2 to 3 tablespoons of butter to completed etouffee for added richness.
Attribution
Posted by GayleL at Recipe Goldmine 9:17:49pm 4/19/03.
The New Thai Tax Law that EVERYONE is Talking About
Big news in Thailand. This new tax law has everyone talking, and a bit scared. I will detail the rules and how it might affect you. So if you’re ever considering relocating to Bangkok, Phuket, Chiang Mai, Samui or anywhere else in Thailand, there’s lots of information in this video.
Years ago I bought a USB “dongle” for Internet access, through a company called Orange.
It was a pay monthly arrangement.
The bloody thing never worked, their customer services eventually admitted that the area I was in had very poor access and it wasn’t going to improve soon.
I said let’s just cancel.
They said no, you signed up for a year.
I said fine, and cancelled the regular payment, after sending them a letter explaining why, with my contemporaneous notes from a series of calls.
They kept sending demands. I said jyst take me to small claims court, we’ll see what the judge says. My view was, if the thing doesn’t work I ain’t paying for it. Contractual obligations go both ways.
Eventually they gave up, but clearly sold the debt (iirc around £250) to some agency.
The agency got in touch, but their phone number was a premium rate one. I sent a letter explaining my side, inviting them to small claims.
At around 6 month intervals for 2 years, different debt agencies tried- presumably these guys sell debts on?
Eventually, a reslly aggressive debt agency agreed to try it in small claims. They were based in London, I live 180 miles north.
I turned up, they didn’t. Well, not on time- some flustered legal junior arrived as I was leaving, and got a proper bollocking off the judge.
Judge awarded me, and my expenses/lost day’s pay, were to be covered by DebtTwat ltd.
I wasn’t expecting them to ever pay up, but i certainly wasn’t expecting them to send me a demand for flustered legal bloke’s train fare, taxi, and fee.
Obviously i tore this up and sent it back without a stamp.
We once took my son and his family out for a meal. The bill was £150, and I paid it with a card. I asked the waiter if I could add a tip and he proffered the card machine to let me do so. I added £20 and paid and we left.
As we got to the car park I glanced at the receipt and realised I’d actually given him a tip of 20p, clearly defining me as tight-arse, so I proceeded back into the restaurant, spotted our waiter, in a group of two or three of them at the bar, apologised for my mistake and gave him a £20 note. Smiles all round. I’d clearly done the right thing.
However as I left for the second time, I couldn’t resist adding “By the way, I’ll take my 20p back next time I’m here”
This caused a roar of laughter, and on subsequent visits has made us memorable and very well looked after. As I pay – more carefully with the tip – I am asked “Will you take your 20p now, Sir?”
The Standard Female Delusion Chart – a tool to reduce dating drama
Technology has enabled countless millions of desperate and morally bankrupt men to constantly shower mediocre women (there’s nothing wrong with being mediocre — most of us are) with attention. Naturally, women assume that this attention is higher-quality than it actually is, because “why wouldn’t people like me?” It’s an understandable mistake. We all want to believe we are “worth it.”
Simply put, a huge wave of sleazy, short-term, hookup-level interest from men is being mistaken – by the women who receive it — as akin to marriage proposals, and they are subsequently developing deeply emotionally and ego-rooted beliefs that they are all 9s, which is mathematically impossible. They then proceed to reject men who are far more likely to treat them well and pursue men who see them as nothing but cheap conquests, resulting in avoidable emotional damage, which they then take out on men in an intensifying cycle of resentment.
I must stand against this, and all I have is a voice. The only power that a man has to stop this cycle is to stop playing the game of letting women think he wants to be with them for real, when he knows he doesn’t. Shame on you. Stop that.
The only power that a woman has to stop this cycle is by being realistic about her actual value and finding men who are most likely to give her the maximum return for what she offers. Stop letting yourself believe that users love you.
That’s a delusion.
These diagrams are only roughly based on non-scientific data, but they are heavily rooted in real-life experience that proves itself true again and again.
I am confident that if women use them to identify the correct men and get to know them, they will have better luck starting relationships that last, and that will cause much less drama, heartbreak, confusion, and wasted time.
Also, my content does and always will contain humor to clarify and intensify the points that I’m making. Try to not take my content as being in competition with formal science, but rather as evidence-and-experience-based advice to avoid common dating problems. I tripped over a lot of rocks so you don’t have to. Best luck out there.
I had scheduled a young woman for a very long (easily 12+ hour) surgery on a deep-seated brain tumor right next to her brainstem. Having explained the risks and benefits of the surgery at length like I usually do (including significant risks of death, coma and stroke), she was more concerned about how much of her hair I would remove to do the surgery.
The night before surgery, I got a terrible flu – fever to over 103, malaise, joint and muscle pains, the works. In the end, I had no choice but to cancel her surgery and schedule for another day …
… expecting she would understand … I mean, who would want to undergo such a massive and dangerous surgery if the surgeon were that ill?
Well I was wrong. The patient became furious, hostile, angry, blamed me for inflicting emotional distress … demanded that I immediately find another surgeon to do the surgery that morning (not possible) … later lodged complaints up and down the hospital system … filed complaints with the medical staff … threatened to sue me … it took weeks to calm her – and our hospital – down.
It was the first time I had ever canceled a surgery in >20 years.
It’s what you get in a society that demands more than it understands. A society in which people live their lives in imaginary worlds conjured up by media (including doctor stereotypes) far removed from any sense of real humanity.
ADDENDUM:
A few Comments made me realize that not everyone understood my Answer, and I should perhaps clarify a few things:
the tumor was not near any part of the brain that would affect intellect or emotions
this patient was not “dying of a brain tumor;” while the surgery was going to be long and dangerous, it was far from urgent
I gently passed her care on to another neurosurgeon (it’s never a good idea to operate on someone who lacks faith in you), who operated on her a few weeks later; I heard she did well (though her attitude remained problematic)
there are no “back-up surgeons” waiting in the bullpen in case a surgeon gets sick: nowhere in the U.S., nowhere in Europe and nowhere in the world. Not like TV.
this is especially true of small sub-specialties like Neurosurgery
the all too common 60+ hour neurosurgical work week is packed full of patient responsibilities, and it is unrealistic to expect a colleague to abandon their own patients just to fill a gap like that at the last minute
no patient would want to undergo a huge brain surgery by someone they just met that morning – nor would most surgeons want to do a “surprise surgery” at the last minute. Neurosurgeons must do a lot of preparation before embarking on big, complicated cases. It’s not at all like you see on TV.
of course the hospital and its committees understood my situation completely (any reasonable person would understand that doctors can get sick), but they are obliged to investigate every complaint – hence a whole lot of unnecessary time and effort
To be honest, what I found most disconcerting about some of the negative Comments was how easily some people could make major assumptions about this story instead of simply asking me questions to clarify the situation.
Such Comments are just another example of: “demand more than understand.”
Why I’ll Never Move Back To America…
The American Dream… Is it dead or alive? In this video, I share THREE reasons why I don’t foresee myself ever moving back to America and why moving to the Philippines was potentially the best decision my family has ever made. Enjoy!
At the age of fifteen, thirteen days after my fifteenth birthday to be exact, I went out on my first real date. He came to my door and picked me up and we walked to a party. We had so much fun. He walked me home and he kissed me goodnight and he asked me to be his girlfriend. This felt like the greatest night in the whole world. Nothing could bring me down from my giddy and excited teenage crush!
….except for what happened the next morning.
I was awoken by my mother shaking me gently but urgently saying, “Honey? Erin. You need to get up now sweetie. Daddy’s going to die today…”
Those words ripped me out of any dreams I was having and back into the waking nightmare that had become my life for the last two years. I lived in constant fear that I was going to lose the bravest, strongest, most honourable, incredible man this world had to offer, but never really truly believed in my heart that it could happen. For me, to believe that he was really dying would be a betrayal to my hero. I would be giving up on him, and you never give up on your hero, not ever.
I learned that day that no amount of wishful thinking or prayer can change your circumstances.
The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do is to tell my dad that it was okay for him to die. He was hanging on with everything he had but it was time for him to go. I told him out loud that it was okay to let go, that we would be okay. We all told him that he had permission to die and to stop struggling so hard. And as soon as we said those things to him he passed away.
I held his hand as he took his last breath.
I watched my hero lose a terrible battle with cancer and I didn’t really know if I would be okay. I may have just lied to the person I loved most in this world. But I still believe I did the right thing. Setting my dad’s mind at ease was the most important thing to me that day, not wondering whether I’d be okay.
And to tell the truth I’m not sure I ever have been okay since that day. Something inside of me changed forever and I haven’t been able to get the old me back.
But I let my dad believe we would be okay because that was what he needed to move on. And I’d do it for him again in a heartbeat.
I had an uncle who was mildly retarded. It wasn’t Down Syndrome, it was probably lack of oxygen at birth, but people could tell just by looking at him that he was different.
That may be why 3 18 or 19 year old teens thought that they would jump my uncle and my grandmother while they were walking through their neighborhood in Bridgeport, Connecticut. What could an old lady and a 30 year old “retard” do to them?
I haven’t mentioned it yet, but my uncle was the youngest of 11 children. 9 of those kids were boys. So even though his brothers had taken it a little easier on him because of his mental disability, he was still used to playing rough and fighting. A lot. So when these teens threatened him and his mother he snapped. He hospitalized all 3 kids. He wrapped one of the kid’s arms around a tree backwards, the opposite direction of the kid’s elbow.
When the first officers showed up they put my uncle in cuffs, thinking he had initiated the carnage. My grandmother set things straight. My uncle had just defended his mother and himself.
The American Child vs The Chinese Child || 美国孩子 vs 中国孩子.
A student got sassy with a teacher about a grade and the teacher kicked him out of the room. The student grabbed a pencil and stabbed the assistant teacher in the room. Just in the hand, but still.
So the teacher goes rage mode and physically marches the student down to the deans office. Everyone is initially furious at the student, he’ll be expelled for sure. Assistant teacher is shaken but fine.
Daddy was a big donor to the school and the kid was on the state championship bound Football team. Daddy argued with the school, who reverses the expulsion and instead fires the teacher for “laying hands on a student.”
There were walk outs, several other teachers quit, the local news picked it up, the whole nine yards. Nothing changed. The school kept the little asshole to keep Daddy happy and fired a very, very good teacher.
When I was a cocky, long-haired punk and could get girls just by walking up and talking to them, I saw what I thought was two women getting in a car. I went up to the driver’s side and said something to the girl behind the wheel involving the word “ladies”. The long-haired dude in the passenger seat leaned over and said “Ladies?” he was annoyed I had tried to hit on his GF, but we laughed it off.
Entitled Women Make First Date List, And It BACKFIRES
I’m 61. My husband is 69. We can’t figure out how to use the kiosk. This morning, we added what we wanted to our order, but couldn’t figure out how to check out. The only icon that looked like it was a possibility was “Review Order” and it was greyed out. So, we were stuck. We backed out of it and left the restaurant. Also, when we saw the “login” prompt, we thought we might have to create an account which we don’t want to do. It’s just one more login and password we would have to remember. Nobody was at the counter to provide assistance. I’ll be diplomatic here. McDonald’s doesn’t sell weed. They sell shitty fake food. There’s nothing in their stores that I can’t live without…for the rest of my life. So, if they’re not willing to assist an old couple by taking their order, we won’t go into their restaurant(s) anymore. We went home and made a veggie omelet, hash browns, and cantaloupe. It was superior to anything on the McDonald’s menu and cooking it was less stressful than trying to figure out that fucking kiosk. Fast service that’s easy is basically all McDonald’s has going for it these days. And, they won’t even do that anymore. Plus, they’re using these non user friendly machines to phase out workers. Fuck ‘em.
I was going to download my banks, banking app, I always read the fine print. They want control of my camera, and they want permission to edit my contacts list.
I said “No” they said that the app wont work without access. I access my bank over the Internet, through their website directly, without going through the app. It works fine. Yet they don’t have access to my camera or contacts, funny about that.
I was on a subway train in DC. I had my five year old son with me, plus a few bags. I’m sitting on one end of the car, paying attention to the stops because I really don’t want to miss ours. A young black man grabs a seat on the other end of the car. I’m thinking gang member. Bandana. Gold jewelry. Baggy pants. Mind you, there were enough people on the train I certainly wasn’t concerned… that was just the impression I had. Anyway, we’re approaching our stop. My son has fallen asleep. The car isn’t jam-packed but it is kind of full. I’m wondering how I’m going to pick up my son and our stuff and make it to the door before the doors close.
As I struggle to get to my feet and head for the door, I see a foot casually hooked around the door, so it can’t close.
Yep. The black kid with the bandana and jewelry. As I look over, he flashes a smile.
We got off the train with no problem. A few people moved out of our way, but I didn’t see anyone else attempting to actually help.
Was he a gang member? Who knows. Who cares. At that moment, he was kind and helpful to a stranger. That’s all that mattered.
I went to apply for a job one time, and when I got there, the lead hand introduced himself to me while shaking my hand.
I had never been to this place before.
As he was shaking my hand this other guy jumped out from behind a machine, and in a gleeful, boisterous tone yells out to the lead hand, as he’s pointing to me, “There’s the guy! There’s the guy right there, that’s going to show you how to work that machine!”
It was a guy that I worked with at a previous job. He was a helper that was assigned to me whenever necessary.
I couldn’t believe it.
The lead hand looks at me, and that second I knew I was in.
I was in an elevator on a cruise ship. Some wiseacre saw my polka-dot suspenders.
He smirked, “Nice suspenders. You from Wisconsin?”
I replied, “No. Ever since my cancer surgery, I can’t wear a belt.”
His smirk instantly evaporated. The elevator doors opened on my floor, and I got out.
Soft tissue sarcoma caused by Agent Orange in Vietnam, They took out 1–3/4 pounds of me from my groin to my beltline. It left a notch where a belt would sit, so I can’t wear a belt comfortably.
The Legendary Mao in 1954 felt that any party member whose kids studied in Missionary Schools run by Western ideology , could not be trusted
In 1964, he felt such party members were Collaborators and Enemies
Thus every CPC member wisely decided to ensure his kids studied in Local Chinese schools and so the Party built more and more and more and more Schools all across China
Since their own members kids would study in these schools, the quality of these schools were higher and the subjects better
In 1996, Jiang Zemin after 42 years decided to repeal this old rule from Maos time and allow CPC members to send their kids to private schools
Then they discovered something
They discovered that Private School Quality was LOWER than Government School
Nobody wanted to send their kids to Private School.
Math, Science, Physics was of a tougher standard and teachers were the best
Thus even if it was due to fear of being branded a Collaborator, the fact is due to Mao – Chinas Education System became one of the best and it’s Government run schools became top notch
Indias misfortune was India never had a visionary like Mao or Deng
We did have Kamaraj but he was too localized
In India, Children of Politicians studied in the finest schools and later typically in UK Or US or Canada and foreign Universities
As a result there was NO REASON for Politicians to focus on quality education
India is a cesspit democracy
Long term vision was replaced by Short term election strategies
As a result, India focused on the BARE MINIMUM for State Or Centre sponsored Education
China and India were both equally pauper nations in the 1970s , in fact India was a tad bit richer
Yet China spent more on Education due to it’s long term vision , spent more on training teachers, spent more on sending teachers to foreign countries for enhancing their knowledge
India?
Politicians lined up their pockets
They duped the public
They openly stole public money and lined their coffers
Still even in 1992, there was some hope
Reservations destroyed it
The principle that a Moron Dullard was entitled become a Neurosurgeon or Doctor merely because Great Grand Daddy was oppressed a few decades ago
Plus the fact that this system was exploited even further when the genuinely oppressed weren’t at all given the chance
Instead a handful of wealthy persons took advantage of loopholes and drove quality into the Ground
China meanwhile had Crisp, Lovely, Meritocracy
A Son of a Sweeper could become an Engineer if he had merit, or a sweeper if he didn’t. Only Ability mattered.
By 2014, China was at a place India couldn’t reach with a hundred ladders
Then under Modiji, we all hoped things would improve
That at last we would have an AFFORDABLE EDUCATION ACT
That at last Modi would set a National Education Program and do what Mao did in 1954
Didn’t happen
Private Education raping the average Indian family with absurd tuition fees
Modiji focusing on Language policies, Sanskrit, Vedas and changing India to Bharat and removing Chapters on Mughals
The Average Chinese focusing on Python and Technology. The Average Indian on Ram, Laxman and some made up lies about how Modi is a superhero
It’s why, the Top 5% or 10% Chinese and Indians are similar
Yet the Average Chinese can swallow the Average Indian for breakfast, lunch and dinner
The Below Average Chinese os more than a match for the Average Indian
The Below Average ‘Educated’ Indian is on the lowest rung
Plus Indias biggest problem is the AVERAGE INDIAN
He doesn’t realize there is a problem at all
Realizing there is a problem means needing to work on a Solution and needing to recognize failure
Sorry. We are India. We are the best. We have no weaknesses.
Our Education system is flawed
Most refuse to agree. Some who agree make excuses including blaming Manmohan Singh. Some talk ‘Practically’ and say India needs to do nothing but everything will magically happen
Like I said, India is heading to a point where it would end up as a hotch potch, mish mash of uneven growth, a kind of Tumor rather than a crisp engine of growth with a Vision like China or even Vietnam
The $ 10 Trillion India would be a Huge Tumor rather than a nice neat rocket
Unless India buckles up and begins basic structural reform of Education, Healthcare and Liberal Laws
1. Everyone is insecure about something. It’s not just you.
2. You will never be 100% sure about decisions you made. But always make a decision because it’s better to go back and fix it than to never make it at all.
3. There is always someone better than you. So there’s no point to compare.
4. There’s nothing in life you can really control except your own thoughts and actions. So always hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
5. Nothing lasts forever. Things change, people change. And YOU can change anytime too.
6. Life is not a fairy tale. That’s why it’s always exciting and you’ll never be bored.
7. Hard work doesn’t guarantee success. But that’s what makes it challenging.
Going anonymous on this one, sorry about it, I just don’t think I can face being associated with the story I am about to tell. It will be a bit long-winded but one of the weirdest encouters ever happened in my life. And as it happened in a date, so…
Here it goes:
I signed up for a free dating site and started chatting to several guys. One of them, seemed like a nice and decent person.
When we started talking, it was about usual topics, interests. The conversation was flowing, as they say. I gave him my mobile number and he sent me texts every day, just some niceties. One of them was “I think we are on the same wavelength” “I hope so” I responded. I haven’t the slightest known yet, how wrong I was on assuming so…
After a week of talks, we set up a real life date.
He lived around an hour train ride from me and came to the station to pick me up. When I entered his car, he looked up to the sky and said: “do you find those clouds a bit weird?” There were no clouds, only condensation trails from airplanes. I said: “these are not clouds”
To which, he responded: “exactly” and had an expression on his face as if he just had said something really meaningful. Bit of an odd exchange, but I shrugged a shoulder and we did not mention the “not-clouds” again.
To my surprise, the date he set up was not the usual movie or restaurant combo with drinking, instead he took me to the riverside on a boat ride. I was enjoying it a lot, we both did a bit of rowing, it was sunny, we chatted nonchalantly.
We were talking about building styles in the UK (I am a foreigner) and I told him my impressions about buildings and differences to my home country. I also added that my dad is a bricklayer, so I have seen many houses being built.
To this, he said: “I have built something too” I asked: “What did you build?” “It is very unique. You will see it once, I hope.” – he said mysteriously. “What is it, a bunker?” – I joked and we laughed out loud.
The first date was over. I thanked him for the pleasant time and laughs. There was not much chemistry between us but I thought, what the hell, I will give another chance. So, when the next day he asked me for a second date, a dinner in his house, I said yes.
We drove to his house, where he lived alone. A nice and big family home. He had a wine chilled and invited me to look around. Everything was tidy, clean and stylish. I was impressed. We settled and he poured me some wine.
Out of the blue, at one point, he told me to go outside and check his car.
The following conversation happened:
“Do you see the scratches on the side?” – he pointed on the side, where large, faint scratches were running. “Of course I can see them” “What do you think caused them?” – he asked again. “I suppose branches or grass, or other cars, maybe some metal objects, a key maybe?” – I said hesitantly unsure where this conversation is going. “Let me tell you: Satan did these scratches…” – sounded his response. “Pardon?” “Satan scratched my car.” – again that sort of meaningful expression. “You mean figuratively I think, mean people maybe with evil motivation?” – I tried to deter the distrubing turn. “No, literally, the Satan itself.”- he said dead serious.
Uh.ooo….
Do you know the feeling, when suddenly the world seem like upside down and the fear hits you momentarily to make you nausetic and words froze inside you? I had that, combined with one of the biggest WTF moment.
“Is this guy crazy or what?”
We went back inside, my alarm bells were set off after this, I tell you. I was like a hawk, watching for little signs of anything unexpected. Little did I know that the real fun starts later….
He suggested we go to the kitchen and eat dinner. At least something normal, right? Right. You would think that someone inviting you over would prepare something. This was not the case. He suggested we eat soft boiled eggs. I happen to like boiled eggs very much, so ate 4 of them with bread. No problem, I am not fussy. So far so good.
After dinner, we went back to the living room and I relaxed a bit as Satan and scratches, the weird clouds and non of this crap was mentioned again. However, around a half hour later, again without any transition he says:
“Let me blindfold you, so I can show you what I built”
My mind went screaming: NO.F**.WAY! Adrenaline rushed through my blood I could sense it. Right then, I became concerned that this guy wants to kill me. In the same time I decided he won’t have an easy task to do so as I will fight like hell. I am not timid and rather strong and quick, so I was sizing up my options to run to the kitchen, grab a knife and defend myself if it comes to that. At this point, I’m wondering who was crazier, me or him?
Amazingly this is what I responded to him without even thinking:
“You know what? You are not going to blindfold me. Reason is, I think you are plotting to kill me. I know. And I also want you to know that you are not going to succeed. I will fight until my last breath.” – I sounded very calm, which amazed me even further.
His eyes opened wide and seemed genuinely surprised.
“Ok, ok, I can see you are nervous. Calm down, I am not planning anything. Just wanted to surprise you. I can see it backfired, so let’s just go as we are. No blindfold, I promise!” – he said.
Even though I was scared, I was also curious, so I responded:
“Right. I will take a look, under two conditions. First: You go in front of me and Second: I will take a knife from the kitchen and walk behind you. One bad move and you are dead. Did I mention I do martial arts?”
He agreed to my conditions. So, here we are, walking out the backdoor into the dark garden. The wind is blowing, trees and bushes rustle ominously as we walk the path. Him in the front with a light, me behind him, armed with the biggest kitchen knife I have ever seen. Just a perfect picture of two batshit crazy lunatics. As a matter of fact I have never fought in my life, I’m absolutely terrified, I lied about the martial art thing as well, I don’t know what I’m doing here, who is this insane person with me, not a single soul knows I am even here – I think about my life, my family far away, my stupidity.
We reach the shed in the back, well away from the house. There is only me and him, the bushes, and complete silence. Around us and as in front of us, as much as I can tell, just some woody areas and meadows and… a garden shed.
“This is it” – he says standing in front of the shed. Just a normal wooden shed, with 6 locks on the door. “This is what you built? Well, good one, now we can go back” – I am almost relieved. “No, the one I built is inside. Do you allow me to open it?” – I realise he must be scared of me a bit too. I nod.
He removes the locks and opens the door. The first thing I saw is a big ass axe on the floor! I jump away and pull the knife in front of me defensively.
“I knew it! Is this your murder weapon?!” – I shout. I can feel my heart beating so fast.
“Sorry, sorry! This is not meant to be here, I will put it away, ok? There.”-he says quickly.
“Give me that axe. Handle first.” – I order. He did.
“Now, look inside” – he asks and steps aside.
Very slowly, keeping an eye on him, I look inside the shed. Nothing. No rotting corpses, no torture chamber, just a few gym equipment, gardening tools, completely normal. I sigh… maybe I imagine too much into this…until.. from the corner of my eyes I notice something on the floor.
This!!!!!!!!!!!!:
A submarine hatch door. Holy crap, like a bloody rollercoaster! My gut is churning again.
“You really built a bunker…” – this is all I can say. What? How? Why? Words would fail to describe my thinking processes. “Yes” – he says bluntly and asks me to allow him to open the hatch door.
Next thing I know is we are looking down into a hole with concrete stairs, thick concrete walls, going down few meters. A nuclear bunker.
I am thinking, “if he kills me now and closes the door, nobody will ever find me”
Let me tell you the end quickly.
I did went down and looked around in the nuclear bunker of his design. He wanted to know what I think of it. I pointed out that no air filtration, pollution measurement equipment and surveillance system was installed so I was not sure if it is of any use (apart from hiding dead bodies). He agreed it needs improvement.
After the tour, we went back to the house. As you can guess, I was exhausted and weary from the whole evening but a bit calmer as I was still alive.
I thanked him for everything and requested to leave. He cried and told me he never met such a cool person as I am…
I was happy I only met a lunatic and not a serial killer.
TL:DR
A guy took me for a second date and showed me the nuclear bunker he built driven by his ideas on an upcoming doomsday fight between evil and good.
Is refusing to be submissive and subservient to the U.S. threatening the U.S.? To you it may be, but to the rest of the world it is call standing up to their right!
Lets defined threat. If Iran say it will bomb Washington, LA, New York, Miami or Hawaii, that will be considered a threat. Did Iran do that? So far it is the U.S. that funded and supported Saddam Hussein to fight a war with Iran in the 1980’s and murder General Solameini an Iranian scientist by a drone in Iraq! That is threatening. But it is the U.S. threatening Iran!
Seriously unless you are blind, deaf or dumb could you asked such a ludicrous question! Come on man be real. The U.S. ought to know that, Americans must surely know that. And you by asking this question is seen by 7.5 billion out of 8 billion or world inhabitants as a fool to even ask this question.
The U.S. threaten Iran and half the world to be bomb into smitten daily. And anyone that refused to be submissive and subservient to them is their enemy. Such behaviour belongs to Ghengis Khan or Atilla the Hun, or the Vikings not a 21st century nation! Call a spade a spade! Make the world a better place.
In my opinion yes, but not now. I looked at the numbers about this. As I suspected, the main reason why China extracts and processes this much rare earth metals is its industry demands it. It is not because of low labor costs or lax environmental regulations.
Few relevant numbers:
Chinese mine production was 210,000 tonnes in 2022, limited by Chinese law for environmental reasons.
Global mine production was ~300,000 tonnes. Which means the Chinese share of global production was 70%.
China’s share in the processing of rare earth ores was 85%. This means around half of the non-Chinese production was imported to China for processing. We can conclude from here that China processed around 255,000 tonnes of rare earths in 2022.
China’s export volume was 48,000 tonnes in 2022. For the value of this trade, the last data is from 2021. And it is 653 million USD. Completely insignificant for China, especially when you consider that it is coming at an environmental cost. When you look at the volume, you see that China’s exports are barely higher than its imports (in terms of weight after the processing of the imported ores). China’s own industry uses almost as much as China extracts from its own soil. Really, it looks like this monopoly only emerged because the scale caused by domestic demand resulted in much lower prices compared to the rest of the planet.
If this monetarily insignificant trade is this important for countries who are trying to kill entire sectors of the Chinese industry, then China should stop this trade. Let them deal with years of shortages. But it is not a good time to do this now. Export controls should be timed so that non-Chinese shortages should coincide with the emergence of Chinese products that compete with the products of Western companies (primarily US, SK and Japan) suffering from the shortages. This is important because commodities are rarely irreplaceable.
When I moved into my first apartment, it was one of those fancy newer buildings that offered incentives on move-in. In my case, it was a low deposit and a free month of rent! Because I was signing for a mid-month move-in, they pro-rated their amounts. At this stage was when I started eating the big bucks working crypto-forensic analysis and scam tracking jobs for Coinbase.
I wrote my check, moved in, and all was well for about 2 years.
A few weeks after I got tossed a notice about the building’s management being changed, I received a new notice taped to my front door. It told me I owed the front office <insert blank> amount within 3 days or they would begin eviction proceedings.
I’ve paid rent on time my entire life so I couldn’t imagine what on earth I would owe. Then I read the amount typed into the <insert blank>.
$0.01.
Yes. One cent. One one-hundredth of one dollar. One penny, and they wanted it NOW or they were going to evict me. What the hell?!
I went down and talked to the nice people in front of the computers in the leasing office. They looked through the files and told me that the new management was going through the books and making the final debt collections in order to start the new term on solid bookkeeping. They were rounding up all the outstanding fees and demanding payment. My fee, it appears, had been hanging around for two years. Yep: a rounding decision on that pro-rated rent amount.
asked them why they didn’t waive it. They said they couldn’t. I wasn’t about to lose my home over a rounding error, no matter the principle. I dug into my pocket to get the damn coin and hand it over. They held up their hands.
“I’m sorry, we don’t take cash.” I am sure the look on my face was comical but inside I was boiling with baffled rage.
They made me write a check. In order to keep my apartment, I used a $0.10 sheet of specially coded paper to hand over to salaried employees to collect in a deposit bag to go into a bank to cover a rounded calculation that had been irrelevant for 2 years but was now suddenly the difference between shelter and the streets.
Once upon a time, I was a stay at home mother. My home was spotless, my daughter taken care of, dinner was ready when her father walked in the door. I was happy and felt fulfilled. I truly loved giving of myself to my family.
Until I found myself alone and I had to find work. I did what I had to. I work long hours. Some say I work too many hours. But they aren’t responsible for me or my daughter, so their opinion is irrelevant. That responsibility falls on me, and even if I ever did remarry, I would never expect anyone else to be responsible for her, other than myself.
I prefer to do all of the “domestic arts” myself. I enjoy them. But the hours I work and the responsibilities I carry outside of work necessitate that I delegate some things to others. I don’t mind paying someone to clean if it means it’s one less thing for me to worry about.
Well, for this, we have to go back to the closing years of World War II. Although Germany and Japan were still fighting, it was clear they were going to lose, but that meant cleaning up the economic mess that had been created by the war.
Now, historically, the British Pound Sterling had been the most common reserve currency due to its stability and the ability to convert paper money into gold. However, the British government had to go heavily into debt for the war and suspended conversion of paper money into precious metal. However, it hardly mattered as British gold reserves were under pressure as it borrowed more and more money.
Now, the United States was in debt too, but back in 1933 they had already suspended the ability to convert paper currency into gold (you could convert it to silver until 1964) and had made the ownership of gold illegal. They then consolidated all the gold held by the various regional Federal Reserve banks and all the private gold they confiscated (and gave paper money for) into a single depository next to Fort Knox in Kentucky. Moreover, most countries had finance their debt int he United States as their own markets collapsed. In other words, the United States was swimming in gold.
So in July 1944 all 44 allied nations met at a hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire and worked out the new world monetary order. At the top of the agenda was avoiding expensive and potentially destabilizing transfers of large amounts of gold which would allow nations devastated by war to have capital to rebuild.
The scheme essentially took gold entirely out of the market and fixed it to the U.S. dollar, with $35 U.S. being the equivalent of 1 ounce of gold. Nations in the compact, called “Bretton Woods”, would agree to buy all the gold they had at that rate. Each nation would be able to fix the value of their currency against the U.S. dollar (for example, 5 francs to the dollar) but would have to guaranteed that exchange rate for intercountry transfers (i.e. the U.S. could buy all the francs it wanted for dollars at that rate). Countries could change that rate (Canada did in the 1960s when it dropped the rate from $1.00 U.S. for $1.00 Cdn. to $0.975 U.S. to $1.00 Cdn.) but had to stand by it. In other words, gold would not routinely change hands, U.S. dollars would.
There was a catch. Even though people couldn’t exchange dollars for gold, countries could. Most countries held U.S. dollar reserves, which were largely from surplus exports to the U.S. If they wanted to, they could “take delivery” of gold, assuming they wanted to securely transport it from Fort Knox themselves.
As such, the U.S. dollar standard replaced the gold standard, as the U.S. dollar became the common currency for all the countries in the compact.
Of course, this only lasted until 1973 when Richard Nixon pulled the United States out of the agreement. From that point forward, there was no fixed rate between currencies and they traded on the open market. The U.S. also ended the prohibition against owning gold and started selling some or theirs on the open market.
A Golden Eagle, a roughly 1 ounce gold coin that the U.S. government sells at the current market price of gold, plus a small premium.
Most countries still use the U.S. dollar as their “reserve” or “exchange” currency, but that’s changing. For example, Argentina just moved from the dollar to the Chinese yuan, which is also quite stable because the Chinese government manipulates its value
I am 21 years old. When I was in 10th grade there was a girl A in school. Just like typical teenagers she had many rumours surrounding her. I ignored those and went ahead and made friends with her.
In some months we started dating. We were head over heels for each other. We had everything going great so shown in movies. One day when we were on a date, after coming out from washroom she gave me her phone. There she had written something which changed all my views on her. She wrote that she was raped at the age of 14 by a guy who forced her to be his girlfriend so that other people won’t suspect a thing.
Fearing society and her parents, she didn’t tell it to anyone. But had to undergo therapy. Her parents were totally unaware to real reason behind her behaviour. She lost a ton of weight and was living on medicines. This was really shocking for me. Then I had flashback of all the times when she had certain insecurities and why she required so much time to trust a person. She also had intimacy issues because of this. And that person had told her to shut her mouth or he’ll leak the tape which he had recorded. This rumour was spread in our school by her friends isolating her.
But now she’s a healthy person pursuing her career in engineering and I am a proud boyfriend.
America Warns China To Obey As US Debt Auction GOES BAD
I didn’t think I was a poor student until I arrived at USC for my MBA program. I had worked hard and saved up $150K, which was to last me exactly through the $100K in tuition for two years and $50K for basic living expenses. I had a 9 year old Lincoln and thought I was set. My naïveté lasted for about 10 minutes.
As soon as I pulled into the student parking lot, I could see all the late model cars, many of them luxury marks. This was the undergrad parking area. One blond undergrad roared her shiny white Cadillac Escalade down the ramp as I looked for a spot.
During our casual meeting time with fellow students, productively labeled as networking, I heard about the kind of massive homes in exclusive neighborhoods that were the norm. Many of my classmates had gotten new luxury cars just for school and had fancy upscale condos for partying during school. But, that was just stuff. What really blew my mind was their attitude about money on a daily basis.
Many would invariably go to night time parties two or even three times a week, all during some very intense course work. While I looked for ways to stick to my $25 daily food budget, they had no problem splurging a few hundred dollars a night each time they were out. At the same time, I knew they were taking out massive student loans to fund their gratuitous consumption, along with tuition and basic living expenses.
Their lack of concern about repaying an extra $50K just surprised the heck out of me. I wasn’t dead broke and could tag along, but I just didn’t see the benefit of such free spending. Eventually, I settled into a more middle-class normative life-style and was comfortable.
Then I saw how naive I truly was.
One of my classmates had gotten to attend the MBA program on a merit and needs-based scholarship. He didn’t have any money. While his tuition was waived, he still needed to pay for daily expenses.
Instead of a fancy high floor condo or even a modest downtown condo, he lived in one of the roughest neighborhoods just off campus. I lived nearby and can hear the police patrols and random gun fire where he lived. My place wasn’t much but at least it was secure. He lived on a couch in a shared room right in the middle of regular gang and drug activity. Running water wasn’t always available, but it was cheap, just a few hundred bucks a month.
Obviously, he didn’t have a car and relied on brisk walks to get anywhere. He didn’t have many friends as he couldn’t afford to go hang out with anyone. When we hung out, I made sure we didn’t need to spend any money.
He couldn’t even afford food, so he worked part time at university food service to make a few dollars and grab leftovers for meals. While others dined in fancy Beverly Hills and Hollywood hot spots, he was scraping pots for a bite. But, he never complained about the squandered money of our fellow students. He knew his values and was content on focusing on his goals.
He certainly kept me grounded as I felt like a spoiled brat using money so freely and buying myself a burrito whenever I felt hungry.
So, here I was moping ridiculously about my relative paucity; he showed what real determination and pride in the midst of deprivation looked like.
And, even at the MBA level, there’s a bias to spend money. My freespending classmates all got six-figure jobs right out of school from their “networking” efforts and were able to quickly pay off their huge student loans. Meanwhile, my poor friend is still struggling financially.
Cheating Wife Stories, Husband’s Cruel Revenge For Cheating
“It doesn’t matter if she ” started to fall back in love with you “…SHE’S HAD ANOTHER MAN’S BABY !!! …that’s it…its over , no if and or buts it’s over…any man who’d accept that is NOT a man , he’d be a lil bitch , I don’t think I could have been with her the 9 months and not starting IMMEDIATE divorce proceedings could cost him child support…remember some sick states automatically declare a husband the ” father ” …even if you have medical proof and D.N.A proof…you must also have written statements by the mother and possible father…if mother can’t find other guy or he refuses to get involved you owe that affair baby 18 yrs of child support.. ( disgusting they’d punish a innocent man just to save a few percentages of tax rates for business and the rich…yet they have the harshest anti- abortion laws…total scum…but then again any man stupid enough to still marry in those states is criminally ignorant and brings it on himself…so no sympathy for those or this idiot..no one or no law forced him to marry…he put himself into his predicament….so keep lining up to sign up for marriage…I get a kick out of your pain and suffering”
According to CIIE organizers, this year’s expo has attracted a record 289 Global Fortune 500 companies and industry leaders, with over 3,400 exhibitors and 394,000 professional visitors registered for the event.
Now read carefully the name for the expo – it’s an IMPORT EXPO meaning the exhibitors are EXPORTERS from all over the world traveling to China to meet Chinese IMPORTERS to buy from them.
This is not about these people investing in China. This is about exhibitors interested to sell to the world’s largest consumer market.
I received a text addressed to him and asking him to call back the very next day after I activated it.
“Who’s this?”
“Mom.”
“I think you have the wrong number,” I answered. “My mom’s half way across the planet.”
“Sorry.”
“Hope everything is okay with your son/daughter!”
“Thanks! All the best!”
The messages didn’t stop there.
Reminders to pick up his car from the mechanic’s, friends wanting to get beers over the weekend, or talking sports and venting about frustrating relationships.
A woman he used to see asking if they can reconnect.
And I diligently replied saying that it’s no longer his number.
Except the more I replied, the more I felt some inexplicable connection with Michael. As if every message I received made me understand him a bit better. Identify with him. Even root for him as he navigates through the challenges of life.
Then things went quiet and I thought he must have let everyone know about changing his number and I almost forgot about the whole thing.
Until I started getting a different kind of messages.
And then it was spelled out in one message: “I heard your mom got diagnosed with cancer.”
The same mom who sent me my very first message on that phone.
I wrote back to one person saying that even though it’s not his number, I’m deeply sorry about the news and that I’m sending healing prayers.
He/she was so touched they said the kindness of a stranger brightened their day and restored a little bit of faith.
And I felt even closer to Michael.
Like we have something greater in common than just having shared a number. I’ve *been* through shit with him. I’ve thought about his problems and commitments.
And now his mom has cancer.
Michael, I don’t know you and we’ve never spoken, but I want you to know that I *am* there for you. That you *are* in my thoughts. That I *do* care.
That I love you and your mother and I hope you all get through this.
China can do manufacturing and the U.S. cannot. China is the global supply chain hub. China is the one with the perrenial trade surplus with the U.S. Militarily, China has the world’s largest naval fleet while we can’t construct any new naval assets while those “active” assets spent more time in repair than out on duty.
Yesterday in the Charlotte, NC airport I decided to spend my last few dollars on a beer before my flight to Munich.
Before me in line stood a man well into his seventies. He ordered two red wines.
The server asked him for his ID and that of his equally aged wife who was sitting at a table with a cane propped between her knees.
He thought it was a joke. So did I.
It wasn’t. He had to walk back to the table and fetch his wife’s ID.
This was not only strange, it was the stupidest rule I’ve ever seen.
Sixty-year old me was next. And yes, I needed to prove I was twenty one.
Edit: I keep getting comments about how this is normal and the server is just doing their job. I understand and don’t hold it against the server, their management or even the legal system that makes them so careful.
All that said, the rest of the world finds it very strange (and a bit sad perhaps) when 80-year old people must be carded to prove they are 21.
If you are 100% sure you know who did it, and the peaches were all inside the boundaries of your yard, you have several options – none passive.
Coming from compassion – Offer to share some – not all – if they “need” some.
Let “all” neighbors know you have plans for the fruit this year. Request everyone stay out of your yard unless invited.
Put up a Beware of dog sign – even if you don’t have one.
Put up No Tresspassing signs. Warn that anyone caught tresspassing is subject to being arrested.
Get security cameras on your place – yard and front and side areas.
And if they get caught trying to do it again have an estimate for value of the crop and press charges for theft. If it’s over $500 it’s a felony in many or most states. Tresspassing and theft could mean jail time. Those peaches better be worth it to them.
Growing up we had grapes along our back fence. Three different neighbors over 25 years all asked first before taking the grapes poking through to their side. Every year my family told them to take any on their side of the fence.
Point is good neighbors “ask.”
Something is weird with your neighbors.
China’s Growing NAVAL POWER Can Destroy the USA in 30 Seconds
Technological advancement is a cornerstone of China’s naval dominance. From the development of cutting-edge submarines, such as the Type 095 and Type 096, to the deployment of advanced naval aviation capabilities, China has demonstrated an unyielding dedication to innovation. Its naval prowess is complemented by a formidable array of anti-ship missiles, naval defense systems, and electronic warfare capabilities, placing it at the forefront of maritime technology.
I was enjoying a meal of spaghetti with marinara sauce in a pleasant Italian restaurant. I noticed two women, around 40, eating at the other side of the small restaurant, conversing and eating heartily. When they had finished, the waitress came to take their plates, and asked if they wanted anything else. They said no, and she asked “If you are ready, I will bring your bill.” The ladies said, no, they would not pay because the food was very bad. They claimed the spaghetti was undercooked, the sauce was thin and salty, and the rolls were not fit to eat. Their coffee was much too strong, too. They were not rude or really loud, but were adamant they did not think they should pay for such bad food. The waitress said, “Why didn’t you tell me? I would have taken the food and gotten you a better meal. And besides, why did you eat it all and then tell me it was so bad?” The ladies realized the sense of the waitress’ words, accepted the bill, and paid.
Early during my intern year in San Francisco in 1973, I took over care of a comatose alcoholic patient. I discovered her electrolytes and metabolic tests were all out of wack.
I corrected them and she woke up.
The first thing she asked upon awakening was “Who’s taking care of my cats?”.
She was in a panic.
I called her contacts and got a neighbor to get her cats and care for them.
I then told my patient that if she kept drinking, the next time she ended up in the hospital she would surely die and there would be no one to look after her cats. They would die a terrible death of thirst and starvation.
I remember her looking at me with grave concern.
About a week later she was discharged and I didn’t see her again until very near the end of my internship. I saw her walking in the corridor of the hospital going for a clinic visit. She looked like a different person, well dressed and made up.
She told me that she hadn’t had another drink in almost a year because her cats depended on her.
It was one of the most rewarding moments in my long career and one of the rare times I succeeded in getting a hard core alcoholic to get and stay on the wagon.
Cheesecake Factory Cajun Jambalaya Pasta
pasta jambalaya 4 1 of 1 1463×2048 1
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
4 ounces butter
2 teaspoons Cajun spice mix
1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into small pieces
1 pound fresh linguini pasta
1/2 cup clam juice
2 ounces green bell peppers, cut into thin strips
2 ounces red bell peppers, cut into thin strips
2 ounces yellow bell peppers, cut into thin strips
4 ounces red onions, cut into thin strips
1/2 pound fresh medium shrimp, peeled, deveined, tails removed
1/2 cup diced tomatoes
Instructions
Place the butter into a sauté pan. Allow the butter to melt slightly. Add the seasoning into the pan and stir together with the melted butter. Add the chicken into the pan and continue to cook until the chicken is about half done.
While the chicken is cooking, carefully place the pasta into boiling water and cook until al dente.
Pour the clam juice into the pan. Add the peppers and onions. Cook for another minute, making sure the vegetables are heated through and the chicken is almost done.
Add the shrimp into the pan. Toss the ingredients together and continue to cook until the shrimp are almost done.
Add the tomatoes into then pan. Continue to cook mixture until both the shrimp and chicken are thoroughly cook through.
Place some pasta into each bowl. Spoon equal portions of the jambalaya mixture into each bowl over the pasta.
My dad was 22 years older than my mom and in his mid-fifties when I was born. He retired while I was in elementary school which meant I essentially had two stay at home parents as my mom didn’t work. My dad never showed his age and was as active and involved as any of my friends dads but more so because he didn’t have work. When I was younger my dad would come to elementary school and eat lunch with me. He helped with boy scouts and came camping with me. He attended all sporting events and school activities. In the summer we would spend full days at museums or going on trips; he was a regular chaperone on school field trips. When my bus stop was far away he’d come pick me up every day.
I was always sadly hyper aware that he was older and losing him was a regular fear; I lucked out and had him with me until he almost hit 97 and I was 42; my mom passed 15 months before him. I just had my first child at 43 and have no idea how my dad managed 4 kids, with my brother and I just two years apart, and not complain or show any signs of age at all. I wouldn’t say I ever wished for younger parents as it is all I ever knew.
My dad was 57 when I was born and my mom 43. My mom passed away 2 days after I was born. My dad was my world. He learned to cook to make me my favorite meals. I was a picky eater as a kid.
He woke me up each morning with fresh squeezed orange juice which I love until this day. As I got older, he would play tennis with me and taught me to play softball. He had played baseball in Cuba and he was a great hitter even in his sixties. I did everything with him.
When I was 5, he was on his way to pick me up at day care when he got into a terrible car accident where an ambulance was called to treat him. He was less than a a tenth of a mile from the day care, he told the ambulance workers he had to pick up his daughter before he could be taken to the hospital. He walked and picked me up with a head injury and took me to a neighbors house before being transported to the hospital. I will always remember this day.
When I was 10 he retired from work and started picking me up from the bus stop every day after school. He always had a snack ready for me and we sat and talked about our day.
At 15 he taught me to drive. He was patient and made sure I knew the rules of the road. For my 16th birthday, he took me to get my drivers license. A few days later he bought me a car. We were poor and I had no expectation of a car. He had put aside money to buy me a 3 year old Toyota Camry. He drove a 13 year old car.
A few months after my 16th birthday he was not feeling well and I thought it was a cold. He passed away 20 days later of a double pneumonia and acute leukemia. My world was shattered. I didn’t know how to pick up the pieces and keep going. To this day, I think about him every day.
Did I wish he was younger? No, I wouldn’t change him but I do wish I had more time with him.
He’s never run any commercials promoting his podcast. Never bought any billboards, any print ads. He never went on any late-night shows to promote his podcast.
I’ve always known about him from watching UFC’s, so I knew he had a podcast.
But eventually – he began popping up more and more on my YouTube suggestions. I figured – can this podcast really be any good? I know he’s a decent comedian and a great fight commentator.
Steadily – over years, he continued plugging away at his podcast, getting more and more guests.
Finally, I gave in – and I’m hooked – along with millions of other people.
The podcast is a blend of funny/smart and is just people having conversations. No acting, no-nonsense.
Just humble, intelligent conversations with a wide variety of people from all walks of life.
Joe now has one of the most popular podcasts in the world and he just did it by being his authentic self and enjoying conversations with people.
He was a Navy SEAL serving in Afghanistan. During a mission in 2007, he went into a room first, leading his team. Unfortunately, it had insurgents in it, waiting with automatic weapons.
He was shot 27 times. While 11 rounds were blocked by his body armor, 16 rounds managed to hit him in the torso, arms and legs. He was also hit by a grenade which exploded and sent shrapnel through his body.
And then, he managed to kill three enemy fighters near him with a pistol and without killing any of the women and children in the room.
His recovery took two long years.
And he later became an advocate for wounded warriors and those living with PTSD—because he had it bad.
Sadly, he was haunted by the things he went through in war. This past March, he couldn’t bear it anymore and was found hanging in his room.
He cheated death narrowly for 16 years, but the demons were the ones Mike couldn’t escape. Rest in Peace warrior.
The Admiral Kuznetsov was and actually still is the flagship of the Russian Navy.
Yes, she’s not seaworthy, but it doesn’t matter. This is really a matter of national pride. If the Russian Navy can’t keep their flagship in service, that does not look great.
As a side-note, the Kuznetsov was built at the Black Sea Shipyard in what is now Ukraine. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few years, you’ll know why docking it in Ukraine is not exactly an option. Russia lacks any shipyards large and capable enough to properly service or build something this big, which is why they’re having so much trouble refitting the ship.
It may happen now and then but I have never heard of of a big box company buying out the little guy. They usually just open up a store and drive the little guy out of business – maybe. Read on. Sometimes a smaller chain will be bought out but seldom a single store.
Mom and pop hardware stores tended to do better than, say, grocery stores because of the expertise offered.
In 1976 I got a position in Rochester NH as a bank trust officer and we bought a beautiful cape cod with a center chimney built in 1853.
A neighbor chatted to me and asked me if I had experience with working on houses. Our previous home we had bought brand new so I had to confess that I had not. He told me I should expect this home to require endless work. He suggested to me that I should patronize Warburton’s Hardware just down the road from me. He said I would go in for a dollars worth of nails and come out with ten dollars worth of advice.
He was right on both counts and I took his advice.
Brownie Warburton retired and it was bought by the Boucher family and they are still there. It was a happy day for me when he invited me to call him Brownie. The locals were not usually that accepting of blow ins.
So the mom and pop hardware stores can compete.
Now just about anyone will be familiar with this logo
ACE Hardware
You might think that Ace is a chain but you would be wrong. Ace stores are individually owned or parts of small chains – a bit liked McDonald’s. The big difference is that Ace Corporation is owned by the store owners – it is a cooperative. Ace started up in 1924, long before big box hardware stores and they seem to be thriving. They do so in the same way that Brownie Warburton did: by providing service and expertise. Edit. I did not intend this to be an ad for Ace but it sure resonated with readers. Read the comments.
This is not to say that big box stores have no place; they clearly do but so do smaller, locally owned stores.
I’m a Christian and would change it to God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform “ as an old hymn says.
When I was younger, I was asked at the last minute to delay my holiday as someone else wanted to go to the Henley Regatta and we couldn’t both be away from work at the same time. I was furious!
When I arrived finally on holiday, this vision in a blue dress appeared. She also not only shouldn’t have been there that week, but shouldn’t have been there at all. She had been going to Switzerland earlier but developed appendicitis and couldn’t go and some weeks later was invited to join her sister and some friends and so we met.
We married a year later and remained together for 63 years until her death.
I used to work for a large rehab company. I was a licensed occupational therapist. One year, we had a new girl start there, who was from Europe. She was also also a licensed therapist, but had two years of additional training. She was also on a work visa. At first she was friendly and agreeable, but soon began to show her true colors. She started making snide comments about people behind their backs, and then proceeded to say them to their faces. She told me that where she came from, I wouldn’t be considered a real therapist, because I had only studied for two years.
We had a few Rehab assistants that she proceeded to lord over, because she had a college degree and they did not. But they worked hard and did their jobs. One day she sat with us at lunch; myself, and two rehab assistants. She proceeded to make rude comments about certain ethnic groups in the company, claiming that they had chips on their shoulders. I told her that her remarks could be construed as racism, and that she had better knock it off. She scoffed, and went on making rude comments. When she left the room with a big smirk on her face, one of the aides told me that she had been making unflattering comments behind my back, too. I decided that she needed to be taught a lesson. I contacted our clinical director and reported her behavior, especially the racist comments.
An hour later, she came walking down the hall, smirk replaced by copious tears. She had been warned that if she continued with her behavior, she would be shipped right back to Europe.
Well, this is the first post for my new series: “Correcting Society Ills“.
This new series, as I have mentioned previously, is concerned with RECONSTRUCTION of the West.
As I have already mentioned, the threat of Global War has passed the DANGER ZONE. That was in 2020 through 2022. What we are experiencing now is a “lesser” state of war. Oh, sure, nuclear weapon threats are being bantered about, and provocations are seemingly everywhere at a global level, but the unseen global counter-threats are not being made public and they will quench any aggressive moves against the great Asian powers.
So, global change resembles this dynamic…
Change; old to new.
Threat of war… either occurs or fizzles out with a *pop*.
I claim that it fizzled out.
What is left is a ruined Western society.
And a need for RECONSTRUCTION.
So we are going to discuss that reconstruction and what needs to occur.
Mind you, actual war can still occur, it’s just that it becomes less and less probable as time progresses forward.
In our reconstruction discussions and talks we will cover all sorts of issues and maladies that the West are suffering through. From fat-generating use of polyunsaturated oils in Western foods, to the destruction of family culture, and the strange ideas of modern Western youth.
You will find all sorts of videos and discussions on related topics herein. It’s part of a phase in our society, and the world must go through this to get to the other side; one of an overall better quality of life.
I can’t answer for near overseas Chinese (that is Chinese in Asia). I can write about my UK experiences.
It was Christianity and FG being a very distant second.
Christianity preyed on recent immigrant types and how they were often alone and isolated having migrated. I had numerous xian types try convert me constantly mistaking me for a migrant.
Same shit when my mother got cancer, some how the jesus types found out and went to find her to try convert her.
I told them to fuck off.
Mother told them to fuck off.
$240 Billion Lithography Machine Order Canceled,China Achieves Full Technological Autonomy!
SMIC, a prominent chip manufacturing company, operates in various areas such as chip design, manufacturing, packaging, and sales. The quality and efficiency of chip production heavily rely on the technological level and precision of the lithography machines, a crucial equipment in chip manufacturing.
However, due to escalating global trade tensions and US export control policies on Chinese high-tech companies like SMIC, the company has been unable to purchase advanced lithography machines and other equipment from the United States. This has prompted SMIC to cancel a $24 billion lithography machine order with the US company ASML, attracting significant attention and raising concerns about alternative markets for chip sales.
The cancellation of the lithography machine order by SMIC is influenced by both the global trade environment and domestic policies. As one of the largest chip manufacturers globally, SMIC’s decision has implications for the global chip industry. The uncertain global trade environment has disrupted the chip supply chain, while the Chinese government’s support for the chip industry has limited its domestic development.
The event’s impact on the global chip industry is two-fold. On one hand, competition in the global chip market will intensify, requiring major chip companies to enhance their technological capabilities and supply chain management. On the other hand, SMIC’s actions may inspire imitation by other countries, further intensifying global chip market competition.
Analyzing the impact of this event reveals that SMIC’s cancellation affects not only the global chip industry but also the US technology sector. Intel, one of the major US tech giants, has highlighted the significant impact on the global chip supply chain, prompting questions about the effectiveness of the Biden administration’s policies for the US industry.
Addressing this challenge requires several approaches. Firstly, China should strengthen international cooperation to collectively navigate the uncertainties in the global trade environment. Secondly, domestic policies should be enhanced to support and promote the development of the chip industry within China. Lastly, SMIC should focus on capacity building, continuously improving technological capabilities, and enhancing supply chain management.
China doesn’t use forced labour to make shoes and apparel. It is another political bit of nonsense that the US government made up.
The US government even claimed that China uses forced labour to pluck cotton, just like how the USA enslaved black people to pick cotton in the past. Goodness gracious, what nonsense, who even uses human beings to pluck cotton nowadays. That’s the old primitive way of the USA. Most of the cotton in China is machine-picked and high-speed packed.
So, This is Happening in West Maui, It’s changes EVERYTHING for Oprah & the Rock
The way these people have been treated is beyond disgusting. Greene lies through his teeth. Banks should freeze their mortgages for at least a minimum of three years to allow the people to get back on their feet.
Funny story. In 1986, I went through basic at Fort Cambell, Kentucky. I had a two-year degree, and so I entered as an E3. A couple of weeks into the training, the 1stSgt called me into his office. He’s reviewing my record and commenting that he thinks my records are wrong. Because of my two-year degree, he thinks I should have entered as an E4.
He looks at me and asks, “When you enlisted, did they promise you E4?” I quickly answered, “Yes, 1stSgt.” He quickly responds, “I knew it! I will have you promoted to E4, but it will take a week or two. I said, “Thank you 1stSGT!” and was dismissed.
A couple of weeks later, the C.O. of the training company stopped me on the way back from evening chow and said, “I wanted you to know that your next LES will reflect that you were promoted to E4. I cannot have you pinned while you are in basic, nor can you wear the rank because you would be the same rank as some of the soldiers assigned to the company, but, you have been promoted to E4.” I said, “thank you sir,” saluted and went on my way.
As soon as I graduated, I upgraded all my rank insignia to SP4. I get to Aberdeen Proving Grounds for schooling, and as I check-in, the soldier behind the counter asks, “Are you promotable?” I did not know what that meant, but I said, yes. Because I identified as E4 promotable, I was assigned to the barracks with all the other E4s and NCOs going through the same school for retraining. No drill sergeants for me!
My Mum was a very formidable Italian lady (all five feet three inches of her!) and took very little nonsense from anybody!! When my sister was 15 and I was 9 my sister went out for the night with a young guy who was 18 (Mum didn’t know this or it would not have been allowed) She was told to be back by 10.00 pm, no later! Midnight approached and my parents were not happy (this was in the days before Mobile Phones) They finally turned up and my Dad went out to remonstrate with the young man whilst my Mum exploded at my sister who was well aware what kind of trouble she was in. Dad came back in with a cut lip where the young Guy had punched him!! Mum grabbed one of my Dad’s hobnail boots went outside and proceeded to bash the young guy around the head and shoulders, loudly cursing him in Italian! The guy screamed at my Mum that he would get the Police on her, she shouted back ‘Do it! my daughter’s 15!! I’ll have you in prison! and every syllable corresponded with another blow to his head and face! After about 10 minutes of the the guy ran away screaming in fear. The next day, right outside our house, the pavement was covered with bloodstains!
New IRS $600 Tax Rule For 2023 (Venmo & Cash App & PayPal)
Americans screwed over YET AGAIN. Good thing, everything is in my Chinese family, not me personally. $20,000 threshold to $600. No fucking way!
You need a drivers license in order to drive your privately owned automobile on public roads. If you drive on your own private property, or someone else’s private property with their permission? No.
The whackos who told you that a driver’s license is for commercial drivers belong to a weird fringe conspiracy cult called “Sovereign Citizens.” To give you an idea how dumb these loonies are, they’re the ones that Flat Earthers point to and say “god, those people will believe anything.”
Sovereign Citizens have all kinds of bizarre beliefs that basically focus on the notion “you do not have to obey any law you do not consent to.” They believe they do not have to obey any law enforcement officers except county sheriffs, they do not have to pay taxes, and that (yes, I’m serious) the Federal government sells each American citizen at birth, and so a “birth certificate” is actually a record of sale to a foreign government.
As you might imagine, these dingbats get arrested rather frequently. When they do, they generally go into court shaking their fists and screaming that the government has no jurisdiction over them and no right to put them on trial, which…goes about as well as you might imagine.
People and people, but this will put Americans into a coma:
Older people going naked in city center parks. (I am not going to post pictures, because if I do I will get blocked by Quora moderators who obviously are not German and have never been to Germany).
16 year olds drinking beer or wine.
Kids riding alone on buses and trains.
Autobahn on a Friday.
Some people will behave like concentration camp guards but when you forget your credit card they will send it to you in the mail.
The U.S. thinks that it is exceptional and that the U.S. must always lord over the world. There lies the problem it is certainly not exceptionally strong or good. It may be seen as exceptionally cruel and evil to the developing nations of the world.
China’s phenomenal growth and rise in a way, together with the phenomenal rise of the non western world has resulted in the ending of a Western centric or U.S. dominated world that is in fact a virtual colonisation post colonialism for 300 odd years.
In effect the poor and underdeveloped countries were forced or connived into the so call rules based international order but in effect it is a set of rules to preserve the wealth of the west and continue the looting and theft of resources of the poor to enriched the west. From 1946-at least 2000. You can call this virtual colonialism.
China together with BRICS effectively put and end or at least the beginning of the end of this virtual colonialism order. That upset the U.S. to no end. That is easy to understand. If the biggest mafia in town lost its ability to steal, to or loot at will it may burnt down some buildings and businesses and probably go on a shooting spree. So you can expect war mongering and doing some shit.
But it does not matter what or how U.S. rave and rant. Asia alone represents 60% of the worlds GDP and U.S. is now a mere shadow of itself since 1945 where its economy alone represented 52% of the world’s economy. Today in 2023 China’s growth alone is 36.4% and the entire G7 including the U.S. together adds up to a mere 25.6%! The Ukraine war and the U.S. sanctions and pure robbery of Russia’s reserves will lead to the end of U.S. dollar hegemony and so will western financial institutions.
To me the more the U.S. try to curb China the faster China will eclipse the U.S. There is nothing the U.S. that can do that don’t make the status worst for the U.S. Today it tries to stop the export of Chips to China. It won’t work. It actually means it actually heighten. It’s inflation and suffer crippling shortages. You see China itself now represent 30% of world demand and another 30% of worlds manufacturing. This ban in effect, deprives the U.S. companies of doing business to 50–60% of the world’s demand.
This act will means bankrupting US and its allies chip makers. China will face some challenges. But in a short 5 years 90% of its chips requirements will be Chinese made and in a decade China will totally handle its own demand and it will totally kill off the U.S. chips. Like everything China will make it faster, better and cheaper.
ANGRY Young Man DIES; Meets ANCIENT Soul Family He Has Known for LIFETIMES!
Still shot of a Blackwater contractor during the Battle of Najaf in April of 2004
Service members of different stripes in a circumstantial combat situation can certainly order each other around if it’s in a joint environment, but in the most recent conflicts, now private military contractors may just be giving the orders too.
During the Battle of Najaf in the early days of the Iraq War, Iraqi insurgents from the Mahdi Army began to surround a Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) Building within the city of Najaf. Within the confines of the CPA compound, the personnel consisted of CPA employees, Spanish/El Salvadoran soldiers, a detachment of US Marines, and an eight man team of Blackwater contractors.
The situation was deteriorating with insurgents having grabbed an unfortunate El Salvadoran soldier, shoving a grenade into his mouth then pulling the pin in full view of the CPA compound. This was on top of the firefights were breaking out between those in the CPA compound and insurgents who were now attempting storm the compound with the mob that had just killed the soldier.
While this was all occurring, a Blackwater contractor called for help to his higher up’s in Baghdad who had been monitoring the situation. The Blackwater contractors in Baghdad then made an ultimate judgment call to intervene with the CPA compound battle when it became apparent that the US military itself will not provide any sort of assistance in the confusion.
Three Little Bird helicopters were then loaded up with six Blackwater contractors coupled with one Little Bird filled with boxes of ammunition and equipment due to the CPA contractors notifying that they were now dangerously low on ammunition.
The contractors then flew to the CPA compound, unloaded the ammunition and additional support, then evacuated a wounded Marine who had been shot during the battle.
With the additional support of the contractors and ammunition, the combined force of Blackwater contractors, Marines, Coalition troops managed to keep the insurgents from reaching the CPA compound. CPA employees would reload empty magazines then run it up to the men who were fighting off the insurgents, keeping everyone busy.
The Blackwater contractors would find themselves dictating where the Marines and other troops to head to during the battle, which would later draw controversy from critics who claimed that now mercenaries were giving orders to military troops.
Eventually, the siege of the CPA compound would subside after almost two days of battle which could be viewed on many videos via Youtube.
Infamous video of Blackwater contractor Travis Haley during the Battle of Najaf. Critics would later use this video to denote how he had no qualms killing random people with a second nature attitude when he was literally going after insurgents attempting to assault the compound.
The Battle of Najaf would serve as an example of how private military contractors mixed with troops in circumstances that called them to fight side by side.
This does not look like it would end anytime soon with the Russo-Ukraine conflict where Russian private military contractors from the Wagner Group and Russian troops are fighting alongside each other in the conflict.
SCOTT RITTER, ANDREI MARTYANOV, AND GARLAND NIXON JOIN ON NATO, UKRAINE’S TIME RUNS OUT
In this special roundtable, Scott Ritter Andrei Martyanov and Garland Nixon join the program to discuss the ongoing developments of the Ukraine proxy war, what it tells us about Russia, and the growth of the multipolar world in the context of history.
I’m going to try to provide an answer with a slightly different perspective.
First off, I’m an Australian Chinese (in that order), born and educated in Singapore. My family is Peranakan or Straits-born meaning that we were the products of intermarriage between the Chinese and locals in what was then British Malaya.
So I grew up speaking English and Malay and a smattering of dialects. As I was educated in English mission schools, I did not learn Mandarin.
As far as I can remember, I was taught to hate Chinese and Communists. Pretty much everything I read about Communists described them as a threat peace-loving people everywhere. And China was communist.
I think I was 17 when I first read Dick Wilson’s A Quarter of Mankind. This was followed by Emmanuel Hsu’s The Rise of Modern China. In those pages I glimpsed a very different China. So I started reading Chinese history, from the Qin dynasty, and continued my inquiry at university.
Most of my working life was spent as a journalist, a sub-editor to be specific, and much of my work involved, among other things, fact checking.
Nixon’s ping-pong diplomacy opened up a new era of ties with China and Singapore was quick to get in on the act (read quick to realise the profits that could be made trading with China. That is the subject of a whole different set of questions and answers). Trading with the enemy? No, it cannot be. But it was.
The opening up of relations with China also led to a relaxation of travel restrictions on travel to the Middle Kingdom. Up till then, I had visited Hong Kong and could only imagine life across the border. I also visited Taiwan and imagined China to be everything the opposite of Taiwan.
Fast-forward many years when I moved to Australia and started travelling to China (Shenzhen, Chengdu, Guangdong, and Shanghai).
I saw modern cities, efficient public transport, rampant capitalism, and I felt completely safe even in quiet streets in the wee hours of the morning.
Many of the Chinese I met were as friendly as people in other places that I have travelled. Often friendlier. Especially to an ethnic Chinese who did not speak the language (I started learning conversational Mandarin at 54 and can now read a write a little).
To the core of the question: Much of the information about China that’s peddled about is false. Many people have very wrong impressions and ideas about the PRC. And most of the people who hold these ideas will never go to China to see and verify for themselves if what is reported is anywhere near the truth.
So I, and many others, try to provide a balance by correcting the grosser erros of belief held by many as a result of, well, propaganda.
A footnote: In my youth I wanted to move to the West (America, UK, the Scandinavian countries, … thataway). If I were young again, I would go east. To China.
Netherlands Reconsiders Huawei After 5G Successes
“If US is not learning from China, it is more important that China learns from US. China should never forget who forsaken her in its hours of need. To be kind to enemy is to be cruel to oneself .”
I won a scratch ticket for $100,000 one hundred thousand. the accoutant handled the taxes.
After claiming my prize we had 2 weeks where different reporters were looking for pictures and wanting to do an interview with the store that sold the winning ticket. churches and charities knocking on the door looking for a slice.
3 people i went to grade school with came knocking I had not seen them in 10 years. Family calling wanting to get a share or asking for a loan they cant afford to repay.
people were confused when I told them I spent it all.
I divided it up 3 ways and gave equal amounts to my 3 kids for thier college funds. I
f I ever hit another winning ticket I am getting a lawyer to deal with the bullcrap and I am gonna move to Alaska to a remote cabin in the middle of nowheresville with no phone or roads.
That you can hope to understand China using the English medium.
I am confident I am in the top 1 percentile when it comes to Chinese proficiency in the pool of English speakers beyond the mainland.
I won’t be surprised if I am in the top 0.1 percentile either.
But if I were honest, I will admit as an east Asian that I find it difficult to keep up with the mainland, even though I possess skills and networks to access media and contacts within greater China.
No, it’s not just about the language struggle, which exists even for someone like me with more than a decade’s worth of formal education in the Chinese language.
It is about developing a contextual understanding for mainland frames of reference and how the mainlander thinks.
That is mostly absent in this medium, even among the rare pool of articles grounded in facts. Most are written by east Asians, not westerners.
My advice? Don’t waste time on the China expert who doesn’t speak Chinese. Even foreigners who do are often wrong or misguided, because that is what it takes to pass through the stringent msm filter these days.
The new employee was just starting, his first day, first morning on the job…
Every morning employees would gather all of their supplies, tools, etc. and load their vans to be ready for the day’s work.
All new employees are to ride with a senior person to gain knowledge and get the hang of things. This was our busiest season and the day was FULL of jobs that needed to be done – all previously scheduled and set in time slots.
This employee was in the process of helping load the van when he came to me and said:
“I need to go to an appointment today; I need the (driver) to drop me off and then pick me up, or wait for me to get done.”
Me: “I am sorry, we are too busy to be able to do all of that on work time. If it is important why don’t you just take the day off, go to your appointment and come back tomorrow ready to go?”
Employee: “Are you F@*king kidding me? What kind of place is this that you don’t care about your employees!!”
Me: “Ummmm, I said you can have the day off, it’s your first day here and I still said go ahead and take the day and come back tomorrow ready to go, I am not sure I understand?”
Employee: “This is BullS@@t, I can’t believe you won’t take care of your employees and have him drive me to my appointment across town and wait for me, you’re F@*ing ridiculous.”
Me: “Um, I am trying to be reasonable here and work with you. How about you can take your own car and follow behind him and when you need to go you can just cut out and go to your appointment. We don’t have the time to do that for you. ”
Employee: “This is ridiculous, I can’t believe you treat your employees this way, you are being so unfair, this is Bull S#@t, F@*!ng ridiculous!”
Me: “Actually, why don’t you go ahead and go home and not come back at all. Thank you for your time.”
Employee then was shocked that I fired him and could not believe or understand why I was letting him go.
This was truly shocking to me. Fired him on the spot within ONE hour of being employed.
“Ukrainian soldiers are being DRUGGED and forced to fight” Ex-CIA Larry Johnson
We now have reports that captured Ukrainian soldiers are turning up drugged out of their minds on some kind of inhibition blocker. Reports say these soldiers are going on withdrawals after being captured. Ex-CIA analyst Larry Johnson joins us to discuss.
The relationship with China from the U.S. perspective as always needs to be one of subservience and submissive to the U.S. That has been the default mode of what US expect it to be since 1945. Let’s call a spade a spade. The U.S. cannot deal with a nation that can and will say no to the U.S.
But if I should be completely honest to the US I will recommend to them to move on and keep your winnings. China with 1.4 billion highly discipline, extremely hard working people who are driven and industrious, today equipped with the state of art infrastructure and leading in 37/44 key and strategic technology cannot be push aside without untold damages to the U.S. itself.
But the U.S. political system, one based totally on popularity contest means that it cannot be pragmatic and realistic. It has to drain tremendous resources to try to keep its hegemonic place, even if it means bankrupting the U.S. that is precisely what the U.S is doing today.
For China is is so simple. Let the US have a long and strong rope to hang itself slowly to death. Lure the U.S. to fight China in a way that drains away the U.S. resources, influence and turned away its allies one by one. It does that be staying the moral high ground. It is the U.S. that is desperate so while the U.S. goes low, China stays high. It is winning without a fight. Remember Mohamad Ali “Rope a dope” the big George Foreman drains all its energy and knock him out in 15 rounds.
China is doing the “rope a dope” while the U.S. is ranting and panting away. Trump thought it wins popularity by starting the trade war with China. China pretends to avoid war but knows so well that it will hurt and harm the U.S. several folds of what it hurts China. Do you notice Biden wants to end the tariff and China says. Not so fast Amigo!
The implications to US allies are particularly bad and the more of a U.S. lackey the worst it gets. Asia is doing just fine and dandy.
How did it come to be? Well China grew astronomically strong economically, politically and even militarily and the U.S. is in denial and Americans are ignorant and naive about China till it is way past too late. The U.S. is in a quick sand. The more it struggles. The faster it sinks.
Since you asked about implications, The US pay the highest price for doing shit on China. The world is moving on faster than the U.S. realised. The U.S. dollar hegemony is all but gone. The U.S. and western order may appeal to a handful of its close allies. No different from a pack of street hoodlums hanging on to its biggest bully as beneficiaries.
US debts will reach 100 trillion in a decade, US deficits cannot go down. It cannot make anything at less than twice it cost worldwide. US standard of living has stagnated back 60 years to the 1960s. And the poor U.S. growing while it’s middle class is collapsing.
Meanwhile for China, you ain’t seen nothing yet! Once it made T-shirts and Toys. Today it makes your computers and smartphones. Soon it makes your EVs and AI and Jet planes. It middle class is now at 700 million will grow to 1 billion people within a generation. 4–6 times the size of the U.S. middle income.
Harvard Economist Reveals Shocking SECRET About China In 2023
Dr. Keyu Jin is one of the most outstanding China insiders. She is a professor at the London School of Economics and has an incredible knowledge of how the US and China both work. In today’s video I share with you her insights into China innovation and how China really works.
16 People Describe What A Dead Body Smell Like
1. “Understand that a pound or two of rotten meat only gives you a faint whiff of the smell of a full-grown corpse. The power of the smell is incredible. Personally, I’m not sure it’s describable. You want to gag when you’re fifty feet away. It can take years for the smell to leave a house. It just lingers in the background. Cars are totalled by the insurance company for the odor. And the guy driving the wrecker can’t drive fast enough to get away from the smell.
It gets on your skin and clothes. (People use bio-suits for body removal for a reason.) Maggots abound, fluids abound, and I’ve never read a good description of the experience. No matter how well you write, it will be but a pale imitation of the experience.”
2. “Buy a Boston Butt pork roast and let it rot. Pigs and humans are apparently similar, meat-wise. It actually turns like a sea blue-green color. (It smells like farts and then gets worse.)”
3. “A dead body, specifically a human corpse has a rank and pungent smell mixed with a tinge of sickening sweetness. Imagine a rotting piece of meat with a couple drops of cheap perfume and you’re halfway to understanding what a human corpse smells like.”
4. “It varies from person to person and how long they have been decomposing.
You get a very sharp, foul smell similar to horrible cheese mixed with the same smell you get from a full trash can in the sun.
If the body decompressed and they had a full bladder, you’ll also smell body fluids, so stale urine and straight fecal matter. For those who don’t know, toilet poop smells bad, but shit that is airborne, not water logged or anything is straight horrific on its own.
If you have flying insect and larva development increase smell this far times two. If it’s hot outside times three and if it’s cold out and the heat in the house is cranked it’s times five at minimum for the dry heat.
The worse part is the materials they died on. Wood mixed with death has a woody slime smell mixed with the death ratio above, carpet has a wet padding smell (like cat wizz) plus death and it’ll it’s on furniture it’s really fun as it usually leaks through to the carpet and wood subfloor.
If you’re smelling these things outside a house, you don’t want to be near it when they go in. Cleaning and deodorizing that is pretty rough.”
“I have assisted in an autopsy on a body several days old, and even though it was in a huge chilling compartment, the smell was in the whole complex. It smells like there are a million dead and rotting rats around you.”
5. “Rotten eggs, feces, and a used toilet left out for a month x 1000. It is unholy.
The smell gets into your throat and you can taste it. You will literally run to find some clean air. Even then, it lingers and you can’t quite get the smell away. Even though you can no longer physically smell it, you remember it and it takes quite a while to get over it.”
6. “A dead body to me smells like a cross between rotting meat and very dirty kitty litter box. Very distinct smell that you won’t forget.”
7. “You ever have like a dead mouse or something hiding somewhere and you just smell something awful? It’s pretty much that. The best I can sum it up to is like shit mixed with meat…in a weird way
8. “In my experience, any formerly living creature, whether human or non-human, has that same powerful, pungent, disgusting odor that I can only describe as a garbage can left to ferment in high heat for an extended period of time. It does vary some between species, though.
A couple of other answers written in this feed point to some things that are accurate. First, two chemicals, Putrescine and Cadaverine, are both found in decomposing tissue. Both are diamenes and they are produced as a result of amino acids (most notably Lysine) breaking down. They each gave their own characteristic odor which by themselves are bad enough. When they are combined due to the simultaneous presence, they are indescribable.
Second, pigs are indeed closest to humans in terms of the odor they give off when decomposing. Any animal with a musk gland (skunks, badgers, and muskrats are some examples. I’m sure there are many others as well) are also pretty stinky when they break down. All produce these same two chemicals because when you think about it, any creature that breathes in Oxygen and releases Carbon Dioxide is going to have a similar metabolic makeup that, when stopped is going to respond in a similar manner.”
9. “Once, I took a trip. When I returned, there was a terrible odor in my den. I know the odor of dead animals on the road or in the forests. Mom puts out poison for mice, so I have smelled them under things in her home. There was a rotten odor like this in my den, so I looked under everything, but I found nothing. The next day, I saw some cops and medics at the next apartment. I learned that my neighbor had died and decomposed for days before anyone found him. The odor is sickening. It’s hard to describe fully.”
10. “It depends how long it’s been dead but if you have ever smelled rotten meat it’s similar to that. some words commonly used to describe it would probably be rancid, foul, putrid, the smell of decay, etc. If it’s decomposed down to the skeleton there probably won’t be any smell anymore since the flesh, muscle, and organs are the ones that create the most smell and decay quickly.”
11. “I recently in countered a dead body that had been rotting in a van near my home for 5-7 days. At first, I though it was Korean people making kimchi, but after seeing the body removal with my own eyes I know that the smell was not of pickled vegetables. I work for a plumbing company so I’m always finding myself walking in raw sewage in basements. And I have to say the smell is similar to sewage or waste. Its nauseating and quite foul. Authorities have removed the body, but the area still smells of fragrant corpse. To be honest, I don’t know why you’d ever wonder about this. But yes indeed, it’s very disgusting. As a female I always find myself running out of breath when I’m dealing with sewage, but a body is about 10 times worse.”
Now, death depends on the environment in my opinion. I’ve smelt a few bodies in morgues and things like that, they just smell of death, it’s indescribable really, but you remember that smell. It’s a cold smell, a heavy smell (this is the best way I can describe it).
Rotting corpses of course just smell like any other rotting mammals, next time you spot some road-kill, stop and give it a sniff, pretty much what a rotting human corpse smells like.”
12. “I was a volunteer firefighter and police had to enter the residence before any of us could. The SCBA is automatic. So I quickly put it on a cop to enter the residence of a woman who neighbors haven’t seen in weeks. Those SCBAs block toxins and the cop ran out of the house drowning on his vomit. He claims he smelled her through the mask….That’s how bad a dead person smells. We eat everything. Those toxins in our bodies is what makes us stink so bad when we die. And to make it worse, when I got home I snorted soap while in the shower. A few hours later I began smelling the stench of her again. The bacteria is said to cling to your nostril hair and remultiplies later until it’s gone. I can’t tell you what it smells like. You’ll know it when you do.”
13. “Not very pleasant. It is a very strong, stomach turning, smell. It does in a way smell like rotten eggs, but it is much more intense. That is the best I can describe the smell, but I heard from someone else on how to make a small replica of it. Take a bag of soy beans, saturate them in water,let them stand a few days in heat above 70F while keeping them moist,crush some of the mixture.In a few days you will smell what decaying flesh/protein smells like.”
14. “My brother-in-law died in his appt. & was there 5 days before being found. When my wife & I went for the funeral (just a picture of him, no body) we went to help clean his place. I can’t describe the smell nor will I ever forget it. It permeated all soft things so badly they had to be throw out, we managed to keep a couple tables only. Even the TV stunk after airing out for week.
15. “Take some meat and leave it in a bag outside for about 3 days in the middle of summer. Then open the bag and mix in some Mexican food diarrhea. Add a good helping of the strongest catfish stink bait you can find. Mix well. This is the best that Death will ever smell.”
16. “Living in an apartment building and the guy next door fell in his bathtub (apparently). We didn’t see him often, so it wasn’t anything weird to not see him but his audio books were put on his doorknob and stayed for a couple days (he was blind, they delivered books to him to listen to).
Started smelling really weird, and since my son was just a baby at that time we’d initially thought somehow we hadn’t put a diaper in the garbage and it had ended up somewhere and was stinking up the place, searched high and low but couldn’t find it. The landlady knocked on his door (all our doors, handing out notices) and we mentioned we hadn’t seen him in a bit…half an hour later she was letting the police into his place.
I can’t imagine the smell in the same room though, it was bad enough being in the next apartment!”
No China don’t need the U.S. to survived or even to be a moderate growth economy in 2023. I will argue that containment, decoupling or de-risking of China which to me and most in the world means the same thing, is counter beneficial to the U.S. and good for China in the long term. The U.S. meanwhile loses the worlds. Biggest market or equivalent to the 2nd to the 10th biggest market for the U.S. put together.
There lies the enormity of the U.S. problem. Without China, the U.S. will suffer between 25–50% inflation which will highly impoverish American’s on the one hand with its U.S. brands becoming unsaleable and losing market share by half at least. All these while losing a humongous market.
By right the U.S. ought to not even dare to utter those threatening words but U.S. politicians lose too much to go soft after their media demonised China for a century. Sure China could be richer with the U.S. being rational. But China don’t take threats by the U.S lightly. The US political system is essentially a popularity contest and even if is suicidal the politicians compete to be a bigger China hawk while its own people suffer.
The trouble with threat is once you utter the word on banning China, sanctioning China, decoupling from China, containing China or even de-risking from China. China won’t hold back to defend itself. And China will make sure it will never depend on the U.S. and the west. That means China will totally do its own thing from now onwards.
That is very bad news for the U.S. as China do everything better, faster and cheaper than anyone on earth by a long shot. And the Huawei Mate 60 pro proved beyond doubt that there is nothing it cannot do! The U.S. should really think many times over before it challenge China for American sake. But the trade war and the chip ban proved to me and the world beyond doubt that the U.S. government don’t care about its own people and it’s own economy.
Don’t follow any instruction related to investing money or sanctioning a loan or allocating money UNLESS YOU HAVE A WRITTEN INSTRUCTION from your superior/cby email or whatsApp or paper letter
Never start smoking due to peer pressure or tension. Use bubble gum instead
First Beer with first month paycheck. First hard liquor after six months of paychecks at least.
Don’t express any political opinion or make any comment apart from work and movies and games and sports
Don’t ever go over your superiors head unless he is on leave or unreachable or is a total dumbo
When a woman wants to come to your office to talk to you, keep your door open or ask a friendly female colleague to sit in the office during the meeting under the pretext of taking notes
Never meet any Vendor or Supplier outside work or at your home. Always meet in office and keep your door open during the meeting and ask a colleague in to pretend to take notes
Never accept any gifts from Vendors or Suppliers whose value exceeds ₹2000/— unless everyone else is accepting the gifts and it’s been approved by your superiors
Never ever accept a meeting in a Hotel room with a potential client or customer. Always MEET IN THE LOBBY OR COFFEE SHOP where you have CCTV cameras
You may be finding yourself forced to spend a lot of money by being in the company of your superiors and indulge in pubs, golfing and high class call girls. Resist. Make excuses and resist until they get the message
No more than 120 ml of Scotch / Rum with 180 ml Club Soda Or Tonic Water Or 3 Tequila Shots at any office party , in fact my son makes the excuse that his liver is weak and avoids any drink entirely
Save around 45% of your paycheck if possible. At least 30%
Don’t ever eat Chickpeas, Beans, Cauliflowers, Kadalai, Sundal for breakfast. If you fart, you become a joke and it’s tough to recover your reputation
Never assume your female colleague who laughs and talks to you likes you romantically. Always ASK if in doubt. Simply ask “Are we friends or could this turn into something more”. Don’t presume.
She Is Against Mandatory Paternity Tests At Birth
This is trending in the United States. Jeeze!
“That woman who said requiring DNA testing would open up a can of worms scared the daylight out of me. Is she suggesting that a whole host of men are providing for children that aren’t theirs and letting this be known would blow up lots of families? What on earth have you women been up to?”
Graham Perry is a UK-based China observer, and wrote a good piece on China/US relations which is worth reading at length:
On the surface things look good in the US; unemployment is low; their economy is growing at 2.4% and inflation is falling. And yet consumer confidence, according to Irwin Stelzer in the Sunday Times, is at its lowest in four months. And Prof Percy Allen – in Pearls and Irritations – concludes that American society is more divided than it has been since its Civil War of the 1860s. “According to a Pew Research poll
about six in ten Republicans and more than half of Democrats have a very unfavourable view of the other party. Thirty years ago, fewer than a quarter in both parties rated the other party badly.”
A recent CNN poll showed almost 70% of Republicans do not accept the electoral legitimacy of the Biden administration. And almost 60% of voters lack confidence that elections in the US today reflect the will of the people.
Other polls by States United Action and Chicago University’s CPOST Research Centre found that over half US voters think elections won’t solve America’s most fundamental political and social problems, and almost half consider political elites, both Democrats and Republicans, are the most immoral and corrupt people in America. The US is fast becoming a dysfunctional nation – and that was before yesterday’s sacking of Speaker McCarthy.
But when it comes to China, Americans unite and rally around the flag. Hatred of China is the one single issue that brings America together.President Biden’s #1 worry
is that China will become the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world. Biden has promised to stop that. He has referred to China as “bad people” who when they have problems do “bad things” The demonisation of China has clearly worked. The 2023 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 83% of Americans hold negative views of China. The share who says China is an “enemy” is now 38%. AnIPSOS poll
found one-third of Americans view China as an imminent threat and two in five Americans think that war with China is likely in the next five years.
The US under Bush and Obama held to the view that China’s economic growth and increased prosperity would bring a relaxation of political rhetoric as the number of Chinese middle class citizens increased. Expanding economic rights would lead inevitably to increased political rights and the downgrading of the role of China’s Communist Party. China would become “compliant reasonable and accommodating”. It has not happened. Billionaires may flourish in China (800+ in number) but the Party remains at the apex of power. China has not changed.
Trump heralded a new and antagonistic approach to China when he started a trade war by unilaterally imposing high tariffs on Chinese goods coming into the US. And when that did not work, he resorted to allegations of genocide against the Uighurs in Xinjiang province to try to demonise China in the eyes of the world. But it, too, has not worked. China remains China and continues to be welcomed by the rest of the world in part because of its Belt and Road Initiative – as historian Professor Francis Fukiyama has said “China has lent more than $1 trillion to more than 100 countries through the Initiative, dwarfing Western spending in the developing world and stoking US anxieties about the spread of Beijing’s power and influence”.
Trump’s successor, President Biden increased economic sanctions on China and announced that “he would not allow China’s economy to overtake America’s” even though, as Prof Allen notes, most economists think that this is inevitable given China’s huge population and income gap.
The flashpoint is Taiwan for two reasons. First, China’s long-standing policy to reunify China with Taiwan and, second, as explained in yesterday’s Post #473, the US is worried sick that a confrontation with China could seriously jeopardise the US economy by impeding, even stopping, the export from Taiwan to the US of essential semi-conductors. Within the US hierarchy – the White House, Capitol Hill, the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs of Staff – there are those who want to give China “a bloody nose” and fundamentally derail China’s economic growth by military action – the Hawks – before China is way ahead and out of sight. “Act Today Because Tomorrow Is Too Late” is their cry.
There are also Doves who fear hostilities and prefer an uneasy but non-confrontational approach to China. For the Doves, second place to China is preferrable to war with China It is not clear who will win but certainly if the Hawks prevail over the Doves the world will be set on a most dangerous path.
Oliver Anthony- Rich Men North of Richmond (Remix Mashup ft Dax & Jo Tyler)
At Papa John’s Pizza I was getting fed up that they weren’t hiring the sufficient amount of staff to properly run the store. Along with doing bike deliveries I also cashed, took phone calls, entered orders, swept, mopped and emptied garbage. They kept a skeleton staff of 3 workers per shift and whenever they had to pay overtime they grumbled and wanted explanations as to why.
Frustrated and fatigued I applied for Dominos Pizza delivery. This is how snippets of the conversation went during the interview.
Interview Lady: We pay the highest hourly rate of all pizza restaurants. $21 per hour.
Me: Papa John’s paid $20 an hour. This is just a dollar more.
Lady: Yes! The highest rate for delivery riders in the country!
Lady: When you come to the restaurant you’ll be happy to see that you’ll be getting so much deliveries. Endless deliveries!
Me: How much do I get paid per delivery?
Lady: $7 per delivery!
Me: That’s the lowest delivery payment of all the pizza restaurants.
Lady: Yes but you’ll be doing so many deliveries, getting so much tips that it wouldn’t matter.
(I later found out that Dominos charged customers $20 for delivery, the highest delivery charge of all fast food restaurants in the country. They paid the driver $7 out of the $20 charge and the restaurant pocketed the remaining $13 for themselves.)
Me: What are the closing hours?
Lady: 10:30pm.
Me: You mean like only on Fridays and Saturdays?
Lady: No everyday.
Me: Thats a bit late and taxis round here stop working around 8pm. Any transport provided for me to get home?
Lady: No.
Me: Will I be able to use the Domino’s motorcycle to get home? (I was allowed this benefit in a previous restaurant I worked that had this same issue)
Lady: No.
Me: Can I leave earlier then?
Lady: Of course. Due to your transport situation we’ll allow you to leave 10 minutes earlier!
Lady: We are a very flexible organization.
Me: How so? (inwardly groaning, expecting more bullshit)
Lady: We give you the choice to work either as contracted or non-contracted.
Me: What does that mean?
Lady: Contracted means that you work somewhat as a permanent staff. You can work all the overtime hours you want. However overtime would be paid at the usual rate of $21 an hour. No time and a half. The same applies for public holidays.
Non contracted is like temporary staff. We pay the usual time and a half for overtime but as you are non contracted you don’t get overtime hours as we send you home after you’ve made your 40hrs a week. We don’t allow you to work on holidays so you basically get your flat salary every week whereas with a contract you are allowed more hours.
Me: More hours at the same rate?
Lady: Yes.
Me: Wouldn’t that be a lose-lose situation?
Lady: No. It’s a win-win!
Me: Am I entitled to a free meal?
Lady: No.
Me: And the uniform?
Lady: We are the only pizza restaurant that provides free uniforms for staff?
Me: How many uniforms?
Lady: Two free Dominos shirts and a cap. We are having them laundered after being returned by a delivery driver who recently left.
Me: You’re giving me a guy’s used clothes?
No: No. She only used them for two days. They’re practically new.
Me: You’re giving used female clothing?
Lady: It’s a free uniform!
Suffice to say I instantly and humbly returned to Papa John’s and their skeleton staff.
Mystery Cambodia
A nice fun video that takes you to another world. LOL.
It will probably upset some folks, but too bad. This is real life. This guy interviews some prostitutes in Cambodia. If you don’t want the experience then you can pass on this video. It’s ok.
Originally Answered: How can we become a Winner at everything in Life?
What made Muhammed Ali the best Boxer in the world? What made Michael Phelps go above and beyond every time he swam? How come Gandhi made so much more of an impact than anybody else?
None of them were exceptional people since birth.
Sure, there is the claim that Michael Phelps, for example, has double the lung-capacity of most humans, which has been disproven.
And while he does have some physical advantages, like longer arms and shorter legs, while being tall, so does everybody else he is competing against!
What made the difference in their ability was not their born talents but rather the way they approached what they did.
They were willing to work harder and produce more than anyone else was willing to.
They are willing to do whatever it takes, go the extra mile and do more than those around them, which is what eventually gets them to succeed.
I remember reading an article back when Michael Phelps was just getting traction, that talked about how ridiculous his training regiment is and how it was way too intense.
At the time many doctors and health experts argued about his routine.
Today, I cannot find any article even mentioning that he was doing too much anymore.
After about 2 days of looking for that article I gave up.
All articles about him only praise his efforts and his routine; obviously because it worked.
He revolutionized the field.
The same can be said about Mahatma Gandhi, who did something no one else dared to do to make a statement that inspired millions.
And the effort that Muhammad Ali made can be clearly seen by one of his quotes:
I don’t count my sit-ups. I only start counting when it starts hurting. That is when I start counting, because then it really counts.
That’s what makes you A CHAMPION. — Muhammad Ali
Each of them made their entire day about training, sacrificing a lot of their day so they could focus on just that one thing.
And then we wonder why we cannot succeed.
The big question you need to ask yourself is: Are you doing enough?
Are the results showing up in the way you want to? Are you succeeding or do you need to do more?
Now, I cannot give you the exact stats of the men named above, as every page I visited had different numbers they boasted about, most of them disclaiming each other.
So I will instead share my own story and numbers to make this point.
Now I am by no means even close to as great as the men above, but I hope the point still comes across.
I started out as a Writer with a WordPress Blog.
At the beginning, it was just to practice my consistency and I wrote about 300 posts in my first year, yielding a total of 20 followers.
This was very little and so I switched to a site called Quora. In my first 6 months there I wrote about 1,000 posts, averaging 3 a day, before I wrote one answer that went viral.
This was back in 2016. Since then I have averaged about 3 posts a day consistently over the years.
I have been published on The Huffington Post, Time, and many more sites, have over 75,000 followers, 60M content views and get over 1M views a month still, and none of it because I was a good writer!
My very first post that I wrote was a page long block of text that was essentially a Writer’s Nightmare.
The only thing that pushed me through was that no one else wrote that much.
Many people wrote one post a day, if that, some even less.
And let me tell you this, after 18 Months of writing every day, the one viral post did not feel like a stroke of luck anymore, it felt deserved.
The point I want to make here is it is not about where you start or what prerequisites you have.
Winning is not about being better than everybody else.
Winning is about being the last person running in a race where everyone else gave up.
If you want to win you have to break through the noise by either doing more than others are willing to or doing it longer than they want to.
I have seen so many amazing writers leave Quora to never write again because they just did not break through the noise.
Mahatma Gandhi just did not eat, Michael Phelps only swam a lot, and Muhammad Ali trained a bit.
We have all done these things before, they are nothing special when you look at them like that. It’s not like they invented something none of us could ever dream of or did something that was so unbelievable it looked like Magic.
What made them special was the fact that they kept pushing and kept going with it when many people around them gave up or would have given up!
So let me ask you this then: Are you doing anything that stands out?
When you are working out do you do more and take shorter breaks than anyone else? When you are with your partner do you give them more attention and love than they can handle? When you are working at your job, do you work 10x more than any of your colleagues?
Are you doing anything that stands out?
You cannot expect yourself to win by just doing what everyone else is doing.
Sorry, but you are just not that special!
You have to become special by doing something extraordinary, and I mean that in the most literal sense possible:
Extra-Ordinary!
That means you do not overexert yourself.
Don’t expect to be able to train 6–8 hours a day, 7 days a week after having done no training at all.
Take it one step at a time but work yourself up and stay committed to it.
If you have the time and energy, then you can push further faster; it will get easier.
The 3 posts I wrote took anywhere from 3–6 hours a day at first. Now I can often write better posts in 15 minutes.
It does get easier.
Pick something, anything in your life that you wish to win at, and commit yourself to more of that.
Even if it is just an hour a day, if you do it long enough you will become absolutely amazing at it.
Push your limits day by day, even one more minute each day gets you 6 hours more in just one year.
“Let me tell you something you already know.
The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows.
It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life.
But it ain’t about how hard ya hit.
It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward.
That’s how winning is done!” — Sylvester Stallone, Rocky Balboa
Breaking US Sanctions: How Huawei Changed US-China Tech War
Carl Zha talks to tech expert TP Huang about how latest Huawei breakthrough in advanced chip design and manufacturing is a game changer in the US waged tech war and economic war against China. Why ultimately US sanctions on China will fail. The rest of this interview is on my Patreon site
During WW2 there was a company that always submitted excellent paper work, head Quarters noticed this and moved their clerk typist to Headquarters, Battalion noticed him and moved him up to their office, he continued to be so dependable the higher ups wanted him, so eventually he ended up in Eisenhower’s front office.
One day, A hard nosed colonel came in to the office and demanded to see Ike, now. The clerk typist asked him, what does this pertain to? The Colonel started getting loud, said he didn’t need to explain anything to a clerk typist.
Ike came out to see the commotion, the colonel again was indignant.
Ike looked around the waiting room, saw another colonel sitting there, took an eagle pin off that colonel’s collar, and pinned it on the collar of the clerk, and said “ Now tell the colonel what you want”, and returned into his office.
The clerk was a colonel for the duration of his enlistment.
On a daily basis, my team and I would clean toilets, floors, rooms, the kitchen, our rifles, the floor around the barracks, our vests, our magazines and even the dog who lived in the barracks. I hated it.
I truly did not understand why I was spending months of paratrooper training time to clean up places that were spotless, instead of shooting and learning to fight.
And then I experienced my first operation.
My team and I were sent with four vehicles to meet up with a field intelligence unit, and prepare for the operation.
I remember meeting the field intelligence guys. It was the first time in my service meeting men, on duty, serving in a different unit than mine.
Their gear was obviously ill maintained, their vehicles were disgusting and dusty, and I could see the soot on the barrels of their rifles who have obviously not been cleaned in weeks. I wanted to tell their commander he was doing a shit job at maintaining his team’s gear.
And then it struck me.
All that cleaning during training has turned me into a neat freak.
Everything, even now in my apartment, needs to be perfectly placed, spotless and maintained. There are no excuses, and there should be none. An organized living is the basis for an organized life.
The lesson I took from all this epiphany?
There is shit in life you will not want to do, and you might even hate doing it, but truly successful people do the things they do not want to do, as best as they can, because eventually it will pay off in the long run.
China-Japan-South Korea Upcoming Summit: What’s Behind this Surprising Diplomatic Shift??
In a surprising turn of events, China has recently announced its willingness to hold a summit with Japan and South Korea leaders. This unexpected move begs the question: what has prompted this significant change? Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Wang Wenbin, revealed that the three countries have reached an agreement to convene a meeting of their foreign ministers “in the next few months,” with the intention of facilitating a gathering of leaders as soon as possible. Undoubtedly, this initiative is driven by the collective interests of the three parties involved.
This development comes on the heels of China’s denouncement, in late August, of the statement released at the conclusion of the Camp David summit. The gathering, which brought together the leaders of the US, Japan, and South Korea, raised concerns about transforming the Asia-Pacific region into a geopolitical battleground. However, China’s willingness to engage in dialogue with its neighboring nations demonstrates an intriguing diplomatic shift. Be sure to subscribe to my channel for regular updates on global affairs & geopolitical shifts. Don’t miss out on my in-depth analysis of significant events shaping the world today!
The US is digging for a deeper hole.
As Washington reportedly plans to update its export curbs against China in October, an analysis report by a Dutch media posits that the previous export curbs imposed a year ago exposed the Biden Administration seem to have no clear idea of their objectives.
According to Dutch media Bits&Chips, the semiconductor restrictions against China are likely a product of the US struggle between hawks and doves concerning the China issue, leading to loopholes and a lack of clear goals.
To consider the interests of US-based semiconductor equipment and material suppliers, the US government allows the delivery of equipment that may be used to make advanced chips, highlighting the incompleteness and inconsistency of the curbs.
The US Bureau of Industry and Security set a threshold that requires exporters to get a license before shipping to China for equipment that can make logic chips with FinFET or GAAFET architecture of 16/14nm or below. However, the current export controls are insufficient if US export controls aim to deny China’s production capabilities of 14nm and below.
On the other hand, the US may not achieve its intended results if it aims to prevent China’s progress in the semiconductor industry, as demonstrated by Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro, which highlights the fact that China can make advanced chips without advanced equipment.
Huawei has obtained crucial patents on 6G technology, which may allow the Chinese company to thrive in the 6G era, according to Simon Chen, chairman of Adata Technology.
A green Toyota Celica drove into the customers’ parking space and a man alighted and walked into the store.
He was a first-time caller.
He was supporting his trousers with his hands.
‘Please I just need a belt. My belt snapped in the car, and I live far away from here. I am late for work and I don’t have money on me now. Can you trust me, I will bring the money at the close of work today’.
O My God!
First business of the day!
A man I never knew?
And here in this country, Nigeria?
‘Give him, he looks genuine. Could as well happen to you!’, one side of the brain was preaching.
‘Don’t!! Could be one of them. You’ll lose if you do!!’, the other side was screaming and countering.
‘Why can’t we live in a world where we can trust people and help them without fear?’, I was trying to make sense of this mental back-and-forth.
I gave him a very good quality belt, made the necessary perforations and he thanked me profusely and left.
5:06 pm:
The green Toyota Celica pulled up.
It was him.
To make good his promise.
Why isn’t life just this good!
Today, many years after that day, he no longer works around the area or passes through the route daily, but for such a small thing, he is one of my most valuable customers and has repaid the trust many, many times over.
Texas Jambalaya
2023 11 07 15 37
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup diced onion
1/4 cup diced green bell pepper
1/2 cup diced celery
1 1/2 teaspoons chopped garlic
1 cup converted rice, uncooked
4 ounces smoked sausage, cut into 1/4 inch slices
4 ounces ham, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
2 cans Ro*Tel diced tomatoes and green chiles
1 cup chicken broth
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
1 bay leaf
2 cans Ranch Style Texas beans, undrained
Instructions
In a 5 quart saucepot over medium-high heat, heat oil.
Add onion, green pepper and celery; cook until onions are translucent.
Add garlic, cook 1 minute longer.
Add rice, sausage and ham. Cook 2 to 3 minutes to coat rice with oil, stirring frequently.
Add next 4 ingredients and heat to boiling.
Cover and steam 20 to 25 minutes or until all liquid is absorbed.
Remove bay leaf, stir in beans and serve.
The Exhausted and Unable to Survive, the Cat was Thrown Out on the Grass to Die
On the 1st of October, 331 B.C.E., the Persian king Darius III finally had that Macedonian pest Alexander the Great right where he wanted him – on a big flat plain where Darius could make full use of his cavalry and 2–1 numerical advantage against the Greek upstart.
The location was Gaugamela in what’s now northern Iraq. For the past three years Alexander had been making Darius’s life a living hell but it was payback time.
At the head of Darius’s forces were 200 heavy chariots. The plan was, as usual, to unleash these monsters running at full speed into the Greek infantry lines. The weather was good, the field was dry – perfect conditions for slaughtering the Greeks and sending them all the way back to the Aegean.
Things…. didn’t work out. As with any battle that took place 3,300 years ago there were different stories about what happened. The only things we know for sure are:
Alexander’s forces killed or captured most of the Persian army at a loss of no more than 1,500 troops; and
The chariots turned out to be entirely useless.
Alexander knew the problem posed by the chariots and was ready for them. He drilled his men to fall back into pockets that would allow the chariot to penetrate the line, only to be met by infantrymen with their spears jammed into the ground pointing directly at the pocket.
What would happen is the horses, running at full speed, would run into the pocket but, facing the spears, would stop suddenly. The charioteers would find themselves surrounded on three sides and no way forward, and horses and chariots don’t reverse easily. As you can see, the chariots mostly went through the gap in the Macedonian line, only to find Alexander leading a cavalry charge back at the gap that wiped them out entirely.
The tactic remained a military favourite against horse soldiers for most of the next 1,800 years.
When the tactic was revived in the 15th century, it similarly made knights on horseback pretty much obsolete.
After Gaugumela, Alexander’s tactics were similarly widely adopted and the use of chariots started to tail off as they became ineffective and easy to lose.
Rich Men North Of Richmond, but it’s a Rap Type Beat
Made a beat to the song everyones talking about rn – Rich Men North Of Richmond by Oliver Anthony. Had a lot of fun with this one, went from idea to finished product in a day. The song isn’t set to a bpm so forgive me for parts that are off time, it was tough putting it all in time. Also shoutout to @TimGuitarLessons I used his audio in some parts.
As you get older, you realize that people who lie constantly have some kind of mental problem. It might be a habit; a neurosis, or a DMS-4 illness. But they are not “right in the head”. Something (not saying what it is) is wrong.
Fully functioning adults do not need to lie. They say things as they are. If they don;t want to answer a question, they say so. They have self-confidence, pride and a sense of self-worth.
…
When I first came to China I started to compare my life as an American, to that of China.
And, as such, I quickly realized that SOMETHING was seriously, very seriously wrong with the United States.
The best way for me to describe this is to imagine that you are married to a mentally ill person. (I was, by the way. My first wife was schizo-effective; which had the worst qualities of bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia). Then you get divorced, and meet up with a healthy person.
It was like that.
…
I am in China. It is a healthy nation. It is calm and peaceful. The leadership works towards allowing people freedom and happiness, and it shows.
When I was in the United States, however, everything was a struggle. One problem after the other. And today, it’s only getting worse.
…
Why do I defend China?
Because a mentally ill nation is attacking it using every single DSM-4 technique in the book.
My girlfriend was to remove the patient’s prostate through a so-called radicalprostatectomy. It was Wednesday morning, a couple of weeks ago.
And Wednesdays can be tough.
A typical Wednesday typically includes brutally waking up very early, getting ready, driving to the hospital, and starting the first scheduled surgery at 8AM sharp. Usually a number of operations are planned, depending on the time they take, and urgency.
The afternoon typically consists of a large number of consultations.
After consulting, she usually drives to her father’s house (which is pretty far away from the hospital), because our daughter will be there, but before leaving the hospital, she always visits the patients who had surgery in the morning to have a little chat about the operation, about how the patient is feeling, and about everyday stuff.
When she was back home, we fetched a drink and talked about our day (“what a day, what a day, what a day”), and watched some TV before dinner.
Suddenly she shouted:
“I forgot to see my patient !!”
The prostate man. In all the Wednesday hubbub, she had totally forgotten about the patient, and driven out of the hospital with other things on her mind. She immediately called the hospital and asked a nurse to tell the patient that she would visit him first thing next morning — promised !
The poor man had been a bit worried, thinking that something was wrong, that the cancer was worse than she had expected, and that this was the reason why she did not come.
But next morning, when the doctor was in the house again, he was a happy man. The operation went as planned, and the cancer would be gone now.
Just because China puts up with US bullying doesn’t mean China has to put up with the same shit from a much weaker nation. In fact, Germany is seen kind of like a joke nowadays by the Chinese public, politically, due to it staying silent on NATO blowing up its Nord stream pipeline, and this public sentiment limits how much compromise the Chinese government can have with Germany. Instead of sitting idle and just take the unfair abuse on what’s now pride of Chinese companies for Huawei’s standing up to the US, China would more likely set Germany up as an example in the Chinese philosophy of “kill the chicken to scare the monkeys”.
I can see China starting by reacting proportionately with banning of Siemens from some operations inside China, as well as making life miserable for German cars, which are extremely dependant on China as their largest market worldwide and their factory as well since energy prices drove up costs in Europe, but China being China, it would reserve the stronger responses in hopes of descalation, and would only apply them if Germany escalates things further.
Things are going very, VERY, wrong; Netanyahu Tells Israelis to “Leave Egypt”
Things in the Hamas-Israel fight are going very much wrong for Israel. This afternoon, The US ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford Aircraft Carrier Strike Group to move into the eastern Mediterranean Sea to be closer to Israel. This signals ALL the players that the US is moving-in to get involved militarily. The Players are NOT backing away.
Hamas: Moving the American aircraft carrier does not scare us, and the American administration must realize the consequences of this step.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office calls on Israelis to leave Egypt ‘as soon as possible.’ This is a HUGE . . . no . . . . GIGANTIC . . . flashing RED sign.
Egypt was the first Arab nation to make peace with Israel, and depending upon what course Israel pursues in Gaza (i.e. possible Ground Invasion) that peace with Egypt may now be in very real jeopardy.
The Palestinian President Mohammed Abbas, who was safely away in Jordan, is now leaving Jordan and heading into Syria.
In earlier reporting, I mentioned Intelligence info that Palestinians in Israel got word to their allies elsewhere to be ready to turn up the heat on Europe if Israel engages in a ground war. Now, we see they also got word to their pals in New York City, where, this afternoon, supporters of the Palestinians and supporters of Israel faced each other in Times Square. Chanting . . . for now . . . .
American Middle Class Is the New Poor | Renters Are Out of Options
Working and homeless! The new slogan. It’s not always drug addiction that leads to this. We NEED to stop this stereotype. Cost of living, especially rent is far outpacing wages which are not even remotely keeping up.. For people with no roommates or family to move in with and not making more than 75K, it’s rough out there.
I have (as of late) been drawn to the horrible stories about infidelity between married couples. Just terrible stuff really. And then one of my followers asked for help on this matter and I responded in a post.
When I get these urges, there are always deeper meanings underlying their intrusion into my consciousness. And it just occurred to me what is going on.
The “marriage” is the United States and China.
The United States is “having sex and fooling round”, and China knows all about it, but wants to keep the relationship stable.
So the United States denies, and denies, and then denies…
What are you talking about?
Nothing is going on?
You worry too much?
You are reading too much into the picture of me and a coworker…
…but the texting behind the back keeps on occurring, and the sex orgies still occur in (apparent) secret.
But China has a PI investigating everything and knows everything. China has transcripts of all the text message. China has videos of the sexual events taken from the phones, and the sexy pictures sent back and forth between them. China knows when, where, how and how often these events occurred.
But hasn’t shown its hand yet.
What will China do?
The normal thing (the most common event) is confrontation; a “lot of fireworks” and screaming and yelling, and then a hostile divorce.
But I really don’t think that China wants, or has any plans, to do that.
China does not want a divorce (a war; in any shape or form.)
However, if push comes to shove, China (as a partner) will make life a living Hell for the United States….
…if push comes to shove.
If all these non-stop provocations keep on occurring while the USA puts on the face that “all is just fine, nothing is going on. You are the one with the issue.“
And were a hard and harsh divorce were to manifest, it would be China who would hold all the cards. It won’t go in any way that the USA thinks.
…
All these are ugly thoughts.
The USA and China are (at least on the surface) making amends. Dating again, things are getting back to normal. Plane Flights are opening up. Businessmen are cutting deals and all the rest.
But the USA is still up to it’s old bag of tricks.
A “color revolution” in Burma by the CIA was just squelched. Lots of dead (CIA trained) insurgents.
“President” Biden got up and made a public warning to China to stop provoking The Philippines…
My gut feeling is that the Chinese know everything, and are just “waiting out” the United States. It will run out of money, resources, banking, finance, and cred sooner than later.
Ai! Hopefully the hidden texts, the late-night “meetings”, and all the rest will come to a quick and decisive end.
Hopefully.
One more year of Joe Biden. Sheech!
I don’t know if I can handle that. Oh Lordy!
I swear that he has his foot on the gas petal towards war and is FLOORING IT.
Well China gave the west a 2 century head start and caught it up in less than 50 years! Go figure. The west don’t have civilisation it has a war mongering barbaric mind set that thinks they are ordained by god to loot and plunder. Colonialism U.S. not civilised it is a cruel, despicable act of stealing land and carrying out genocides to slaughter most of the natives.
Civilisation is like the Chinese and Confucianism edicts on discipline, respect, compassion, hard work, eagerness to learn, winning without fighting. Murder, slaughter, genocide done by the west to steal land and resources is barbaric not civilised.
Star Trek: The Silent Skies | 1920 Universe
This is AMAZING!
Zero-sum mentality in US won’t halt China’s tech rise — Global Times
American automaker Ford said on Monday it’s pausing construction of a $3.5 billion electric vehicle (EV) battery plant in the US state of Michigan until it is confident it can run the factory competitively, the Associated Press (AP) reported. Although the US government is flexing all of its policy muscles available to suppress China’s high-tech industry, US competitiveness in cutting-edge technologies has continued to decline as a result of multiple factors.
Ford’s decision comes as the company is in the midst of national contract talks with the United Auto Workers union, which wants to represent workers at battery factories and win them top wages, according to the AP report. Intense competition among global EV manufacturers has unsettled the US automotive industry, which had been a pillar of the US economy, as US automakers are under pressure both at home and abroad.
On the one hand, competition from international competitors, including Chinese EV makers, poses a challenge to American firms, especially as Chinese companies have accumulated technological and price advantages against the backdrop of fierce competition in the Chinese domestic market.
On the other hand, deep-seated problems in the US economy, including insufficient labor protection and the widening wealth gap, have erupted in a concentrated manner. The car industry, like other manufacturing industries in the US, is facing increased pressure due to rising production costs.
As reported by the AP in March, Ford’s EV business has lost $3 billion before taxes during the past two years. If the US automaker wants to catch up with rivals amid intense international competition, one option for Ford is to collaborate with top Chinese companies.
Ford in February announced plans to build the plant in Michigan, betting that making the batteries in the US would help it and Chinese partner CATL attract US customers to embrace a lower-cost technology pioneered in China, according to Reuters. Honestly speaking, Ford’s cooperation with CATL benefits the development of the US EV industry. However, the sector’s survival opportunities are being stifled by politicians in Washington. Republicans in Congress have been probing Ford’s battery plant plan over concerns it could leave Ford dependent on Chinese technology.
As reported by Reuters, Rep. Mike Gallagher said lawmakers were “encouraged to see Ford take a crucial first step to reevaluate its deal” with CATL. “Now, Ford needs to call off this deal for good,” he added.
Not only in the EV industry, but also in most high-tech and cutting-edge industries, some people in the US possess an extremely unhealthy and unfair zero-sum competition mentality toward China. However, it is evident that this thinking is counterproductive in promoting the development of domestic US industries.
Apart from Tesla, other American vehicle companies still have a relatively low share in the domestic and international EV markets. Although the US government has devised protectionist measures such as the Inflation Reduction Act, it is still moving slowly in terms of addressing domestic supply chain issues, particularly in the production of batteries.
Washington is working toward a zero-sum competition with China, with American firms serving as victims. What Chinese enterprises need to do is to confront external challenges, continuously enhance their competitiveness, strengthen technological innovation, seize the opportunities created by Washington’s zero-sum competition mentality – which has caused difficulties for American enterprises – and continuously strengthen themselves.
China is becoming increasingly competitive in EV manufacturing capacity and technology innovation. Chinese EV brands, such as BYD and NIO, have made significant strides in developing advanced EV technologies, including battery technology and autonomous driving features.
China holds a superior position in the EV supply chain, with about three-quarters of the world’s battery production capacity. Moreover, China houses more than half of the world’s processing and refining capacity for lithium, cobalt and graphite, which are essential materials for making EV batteries.
The West’s narrow-minded, zero-sum game mentality has indeed put some pressure on China in the short term, but it cannot fundamentally hinder technological progress. If the US always opts for dirty tricks against China instead of learning how to conduct healthy competition with Chinese enterprises and develop its own economic competitiveness, this will just lead to a larger gap between China and the US.
If you don’t understand why I use the word “monster” to describe Huawei, please look at this picture. Here is a summary of the business Huawei is doing.
It is different from traditional foreign technology companies, such as Samsung, SONY, Nokia, and Alibaba, which only challenge advanced American companies in a certain field.
It has launched a comprehensive challenge to its American counterparts in almost the entire information technology industry.
It not only challenges, but has already achieved success in many areas, and this trend is getting faster and faster.
If the US doesn’t stop it, it will slap American companies on the butt in global markets. Just like Toyota and Honda slapped Ford’s ass back in the day.
Currently, high-tech companies are a key means for the United States to gain wealth from around the world. Once these high-tech companies are stepped on by Huawei, how can the United States maintain its status as a developed country and maintain Americans’ living standards?
Therefore, when American companies have no choice but to rely on the U.S. government to take action. Kill the monster before it grows up. As for the reason: threatening national security
Senior shelter cat desperately hugs woman for adoption
“I adopted the oldest cat my shelter had. She was owner surrendered at the age 15 which I just thought was wrong. I named her Hope and she gave me 4 of the best years of my life. Thank you so much for adopting a senior cat. I wish you many years of happiness and love with her.”
REPORTS: Thousands of Ukraine Soldiers SURRENDERING To Russian Army
A special radio frequency being used so that Ukrainian soldiers can safely surrender to Russian forces is now chattering like never before. Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are opting to surrender to the Russian Army.
These surrenders were seen even by Clayton Morris, an American journalist, who expressed his astonishment and said, “this is a story the western media does not want you to see.”
Ukrainian forces are laying down their Western-supplied arms and surrendering en masse! Using emergency radio frequencies, they’re receiving food & medical care and even sharing critical intel with Russian forces.
Is this the final chapter?
As Zelensky hears of mass surrendering of Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines he will likely be very concerned. Not about the soldiers; about what happens to him
The question now is who gets to him first. The Russians will want him but the west may want him too. Dead.
They will not wish to have him expose the money laundering, child sex slavery and child organ harvesting that has been going on in Ukraine; the Globalist Parasites cant allow that.
Either way its not looking good for the man in Green.
By most credible accounts, the recent Ukronazi+NATO attack in the Kharkov area was even more costly in KIA/MIA, wounded and lost hardware than the attack towards Kherson. The combined losses from these attacks are staggering.
Yet there are all the signs that the Ukronazi+NATO forces are preparing for even more such attacks.
The Ukronazi+NATO seem happy to trade human lives for territorial gains, no matter how small or how irrelevant that territory is.
The Russians seem happy to trade space and time to protect the lives of their soldiers and equipment.
We could say that the Ukronazi+NATO are trading bodies for shells.
Let’s remember the two goals set by Putin for the SMO: denazify and demilitarize. Both of these goals are human-focused, not terrain-focused. In other words, if a tactical-level withdrawal allows the Russian to kill scores of Ukronazi+NATO personnel and destroy their equipment, they will gladly accept the trade.
The other goal was to protect the LDNR. Kherson is not part of the LDNR.
Territory can be reconquered, equipment is hard to replace, especially complex weapon-systems.
Soldiers cannot be resurrected.
It is absolutely clear that Ukronazi+NATO are “betting the farm” into these offensives. Not only is the coming winter a major threat for them, but the political chaos in the EU and the US this fall and winter means that now is the time to try has hard as possible to conceal the magnitude of the disaster for the Ukronazi+NATO.
So, most of what is taking place now can be summed up in this simple question: who will run out of resources first: the Ukronazi+NATO in terms of manpower and equipment or the Russians in terms of firepower (mostly artillery, missiles and airpower)?
I think that the answer is obvious: Russia wins.
U.S. Plans To Ethnically Cleanse Gaza
This is, presumably, the U.S.-Israeli plan for the Palestinian people in Gaza:
Amazing: President Biden is working on a plan with other countries that would allow civilians to safely leave Gaza and cross the border into Egypt. This is great news. President Biden is making sure that innocent people don’t die due to the actions of Hamas. That’s leadership.
No, it is not leadership. It is ethnic cleansing, a war crime disguised as humanitarian gesture. It is ethnic cleansing of people who’s land has been stolen by Zionist settlers. These people would have no right of return to the homes and land they once owned. People who have been put into an open air prison, who have no access to electricity, water and food and are currently under intense attacks.
Egypt, the only country where they potentially could be moved to, is already bankrupt. It can not even provide for its own people. Two million new people from Gaza, all poor and some of them radicalized, would undoubtedly unbalance the Egyptian state.
Should such a plan be put into action it would guarantee that the resistance axis, Hizbullah and various other Sunni and Shia groups in the Middle East, would step in. The would attack Israel to prevent such a move.
The U.S. thinks it can deter resistance action by threatening to move in with its own forces. That’s why the USS Herald Ford, its newest carrier, was moved into the Eastern Mediterranean. Rumors have it that a second carrier will come in too.
But the resistance can not be deterred by that. The last time the U.S. tried to intervene in Lebanon it ended up with 241 dead Marines and had to retreat in shame. Hizbullah at that time was only a handful of men. Today Hizbullah has tens of thousands of very well trained men. Then there are also Iran and Russia:
As I said in my analysis today of the NATO intervention in the Israeli northern front, it’s inconceivable that Russia should stay silent in the face of such brazen NATO overreach. This seat-of-the-pants, unmandated NATO panic move will speed up Russia’s pivot from pro-Israel to pro-Arab that started with the deaths of Russian airmen caused by an IAF aggression against Syria and was locked in with Netanyahu’s support for the nazi regime in Kiev.
The Russian military has long identified Israel as an enemy state and Putin is now conceding to them, acknowledging the failure of yet another one of his strategies, namely the political use of the Russian Jewish community in Israel via his “friend” Avigdor Lieberman. Russian Jews in Israel are virulently anti-Arab, so Putin tried not to upset them.
Today, however, with Bibi bringing in the full might of NATO to the Eastern Mediterranean to threaten not only Lebanon but Russian bases in Syria, it’s no more Mr. Nice Guy. With Patrushin and Shoygu holding the reins of state and a clear and present NATO threat on Syria’s doorstep, expect a strong and unexpected Russian intervention in the multifront Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah war.
The U.S. Embassy in Beirut has not evacuated and is open and operating normally. Reports saying otherwise are false. For more information and travel advisories, visit our embassy website: lb.usembassy.gov
Posted by b on October 11, 2023 at 15:43 UTC | Permalink
When I was young I was pretty much left to my own devices as far as personal hygiene and was always had dirty clothes. My parents were drunks and as the youngest of 7 it was total chaos for me. For some reason though this girl in my class who was smart, funny and popular became my friend. She was just the best friend a girl could ask for. Her father was a prominent doctor and she came from a big loving family. Whenever she could she would include me in whatever she was doing.
We were freshman in high-school and were sitting having lunch and a girl who was just as popular invited my BFF to a party but told her not to bring me because her mother wouldn’t appreciate it if I brought vermin or disease into her house. My friend just stood up and told me that we had to get to our next class and didnt engage with her. The next Saturday was the party and I was home sitting in my room and my BFF showed up at the door and said she thought the party was boring and we ended up going to the movies and then to her house for a sleepover.
Fast forward about a week and the girl who had the party was talking about how her mother was upset because their house apparently smelled like something died in it. They couldnt figure out what the smell was. It was awful. My friend said to the girl that “maybe you have some type of vermin in your house.” She then said she didnt think she could hang with someone like her because there could be vermin in her house. This immediately caught my attention. I asked her about it later. She came clean and told me that when she went to the party – she brought with her some canned shrimp and discreetly placed the raw shrimp in places throughout the house. Under area rugs, on top of a grandfather clock even in the hem of the drapes in various rooms. She said that nobody fucks with me – and she would always have my back.
THAT IS A FRIEND
The Average Age Of Ukraine’s Army
Ben Wallace, the former Secretary of State for Defence of the UK, writes in the Telegraph:
Putin is desperately grasping at the final two things that can save him – time and the splitting of the international community. Britain can do something about both. We must help Ukraine maintain its momentum – and that will require more munitions, ATACMSs and Storm Shadows. And the best way to keep the international community together is the demonstration of success.
Ukraine can also play its part. The average age of the soldiers at the front is over 40. I understand President Zelensky’s desire to preserve the young for the future, but the fact is that Russia is mobilising the whole country by stealth. Putin knows a pause will hand him time to build a new army. So just as Britain did in 1939 and 1941, perhaps it is time to reassess the scale of Ukraine’s mobilisation.
Let us not pause for one day. Let us see this through. The world is watching to see if the West has the resolve to stand up for our values and the rules-based system. What we do now for Ukraine will set the direction for all of our security for years to come.
Think for a moment what the aside insert “The average age of the soldiers at the front is over 40” really means. Can Storm Shadows change that fact?
Sollte stimmen, was Wallace da über das Durchschnittsalter an der ukrainischen Front sagt, 40 Jahre, dann sind die schlimmsten Mutmaßungen über Verluste weit übertroffen worden. Paraguay 1870.
Translated from German by Google If what Wallace says about the average age on the Ukrainian front is true, 40 years, then the worst assumptions about losses have been far exceeded. Paraguay 1870.
Paraguay suffered massive casualties, and the war’s disruption and disease also cost civilian lives. Some historians estimate that the nation lost the majority of its population.
Ukraine ain’t there yet. But looking at pictures of Ukrainian soldiers at the front Wallace seems to be right. If you are forty or above are you really still able to run, react and fight like when you were twenty? I am not.
The young Ukrainians are gone. They either have fled from Ukraine or are wounded, disabled or died. You can not mobilize what is no longer there.
Have your chili 3, 4 or 5 ways, Cincinnati style. This is also great on hot dogs, smothered with shredded cheese.
cincinnati chili
Yield: 5 to 6 servings
Ingredients
Chili
1 1/2 pounds lean ground beef
2 medium onions, chopped
1/2 cup chopped celery
6 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons mild chili powder
1 tablespoon paprika
1 1/2 teaspoons dried basil
1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
1 1/2 teaspoons dried thyme
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2 (14 1/2 ounce) cans diced tomatoes
1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce
1/2 cup water
Have It 5 Ways
1 pound spaghetti, cooked
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 cup finely grated Cheddar cheese
1 (15 1/2 ounce) can kidney beans, rinsed, drained and heated
Hot sauce (your favorite)
Instructions
Brown ground beef, onions and celery in a large skillet, drain off all fat.
Place slow cooker ingredients into a slow cooker and stir well. Cover slow cooker and cook for 7 to 9 hours on LOW, or for 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 hours on HIGH, stirring during last part of cooking if using HIGH setting.
Cook spaghetti 1/2 hour before chili is done.
To have chili 3-ways, serve it with spaghetti, chili and cheese.
To have chili 4-ways, serve it with spaghetti, chili, onion and cheese.
To have spaghetti 5-ways, serve it with spaghetti, chili, beans, onion and cheese.
Douse chili liberally with hot sauce, if desired.
US Shutdown CANCELLED, No Money For Ukraine, Economy In Ruins
At the last minute, the US Congress passed a Stopgap Bill to keep money flowing for government spending. However, funding was cut to Ukraine in a shocking move. This is most likely political theatre as American support will likely continue. Here’s why the US government is trapped and borrowing money will never end!
I was a store manager at family dollar and I inherited the store and like 6 employees. I was a new manager and didn’t have much experience in such a leadership role. Fast forward I am learning as the days go by. One of my employees come to me and ask me for a ride from work. I typically don’t mingle with coworkers or employees just to keep the possibility of drama down. Well long story short I ended up befriending this middle aged lady I worked with. She frequently got rides from everyone because she didn’t have a car. I ended up hiring another middle aged lady because she had to get a job to get her kids back from the state(I know I know not a good reason to hire someone but I was young soft hearted and above all a mother) so I gave her a chance. I worked around her visitation and allowed her to work a sporadic schedule. This went on for about two years. Well one day I came in on my day off which I frequently did just to make sure everything was up and running and things didn’t feel right. Everyday at a certain time the cameras cut off and reset to save memory or storage(one do them) well I see those two employees pushing carts full of merchandise to their cars along with other people. So I stop them and the people who were with them and ask them for receipts. They produced receipts for like 5 items but the amount of items In their carts greatly exceeded the receipt description. I fired them on the spot and they took two of four carts back into the store. Their family refused and I called loss prevention and police at this time. I was stressed out because she lost her job which means she was going to lose her children and I know it wasn’t my concern I just didn’t understand why she put her children in that position. They both had been stealing expired and new merchandise for the last 6–9 months. I was shocked at how they behaved so normally around me. I learned a lesson here though, I am more strict and don’t allow my heart to lead my professional decisions! I am an exceptional leader today because of my family dollar experiences!!
Not fight but they were hard to get back. As the younger brother, two years younger, of two older sisters, twins Lori and Tracy, I often had to go into their bedrooms and retrieve my stuff.
Yes it’s odd girls would be taking their brother’s clothes but mine did. Tracy would take my ball cap. She had a lot of blonde hair but that didn’t stop her from wearing my cap. She wore ball caps before girls wore ball caps and she got a lot of looks. She would also borrow a military style belt I had.
Tracy wore jeans ripped on the knees, purposely, to school one day before that came into fashion. The teacher sent her home. He told her that her knees were showing. She went home and changed into a short skirt and came back to school. The teacher stared at her shaking his head.
“Oh my God. My knees are showing. Should I go back home and change?” she said coyly. That was my sister. She was ahead of her time.
Lori would often take my school football jacket and wear it going to games with her friends. She often came to my games wearing it and cheered me on.
It was hard getting these things back sometimes and I’d have to sneak into their rooms that looked like cyclones hit them. Mom called them ‘Cyclonic Rest Areas.’ Fashion models since age 15, the girls had a lot of clothes and they were all over the rooms. You wouldn’t think they’d borrow their brother’s clothes having all those clothes in their rooms. Of course as soon as I got them back Lori would ask, “RJ, can I borrow your school jacket?”
I remember once I had to run out into the backyard to get the dogs out of the rain. Mom’s orders. The dogs never wanted to come in, even out of the rain. I had no shoes but there was a shiny pair of white boots by the back door. I was thirteen then. I put on the boots. I then ran outside and herded in the three dogs. Tracy, 15, was at the door with her friends. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING WEARING MY BOOTS? THEY ARE ALL MUDDY NOW!” She scolded. “Do you have any idea how much they cost?”
“Oh, but it’s fine for you and Lori to wear my ball cap, belt and jacket having them smell like perfume later!” I said to her as I took off her boots. She looked at her friends and laughed. She sighed. “Touché!” she said smiling at me.
I remember the girls were at a school football game I was playing in. One of the guys asked, “Is that Tracy wearing your cap RJ?” In those days, girls were not often seen wearing ball caps.
“Yep, that’s her,” I said.
“Wow! She sure looks a hell of a lot better wearing that cap than you do,” he said..
As Apple found out, limited amount of skilled labor and poor quality output. Apple tried to assemble in India and found they had a 50% yield rate and about a fifth of its required manpower needs. Further, as word got around, Europeans are not buying ‘made in India Apple iPhones. Almost all developing countries are similar in condition and experience. Simple things like garments work fairly well, but assembly of high end mobile phones are a bit harder.
While India offered what appeared to be the greatest possibility, Vietnam is always cited. Vietnam has limited skilled labor, lack of electricity, and lack of infrastructure. Again, garments, toys, and simple assembly are possible, but complex items get poor results.
Further, the supply chain is non-existent, so parts have to come from the supply chain developed in China. For Apple, lesson learned. It has lost $70 billion in this exercise to move to India, only to return to China and expand its operation there. The labor costs may be higher, but still cheaper than the US and the skilled labor is in quantity that Apple needs plus the yield rate is almost 100% and the supply chain is well developed.
I would also mention TSMC’s attempt to build a 4nm fab in Arizona, only to find lack of skilled labor, and work culture below that of Taiwan. It appears TSMC has closed the fab, laid off the workforce, and for all intents and purpose, shut down its US operations.
This break-up is epic. And classic. It was the ultimate f*ck you and the horse you rode in on.
A former co-worker had this “boyfriend” for four years. Didn’t want to marry her. “Marriage is just a piece of paper” and all that guff. So this woman was diagnosed at a fairly young age with cancer. Boyfriend still didn’t want to marry her; really, he didn’t want to have to deal with making her medical decisions, caring for her, etc. It became obvious during chemotherapy when she needed tending to.
Luckily, she had adult children and friends who stepped in and did all of the heavy lifting he was unwilling to do—and unable, by law, to do.
The cancer turns terminal. So, of course there’s the issue of inheritance to sort out and other financial and legal matters. This woman wasn’t rich by any stretch of the imagination, but she did okay. She had a house that was paid for, and some investments. A nice pension and Social Security benefits, and of course, health insurance.
The ne’er-do-well boyfriend has a lightbulb moment: he could get the house, basically double his monthly living income, and get really good health coverage, if he just married her. So he proposed when she was at her very weakest.
Not being a foolish woman, she told him to take a long walk off a short pier. He scuttled away in disgrace and let her spend her final days in the company of those who loved her.
When she did die, it was very sad. She was too young and still had a lot of living to do. But at least Mr. “marriage is just a piece of paper” didn’t profit out of the deal. Her adult kids got everything instead. To this day, I hold her in very high regard for not letting him bamboozle her.
He got nothing, nada, niente, as it should always be for people like that.
Oliver Anthony Rich Men North of Richmond”REACTION” It Just Got Real
China’s 18 main trunk lines of high-speed railways, only 6 lines are profitable, and the remaining 13 are loss-making.
In 2022, China’s high-speed rail suffered a total loss of US$15 billion.
Therefore, if all high-speed rail in China is regarded as a company, it is a company with huge losses.
image 82
But in the eyes of the Chinese, high-speed rail is not a business. They believe that high-speed railway is a kind of social infrastructure. The purpose of its existence is to provide basic services for the entire social and economic development without maintaining profitability itself.
Therefore, as a state-owned enterprise, China Railway Corporation must bear losses. The funds lost are subsidized by the government every year.
The question is, how can the Chinese government have so much money to subsidize high-speed rail?
The reason is simple. After the Chinese built the first key high-speed railway, the Beijing-Shanghai High-speed Railway, they were surprised to find that for every US$1 they lost on the high-speed railway, the economic growth generated along the high-speed railway would increase by US$1.8. Three years after the high-speed rail was completed, tax revenue from governments along the line increased by 68%. The economic growth is 1.5 times faster than that of other regions. This increased wealth is enough to build ten more high-speed railways of the same type.
At the same time, there are 140 core enterprises and 500 general enterprises producing high-speed rail parts in China, distributed in more than 20 provinces. A 200 billion yuan industrial chain has been formed, providing a large number of jobs. Just look at the construction process of the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway, which involved more than 700 construction companies and provided jobs for 110,000 people.
Ultimately, high-speed rail became an engine of economic development in the eyes of the Chinese.
Wherever high-speed rail is built, wealth will be greatly increased. As for the funds invested in high-speed rail construction and operating expenses at a loss, they seem insignificant in the face of these increased wealth.
I worked in a small rural hospital in the central part of Texas. This hospital happened to be in between two high-security prisons. It was not a rare occurrence that while being transferred, they would stop at our hospital for blood work, x-rays, cat scans, etc. One time they brought two prisoners to the lab for blood work. (they remained chained and the officers kept weapons at ready.) I drew blood from the first guy. He was charistically covered with prison tattoos; tears, a clock with no hands, and several gang tattoos. He had one I never saw before. On his cheek were the numbers 5150.
I asked the other guy what 5150 meant. He said that guy is completely nuts! Nobody messes with that guy! What does 5150 mean? He said it is Part of the California penal code. It means criminally insane. I don’t who he is or what he did but he sure was creepy.
P.S. I got to know the transfer crews pretty well. we developed a practical joke with the prisoners. For all of their toughness, many of them were afraid of blood draw needles. When I was done with the blood draw I put a pink Barbie band-aid on the site. Then I told them they had to keep it on until they were admitted to their new home. The guards would back me up and say that they had to have proof that the blood was drawn. So the possibly badest, craziest, most evil, person I will ever meet wore a pink Barbie band-aid in prison because of me.
After a countless string of falsehood dangled by American leaders, government agencies, the mainstream media, thinktanks and intellectuals, why are we still debating if a particular American interpretation of China is credible?
Odds are it is false or embellished/exaggerated.
Remember this guy?
image 173
He made history becoming the first Cabinet-level official to be sanctioned by China, after passing a genocide determination on China’s treatment of the Uighurs in Xinjiang during his final weeks in office.
Surprisingly, few have spoken up for him, neither blue, nor red.
The State Department has quietly shelved his statement, with its lawyers concluding there was insufficient evidence to make the genocide designation. Antony certainly hasn’t acted on his predecessor’s words, even though the designation remains.
There was also balloon-gate, which was recently absolved by the Joint Chiefs.
“It was a weather balloon we shot down.”
It doesn’t matter how many warheads China has, because Zhou Enlai’s words remain relevant today.
“China has enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world once over”.
Stopped a motorcyclist who blew through a 4-way stop intersection. The guy pulled over and after I got out of my car, took off.
I chased him down and again, he stopped. He continued to straddle his bike while I approached him. I asked him to shut down his ride and swing off of it. No compliance. I reached down and turned the ignition off and removed the key. He went ballistic and decided to fight. Guy was huge and clearly under some form of influence. Inhumanly strong.
Tried to mace him, only to have the wind push it back at me. I had left my baton in the car and all he wanted to do was grab my holstered service weapon. We had no portable radios. Frankly, he was besting me and all I could do was keep him from ripping my revolver away from me.
Very, very fortunately, a county traffic officer approached from the other direction and he called it in before diving into the wrestling match. A few minutes later, LOTS of needed manpower arrived and we got the guy down and cuffed. We got him to his feet and watched while he “stiff-legged” it back to my car. Went to put him in the back seat and he wouldn’t fold. Tucked his knees with my stick; nothing. We knocked him back down and shoveled him into the car for the trip to the jail.
Upon booking, he ripped his (artificial) leg off, hopping around and swinging it at the jailers and everyone else……again, subdued and hauled off…aggressive, foul-mouthed, non-cooperative. Next day at his arraignment, a totally different guy! Disabled Vietnam vet…..double amputee….off of his meds. Contrite and apologetic.
Even as the arresting officer, the magistrate gave me no opportunity to comment or o’wise condition the arrest. The vet pleaded guilty and drew a 60-day sentence for battery to police officer(s). To this day, not certain that justice was served, but rolling around in the street fearing for my life was an eye-opener!
Many years ago, I was walking down a road in Bristol (England) and suddenly, a figure burst out of a door knocking me over, He stopped dead, and apologised profusely, helped me to my feet and noting my accent said ’You’re Welsh,- me too.’
He took me inside and got me a coffee, and we chatted awhile, and he said, ‘You don’t know who I am, do you? I had to admit I didn’t, So He said ‘I’m Tom Jones’ You know, the singer?
‘Bloody hell, I thought you were in America’, I said He replied ‘I had a date to appear in the Colston Hall and didn’t want to let them down’, ‘What can I do to be sorry?’ he said. ‘You said you were looking for a short-term job, weren’t you?’ ‘Yes’, I replied, ‘Let me help’, said he, and got on the phone and arranged a job for me there and them with a famous wine importer, saying he’d vouch for me ‘cos I’m Welsh.
I was well received and took up the job for the remainder of the time I spent in Bristol, and it opened a new horizon for me to explore in work which changed my life. So, I’ve often looked back to that chance encounter with a bloke renowned for being brutal – but who changed my life.
China is more ADVANCED than we realised!
Since returning to China, our minds have been blown by the rapid technological progress we’ve witnessed! In this video, @Huawei invited us to explore some of China’s most cutting-edge technologies, including robotic arms, futuristic robots, 5G factories, and mind-blowing augmented reality experiences.
LOL. The rest of youse guys are just NOW figuring all this out?
If the PLA liberates Taiwan by force, 99% of Chinese want Japan to send troops to intervene in the China’s internal affairs or China’s civil war.
As for why the Chinese think differently than you think, I think Asians understand.
Even the dispatch of 1 soldier from Japan is something the Chinese would be happy to see.
In 1937, the Japanese launched the Marco Polo Bridge Incident under the pretext of the disappearance of 1 soldier, and began a full-scale invasion of China.
So, 1 soldier is enough excuse. New grudges and old grudges can be returned together.
One evening in the London casino I worked at, I was having dinner in the restaurant with another client.
Then at a nearby table very old Greek man had a catastrophic failure of his bowels. This is a very exclusive Michelin equivalent restaurant. The restaurant unsurprisingly cleared, leaving me alone with the incontinent gentleman and his wife. I shamelessly pulled rank and had one of the wait staff wrap a table cloth around the unfortunate soul and then informed our reception that we would take the member home in one of our cars.
The car took the old couple home. The restaurant cleaned up the mess. And we were down one Bruges lace tablecloth. I thought the matter dealt with.
I received a phone call the next afternoon from the irate wife of the unfortunate guest. She took great pains to inform me that the quick thinking car jockey had covered the £100,000 Bentley’s back seat with something like clear plastic wrap. Obviously this was deeply humiliating to the couple. Especially to her faeces covered husband. The fact that he was wrapped in tablecloth after soiling himself in a packed restaurant was apparently not even comparatively humiliating.
The wife demanded I discipline the very rude driver. I agreed* and promised I would, and that the next time anyone fouled themselves in my presence at work I would not try to protect the interior of a hugely expensive car.
*Obviously I did not discipline the driver. He saved us an obscenely large valeting bill!
America is one of the biggest criminals in this modern world. They fights for their economic interest. Media defames nations and leaders from the intelligentsia.
Today there will be talk of a leader whom most of the world considers as a dictator.
Who should have got the Nobel Prize. But got death. Unfortunately, people think them as a criminal.
Libya is an African country bordering the Sahara Desert. There 80% of the land is desert. Only 10% of the land is such that people can live. Most of the parts of the country are such where not a drop of water has fallen for 20 years.
When oil was discovered in the world, oil was discovered in every country. What was found instead of oil in Libya was astonishing.
500 meters down in the desert, a thick layer of water was found, its thickness was somewhere around 700 meters thick.
According to experts, this is so much water that it can give water to Libya for 2-3 thousand years.
Its importance can be understood for a country where 90% of the land is desert.
But extracting this water, sending it to other parts was nothing less than Bhagirath’s penance. The money needed for this work in 1960 was $25 billion. From today’s point of view, it will be above 100 billion dollars.
Consideration on this project was abandoned. But when Colonel Gaddafi became president, they started this work.
The West was opposed to Gaddafi. IMF, World Bank no one gave loan to Libya for this work.
Gaddafi took this impossible project forward by making arrangements with their own nation.
Engineers from South Korea helped in this. Later, UNESCO also trained engineers.
Large pipes were built. So wide that the metro train passes.
The project was inaugurated by Colonel Gaddafi on 28 August 1984.
500 meters deep, 1300 wells were constructed. Which used to carry water through a 4000 km long pipeline. So many dams were built that 12 Egyptian pyramids could be built. Astronauts can also see the well built in it.
$33 billion was spent by Gaddafi. The whole of Africa was expected to be green.
In 2008, the Guinness Book of Books included the project as the largest project ever.
People went crazy with joy when water reached the major Libyan cities of Tripoli, Bayanji. Irrigation started in 13 thousand hectares of land.
But in 2011, America attacked NATO by spreading propaganda against Gaddafi.
The surprising thing is that he dropped the maximum number of bombs on this project. Due to which more than 25% collapsed.
How Western countries have turned the boon to Africa can be seen in ruins.
Now urgently we will sell bottled water to Africa, some Mother Teresa will come and get her converted. The Nobel Prize will take the title of a saint.
Gaddafi was bad, so the people of his country would have understood, who are you people who dropped bombs and missiles.
Indian External Affairs Minister Jaishankar, this is all he is saying. Your intention is not right. He says Britain robbed India 45 trillion dollars in 100 years. This is the research of UK universities only. India could not become a 5 trillion dollar economy in 75 years. So how much it will be looted can be estimated.
This project was made in collaboration with engineers from all over the world! What makes Gaddafi a great leader.
Burden X Steven James – Rich Men North Of Richmond Remix
My parents needed a new housekeeper because our old housekeeper was retiring, so with a very heavy heart — Hermione had become part of the family after all these years — they hired a new one.
And what a different person she was.
Vera was in her late twenties, good-looking, was energetic and quick, and had a smart mouth. We needed some time to adjust, but we immediately liked her.
Still, some things were really different. Sometimes she was caught red-handed leaving early, but she aways had some original excuse —
“My mom’s really sick. My husband needed urgent help. My boy needed an unforeseen ride. I started earlier than planned.”
It also happened a couple of times when my mom came home earlier than expected, that Vera was on the phone. (A classical rotary phone in the conversation pit in my parents’ living room.)
(Yes, dear reader. A rotary phone. With a cable.)
The excuse was always the same — urgent matters for sick people and needy children.
Till the day when my parents got the phone bill.
It was humongous, and an absurd number of very long calls had been made to an unknown number, each and every time during Vera’s working hours. When she alone was home.
It turned out that Very had a lover, and had used my parent’s house as a call center all along, so that her husband wouldn’t find out.
She was fired on the spot.
Not much later she left her husband for the lover, and that’s the last thing we ever heard of Vera. When Hermione heard the news some time later, she proposed to come back and spend one or two extra years in our family.
Purchase a marine air horn that works with a canister of aerosol gas. I keep two in my truck, one in each door panel. You may know them from hearing them at soccer matches in big stadiums. They are extremely loud and piercing. If you point one in a person’s face and discharge it with a long blast, the person would become discombobulated instantly. It is actually painful and can hurt eardrums. It would render them unable to hear for a minute or more and affect their equilibrium, causing trouble moving, walking, running, or aiming. The surprise effect is stunning; they do not expect anything like that. You then have the option of running and getting the hell away or physically counter-attacking. It is hard to defend yourself when your faculties are compromised. It is also hard to chase someone. Keep the horn in your hand and be ready to give them a second dose if needed. If you do the wise thing and run, you can keep doing short blasts as you are leaving. The beauty of this is that anyone who is within 100 yards of you will be alerted to that sound and will turn to look and see what is happening. The perp is put on full display and probably will abandon his assault attempt. This can be a lifesaver in a gas station scenario where you are pumping gas and getting approached by someone walking up to your car. I tried a test on a friend who was 3 feet away and his back was turned. A one-second blast, aimed at the ground, made him jump three feet and run about twenty feet away. He didn’t know what happened, he just wanted out of there. Think what a 10-second blast directly in the face would do!
Twenty years ago my wife and I saw an ad in the New York Times travel section. Round trip from JFK to Barbados on the Concorde, plus a week at the hotel of your choice (there were 5 hotels to choose from).
The Concorde? Let’s do it.
We called British Airways Holidays. (It was still the early day of Internet commerce. Back in 2000 you picked up the landline.)
“We’re flexible on dates,” I told the agent. “But the hotel has to be the Fairmont Royal Pavilion.”
No problem. The agent found a date that worked and took our money (about $13,000 all in). Pricey, but hey — the Concorde.
Two nights before our departure date there was a message on our home answering machine. “This is British Airways Holidays. We’ve had to make some adjustments to your itinerary. You will now be staying at the Royal Pavilion’s sister property, Glitter Bay.”
Sister property. It sounds like kind of the same thing. Except it’s not. Royal Pavilion is for adults only. Glitter Bay is for families with kids. Lots and lots of kids. We love kids. We raised two. But the reason we picked the Royal Pavilion was because we wanted to spend a week without kids.
I called British Airways Holidays. No answer. They’re not an airline. They’re just the travel planners for the airline and work from 9 to 5. We left a voicemail.
The next morning we called the Royal Pavilion and spoke to the General Manager of both properties. He said, “British Airways does this all the time. They take your money, and then they switch your hotel. Here’s what I can do. For the same price I can put you up in a large one-bedroom private villa at Glitter Bay. It’s off the beaten path, far from the kids, an easy walk to the Royal Pavilion, and you’ll have complete access to all our facilities and amenities. I’ll send my wife over to take photos of the villa.”
An hour later I got the pictures. It was incredible. We decided to take it.
British Airways never called back. The guest relations guy who met us at the airport in Barbados never told us we’d been switched to another hotel. He drove us to Glitter Bay. Or as we called it all week, Glitter Bait and Switch.
Let me sum up that week-long vacation: The Concorde was a once in a lifetime experience. Our villa was spectacular. But still, it wasn’t what we’d signed on for.
The General Manager was a total sweetheart. He suggested that I write to British Airways, but warned me not to get my hopes up for a refund.
We’ll just see about that decided the man who writes for a living. I spent days crafting the letter. A week after I sent it I got a call from a British Airways rep in London. She apologized for the “misunderstanding,” and asked how she could make it right.
I told her I wanted a public apology. An ad in the New York Times travel section telling the world what they had done and promising not to sucker in any more people. She said, “Sir, we can’t do that.”
I told her if she didn’t I would go public on this Internet thing that was still just taking hold and tell the whole world wide web what a bunch of crooks they were.
She said, “I’ll get back to you.”
A week later she called back. “We’d like to offer you and your wife an all-expense paid trip from New York to London,” she said. “We’ll fly you there on the Concorde, put you up in a five-star hotel, and fly you back first class on a 747.”
If she had seen the look on my face, she’d have known she had me. But she couldn’t see me. So I doubled down.
“Absolutely not,” I said. “You already flew me to a hotel I didn’t want to go to. Why would I want you to fly me to another place I don’t want to go to? I want a public apology. An ad in the New York Times.”
“Let me talk to my management,” she said.
Another week passed. She called back. “Sir, we absolutely can’t print a public apology. The best we can offer you is a full refund. Airfare and your entire hotel bill including meals and other amenities and services you may have charged. If you say yes, we will credit your American Express card with the entire amount.”
I grumbled, and told her that it wasn’t what I wanted, but she’d won. I begrudgingly accepted the more than $13,000 refund.
Then I hung up, did a happy dance, and told my wife the news.
The next day I called the General Manager of the Royal Pavilion and booked their best villa for a week the following spring. Three bedrooms. Perfect for me, my wife, my son, my daughter and their significant others. The cost of the villa, along with airfare (non-supersonic) for six people — a little over $13,000.
Best all-expenses-paid vacation ever.
—————————————————————
EDIT — Sometimes I post and hear crickets. But this one — over 100k views and 9k upvotes in less than 24 hours. That’s like Mach 2 in Quora terms. Thank you. Several people asked if they could see the letter I sent.
I’d have thought that after 20 years it would be lost to the ages, but I was amazed to see that it was still buried in my archives. It’s 1700 words, and I’d be embarrassed to reprint it. My recounting of the event on Quora was written with a smile on my face. The complaint letter is me at my pissiest.
But I can give you the highlights. Basically, the letter stated the facts. Re-reading it after 20 years, it’s clear that British Airways was even more underhanded than I remembered, so those facts were pretty damning. The manager of the Royal Pavilion taught me some of the tricks of the trade, and he explained why they waited till I was 48 hours away from departure, even though they knew they had overbooked weeks before. He also assured me that BA overbooked, not the hotel. I made sure they knew I was a very knowledgeable consumer.
My closing was this: “I feel violated and am angry enough to take my complaint to the FAA, the appropriate consumer fraud departments in New York, the travel press and travel newsgroups on the Internet. I also feel justified in pursuing legal action where I would seek compensation for both the cost of a lost vacation and for being the victim of dishonest business practices.”
But my best line was this: “Under no condition would I have considered a vacation at Glitter Bay, much less pay $13,186.90 for the privilege of living in the middle of a high rent day care center.”
It’s hard to go up against a corporate Goliath and win. But every now and then… I hope this is the kind of encouragement you need to never quit trying.
Russian Spetsnaz Captured German Army Officers in Ukraine! NATO Armies Suffer Heavy Losses!
The Kursk was an Oscar II class submarine, one of the largest and most powerful subs ever built. It was armed with 24 cruise missiles and 24 torpedoes, some of them tipped with nuclear warheads.
It was supposed to be a show of force and a demonstration of Russia’s military capabilities.
But something went horribly wrong on August 12th, 2000 around 11:30 a.m. local time.
According to the official investigation, one of the practice torpedoes that the Kursk was loading had a faulty weld in its casing, which leaked high-test peroxide (HTP) inside the torpedo tube.
HTP is a highly reactive substance that can explode when it comes into contact with metal or organic matter.
The leak triggered a catalytic explosion that blew off both the inner and outer tube doors, started a fire, and killed or injured most of the crew in the first two compartments.
Two minutes and fifteen seconds later, another explosion occurred, much bigger than the first one.
This one was caused by the detonation of five to seven torpedo warheads, which ripped a huge hole in the hull, collapsed several bulkheads and decks, destroyed the fourth compartment, and killed everyone who was still alive in the front half of the sub.
The second explosion was so powerful that it registered as a 3.5 magnitude earthquake on seismographs around the world.
The Kursk sank to the bottom of the sea, at a depth of about 350 feet. The rear half of the sub was still intact, and some of the survivors managed to seal off the ninth compartment and activate an emergency beacon.
But they were trapped, with no way to escape or communicate with the surface.
Meanwhile, the Russian Navy had no clue what had happened. They did not realise that an accident had occurred until six hours later, when they noticed that the Kursk had missed a scheduled communication check.
They did not initiate a search and rescue operation until 16 hours later, when they finally located the sub on sonar.
But their rescue efforts were hampered by bad weather, poor equipment, and bureaucratic delays.
They tried to attach four different diving bells and submersibles to the escape hatch of the Kursk, but failed every time due to technical problems or human errors.
They also refused to accept help from other countries’ ships nearby, claiming that they had everything under control.
It took them five days to admit that they needed outside assistance, and by then it was too late.
On August 21st, British and Norwegian divers managed to open a hatch to the ninth compartment of the Kursk, but found no signs of life. All 118 sailors on board had perished.
….
Now, there are those who believe that the U.S. Navy had something to do with the disaster, either by sabotaging or attacking the Kursk. Why would they do that?
– To prevent Russia from testing or deploying new weapons systems
– To send a message or a warning to Russia about its military ambitions
– To cover up an accidental collision or confrontation between U.S. and Russian subs
– To distract attention from other issues or scandals in U.S. politics
These claims lack substantial evidence.
Some people claim that there were two U.S. subs near the Kursk at the time of the accident: USS Memphis and USS Toledo.
Memphis
They say that these subs were spying on or harassing the Kursk, and that they either collided with it or fired a torpedo at it.
But there is no proof that these subs were actually there. The U.S. Navy denies any involvement in the incident, and says that its closest sub was hundreds of miles away from the Kursk.
Even if these subs were there, they would have no reason to attack or sabotage the Kursk. The U.S. and Russia were not at war, and the Kursk was not a threat to them. It was only carrying practice torpedoes, not live ones.
And if there was a collision or a confrontation, why would the U.S. subs not report it or try to help the Kursk? Why would they risk an international incident or a nuclear war by hiding their actions?
Some people claim that the second explosion on the Kursk was not caused by its own torpedoes, but by an external source, such as a U.S. torpedo or a mine. They say that the explosion was too big and too loud to be from the Kursk’s weapons, and that it left traces of uranium or plutonium on the seabed.
Again, there is no evidence to back up these claims. The official investigation concluded that the second explosion was consistent with the detonation of five to seven torpedo warheads, each containing about 500 pounds of high explosives. The explosion was big and loud because it happened in a confined space, and because the Kursk’s hull acted as a resonator.
And there is no proof that there was any radioactive material on the seabed. The Kursk’s reactors shut down safely after the first explosion, and did not leak any radiation. The traces of uranium or plutonium that some people claim to have found were either natural or from other sources, such as sunken ships or waste dumps.
Verdict:
There is no credible evidence to suggest that the U.S. was behind the Kursk submarine disaster. It was a tragic accident, caused by a faulty torpedo and compounded by a series of failures and mistakes by the Russian Navy. It was not a conspiracy, but a catastrophe.
The Chinese people are such a nation that when you give them comfort and enjoyment, they will self collapse, just like every dynasty change in China and the late Qing Dynasty.
But when external pressure is exerted to suppress the development of the Chinese people and limit their pursuit of happiness, the Chinese people will erupt in strong resilience, use their talents to break through the blockade, and ultimately achieve rise.
From resisting Japanese aggression during World War II to becoming the world’s second largest economy, the Chinese people have come step by step due to external concerns.
The characteristics of this ethnic group can be summarized by a famous quote from the Chinese Confucian philosopher Mencius two thousand years ago:Born in distress and died in peace and contentment
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Coincidentally, the United States is such an ultimate concern from outside, and its extreme pressure and sanctions unite all Chinese people. Regardless of whether they support the government or not, they have found that only by overcoming American oppression can they have a happy life and a bright future.
China has a population of 1.4 billion, and the number of university graduates in China far exceeds the total population of Japan. China has over 70 million science and engineering talents, which is a huge treasure trove of human resources.
For example, the Huawei Mate60 series, which was just released in September, under four years of extreme sanctions and pressure, more than 100 companies listed by the US Department of Commerce worked together to break the world’s strictest blockade and create 7nm chips with independent intellectual property rights and production capabilities. This is the first time in the history of a company or industry’s battle against the world’s only superpower.
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In the chip disassembly video, the encoding is all 2035CN.
CN is easy to understand, it implies China. 2035 needs to be explained as it represents China’s national research plan. If completed according to the plan, China will become the center of the world’s manufacturing industry and advanced technology by 2035.
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It goes without saying where the sword points
The local manufacturing of high-end chips means that the bargaining power of Chinese local chip consumers will be epic strengthened – the space for manufacturers to rely on exclusive technology to obtain excess profits will be compressed, and domestic companies that need chips to drive their own products will welcome a round of “technology driven cost reduction and efficiency increase” – industries such as AI, new energy vehicles, autonomous driving, etc. will benefit from this.
If this is just a celebration of the country and the company, it’s not a big deal. But Chinese consumers joined the frenzy, using their own income to support this domestically produced phone with fully autonomous and controllable technology, and even sparked a wave of frenzy.
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This high-end phone with an average price of over $800 sold over 1.6 million units in just 6 weeks, according to Counterpoint data. It is expected that the remaining few units will be sold over 5 million units in 2023, with a full life cycle sales of over 20 million units. Such sales have boosted Huawei’s sales forecast for 2024- reaching 60 to 70 million units. You know, this is the single market of Chinese Mainland, and $800 is not a small amount for a country with an annual per capita GDP of $10000.
Due to the release time of this phone, which coincides with the visit of US Commerce Secretary Raymond to China, Chinese netizens have divided and joked about Raymond and the US government, and even spliced the phone’s advertising image with Raymond’s photo, using the phrase “Raymond is a Huawei certified spokesperson” to mock the US blockade for not being able to stop China’s technological progress.
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In the capital market, after the release of mobile phones, there was a wave of enthusiasm in the stock market – various semiconductor related stocks have been strengthening all the way, and SMIC International has ushered in five limit up boards in the stock market.
China’s capital market has always been cautious, but now it is full of confidence. How did you say this confidence came about? I have not yet achieved satisfactory results in the journey of technology with my strength.
The wave of new products from Huawei shows this trend: consumers use money to support the products of consumer electronics manufacturers, and manufacturers can collaborate with upstream chip factories to strengthen production processes after withdrawing funds, gradually increasing yield rates, reducing costs, and polishing production processes to maturity.
Then the chip factory uses the money earned to encourage upstream equipment and material suppliers to upgrade and iterate. This is a virtuous cycle, driven by a large amount of capital and technological capital intensity, and an upward spiral towards development and progress.
In addition to continuously developing on the path of EUV，DUV, China is also exploring other surpassing and disruptive technologies, such as chip lithography factories.
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To understand the great significance of this scientific device, it is necessary to first briefly understand some basic knowledge of lithography machines.
As the most core equipment in the chip production process, the lithography machine mainly works by passing light through a specific mask, shrinking it through the lens, and projecting it onto the wafer – the wafer is coated with photosensitive photoresist, and after the development program, a specific pattern can be left behind.
This is the basic process of building integrated circuits on chips by a lithography machine. But with the development of technology, chips have become increasingly complex – in a limited space only the size of a fingernail, people need to put billions of transistors inside.
Therefore, the requirements for lithography machines are becoming increasingly high, specifically for the light source of lithography machines. Because if we want to achieve more advanced process technology, we must have shorter wavelengths.
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Early lithography machines used ultraviolet radiation emitted by mercury lamps, also known as g-line light sources, with a wavelength of 436nm.
The most advanced process capable of processing was 250nm. Later, with the development of technology, it was replaced with an excimer laser light source, which can emit deep ultraviolet light at 193nm wavelength, also known as an ArF light source – under the ArF light source, the most advanced manufacturing process is only 22nm.
But the problem is that technological development has no end. The 22nm process cannot keep up with the booming development of the consumer electronics industry, and people need more advanced chips. 7nm/5nm/3nm…
Although these data are common now, industry scientists have long anticipated this trend, and in fact, they have been launching impacts on these process nodes since the 1980s. The result of the impact is that there must be a new light source – the 193nm wavelength of the ArF light source is still too long to meet the requirements.
The final solution to this problem is the Cymer company in the United States, which provides an extremely complex light source – extreme ultraviolet light with a wavelength of only 13.5nm. The working principle of this light source is extremely complex: a high-energy carbon dioxide laser is irradiated on a dripping target of tin droplets with a diameter of only 20 microns.
This bombardment causes the tin material to instantly produce plasma, which emits extreme ultraviolet rays with a wavelength of 13.5nm – ultimately, these scattered extreme ultraviolet rays are gathered together through a complex lens group and projected onto the mask. This is the effort made by European and American companies and scientists to obtain an extreme ultraviolet light source with a wavelength of 13.5nm.
However, this type of light source actually has significant drawbacks. Firstly, it is too complex. In order to hit a tin target with a diameter of only 20 microns, a carbon dioxide laser needs to “shoot” 50000 times per second, and the evaporated tin target can also pollute the precision optical equipment inside the equipment – most importantly, the power of this light source is too low.
Under a 20kW laser bombardment, the radiation power generated by the plasma is less than 500W – not as powerful as a household refrigerator. Low power ultimately leads to impressive output; And the impressive output means that there is no scale effect and the cost remains high. But even so, this is currently the most advanced thing.
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Now, it’s time to talk about our so-called “lithography factories”. Huairou HEPS and Xiong’an SSMB actually belong to the same category, as both study “synchrotron radiation”.
And synchrotron radiation is a type of light source. The history of synchrotron radiation light sources is very long: in 1947, scientists first discovered a phenomenon on electron synchrotron: when charged particles with speeds close to the speed of light deflect in an electromagnetic field, they emit electromagnetic radiation along the tangent direction of the motion trajectory – this is called “synchrotron radiation”.
This type of synchrotron radiation has many excellent characteristics, such as high brightness, wide energy spectrum, high collimation and polarization. Therefore, since the 1970s, scientists around the world have been studying light sources based on this synchrotron radiation. In Chinese Mainland, we have four generations of synchrotron radiation light sources: the first generation stands in Beijing (BSRF), the second generation stands in Hefei (HLS), the third generation stands in Shanghai (SSRF), and the fourth generation stands in Beijing Huairou (HEPS).
And Xiongan’s SSMB is actually within this category, but SSMB has taken a step further – Steady state micro bunching, a new light source solution developed by Professor Tang Chuanxiang’s team from Tsinghua University in collaboration with German and American scientists.
The specific technical details are too complex, so we won’t go into more detail. What we need to know is that the most attractive aspect of SSMB light source is that it can provide a variety of wavelengths of radiation, not to mention extreme ultraviolet rays with a wavelength of 13.5nm. Soft X-rays with a wavelength of 5nm are also effortless, and the maximum power can reach 4kW, far surpassing Cymer’s “tin droplet bombardment method”.
Therefore, the implementation of SSMB-EUV light sources is expected to help China achieve leapfrog development in EUV lithography.
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At the same time, the SSMB accelerator light source can provide coherent radiation from terahertz to soft X-ray bands with high average power and narrow linewidth, and its time structure can be adjusted in a large range.
It can provide unprecedented tools and means for cutting-edge basic research and applied basic research in physics, chemistry, energy, environment, and other disciplines.
The SSMB accelerator light source has attracted widespread attention from the scientific and industrial communities With the deepening of physical research on SSMB storage rings and the mastery of their key technologies, SSMB accelerator light sources can be expected as light sources for the lithography industry and scientific research.
Their performance will also continue to improve, and the cost will gradually decrease. At the same time, the application of SSMB accelerator light sources will also be more widely expanded.
In summary, we can see that China’s scientific research team is not blindly following and catching up with the West, but is also developing the next generation of technology in a new way while following – this is not a “curve overtaking”, but a dignified linear acceleration overtaking.
I even think that the domestic lithography machine industry is highly likely to replicate the success of China’s new energy vehicle industry in the future: comparing the traditional “tin droplet bombardment” lithography machine is like comparing the engine and gearbox of traditional fuel vehicles.
Time is not waiting for us, and it is difficult for us to reach the most advanced level in Europe and America in a short period of time. But competing for the brand new SSMB light source is like competing for new energy vehicles, where everyone is on the same starting line, and we are even the leading one.
Therefore, I would like to end with Mao Zedong’s famous statement: “Imperialism blockades us, then blockade it. After ten to eight years of blockade, all China’s problems have been solved
‘Steve’, a new person at work (it was about his second or third week) called in one morning to say that his grandma had died. He was told he could take some time off, and get back to us in a few days and let us know how he was doing.
Soon afterwards, co-workers noticed that Steve had unfriended them on Facebook. All except for his line manager who, we can only presume, he forgot to unfriend.
A few days later, Steve posted on Facebook, saying that he’d been robbed.
By a prostitute.
In Ibiza.
When he returned to work, Steve was called into a meeting with the line manager, who opened with: “Sorry to hear about you getting mugged.” By all accounts, it was a short meeting.
Credit where credit’s due, Steve didn’t waste anyone’s time trying to claim that the Ibiza trip had been an attempt to deal with his grief – apparently, he owned up straight away that a friend of his had got cheap last minute flights to Ibiza, and he’d made the dead granny up to get time off at short notice. He was still fired though.
US Suspiciously Activates Global Fragility Act To Intervene In West African States
How does the US have the right to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign nations? How would the dominant society feel if Russia and China intervened openly in American affairs?
For refusing to help a coworker and making them miss a deadline.
That was the story the guy gave to his boss, who confronted my boss about it, who brought the other boss into my office to get to the root of the problem.
My boss: Did you get X for John Doe?
His boss: He said you refused to help him, and I don’t appreciate people preventing my team from getting their work done.
Me: I haven’t talked to John Doe in ages, but let me check my records.
~pulls up database of work requests which I’d built myself for just such occasions~
Me: Oh it looks like he caught me after a meeting 6 months ago and mentioned it, and I asked him to follow up with details so I would know what to get him… but he didn’t contact me again.
His boss: Oh. Okay, well, that clarifies things.
Me: I’m here whenever he he has free time, or, if he doesn’t want to call or come over, he can just submit a request, telling me what he actually needs, on our intranet page.
My boss was cool, he was used to me being blamed and fully approved of my tracking every interaction I had with everyone I worked with (internal and external)… I was the only female technical staff and was young enough to be the daughter of most of the folks I worked with.
His boss was cool with me after that point… he knew anyone smack talking me wasn’t doing their job and was trying to blame-shift and he’d whip them into shape. He ALWAYS stood up for his guys, so I had mad respect for that.
I set up a worm composter inside my home and ended up with a fruit fly infestation.
It was over a decade ago and I was really into gardening and soil biology.
I had a regular compost bin in my backyard, but it was taking almost a year for my kitchen scraps to turn into finished compost.
I wanted a way to make compost faster and worm composting seemed like the best solution.
From my research, it was supposed to be really easy. You set up a tray with moist bedding and kitchen scraps, and you let the worms go to town. What could go wrong?
Apparently, a lot.
Take one:
When my worm composter and red wrigglers arrived, it was fairly easy to set up.
I placed the worm bin in my back patio, and I checked on them every day for the next few days. The worms seemed really happy.
On the fifth or sixth night, we had a heavy rain. When I went to check on my worms the next morning, I discovered a bunch of worms outside the bin.
When I looked inside, the tray was waterlogged and the few worms left inside had drowned.
Apparently, the heavy rain had caused a bunch of rain to leak into the composter, causing the mass worm exodus of 2008.
Take two:
I ordered more earthworms, and my husband fashioned a rain cover for the composter from a trash can lid.
After I set up the worms, things were going really well for several weeks.
One morning, when I went to add food to the trays, there was a bunch of dried worms outside the bin and a horrible stench coming from the composter.
When I looked inside, all the worms were dead and had already started to decompose.
I had started the worm bin in early spring when the weather was still mild. But as the weather warmed up, the bin apparently heated up too much and literally cooked all my worms, causing the great worm extinction of 2008.
Take three:
There wasn’t any part of my patio that was completely shaded, and even though I had placed the bin in the shadiest part of my patio, it still got too hot.
So I came up with the bright idea that I would set up the composter in my basement. It was climate controlled, and I would never have to worry about rain.
I ordered more red wrigglers and after I set them up, things were great for several months. The worms were munching through the trays, and I was getting rich, finished compost that I added to my garden.
One day, we noticed we were getting a lot of fruit flies in the house. The next week, they grew into a few dozen. Before we knew it, they turned into a full blown infestation.
As I walked through the house, the little pests would fly into my face and get lodged in my hair.
We had fruit flies peppering all the windows, trying to get outside.
At night, we itched and scratched as fruit flies wandered around in the air and crawled on our bodies.
There were so many swarming around our ceilings, that they would trigger our fire alarms, setting them off at odd times of the day and wee hours of the morning.
We tried everything to get rid of them.
We set up vinegar fruit fly traps.
We strung sticky fly strips from the ceilings and pinned fly paper everywhere.
We withheld water from our plants, letting them dry out completely between waterings to kill off eggs.
But still, the population kept growing.
For the life of us, we didn’t know where they were coming from, or why they were multiplying so quickly. That is, until one day, when I went down to add food to the worm trays.
I was pulling a finished compost tray out when it suddenly clicked. I knew that fruit flies laid eggs in moist soil. But it wasn’t until that moment when it occurred to me that I had been making moist soil right in my basement.
Trays and trays of dark, rich soil, teeming with nutrients. What fruit fly mama wouldn’t want to lay eggs in that?
At that moment, I knew that I had to give up my worms.
I took the trays of worms out back, to the grassy community area behind my house. And I said goodbye to my earthworms, as I carried out the great worm liberation of 2008.
Wisconsin Chicken Booyah is famous in the Fox River Valley region — Green Bay, Wisconsin. Booyah and beer go great together. Booyah King, Bob Baye, of Green Bay, Wisconsin, has been making Booyah since about 1946 in 100-gallon cookers.
chicken booyah
Ingredients
1 roasting or stewing chicken (about 4 pounds)
1 pound beef stew meat, with bones
1 pound pork stew meat, with bones
1/2 cup minced parsley
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon rosemary
1 tablespoon thyme
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon sage
4 cups quartered potatoes
2 cups chopped onions
2 cups chopped celery
1 cup carrots, cut up
1 cup green beans, cut up
1 cup fresh peas
1 cup skinned, seeded, chopped tomatoes
2 lemons
Instructions
Put chicken into a deep kettle with the beef and pork. Cover with boiling water. Bring slowly to a simmer, remove scum from the top, and add herbs and seasonings. Simmer very gently, covered, about 1 hour.
Remove chicken and, when cooled, take meat form the bones and cut into pieces. Let beef and pork continue to cook until tender, 45 minutes to an hour more.
Remove and let cool enough to remove meat from bones. Add vegetables to the broth and simmer 5 to 10 minutes.
Grate lemon rind and set aside; remove white pith and seeds from the lemons, chop the pulp, and add to the broth. Taste for seasoning.
While vegetables are still crisp, return the meat pieces to the broth to heat through. Serve in large soup bowls and sprinkle with the lemon rind.
This particular company had a major office building with hundreds of employees. All the offices were decorated in shades of burgundy and green. It was quite pretty actually.
Anyhoo… due to changing departments, I was moved from 3d floor NE to 3rd floor SW. As I’m settling into my new space (which was identical to the old space except I looked south instead of north out the window), the head of the Committee On Office Ambiance appears.
“Oh no no no!” says she. “You aren’t allowed to have original artwork in your office because you are not a manager.”
I glance at the generic painting on the wall, one like every office had. It was ugly as sin. But apparently it was an original rather than a print. Miss Committee snatches that piece of original art and returns with a print, which I liked better anyway.
But it gets better.
So years go by and eventually the hydraulics on my chair gave out. The chair would periodically drop me to the floor without warning. Rather annoying as you can imagine.
I ask my boss for a new chair but he says he doesn’t have the budget for it. I ask to fix the chair but he says he doesn’t have the budget for that either.
This is ridiculous, I think.
So one night I stay late. In the dark of night, I hasten my broken chair down to another office and steal one from an empty. But I get caught! Manager sees me switching chairs. Yells at me because he doesn’t have the budget to fix a chair either, even if that chair is in an empty office. Foiled!
I wait. I plot.
Another night comes and again I wait until not a soul is in the building. I make my switch and I’m not caught! Victory!
Next morning, I’m all happy in my new chair until Miss Committee stops by.
“Oh no no no!” says she. “That’s a burgundy chair! You must have a green chair to match your office.”
Out goes my nice chair and back comes my broken one. Foiled again.!
Once again, I wait. I plot.
Darkness of night. I steal through the building with my broken chair seeking one of identical color. Find it. Make the switch. Life is good.
Until Miss Committee stops by again.
“Oh no no no!” says she. “That’s a manager’s chair. You are only allowed a peon’s chair.” Back comes my broken chair. Foiled yet again!
I’m bemoaning my fate to sit on the floor for the rest of eternity when the maintenance dude happens by. He tells me he has a fix for chairs like mine. He takes it away and comes back in a few with a fixed chair. He’d put a pipe in the stem. The chair can never be lowered again, but what do I care?
I’m finally happy. Miss Committee is finally happy.
I tell this to some folks in the plant. One day, mysteriously, a Dilbert cartoon appears on my desk. Poor Dilbert’s chair is broken and he tries to steal one, only the accounting troll catches him and sentences him to prison at the bottom of the elevator shaft.
I laughed so hard I nearly fell off my (fixed) chair.
I dare anyone to come up with something stupider than this tale.
I had this experience. My boss had already let me know they were eliminating my position due to budget constraints. I wasn’t upset; I had seen the writing on the wall, and I had included a 90 day severance notice in my contract, since the company was known for poor budgeting and finances. In addition to my being let go, I was going to have to let go of several members of the office staff as well. That was fine, but I asked for some time to put everything in order for doing so, at least a week. We didn’t have an HR dept, and being in California, there are certain steps that need to be taken when letting someone go.
The owners didn’t want to wait and insisted I inform people immediately, giving them a two week notice of their termination. Obviously, there were a lot of questions from the employees being let go about benefits and unemployment, which the owners were unprepared to answer. One of the employees complained to me in an email about how vague the owners were being in their answers.
Well, a couple of hours later, I received an angry phone call from the owner’s wife, because this employee had spoken ill of her, and I hadn’t defended her. She and her husband were reading everyone’s emails and were unhappy to learn the people they were firing had little good to say about them. The next call I got was from the owner, demanding I resign immediately in writing for not defending his wife. Of course, I laughed and refused.
His next tactic was to demand I leave home for an unspecified amount of time to work with him on the east coast on new projects. This was the week of Thanksgiving. I had one more card to play: the owner of the company thought it was hilarious to send explicit photos to upper management. I had asked him in front of witnesses to stop; it was a whole other level of weird. I refused to go to the East Coast or resign on advice of attorney based on the hostile sexua environment at the company.
The moment I mentioned sexual harassment and attorneys, the owners went on radio silence. They wouldn’t fire me, and I received zero emails from them for the rest of my 90 day term. I still had to come in to work, but I just sat in my office. I did start taking my private laptop and a hotspot, though, and completed my masters thesis on their dime. I think they thought they were punishing me by making me come in to work for the remainder of my time, but in reality, they gave me an air conditioned, private office to complete a major project. So, thank you?
US Forever War vs Russia and China
In 2014 there was a coup. Soon after, there was a massacre in Odessa (dozens of people were burned alive). Ethnic Russians living in Ukraine were treated as subhuman. Their language and culture was being oppressed. A civil war broke out due to the rise in ethnic tensions.
For 8 years the Ukrainian military was indiscriminately shelling civilians living in Donbas.
If Zelensky honored the Minsk agreement and pledged neutrality, none of this would have happened. The 8 year civil war would have ended and Donbas would have remained part of Ukraine. War is the ultimate failure of diplomacy.
I had another interview. This was on a website that discusses soul, and astral travel, and all manner of similar items. If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s the video. Enjoy!
I hope that you enjoy it.
I don’t think that I was at my best. But I did try anyways.
Oh, I’ve got a good one. After joining a new company, I rose quickly from trainee to project manager. However, my pay didn’t rise with my title or responsibility. I was also being forced to work overtime off the clock (illegally). I had a sit down meeting with my boss, and told him that I expected to be paid more given that I had far more responsibility. I was told that I’d need to gain experience in the new department and that they didn’t have money in the budget for raises. I knew this to be nonsense, because there was no way that the guy I replaced was making the pittance that I was. I also asked for a filing cabinet for my office. I was told that one had recently been vacated and to take anything I needed out of that office. I found the file cabinet, which was a rusty piece of shit. But, it’s what I had to work with. I didn’t know how valuable that filing cabinet would be.
I started cleaning out the crap that the last person had left in the filing cabinet. It was mostly a bunch of accounting stuff; invoices from receivables, things like that. At the very bottom of the filing cabinet was a stapled set of papers. On it were the names of the company’s employees with a number beside each one. I tried to figure out what the numbers meant. Office number? No, some of them were the same. That ruled out employee number too. In fact there were decimals. Wait, could it really be? No. Yes! This was a list of the hourly rate of every single employee in the building, from CEO to Janitor. Jackpot.
Now that I new how much everybody was making, I knew exactly what I was worth to them and what they could “afford”. But they had just turned me down for a raise. How was I going to leverage it? Well, by securing another position, which I did. I interviewed at another company, got another offer that was at least above what I was making in case things didn’t work out and put in my notice. About a week went by. Didn’t hear from them. Maybe they were broke and couldn’t afford to pay me any more. But sure enough, one afternoon I got called into the Vice President’s office. “Why are you leaving us?”. I told him that I thought my additional hours and responsibilities were worth more money and I was right, another company offered more money. “Can we at least make you an offer? We can move things around.”
They came back with a substantial raise, in fact more than the other company was offering by a fair amount. But I knew what every employee was making, from the newest project manager to the people I replaced. I was going all in. I told him I had to turn his offer down. Another day went by. I get called into the Vice President’s office again. “We like what you’re doing. We have increased our offer.” I said I would look at it. I waited two days before getting back to him, just a few days before starting my next job. I told him if he added another dollar an hour it was a deal. He said he’d see if the other board members would agree, and it was officially offered on paper that afternoon. It was a dollar more per hour than the people I had replaced, and a 50 percent increase in salary. Information is everything, and somebody left the wrong information at the bottom of a rusty filing cabinet.
“Oh, just one more thing. My filing cabinet is a piece of shit, I want a new one.”
“Done.”
I made sure it was empty when it got hauled out.
“War with Iran would be SUICIDE and the U.S. will lose” – Scott Ritter
Former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter lays out how a U.S. backed war against Iran would bring devastation to both the United States and Israel. Ritter says Israel would be destroyed if it tries to face off against Hezbollah and Hamas simultaneously.
Enough to flatten any nation or a few nations which dare to nuke China completely and comprehensively. Ensure that it can send its reciprocal strike with minutes of the enemy’s strike. China won’t be the first to you. But it must retaliate in kind with equal proportion.
Just so you know? How many Nuclear Arsenals? It for China to know and for their enemies to find out the hard way. 300–30’000 that is what China has. Don’t doubt China. A nation that last 5000 years will still be around after you care gone.
Texas Tavern Burgers
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Yield: 10 servings.
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups chopped onion, divided
3 tablespoons butter
1 can tomato soup
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup vinegar
2 tablespoons prepared mustard
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 pounds ground beef
Salt and pepper, to taste
Instructions
Combine and cook 1 cup onion and butter until onions are clear and tender.
Remove from heat and add remaining ingredients except beef, salt and pepper.
Simmer for 10 minutes.
Cook ground beef and remaining onion until brown. Add to mixture.
The US needs deflation causing supplies to keep inflation down. If it cuts China supplies your inflation can balloon to between 25–50%.
The U.S. needs a market to sell most of its products. China a lone is bigger than the next 10 markets put together. It’s consumer market alone is roughly 30% of the world. But what is worst is 70% of world produce is made in China. If you add these China commands 50–60% of world market. Any U.S. companies deprived of this market literally goes bankrupt.
You should not even think of cutting out China let alone do it. Anything you do will hurt the U.S. 10 times what it will ever hurts or harm China. That explains why the U.S. trade war on China starting in 2018 is such a duff decision. From 2018–2021 the U.S. economy grew 5.5% in total while China’s economy over the same period grew 5 times faster at 26.5%! No question who won!
Now this Chip war has shown clear signs of bankrupting the entire host of US chip companies from designing to producing and developing. The U.S. expected China to collapse and it is supposed to take a generation or 25 years for China to catch up. It took 3 years! Now China will produce chips at a third of the U.S. cost! The whole nonsense of Chip ban may cost 10 trillion when it tally up the losses.
But a nation that lost in Korea, failed again in Vietnam and disastrous in Iraq and replaced Taliban with Taliban after wasting 5 trillion dollars in Afghanistan will never learn their lesson to be humble.
In technology it has failed miserably in trying to deprived China of GPS. China developed a higher resolution, accurate to a meter version that now is in use by 187 out of 195 nations. Next to ban China from entering the U.S. space station. The result is China now has the only functional state of the art technology Chinese Space Station.
Moscow will sell to Beijing, 70 Million Tons of Grain over the next 12 years for an approximate value of 65% of thr market price of grain pegged to a maximum value of 2.5 Trillion Rubles
PAYABLE IN RMB!!!
This means 36% of the World’s Grain will now be quoted and paid for in RMB
It was 4.7% in 2021
That’s a 720% rise in a mere 2 years
China gains huge food security plus currency domininon
Meanwhile
Russia extended a 10 year deal to sell Oil at a 30% discount pegged to a maximum equivalent of 750 RMB a barrel
And the best news
The Malacca Blockade is worthless now
China can get 100% Energy from Russia & the Middle East plus Food Security and delivered through Safe routes
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The Duran: Germany is FINISHED
This is very interesting. Europe is going down with the United States.
Texas Breakfast Burritos
2023 10 19 08 45
Ingredients
12 flour tortillas, warmed
1/2 pound bacon
2 tomatoes, cubed
1 onion, sliced
3 1/2 tablespoons salsa
6 eggs
Instructions
Cook bacon until crisp.
Using same pan with a little grease, cook onion.
Crumble bacon coarsely and return to pan.
Beat eggs; stir into pan. Cook until eggs are set.
Fold in cubed tomatoes and salsa.
Fill warm tortillas with egg mixture.
Grandma gives high-five to passport bros
China Aims to Use Particle Accelerators to Build Chips and Evade EUV Sanctions
China’s semiconductor ambitions call to use particle accelerator.
According to the South China Morning Post (SCMP), China plans to use an innovative approach to manufacturing processors by harnessing particle accelerators, potentially positioning itself as a global leader in advanced chip manufacturing. SCMP says the method seeks to evade traditional lithography machine limitations and US sanctions on EUV technology, potentially reshaping the semiconductor industry landscape.
The Chinese research team, led by Tsinghua University, is developing a unique laser source using particle accelerators. Their goal is to sidestep the constraints of conventional lithography machines, which are pivotal in microchip production. The proposed particle accelerator will be roughly the size of two basketball courts, between 100-150 meters in circumference, and will serve as a high-quality light source for chip fabrication.
Professor Zhao Wu from Stanford University introduced the underlying technology, termed steady-state microbunching (SSMB). SSMB captures the energy emitted by charged particles during acceleration, transforming it into a continuous, pure EUV light source. Compared to the prevalent ASML EUV method, SSMB boasts superior power and efficiency, potentially reducing chip production costs.
“An SSMB-EUV light source has been designed at THU, with designed EUV power higher than 1kW, and some key technologies are nearly ready,” said team member Professor Pan Zhilong at a presentation at an academic workshop in January 2022.
This ambitious project contrasts with the strategies of companies like ASML, which focus on miniaturizing chip-making machines. Instead, China’s vision involves creating a giant factory that houses several lithography machines, all centered around a single accelerator. This design aims to enable competitive manufacturing processes (such as 2nm and beyond) that will be used to make high-performance chips without using traditional extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography scanners.
“As a completely new light source, the experimental verification of the technology has been implemented. But it is necessary to build a solid SSMB light source research device operating in the EUV band,” said project leader Professor Tang Chuanxiang from Tsinghua University.
“Then we can [use the device to] cultivate scientific and industrial users, and polish the SSMB technology.”
According to the report, Tsinghua University’s team has made significant strides in this domain; they have successfully trialed the technology and are now scouting locations for the project’s construction, the report claims. Their achievements could pave the way for China to bypass potential future sanctions and emerge as a semiconductor powerhouse.
However, the journey to realizing SSMB-based EUV lithography machines remains long and challenging. Professor Tang Chuanxiang heads the project and emphasizes the need for continuous innovation and collaboration across industries to develop a functional lithography system.
“There is still a long way to go before our independent development of EUV lithography machines, but SSMB-based EUV light sources give us an alternative to the sanctioned technology,” said Tang. “It requires continuous technological innovation based on SSMB EUV light sources and cooperation with upstream and downstream industries to build a usable lithography system.”
China Will Take Revenge Against US Discriminatory Practices On Huawei This Way!
The question is, what kind of inquisitive mind thought it would be possible to stop the technological advancement of a country of 1.5 billion people that work diligently hand-in-hand to build and better their country that has over 1 billion people as citizens, and over half of that as Middle Class? US economic experts advising their government should re-educate themselves.
https://youtu.be/RdMwv9z0VwE
Does US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo seriously think that the US Congress can use legislative tools to stop Huawei from doing research innovation and launching new products?
It’s not just her. The entire US government is having delusions of grandeur. They think that all the US needs to do is pass a law and it will magically happen anywhere in the world. This is massively deluded behavior. Much like the insane Emperors of Rome.
Huawei’s mobile devices consumer division was kneecapped and decapitated through sanction, suffering a 90% drop in shipped volume in the last 4 years.
That’s a 100–200b dollar swing in revenue, just for handsets. To put that in perspective, that’s equal to 1–2 Boeings at its 2018 peak.
The US was trying to kill Huawei, and bury the telecoms business by bleeding revenue off its high margin consumer division.
That’s way grander than “stop Huawei from doing research innovation”.
Huawei is still under sanction, and Bloomberg’s recent name and shame of Taiwanese companies helping Huawei/SMIC with foundry infrastructure is a thinly veiled attempt at threatening companies not to deal with Huawei, even though the contracts they have entered into do not fall under current sanction.
Gina is free to suggest sanction escalation and fix Huawei like America did to Russia and Russian oligarchs, but Beijing will retaliate this time. And there is ~1 trillion in annual S&P 500 revenue generated from the mainland to aim for. The Chinese don’t have a significant presence stateside.
Personally, I think the ship on Huawei has already sailed. I won’t be surprised if Huawei breaks 100m phones shipped annually in the next 18–24 months. I also won’t be surprised if Huawei introduces new WIFI and telecoms standards in the next 5 years that end up being adopted in Apple phones. Neither Apple nor Google are capable of driving hardware standards revolution.
I can’t think of any easy-to-implement/low cost cards that the Department of Commerce can still deal when it comes to Huawei.
When I was a child of 8, my mom died suddenly. Our next door neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Cardin, sat outside on their front porch every night and I went over and sat with them for endless hours. They were so kind. I thought they were old. They were in their sixties, I guess. I always felt welcomed. They served me iced tea. They played cards with me. When I turned 18 and my dad died, I moved in with an older sister. I don’t remember ever saying goodbye to them. Years passed, I married, divorced and remarried and moved to another town nearby. I always remembered their kindness. One day I was walking through a local cemetary and reading the tombstone inscriptions (which I love to do). There they were: Geraldine and Louis Cardin. I knelt down in gratitude. The next weekend was Mothers Day. I laid a bouquet of flowers at the grave of Mrs. Cardin and thanked her for her kindness and comfort. They never touched me, never hugged me. They just let me sit beside them while I talked to them and they talked to me. I cannot remember one conversation, only that I felt at peace in their company.
Carl Zha on Huawei, ‘Chinese Spies’ and Chinese economy on Redacted
Years ago I bought a golf diesel car. It belonged to my girlfriends father. He had fallen asleep and clipped a pole. Damaged the passenger side.
I asked what he wanted for it and he insisted it was only worth $600 because that’s what the dealer said it was worth. I bought it and replaced the door and rear axle and had a little body work and paint and pin stripping done. Cost me $800. Now the car had 50K miles on it so just barely broken in for a diesel.
The first time I drove it at night the climate control section of the dash was black. I thought you know that should be illuminated.
So I got into the dash and found the plug to the climate control unplugged. Plugged it in and it worked fine. Actually it looked like the neon lights at a fair. Red, green, blue colors. So I’m over at my girlfriends and sitting in the car when her father came over and we’re talking and he looks into the car and is stunned to see the lights.
Owned the car for a couple of years and said he just carried a flashlight to see the controls. He had no idea it was supposed to be illuminated.
Egypt just dropped a BOMBSHELL in the Israel Hamas War
Much respect to Egyptian Gov. for not bowing to the US.
I love American cars – I have owned Chevy El Camino, two Dodge Ram Vans and one Ford Econoline.
The thing is that American cars are designed for different ecosystem than European and Japanese. American cars have ridiculously over-powered and under-efficient engines, which are extremely reliable, but they are terrible gasoline guzzlers. I mean, the American cars drink petrol like an alcoholic cheap plonk.
Moreover, the American cars are large and they have been designed for straight roads and long distances. They are excellent in Scandinavia, but next to useless in Central Europe.
In Europe, petrol is an import ever since the USA destroyed all the surviving Fischer-Tropsch plants in Germany after the WWII so that Europe could never be self-sufficient on liquid fuels. It means petrol is expensive, and it is heavily taxed. Petrol prices are approximately the same per one litre than they are in the US per one Yank gallon. So this is an incentive to a) maximize the thermal efficiency of an Otto or Diesel engine and b) to get as frugal and economic car as possible.
Moreover, the distances are short (which means a lot of acceleration and deceleration) and the roads are old (some date all the way to the Roman era) and follow the contours of nature. Which means they can be awfully winding, especially at the Pyrenees, Alps and Scandian mountains. Thus the agility is favoured over speed or comfort.
European cities are old, the streets are narrow and they certainly aren’t going to be re-planned with automobiles on mind. Finding a parking lot can be a pain and many city streets may have centuries-old cobblestone instead of asphalt. American car aren’t exactly the optimal vehicles there.
BLOCKADE FAILED! Germany Halts Dismantling of Chinese 5G Equipment！
Recently, the launch of the Huawei Mate 60 and the resurgence of 5G technology in China, powered by the domestically produced Kirin 9000S, have demonstrated that Huawei has successfully overcome the long-standing blockade imposed by the United States.
Although some US lawmakers have made strong statements about increasing sanctions on Huawei, US Secretary of Commerce Raymond has already affirmed that chip supplies to China will continue. Additionally, ASML, a key supplier of lithography machines, has announced their commitment to providing equipment to China until the end of the year.
Furthermore, Germany has also changed its position. Despite the “red-green-light” coalition government’s emphasis on the “security risks” associated with Huawei’s 5G equipment and their efforts to suppress Huawei through legislation and orders to remove Huawei’s equipment, the German government has covertly allowed German telecommunications operators to use Huawei’s 5G components.
According to reports from Chinese media and Germany’s Die Welt newspaper, a German government official privately acknowledged that the new 5G network in Germany incorporates technologies from China and German operators still rely on security-critical components provided by Chinese suppliers, implying that the German government has effectively permitted the use of Huawei’s 5G technology.
Huawei operates globally in 170 countries, with 30 commercial 5G contracts and over 25,000 5G base stations deployed without any major security incidents. Moreover, Germany’s ban on Huawei’s 5G components lacks substantial evidence to prove security risks, indicating that Germany is attempting to find faults where none exist.
However, this ban has faced opposition, with individuals stating that Germany’s 5G network has developed a deep reliance on Chinese suppliers, making it challenging to remove this dependence in a short period of time.
A friend was flying in to LAX, and I was going to meet her there for lunch. Another friend insisted I borrow his Prius (this is important to the theft), saying that he didn’t want to have to rescue me if my car broke down. (Fair worry—my then car was really on its last legs!)
I stopped at a McD’s on my way out of town to get some coffee, and when I walked back out of the restaurant, I unlocked the car using the fob, hopped in, and left. I drove to the airport, but when I parked and went to get my book out of the back seat, my book had disappeared!
It turned out that I had gotten in the wrong Prius!
When I finally figured this out, I went immediately to the airport’s little “police station” (a trailer at the far end of the airport’s circuit) and confessed to my crime. Yes, the car I was in had been reported stolen, but they contacted the owner who kindly agreed to just let me bring it back, which I did after having lunch with my friend.
Both these Priuses had a keyless entry and ignition system, and the way the owner handled hers was the only reason this could have happened.
Her car was the same color as the one I was driving, and she was parked two stalls away from me in the crowded parking lot. When I came out, I headed to the wrong one, not even noticing that there was another Prius nearby. I unlocked my car remotely, opened the door and sat down.
Here’s the thing: she had locked her car with a physical key when she parked it, but had left the fob in the console, forgetting that the Prius won’t lock if it detects the fob inside the car. So her car was unlocked.
I started the car with the pushbutton instead of with the key, and it started since it knew the fob was inside the car, and voila—grand theft auto!
Victoria Nuland, Asst. Sec. of State for Europe, phone call to US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, in which they discuss how they’re going to set up the new Ukrainian government in 2014.
The video link is provided below. Here’s your smoking gun right here.🔫
And isn’t it interesting that the only administration in which Nuland could NOT find a position was the Trump administration. I’m no fan of DT, but it’s an interesting fact nevertheless.
She was in on Clinton, Bush, Obama, and now Biden administrations — a 33 year “diplomatic” career —including a very high level and indeed dangerous position today (Oct 2023) as Asst. Sec of State. She was Dick Cheney’s Deputy National Security Adviser from 2003 to 2005.
Interestingly, Wikipedia makes no mention whatsoever that Vitali Klitschko was a Ukrainian presidential candidate in 2014, instead providing page after page of information about his boxing career.
On this one, we got real, real lucky.
High level covert operations are NEVER this easy to get evidence on.
Foreign media tend to portray Chinese plans and projects as stemming from a small, tightly centralized regime in Beijing. Foreign press back in the 2000s (when they were still enamored with the ‘Chinese model’ of economic growth) were often quick to praise how the strong, centralized decision making of China and it’s technocratic bureaucracy were key to driving economic growth where the ‘decentralized and slow democratic’ decision making of the decadent rest was going to be their death knell.
One could say that this is more of a linguistic issue where press reports simply referring to Beijing or the CPC created the impression that it was literally just Beijing and the Central Committee of the CPC calling the shots. Thereby creating the assumption that in order to address any issue in China, one must fly to Beijing and meet with the top man there. Or perhaps its a throwback on how the press reported on the USSR by making references to the “Kremlin” every time policy decisions were taken, forgetting that the Soviet States of Hungary, Poland, Romania etc had their own governments with their own powers who also called some of the shots.
This is flawed to say the least.
The Chinese governmental structure endows its provincial governments with surprisingly vast powers to the extent that Provincial governments alone can pursue their own foreign investments and trade deals with only minimal oversight from the center as long as such deals adhere to the loose guidelines issued by the center.
The same goes for the gigantic State Owned Enterprises in China which are permitted to initiate and pursue their own economic activities under the loose framework of the central committee’s guidelines.
As other Chinese Quorans have pointed out, One would do well to remember that China can better be thought of as a continental level entity with it’s own mini nation states inside its borders.
When the BRI was initiated, the central committee simply set out the guidelines for the project, which you can read here:
President Xi Jinping’s keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the forum pointed out that our promotion of the “Belt and Road” construction will not repeat the old routine of geo-game, but will create a new model of cooperation and win-win; it will not form a destabilizing small group, but will build harmony. A coexisting family.
This fully demonstrates that the construction of the “Belt and Road” is an important exploration and practice for countries along the line to jointly build a community of human destiny.
Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core has coordinated the two major domestic and international affairs, coordinated development and security, and carried out a great-state diplomacy with Chinese characteristics in a proactive manner, and put forward a series of new ideas and concepts. We advocate the establishment of a new type of international relations with cooperation and win-win as the core, and strive to build a community of human destiny.
President Xi Jinping said in a keynote speech at the 2017 annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos in January this year that as long as we firmly establish the common sense of human destiny, work together and work together to help each other and overcome difficulties, we will certainly make the world a better place. Be beautiful and make people happier.
The concept of the community of human destiny highlights the inclusiveness of the new international order
The community of human destiny is based on the thinking of various new elements in the development of the world in the 21st century. In response to the philosophical and historical propositions of “where does man go?”, from the perspective of reforming and improving the international order, A vision for the evolution of global governance.
After the Second World War, the world as a whole maintained peace and development. Its main guarantee factors were the construction of the international order and the in-depth development of economic globalization.
However, with the increasing challenges in the process of economic globalization and the increasing diversification of international actors, the current international order cannot effectively cope with various problems, and the risks of security disorder and development imbalance are increasing. Global governance calls for reform and innovation.
The paper goes on to talk in general guidelines about Eurasian infrastructure and trade development in loose terms:
In 2013, Comrade Xi Jinping formally proposed the “Belt and Road Initiative”. China is focusing on the periphery as the primary direction, promoting the liberalization and facilitation of trade and investment, and providing important new public goods to the international community, especially the developing countries in Asia and Europe.
In August 2016, Comrade Xi Jinping pointed out at the symposium on promoting the construction of the “Belt and Road”: taking the “Belt and Road” construction as an opportunity to carry out cross-border interconnection, improve the level of trade and investment cooperation, and promote international cooperation in capacity and equipment manufacturing. It is to revitalize the world economy by increasing effective supply to generate new demand.
His keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the “Belt and Road” International Cooperation Summit further emphasized that China will thoroughly implement the development concept of innovation, coordination, green, openness and sharing, constantly adapt, grasp and lead the new normal of economic development and actively promote The supply-side structural reforms will achieve sustainable development, inject a strong impetus into the “Belt and Road” and bring new opportunities for world development.
In the context of the continued downturn in the world economy, China’s support for countries along the line to promote industrialization and modernization through the “Belt and Road” initiative to meet the urgent needs of countries to improve infrastructure levels will inevitably activate the growth potential of countries along the route, which will undoubtedly help stabilize the world economy. The situation and the promotion of global economic growth.
McKinsey, the US consulting firm, estimates that by 2050, the contribution rate of countries along the Belt and Road Initiative will be more than 80%.
To say that there are a thousand and ten thousand, China is going to build a development concept of practicing the community of human destiny through the “Belt and Road”, so that all parties can work together to fill the development of Asia, Europe, and the mainland, and create a common development and prosperity of all countries. New Era.
That is pretty much all the center does: establish the guidelines and groves for the project but leave it to other actors to decide how they carry them out.
Chinese provincial governments and their regional local elite have their own significant powers which they can use to resist parts of the agenda from the center which they don’t like (at least temporarily). I remember reading how one of the provincial governments stubbornly resisted Beijing’s calls to reduce pollution levels stemming from the province by pointing out how that would slow down economic activity in the province.
Similarly, when the CPEC project started, a Chinese SOE began development of Gwadar port and it’s special economic zone as part of the BRI initiative.
But right across from Gwadar, a Chinese provincial government began their own special economic zone in Oman, directly in competition with Gwadar!
Our Prime Minister Imran Khan would learn this lesson well when his incompetent team failed to brief him on how the Chinese political structure worked.
So when Imran Khan recently went to China on a state visit to Beijing to renegotiate some of the CPEC projects, he was met by bewildered officials in Beijing who pointed out that the central committee doesn’t exactly negotiate the deals for the BRI. SOEs and Provincial governments do. What exactly did Imran Khan want Beijing to do on an issue where Beijing wasn’t directly involved?
Most BRI contracts are not between governments but instead between Chinese companies and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to facilitate projects for the larger BRI initiative.
In that context, when the new government claims it will renegotiate contracts, as well as terms and conditions, it is forgetting to mention that it will have to do them with Chinese companies and SOEs, not with the Chinese government.
Secondly, because CPEC is an overland project, any arbitration that happens i.e. if the government were to try to renegotiate any contract in place, they will have to refer to the BRI court in Xi’an, which falls under Chinese law.
That means either the government must engage a law firm to represent it on each contract it wants to renegotiate or try to contest cases itself.
Worse still is the fact that the government has practically no idea what it wants to renegotiate in the first place.
That is the crux of the problem Pakistan faces: the state simply does not understand the conceptual basis of BRI or CPEC and, hence, cannot even define what it means.
Chinese companies raise that money in their own country from institutions like the Silk Road Fund, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Export Import Bank based on guarantees provided with regards to project completion through contracts signed by the Pakistani government.
Pakistan owes that money to Chinese financial institutions and not the government — let’s be crystal clear about that. The Chinese government will also not waive that borrowing away because it is project-based debt financing.
The crux of the problem as far as Pakistan is concerned is that we have become so accustomed to reading about China through English print media or viewing the Chinese through a prism set by others, that we have no idea where policy decisions in China are stemming from. Or who exactly to talk to in the PRC.
So we default to our own logics: If we’re a strong man, authoritarian country we expect to take our problems to Xi to have them addressed. Or if we’re a country who sheds limelight constantly on the ongoings of their president, we tend to equate the other country’s president with the same power structure.
It would be useful for other nation states and companies besides Pakistan as well to perhaps narrow down on who exactly they are dealing with when they deal with China.
And perhaps do some linguistic adjustments so we move away from stuff like “China is building ports in the Arabian sea” – wait! Who is China? Xi himself ordered the ports built? Like specifically? Or do you mean a variety of different actors ranging from provincial governments to SOEs are pursuing their own economic activity under loose guidelines from the center rather than as part of some ominous grand design.
To be fair, maybe I’m being too harsh on Pakistani leadership. Certainly the military seems to know who to deal with in China, having negotiated independent contracts with the Xinjiang government, Chinese SOEs and so on.
There is also a tendency to get lost in the weeds when reading foreign press on China sense the idea of “large, centralized, authoritarian behemoth moving steadily in an organized manner towards American interests” sounds way more ominous and fearful than “oh hey, one of the Provincial governments in China is building a port in Burma to expand their provincial trade”.
The idea of an ominous, all power, omnipotent central leadership in Beijing calling all the shots sounds very enticing. Particularly for media centers operating out of nations that wish to portray China as the next big threat to their interests.
Its just not true. And we should probably learn that lesson well in our future dealings. Others would be well advised to do the same.
The point isn’t that the central government is powerless vis a vis localized power centers. Or that the central government is all powerful. But that the truth lies in a nuanced middle ground between both polar opposites. And there needs to be more specificity about who we are referring to in China when discussing policy decisions stemming from the PRC.
“Just a small note – neither of this countries was ever part of the USSR – all of then was separate countries albeit dependent of the Soviets.
USSR republics was the “stans” countries (Turkmenistan, Tajikistan etc), Ukraine, Belorusia, The Baltics, Georgia and Armenia, but not Poland, Hungary or Romania.”
Meet Brian Mwenda, a Kenyan man who has been playing a high-stakes game of make-believe in Kenya’s legal system.
Stunningly, Mwenda is said to have argued and won not one or two, but 26 cases, pitting his wits against bona fide legal eagles and leaving courtrooms in awe. And he did all this without a law degree or any professional certification. He’s a fraud.
Now, authorities have finally caught up to him, and he’s facing a slew of charges for impersonating an Advocate of the Kenya High Court. But the man’s record is flawless, a clean sweep of victories.
It begs the question, should he be behind bars or standing at a podium accepting an award for extraordinary legal acumen?
Mr. Mwenda might just be a legal prodigy, an undiscovered gem in the world of law. Or Kenya seriously needs to reevaluate its legal education and certification processes.
After all, if a fake lawyer can outwit the pros, what does that say about the system?
If he was given the right to defend himself and he eventually won, it’d be his 27th triumph, an untainted record in a courtroom career founded on a lie.
If that happens, Brian Mwenda wouldn’t just be defying the laws of his land; he’d be defying reality itself, turning what should have been his downfall into yet another improbable victory.
There are a lot of things I do understand about Trump supporters.
Trump supporters are angry, tired, and frightened. They live in a world that’s passing them by. They keep hearing about how the economy is booming, but they’re struggling to make ends meet.
They see foreign students coming in on H1B visas to work at tech companies for what seems like ludicrous, unfathomable amounts of money, money they don’t see in a decade, and they’re wondering where their share of the pie is.
They hear people sneeringly talk about “flyover states” without seeming to know or care those are their states, their homes. The people they care about are mired in drug and alcohol addiction and struggling to pay the mortgage while Instagram 20somethings jet off to Maui and get sponsorship deals with companies that make bottled water.
They see liberals bending over backward to support gay men and lesbians and Black criminals and trans people and illegals, talking about treating everyone with compassion, and they’re like, what about me? Where’s the fucking compassion for me?
They bought into reassurances that if they were willing to work hard, they’d make it. They’d get ahead. Hard work and grit would be rewarded. Now the lumber mill’s closed and the mine’s closed and city folks keep going on about how coal mining is actually bad and wrong, and they’re like fuck you, we had a deal, I busted my ass and you took it all away.
They were told there was an order to things, a way things worked, and yeah they were never top dog on the heap, but at least they weren’t the bottom either, and now everything’s changed and men in makeup with long nails who’ve never done a days’ work in their lives are being put ahead of them? Are you kidding me?
I get it. I understand that. They were sold a bill of goods, and now the world has shattered around them and they’re stuck in podunk nowhere with no way to keep a roof over their head and the neighborhood they used to be proud of is trashed by meth dealers and everyone else is going on about how wonderful life is and what losers they are, and they’re pissed about that.
That’s not hard to understand at all.
What’s hard to understand is why they think a grifting self-described billionaire who lives in a penthouse, shits in a gold toilet, and wouldn’t ever in a million years allow any of them into any of his resorts is “one of them” and totally, like, gets them.
That’s the part that I don’t get.
Why the West FEAR China (China is UNLIKE Japan in the 90’s)
America loves China’s consumer goods. As long as China was “the world’s production factory” the United States left China alone for the most part. There was the occasional “free Tibet” protest or Tiananmen Square protests, but nothing like what I see today.
What changed? China. China began to rapidly develop its infrastructure as well as its education sectors such as Science and Mathematics. They were obsessed with STEM learning before it was cool. Their military and space program excelled. They tackled poverty and literacy, created jobs and basically pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
They no longer had to be the world’s factory. They still produce a massive amount of consumer goods, but as China develops toward first world status some of those factories relocated to Southeast Asia. Vietnam will likely earn persecuted country status by the time my grandchildren come of age. That’s if the U.S. is still influential in world affairs.
They hate China because China is no longer the sick man of Asia. China is strong and influential. The U.S. is terrified of losing their hegemony to China. They are an emerging world power that can offer developing countries a different path from what the United States traditionally offers. It’s all a part of a circle really. Nations rise and fall and have done so for millennia past. They will continue to do so for as long as Earth continues to exist. The U.S. will fall and China will rise. A hundred years from now and it will likely be another country’s turn.
If you are in Southeast Asia like me, you should have realized how happy and proud Indonesians are recently.
The media in Southeast Asia is full of reports about Indonesia’s high-speed rail.
In Indonesia, everyone from the president to civilians is happy for the opening of the high-speed rail. Even those against the media can only say irrelevant nonsense.
Indonesia’s high-speed rail has achieved initial success. This is the first high-speed rail in Southeast Asia. They are worthy of pride.
Our Malaysian neighbors have some nasty things to say in the media. But I know that they are actually very envious of Indonesians, and they also want a high-speed rail from Kuala Lumpur to Penang.
Currently, there are several high-speed rail projects in South Asia and Southeast Asia. Japan’s high-speed rail project in Vietnam is in a quagmire, and its high-speed rail in India has made no progress. Only China’s high-speed railways in Indonesia and Laos have been successful.
If Indonesia wants to maintain this success in subsequent projects, it only needs to maintain its original approach and trust the Chinese as always, and they will help Indonesia create miracles.
If there is, 99% of any incidents are man made. To be precise US lies, innuendos, concoctions, fabrications, made up haft truths or total garbage.
Take the weather balloons. Intentionally blown out of proportion. Pardon my punt. Imaging some hundred million Americans fixated over lies by the media and opportunistic politicians making hay on sunshine demonising and accusing the Chinese of spying a most ridiculous and frivolous claims but it sells media! Finally shooting it down with a hundred million jet at a million a pop on a float away balloon worth a thousand bucks!
So think about how ridiculous it is? In todays world where if China wants to it can zoom in from space at high resolutions on very square meter balloon China need to spy the US using a brightly coloured 2 school bus sized with a huge Chinese flag pasted moving at 5 miles an hour, visible by naked eyes m? It is laughable and shameful if you ask most of the world. But guess what some Americans think it is real! What a spun!
But Chinese people laugh their eyes wet thinking how silly you guys can get. Blinken your Secretary of State even postpone a state visit of utmost importance pretending to be affected by the balloon!
The tensions if any are all US made. A nation allowing fictions to exist and lies to demonised other nations cannot amount to much. But the US has no shame or pride. When General Mike Milley your joint forces chief announced officially that after days of disruption and chaos, up to a billion dollars, that it is what it is. A weather balloon! No more no less. Guess what! No apology, no one took responsibility, no one U.S. made to pay, no acknowledgement!
This is a nation that has carpet bombed nations, use agent Orange on villagers destroy thriving economies by mistakes and false flag operations. 3 million Vietnamese died and half a million U.S. agents dead or injured due a war started by lies in the Gulf of Tonkin!
So, sure one cannot expect much! But guess what they dare to call US exceptionalism and even worst Americans believed it!
In every revolution, there’s one man with a vision
“If change is inevitable, predictable, beneficial…doesn’t logic demand that you be a part of it?”
It won’t it will never and it will hurt and harm the U.S. several folds more that it can hurt and harm China.
It is no different from the U.S. picking a big rock and threaten China that if China do better than the U.S. you will throw the rock on your own foot!
China is a humongous market now. It is several times bigger than the U.S. and worst it produce 75% of everything needed by the world. If you stop selling to China which is say 40–60% of your market. You will go bankrupt. And if you think China cannot make it you better be super careful that the can’t and they will never be able to do! If you are wrong you will not only lose their need but you will also lose entire worlds need too.
Frankly the U.S. is a party not the only party to make most of the products. It simply cost the US too much to stop China. It is cheaper and more sustainable to work with China as an equal and finding a win win solution. The U.S. cannot forced China’s hand and will. China is too strong, too influential, too rich and too capable to fight you if you fight them.
If something is an Offence, then you need someone to determine what constitutes an Offence and thats called DESIGNATED AUTHORITY
So unless US is the Ruler of the World, how can it be an offence to get around Sanctions Imposed by Russia for economic reasons?
Lets say India needs 96 Million Tonnes of Crude this year – 71 Million Tonnes of Sulphur & 25 Million Tonnes of Sweet ]
We normally buy Spot from the Market and have no long term contracts like other Nations have.
Suppose tommorow we are offered Crude at 30% Cheaper Rate, Why cant we buy Crude from Russia if it means a savings of several billion dollars?????
Punishment would simply mean US Sanctioning the Country that dares Trade with Russia
It might work or It might fail
For instance say India which produces its own Food is Sanctioned , tomorrow if it comes to Energy Crisis and Massive Recession vs Freezing of our USD Assets – A Sane man would rather choose Asset Freezing and fight legally in the UN , rather than force an Energy Crisis and Massive Recession
Say China is Sanctioned. It would rather be sanctioned than compromise its National Integrity and Face by conceding to the US demands.
However a Country totally dependent on US would have to Kowtow or totally Dependent on Imports from Europe would Kowtow
In 1997 – 82.9% Nations depended on US and European Imports primarily (159 out of 188)
In 2007- 59.7% Nations depended on US and European Imports Primarily (119 out of 199)
In 2017 – 32% Nations depended on US and European Imports Primarily (66 out of 205)
In 2022 – 28% Nations depend on US and European Imports Primarily (58 out of 207)
So the Sanctions are becoming weaker and weaker because More Countries can survive primarily even despite US Sanctions. (US/EU also includes Canada , UK and EU and NATO nations)
Almost 101 Countries have changed their primary trading Partner from US / EU/ UK/ Australia/NZL/Canada in the last 25 Years alone. Most of them have moved to CHINA including the EU themselves.
Stupid Sanctions like those against Russia tend to cause more negative impacts to the US than positive Impacts
Russian teenage genius joins Huawei .sparking concerns in the United States.
China and Russia, march forward hand in hand to make our world more stable, prosperous and peaceful.
How many cities can make a simple claim like that?
In Singapore, there are few exclusive districts, and those are the remnants of colonial history. In a modern new town, the expensive private apartments are within a stone’s throw of 1,2,3 room public flats. The children go to the same schools, and the parents shop at the same supermarket.
This raising of baselines across the board prevents organized crime from festering, because the fertile ground of poverty and the disadvantaged is uprooted.
Singapore is low crime, and most people have a healthy respect for the law, and especially officers in uniform. My grandma won’t indoctrinate her grandchildren in 21st century Singapore to “beware of cops”, because it isn’t 60s Hong Kong anymore. The SPF is one of the cleanest and most efficient police outfits in the world.
As a reminder, beat cops are armed with guns, but officer-involved shootings are very rare. We can go years between shots being fired. How does the SPF reduce violent arrests, and the risk of injury to both suspect and officer?
Through displays of overwhelming force.
Not all guns blazing, but the deployment of teams of officers to handle on-the-ground situations. Like these:
This round-island ability to concentrate policing power allows the senior officer to control and manage the situation, particularly the safety of the innocent public, the suspect/s, and of course the officers themselves.
In other words, gentler policing SOP.
This is a luxury that not all police forces can boast. Singapore manages by keeping crime waves at bay with effective policing and stiff laws.
At the end of the day, it is the economic and social fabric that keep crime from festering. And Singapore’s remain healthy.
Note: This is what passes for policing elsewhere.
Nurse Dies Of Illness; Experiences Infinite Reality And Told Why We’re Here (NDE)
There is an island in the Aleutions just east of Attu called Shemya. The AirForce has a landing strip there. The Army used to run a listening post there as well. It was considered a hardship tour, so the duration was one year. However, being under CONUS jurisdiction meant that overseas and hazard pay were not offered, base only. As for social life, the joke ran “there’s a woman behind every tree on Shemya; but there are no trees.” A good wind could carry a person off the island if one is not careful. Guide ropes were installed over the winter months to ensure safe passage between the barracks, the workspace, or the messhall. Being in the high latitudes subjected one to auroras, and other geomagnetic storm effects. Stereo gear just didn’t last long up there. Its isolation put Shemya on the bottom of any iteneraries for the top brass, so their presence was rare, thankfully.
Due to its proximity to the international date line, you could see tomorrow on a clear day!
I let a friend stay at our summer house all winter. All they had to do was pay the utilities. A flag went off in my head when she said “why do I have to pay for the utilizes?
we get back in May-the first thing we are greeted to (in order):
oven is a disaster
phone call they will turn off our electric for non payment
her son (who wasn’t supposed to be in there) carved his name in our cocktail table
deep gouge in the oak flooring
my new water pik is gone
ALL MY WINE THAT WAS HIDDEN WAS GONE
Instead of cleaning out the fireplace she used the trap door which took us all day to clean out
she left the place filthy.
I was so angry I wouldn’t answer her emails or phone calls.
She then dialed on someone else’s phone and I picked up-she asked why I wasn’t taking her calls. I told her everything especially our wine being gone.
Her reply was ““so you are going to RUIN our friendship over a few bottles of cheap wine?”
I said THEY WERE CHEAP TO YOU SINCE YOU DIDN’T PAY FOR THEM.
Don’t call me again and hung up. I hope she sees this post.
A scammer sees a high-ticket item with resale value online.
The scammer offers to buy it, sight unseen, with a cashier’s check, money order, or credit card.
You deposit the check or money order, or run the card.
The scammer has a mule, who may or may not know it’s a scam, pick up the item.
The bank notifies you that the check/money order was a forgery or the card was stolen. They take the money out of your account.
You try to go after the scammer to realize they used a fake address, a disposable cell phone or VoIP line, and a fake name—you have absolutely no way to find them. And the mule who picked up the item? If you can find that poor sucker, he tells you the scammer paid him money to pick up a bunch of items, but then the check the scammer paid him with turned out to be a fake.
Optional bonus round:
The scammer sends you a cashier’s check or money order, but the amount is wrong. You agreed on a price of $2,500, the check is for $2,800.
The scammer says “Oh, I’m so sorry, I made a mistake. Can you wire me the $300 I overpaid? Tell you what, it was my fault, just wire me $250, keep the extra $50 since I screwed up.”
The bank tells you the check was a fake and takes the money out of your account. (This can sometimes take 6 or 8 weeks to happen, by the way.) Now you’re out the car, you’re out the money, and you’re out $250 that you wired to the scammer…
…which, when you try to get the wire transfer back, you discover actually went to a recipient outside the US, and you are completely utterly 100% screwed. There is no way in hell you will ever see that money again.
Super playoff round:
You get a message from an “insurance fraud investigator,” “funds recovery specialist,” “online fraud recovery agent,” or something along those lines. He tells you that your name came up as part of a fraud investigation and he can get your money back in return for a percentage.
You negotiate some percentage, say 10% or 15%.
He tells you to send him $150 to pay up-front expenses, fees, duties, “recovery tax,” or some other bullshit fee. He explains that the fee will come out of his percentage, so it’s all good.
You send him the $150.
You never hear back from him. It was the same scammer all along. Now he has your car, your money, the extra $250 you sent him, and he’s just taken you for another $150 on top of that.
Double Jeopardy round:
You get an email or phone call from Interpol, or the FBI online crime task force, or US Boder and Customs, or whatever.
They tell you that a car registered in your name was used to commit a crime and since you’re still the registered owner, you’re legally liable.
They say that an arrest warrant has been issued in your name, and you will be arrested…
…unless you agree to waive your right to a trial and just pay the fine.
They tell you the fine will be $1,000, payable by money wire.
You wire the money. It was the same scammer all along. Now he has your car, your money, the extra $250 you sent him, the $150 you sent him on top of that, and another $1,000.
Double Jeopardy round variant:
You get an email or phone call from Interpol, or the FBI online crime task force, or US Boder and Customs, or whatever.
They tell you that a car registered in your name was used to commit a crime or found abandoned, but either way it’s been impounded, and they’re calling you because you’re still the registered owner.
They say that you will get your car back if you pay the impound fee. Maybe they even send you a photo of the car.
They tell you the fee will be $150, payable by money wire.
You wire the money. It was the same scammer all along. Now he has your car, your money, the extra $250 you sent him, the $150 you sent him on top of that, and another $150.
Yes, I’m dead serious, this actually happens, and people actually fall for it at every step along the way.
In terms of absolute strength, the Qing Empire was more powerful than the Ming Empire
The Qing Empire had a much stronger army. The Qing Empire had twice the territory and four times the population of the Ming Empire.
During its most powerful period, the Ming Empire still faced threats from northern nomads. They built a whole new Great Wall to deal with this.
The Qing Empire completely dealt with the surrounding threats, and their military controlled almost the limit of geographical control.
From the perspective of global relative strength, the Ming Empire was stronger.
In the 15th century, the Ming Empire was the most powerful empire in the world. At that time, the Byzantine Empire fell, England and France were in the Hundred Years War, and the Spanish Empire had just begun to expand. Technically, economically, and in terms of strength, there was no power in the world that could rival the Ming Empire.
In the 18th century, the Qing Empire was not the most powerful empire in the world. Although it has vast land and population, it has lagged behind in terms of social structure and technology. After Europe completed the Renaissance and circumnavigated the world, it began global colonization and the industrial revolution. In particular, the British Empire developed rapidly, and the strength of European countries surpassed the Qing Empire.
Apollo 20: The Secret Mission to the Moon to Salvage an Ancient Alien Spacecraft
This is fun. Not sure if true or not. Check this out.
Egypt warned Israel of a pending Hamas attack ten days before terrorists breached the border and took control of military bases, and communities, killing more than 700 and taking 150 captive including women and children.
“We have warned them an explosion of the situation is coming, and very soon, and it would be big. But they underestimated such warnings,” the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the content of sensitive intelligence discussions with the media, told The Associated Press.
The Egyptian official said the Israelis were concentrated on the tension on the West Bank and did not consider the Gaza ruling terror group to be a threat despite repeated warningד
that the Egyptians though were not being taken seriously.
One would hope so. But the story will certainly be denied. And due to the war Bibi may still keep his seat.
Since Ukraine fell into crisis, Tesla has recovered from a low of 700 dollars to close to 1,100, a rally of more than 50 percent.
Similarly, the first world’s stock markets have mostly chugged through like nothing has happened.
The turmoil in the commodity space though, tells a different story.
This is because the sanctions are designed not to hurt the first world financial markets too much. The first world control the world’s money flow.
Unfortunately, China is a totally different problem. Any meaningful sanction on the same wide-ranging scale as those being thrown at Russia will roil financial markets around the world.
For a start, Apple will lose 90+ percent of its production and 25 percent of sales if it withdraws from China just like it did in Russia.
When Apple goes, so does the rest of the market. The mother of all asset bubbles will burst, from stocks to real estate to crypto to bonds.
The yuan will devalue sharply, and the forex game of cards will go up in flames, especially the ntd, krw and jpy, which will have to devalue even more or risk oblivion.
A weird new world will be in flux, with assets in the first world devaluing sharply, but consumer goods skyrocketing along with unemployment.
All these point to massive social unrest within weeks or months of taking such a decision, which is difficult to walk back because market sentiment is not easily reversed once the trust evaporates.
No amount of money printing can save the day because China controls the real economy of goods and component production.
REPORT: Qatar to Cut Oil/Gas Supply if Israel Invades Gaza
Qatar is now threatening to cut their oil supply to the world if Israel invades Gaza.
Emir Sheikh Tamim ibn Hamad Al Thani of Qatar threatened to stop gas supplies to the world if the bombing of Gaza did not stop.
You can bet Saudi Arabia among others will be right behind.
Hal Turner Editorial Opinion
Thankfully, illegitimate President Joe Biden and his incompetent Regime, sold-off about two-thirds of the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve in an attempt to stabilize gasoline prices, which skyrocketed when they imposed Sanctions on Russia over Ukraine.
So if the Arabs DO cut-off oil supplies, the United States no longer has a massive 714 Million Barrel reserve from which to draw to keep the country going.
Some 80 million of you voted for this! All you folks who thought Trump was mean (Orange Man BAD!) . . . and voted for Biden . . . . YOU did this.
You’re correct, ground beef is fairly cheap and the cost of the ingredients that make up a burger is relatively low. The cost of all of the ingredients used to produce a restaurant’s hamburger might be a couple of bucks.
So why is my hamburger $15.00, you ask?
Restaurants have other costs, as well as the cost of food. The young lady who greeted you at the door, escorted you to your table and handed you a menu has to be paid. So does the young fellow who took your order, brought you a drink and delivered your burger. Someone had cook the burger, shred the lettuce, slice the onions and tomatoes and prepare the secret sauce that’s slathered on your bun and they get a paycheck. The plate, fork, knife and glass you used need to be washed, which means there’s someone doing that job as well and they need to be paid too. Finally, there’s the owner and his investors. They all demand a profit from the sale of your burger. If there’s no profit, there’s no point in being in business. So they tack a profit onto the price of your burger because they want to be paid too.
There’s also the rent that has to be paid on the building, the electricity and gas that were used to cook your food, light the dining room and power the AC that’s keeping you cool and comfy. A portion of those things are paid for via the sale of your burger. Sell enough burgers and the restaurant stays in business. Don’t sell enough, or sell them too cheaply and you close the doors.
Understand?
Satellites Show Location of USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group Heading toward Israel
European Space Agency (ESA) imagery shows the USS Gerald R. Ford Aircraft Carrier and its Strike Group, moving south past the Island of Sardinia, enroute to the eastern Mediterranean Sea, closer to Israel.
Iges released by the ESA show the ship and its group:
Alongside the Ford—USA is sending the cruiser USS Normandy, destroyers USS Thomas Hudner, USS Ramage, USS Carney, USS Roosevelt.
The Ford and its Strike Group are being sent to “Make certain Iran does not escalate the ongoing hostilities in the region.”
When HAMAS, which is fighting Israel, got word the Carrier was on its way, they issued a statement saying the ship does not make them afraid. One government official – I won’t say from which government — told me “It isn’t coming to scare them; it’s coming to kill them.”
That aside, there is real danger for that ship and its Strike Group, if a confrontation develops. You see, Hezbollah, in Lebanon, has, in its possession, a known quantity of twelve (possibly many more) P-800 “Oniks” anti-ship missiles, built by Russia.
The Oniks missile is either land-launched or air-launched. It has a range of 120 to 300 km (75 to 186 mi; 65 to 162 nmi) depending on altitude (Yakhont export version). But Russia has also made a version for itself with a Range of 500 lm.
It flies very close to the surface of the water, with an operating altitude of 10 meters (32 ft) or higher.
But its real danger is its speed. The missile travels at Mach 2.6, which means 3180 km/h which translates to 1998 mph (884 Meters per second) The human eye — in general — cannot even see this thing moving . . . it moves so fast.
The missile has already been used against Ukraine and Ukraine had a lot to say about these missiles:
The Oniks has proved to be a difficult threat for Ukrainian Air Defenses. Air Force Spokesperson Yurii Ihnat mentioned (to Wikipedia) that the flight profile of the missile is of particular concern; “Onyx missiles are designed to destroy watercraft, and ships, it flies at a speed of 3000 km per hour, that is, very fast,…On the march [cruising], it can rise high, and when entering the target, it can actually fly 10-15 meters above the water to destroy the ship.” He concluded that it was “impossible” to shoot them down with available anti-air means.
Which brings us back to the USS Gerald R. Ford and its Strike Group.
They will be in “the eastern Mediterranean.”
One hopes they will remain far enough off shore to be out of range of these missiles. But the farther offshore they must stay, the less flight time for their fighter jets without refueling. So the Ship has to try to strike a balance between getting as close as possible so fighters can have good range, or putting themselves farther away for their own safety, which lowers fighter jet range.
OTHER SHIPS, EVEN CLOSER!
Other US Navy Ships are even closer to the threat of these missiles. The ships and 3,000 US Marines onboard, are in the Persian Gulf!
Unless, of course, the USS Gerald R. Ford and several (or ALL) of the ships in its Strike Group, are being set-up to be sunk, to provide an excuse for the US to go to war.
No, such a thought isn’t far fetched, the US knew the Japanese were going to attack Pearl harbor, and they let it happen on purpose.
Who knows if the same, sick, mentality, is at play in the federal government today? Another “Gulf of Tonkin” type situation, perhaps?
I guess we’ll see.
The Gerald R. Ford and its Strike Group should be in the eastern Mediterranean Sea later this week. The other vessels are already in the Persian Gulf off Iran’s coastline.
I worked for a 150-person manufacturing and assembly plant. We made small engines and parts for aircraft.
I was the HR person.
While doing a payroll audit after we switched to a new system, I found this guy on payroll. He was supposed to mow the grounds and provide janitorial service.
Except we had a service do it all for over 8 years. So this guy was paid a not-so-bad hourly rate and just never showed up. For 8 years. We never could find him to tell him he was terminated.
A few months later, we found a small room in the upper mezzanine of the warehouse. We found a small color tv, a cot, a refrigerator and microwave, a desk and chair, a radio, and easy chair, clothes, etc.
From the things we found on the small desks in the room, we figured he had been living in the room rent-free and he went unnoticed for years.
We finally caught him sneaking in late one evening and escorted him off. He was actually pretty clever.
Brian Berletic: China is Ready for War as South Korea and Japan Join Alliance with US
Brian Berletic of The New Atlas discusses Biden’s latest escalation with China, this time in the form a new military alliance with South Korea and Japan.
China develops new record-breaking ‘Jiuzhang’ quantum computer prototype
Chinese scientists have developed a new quantum computer prototype known as “Jiuzhang 3.0” with 255 detected photons, pushing the boundaries of photonics quantum computing technology on a global scale.
Led by the renowned Chinese quantum physicist Pan Jianwei, the research team has successfully accomplished this quantum computing feat, achieving a speed that is 10 quadrillion times faster in solving Gaussian boson sampling (GBS) problems compared to the world’s existing fastest supercomputers.
Gaussian boson sampling, a quantum computation intractable for conventional computers, was employed in this study to provide a highly efficient way of demonstrating quantum computational speedup in solving some well-defined tasks.
The study was published online in the journal Physical Review Letters on Wednesday.
Lu Chaoyang, a member of the research team and professor at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), said that a series of innovations, including a newly developed superconducting nanowire single-photon detection scheme with fiber loop-based configuration, increased the number of detected photons for “Jiuzhang 3.0” to 255, greatly improving the complexity of photonics quantum computing.
“By demultiplexing photons into time bins through delays, we’ve achieved capabilities of pseudo photon number resolving,” Lu added.
According to the state-of-the-art exact classical simulation algorithm, “Jiuzhang 3.0” is a million times faster at solving GBS problems than its predecessor, “Jiuzhang 2.0.” Moreover, the most complex samples of GBS that “Jiuzhang 3.0” can calculate in just one microsecond would take the world’s fastest supercomputer, “Frontier,” more than 20 billion years to complete.
Quantum computing, a new computing paradigm, features extremely fast parallel computing capability.
It has the potential to achieve exponential speedup through specific quantum algorithms compared with classical computers in solving problems of great social and economic value.
Therefore, the development of quantum computers is one of the biggest challenges in the current scientific and technological frontier of the world.
with up to 76 photons detected, marking the first milestone China reached on the path to full-scale quantum computing – a quantum computational advantage, also known as “quantum supremacy,” which indicates an overwhelming quantum computational speedup.
In 2021, the team further developed the “Jiuzhang 2.0” with 113 detected photons and a 66-qubit programmable superconducting quantum computing system named “Zuchongzhi 2.1,” making China the only country to achieve a quantum computational advantage in two mainstream technical routes – one via photonics quantum computing technology and the other via superconducting quantum computing technology.
Girl Dies of Hypothermia; Shown Past Lives & Gets To Choose Her Future (NDE)
This young girl’s story is so authentic and original. Thank you!
I worked with an older geophysicist with a PhD from MIT. He did a lot of research for us. We needed to compare the force generated on a hill side, using 200 grams of dynamite, to the force felt on that hillside by an earthquake, that was rated at 5 on the Richter scale, a certain distance and depth away.
We hired a PhD physicist as a consultant, to write us an unbiased report.
After 3 days, he admitted to us, that he could not find a way to compare the two, unless we could give him a method that did the work for him. Very embarrassing.
We approached our MIT PhD, and asked him if he could work out an equivalency. He looked at us, stunned that we didn’t see how obvious it was. He tried to explain, but he was talking so fast, he lost us.
He then went to his white board, and broke the Richter scale down to its basics, then broke the dynamite down to its basics, in Joules, which is kg m squared per second squared.
Then derived a formula that tied them together.
He did this in less than two minutes, and only took that long, because that was as fast as he could write.
I was impressed, that he even remembered how to calculate the force used to measure the richter scale, without looking it up. But for him to solve in two minutes, what our high priced consultant, couldn’t solve in 3 days, says a lot about the difference in quality of PhDs.
He was the smartest functional man that I ever met. I knew smarter people ,but they couldn’t fit into society.
I know that once I was out of school for 10 years, I couldn’t work things out from basic principles, without researching it. Yet he could after 45 years.
America CAN sanction China, but the cost of doing so won’t be low like doing the same to Russia.
America must pony up the cost, like Apple losing 90 percent of its manufacturing capacity, or Americans losing access to Tiktok or half of Walmart. Jp Morgan and Goldman Sachs will lose access to greater China. Many companies will lose their biggest market, including Volkswagen which sells half its production to the Chinese today.
Yes, 50 percent.
Apple sells more iphones in Greater China than it does back home.
Let that sink in.
Sanctioning China won’t land exclusively on chinese laps. It will hurt the first world too and directly affect the quality of life.
When it comes to China, even America must count the cost. China on the economic battlefield is what Russia on the military front means to the Americans.
Plenty of respect, that is.
Plenty.
U.S China Technology War Panics US as it Sanctions Middle East on AI!
“I love China, from East Africa Kenya, and the whole of Africa stands with China”.
I was once part of a government delegation to Italy to partake in a conference being held by energy industries world wide. It was a pretty diverse event. There were speeches by energy experts on a variety of energy related topics. Panels that debated the future of the energy industry (the Nuclear Energy proponents vs Anti Nuclear energy lobby had some fiery debates!). We had some activities in which we would come up with our own amateurish proposals to resolve energy issues in the developing and developed world.
Perhaps the most time was dedicated to the exhibitions where different industries set up their booths which would offer company products and services to prospective clients.
The exhibitions weren’t really of much interest to us. The company employees knew Pakistan was “small fry” (back in 2007 we didn’t have much purchasing power or budget dedicated to energy related issues). So we Pakistanis were largely ignored by the American and European execs who were more interested in the big fish like Saudis, India, China, Brazil etc. We just mostly meandered about.
During one of our strolls, we passed the Chinese delegation. All serious, taking notes, being engaged by this stunning Italian woman from Shell i think who was explaining some kind of product to the head of the Chinese delegation.
We stood a bit to the side and listened in politely, when the head of the Chinese delegation caught our eye, offered a friendly smile and handshake and asked if we were waiting for them to finish up.
“Oh no no, please continue.”, we replied. “Just wanted to say hi, we’re from Pakistan”
The Chinese gentleman’s face lit up instantly. “Pakistan!” He shook my hand warmly “Our brother!” he exclaimed.
It was quite a moment. I remember every tiny detail from it even till today. The Italian lady’s surprise at how warmly we were being greeted. The other booth employees turning around to see what all the fuss was about. Their own looks of surprise at how the small fry, largely ignored Pakistani delegation was being treated so warmly by the most watched delegation of all, the Chinese.
It’s these small moments, these isolated incidents of human magic that people tend to miss out when they get confused over why China is so well liked by many of the developing world nations. Over the course of the conference, i interacted with other delegations from Africa, Eastern Europe, Central Asia and so on and they all had the same respect and positive impression for the Chinese delegation. Whether it was a delegate from Africa or Asia, no matter what their country’s size and importance, they were treated warmly and with mutual respect by the Chinese as if their country was the same as China in size, importance and power.
Several analysts and commentators want to see something empirical, some hard data that quantifies this respect, that explains scientifically why China is held in a high opinion by developing world countries. They look at investments and trade, look at China’s growing foreign worker and student populations, analyze the spread of Chinese media.
And of course, they do hold true on their own. You can see from this entire thread the vast variety of reasons why people like China (economic might, non-interference in other country’s affairs, an affinity for Chinese culture etc).
So take my answer as one part of the entire canvas of reasons being presented here when i say that a lot of developing nation people, be it government employees or just common folk everywhere, like China because the Chinese still consider themselves as one of us. Not imperial overlords or racial superiors or strict masters and so on. But comrades to the developing world, partners in our struggles and a developing country just like us who share in our troubles, concerns and visions for a mutually beneficial future.
I’m no China expert so i can’t explain where this comes from. Perhaps its still the old Communist ideology at play? Back during the cold war years, the USSR and Chinese communists partnered with a lot of the developing world back then as we struggled to overthrow the colonial and imperialist powers (as well as their local feudal, tribal and monarch proxies). I’ve met old Leftists in their senior years today who tell me about how they would go to the USSR and China back when Pakistan was a dirt poor country to get training, education and what not. Revolutionaries and Leftists from Pakistan, other Asian countries, Africa, Latin America etc would go to the USSR and China in cheap, patched up suits with tattered shoes and not a dime to their name and be greeted warmly by their comrades in Beijing and Moscow and given the top notch treatment. Nations that managed to overthrow their tyrants in a successful coup would send delegations to China and the USSR who would come back full of praises for the hospitality and camaraderie of the Chinese and USSR brother Leftists. Whereas the “Free World” would only choose to associate with our feudal lords, our Shahs, our Kings and our dictators and not step foot in a single street populated by the common man.
I don’t even have to wax poetic about the old days of the Cold war. In my own experience working side by side with my Chinese coworkers, this same feeling of partnership and camaraderie is on display as well. The Chinese who come to work with us, work side by side with us, in the same heat, the same muck, the same mosquito, freezing temperatures, rain and what not. The same hectic schedules and daily annoyances are shared by us equally. We also eat at the same table, play football in the evening with each other and exchange movies and TV shows in USBs with each other.
When i told all of this to my friend who works in the Gulf at an MNC he wouldn’t believe me. His experience with Gulf Arabs and the Western Expats there has been nothing like this. Even students and workers that i know who went to South Korea are a bit amazed when they hear this.
Outside of the work place it’s the same story. Western Expats in Pakistan tend to live in huge, well guarded, walled off compounds with these giant electric generators and might as well be living on another planet given how cut off they are from the rest of the populace. Meanwhile, just 2 days ago, i reversed my car past a Chinese couple getting on their motorcycle in a busy, crowded bazaar typical of any major Pakistani city.
The Chinese live, walk, breath, eat and work among us, on our streets, our cities, our home soil. They face the same problems we do whether its load shedding, low gas supply or slow internet. And when we see them share the realities of our lives, it creates this mutual bond and sense of respect between us. They could have chosen to live in their own huge compounds and indeed, the Pak government is trying to force the Chinese expats in Pakistan to live in compounds away from ordinary Pakistani citizens due to security concerns. But the Chinese refuse. They CHOOSE to live with us. Despite the dangers they face. And that makes all the difference in the world for us.
I had similar positive experiences with the Chinese in Egypt and the African delegations and Middle Eastern delegations were absolutely delighted with the Chinese, how willing to explore the local culture they were, how respectful they were of us and how they would engage with us in social activities and general chit chat everywhere, whether at work or leisure. In the meantime, we didn’t even see the European delegations to Egypt even once (separated for security again i guess).
And my own visit to China a long time ago was no less positive for me. Senior government, military and diplomatic officials would engage with us, discuss with us, seek our view point, offer their own. They would even share stories from their personal lives and listen attentively when we told our own. We were given a royal treatment, housed in comfortable hotels, provided medical assistance immediately if someone got sick, accompanying us to the hospital to make sure we were ok, guiding us in the city. Whether it was common citizens or senior officials, they treated us like equals with a lot of protocol.
Maybe I’ve lost a few folk at this point who have no idea what i’m talking about because they can’t relate. But as a Pakistani, our country is associated only with poverty, violence, terror and instability abroad. No one is impressed when we say we are from Pakistan. No one cares either. So much so that we have become accustomed to it, built our lives around it.
So when i was at that exhibition and the Chinese delegate warmly shook my hand, proclaimed my country a brother in front of the entire exhibition to the surprise of onlookers, when the citizen of a country touted as the next super power of the world gives respect to the citizen of a country that’s touted as a failed state in western publications, it creates an impact on our lives.
I know there are thousands of more like me. In 10, 20, 30 years we will be senior officers, politicians or executives in our own countries. And when we see a Chinese official ask us for a favor, a Chinese company bid us for a project maybe some of us will think back to when the Chinese gave us so much respect on so and so occasion. And we will favor the Chinese because of it. Don’t believe me? Just look at the bonhomie between the Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif who was so dazzled to hear that the Chinese were referring to rapidly implemented Pakistani Projects as “running at Punjab speed” as a compliment to his administrative skills, that he granted several projects to Chinese companies without bidding or on very favorable terms.
Based on how i saw the delegates from Africa, Middle East, Asia also be impressed at the humble, respectful and partner like attitude of the Chinese during their interactions with them, i have no doubt the same kind of positive image of China will be created in the minds of those delegates as well. And when they rise to senior positions, they will also hold the same positive image of China and favor her. All that influence and positive image built across the globe for no cost and without needing 12 Aircraft carriers.
There was once a time i thought that maybe our positive experience of China was because of us mostly experiencing China’s “Golden Generation”. By Golden Generation i mean a generation of people who are born when their country is poor and life is hard, enter young adult life when their country is rising rapidly and go into their senior years when their country is a global power. Kind of like the US’s golden generation. This Golden generation has all the power available to a citizen of a super power but at the same time the same humbleness and respectful nature of a modest power. A person from this generation could become king of the world and still rise to meet a person of more modest means.
I would resign myself to the fact that as younger Chinese came of age who had never seen the struggles of China when she was a poorer country with less power, and he grew up only knowing China as a great, powerful nation then perhaps the Chinese too would become more arrogant and assured of their greatness like the US has become. But my interaction with the Chinese youth of Quora has put to bed such fears as i find them as respectful to us, the people of the developing world, as i found their parents and older siblings etc.
I hope this answer didn’t sound too much like rambling or disappointing due to lack of quantifiable data and science. And i hope this answer isn’t interpreted as a diss of people from the West with whom i also have great experiences. But as someone who as worked in Data analysis so long, i can tell you, some things aren’t there in the data. Some things are in the mysterious, murky sphere we call the human aspect. And in that aspect, you’ll find that this mysterious pull and attraction China has on so many people in the developing world from Africa, Asia, Middle East is based on the smallest, but oldest of all things: Respect. Equality. Partnership. Camaraderie.
This happened to a friend of mine. He’s a PhD in Mathematics and was working for Silicon Valley firm writing mostly encryption algorithms, but some firmware stuff as well. Very very well paid — but not the most social person in the world. Being around people causes him anxiety. This isn’t a minor thing for him — it’s a real pathology.
Anyway, He’s a Los Angeles guy — and hated living so far north. His employer worked with him and let him work remotely 4 out of 5 days a week — he would just need to show up for “face” time once a week. Basically show up Sunday, sleep in the company flat, drive home Monday.
That was grinding him down after a year. His employer dropped that down to once a month. After six months, this was still too much and he decided to turn in his resignation on the next “face” day.
He drove up there, spent the night in the company flat, got up to go to the office with his “notice” papers and his boss calls him in.
They’re laying him off. This means, he keeps the stock options he’s earned (would have lost them if he quit), he gets 3 years of paid medical insurance and a 3 year severance package per his contract.
He sent me a pic of himself after he got the news. The biggest sh*t eating grin I’ve ever seen on him —ever — in front of his “beater” pick up truck. .
A very long time ago, when I was new to working in Corporate America, an employee was reprimanded for refusing to do an assigned task given by a new supervisor and then fired for insubordination.
Sheila had worked in the unit for most of her 7 years with the company. She was hardworking, never missing a day, and knew every aspect of the department’s purpose and work. She was ‘right there’ when any of us needed info or help, something that our supervisors were not always able to do.
She SHOULD have been the supervisor, but she had 3 strikes against her: she was still in school (no paper), she was female (most management positions were filled by males), and she was black (the company had a 7% minority hire, mostly in lower positions).
The new supervisor had worked with us for 6 months when he told Sheila that he wanted her to change a major procedure. When she asked why, he became belligerent and refused to discuss it.
Sheila knew (to summarize) that the new procedure would create a multi-level bottleneck in our area and would ultimately lessen efficiency within a third of the company.
When she attempted to explain this, the supervisor accused her of insubordination and threatened her with termination.
He then began a whisper campaign against her. In hindsight, it was based on racism and misogyny that others (especially in management) seemed happy to join.
Sheila did as she was told, and we all watched as our department’s efficiency rapidly fell and began to adversely affect other units.
When the problems couldn’t ‘work themselves out,’ the supervisor accused Sheila of sabotage.
Some of us went to Personnel (HR) in support of Sheila to no avail. Sheila produced the supervisor’s written instructions, but he continued to call her an incompetent, vindictive, ignorant saboteur and in private, added racist/misogynistic terms.
Sheila was fired based on that man’s accusations and in spite of her denials and proof.
Sheila landed a great position with a competitor within days. (She ultimately lured 4 of the department’s best to join her several months later.)
The supervisor crowed that she had been a spy all along, but as the effeciency still fell, management FINALLY saw that department disruption came from the ‘incompetent, vindictive, ignorant’ supervisor.
He was moved to a different position within the company with no reprimand.
This was my first exposure to how unfair and hateful some ‘management’ can be.
Erwin Rommel is probably one of the most over rated so called geniuses. Rommel had a good sense of tactical employment of certain equipment particularly tanks, but he was greatly aided by the fact he mostly fought an outpost of Britain, rather than the full might of any of the allied armies, and his tactics were never tested by the Soviet armored branch, unlike most German generals.
Furthermore, he was operationally inept and strategically an imbecile. Rommel was the ultimate “i know better than you”, and circumvented the command chain to get his way. For example, he appealed directly to Hitler in order to launch the attack on Egypt, that totally failed and cost the Axis their foothold in Africa, and undermining the Wehrmacht plan made to occupy Malta and cut off the British navy.
At the strategic level Rommel never understood Germany’s actual position, and certainly did not contribute to it. He left this entire theater of command on June 5th despite the Germans knowing that an invasion of France was imminent. He had also previously spent massive resources on creating additional anti air borne defenses, none of which had an impact on the outcome of D-day.
Rommel was defeated in Africa, defeated in Italy and defeated in France, before he was a high level leader he was an insubordinate divisional commander who got lucky mostly. His ghost division was called such because no one knew where it was or what it was doing. That is not a good thing.
Despite all this, Rommel is often mentioned as one of the greatest generals in World War 2, but I really see no reason for this, when von Rundtstedt and even the self aggrandising Mannstein, clearly had far more success and skill than Rommel did.
Star Trek – Two Captain Kirks
Spock makes his way to the control room with a phaser…only to find two identical Captain Kirks (Whom Gods Destroy)
Huawei and China. It force China to speed up dominating the industry and make all the money. It no longer need to share with the west and U.S. The U.S. has to pay and lose in trillions of dollars to build big white elephants, subsidise a dozen countries and the entire industry for decades to come!
Meanwhile it has to contend with poorer technology, higher inefficiency and humongous cost of connectivity! It loses competitive edge and allow its people to fall behind in technology!
But you know who else benefits. Your media and your politicians. The media sell hate and the profit. Your politicians show hates and the win votes!
So who benefits? China, the Chinese people, the global south, the U.S. media and the U.S. politicians.
Who lose? Americans. The U.S. taxpayers. Your U.S. companies, your U.S. dog nations, you U.S. slave vassals, your cronies nations! Too bad karma. You guys deserved it.
Are Humans the First Civilization? The Silurian Hypothesis
I had applied for a job with a company where my friend worked. She had sent me the posting even though I was extremely under qualified and the job was 400 miles away.
I applied, not thinking I actually had a chance. The posting was for a SysAdmin, and at this point in my career I had only worked in computer repair shops. I had some server experience and did some side work for a few clients, but I wasn’t a full SysAdmin by any stretch of the imagination. But what could it hurt to apply. The worst they could do is throw out my resume. So I was surprised when they called me for a phone interview.
I got through the HR interview no problem. I have a good work ethic and am generally a pleasant person, so it was a breeze. Next came the tech interview. The guy who was leaving called me and was immediately concerned about my complete lack of experience as a SysAdmin. We went through the technical interview and I figured that would be the end of it. He asked some pretty tough questions about things I had never done before. So I didn’t think I did that well.
Surprise! I got another call from HR. They wanted to interview me in person! Wow, was I shocked. I agreed and immediately started packing a bag for a road trip. I left early the next morning and drove the 400 miles in one day. I crashed on my friend’s couch and went in to work with her the next morning for my interview.
Again, I was interviewed by a technical person, this time a consultant. Again, he grilled me on a bunch of technology that I had never used before. I answered to the best of my ability, but more than once I had to admit that I didn’t know the answer. Again, I didn’t think I did very well. I basically got the “We’ll call you if we’re interested” response when I asked what the next steps were.
I chalked it up to just being a road trip. I spent the rest of the day exploring the city and taking in a few museums. I had a good time with some friends in the city and then headed home the next morning. This was a Wednesday.
The very next day, Thursday, my phone rang. “Hello, this is X from company Y. We were really impressed with you and would like to offer you the job.”
I almost dropped my phone I was so shocked. All I could do was stutter out a “Ok. I’d love to take it.”
Then the twist. “We absolutely need you to start on Monday. Is that going to be a problem? If you can’t we’re going to offer the job to a local candidate.”
I looked around at my house full of stuff that wasn’t packed and replied the only way I could. “Sure. Looks like I’m moving to Washington DC tomorrow.”
So I did. It took about a month of crashing on my friend’s couch before I found a place to stay and move all our stuff down there.
It was surreal to say the least. In one week, I went from being unemployed in Cleveland to getting a job in DC that I wasn’t qualified for and moving my entire life 400 miles away.
UN GIVEN 24 HOUR WARNING, IRAN SENDS TANKS TO BORDER, SYRIA AIRPORT BOMBED
Two months ago, I got a call that my home was on fire. I rushed home with my 4 year old, found my house uninhabitable and all of my pets deceased. While the fire marshal was finishing up paperwork, and I was covered in soot and tears, a man came up to me with condolences and placed $200 in my hand and said he’s sure I could use it. We had never met; I found out later that he lived in the neighborhood and just felt the need to help.
This man’s actions impacted me in a big way. Of course $200 wasn’t going to rebuild my house, but it did cover getting us pajamas, a change of clothes, toothbrushes, and other essentials that we needed immediately, as well as a hot meal, with some left to spare. Most importantly, it gave me one less thing to worry about at the moment.
Moving forward, I want to be more like that guy. Offering thoughts and prayers through Facebook when people go through tragedies is nice, but actually being present and offering assistance is what makes a difference. Thanks, stranger!
Operation Abscam was the sting of the decade. In 1978, the FBI set up a fake company to snare New York gangsters selling stolen art. The company was called “Abdul Enterprise” hence the name Ab(dul)Scam, and owned by a fake Arab Sheik looking to invest in art.
They recovered two paintings worth 1 million dollars, and during the operation they were introduced to more criminals dealing in stolen stocks and bonds, which stopped 600 million dollars in fraudulent securities.
It was through this operation they were introduced to politicians willing to take bribes. The sting brought the FBI to Washington DC, where their criminal contacts introduced them to shady politicians willing to take bribes for the Sheiks business which was a fake Casino in Atlantic City.
These politicians wanted to arrange a meeting between the Sheik and a US congressman who could make happen any private legislation the Sheik wanted for the price of 50,000 dollars.
This led to the arrest of one senator, six congressmen, and more than a dozen corrupt officials.
The sting was surrounded in controversy because it raised many question regarding the FBI tactics being considered entrapment.
This infamous sting was the inspiration behind the movie American Hustle.
This Cat Was Left Behind When His Owner Moved Away | The Dodo
Citibank. Went to the bank to deposit a ~$26k check into a checking account with many times that amount, then pay my credit card bill which had all the charges from a 15-day Disney vacation.
They deposited the check, but put a ‘hold’ on it, making only $100 of the balance available. Then they debited my checkbook, to pay the CC balance in full.
About a week later the statement arrived. The CC was paid in full, ~48 hours before it was due, but somehow managed to accrue >$100 in interest charges. — First time for that.
The checking account also generated about a dozen overdraft charges despite the balance never dropping below $100k! — It’s not like there was a six-figure minimum balance on that account.
And to top it off, every one of my $25k 7-day certificates of deposit forfeited their interest for the week that included that fiasco.
I went to the branch on the next business day. I waited patiently in the line for the teller. When I got to the window, I quietly explained that they had messed up. The teller *insisted* that they followed procedure. I asked for the manager to come out and explain their procedure in more detail.
I listened to 5+ minutes or doubletalk in stony silence. The manager finally saying he could reverse the charges & credit the interest “… this one time as a courtesy.” I allowed him to proceed and complete the tasks.
When I had the corrected receipts in my hand, and in my wallet, I said to him: “Now I want you to close all of my accounts.” There was indignity & quite anger in his face.
He asked me to step aside into his office. I politely declined saying that until you hand over my money, I’m still a customer. I waited 45 minutes in your line and I’m not giving up my spot so you can hide me away from the people who are still in line. I think they deserve to know how badly you treated me, and maybe some of them will get the idea to leave the bank too.
He tried to maneuver me away from the window. I refused to budge. He tried empty threats, even up to calling the police. I told him go ahead. I have witnesses. Then I said, he *SHOULD* call the police because I want my funds in *CASH*.
He then tried to explain how that much cash would generate a CTR, and I’d be investigated by the IRS. I said, that’s fine. I’m clean, you’re dirty. I welcome the sunlight.
Within an hour I walked out of the bank with a thick manilla envelope under my arm and was walked to my car by the armed security guard. I had informed the manager that my safety was *HIS* personal responsibility until I drove off the bank property. The reason was that because of his incompetence, several people in the lobby *KNEW* that I would be leaving the branch carrying substantial cash, and that the potential for me being robbed once I walked out the door was non-zero.
I left the parking lot and drove to the First Union branch nearer my house, asked for the branch manager, told him a short version of what had just transpired, and in less than 30 minutes walked out with a brand-new leather-bound checkbook, and started earning 0.25% more interest on my money.
—
I had been increasingly frustrated with Citibank in the months leading up to that fiasco. To be fair, it was their electronic banking that had lured me into doing business with them in the first place. Their systems integrated with Quicken better than any other I had used up to that point. BTW this all happened between September 1997 & August 1999. The Disney vacation was from the last day of school in June 1999 thru the 8th or 9th of July. It was a big deal for the kids when we pulled them from school early that day and they got to say to their classmates “I’m going to Disney!”
So, literally every time I visited the Citibank branch to conduct business, I walked out feeing like something was wrong. They always did things out of order from the way I presented them to the teller. It was mildly frustrating most of the time. Irritating on many occasions; and maddening when I’d make large deposits & purchase one or more of their $25k 7-day CDs. The $25k CDs were nice because although they were illiquid for the first 14 days after the 2-week hold the most I could forfeit was the interest on the last week — in theory. There were a number of occasions when they would deduct 8 or more days of interest, when I cashed more than one at a time. I’d get to the office, plug the amounts into Quicken and there would be a ‘discrepancy’. That necessitated another trip to the bank to get it corrected. Or a phone call and an up to 60 day wait.
The bank offered these products to attract deposits. They worked, but they inevitably tried to cheat me out of hundreds if not thousands of dollars in interest earned. But in all candor it was the $400plus in *OVERDRAFT* charges on a well-funded account that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Several years ago Costco ended their arrangement with American Express and switched to Citi. I wasn’t happy. But they gave me a new Blue card with my Costco photo on the back. I only used the card at Costco. And each February I’d await my ‘love check’ aka “My Costco Rewards Voucher”. It usually came by April.
About a year ago, I hadn’t been to Costco for a while and so the automatic $50 payments I made to avoid any possibility of a missed payment fee had accumulated. I had visited Costco on the 92nd day following my last bill and the charge was less than $150. But true to form, the bank had cut me an unrequested paper check on the 91st day (supposedly) recorded the charge on day 92, then hit me with a $35 late fee for not receiving another check before the close of the 3rd statement! Can you imagine?
That was the last time I used the Citi card for *ANYTHING* — except… Now, when I go to Costco, I show the Citi card to prove my membership, but I pay with my Chase. Then when I finish shopping, I stop at the lunch counter and buy a Costco signature Hotdog & Pepsi for $1.50 which comes to $1.61 with the tax. When I return home, I schedule a ebill-pay check to be sent to the bank 15 business days later.
And lastly, I disabled electronic statements, forcing them to send me a paper invoice for $1.61 each month. I did this when they failed to send me an email statement or notification then had the nerve to again charge me $35 after a minor error on my part that had left me with a $0.50 *CREDIT* balance which I was allowing to roll from month to month. That was until the bank decided that since the credit was less than $1.00 they were entitled to absorb it and not issue me a check. They also absorbed my then insignificant Rewards balance ~$5.00 as a co-consequence of the late fee assessed. That too earned them another phone call and cost them >90 minutes of agent time, and a replenishment of the rewards balance.
In 2022 my accrued rewards were $0.12 I don’t expect a voucher, but I will call them to inquire why it wasn’t sent. Come to think of it It’s May 16th. I think I’ll do it tomorrow morning.
We need to ACKNOWLEDGE China IS SUPERIOR in these areas
That’s Rule No 1
…
You have nutters who claim we have nothing to learn from China and if these people are the majority than India will be the perpetual loser like always
We built so many toilets, We built so many trains, IMF says we are No 1, ABC says we are No 2 etc etc
India is a country where mediocrity dominates
…
The Cream is in US or UK or Canada or Australia or Europe or Singapore or Malaysia
Achievers think differently
They always look at others strengths and decide to incorporate them and grow and develop
Mediocrities think differently
They bury their heads in the sand, and keep quoting random nonsense to feel good
India sadly belongs to the latter groups
Thus Rule No 1 is to say
Alright these are Chinas strengths, these are Chinas weaknesses
Let’s try to achieve Chinas strengths without going into Chinas weaknesses
The Basic Truth
China and India started together in 1982 and today China is six times larger
That is a truth that’s out there
That means China did something right or infinitely better than us
That means China has to be superior to us in many areas
That’s Logic
We have the same populace at the end of the day
We don’t have a single viable achievement where we have beaten China
Not one
So obviously China did something better
How many actually say this?
Say that – Wow!!! China is indeed better than us in so many aspects. Let’s learn from them.
My guess is very few
Most of us can’t accept this very basic thing
So this answer isn’t for an Indian sadly
Indians today aren’t built to assess others strengths and evaluate the same
Nopes
The West: China Is Collapsing!
Great video! Some people choose to be so ignorant of China even when there are so many vlogs of those exploring the country.
This is worth viewing.
The Split In Israel And The War Of Al-Aqsa
What is the reason for the ‘Al-Aqsa Deluge’, as Hamas had named its terror operation against the Zionists?
On October 8 Alastair Crooke, one of most experienced Middle East hands, wrote in AlMahadeen:
“Israel” has shattered into two equally weighted factions holding to two irreconcilable visions of “Israel’s” future; two mutually opposing readings of history and of what it means to be Jewish.
The fissure could not be more complete. Except it is. One faction, which holds a majority in parliament, is broadly Mizrahi — a former underclass in Israeli society; and the other, largely well-to-do liberal Ashkenazi.
Mizrahi are mostly the original Middle Eastern Jews and often on the religious far right, Ashkenazi are mostly liberal European ones. The current Netanyahoo government is the first which includes far-right Mizrahi ministers.
Most Mizrahi follow the Sephardi religious rites. They want an religious state based on Jewish law. They are as radial as ISIS.
The high court of Israel has 14 Ashkenazi judges and one Mizrahi one. It is one of the reasons why the Netanyahoo government wants the parliament to be able to vote down high court judgements. There have been large, U.S. sponsored ‘regime change’ protests in Israel against that move. The leaders of the military and security services, mostly Ashkenazi, have also opposed the government move against the court.
I therefore think that it is quite possible that there was intelligence pointing to the Hamas attack, but that it was not revealed to let Netanyahoo fall into a trap. We have however no evidence that there were reasonably precise intelligence warnings, or that they were held up.
There are already demands for Netanyahoo to go. If only for his long term sponsoring of Hamas as a counterweight to the more secular Fatah Palestinians. Should he no longer be prime minister the courts will take up the three bribe cases against him which are currently pending. He would likely end up in jail.
Another reason for Hamas’ success was the fact that three of the four infantry battalions, with 800 soldiers each, that usually guard the Gaza strip, had been moved to the West Bank to protect right-wing Zionist settlers during a religious holiday. This allowed for Hamas’ easy breach of the fence.
Well, the Right in Netanyahu’s government has two long-standing commitments. One is to rebuild the (Jewish) Temple on ‘Temple Mount’ (Haram al-Shariff).
Just to be clear, that would entail demolishing Al-Aqsa.
The second overriding commitment is to the founding of “Israel”, on the “Land of Israel”. And again, to be clear, this (in their view) would entail clearing Palestinians from the West Bank. Indeed, the settlers have been cleansing Palestinians from swaths of the West Bank over the past year (notably between Ramallah and Jericho).
On Thursday morning (two days preceding Al-Aqsa Flood), more than 800 settlers stormed the Mosque Compound, under the full protection of Israeli forces. The drumbeat of such provocations is rising.
This is nothing new. The First Intifada was triggered by (then) PM Sharon making a provocative visit into the mosque. I was a part of Senator George Mitchell’s Presidential Committee investigating that incident. Even then, it was clear that Sharon intended the visit to fuel the fire of religious nationalism. At that time, the Temple Mount Movement was a minnow; today it has ministers in Cabinet and in key security positions — and has promised its followers to build the ‘Third Temple’.
So, the threat to Al-Aqsa has been building for two decades, and today is reaching an apex. And yet US and Israeli intelligence didn’t see resistance coming, and nor did they see the settler violence building in the West Bank?
What happened on Saturday was widely expected and clearly extensively planned.
There is by the way no archaeologic evidence, none, that a Jewish ‘Temple’ ever existed in Jerusalem. If it did, it was most likely not on the hill of Al-Aqsa but one of the six other ones.
Al-Aqsa is holy to all Muslims, Shia and Sunni alike. Its destruction would inevitably lead to war. The West is clearly underestimating what forces calls like this one can rise:
Friday sermon from the Grand Mosque in Mecca prays for the “liberation of Al-Aqsa Mosque” in Jerusalem.
This is significant for two reasons: • Audience of 2 billion Muslims. • Such sermons have been significantly censored under MBS. Today’s sermon was likely pre-approved. Video
Israel has used White Phosphorus on the people in Gaza, another war crime. Israel has given all people in north Gaza, 1.1 million human beings, 24 hours to move to south Gaza. That is impossible and will not happen. It is an attempt of ethnic cleansing.
If there were two million Jewish people trapped by Christians in a giant open-air prison and placed under total siege, being told that half of them had 24 hours to relocate into the other half or be killed, nobody would have any confusion about what they were witnessing.
If Israel makes, as announced, a ground attack on Gaza, Hizbullah in Lebanon is likely to attack Israel. The U.S. has allegedly let Syria know (via France) that Damascus, and President Assad personally, would be attacked if that were to happen. This is a miscalculation. It is far from certain that Assad, or even Iran, has the means to hold Hizbullah back.
A U.S. attack on the government of Syria would bring Russia into the war. Iran would also respond which is exactly what some of the neocons want.
The war could easily escalate further from there.
Posted by b on October 13, 2023 at 15:46 UTC | Permalink
Wife Self-Deletes After Husband Discovers All 4 Kids Aren’t His
I live in a wealthy suburb on the outskirts of Silicon Valley in California; trees, flowers, birds, mostly nice neighbors of diverse backgrounds. On the surface, it seems a wonderful place to live, and in many respects, it is, however, if I look out my front window, I see this:
image 172
The electricity is distributed via overhead lines, due to an underinvestment in infrastructure: last month, I lost power for over 36 hours because it got a little windy (the world headquarters of Apple, Facebook, and Google are within a ten mile radius of my place). When I ride my bike to the local supermarket this evening, I will have to be careful not to slip on a large and growing patch of gravel on a road that hasn’t been repaired for many years: this, in one of the wealthiest parts of the wealthiest country in the world.
image 80
The above is a map of the SF Bay area, a densely populated part of California with an almost continuous ring of urban development. As you would expect, the traffic can be pretty bad, so you might expect that there would be a single circular light rail system linking the many cities around the bay; there is not: if I want to travel from my place to Fremont by rail alone, the quickest way with the most frequent service is via San Francisco. US infrastructure is truly abysmal.
Why is America in such poor shape, with its crumbling roads, crappy power distribution, and pitiful public transport systems? It is because Americans have been propagandized for decades into believing that “liberty” is the ultimate virtue, and this “liberty” is so valuable that it justifies the cost of living as a selfish asshole under a dysfunctional government. “Raise taxes to pay for public infrastructure?” “Jeez Louise; over my dead body! Taxation is theft, government is bad!” For much of the 20th century, America defined itself against the collectivist USSR, and the fatuous argument was made that since everything was under the control of the state in the USSR, the US government should do as little as possible, apart from outspending the evil Commies in national defense.
The infrastructure is just one symptom of America’s degradation: the streets of major cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles are filling up with homeless drug addicts, leaving the sidewalks littered with tents, needles, and human waste. Next to nothing is done for these people because it is seen as “their problem” that they are mentally ill, and lack access to mental health services and affordable housing. The irony is that there are so many of these people now that they have become everyone’s problem. Retailers in downtown SF are closing down their stores because the conditions in the streets are keeping paying customers away, whilst the cops barely regard shoplifting as a crime.
2023 10 19 08 53
The only way this person lying on the ground can guarantee access to shelter and minimal medical care is to go to jail. Land of the free…
The US is run by an oligarchy of libertarian fantasists, who have spent so long sucking hallucinogenic bile from the withered teats of Ayn Rand that they have lost all contact with reality. The government is not entirely to blame for the current situation; a lot of the social problems are the result of the narcissistic counter culture that started in the 1960s, but now that these problems are getting worse, the question is, can the government continue to pretend that they don’t exist, or that there is somehow a “free market” solution to mass shootings, drug addiction, and homelessness?
Living in my little enclave, with its fragile electricity supply, and crumbling roads, it’s easy for my neighbors and I to think that things aren’t so bad, but in under an hour, I can travel to SF and see scenes exactly like the one in the last photo. Whilst people are constantly harping on about whether the Democrats or the Republicans are better or worse than each other, they are ignoring the fact that both parties have done nothing to seriously address the severe decay that is undeniably afflicting America’s social and physical fabric.
Edit: My apologies to those who may have wished to leave reasonable and informed comments; I got tired of being notified of comments that were rude and stupid, and there are already plenty of comments in the thread that disagree with my point of view.
Edit 2: There appears to be evidence that it was uninsulated overhead powerlines, such as the ones in my photo, which led to the fires in Maui, which killed hundreds of people.
He himself was a salesman at our local Ford dealership back in the 1960’s. He was a good and honest man. Around 1967 he had several customers reject the deals he was making with them and instead buy cars from another dealership about an hour away, in Amarillo, thinking that they were getting a much better deal. However what was really happening was that other dealership was quoting them a lower initial purchase price but “making it up” with their financing interest rates. Several times, when they came back and talked with my uncle to tell him that they’d “beat his price”, he showed them how they were going to end up paying a lot more for their purchase than they would have with him once all the finance costs were considered, and they got angry about how they’d been tricked, but of course then it was too late.
So, one day he made a trip to Amarillo to that other dealership and posed as something of a ‘rube’ customer. He started trying to make a deal on a new 1967 Ford Mustang coupe, 289 V8, 3-speed manual. Ford called the color “Dusk Rose” but to look at it, it was obviously “Pepto Bismol pink”. He played the usual games with the salesman, going back and forth “to check with his manager” and all that. (As an aside here, if you’ve ever wondered if sales offices are bugged so that they can hear the private conversations that happen while they’re out of the room, you can stop wondering now. They are. What they’re actually doing when they go “talk to their manager” is running a credit check on you to find out if you’re “worth their time” and listening in. They like nothing more than to have a couple in their office and hear that one of them “is in love with” the car they’re considering. They know they’ve won at that point.)
Anyway, my uncle took advantage of all that back and forth, took advantage of what he knew was the actual dealer cost of the car, took advantage of the bug, “talked to himself” while the salesman was gone about how much he liked the car and hoped he could get a good price, and kept at it until the salesman offered to sell him the car at a price that my uncle knew was hundreds less than what the car had actually cost the dealer. The salesman wrote down the deal, and my Uncle Bill reached over and snagged the paper.
Salesman, as he reached into a desk drawer to get the finance agreement forms: “Mr. Garrett? How much would you like to pay down on this car today?”
Uncle Bill: “Oh, I’ll just pay the full price in cash. Right now. No trade in.”
Salesman, now flustered and getting angry: “But you kept haggling about price and wanting it lower!”
Uncle Bill: “I never said I couldn’t afford it, I just said I didn’t want to pay that much.”
The salesman, and the dealership, were so mad at him that they practically threw the keys at him and refused even to wash the car for him prior to delivery. Uncle Bill paid for it and drove it home.
Back then, in our small town, everyone knew “the pink Mustang” and thought it was funny/ugly. Turns out, that Dusk Rose color was very rare and only a very few of them were built (gee I wonder why?) – but documented originals are quite valuable now.
I miss him.
Leaked CIA Documents REVEALED China Has Powerful SPACE WEAPONS
The Chinese Space Program has often found itself at the centre of allegations and accusations, primarily originating from the United States. More recently, the international community was stirred by the disclosure of a classified document, which brought to light China’s formidable space capabilities, notably featuring a device that can be referred to as a ‘satellite hijacker’—an asset reportedly within China’s grasp. Today’s episode will cover a leaked CIA documents contents and a potential arms race in space.
Im an African American male, okay? I come from the DEPTHS of the hood. In the hood, we don’t eat this. In my culture, we don’t eat this.
Well when I graduated college, I moved to Austin Texas. I have a Caucasian wife, okay? She always talked about this. Her family talked about it and even random people. I was like ummm how good can this be because it sounds pretty gross.
One night, 8 years ago, we made it for dinner. And just know that 8 years later, im still dipping my grill cheese in tomato soup at least 4 times a month.
My grandmother, who is now 96, marched out of Auschwitz in broad daylight after taking off her striped uniform and changing into normal clothes.
A Polish friend who worked in the camp as a secretary and wasn’t corrupted by the racist propaganda had risked her own life to bring her the outfit.
Out she walked, past guards with rifles, attack dogs, and hatred so intense it would make your skin crawl with fear.
Her parents, and almost all living relatives, weren’t as fortunate.
The rest of the war, she spent in hiding.
“At that time,” she explained to me during a recent visit, “we couldn’t set goals, let alone pursue them. We were deprived of our agency, of freedom.”
That’s why she always encouraged me to go as far as possible in life.
Because the highest form of freedom— the ability to actualize your dreams, to create a life of meaning, purpose, and wellbeing—is not something to be taken lightly.
Whatever you choose to do with yours, never forget that it’s a gift of the greatest magnitude.
Parents Took $120k Loan On My Name To Fund Spoiled Sister Studies & Claimed It’s My Responsibility
His family STOLE HIS money. They needed to pay it back.
Pro-Israel Propaganda Is Stupid
It is somewhat amazing how low the quality of western propaganda has become. Especially when it relates to hobbyhorses like Israel.
Here is NBCnews testing not only the stupidity of its viewers and readers but also demonstrating the fatuity of its ‘journalists’.
Documents exclusively obtained by NBC News show that Hamas created detailed plans to target elementary schools and a youth center in the Israeli kibbutz of Kfar Sa’ad, to “kill as many people as possible,” seize hostages and quickly move them into the Gaza Strip.
The attack plans, which are labeled “top secret” in Arabic, appear to be orders for two highly trained Hamas units to surround and infiltrate villages and target places where civilians, including children, gather. Israeli authorities are still determining the death toll in Kfar Sa’ad.
The documents were found on the bodies of Hamas terrorists by Israeli first responders and shared with NBC News. They include detailed maps and show that Hamas intended to kill or take hostage civilians and school children.
One page labeled “Top Secret” outlines a plan of attack for Kfar Sa’ad, saying “Combat unit 1” is directed to “contain the new Da’at school,” while “Combat unit 2” is to “collect hostages,” “search the Bnei Akiva youth center” and “search the old Da’at school.”
The attack happened in the early hours of October 7, a Saturday.
What do Zionist children do on a Sabbath, before dawn? Are they sitting in school? Do they visit a youth center?
If Hamas terrorists maneuvered around schools to kill children they came at the wrong time and the wrong day.
At least to me that does not seem to be the most plausible explanation for their carefully planned operation.
The Israeli army is going all in. The plan is to push all people in Gaza into the desert of Sinai:
“This is thought out… There is a huge expanse, almost endless space in the Sinai desert, just on the other side of Gaza. … The idea is for them to leave over for the open areas where we, and the international community, will prepare the infrastructure, ten cities, with food and water… just like for the refugees of Syria that fled the butchering of Asad…. There is a way to receive them all on the other side for temporary time on [sic.] Sinai… and Egypt will have to play ball.”
That is from an ex-deputy foreign minister of Israel. If he says “for temporary time” he likely means centuries.
There are clashes in the West Bank where Israel is trying to incite a third intifada. Some 43 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank over the last six days. Nine of them during the last 24 hours. There are also clashes and artillery exchanges along the boarder with Lebanon.
Posted by b on October 14, 2023 at 13:39 UTC | Permalink
Girls Standing In The Middle of Tokyo to Sell Themselves.. Japan Has A Serious Developing Problem.
Why are so many young women in Japan recently “standing” in the middle of Tokyo? We find the answer to this question through the story of Yuka in this video, and the important message of takeaway in which this alarming phenomenon has for all of us, when visiting, or considering any social issues regarding Japan.
https://youtu.be/yo3IUSfTiMY
The Split In Israel And The War Of Al-Aqsa
What is the reason for the ‘Al-Aqsa Deluge’, as Hamas had named its terror operation against the Zionists?
On October 8 Alastair Crooke, one of most experienced Middle East hands, wrote in AlMahadeen:
“Israel” has shattered into two equally weighted factions holding to two irreconcilable visions of “Israel’s” future; two mutually opposing readings of history and of what it means to be Jewish.
The fissure could not be more complete. Except it is. One faction, which holds a majority in parliament, is broadly Mizrahi — a former underclass in Israeli society; and the other, largely well-to-do liberal Ashkenazi.
Mizrahi are mostly the original Middle Eastern Jews and often on the religious far right, Ashkenazi are mostly liberal European ones. The current Netanyahoo government is the first which includes far-right Mizrahi ministers.
Most Mizrahi follow the Sephardi religious rites. They want an religious state based on Jewish law. They are as radial as ISIS.
The high court of Israel has 14 Ashkenazi judges and one Mizrahi one. It is one of the reasons why the Netanyahoo government wants the parliament to be able to vote down high court judgements. There have been large, U.S. sponsored ‘regime change’ protests in Israel against that move. The leaders of the military and security services, mostly Ashkenazi, have also opposed the government move against the court.
I therefore think that it is quite possible that there was intelligence pointing to the Hamas attack, but that it was not revealed to let Netanyahoo fall into a trap. We have however no evidence that there were reasonably precise intelligence warnings, or that they were held up.
There are already demands for Netanyahoo to go. If only for his long term sponsoring of Hamas as a counterweight to the more secular Fatah Palestinians. Should he no longer be prime minister the courts will take up the three bribe cases against him which are currently pending. He would likely end up in jail.
Another reason for Hamas’ success was the fact that three of the four infantry battalions, with 800 soldiers each, that usually guard the Gaza strip, had been moved to the West Bank to protect right-wing Zionist settlers during a religious holiday. This allowed for Hamas’ easy breach of the fence.
Well, the Right in Netanyahu’s government has two long-standing commitments. One is to rebuild the (Jewish) Temple on ‘Temple Mount’ (Haram al-Shariff).
Just to be clear, that would entail demolishing Al-Aqsa.
The second overriding commitment is to the founding of “Israel”, on the “Land of Israel”. And again, to be clear, this (in their view) would entail clearing Palestinians from the West Bank. Indeed, the settlers have been cleansing Palestinians from swaths of the West Bank over the past year (notably between Ramallah and Jericho).
On Thursday morning (two days preceding Al-Aqsa Flood), more than 800 settlers stormed the Mosque Compound, under the full protection of Israeli forces. The drumbeat of such provocations is rising.
This is nothing new. The First Intifada was triggered by (then) PM Sharon making a provocative visit into the mosque. I was a part of Senator George Mitchell’s Presidential Committee investigating that incident. Even then, it was clear that Sharon intended the visit to fuel the fire of religious nationalism. At that time, the Temple Mount Movement was a minnow; today it has ministers in Cabinet and in key security positions — and has promised its followers to build the ‘Third Temple’.
So, the threat to Al-Aqsa has been building for two decades, and today is reaching an apex. And yet US and Israeli intelligence didn’t see resistance coming, and nor did they see the settler violence building in the West Bank?
What happened on Saturday was widely expected and clearly extensively planned.
There is by the way no archaeologic evidence, none, that a Jewish ‘Temple’ ever existed in Jerusalem. If it did, it was most likely not on the hill of Al-Aqsa but one of the six other ones.
Al-Aqsa is holy to all Muslims, Shia and Sunni alike. Its destruction would inevitably lead to war. The West is clearly underestimating what forces calls like this one can rise:
Friday sermon from the Grand Mosque in Mecca prays for the “liberation of Al-Aqsa Mosque” in Jerusalem.
This is significant for two reasons: • Audience of 2 billion Muslims. • Such sermons have been significantly censored under MBS. Today’s sermon was likely pre-approved. Video
Israel has used White Phosphorus on the people in Gaza, another war crime. Israel has given all people in north Gaza, 1.1 million human beings, 24 hours to move to south Gaza. That is impossible and will not happen. It is an attempt of ethnic cleansing.
If there were two million Jewish people trapped by Christians in a giant open-air prison and placed under total siege, being told that half of them had 24 hours to relocate into the other half or be killed, nobody would have any confusion about what they were witnessing.
If Israel makes, as announced, a ground attack on Gaza, Hizbullah in Lebanon is likely to attack Israel. The U.S. has allegedly let Syria know (via France) that Damascus, and President Assad personally, would be attacked if that were to happen. This is a miscalculation. It is far from certain that Assad, or even Iran, has the means to hold Hizbullah back.
A U.S. attack on the government of Syria would bring Russia into the war. Iran would also respond which is exactly what some of the neocons want.
The war could easily escalate further from there.
Posted by b on October 13, 2023 at 15:46 UTC | Permalink
Originally Answered: What would happen if a high ranking Admiral or General visited a Military base without telling anyone first and didn’t like how things were being done there?
Admiral Rickover no-notice visited a nuclear boat in civilian clothing, was admitted, and began touring the boat. As he approached the reactor room a second class (E-5) stopped him from entering.
When the Admiral went to push past the man, he picked up a very large wrench and offered to split the Admiral’s head open.
Later 0, during a post-tour discussion, the Admiral asked the sailor if he recognized him (the Father of the Nuclear Navy) and if so, why the young sailor wouldn’t let the Admiral enter the reactor room.
The sailor said “Because, sir, you didn’t have the boat’s Reactor Room badge. No one comes into my reactor room without the proper pass, not even you.”
The next day the young man was spot promoted to E-6.
I was told this story by a roommate that was an MS1 (cook) on the boat at the time.
The key sentences in the Analects are:子罕： 無意無必無固無我：Have no preconceptions, do not insist on a certain course of action, don’t be obstinate, keep your ego out of things. The other one is: 里仁：君子之於天下也無適也無莫也義之與比：There is nothing in the world you have to be for, there is nothing in the world you have to be against; the only standard is what is appropriate for the situation at hand.
These were balanced by 禮 cultural standards. You should maintain a balance between 智仁勇 thinking, feeling (kindness), and courage. In all matters, 中庸 keep a balance, don’t go off far ends, never become an extremist.
In a nutshell, that’s it. I could go on for days, but that gives you the key points.
A large group of Russian soldiers in the border area in 1939 are moving down a road when they hear a voice call from behind a small hill:
“One Finnish soldier is better than ten Russian”.
The Russian commander quickly orders 10 of his best men over the hill where a gun battle breaks out and continues for a few minutes, then silence.
The voice once again calls out: “One Finn is better than one hundred Russian.”
Furious, the Russian commander sends his next best 100 troops over the hill, and instantly a huge gunfight commences. After 10 minutes of battle, again Silence.
The calm Finnish voice calls out again: “One Finn is better than one thousand Russians!”
The enraged Russian commander musters 1000 fighters and sends them to the other side of the hill.
Rifle fire, machine guns, grenades, rockets, and cannon fire ring out as a terrible battle is fought…
Then silence.
Eventually, one badly wounded Russian fighter crawls back over the hill and with his dying words tells his commander:
“Don’t send any more men… it’s a trap. There’s two of them!
Pay no attention to criticism or to authors of lies. They wouldn’t be doing it if you hadn’t created something to make them jealous.
When people troll you, this means that you’re important. Pretend that you’re depressed, but smile inwardly because deep inside, you know that you’re somebody significant.
Have a good reason to put a smile on your face. Even when you’re hungry or broke, that’s not a good reason to frown, for you never know when your help is arriving.
Happiness can be faked. This is probably a good thing for your health because your subconscious mind can’t tell the difference.
You can probably tell who your best friends are since they’ll not be easy to find. However, you can easily tell who your fake friends are since they’ll bring themselves to you.
It’s important to connect with as many friends as possible, but the most important way to have inner peace is to connect with yourself.
Whatever happens in your life, try to remain as calm as possible, despite all that’s going on around you.
People who can control their emotions are stronger than fortresses. Most of the problems that take away our inner peace come from reacting to situations we shouldn’t react to.
Don’t look for internal peace externally, where everybody is looking. To have peace, you have to look for someone who already has it. Unfortunately, most people don’t have inner peace, so you must change your focus to rely on your internal resources.
Despite all the noise, there’s still a central place where you can find peace. The heart is a central place where you can find almost anything that needs to be found.
You will never have peace watching the daily news, for it is the bad news that sells for TV stations and makes a slave to negative news. A person who watches much TV will always wake up with a headache, hangover, or depression.
Happiness is the secret to inner peace. Avoid people or situations that deprive you of happiness.
Nothing is as infectious as a good laughter, yet most people want to look depressed for no particular reason. Why don’t you lock yourself in a room and laugh even when there’s no particular reason to laugh?
Whatever situation you find yourself in, there’s no good reason to lose hope. Hope is like advance payment on something valuable you’re eagerly awaiting.
In most cases, you have innate peace inside of you, but other people come and take it away through discouragement, bad news, and idle talk because they don’t have peace in the first place and they don’t feel comfortable when you have it.
When people tell you something negative, the best thing to do is to remain calm. Try to assess it, and if it doesn’t make sense ignore it. The worst thing you can do is to react to it, but the best thing you can do is to avoid negative people.
Inner peace is more valuable than all the peace in the world, because when you have it, you can think more clearly and know how to react to situations and problems.
The natural inclination for humans is to dominate and control others. Know that if you’re a person given to this instinct, you’re courting misery, unhappiness, and grief, for the same people you seek to control, will turn upon you and tear you apart, the moment they realize you’re also human.
The number one killer for peace of mind is when you lose sleep as a result of another person “getting there” quicker than you. No two people are the same. No two people have the same abilities, and no two people think the same way. Don’t feel jealous because someone else is succeeding where you failed. Instead, be happy for them and your own success will arrive faster than you think.
The number two killer for peace of mind is anger. Anger is like a tornado, destroying everything in it’s wake including you and your loved ones.
Pay attention to what you eat. Neurochemicals in the brain that control mood, peace of mind, love, happiness, anger, and other factors, depend on the kind of food you eat, your particular environment, and the people you live with. Changing any or all of these factors, can greatly boost your inner peace that you didn’t believe existed.
There’s a reason why people take a break. Although worrying your head off won’t solve any problem, you might find it reasonable to find a solitary place where you can spend time alone. Enjoying solitude, meditation, and prayer, especially where there’s a body of water like the sea, river, or lake, are great ways to get away from people and all the noise, mobile phones, internet, social media, and rejuvenate your life. Find time to connect with your soul, and understand better what’s ailing you.
The phrase that “music heals your soul” can’t be more true. I’d say that making music your close companion is a great way to relax, whether you’re depressed or not. Music relaxes the mind and body, soothes the nerves, recovers your lost energy and focus, and immunizes you from the stresses of life.
DID YOUTUBE SABOTAGE US? WHY IM CLOSING MY 808,000 SUBSCRIBER CHANNEL
A Turkish artilleryman lifts a 215 kilogram shell singlehanded for loading in a cannon. Corporal Seyit (Seyit Onbasi) is famous for having carried three 215 kg shells to an artillery gun during the Allied attempt to force the Dardanelles on 18 March 1915. Born in a village of Havran, he enlisted into the army in April 1909. After serving in the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 he was transferred to the forts defending the Mediterranean entrance to the Dardanelles. Following the heavy naval bombardment of the forts guarding the Narrows on March 18, 1915, the gun he was serving in the Mecidiye fort remained operational but its shell crane had been damaged. Seyit carried three 215 kg artillery shells up to the gun enabling it to continue firing on the attacking Allied fleet. One of the shells reputedly hit the British pre-dreadnought HMS Ocean, most probably contributing greatly to the repulse of the Allied naval assault.
After that Seyid was promoted to corporal and publicised as an iconic Turkish hero. He was discharged in 1918 and became a forester and later coal-miner. He took the surname Çabuk in 1934 with the passing of the Surname Law. He died of a lung disease in 1939. A statue of him carrying a shell was erected in 1992, just south of Kilitbahir Castle on the Gallipoli Peninsula.
Edit: There are some skeptics who think that this story might have been invented for propaganda reasons. First of all, the Ottomans were not as sophisticated as the Allies or the USA regrading propaganda strategies. When it comes to propaganda, misinformation and psychological tactics for manipulating the masses, the Western countries are way ahead of the Turks. Secondly, the only eye witnesses were the few soldiers operating the gun. Nevertheless, according to military records, the crane of the canon was broken and the rounds fired. The battleship Ocean was hit by a cannon shell exactly at a position where it was facing this particular fort. (The picture was shot after the war, to imitate the moment.)
“What’s happening In the Middle East is Shocking…”
You see, when Trump imposed the Huawei Ban, China and Chinese entities were very concerned that they would be next
Thus they began stockpiling massive quantities of Chips & Semiconductor equipment
From 2020–2022 , China kept on buying Chips from the world though it’s demand thanks to the lockdown was down by almost 45%
That’s a huge chunk of chips purchased and equipment purchased between 2020–2022 when the total demand was far lesser both within China and outside China
Hence China has a Supply Glut of Chips & Semiconductor Equipment
This surplus has to be first utilized for China to begin placing orders again
Meanwhile China is also developing it’s own industry in Chips and Semiconductors
Thus the fall in imports is unlikely to be ever reversed
Imagine you’re the unlucky bastard who gets to be positioned behind the machine gun. While most of your brothers in arms have died long ago from climbing out of the trench, you remain shackled in place to provide them supporting fire, watching them each die in the process. What was once your childhood friend Richard presently sits motionless forty paces before you, in the middle of no mans land, tangled in a mess of barbed wire. The flies have largely left him alone by now.
At the same time, you get to fire endlessly at young men your age, of a different uniform, charging blindly towards you. You used to scream at the top of your lungs for them to turn back, to stop running forward. You stopped trying a few hundred kills back.
You’ve witnessed technological marvels unlike anything else you’ve ever seen before. Airplanes. Flamethrowers. Automobiles and tanks. And yet, just a few days ago, you saw your friends beat down an enemy using a primitive spike-covered club, like a caveman might.
Over the permanent ringing in your ears you gained from endless rounds fired and near misses of enemy grenades, you hear a corny, empty song of patriotism for the fourteenth time that day off of a distant gramophone. It’s words cruelly mock you anymore.
You’re covered in fine layers of semi-dried mud, thrown up in your face from a distant artillery hit. It’s the cleanest substance presently adorning your person. Your boots and wraps are wet from the blood, urine, and vomit. Some of it is your own. You can almost remember the last time you took a bath.
The cloth near your ankles has been shredded from the rats, who grow more brazen and hungry every day. The last one you saw was the size of an opossum, and took a nasty bite out of your left leg. Bartholomew, the man who helps feed bullets to your iron beast, stabbed it with his bayonet and tossed it in the pile: the sixteenth one he had killed that day alone.
Your nose has grown numb to the overwhelming odor. The winter season approaches, and everything’s become colder. All your aches and pains hurt more with the cold. Until now, things have been relatively dry, which means you have yet to drown in your own trench from the rainfall.
The sound of a shell impacting the ground crosses the land. The color of the air begins to turn a funny color again. You quietly put on your gas mask and hunch over your weapon. You first heard that this war would be over before Christmas. You then heard that this would be the war to end all wars. You now wonder if this war would ever end, or if it’d merely become the introductory section to the new era: the era of modern warfare.
Well, to start with, nobody in the world actually wants social justice.
There. I said it.
Okay, lots of people sincerely believe they want social justice; the people who say they want it aren’t lying, exactly. It’s way more complicated than that, and a lot happens between “I’d like to live in a just world” and “I am going to work to make a just world happen.”
Buckle up, this answer is gonna get loooooong.
Let’s start here: The real world is complicated. Really, really complicated. You might think getting your scanner/printer to work with Windows is complicated, but that’s peanuts compared to socioeconomic and geopolitical reality.
And people, even smart people, handle complexity poorly.
Topical case in point: What’s happening in Israel and Gaza right now.
If you want to understand what’s happening, you need to know quite a lot of history from the 1940s on. There’s a lot of “there” there: the Israeli offer, turned down by the Arabic population; the reasons Egypt and Jordan closed their borders to the Palestinians; the history of Hamas, which is both a terrorist organization and also a government (and before that, the Muslim Brotherhood); the way Egypt has deliberately played the Gaza refugees as political pawns…it’s complicated and ugly and no side has totally clean hands, but even understanding where the balance lies requires a pretty thorough history lesson…
…and oh God that’s, like, sooooooo complicated, whyyyyyyy can’t someone just tell me who the good guys are and who the bad guys are?
That’s the thing: a lot of people want to treat actual, real-world political situations like football matches or WWF wrestling, with a clearly defined good guy and a clearly defined bad guy, so they know who they’re supposed to root for.
Even people who start out genuinely, sincerely interested in social justice can easily get bogged down.
That’s the heartbreaking thing about, you know, empathy and compassion. When you sincerely want to leave the world in better shape than you found it, you soon find yourself fighting an uphill battle. Injustice doesn’t exist because someone woke up one day and said “Hey! You know what? I think I’ll be a dick to other people today!”
Injustice exists because entrenched economic, social, and political systems with roots thousands of years deep have entrenched ways of doing things because the people atop those systems benefit from doing things that way.
Fighting against that is hard. It grinds you down. However energetic and idealistic you were when you started, it pulverizes you.
Nobody has infinite time. Nobody has infinite energy.
Which is fine, except that most people want to believe themselves to be one of the good guys, on the side of Truth and Righteousness and Justice, even when we don’t want to—or can’t!—do the work of getting there. It’s not enough to say “You know what? I’m not informed enough about this to have a reasonable opinion.” Oh, no, no, we want to take sides but we don’t want to invest the time or labor in making sure we pick the right side.
We just want to know who to blame.
Knowing who the bad guy is helps define us as the good guy. If we’re against the bad guy, that makes us good, right? Right?
So what do we do?
We develop heuristics. Cognitive shortcuts. Quick and dirty rules of thumb to simplify complex situations and help guide them toward the ‘right’ team to root for. These fast and easy heuristics, at least in theory, cut through all the tedious drek of having to learn all that history and become informed of the goals and grievances of all the players and untangle a knotty and nuanced tangle that’s been all balled up for decades.
But here’s the thing:
Heuristics are not subtle. They’re fast intuitive guidelines that substitute for actual understanding. They feel right, but that doesn’t mean they are right.
Those heuristics—“believe women,” “always side with the most historically oppressed,” whatever they are—gradually become rules, then social tribal markers, then symbols of moral purity. Heuristics become adopted by tribes as ways to tell the in-group from the out-group. If you see a hashtag like #believewomen, you can probably make a pretty good guess about the politics of the person who subscribes to it.
Before long, it actually becomes morally wrong not to obey the heuristics.
Enforcing moral purity becomes a way to feel powerful, to feel like you’re accomplishing something, in the face of the overwhelming hopelessness and despair that comes from fighting an entrenched system day after day and ending each day with nothing to show for it.
What it feels like to care about justice
Say your crusade is animal welfare, for example. You’ve fought for years and what do you have to show for it? There are even more factory farms now than when you started. Consumption of animals is up, not down.
But then let’s say Bob, your staunch and stalwart ally, your comrade in arms, reveals that he’s not a vegan…he thinks it’s okay to eat fish. And…and…and eggs. And he wears leather belts.
You can’t end factory farming, you can’t stop the senseless slaughter of animals…but hey, you can rally the troops against Bob, because he betrayed the cause! You can destroyed his reputation and cast him out! Look! Look! You accomplished something!
This is inevitably what happens in social justice circles. We end up here because:
People want a morality simple enough to fit in a hashtag; and
Any morality simple enough to fit in a hashtag cannot capture reality, and therefore is rather limited as a tool to change reality.
People tend to think of “social justice” as a left thing, but this process knows no political bounds. Those on the right do it just as often—they simply don’t call it “social justice.”
But the same things still apply: they have a way they want the world to be; changing the world requires tremendous amounts of effort and work; people don’t have limitless resources; they fall back on simple rules to tell them who the good guys and bad guys are; those eimple rules become tribal markers; before long, it becomes morally unacceptable even to question those simple rules.
We see the world not at it is but as we are. We invent narratives to describe the world, and to tell us who the good guys are, and who we should be in order to think of ourselves as good. Anyone who can co-opt those narratives can control the lines between Us and Them, the boundaries that define our tribes.
So here we are. We’re terrible at nuance, we don’t have tome to get informed, so we let the hashtag mentality do the work for us.
The UK colonized many nations to procure the raw materials to fuel it’s empire worldwide
They enjoyed 80% of the cream and barely gave 20% to the Colonized Nations, of which 15% was taken back vide Taxes and Protection and payment for British Troops
Chinas BRI is a modified version of the same thing UK used to do but a fairer economic sharing platform
China gets Raw materials worldwide through the BRI to fuel it’s mammoth economy and production machine
However instead of the unfair British division, China enjoys maybe 60% of the cream and ensures 40% to the BRI Nations of which maybe 20% is taken back vide Infrastructure projects, Power Projects etc
This while Britain gave only 5% of the Cream to the Colonies, China gives 20%
And while Britain paid most of the Cream to Corpulent Rajahs and Maharajahs, China spends a lot on building Schools and Roads and Bridges
Plus China also uses BRI Countries to outsource it’s low grade manufacturing
Hence BRI is essentially a ‘You help me fuel myself and i help you grow’ mode of economics
Here are some stats from Chinas forum in 2023:-
China sources 66% Rare Earths vide the BRI and controls the Production
China controls between 30–45% of the Tungsten, Nickel, Copper and Mercury vide the BRI
China sources Wheat, Soybeans, Pork, Beef and Eggs vide the BRI
China supplies Chemicals, Machinery, Low Cost Goods, Medium Cost Goods, Textiles and Semi finished goods vide the BRI to various nations. Almost 70% of the supply of these come from China including Paper & Ink
Chinas Energy needs from Enriched Uranium, Uranium Ore, Oil, Gas come vide the BRI at an average discount of 31% from World market prices. Thus outside of interest, China saves at least $ 70 Billion a year on market prices
Thus Chinas BRI is definitely not a Utopian Charity
It is a business arrangement where Chinese win big time with supplies, raw materials, chance to invest their money and prevent accumulation & gain soft power
Yet the BRI nations in return get money from sales of goods plus a lot of modernization at minimum cost (China averages $ 2.19 Million per Mile against $ 17 Million for the US)
Its the best deal for BRI nations today if they want to grow
Best example is Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam which have all seen a CAGR of around 12.2% a year with the BRI over the past 10 year
26 out of 50 African Nations show a CAGR of 6% or more with BRI
Why Is Another Young American Woman Arrested And Jailed In Dubai ? A Critical Review.
Right now, there are at least 4 potential trigger points. Ukraine, Israel/Palestine, North Korea, and China. Any of these could flare up because of an accident or false narrative. WW2 had the Japanese taking a risk by attacking Pearl Harbor, but that was being fought by China much earlier than that. Vietnam was the Gulf of Tonkin false narrative by the US accusing Vietnam of attacking its destroyer. We stayed for 10 years and lost. Iraq was the infamous WMD that proved a false narrative by the US. Afghanistan was the witch hunt for Ben Laden that took 10 years and we stayed for 10 more years only to leave ignominiously. Ukraine is the invasion of Ukraine by Russia because the west continued to move east with NATO. All had reasons for the start of a conflict that potentially could have become much wider, most because of a false narrative by the US, leading one to suspect the US wanted a conflict.
Texas Beef Brisket
2023 10 19 08 47
Ingredients
4 pounds beef brisket
2 tablespoons chili powder
2 tablespoons salt
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 tablespoon black pepper
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons dry mustard
1 bay leaf, crushed
1 (10 ounce) can beef broth
Instructions
Make a dry rub by combining chili powder, salt, garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper, sugar, dry mustard and crushed bay leaf.
Season the raw brisket on both sides with the rub.
Place in roasting pan and roast, uncovered, for one hour at 350 degrees F.
Add the beef broth and enough water to make 1/2 inch liquid in roasting pan. Lower oven to 300 degrees F, cover pan tightly and continue cooking for 3 hours or until fork tender.
Trim the fat and slice meat thinly across the grain.
They see as a western nation hypocrisy. Screaming human rights but doing human wrongs. The see everything wrong about US and UK unilateral decisions. They decide to plant Jewish people in the middle if Arab land to do U.S. and western shit on Arabs and Muslim nations and the Palestinians must be happy about it.
The wonder why the people who truly own this land has to give it all up and agree to live as slaves and asylum seekers in their own lands. The Palestinians are the living in the world’s biggest open prison in a land they owned. Who the fxxk gives the US and UK to give something that don’t belong to them away!
The cannot understand why the west can be so foolish to think that Palestinian must be happy and contented in such a terrible outcome for them! Surely they ought to expect incidents like what happened if the Palestinians got a chance? Why do the west not expect that?
Blind? Foolish? Do they see Palestinian as sub humans? Like their African slaves? 4/5 of a human? Imagine instead of choosing Palestinian lands it choose Wales or Burgundy or Texas, will the people in these region accept their fate lying down? I doubt so.
I think they will do what Hitler does! Why do they think Palestinians must accept this fate!
Chinese people cannot understand why the west thinks it can get away with it. That is what the Chinese thinks! I think the Chinese is pragmatic and highly intelligent. They see an unworkable solution while the West thinks it can do what they wish!
Russia Signals The Unthinkable, U.S. Warns Iran, Oil Crisis Coming
Wing Dings
Wing Dings are a Texas specialty!
2023 10 28 12 37
Ingredients
1 cup beer
1/4 cup unsulphured dark molasses
1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 tablespoons chili powder
Juice of 1 medium lime
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1/4 teaspoon aniseed, toasted and ground
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 dozen chicken wings
Instructions
Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
Grease a large baking pan or dish.
Combine everything except the wings in a large, heavy pan. Simmer them over medium heat 15 to 20 minutes, until they have reduced to a thick sauce.
While the sauce simmers, prepare the chicken wings.
With a butcher knife, remove the wing tips, then cut each wing in half at the joint.
Add the wings to the sauce, and stir to coat them.
Ladle the wings and the sauce into the baking dish.
Bake for 25 minutes, then stir the wings in the sauce.
Turn the heat up to 425 degrees F and bake an additional 10 minutes, or until the sauce glazes the wings.
Serve the wings hot with Ranch dressing, if desired.
US-backed Terrorism Targets Vietnam & Myanmar in Wider War on China
Two terrorist attacks this month (June 2023) in Southeast Asia have been carried out by groups backed by the United States government and its allies for decades;
This includes a singer murdered in Myanmar and a series of armed attacks carried out on police stations in Vietnam killing 9 including several civilians;
British state media, the BBC, and US government-funded media platform Radio Free Asia have attempted to spin and even justify this terrorism as part of a much wider pattern promoting and defending terrorism as a means to counter China’s rise and punish nations working closely with China;
The opposition in Myanmar has openly been backed by the US and UK for decades – fighting to reinstall Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy back into power;
In Vietnam, the ethnic Montagnards had fought alongside US invaders in the Vietnam War, and since then have worked closely with the US through the National Endowment for Democracy toward separatism;
Much of this context is omitted from Western state-media accounts of the terrorism;
Both Myanmar and Vietnam’s current governments have close relations with China. Vietnam, while depicted in the Western media as “anti-China,” has worked with China to build infrastructure within its borders and access Chinese rail projects to bring their products all the way to Europe;
US Encircling of China Explained
The US claims that it is not seeking conflict with China – but a look at what the US is doing all along China’s peripheries reveals the US is already in a conflict with China and has been for decades.
The US pursues this conflict – admittedly – not out of national security concerns, but to preserve what it itself calls its “primacy” in the Indo-Pacific region.
China’s New Maglev, High Speed Rail, & What it Means for Belt & Road Partners
China has unveiled a 600kph maglev train that will eventually be used on lines connecting China’s major cities. It is part of the nation’s much larger high speed rail (HSR) network.
I discuss China’s HSR network, the foresight required to implement such an ambitious infrastructure drive, and how the West is trying to foil it both within China’s borders and beyond them as HSR lines begin moving outward as part of the Belt and Road Initiative.
Bully or Builder? China Finishes Vietnam’s First Metro Train
While the Western media attempts to convince the world China is “bullying” its neighbors in Asia, upon closer examination it is clear it is instead building projects with its neighbors.
This includes with Vietnam which does have a complicated relationship with Beijing – but has not let that get in the way of progress – including cooperation in building the country’s first metro train.
China’s Laos High-Speed Railway is Already Delivering
The Western media continues its attack on China depicting the nation as a global threat. However, what the West says about China and what China itself is doing are two entirely different stories.
The high-speed railway being built between Kunming, China and Bangkok, Thailand is a perfect example of how China is helping the rest of Asia rise with it. The only thing being threatened by China and Asia’s rise is the West’s unwarranted influence over the rest of the globe.
Inflection EP20: China Builds Up ASEAN, the US Bullies it…
While the Western media insists China is a threat to global peace and prosperity, an objective look at China’s role in ASEAN development versus US coercion, political sedition, and even proxy conflict reveals the true threat to both Asia and the rest of the world.
Inflection is a weekly show featuring Angelo Giuliano and Brian Berletic, discussing recent headlines and in-depth discussion of topics shaping the shift from West to East and unipolarism to multipolarism.
Inflection EP23: As China Rises, Southeast Asia Rises
The US is obsessed with containing the rise of China. But China is not rising on its own. With its rise, all of Asia is rising with it.
The notion of the globe’s center of power shifting from West to East is at the heart of Washington, Wall Street, London, and Brussel’s growing desperation and aggression toward China – the engine of Asia’s rise.
Inflection is a weekly show featuring Angelo Giuliano and Brian Berletic, discussing recent headlines and in-depth discussion of topics shaping the shift from West to East and unipolarism to multipolarism.
The US Just Did Something CRAZY!
Biblical collapse coming to the West.
REFLECTION
“My parents were married for 55 years. One morning, my mom was going downstairs to make dad breakfast, she had a heart attack and fell. My father picked her up as best he could and almost dragged her into the truck. At full speed , without respecting traffic lights, he drove her to the hospital.
When he arrived, unfortunately she was no longer with us.
During the funeral, my father did not speak; his gaze was lost. He hardly cried.
That night, his children joined him. In an atmosphere of pain and nostalgia, we remembered beautiful anecdotes and he asked my brother, a theologian, to tell him where Mom would be at that moment. My brother began to talk about life after death, and guesses as to how and where she would be.
My father listened carefully. Suddenly he asked us to take him to the cemetery.
Dad!” we replied, “it’s 11 at night, we can’t go to the cemetery right now!”
He raised his voice, and with a glazed look he said:
“Don’t argue with me, please don’t argue with the man who just lost his wife of 55 years.”
There was a moment of respectful silence, we didn’t argue anymore. We went to the cemetery, we asked the night watchman for permission. With a flashlight we reached the tomb. My father caressed her, prayed and told his children, who watched the scene moved:
“It was 55 years… you know? No one can talk about true love if they have no idea what it’s like to share life with a woman.”
He paused and wiped his face. “She and I, we were together in that crisis. I changed jobs …” he continued. “We packed up when we sold the house and moved out of town. We shared the joy of seeing our children finish their careers, we mourned the departure of loved ones side by side, we prayed together in the waiting room of some hospitals, we support each other in pain, we hug each Christmas, and we forgive our mistakes… Children, now it’s gone, and I’m happy, do you know why?
Because she left before me. She didn’t have to go through the agony and pain of burying me, of being left alone after my departure. I will be the one to go through that, and I thank God. I love her so much that I wouldn’t have liked her to suffer…”
When my father finished speaking, my brothers and I had tears streaming down our faces. We hugged him, and he comforted us, “It’s okay, we can go home, it’s been a good day.”
That night I understood what true love is; It is far from romanticism, it does not have much to do with eroticism, or with sex, rather it is linked to work, to complement, to care and, above all, to the true love that two really committed people profess “.
Peace in your hearts.
You Won’t Believe What Ugandan Women Think About Black Americans
My African sisters looking beautiful and sounding intelligent. On another note, most human beings are unique so lumping a group of people into a stereotype isn’t always advantageous.
One day, Saskatchewan farmer Cecil George Harris was out in his field when his tractor got stuck. Unfortunately, while trying to extricate it, he got trapped beneath one of the tractor’s large wheels.
He wasn’t found for nine hours, by which time he was near death even though he was still conscious. He was taken to the hospital, but he died two days later.
The question was, how should his estate be handled. He had never gone to a lawyer to prepare a will.
But while lying there, trapped and knowing he was going to die, he had the foresight to scratch something into the fender of his tractor with his penknife.
In case I die in this mess I leave all to the wife, Cecil Geo. Harris.
The fender was entered into evidence in the probate court as a holograph (handwritten) will. It was approved for probate. The fender was stored for years in the county’s courthouse and instead of going to the archives it was sent to the University of Saskatchewan Law School for safekeeping, where it now appears.
Treat someone who’s never been treated well as a genuine human.
This Spring I had a few moments in New York City, and a bit of spare cash. Nothing too large that’ll make a difference, but an amount that could buy a meal at Halal Guys.
I saw a man having his head in his palms, sunken with the weight of the world around him. What most people never ever have to experience is having a social net you thought existed fall below you, and then continue falling in life without having a single moment to grasp or gain your balance. Things like this can really screw with any mental problems that may never have existed, and also create anxiety that comes with the insecurity of the most basic human support.
main qimg e8afcfee13f42e8d61cb7b51491c2f5c lq
Out of respect, I didn’t take Jake’s photo, but he looked like this
“Hi sir, what’s your name?” I asked him. He replied Jake, and whether I had any spare change.
I told him, “How about this. Let me get you something nice to eat. You must be cold out here by yourself, right? Does that sound good to you?” One thing I remember was how a lot of homeless people never eat food given to them as they don’t know if someone tapered it or poisoned it, which is a real concern.
“Bless you, sir. That’ll be amazing, thank you.” He replied
We went to Halal Guys and I learned that he was in the military, but he fell upon some hard times. He used to work as a mechanic of sorts but lost it all in a divorce and “money mismanagement”. He didn’t have a family to really go back to so tried to find work in New York but couldn’t and ended up on the street. He told me he was planning to leave soon, and I kept on listening to what he was saying.
I think the look on his face as I got him chicken over rice was something that I rarely see in people, which is a form of gratitude you can never express unless someone lends you a hand as you fall through every social net.
I told him I had to catch a train, but he shook my hand and kept saying “God took you to me, sir. Bless you, bless you.”
Now, regardless of whether his story was true, it doesn’t really matter. I knew this man had to fight off his own demons.
There’s a word in Russian called umilinie (умиление) which roughly translates to “tenderness”. My professor once called the tenderness “melting of the heart”, and that’s what the other man felt at the moment.
I had given him one moment of peace as a human being, and that was all I cared about. When you treat someone well who usually doesn’t and give them some of your time, you’ll truly see someone’s heart melt from a moment of humanity.
Last Gasp of Western Hegemony
The US-NATO group are drowning in debt. The ability to wage war is limited by their debt. They have no military industrial capacity, just corruption. Russia and China are free of debt and have extreme advantage in any war.
As long as it is win win for China and for the U.S. China will sign a deal. But the U.S. cannot say you must buy what we like to sell you and you must sell everything we want at a dirt cheap prices and pay us in dollar!
The U.S. says your products cannot be spied on but we have a right to spy on each and every one of your phone!
The U.S. says when the U.S. introduce G1 to G4 you must trust us blindly but when China build G5 we must not only use your initiative but we will forced everyone else to stop using you too!
The U.S. says you must make all simple chip products and sell it to us as dirt cheap prices and we sell you cars and planes at astronomical prices and don’t you dare make these products!
To China this is wrong and unfair so it’s says go sell to one of your cronies. No thanks U.S.! China say over our dead body will we listen to you! China do what is good for China and the Chinese people. And it will always do so. If you don’t like it tough! Go bang your head against the wall!
The state of Virginia has a “Standards of Learning” end of grade testing, called SOL’s (yeah, that’s what I thought too).
Anyway, my nephew was taking the test (or a practice test that uses old questions) that asked what the Native Americans foraged for in the spring. The answer wasn’t there.
My sister happens to specialize in edible native plant of the Blue Ridge Mountains. My nephew not only knew what was growing in the spring in Virginia, but he could name them and find them in the wild.
His answer was counted wrong and the correct answer, according to the State of Virginia, was berries. My sister asked the school system to identify just one berry that ripens in Virginia in the spring. They couldn’t.
Edit: I was a CTE high school teacher for a little while (Career & Technical Education) and I certainly got things wrong. Everyone does. But I would share the correct answer, apologize if I felt it necessary, and if it was something graded, I would change the grade. I also rarely used a textbook with the exception of specific practice sessions.
As a CTE teacher, I had much more autonomy than math, science or English. They were strictly controlled. Our department was lucky but the state was slowly tightening down on our classes too.
The SOL test wasn’t graded by a teacher or even the school. It was strictly controlled by the state. Each question has to go through a review process and be approved and the grading isn’t subject to revision by the local school.
There are four things that can be regarded negative , as part of the feelings by the people of China
#1 Blaming the Lockdowns – Many Mainlanders especially in the Big 4 Cities blame the lockdowns, kind of like Indians blaming Demonetization. The impact of the Lockdowns was maybe 10% of the Impact of demonetization but China is such a rich and prosperous country now that the slightest slowdown annoys the hell out of the people
#2 Cautious to Invest – Gold & Jade Investments in China have piled up almost by 41% in the last 3 years by Individuals. That’s because Chinese Mainlanders are not having many areas of investment and it’s either Gold Or Banks. They don’t seem to trust the share market and the real estate market is in a glut. Thus China has almost $ 16-18 Trillion in Savings against $ 4.82 Trillion that the US has
Chinese Individuals thus need more Venture Capitalists and Technology Investments to invest their funds in
#3 Generation Gap – The Gen Z of China work smart rather than hard. The policies of Chinese companies still mirror those of the 2000s which focus on time rather than value of work. Rather than the TARGET ORIENTED approach, the approach is TIME ORIENTED meaning working 54 hours a week seems more important than meeting performance targets
The Gen Z feel that if they can work 35–40 hours a week and achieve the same targets , they can enjoy the remaining 14 hours a week
Huawei, Tencent, Alibaba, DJI, Baidu etc already changed their workstyles to make them flexible and based on Targets
Yet 60% of Chinese Employers still have the TIME ORIENTED mentality and pay on a PER HOUR basis
#4 Inability to understand Hostility of the West
Many Chinese are unable to understand why the West is hostile to them and why the sanctions.
This is because the CPC is too nice and doesn’t promote hate against the West in their propaganda
Luckily in this area the CPC has worked tirelessly to ensure alternate economic routes
If exports to the US fell for a Chinese company, Russian markets are a virtual monopoly for the Chinese now (Indians failed to capitalize this market in any way) plus newer markets in South America plus Middle East
Likewise if Investments from US have dried up, Germany and Russia have tripled their investments into China, making up potential deficits
Yet the key thing about China is the TRANSPARENCY in the Country
No lies, hidden from the public, the Positive Side l
Costs are very low, Rents, Food are at their lowest. Savings potential is at 43% , highest in the world against 7% in USA
Rapid Development
Excellent Education
Very good employment despite the slowdown without creating Government Jobs like India or SL
Rapid Technology development
Growing Soft Power of China and Tourist related power in Thailand and other places
So Chinese are extremely content though they wouldn’t mind some reforms which the CPC is likely to implement in the coming 6–24 months
As a new PhD , I interviewed for an entry level academic position. The afternoon prior to the interview, I flew in to a large airport, rented a car as instructed, and drove nearly 200 km out to a university in a rural setting. The next morning, a gray, dreary day, I found my own breakfast and then went to the University, let’s call it University A, to find the interviewer. His first question was, “Are you sure you can tolerate living here?” Odd question, but I could imagine the location probably could have been a problem for some candidates like me, who got his degree at an urban university. I grew up in a place that looked and felt nearly identical, so I was on board. The rest of the morning went well.
For lunch four of the professors and I piled into an older car. The senior professor was in the front passenger seat. The younger two professors and I were in the back seat. Before we start moving, the senior professor turned around, looked me in the eye, and asked, “What do you think of Professor X at University B?” I knew Professor X well. He was a mentor of mine when I was a contract teaching hire at University C several years prior. Both Professor X and this senior professor were well known experts in our field. My Mama told me to always say something nice in such situations. So I made a single sentence that Professor X was a wonderful man to have the privilege of learning from. The senior professor said nothing more the rest of my two days of interviews. Though I did not realize it at the time, the interviews were over when I made that statement. I did not get the job.
I found out later that the senior professor considered Professor X to be his mortal enemy. They had started at this same University A as entry level professors many years prior. After gaining their tenure together, Professor X left for University B while the senior professor stayed. Both became prominent in the same field. But somewhere along the line, their relationship failed. I unwittingly stepped into the crossfire. I never asked Professor X about this, considering it to no longer be important. I also found out that the position was available because the senior professor was running off a young professor that he disliked. A year later at a conference, I met the candidate who won that position. He looked like he had a big dark cloud over his head.
Soon after this interview, I interviewed at another university much farther away. The people were bright and kind. The students were excellent and enthusiastic. The location was also a long way into a scenic rural setting with many gray, dreary days. By the time my flight arrived home back East, their job offer was waiting for me. I still work there, more than three decades later.
The man who lives with the 17 tiny kittens he rescued is experiencing an explosion of happiness.
WWIII will not happen, but the United States is essentially on the road to collapse. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, which was a federal system, it was the turn of the United States, which was a federal system.
As far as the current world situation is concerned, the United States will certainly support Israel without a second thought. In fact, Hamas has already achieved its goal. What happens next:
The EU is forced by the United States to support Israel as it supports Ukraine, but they forget that there are 50 million Muslims living in Europe.
The national image that Israel had previously created for itself collapsed straight away.
The Arab countries will further turn against the US and the West and de-dollarisation will further accelerate.
Further shaking up the US petrodollar system
Ukraine is being collectively ignored by the Western bloc, and the longer the Palestinian-Israeli conflict continues, the better for Russia.
The U.S. doesn’t have the time or the strength to compete with China
In short, the United States has lost so badly this time that there is no room for redemption.
The US is broke, its strategic oil reserves are running on fumes, and it is out of ammo. Ditto for the EU, except the EU is already an economic basket case. The US seems to have this fixation that conflict creates a win for the US so it continues to fund its MIC with only window dressing for its infrastructure and economy.
What Ukraine has shown the US is that it is not invincible and that Russia is not only stronger than the US thought, but more adaptable to the changes in tactics and technology. Ukraine has been a black hole for US and EU wealth and it is no longer in a position to strongly support its domestic needs. The US keeps printing money and raising interest rates, a sure formula for the failure of the US economy.
But, your point is well taken, the US should have been doing that for the last 20 years or so and it would be in a better condition domestically, economically, geopolitically, and relations with other countries. At this point in time, the US is almost beyond repair.
The Idiots couldn’t negotiate with the PLO and later created the Hamas and ended up making the Hamas their enemies as well
Like I said THEY SUCK AT THIS
Just like their masters the US
They keep killing Civilians and always the Terrorists never die
They change from one form to another
So it’s time Israel starts NEGOTIATIONS and uses the Arab Nations to use their leverage with the Hamas
I firmly believe if Israel agrees to the Two State Solution, the whole world including Russia, China, India and even Iran would cooperate in fighting against the Hamas
Even the Hezbollah believe in a Two State Solution now.
The red circle is China, the green circle is Canada
The red arrow is where the “interception” occurs.
2023 10 20 15 3e9
The red circle is China, the blue circle is North Korea
The red arrow is where the “interception” occurs.
The Canadians said they were in “international airspace,” but the Chinese said the plane was near the Diaoyu Islands and that this airspace was China’s airspace.
I don’t want to discuss which one of them is telling the truth.
At least I’m not a fool.
Canadian planes flew from 10,000 kilometers away between mainland China and Taiwan. They said they were to monitor North Korean cargo ships, not to provoke China.
Are Canadians smoking too much marijuana?
The Chinese Navy actually let them fly back intact. This is so merciful.
By the way, the Canadians say that their “Operation Neon” is to uphold the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council.
But the Chinese say they have never signed such a mandate in the Security Council.
We know that the authorization of the Security Council requires the signature of the five permanent members.
What Canada means is that they are carrying out an operation authorized by China.
A Chinese hsr train is formed from 8-16 carriages, capable of carrying 500-1,300 passengers. Up to 8 trains per hour serve the busiest routes at peak times, which can average 100 services per direction per day.
That’s 260,000 carrying capacity a day, both ways, or 95 million a year, for a single route.
An airport serving the route will have to handle more than 470 Boeing 777 flights a day.
That’s 1 takeoff or landing every 3 minutes, which is obviously untenable.
China has more than 160 cities with population more than 1 million. This number is expected to grow, with Chinese urbanization at 55-60 percent, quite some distance from the 80-85 percent typical of the developed world. The density of Chinese populations make high speed rail a viable proposition.
Airplanes are not more efficient than trains. However, they make more sense for longer trips, with the average air trip being 1,400 km. Hsr trips rarely extend beyond 800 km, and make the most economic sense below 500 km.
The Chinese hsr network is built to handle huge numbers, particularly over the Chinese new year holidays, the largest human migration known to man. China does not have enough planes to handle that kind of demand.
And yes, hsr trains run on electricity, a much greener option than avgas.
Man Dumps Bride Months Before Wedding After Learning She Participated In Group Activities For YEARS
Jesus H Christ
I would like to say a few things here.
Honesty is the foundation of a long-duration relationship
People, however, are permitted to have secrets. It is a human need.
When confronted with this situation, there are many ways to handle it. This man saw it as no-starter, unfortunately. I believe that the issues could have been worked out.
There is nothing wrong with alternative lifestyles, or what-have-you, but if you are married, you lose part of yourself and join with another. For good or bad.
Apparently everything was perfect with them, except for this one issue. Could the issue be resolved, or mitigated? I do not know.
For men, “respect” is the biggest and most important aspect of a relationship. Not sex. So I see this as a sequence of lies on the gals part because she showed him no respect.
Like I said, I would have done things differently, now as an older man. But when I was younger, maybe not…
All in all, the most disturbing thing about this video is NOT that she was having group orgies for the entire time they were living together and him being clueless. It is that she hid that part of her life from him, and told her rotating partners, that he was just fine with it. These lies are what broke up the relationship.
People! Accept who you are. Good and bad. Say things as they are and let the world howl. This goes for both the guy as well as the girl.
The girl, obviously was ready to settle down; get married, have kids and a stable family life. But that is not going to happen if she wanted to continue a free-wheeling 20’s single lifestyle. She wanted what she was clearly not ready for. Sigh.
I rented a caretaker apartment that was attached to a horse stable. The owners were an elderly couple who lived in a house behind the barn. The owners were fantastic people and I got along with them splendidly.
One day they advised me they were selling the property. A few weeks later after the property sold I met the new owners. I immediately did not get a good feeling about the owners. Within the 1st month I started noticing things in the apartment were not where I had placed on. I confronted the new owners who denied going into the apartment. One day, I left for work and did the old tape on the door trick. When I came home sure enough the tape was broken. I again confronted the owner who stated somebody else must have gone into the apartment. I also had some property in the barn that suddenly turned up missing. I asked the new owners about the property and they denied taking it. I ended up finding the missing property in one of their storage sheds hidden underneath some tarps.
I had been dating my girlfriend for several years and at that point we decided to move in together at her place. The caretaker apartment was rather old and the door locks used old style keys that you could not have duplicated at your local hardware store.
I immediately moved out and took the keys with me. I got a call from the owner demanding that I return the apartment key. I advised him I didn’t have the key and told him I left it on the kitchen counter. The owner started yelling that if I didn’t return the key he would sue me for theft and the cost of putting new locks on the doors. I chuckled and said that “Someone must have gone in and stolen the key off the counter. Maybe it’s the same person who stole my property that I found under the tarp in the storage shed.” There was silence and then the phone hung up. I never heard from him again.
When I was in High School there was a on-going activity that was very popular with us guys and girls. This was square-dancing. And you know what? I loved doing it. I also loved the attention that the girls would give to me when they would ask me to go out dancing.
It has been many years… but seriously, I haven’t square danced since. And you know what? I miss that aspect of my life. A fun time during school that occurred so, so very long ago.
However, the bright side is here in China, free dancing is morning, noon and night. Woo! Woo!
Sigh.
Today…
The US Establishment: The Dumbest People In The Room
With the unbending support provided by the US foreign policy establishment for the obvious Israeli “atrocity” propaganda ploy to facilitate a second Naqba, the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza, that establishment has once again shown itself to be the dumbest people in the diplomatic and international relations room. Below, I cover the increasing utter ignorance and stupidity of those that have a self-image of the cleverest people in the room; a disabling combination of ignorance, stupidity, corruption and arrogance. The current Israeli elite, the vast majority of which hold US, other Western and even Russian passports, may not be as dumb but are being driven to desperate means by the demographic dynamics of the region together with the now obvious decline of US power.
Part of the pure dumbness of the US foreign policy establishment is due to its utter corruption. Within the military, the generals tend to be those that could kiss ass and politic well, not those that served their countries well. Part of that kiss-assing is to the deeply corrupt corporations of the Military Industrial Complex, who are focused on profits not improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the US military nor its use for the general benefit of the US population. That MIC is the retirement plan for the generals, and admirals, as this piece by the Quincy Institute details. To quote:
· 26 of 32 four–star officers who retired after June 2018 — over 80 percent — went to work for the arms industry as board members, advisors, executives, consultants, lobbyists, or members of financial institutions that invest in the defense sector.
· The biggest category of post–retirement employment for four–stars, by far, was as board members or advisors for small and medium–sized arms contractors, with 15 choosing that option. This compares to five who became board members, advisors or executives for one of the top 10 arms contractors.
· Five retired four–stars became arms industry consultants, five became lobbyists for weapons companies, and four joined financial firms that make significant investments in the defense sector.
The politicians are also widely known to be utterly corrupted, with the MIC making sure that it has factories in the electoral districts of every senator and representative, and “money as free speech” rained down upon them like rain from the oligarch rain makers. Bob Menendez is only one of the worst examples:
Then we have the “intellectuals” who sell their knowledge and skills relatively cheap on the “thinktank” circuit. With respect to Occupied Palestine they have many such intellectual pimping organizations to choose from, one of them being the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, full of ex State Department operatives and craven academics. Nowhere can you find who actually funds this so obviously pro-Israel and pro-aggressive US foreign policy outfit. The beauty of such “thinktanks” is that propaganda can be so easily washed through their hands onto the pages of the mainstream media as if from some, “independent” academic source:
Today, almost daily, newspapers in the U.S. and Europe carry analysis about the Middle East by experts of the Institute, but without identifying the organization as pro-Israel and close to the Israel lobby … the Washington Middle East Scene … changed radically … with the advent of the Clinton administration. Clinton appointed Martin Indyk, who founded WINEP as the research arm of AIPAC, as his chief Middle East advisor (he did not have U.S. citizenship at the time and his papers were rushed in to meet the confirmation process).
The administration then cleansed all Arabists from the State Department and anybody who was identified as tilting to the Arab point of view was sent to Siberian posts. The message was loud and clear: the U.S. government would no longer tolerate anybody daring to express the “Arab point of view” in the Arab-Israeli question.
That quickly elevated the status of the Washington Institute and many of its researchers served in high positions of government, especially at State and Defense. At least three of its “experts” served as assistant secretaries of state for the Near East (the top Middle East post at the Department of State). The reputation of the Institute as the organization which staffs Middle East posts at the National Security Council in the White House, State, and Defense grew.
The US State Department was consciously made dumb, with those that understood the complexity of the Middle East replaced with Zionist ideologues. The same can be said for Russia, with true academics such as Stephen S. Cohen pushed to the media and academic edges as they had the temerity to consider that Russia may have its own legitimate interests. The same with those that truly understand China and understand that cooperation with China is the best option for the US long term.
The US establishment, dominated by the international and global corporations from at least the 1930s onwards, seeks complete domination of the globe for the facilitation of the extraction of resources and value added for the furthering of its own wealth and power. With the coming of the second unipolar moment, all arms of the foreign policy and security establishment were cleansed of those that understood and empathized with other nations and restaffed with ideologues that would happily implement the plan for global domination. This is the reason why the Eastern European Division of the State Department etc. was filled with extremist ethnic Ukrainians and other Eastern Europeans who have a pathologic hatred of Russia. These people are simply tools of the oligarchy, courtiers who will only stay in place if they carry out the oligarch’s wishes. The same for the many Jews in senior state positions, who after the post-WW2 attack upon the Jewish community as communists (e.g. the McCarthyite taking down of the Jewish Hollywood moguls, Oppenheimer, the Rosenbergs etc.) quickly moved to the right to protect themselves; becoming consiglieres to the US Mafia-State in addition to the Italian Mafia.
Their positions are not a sign of their strength, rather a sign of their readiness to serve the US establishment; empires many times use compliant ethnic minorities to help administer their territories. The same as Israel itself being a colonial project of the UK and then the US as a Western island of influence to keep the Middle East weak, just as with Ukraine after the 2014 coup.
Even with the highly obedient ethnic courtiers, no risks are taken with the oligarchic control. Three oligarch-serving and quite prominent Muslim anchors, Mehdi Hasan, Ayman Mohieddine and Ali Velshi, have been removed by MSNBC during the current Israeli colonial escalation. This after the US Jewish courtier Dan Abrams (ABC’s Chief Legal Analyst and media entrepreneur) singled out the three of them for opprobrium for their delivery of an honest balanced view of the true causes of the conflict. How dare the ethnic courtiers question the oligarch’s policies! Perhaps they feel how US Jews felt after being victimized during the McCarthy era?
Taking Afghanistan and Iraq without a plan
Sheer over weaning arrogance drove the US establishment to invade Afghanistan and Iraq without a plan for “what after?” Six trillion dollars later they had exited Afghanistan through a pathetic retreat and had greatly enhanced Iranian influence in Iraq. For much less money the US could have easily funded the development of the two nations and gained the support of their populations. But of course, that would not have provided a massive process of financial extraction through which the MIC and US capitalist ruling class in general extracted vast amounts of money from the US state. The money would end up in the bank accounts of the already rich, and the debts were owed by the US people. As would much of the drug profits from the poppy fields that came back into production after the Taliban was removed, and ceased production soon after the Taliban returned.
Attempting to thwart Chinese technology parity to the US
After blindly profiteering from cheap Chinese labour for more than two decades, while facilitating the development of China as an industrial competitor to the US, the US establishment is now trying to close the technology door after the horse has bolted well down the field. Instead of crimping China, these policies will simply reduce the sales of Western technology companies. Within a decade at most, China will have equalled or surpassed the West in all technology fields. In microchips, as in many other technology fields, the Chinese were happy just to buy the goods from the West. It was the sanctions which actually galvanized Chinese corporations and the state to launch a massive program to overcome the Western technology lead, and the Western sanctions designed to keep China as a subaltern.
Attempting to use Ukraine against Russia
The utter ignorance and delusion of the foreign policy elites was shown in their utterly ridiculous belief that Russia would fold like a house of cards under Western sanctions and its population would rebel and overthrow Putin. The opposite has occurred, as Russia is poised to win the Ukrainian war in the next year or so, support for Putin has strengthened, and it is Europe that has been weakened. At the same time, the Western financial system has been exposed as a tool for the expropriation of those that disagree with the West. In addition, the sanctions have freed Russia to align with both Iran and North Korea; strengthening both in their opposition to the West and strengthening the EurAsian anti-West alliance.
Creating and Facilitating the extremist Zionist Israeli Settler Apartheid State
The vast majority of European Jews in the post-WW2 period wanted to emigrate to the United States, but the still relatively high level of antisemitism in the US blocked this route, as was the case with Canada and the UK as well. Another route would have been to carve a new nation out of the ruins of those that had attempted to exterminate them, primarily Germany but also perhaps a Lithuania where the extermination of the 200,000+ Jewish community had involved many members of a deeply antisemitic community. The latter option was not probable under the Stalin leadership and the former not under the German occupation by the US, Soviet Union, the UK and France. Instead, the Arab population would be made to pay for the centuries of antisemitism of the Europeans.
This option fit the foreign policy aims of the British (who issued the infamous Balfour Declaration in 1917), and later the US, to have a European settler colony to aid the control of the Arab lands under which oil had been found while once and for all ridding themselves of the Jewish issue. This option also fit the aims of the Zionist Jewish minority, a group of non-religious Jews who planned for an ethnically pure Jewish homeland. With the support of the British, an increasing number of European Jews (Ashkenazi) were allowed to settle in Palestine; prior to the British mandate that started in 1920 only about 5%, 25,000, of the population was Jewish. During the mandate, over 400,000 Jews emigrated to Palestine, and by 1947 the Jewish population was 630,000 out of a total of a total of 2 million. Through a UN dominated by the Western powers (the Soviet Union had not taken its chair at the UN Security Council and the Chinese chair was taken by Taiwan), the Jews were allotted a contiguous homeland that was disproportionate to their relative numbers (56% of the land) and contained much of the coast as well as the best land; the desire to “hem in” the Palestinian population was obvious. The Zionists then grabbed much more land through the Nakba ethnic cleansing which was the primary cause of the Arab-Israeli War, forcing 700,000 Palestinians to flee. The UN have since passed endless resolutions telling the Israeli’s to relinquish this stolen land, but with the US, France and the UK enjoying veto powers at the UN Security Council these were toothless. The establishment of Israel was fundamentally a British and then a US geopolitical project, led by non-religious Jews who had planned a nationalist and racist project of ethnic cleansing for decades; the latter simply took advantage of the Holocaust to wrap themselves in religious victimhood clothing.
Since then, Israel has served the US Empire well both as an offsetting power in the Middle East and also as a provider of enforcers across the globe. The latter are extremely useful as they give the US a gift of deniability, with Israelis doing the Empire’s dirty work. Just as the Nepalese Gurkhas and Indian ethnic minority Sikhs had done for the British Empire. Over the past few decades a greater number of non-European Jews (the Mizrahi) have settled in Israel, and their birth rate has exceeded that of the European Ashkenazi. The Mizrahi tend toward a greater level of religiousness and extremism, with the worst elements being akin to a Jewish ISIS that wants a Jewish state ruled by Jewish religious law. It is this group that also wants to demolish the Al-Aksar mosque, the third holiest place in the Muslim world, and build a Jewish synagogue upon its ruins. The current Israeli government, and an increasing number of its armed forces and police, represent the Mizrahi. The Ashkenazi – Mizrahi ideological split represents the basic conflict within Israeli society that had broken out prior to the most recent Gazan conflict.
This excellent Duran panel with Alastair Crooke and Glenn Diesen covers this schism within Israel.
Both the Ashkenazi and Mizrahi are ethnically cleansing Zionists, their only differences are between the nature of the Israeli state and the tactics used to gain their objective. For the Ashkenazi, their plan of the slow death of the Palestinian West Bank communities under a thousand settler cuts has worked extremely well at keeping their ethnic cleansing under the geopolitical radar; greatly aided by Western and Arab elite complicity. The Mizrahi are pushing for tactics that would enflame the whole Arab world and make it impossible for the complicit Arab elites not to side with the Palestinians. Unfortunately for the Israelis the Middle East has greatly changed in the past few decades, and not in their favour:
· Iran survived the Iraqi invasion meant to quash the still-young revolution against the Western-puppet Shah, and Western sanctions have also been resisted. The Western attempts to destroy Iraq, Syria and Lebanon have resulted in a great expansion of Iranian power in the region; an Iran of 90 million people possessing a highly developed Military Industrial Complex.
· The second Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006 (the first was in 1976) proved to be an abject failure, with the Israeli army being forced back by the forces of Hezbollah. The latter has only grown stronger since then, now possessing over 100,000 soldiers (many having gained experience in Syria) and highly advanced military equipment including 130,000+ missiles.
· Syria survived the attempts of the Western powers, Israel and some Arab powers to destroy it and has now substantially recovered. One result is a war-hardened armed forces and the presence of both Iranian and Russian military forces.
· Demographic shifts have massively changed the balance of forces against Israel, with Arab populations growing much more rapidly than the Israeli one with a heavy skew to military-age adults.
· The peace initiatives between Iran and the Gulf Cooperation Council states (which includes Saudi Arabia) and between Syria and the Arab states, have greatly increased the cohesion of the Arab world.
· The Ukraine conflict has very significantly deepened diplomatic, economic and military relations between Iran and Russia. Turkey’s rapprochement with both Russia and Iran also removes it as a tool of Us foreign policy in the region, isolating Israel further. Significant amounts of Israeli munition stocks were also sent to Ukraine.
Fundamentally, the issue for the Israeli’s is that they need to come to terms with the new reality that they are no longer invincible or the dominant power in the West Asian region. But this would require Israel to retreat from all of the land stolen from 1947 onwards, together with the Syrian Golan Heights; something that both Ashkenazi and Mizrahi are completely unwilling to do. Together with the power of the US and the West waning, Israel only has a short window where it may be able to complete its ethnic cleansing and that seems to be the strategy that the Mizrahi-dominated government has set upon. The highly fabricated Hamas “atrocities” provide the propagandist smokescreen behind which the 2+ million Gazan population will be driven out through military terror tactics. After that the West bank can be ethnically cleansed in a much less visible way, one enclave at a time.
The fact is that this has to be one of the dumbest strategies possible; one guaranteed to unite the Arab world against Israel as well as ignite a significant proportion of Western populations. As has been noted even by the US state apparatus, Israel does not seem to have a plan for what to do after it has triggered the Arab world’s response. Can it fight a multi-front war against Hezbollah (who have stated that they will intervene if Gaza is invaded), Syria, an exploding West bank, 20% of its own population that is Arab, and possibly hundreds of thousands of Arabs travelling to fight a holy war against Israel? None of these considerations seemed to have passed through the Israeli leaders’ heads, nor at first through the heads of the US and Western leaders who knee-jerked absolute support for their colonial project.
This support, in parallel to the multiple crimes of humanity carried out by the Israelis against the Gazan population (cutting off of basic amenities such as electricity and water, bombing of hospitals, indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas etc.), has destroyed the West’s credibility with respect to the “other 7 billion” and the Arab states in particular. The Abraham Accords designed to support the slow quiet ethnic cleansing of Israel are dead and buried. The Western elites have also been forced into propagandistic gymnastics that serve to undermine their own narratives; for example, being for Muslims in Xinjiang but against Muslims in Palestine, applauding a Nazi in the Canadian parliament only weeks before being “fully behind Israel”. Not unexpectedly, the height of dumbness was reached by Blundering Blinken who on arrival in Israel stated that he came “as a Jew” as well as the US Secretary of State. What are the Arabs supposed to make of such a statement, or the non-Jewish citizens of the US? His partner in the Duo of Dumbness, The Joke Sullivan (US National Security Adviser) had stated that the Middle East was very stable only a couple of weeks ago.
As Bhadrakumar points out in Indian Punchline, an Arab-Iran-China axis has been created on this issue focused on the plight of the Gazan population, aligning the major Middle Eastern Arab and Persian powers and placing China as an ally of both them and the Palestinian people. Such an alliance attests to the incredible failure of US foreign policy in the region while Blundering Blinken flits from one country to another repeating Israel’s “right to defend itself” against those that it has imprisoned. The parallels with the statements of the Nazis with respect to the rebelling populations of the occupied territories during WW2 are redolent, but invisible to this ideologically blinded numbskull. A great product of the esteemed Dalton school, Harvard (social studies degree) and Columbia (law); none of which seem to have taught him any real history or improved his critical faculties. His ascent from lowly speech writer and political fixer to US Secretary of State reflects his craven courtier qualities much more than any great intelligence.
No matter what happens next, the US establishment and its foreign policy and security service courtiers have created a new foreign policy debacle that can only hasten the decline of their soft power across the globe while increasing the cohesiveness of their opponents. Through decades of support for the colonial ethnically cleansing apartheid Israel they have simply fostered an ever more extreme regime. One that threatens to destroy itself, and perhaps the rest of humanity by its actions. Unfortunately for the predominantly Anglo-Saxon US establishment, the Zionists have spent decades embedding themselves in the US state, political and economic circles. The disciplining of Israel would require the disciplining of a core section of the US Mafia-State, the US media, and significantly rich Zionist citizens and their powerful association AIPAC. So, instead Muslim anchors are quietly removed from the media to keep the “Israeli victims defending themselves / terrorist Hamas” narrative unchallenged.
The US establishment may be the “Empire of Chaos” but the result seems to be more of it reaping the whirlwind of blowback rather than gaining advantage against its opponents. Pepe Escobar called it nine years ago, perhaps the Duo of Dumbness and their establishment backers should have read his book.
Chicago-Style Breaded Steak Sandwich
This is a much loved Chicago sandwich. The Italians in Chicago really know how to make yummy sandwiches. You won’t be disappointed!
chicago style breaded steak sandwich
Prep: 10 min | Cook: 30 min | Yield: 6 sandwiches
Ingredients
1/2 cup vegetable oil
6 sandwich steak or round steak cutlets, pounded to 1/8 inch thick
Salt and pepper, to season
1 cup all-purpose flour
3 eggs, whipped with 2 tablespoons water
1 cup Italian seasoned bread crumbs
2 tablespoons fresh rosemary, chopped (added to bread crumbs)
What’s happening is employers are posting job ads like…
“Senior Developer required! Must have at least a master’s degree in computer science, Ph.D. preferred. Minimum 15 years experience running a large development team for a Fortune 500 company. You will be responsible for rolling out a new $8 billion distributed computing platform that will help our company increase its revenue by $2 billion a year. Starting pay $7.95 to $8.25 an hour. No benefits. “
WhY dOeSn’t AnYoNe WaNt To WoRk AnYmOrE???!
PeOpLe ArE sO lAzY!!!!!”
A Visitor Reports on China
Just finished a 2-week trip in China (Shanghai, Beijing, Xi’an, Yen’An)
Hadn’t been since Dec 2019, previously visited multiple times/year for 20+ years. Had to see for myself how things are vs. media reports within the US. For the record, I am neither Pro or Anti China, I am Pro-Business. Here are my summary observations/opinions:
Economy is definitely slowing down and most people feel or see the impact. However, the loudest complainers are from the ‘elite’ segment (well educated, experience with MNCs, live in Shanghai, etc.). Noticed people in Beijing, Xian, and smaller cities weren’t as concerned.
Despite downturn, most people aren’t severely impacted for now. They have plenty of savings, almost no debt, and can live with their parents. Chinese are notoriously frugal and save for a rainy day – guess what? It’s raining now. Also, for perspective, economy still going to grow 4–5%, just not 8–10% as hoped/expected. So people aren’t buying as many luxury goods, the 10+ Uber/Lyft rideshare companies aren’t getting as much traffic, and not every engineer will get their dream job.
Foreign population visibly lower, the smallest number I’ve seen in 20+ years even in Shanghai. Took a flight from BJ to Shanghai, saw less than 20 foreigners at airport and plane, most appear to be from Europe. Shouldn’t have been surprised given the situation but eye opening nonetheless.
Technology progress in China is for real. ~35–40% of cars in Shanghai are EVs. And they are much nicer than expected, even from brands I’ve never heard of. BYD has a version that can do 900 KM on full charge (vs. 450 for a Tesla). Huawei 6G pro is impressive. Bullet train system is easy, convenient, and fast (some routes didn’t exist just a few years ago). Subways are upgraded. Robotic companies everywhere. This was my area of expertise, a bit disturbed to see how quickly they copy-catted, highly likely they got some IP improperly IMO. One executive told me they don’t need any tech know-how from America today. This is where things are at whether the US admits to it or not.
80–90% of all money transactions for me was electronic. I linked my ATM card to Alipay and it was pretty easy most of the time. I got a bunch of added charges though, some expected, some not. Kind of annoying.
My US cell phone was blocked in China, meaning I couldn’t iMessage or call Chinese numbers (not the case before). My WeChat messages to locals came with warnings. Just some minor retaliation from China.
Downloaded 2 VPNs, between the two I was able to get most of what I needed from US though they would crash 1/day or work very slowly sometimes. People still use WhatsApp a lot in Shanghai. One bonus: Spotify worked great even within the firewall!
In Shanghai I saw signs of small groups of “youts”, meaning younger generation Chinese dressed more hip or alternative (baggy pants, blond hair, etc.). Hadn’t seen much of this before, we’ll see if it evolves like Japan in the 80s.
Most Chinese are aware of the Sino vs. US tension. The more educated are privately quite critical of the current CCP government. But they are also confused with US positions. For example, why are Huawei and BYD banned in the US but Apple and Tesla are allowed in China? They don’t see all the negative coverage on China from the US, but do get amplified coverage of US deficiencies (gun violence, Trump, Biden gaffes, gov’t shutdown talk, etc.). They all hope things get better. And nearly all Chinese I talked to aren’t big fans of Russia.
In summary, my takeaway is China is going through a pretty big correction. For some, it’s hurting but for now, the country is fine. I do see the impact of lesser foreign investment but IMO, there is still significant opportunity. China still covets global products and services, and believe established quality is paramount – especially in Shanghai. The rules are just tighter and some sectors are more complicated than before. I believe if things don’t get better in 1–2 years, there could be some serious trouble. I’m guessing many Chinese nationals outside of the country are also paying attention to this as well.
Scott Ritter: THIS is Why the US Will LOSE Its War on China
This is surprisingly good. Take this video to the bank. It is really, really good.
Easy Sloppy Joe Pot Pie
All the great taste of classic sloppy joes in an easy one-skillet pot pie. No one will miss the buns!
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Prep: 5 min | Bake: 40 min | Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
1 pound lean ground beef
1 medium onion, chopped (1/2 cup)
1 (15 1/2 ounce) can original sloppy joe sauce
1 cup (4 ounces) shredded Cheddar cheese
1 cup Original Bisquick® mix
1/2 cup milk
1 egg
Instructions
Heat oven to 400 degrees F.
Cook beef and onion in ovenproof 10-inch skillet over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until beef is brown; drain.
Stir in sloppy joe sauce.
Sprinkle with cheese.
Stir remaining ingredients until blended. Pour over beef mixture.
Bake for about 30 minutes or until golden brown.
Notes
Special Touch: Before baking, sprinkle with a tablespoon of sesame seed.
I was adopted by an amazing family when I was 4 1/2. My adoptive mom and adoptive dad had a biological child, my adoptive sister, who was 3 years my senior that was killed in a car accident when she was 21. I was 18 and a senior in high school. The loss of my sister devastated us all and changed the framework for our family for sure. My mom, dad, and I became even closer and cling to one another after knowing that any of us could be gone in an instant after losing my sister under such sudden circumstances.
Fast forward 27 years. My father was diagnosed with Brain Cancer. He quickly gave me Power of Attorney to make all medical and financial decisions on his behalf since he knew I’d honor his every wish. He had a sister that basically controlled and manipulated all their siblings except for him since he was the oldest sibling and had moved away from all their drama first chance he got. When my aunt found out that my father placed me in charge of his care and not her, she angrily called me and said, “You aren’t a REAL daughter! You’re just a daughter on paper!” She then added, “The only reason he put you in charge is because he didn’t have a choice!!”
So, I quietly hung up the phone on her, continued to allow her to visit my father (but kept a close eye on her so she wouldn’t steal anything). On the day of his funeral I went up to her and told her that our mutual point of contact is gone and I no longer wanted any contact with her or anyone she knew! I told her that I wished to cut off all communication and contact with her and that side of the family now. That if I heard from her or anyone that she sent to call, visit, spy on my or my daughter that I’d promptly call the police for trespassing and/or harassment. I later put that in writing when returning an assistive device she had given my dad to tell him get out of the car.
Have not heard a peep from her since. Best decision I ever made! Keep toxic family members out if your life and keep things moving forward for yourselves!!
America at its best
the result of its strong and capable leadership
image 78image 79
This is Evil and Demonic
always calling for war, killing and destruction of others
but they cannot stop threatening or demonizing others
as they and their nation – consumed by hate – are now controlled by the anti-Christ himself
PLEASE do NOT let their hate get to you so that you also lose your humanity and become like them
because that is the exact intention of their Deity
Nobody today wants a confrontation with the United States
It is the United States which is becoming unbearable
After Barack Obama, the US has been :-
Reneging on past promises
Bullying almost every Nation
Imposing illegal Tariffs
Making fake claims with no substantive evidence against one and all
The US is becoming so unreasonable that other nations are rightfully ten times more frightened of the US than they are of China & Russia
The US unilaterally blocked all trade from Cuba for almost 65 years for no reason
Cuba hasn’t attacked the US once and is no threat to the US
Now US openly tells Venezuela that only the person US says must be the President if Venezuela want their money back or they will be sanctioned
They have refused to pay 12 nations their own money including Russia
They threaten to sanction any nation that does business with a nation sanctioned by the US
They are like the Catholic Church in the 1100s with their excommunication powers
The US Dollar is a weapon which the US could use to starve a nation of energy and food and imports ON A WHIM
Vermin like Lindsey Graham who still think they rule the world and have a say in what anyone does
So there are at least 100 Countries that want a backup plan to ensure continuous delivery of energy and food if the US decides to go rogue on them
So many nations are going to ensure that they REDUCE THEIR DEPENDENCE on the Dollar
That’s guaranteed
Unless the US goes back to it’s best behaviour and passes a law regarding the legality of sanctions against a nation and against associate nations in the house, Senate and by the President.
Unless the US stops interference everywhere
Now will that lose the Global power of the Dollar
Not necessarily
The USD will remain the largest reserve currency
Yet the US can’t weaponize the Dollar anymore
There will be alternate payment systems and alternate payments for Energy and Food including Cross Currency payments
That’s undeniable
The days of the US Army threatening people are gone now.
The USD and it’s dominance will be dependent on Economics and Trade and not the strength of the US Army Or the threat of Sanctions
That’s virtually a guarantee in five years
BIBLICAL PROPHECY- REAL LIFE: Netanyahu Warns will “Destroy Damascus if Hezbollah Enters War”
Biblical Prophecy seems to be playing out in real life right now, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just announced “Israel warns that the United States will join (the war) if Hezbollah joins. IDF will destroy Damascus, target Syrian President Assad if Hezbollah joins war; US warships will support Israel in war.”
When I first heard this remark, I recoiled in horror, and instantly recalled the Prophecy of Damascus:
Isaiah 17 predicts the destruction of Damascus, Syria.
Isa 17:1 The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.
Folks, I’m no Priest, or Rabbi, or Preacher, or Reverend. I’m not some Bible scholar or even a Bible Thumper. I’m just a regular guy, who grew up a “Holiday Catholic.” That means I went to church on Christmas and Easter. Throw in a few weddings and funerals, and that was about it.
Yet even a Biblically-ignorant man like me knows the prophecy of Damascus and now it looks as though we’re seeing it take place in real time. OUR TIME!
This is terrifying to me because if this takes place, the steps to Armageddon are well along their way.
When US accuses China on information dominance, it’s like Uncle Sam talking about itself
An Outlaw US Empire government report was issued by the Department of State last Thursday called “How The People’s Republic Of China Seeks To Reshape The Global Information Environment.” The immediate reaction from China and most other nations resounds in the above title, where one writer says, “And the first reaction of the most readers is – isn’t the report about the US itself?. Another article headlines: “People are not blind in seeing US’ empire of lies: Chinese FM refuting State Department’s China report”.
Before I provide the text of those two articles there’s an important observation that needs to be made that some will know while for others it will be a revelation. Some know the history of the US code breakers prior to and during WW2 which was of profound importance and served as the basis for what became the National Security Agency post-war, although it’s most properly known as the National Surveillance Agency. Prior to my working for one of its smaller arms during my US Army Reserve service with an EW/Sigint Company based at Moffet Field, California, I became aware of what was the largest industrial espionage program ever in world history: Project Echelon, which was the #1 NSA project at the time, well before the Internet Age. I wasn’t too shocked by this revelation despite the significance of it being a quasi-fascist relationship between government and Big Business. And it was the Cold War so spying on the Other Side was a given. The work my Company did was tactical battlefield spying and interdiction, not strategic, although it was interesting what the jammers and other spies would listen to during our monthly exercises. On our larger Summer Field Training Exercises (FTX), we were always tasked as the OpForce—the Soviets—and we’d always win because the operational security (OPSEC) of the regular army formations was horrific—as bad or worse than ‘Nam I was told by many. And from what I hear and know, it hasn’t improved much since then. The point being, we were actually good at spying on others but we were woeful when spied upon. And apparently, that’s been and continues to be a chronic problem—US troops just don’t want to follow OPSEC regardless their generation—WW2 to present. The result is an acute sensitivity to the problem—Project Echelon revelations were denied by one and all despite hard evidence and protestations from nations who thought they were seen as friendly. (Thus the lesson that the Outlaw US Empire has no friends only interests.) The Pentagon Papers revealed the degree of propagandization the US public was subjected to, and other revelations told even more, like Operation Mockingbird. Watergate was also revelatory—the president spied on himself! Wow! Was that ever a revelation; and then it was revealed that Ike had started it and JFK continued it. And of course, before all of that was 1984 and its Ministry of Truth that merged well with the propaganda aimed at the West by the West about the Soviet Bloc and then the Red Chinese, etc. And even before 1984 there was George Seldes and other journalists who wrote about their being censored not just by the government but by their own publications”: You can’t Print That! was one of Seldes titles filled with revelations that if published when written might have made a difference. Seldes was followed by IF Stone as the 1940s became the 1950s, and ever since there’ve always been a small number of genuine patriot journalists trying to tell the public what’s actually happening. Which brings us back to our new, latest government lie, which is actually propaganda aimed at the US public to demonize what the Warmongers see as their next opponent.
This op/ed was published in Global Times on 29 September but its access was blocked until today by I don’t know who/what. Because the US government lies all the time to one and all, many assume other governments do the same thing, but that’s not the case, particularly with today’s Info War where the high ground is being truthful and factual consistently so you gain credibility because you’re honest. Lying about others and yourself propagandizes your populace to not trust any government. And in this case, the US Government doesn’t want anyone to trust the word of Russia or China. So, one can see the Outlaw US Empire’s lying campaign as a Psyop aimed primarily at its own people. So, here’s the op/ed’s contents:
The hypocrisy of the US is on full display in its newly-released report on China, while Washington’s anxiety on its own capability to dominate public opinion is also bubbling. The report, launched by the US Department of State on Thursday local time, is called “How The People’s Republic Of China Seeks To Reshape The Global Information Environment.” And the first reaction of the most readers is – isn’t the report about the US itself?
The report focuses on accusing China of information manipulation via propaganda, disinformation, and censorship in an attempt to seek information dominance globally. Yet it sounds more like a portrayal of Uncle Sam himself when he is looking at the mirror, and then makes it about China, Shen Yi, a professor at Fudan University, told the Global Times.
Has China ever manipulated global information like the US has been doing? Like the time when Washington claimed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the media parroted the claim, and US allies followed suit in US-led invasion of the Middle East country? Or like the time when the US faced the world’s highest COVID death toll, the US took the top spot on Bloomberg’s COVID Resilience Ranking?
If the US claims No. 2 in the world in disinformation and public opinion manipulation campaign, no one dares to claim No. 1. Think about how US political elites and media outlets uniformly bleats the word “unprovoked” in reference to Russia-Ukraine conflict, despite the fact that the conflict was not only provoked, but deliberately provoked by NATO’s eastward expansion; and how the US distracts public attention from US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s report that the US was the mastermind behind the Nord Stream pipelines explosion, by claiming the sabotage was made by a six-member team of a pro-Ukraine group.
The US takes every measure to make the world hostile against Washington’s rivals. Launching an information war against China is therefore a part of US containment strategy, with a goal to create an “evil” image of China in the international public opinion arena. The new report is simply a latest example in US long list of tactics to make the world vigilant toward China.
This is why the US has been encircling China, half a world away from US own soil, with a chain of military bases and ports, yet calling China an “aggressor.” When a Chinese civilian unmanned airship accidentally floated over the US, the later made no hesitation in labelling the incident an act of espionage. The hysteria lasted for months until Pentagon, after a lengthy examination, confirmed it did not collect any information, not to mention send any data back to China.
American elites are so comfortable living in their echo chamber to repeat their accusation on “forced labor in Xinjiang,” which appears in almost every China-related report issued by US authorities. Unsurprisingly, it also shows up in the latest report. When people, especially from Western countries, have actually visited Xinjiang, acknowledge the development, improved healthcare, rising education and employment levels in the region, as what they see with their bare eyes, the politicians in Washington are busying clamoring so-called genocide and forced labor.
But whenever someone tells the truth, or whenever Chinese media tell the truth, they are labelled as a puppet of a Chinese propaganda machine. Who is manipulating information? How come the US has the freedom to spread disinformation but China becomes a manipulator for telling the truth?
The US State Department gets one thing wrong. It is not China manipulating information. But the US has been undermining its own credibility by lying for so long. It seems the US can also sense the fragility of its manipulation. Unfortunately, the way it responds to it is spreading more disinformation by smearing its rivals.
The more the US tries, the more its hypocrisy is exposed. The last thing the US cares about is public access to information, it cares about its hegemony, including that in the information field. Otherwise, why Julian Assange and Edward Snowden have to go through prosecution just for telling the truth?
This is what the Global Majority wants stopped ASAP.
On October 1, a reply made by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was made and an article built around that was published by Global Times, “People are not blind in seeing US’ empire of lies: Chinese FM refuting State Department’s China report”. Putin’s term, Empire of Lies, is now in wide use, which helps in the Info War but doesn’t mean the use of truth and facts can diminish. And here’s its content:
Refuting the US Department of State’s malicious report claiming that China has invested billions of dollars spreading disinformation globally, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said the report itself is disinformation, and people of the world are not blind in seeing the US’ ugly attempts that have proven time and again that it is an “empire of lies” through and through.
Titled “How the People’s Republic of China Seeks to Reshape the Global Information Environment,” the US report focuses on accusing China of information manipulation in an attempt to achieve global information dominance. It says that China’s “global information manipulation” is a challenge to the integrity of the global information space.
Responding to the report, a spokesperson from the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Saturday the report is in itself disinformation as it misrepresents facts and truth. In fact, it is the US that invented the weaponizing of the global information space.
The relevant center of the US State Department which concocted the report is engaged in propaganda and infiltration in the name of “global engagement.” It is a source of disinformation and the command center of “perception warfare.”
From Operation Mockingbird that involved bribing and manipulating news media for propaganda purposes in the Cold War era, to a vial of white powder and a staged video of the “White Helmets” cited as evidence to wage wars of aggression in Iraq and Syria earlier this century, and then to the enormous lie made up to smear China’s Xinjiang policy, facts have proven time and again that the US is an “empire of lies” through and through, the spokesperson said.
Even some in the US, such as Senator Rand Paul, acknowledged that the US government is the greatest propagator of disinformation in the history of the world.
Some in the US may think that they can prevail in the information war as long as they propagate enough lies, but the people of the world are not blind, the spokesperson said.
“No matter how the US tries to pin the label of ‘disinformation’ on other countries, more and more people in the world have already seen through the US’ ugly attempt to perpetuate its supremacy by weaving lies into ’emperor’s new clothes’ and smearing others,” the spokesperson noted.
China’s response has revealed the distorted narrative of the US and fully exposed the US’ use of this report as a crucial element in trying to shape public opinion and international consensus in its strategic competition with China, Li Haidong, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times on Sunday.
The spokesperson’s remarks have unveiled the insidious intentions and deceptive nature of Washington, contributing to a clearer and more comprehensive understanding within the international community of the US’ unscrupulous practices in its China policy, Li said. This includes the US’s longstanding history of hypocrisy, deception, and inconsistency in its words and actions.
The US has been taking every measure to make the world hostile against Washington’s rivals. Launching an information war against China is therefore a part of US containment strategy, with a goal to create an “evil” image of China in the international public opinion arena. The new report is simply a latest example in the US’ long list of tactics to make the world vigilant toward China, Shen Yi, a professor at Fudan University, told the Global Times.
However, the more the US tries, the more its hypocrisy is exposed. The last thing the US cares about is public access to information, and it cares about its hegemony, including that in the information field, the expert added.
Disinformation disguised as disinformation? Why not. The Establishment Narrative is often exactly that. For the public, how can it trust anything said by the national government since it’s being lied to most of the time; when/how can it tell the government’s being truthful? And most know the big problem serial prevaricators have—they don’t know when they’re lying and when they’re being truthful; nor do they know how to exit their false narrative. Most are aware that outlaws always lie to justify their outlawry. Most know the Magic Bullet was a lie and thus the official explanation for who killed JFK is also a lie. Same goes with the assassination of RFK. MLK’s murder was proven to be done by the US Government in a Civil Court suit that never got the press it deserved. Yes, it’s all online. Pearl Harbor. Tonkin Gulf. Serbia, 911. Iraq 2. All the accusations about Iran. Syria. Arab Spring. Ukraine 2004-5 and 2014 to now. And those are merely the major ones, not the thousands of little ones, like Somalia and Sudan and the many within the USA. Which raises a very important question: When did the US Government begin lying so heavily to its citizens? Libertarians IMO think that’s a product of Big Government, but the US Government lied for decades about the fate and its actions towards Native Americans as Helen Hunt Jackson revealed in her 1881 A Century of Dishonor : A Sketch of the United States Government’s Dealings with Some of the Indian Tribes. And then there’s perhaps one of the best kept secrets of all—the proceedings of the so-called Constitutional Convention were never to be made public—Which was actually a coup that ousted the prevailing government and its legal documents—The Continental Congress and the Articles of Confederation—that instituted an oligarchic “republic” that was approved by less than 10% of the populace. We have no way of knowing where the Articles might have led, but we do know what has befallen us via the 1787 Constitution that’s supposed to improve the “Welfare” of all but has failed at that task grandly. Is that why the public’s lied to constantly, even in textbooks?
There’s only one solution to the above problem. People must rise up and not just demand but force the government to tell the truth. But we can’t expect the current Swamp of prevaricators to do that, so a wholesale replacement of most everyone within the federal government is required. Tall task? Yes, you bet it is. Impossible? Only if we don’t gather together and try—we the people have done so before when our problems weren’t nearly as bad as today—1880-1900 and 1930-1940. Many in the world ask when will the American people stand up for themselves and wonder if we have the courage to do so. Of course, thanks to the US Government, many Americans don’t realize they need to stand up for themselves.
We weren’t poor exactly, but as a child in the 70’s, my dad was a teacher and the sole breadwinner. My parents had to budget carefully.
Dad got paid once a month, and they went grocery shopping once a month. They’d buy 4 gallons of milk and put 3 in the deep freeze. Mom had a menu plan for the entire month and bought exactly what she needed to prepare those meals and nothing more. It was a rare occasion to find a box of Little Debbie snack cakes in our pantry.
Mom would make pancakes for dinner at least once a week, and my sister and I would happy dance in the kitchen.
I now know those pancakes were one of the many ways my mother stretched those groceries, an absolute necessity due to the inflation of the 1970’s.
I also know there were times I didn’t have enough to eat as a child. As an adult today I suffer from fears of food insecurity, and an empty fridge and/or pantry sends me spiraling into anxiety.
But I still love pancakes for dinner, although I don’t serve them as a cost saving measure. I serve them because they’re quick, easy & damn delicious.
First the cops, they would look at you weirdly and ignore you completely unless you break a law
If you say you want to take down the CPC, they will shrug and keep doing their job
If you disturb them, they will lock you up as per the relevant law
Now the officials
Even a mainlander doesn’t know who security officials are or what they look like
If you talk to a committee official or a local government official about overthrow of the party, he MAY notify the local security bureau
They will contact you, investigate you and when they find you have no funding or any major involvement with any organization, they will deport you and ban you from entry for 12 years if you are a foreigner
If you are a local, they will regard you mad and inform your family and neighbors that you are mad
Madness is not regarded a good thing in China
However most mainlanders are more amused than offended by these jokers who protest and scream and are OBVIOUSLY US FUNDED
Sometimes you can see 30–40 screaming students yelling about Democracy and most mainlanders looking at them like they were Zoo animals and grinning and walking by
In fact it’s a running joke in China
If you want money badly, you simply go to the US Consulate and say you support democracy and want to write a newsletter for 1500 people and want $ 5000 a month
In 2 days, the US agrees to pay this amount and you simply copy paste all leading articles in NYT or Washington Post, translate them to Mandarin and happily earn 35000 Yuan a month and even pay officials 20% Heung Ya
At one time, this was the most densely populated city on earth. It was built on a tiny island that used to be an important coal mine. Huge living towers were constructed for the coal miners, linked together by a network of underground tunnels. There were movie theaters, restaurants, shops, all built into or beneath the high-rise living towers.
In the 1950s, the mine was no longer economically viable. Overnight, the entire city was abandoned. It has been completely untouched for sixty years; not a single soul, not even a caretaker, lives there.
It is without a doubt the epicenter of urban decay on earth. I could spend weeks doing photography there.
14 Teen Clinical Psychopaths Reactions to Hearing Their Sentences
If you want to be happy then do what makes you happy.
If you want to be rich then do what makes you money.
And if you don’t do anything then you don’t get anything.
You either love someone or you don’t, either worked hard enough to achieve success or you didn’t and you are either proud of who you have become or you’re not.
That’s the “secret” to life and it’s all very simple.
The worst part about this is, that you know that this is true.
You know that if you just did the things you’ve been avoiding, the hard things, the uncomfortable ones, that your life would likely be far better!
You know that better than anyone, but keep avoiding it because you “missed too much” or “failed too often”; which is ultimately nothing more than pretty excuses.
The truth is you just want to avoid the discomfort of the action.
Something is keeping you from it, be it fear, discomfort or something else.
There is some story that you tell yourself that you believe that keeps you from doing that task.
You are not good enough, not smart enough, not disciplined enough. Life has been unkind to you, your parents prevent you from doing it or your situation does not allow for it.
You can make thousands of excuses and give even more reasons to why life is not that simple, but, in the end, it still is.
For if you just sat down and worked out, if you just worked harder or smarter, your life would be better. Period.
Now, if you do not know how to do it, then spend time figuring it out!
If you do not know what to do, then sit down and work on that.
But in the end it is all about doing the things you know you should.
That’s all it takes.
Stop making things so difficult for yourself, stop telling yourself the reasons that you cannot do it and find the reasons why you can do it or how you can.
Stop looking for ways out and find ways into the action.
Do more of what makes you happy and less of what makes you sad.
Do the things that progress your life and avoid the things that slow that progress down.
Surround yourself with people that make you feel amazing and drop the ones that don’t.
And get the things done that you know you need to to make your life better.
Life, at its core, is very simple. Don’t make it so complicated.
I used to work in retail. I have worked for a large retail chain both in the UK and the United states and I have owned and co-owned small retail businesses. Retail was my life for about thirty years.
Your question asking how to politeley tell people to just buy and go, suggests that you are not suited to retail.
That is not bad, you just don’t have that social touch that retail shop workers need.
Retail is working with people. They have a commodity that you need. You need their money, if it’s your business you need their money daily. If you are an employee of a retail business you need their money so the owner of the business can pay you a wage.
Now some customers will definitely want to just pay and go. They have what they want from you and you have their money, so transaction over. Hi and goodbye.
Some customers though will actually come to the store for the goods they want and also it can be a huge part of their social life.
You or your staff might be the only person whom they see on a regular basis.
Telling such customers to pay and go is not going to help your business or your employers business. Telling these customers such things is going to hurt them, you will embarass them and make them uncomfortable. Those words will cut, you won’t see a physical wound, but sure thing your top and bottom line will.
They will take their custom elsewhere, with their custom your possibility of gaining their cash. You just added to the profits of your competitors who are much more in touch with their customers.
Yes it is mercenary to see your customers as cash dispensers. But your question suggests that you are such a mercenary. You want their cash, you don’t want them to be sociable, it’s preventing you garnering their money.
In fact if you looked on the sociability side of retail you would find those customers like and trust you more, you are going to be their first choice of store.
It takes time and effort to cultivate a rappour with your customers. It’s damned hard work at times. But those will be the customers you will find coming back again and again.
Learn to take people for what they are and not as you would like to make them. That will take you far in retail.
If that is not your way. Then don’t work in retail, if you own a retail business, get out of the customer facing side and employ someone who will foster a more friendly face to your business. Pay them well and look after them, Because you will need to work harder abd so will they because of your poor attitude so far.
THIS is how Colombians are seeing us now (it’s not good)
When I first arrived in Medellin Colombia in 2016, the way that foreigners were depicted was much different. But now, I see a big change in how they see us.
there is one single thing that “separates the people that do things from the people that just dream about them.”
It isn’t their intelligence, their work ethic, or their financial means. It’s something much more simple…
When Jobs was only 12 years old he opened the phone book and placed a call to Bill Hewlett (the co-founder of Hewlett-Packard). On the call, Jobs asked if Bill happened to have any spare computer parts he could have for a project he was working on––building a frequency counter.
Not only did Bill have the parts, he gave Steve a job that summer working on the assembly line at his company. To quote Jobs, “I was in Heaven.”
So what did Jobs do that was so special? (Besides calling the co-founder of a computer company when he was just 12 years old). He asked. Yep, that’s all.
So many of us are held back by our own self-doubt or unwillingness to ask that opportunities we never even know are available pass us by.
A simple question I’ve used for years that has served me well: Will I be any worse off than am I now by asking for this opportunity? If the answer is no, which I’d argue it almost always is, ––then you’ve got nothing to lose.
If you’re too afraid to ask, you’re too afraid to fail. And without failure, you’ll never grow. Just take action. Just ask.
From the US side: only if China kneels down, promising:
not to further develop the nation in case it would surpass the US in the near future (better would never);
not to upgrade its industry, especially in the high-tech sectors so that the US can remain its tight grasp on making the standards to charge for high IP, licensing fees, as well as gaining enormous profits via selling high-end products to China, etc.;
not to build up its military prowess, so that the US can coerce and bully, even strike China at its will, while China does not have the power to hit back, even to complain about that;
not to reunify its territory, ie, forget about reuniting Taiwan province, even by peaceful means, let alone any attempts to taking it back by force even under the fiercer and fiercer provocations from the Taiwan authority backed by the US, and also directly from the US itself, as well as from other US allies;
not to adhere to its socialism system, instead, should adopt the US model of capitalism, so that international capital, especially US capital controlled by conglomerates in various fields can march into the Chinese capital market and eventually control the economic system of China, like what they have done with many other economies;
not to continue its one-party rule model, instead, follow the Western multi-party model, so that the US can sow certain evil seeds among different parties and then cultivate those who would rather sell their soul to the US in return for their selfish own interests, like many politicians in some countries, who have turned into the barking dogs of the US;
not to sell its products all over to the world, especially those which the US still has some competitive edges (though fewer and fewer), so that the US can still havest wealth from around the globe;
not to cooperate in a win-win manner with other countries, especially those countries less developed but abundant in natural resources, anyway, before China advocated this new win-win approach, their natural resources could be easily obtained by the US-led West in exchange of some rosy political promises of democracy and freedom, or looted (for example in Africa), or even stolen (for example, even right now, oil in Syria stolen by US soldiers) by them.
Then, the US would like to “coexist peacefully” with China.
But from the China side, can and will any Chinese people (except those traitors or betrayers, or those still naively believe the US, or broadly, the West, is still the “beacon of hope” of our human beings that China should and must obey the US’ order, etc.) agree to even just one term of the above listed?
Is it China’s fault to develop its nation?
Is it China’s fault to upgrade and develop its tech sectors?
Is it China’s fault to build up its military strength to protect its 1.4 billion people, their properties, as well as China’s overseas interests, since it is now the world’s second largest economy, the largest exporter of goods, and the second larget importer?
Is it China’s fault hoping to reunite its territory? Don’t forget, China is the only country among the five UN permanent members who has not finished intergrating its territory. The UN, and 182 of its 195 members, including the US itself, have stated clearly, Taiwan is a part of China.
Is it China’s fault to choose its own political system and governing mode? There are 193 UN member nations (with another 2 observe states), then actually there are 195 governing modes with various political systems, could the US require each and every one of them to follow the US model, why singling China out?
Obviously, a strong and rising China itself is the “threat,”because China’s rise is posing a “threat” to the US hegemony.
But a strong and rising China, is what China wants to be, needs to be, and is striving to be.
So, don’t expect a so-called “peaceful coexistence” between the US and China in the short future, unless one day, either China failed on its upward road onto the mountain, or the US continues to decline and lose its absolute control over the world with few to none tools to further block China’s rise.
The long-term forecasts clearly favor China by every measure.
If American companies fail to use this period of time to invest, they will not be able to “jump on the bandwagon” and take advantage of opportunities that are presenting themselves today.
If the Biden “government” insists that all American (and allied) companies “sit this one out”, then the entire American and Western industry will fall back and will NEVER be able to catch up.
…
China is being kind.
The United States NEEDS to “carefully consider” the long-term ramifications of their current actions.
As China gets stronger, more important, more dominant in all areas, the United States is at risk to not only falling behind, but going absolutely obsolete in the process.
This is not something that China wants.
…
China wants and prefers a vibrant world; one where different regions; nations, societies and people thrive. In the world that China envisions, it is a WIN-WIN for everyone.
However, the path that the United States has embarked on is fraught with danger. And the United States appears to be on fast-track towards becoming a blight; a mawed gouge in an otherwise improved world.
…
So China is being very polite, and very understated.
However, the truth is the truth.
Putin blasts ‘rules-based order’
So-called “order” is just a front for colonialism, with purported rules ever-changing to fit needs, Russian president has said
The Western-promoted “rules-based order” is merely a cover for colonialism, as the presumed rules have never been agreed-on by anyone and are ever-shifting from one case to another, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.
The president made the remarks in an exclusive interview with state-run broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) that was aired on Monday.
“Have you ever seen these rules? No, because no one has ever written them, and no one has ever agreed to them with anyone. How can we talk about order based on rules that no one has seen?”
Putin stated.
While such a situation definitely looks “from the point of common sense” as “nonsense,” it’s extremely beneficial for the proponents of the said “rules-based order,” the president explained.
“If no one has ever seen these rules, it means that those who talk about this themselves come up with these rules from case to case in a way that suits their own interests. This is the essence of the colonial approach,”
Putin noted.
Colonialism has always been based on supremacist ideas, segregating people into different “classes.”
“Colonial countries have always believed themselves to be first-class people. After all, they always said that they bring enlightenment to their colonies, that they are civilized people and bring the benefits of civilization to other peoples, who are considered to be second-class,”
Putin stressed.
The colonial mindset remains strong, he noted, with all the US talk of its “exceptionalism,” for instance, stemming precisely from it.
“That is, when they say that they are exceptional in the United States, it means that there are other people, people of some other second class. How else can we perceive this? These are the rudiments of the colonial mindset, nothing else,”
he added.
The approach exhibited by Russia and China is entirely different from that shown by the West, with Moscow and Beijing both believing that treating all nations equally is the cornerstone of the emerging multipolar world and the basis of cooperation between the two nations themselves, Putin stressed.
“We proceed from the fact that all people are equal, everyone has the same rights, the rights and freedoms of one country and one people end where the rights and freedoms of another person or of an entire state start. This is how a multipolar world should gradually be born,”
I was at my local college bar in Long Island, NY. I saw a girl and she looked like someone I knew that wasn’t from my college area, someone from hundreds of miles away not far from my hometown in Vermont.
That girl was named Sharon Smith. Sharon and I kind of dated one spring/summer and we went to the local big name amusement park. I met Sharon during one of my high school wrestling meets. She was from a town in New Hampshire about 45 miles from my hometown.
It was kind of hard to maintain a relationship with someone so far away back in the rotary phone days, long distance calls, etc. Neither one of us had a car. I left for college, and we never saw each other again.
Since it was such an uncanny resemblance, I commented, “I think I must know your twin.” Now, I didn’t really think she was the twin of Sharon, I just thought she looked so much like the other girl.
The girl rolls her eyes at me since she knows she’s not from this area, and I guess she thinks it’s quite a lame pick up line.
She says something like, “Yeah, right.”
I reply, “I just think you look like a girl named Sharon Smith from Keene, NH.”
She then says, “Sharon is my twin sister, I’m Joann Smith!”
I did know Sharon had a twin sister, but I never expected to see anyone from my hometown area six hours away at my college town.
Joann was at my college for a sporting event and had wandered to our local bar with her group of friends from her own college.
We chatted, had some beers and a minor bar stool make out session, and parted ways. I never saw either girl again.
Russia doesn’t have two camps — Pro US and Pro China
Russia has two camps
One is the Moderate Nationalist Camp containing Putin, Shoigu, Gerasimov, Mitsuhitin and Nabulliana
Another is the Ultra Nationalist Camp containing Medvedev, Lavrov and friends
Both are Pro China
Both are Anti US
One side led by Putin wants to ensure Russia grows away from the US or West but keep bare minimum relations with the US or the West
The other side sees the US and West as enemies and would drink champagne if the Capitol building exploded and US Congressmen were in pieces
Either way CHINA IS KEY TO ALL OF THEM
It’s why a Regime Change in Russia would be bad for US and the West
Right now there are two groups of people — One Group who feel Putin is doing very will with the SMO (70%-75%) and another group who feel Putin is not being aggressive enough and that he should start bombing cities and even use key weapons (25%-30%)
Nobody significant cares about a single Ukrainian life or that Putin was wrong to be an aggressor. They all loathe Ukraine and the West and the perverted LGBTQ culture.
With Putin in charge, Dissidents like Navalny are still alive
With Putin gone, Navalny will be found hanging in his cell regrettably the next day
With Putin in charge, OLIGARCHS in exile are alive
With Putin gone, they will all die within weeks of various accidents
With Putin in charge, the SMO can still end in a negotiated peace
With Putin gone, Zelensky dies in a few days, The Ukrainian Parliament is bombed to rubble in a week and at least 100,000 civilians die in Kyiv and Lvov and Russia threatens open Nuclear War
So Xi has no problems
Russia and China need each other regardless of Putin or Xi being in power
There is no chance that either nation will have a Pro Western group in charge for a long time
Operation Mincemeat: The Shadow Catalyst for CIA’s Dark Age
Last month, Huawei unveiled its latest smartphone, the Mate 60 Pro, which boasts a 5G Kirin 9000s processor, the world’s first 5nm 5G chip with an integrated 5G modem. This is a remarkable feat of engineering and innovation, especially considering that Huawei has been under relentless pressure from the US government, which has imposed sanctions, restrictions, and bans on the Chinese tech giant, accusing it of being a national security threat and a violator of sanctions on Iran. The US has also tried to persuade its allies and partners to exclude Huawei from their 5G networks, threatening to sever intelligence and cooperation ties if they do not comply.
Some might see the launch of the Mate 60 Pro as a sign of Huawei’s triumph over the US, and a symbol of the US’s failure in its trade war against China. But this view is based on a false assumption: that the trade war is a zero-sum game, where one side’s gain is the other side’s loss, and that the ultimate goal of the trade war is to destroy Huawei and China’s 5G industry. This assumption is too simplistic and misleading. The trade war is not a binary contest between the US and China, but a complex and dynamic interaction among multiple actors and factors, such as markets, consumers, competitors, allies, regulations, standards, and innovations. The trade war is not only about tariffs, sanctions, and bans, but also about cooperation, competition, and coexistence. The trade war is not only driven by security and economic interests, but also by ideological and political values. The trade war is not only a challenge, but also an opportunity for both sides to reform, adjust, and innovate.
The launch of the Mate 60 Pro does not signify a failure on the part of the US in its trade war against China, but rather a reflection of the changing dynamics and realities of the trade war. On the one hand, it shows that Huawei has been able to overcome some of the difficulties and obstacles imposed by the US sanctions, and has been able to maintain its technological edge and market share in the 5G domain. On the other hand, it also shows that Huawei still faces many uncertainties and challenges in the global market, and has to contend with the rising competition from other players, such as Samsung, Apple, Qualcomm, and MediaTek. Moreover, it shows that the US has not given up on its efforts to contain and counter Huawei and China’s 5G ambitions, and has been exploring various measures and strategies, such as investing in domestic chip production, forming alliances with like-minded countries, and promoting alternative 5G solutions.
The trade war is not a simple or static game, but a complex and dynamic process. The trade war is not a win-lose situation, but a win-win possibility. The trade war is not a dead end, but a new beginning. The trade war is not only about confrontation, but also about dialogue and cooperation. The trade war is not only about the past, but also about the future. The trade war is not only about Huawei, but also about the world.
If the US media and their fellow lying western media were to honest for a change they will be writing about China this way;
Xi Xinping couldn’t have put a foot wrong in his 10 years at the helm of China. Close to a billion Chinese people were brought out of poverty and today Chinese middle income numbers at least twice the entire U.S. population thanks to the economic and social policy of Xi’s administration.
The 1 billion is more than the entire worlds total the go out of poverty in the last generation put together. China did it within 10 years! Today, China became the worlds biggest consumer with the highest consumption of the worlds demand all thanks to the Xi’s government that put priority to enriching the Chinese and care for their live and livelihoods.
After 10 years at the helm, China overtook the U.S. average live expectancy in 2021 and 2022. So an average Chinese now live longer than their American counterpart CV, the ultimate measurement of health care and welfare! In the decade Chinese economic growth alone become considerably bigger than the entire G7.
Today China’s high speed rail measure 120 thousands miles, more than able to circumnavigate earth twice and longer than the world put together. It’s deployment of Robots and automation is also more than the world put together during Xi’s reign. So is solar, hydro and wind energy cultivation in excess of the entire worlds total.
While the U.S. is in effect suffering from double digit inflation and resulting in a bank run, China’s inflation stay less than 2%. And grow on average 4 times the size of the U.S. when Covid break China under Xi handled the pandemic better and any western nation by a mile. Deaths and infections number less than 0.1% that if the U.S. and its economy flies the moment they end Covid measure, which is timed to perfection.
During his reign he motivated Chinese engineers and scientist to excel till they now lead in 37 out of 44 most strategic and key future technology category that brought China to the dark side of the moon and to Mars and back at 1/30 amount of time and cost compared to the U.S.!
It’s no wonder 97% of Chinese people approves of the job he is doing compared to 30% for Biden and Trump! It is no wonder Chinese people are the most confident of their future amongst all nation and. American’s amongst the least confident. Today 151 out of 195 nations participated in the BRI whiles the U.S. copycat B2B has less than 10 members after 3 years and barely build 10 miles of road!
That is what western media if they are honest will write. They will say that the west can only marvel and dream that they have a leader like this in the west but no, instead they criticise him to no end shamelessly and pathetically. I will go further Xi alone did more than the previous 10 US presidents did for America! As what Xi did for China!
Is This the BIG SHTF??? (prepping News)
Russia To Inject Much Larger Resources into Ukraine Special Military Operation
Russia has unveiled its plan to funnel massive resources into its Ukraine offensive to fight what it calls a “hybrid war” unleashed by the West, particularly the United States.
Russia’s finance ministry, according to a document released on Thursday, revealed that defense spending on Moscow’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, is set to jump by more than 68 percent year-on-year to almost 10.8 trillion rubles ($111.15 billion).
“The focus of economic policy is shifting from an anti-crisis agenda to the promotion of national development goals,” the ministry said in the document.
It added that such a decision included “strengthening the country’s defense capacity” and “integrating” Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. The four Ukrainian regions were annexed to the Russian Federation last year following local referendums in the regions, which have not yet fully fallen under Russian control.
The huge hike is more than the spending allocated for social policy in Russia.
“It is obvious that such an increase is necessary, absolutely necessary because we are in a state of hybrid war, we are continuing the special military operation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.
“I’m referring to the hybrid war that has been unleashed against us,” he added.
According to figures and calculations by AFP, Russia’s defense spending in 2024 is set to total around three times more than education, environmental protection and healthcare spending combined.
The announcement came as UK Defense Secretary Grant Shapps, French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg convened in Kiev on Thursday to discuss more military aid to Ukraine, whose President Volodymyr Zelensky is tirelessly lobbying for more air defense systems to boost its slowed (read failed) counteroffensive against Russian forces.
Moscow has repeatedly warned Western leaders against the continued supply of weapons and munitions to Ukraine, pointing out that such measures will not stop Russian troops from defending its objectives and that arming Kiev would only prolong the war.
In what might have been the most difficult decade of my life, the years between 2001 and 2011, I was diagnosed with a auto-immune disorder ( anti phospholipid antibody syndrome ), Type two diabetes, Congestive Heart Failure, began to go blind, got married, my widowed mother died one week after my marriage, I left my homeland, the United Kingdom to set up life in California.
The hardest thing in all of that was learning to live life as a blind person. After being sighted for forty something years.
Allbeit, my blindness is not total blindness, Iam legally blind, I still have a little light perception in the peripheral right eye. I can see some bright light and shadow. No detail or color.
It actually took me most of the decade to lose my sight from excellent vision. I could shoot skeet and trap at the beginning of the Millenium. By the beginning of 2012, I couldn’t see much other than a white glare.
From my first blood clots in my right eye I learned about my auto-immune disorder Anti-phospholipid antibody syndrome. (APAS ). The doctors told me that I was likely to lose the vision in my left eye too, one blood clot might do the same damage later to the other eye. More a case of when not if.
I had massive doses of laser treatment on my right eye in 2002 to just close off leaking blood vessels. That was painful. No pain killingdrugs, just don’t blink zap, red laser light flashes.
I was able to sustain one eyed life until my series of blood clots in my left eye in May 2007, that led to my journey into certain blindness.
Though hopes were high early on as steroid injections directly into the eye, led to my being able to maintain good vision. The steroids caused the rapid growth of a cataract which had to be removed. Then the steroids themselves became less and less effective.
By late 2009 the ceased to work at all.
My blindness was sealed.
I lost light perception in my left eye in 2010.
I had to learn to use a long white cane.
Funny, that was just at the critical time of the Fianancial Crisis. California was poor. So poor that when I applied for a $20 white cane I was told one would be supplied, at some point. It was three years later.
I bought my own $20 cane in the meantime.
I did get instruction in using a white cane. Six hours with an instructor, those hours were precious and used well. I got to know how to use the cane to walk about my town. Later those skills would serve me well when I applied to get my first guide dog. Leif, but that was in the future.
Blindness was now.
At times it looked as if there was no future. Those were dark days for me and the marriage. I wanted to pity party my days away. My wife wrestled with becoming perceived not as my wife of just a few years but as my caregiver. A role neither she nor I relished for her.
A role which my blindness had seemed to force upon her.
Blindness, sudden blindness, affects everyone in the life of the person who has lost their sight. They too are rendered helpless by the inexorable knowledge that life will be the life that was planned.
It’s cold, lonely and ultimately a potential relationship destroyer.
But luckily. My wife pulled me through.
She found the strength for both of us.
That made the toughest time of my life a thing of the past.
Thank you for reading.
All the best.
Deep Dish Hamburger Pie
beef pot pie
Ingredients
1 pound ground beef
1 can green beans
Salt and pepper to taste
Ketchup
2 cups mashed potatoes
1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
Instructions
Brown the meat and add your seasonings.
Stir in enough ketchup to suit your taste.
Add green beans and stir in well.
Place this mixture in a casserole dish and top with the mashed taters and then top that with the cheese.
Bake at 350 degrees F until heated through and cheese is browned.
The U.S. is ready to arrest Huawei executives for fear of China’s chip rise!
https://youtu.be/Vj3pxJzajBQ
German Legislative Chairman Says “Yes” To Taurus Missiles for Ukraine
The Bundestag in Germany said that Ukraine will have the right to attack the territory of occupied Crimea with German-Supplied, Taurus missiles. This was stated by the Chairman of the Defense Committee, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann.
Germany has not yet officially announced the transfer of Taurus missiles because the Russians have openly warned about this.
The Taurus KEPD 350 is a Swedish-German air-launched cruise missile, manufactured by Taurus Systems and used by Germany, Spain, and South Korea.
The missile incorporates stealth technology and has an official range in excess of 500 km (300 mi).[10] It is powered by a turbofan engine at Mach 0.95 and can be carried by Panavia Tornado, Eurofighter Typhoon, Saab JAS 39 Gripen, McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet, and McDonnell Douglas F-15K Slam Eagle aircraft.
The dual stage 480-kilogram (1,100 lb) warhead, called MEPHISTO (multi-effect penetrator highly sophisticated and target optimized), features a pre-charge and initial penetrating charge to clear soil or enter “hard and deeply buried targets” (HDBT) such as hardened underground bunkers, then a variable delay fuse to control detonation of the main warhead.
The missile weighs about 1,400 kg (3,100 lb) and has a maximum body diameter of 1 meter (3.3 ft). Intended targets are hardened bunkers; command, control, and communications facilities; airfield and port facilities; ammunition storage facilities; ships in port or at sea; area target attack and bridges.
The missile also includes countermeasures as a self-defense mechanism and electronic countermeasures.
Mission planners program the missile with the target, air defense locations and planned ground path, then the missile uses a low terrain-hugging flight path guided by inertial navigation system (INS), image based navigation (IBN), terrain referenced navigation (TRN), and Global Positioning System (GPS) to the proximity of the target, although it is capable of navigating over very long distances without GPS support.
Once there, the missile commences a bunt (climb) maneuver to an altitude intended to achieve the best probability of target acquisition and penetration.
During the cruise flight a high resolution thermographic camera (infrared homing) can support the navigation by using IBN and is also used for GPS-free target attack. The missile attempts to match a camera image with the planned 3D target model (Digital Scene Matching Area Correlator, DSMAC). If it cannot, it defaults to the other navigation systems, or, if there is a high risk of collateral damage, it will steer to a pre-designated crash point instead of risking an inaccurate attack with undesired consequences.
Taurus Systems GmbH has proposed an anti-ship variant.
If Ukraine is given such missiles by Germany, nowhere on Crimea would be safe for Russians.
However a colleague of mine believes this fervently. He believes an act of god saved his life.
He normally took the 5:50 PM train to his house. Same routine for years. No change.
Leave office at 5:30 ,purchase fruits, have a cup of tea and a samosa at a local tea shop and take the 5:50 train home. First class.
That day he began the same way but at the tea shop the tea seller was making delicious Cutlets. He said it will take 10 minutes. My friend decided to stay, and purchase some cutlets to take home for the evening meal as his son loved cutlets and other fast food and regularly complained of why his father kept bringing fruits daily.
He missed the 5:50 Train
Rather than wait for the 6:15 train, he decided to treat himself to an Auto.
When he reached home, it was 6:30 PM and he came in and delivered the cutlets to his son and went for a bath. When he came out he relaxed on the balcony and at 7 PM he got the calls – Are you alright? There was a bomb blast on the Churchgate 5:50 train.
Hundreds of calls that prompted him to send a Multiple SMS to everyone
I am fine and safe
I got the SMS and had no clue what the SMS was for. Only then came to know about the Train Blasts
After a few hours, my friend finally realized that he was a first class passenger and he would have most probably died.
His wife took him to the temple the next day and he refused to take the train anymore.
His decision to wait ten minutes to purchase Cutlets saved his life.
He is alive. Watched his son join ISRO. He is posted in Kolkata now.
Every July he will without fail on that day of the blast, visit the temple and thank god for that single decision.
And he has said this 20 million times to us. Every time he will start by saying “This is my second innings”.
Even to strangers. You ask him what the time is and hell reply – “Time…i dont regard time…..in 2006…” and hell start.
And despite this near miss – He posted a facebook post criticizing Tejasvi Surya and hailing someone called Srinivas.
Chicago-Style Sausage and Peppers
2023 10 17 15 45
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients
2 tablespoons corn oil
1 large red onion, thinly sliced
2 large yellow bell peppers, cored, seeded and thinly sliced
2 large red bell peppers, cored, seeded and thinly sliced
1/4 cup Jack Daniels Sour Mash Whiskey
1/4 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme
Salt and pepper to taste
8 spicy Italian sausages (4 ounces each), not hot dogs!
8 good quality hot dog buns
2 tablespoons reserved sausage grease or soft butter
Instructions
Heat corn oil in large skillet and sauté the onions and peppers until tender and beginning to brown, about 10 minutes over medium heat.
Add the bourbon and stir quickly until absorbed.
Add the brown sugar and stir until the sugar melts.
Season with thyme, salt and pepper. (Can be refrigerated for one week. Let come to room temperature before serving.)
Char-grill the sausages until slightly blackened and cooked through.
Brush the hot dog buns with a little sausage grease or butter and toast on the grill or under the broiler.
Nestle a sausage in a bun and top with about 2 tablespoons of peppers and onions.
In July 2020, a girl about 20 years old was riding a shared bicycle to cross the road. Suddenly, she collided with a car turning left. The girl fell from the bicycle and was caught under the car.
After receiving the information, the police rushed to the intersection, which took 30 seconds.However at the time the police arrived, the girl had been rescued.
image 160image 159
Some delivery guys helped her.
In China, there is a magical group called delivery boy.
They belong to two different companies. One company’s employees wear orange clothes with toy kangaroo ears, and the other wear blue clothes with bamboo dragonflies on their heads.
Like this
image 158
It turned out that there happened to be a take-out station nearby (the delivery guys usually wait for the pick-up and drop-off information in the densely-packed neighborhoods of restaurants). More than ten delivery guys rushed out, and together with the surrounding construction workers, passing students and white-collar workers, they took the car lifted and rescued the girl. This process takes about fifteen seconds.
Although the girl’s head was bleeding, she was conscious. After the police used a first aid kit to stop the bleeding, the ambulance rushed to the scene and took the girl to the hospital. After the treatment by the hospital, the girl was out of danger.
There is also a group with a similar work nature to the delivery guys. They are called the express guys. The express delivery company in China is very efficient. It takes about three days for a product purchased from Guangzhou to Harbin (more than 3,000 kilometers) , If you choose a courier company known for its speed, the time can be shortened to two days, and the courier fee increases just a little. The reason for this speed is not only the efficient road transportation and air transportation system, but also the courier’s understanding of roads and community conditions and a dedicated work attitude.
image 157
In June last year, a child was playing on the balcony of his home. He accidentally fell out of the window with his head stuck in the guardrail and his body hanging outside the window. There was a danger of suffocation. A courier named Liang rushed over and climbed up when he heard someone calling for help. He stood on the guardrail of the first floor to support the boy’s feet and made sure him not hang in the air, waiting for the police to rescue him. In the end, the police and property staff who received the information saw the guardrail with a chainsaw and rescued the boy.
In some streets, there are caring refrigerators specially prepared for couriers, delivery guys and sanitation workers. There are free drinking water in them to prevent these workers who often go out in hot weather from heatstroke.
image 156
Human relationships are mysterious and full of charm. The mutual help, understanding and respect between people are too heartwarming.
It was the middle 1990’s and I was living in Shreveport, LA. At that time, I was a principal engineer of the Electrical products group at Poulan Weedeater; a major manufacturer of outdoor appliances. The entire experience was Hellish. Shreveport was the “pits”; a hot crime ridden city well past its prime. The company was a real Hell as well, and my group was led by a rather egotistical tyrant.
I was pretty unhappy there.
The entire experience was all pretty awful. What made it even worse was my mentally ill wife who was just (at that time) entering the worst part of her mental illness. It was pretty horrible living with a mentally ill sick person. She spent most of that time (in our shared lives) going in and out of mental hospitals, and bouts of trying to kill herself.
Today, with that horrible backdrop, I wish to relate my first and hopefully my only serious heart attack. It hit me at a young age. I was in my mid 30’s. My wife was in the hospital in a medical coma as the result of a serious overdose, and I was busy working on a very aggressive design project.
My manager (at that time) was pretty ridiculous and insisted on 12 hour days, and at the end of the day called a meeting where he locked the door and had us endure a “group meeting” that lasted for around two hours. Roll-call was taken during this meeting and if you missed the meeting, you would be penalized. Many lost their jobs as a result for losing too many attendance points. And it was a real concern. After all, I needed the medical plan to pay for my wife’s treatments.
I was in the workshop and busy making a prototype of a electric hedge-trimmer when I noticed that I had two minutes to make the meeting. So I turned off the lathe, took a swig of Pepsi, spun around and then suddenly I had this massive pain. It felt like a big giant grabbed hold of a wire attached to my heart and pulled.
I crumbled to the floor. I really did.
I am not being dramatic. I just fell to the ground clutching my chest. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t do anything, I just gasped for air. And then…
…the event ended.
Somehow, was able to breathe. The shock was still there, but the pain faded away.
I got on my knees, and made it to the door to the meeting, and found that the door was locked.
(Sigh)
The next day, right before I left work to go to the hospital to check on my ill wife, my manager took me in his office and berated me for missing the meeting. He warned me that if I missed the next one that I would just forget about working there any longer.
(Sigh)
Two weeks later. I went to my doctor complaining about a weakness and fatigue that I was experiencing. I also needed to get my anxiety and stress medicines renewed. The doctor took me in and conducted a basic checkup and when listening to my heart had to check, and then check again. And then yet again.
Then she went and ran a check on my heart. Yup, my heart was not sounding right. And that was how I discovered that I had a heart attack, and that my heart was damaged by the attack. I ended up with “extra heart-beats”, from the damage.
Later on, when my wife got out of the hospital and was on the mend, she noted the bills for the extra heart related check ups and procedures that I had to have. She asked me what was going on, and I told her that while she was in a coma, I had a heart attack due to the stress that I was under.
Then the next day, while I was at work, she must have felt guilty and tried to kill herself yet again. Sheech!
Why?
Because I cared for a bat-shit crazy wife? Because I cared and did my best at a terrible job? Because I put others in front of me because they were my responsibilities?
Several months after 9/11, I had a customer come in wearing a shirt that simply said, in big, bold letters, “MUSLIMS SUCK”. So I approached the *cough* gentleman *cough* and explained to him that he couldn’t wear that shirt at our establishment, he would have to wear his jacket over it, go in the bathroom and turn it inside out, or leave. He asked why he couldn’t wear it. I explained that it incited hatred on the basis of religion and we didn’t tolerate that at our establishment. Now, having thrown many people out of a casino I’ve been called many things in my career, but next came the most colorful: “So what are you, a f*cking Muslim-loving, c*nt-ass b*tch?” I replied, “Well, now you just get to go home.” He informed me he would sooner leave in handcuffs than walk out willingly. I assured him I could arrange that for him. And I did.
I had a married couple who were dealers and happened to be Muslim. He came up to me afterward and thanked me profusely; the T-shirt had, unbeknownst to me, made his wife cry. I was more than happy to assure them harassment of their beliefs at work would never be tolerated. They were both wonderful people and just as distraught as the rest of us over the events of 9/11. The other guy was just a jackass.
. It sheds light on the challenges faced by Muslims in the aftermath of the tragedy and highlights the importance of standing up against hatred and discrimination. The story shared in this article perfectly exemplifies the need for understanding and tolerance in our society.
American ships near Israel could become another “Gulf of Tonkin,” Michael Maloof has said
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would like Washington directly involved in the conflict with Hamas because he hopes to expand the war to Lebanon and Iran, a former senior security policy analyst at the US Department of Defense, Michael Maloof, told RT on Wednesday.
the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford and five guided missile destroyers to the Eastern Mediterranean. According to Maloof, this “meets Netanyahu’s wildest dreams.”
“He wanted the US involved in this conflict,” the former Pentagon official told RT.
Netanyahu “wants to open up the war with Lebanon, by attacking Hezbollah” in pursuit of his ultimate objective, “to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities,” Maloof added. For that to happen, “he has to have a Gulf of Tonkin moment, if you will.”
Maloof recalled how US President Lyndon Johnson essentially started the Vietnam War by sending ships to the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964. An alleged North Vietnamese attack on two US destroyers was then used as a pretext for direct involvement.
The US has also pledged to help Israel with deliveries of weapons and ammunition, with the Pentagon insisting
it has enough to do so and continue supplying Ukraine. Maloof is skeptical of that assertion, however.
He also told RT it was “not surprising” that some of the weapons Washington had sent Kiev ended up in the hands of Hamas.
by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Ukraine’s military intelligence, the GUR, responded on Monday by accusing Russia of sending captured Western weapons to Hamas militants in a “false flag” operation designed to make Kiev look bad to its backers.
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied the weapons claim, but rejected the Ukrainian insinuations of Russian involvement in the Hamas attack as “complete nonsense.”
Baked Beans Supreme
Simply delicious! Baked Beans Supreme can double as either a side dish or a main dish.
2023 10 12 15 43
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
1/2 pound bacon
1/2 pound ground beef (I use a little more)
1 large can pork and beans
1/2 cup ketchup
1 tablespoon mustard
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1/2 to 3/4 cup brown sugar, depending on taste
1 small onion, chopped
Instructions
Cut bacon slices into 1 1/2 inch pieces, then cook. Drain grease.
In the same skillet used to cook the bacon, brown ground beef, then drain well.
Add bacon and ground beef to beans.
Mix in remaining ingredients. Bake at 375 degrees F for 1 hour or until brown.
Meanwhile in the USA…
2023 10 12 19 49
The Debt Clock is now quoting verses from Revelation!!
The US Debt Clock, set up in the 1980’s by a Billionaire named Durst, has – for the second time in history – quoted the Book of Revelation and placed religious symbols on the site. The firstt time it did this was on October 3. Why is this bastion of finance quoting End Times Revelation twice in six days?
Debt Clock Full Page 10 08 2023
On Sunday, 8 October 2023, at 9:04 PM EDT, the Debt Clock appeared as shown in the full screen shot below. Note the Biblical citation along the top man banner: “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a Trumpet” (Click image below twice to fully enlarge)
That Scripture, featuring Revelation 1:10 deleted at precisely Midnight.
We can also see a document or piece of art behind the verbiage
Alpha and Omega
7 angels and 7 candles (7+7) ?
Jerusalem and Palestine Maps of Christianity VERA HIEROSOLYMAE VETERIS IMAGO (HERE)
Turns out, It’s a drawing of the map of Jerusalem from Ezekiel’s prophecies.
Revelation Ch 1 vs 1-20 7 lights/candles 7 angels
The “debt clock” has always been a professional thing. It was in New York and then, later, it went online. It is run by a billionaire family . . . the same family since the 1980’s.
What are they trying to tell us? That this is the end of our monetary system?
After all, complete economic collapse is one of the seals in Revelation.
End of financial system?
FIRST TIME – OCTOBER 3
Back on October 3, of this year, the Debt Clock showed — for the very first time — another Biblical verse:
““And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and Overthrew the tablets of the moneychangers”
I have no idea what it all means, except maybe this billionaire family is trying to communicate something to us; and it sounds apocalyptic!
The clock’s first incarnation was installed in 1989 on Sixth Avenue between 42nd and 43rd Streets, one block away from Times Square, in New York City by real estate developer Seymour Durst, who wanted to highlight the rising national debt.
At that time, the national debt was almost $3 trillion and 50% of the gross domestic product (GDP).
Up until the week before his death in May 1995, Durst himself adjusted the tally via modem. After his death, his son Douglas became president of the Durst Organization, which owns and maintains the clock.
As of September 2009, Douglas Durst’s cousin Jonathan “Jody” Durst was taking over the day-to-day operations as president. In an interview with The New York Times, Jonathan said that maintenance of the clock is planned “for years to come.
I don’t know all about Scripture. I’m not a Priest, or a Rabbi, or a Preacher, or a Reverend. Heck, I’m just a Holiday Catholic – went to church on Christmas and Easter. But at the ripe old age of 61, I absolutely believe there is one, Almighty God, whether he is called Jehovah / I am that I am / Yahweh. I also absolutely believe he begot one son Y’Shua / Jesus who I am taught is the Christ / Messiah.
So being as I am Scripturally ignorant, and not any kind of Bible thumper or expert, I am not even remotely qualified to interpret this. But I CAN tell you this looks bad to me. I take this as a harbinger of imminent doom.
Practicing neurosurgery for years I saw many strange things, but one that comes to mind was a young man who had been in a car accident. I had been informed that my 8 o’clock surgery had been delayed because of an emergency. They wheeled the patient down the hall on a gurney. He was conscious and sitting up. Attached to his head was the rear view mirror from a car. The mirror had a small metal sphere on its end, part of the mechanism used to adjust the mirror’s position, and that was inserted into the right frontal bone of his skull. There was no bleeding and inspection at surgery showed it had not penetrated the skull into the brain. I still have mental images of this kid. He looked so silly with a rear view mirror sticking out of his forehead. And then there were the inappropriate thoughts … how could this happen? … was he trying to see what was behind him? There is always a bit of humor in medicine. We laugh or otherwise we cry.
When a good friend, from the Marine Corps, was K.I.A., his eldest brother cracked open the deceased’s apartment, before the funeral had taken place. My friend’s widow, also deployed, hadn’t even been notified, yet. By the time she knew of the situation, their home had been ransacked by nearly twenty members of two families.
I called the brother, and offered him an out, which he blew off. Over the next ten days, I contacted each of the offending parties; only two responded, and not favorably. Then, acting on the widow’s behalf, I hired an attorney and filed police reports. I went to the D.A., who filed 98 separate charges against all of the perpetrators, including the management and owners of the complex.
After sixteen months of legal crap, nine of the family members(one was an attorney, another a university economics professor) were convicted of misdemeanors, spent between thirty and sixty days in jail, and paid both restitution and fines of $500.00–6,000.00. The eldest brother, an electrician and small-business owner, now a felon, spent eight months in jail; the widow sued him and won a $450,000.00 settlement. The apartment complex ended up terminating the managers; and, they paid the widow $2.9M.
Not one of these people had been a criminal, prior to the incident. They were simply ignorant, greedy assholes, who deserved everything they got.
What Do People Think of “Socialized” Medicine? – REACTION
However, the global chip industry has been upended by US machinations and the inevitable Chinese response.
This is a matter of life and death for the Chinese economy, and not just its tech industry, because a small office in the Department of Commerce can hold the Chinese to ransom through liberal application of US IP control, under the guise of “national security”.
The entire global supply chain of advanced materials, design tools/software, manufacturing hardware, control systems and finished chips has already been disrupted by arbitrary American orders to stop doing business with Chinese entities. The Chinese have no choice but to treat all foreign entities as potential risks that can seriously disrupt the downstream economy, because even humble household appliances contain chips today.
This is an existential issue, and makes cost competitiveness irrelevant as a barrier to entry. The Chinese will create completely indigenous chip supply chains at various nodes to satisfy volume demand, down to the tools and materials. This will inevitably lead to a glut in global supply, and create new business models from the ashes of ex-China competition. Given the huge sunk cost for foundries, the bulk of subsidies being doled out aplenty by Joe’s administration to “derisk” will go up in smoke, because there is a finite market and limited application for the cutting edge.
That is, however, merely the best-case scenario.
What if the Chinese make headway in the premium, cutting edge segment? In other words, what if the mainland begin to make the world’s best chips in the next 5–10 years, using original hybrid solutions? Whether it is transistor geometry, material chemistry, logic layout, node shrink dividend, or some other breakthrough, I don’t put it beyond them. My friend in the industry certainly think it is possible, because she knows firsthand the quality and quantity of talent on the mainland side.
That is a scary proposition, China becoming both Mercedes and VW in the chip business.
Expect a hairy ride for the material and tool enablers in the coming years, because their customers will have to critically examine the assumptions baked into obsolete business models. Unfortunately, they will have to navigate an uncertain future, courtesy of Joe’s administration turning on the fog of war through economic coercion. The Chinese are playing among themselves, and this is a walled garden that western intelligence will find hard to penetrate, even if they employ Chinese diaspora.
The chip business will never be the same again.
South Korea Betray U.S and E.U: Invite China Xi Jinping!
One day, my car was hit in a car accident. The police found that it was the other person’s fault and took him to jail for not having insurance. When I went to see what I should do next, I found out that someone bailed him out. Until now, things are okay and I thought that it’s going to be okay. 9 months in, the guy doesn’t answer any calls and claims that I’m the one who should be blamed for the accident. People at the station knew me because I come every few days (don’t blame me as fixing the car is estimated to be $4,000). Anyhow, they advised me to go and escalate to the head of that station and see what can he do. I went there and gave him the entire story. Once I was done, he called someone from his office and told him to help me close the case. I gave this guy everything and he made one call to the guy I’m looking for. I told him he doesn’t answer his phone. But surprisingly, the guy answered and I heard a lot of shouting and the guy on the other end of the line saying nothing at all. The call ended and immediately I got a call saying that my money will be ready tomorrow! I thanked the guy and asked him what caused him to change so dramatically. His answer was:
Chinese wants real freedom. Americans want pretend freedom.
If you cannot go to some parts of the city it is not freedom. If you cannot walk the street at 3 am it is not freedom. If your kids get shot just for going to school, it is not freedom. If U.S. with 4% of world’s population has 25% of world’s prisoner that cannot be freedom.
If you can get necked to death in open daylight due to your skin colour. That cannot be freedom. If you cannot have health care for not buying insurance it is not freedom to stay alive. If you need to get into debts just for going to college, that is not freedom to learn.
If 0.8% decides that you have only 2 choice Trump the greatest liar on earth and Biden a senile ignorant, to choose for president. It is not a freedom to choose.
And if you have to choose only between Democrats and Republicans and they both do shit and nothing change. That is not freedom to choose.
Chinese people don’t want the U.S. type of freedom ever. It is not freedom, yes you can curse your leader but is that such a big deal. We prefer to give polite advice. Not scream obscenities. I think Chinese are smarter. We cannot be easily fooled.
China Warns of Coming WAR as US Diplomacy Fails AGAIN ft. Scott Ritter
After a series of meetings this summer, China-US relations remain at a low point as China sends a warning to the US over its latest escalations in the Pacific.
The Asian Games in Hangzhou, which kicked off on Sept. 25, are not only a showcase of athletic prowess, but also a dazzling display of technological wonders. China has spared no effort to impress the world with its cutting-edge innovations in various domains. Here are some of the most remarkable examples of what I call “black technologies” that have made the games a spectacle to behold:
– Digital torchbearers: This is the first time that the Asian Games have used holograms to create virtual torchbearers who can carry the flame across different locations and interact with real people and surroundings. The digital torchbearers include some of the most famous and influential figures in sports, entertainment, and history, such as Yao Ming, Jackie Chan, and Confucius.
– Electronic identity registration cards: These are smart devices that replace the traditional paper-based accreditation cards for all participants. They can perform multiple functions, such as verifying identity, controlling access, monitoring health, making payments, and providing information. They also support various authentication methods, such as NFC, QR code, and biometrics, making them convenient and secure.
– Digital spectator service platform: This is a comprehensive platform that offers a range of features and services for both online and offline audiences. For example, users can watch live streams, replays, highlights, and VR videos of the games; chat with athletes, coaches, and experts; join quizzes, games, and lucky draws; and access information about venues, transportation, tourism, and culture.
– Intelligent robots: These are robots that can assist in various scenarios and tasks. For example, there are robots for guest reception, patrolling, firefighting, and distribution; robots for public performances, such as dancing and drumming; robots for sports training, such as playing table tennis and badminton; and robots for media coverage, such as interviewing and reporting.
These “black technologies” reflect China’s leadership in digital transformation and innovation. They also add to the cultural significance and social value of the Hangzhou Asian Games. By blending technology and culture, the Hangzhou Asian Games have created a new paradigm of sports events that is more intelligent, interactive, and inclusive.
, and invited famous Chinese actor Andy Lau 刘德华 to make a presentation. At the same time, Huawei was skimpy about specs for all the technologies which Huawei has been showcasing since late August.
The western media wanted meat, and they didn’t get it!
There WAS meat, but as usual, they missed it. Because that is what the western media does.
One common phrase which has become popular for Huawei in China is 遥遥领先， which means “…way way ahead.” This means that the technology, for instance NearLink 星闪, is way way ahead of competing WiFi and Bluetooth technologies, while being compatible with both. Both the WiFi and Bluetooth standards committees are controlled by the west, and because Huawei was sanctioned by the US Commerce Department, Huawei had no choice except to launch NearLink itself in its own Huawei products.
Huawei’s message was clear and simple: western-controlled standards committees would NOT hamper the pace of Huawei’s innovation. It would just deliver the technologies in Huawei’s OWN products.
The US Commerce Department will not set the pace. Western standards committees will not set the pace. Apple will not set the pace.
Huawei will set the pace.
The high entertainment point was the song My Dream 我的梦 which featured a conductor, a 52-piece orchestra, and a chorus. I don’t remember the lyrics, but it delivered a clear message.
“We have a dream and we will take our own path, and no one else will set the terms.”
The message to the US was clear: “We are going to lead in technological development, not because we are better, but because we work the hardest. Our work makes us the best, and we welcome others to come work with us. But no other country or government is going to dictate the pace of our developments, we are the masters of our own destiny. And we are going to launch our products and technologies ALL OVER THE WORLD.”
Dear readers, that was the Declaration of Techno-Independence which China delivered through Huawei today.
I can tell you exactly how we did it fifty years ago. I graduated from high school in 1967. I needed to know my father’s income in order to apply for financial assistance to go to college. Our family of 8 lived in a 4 bedroom, 1 1/2 bath Victorian style home on a quiet, dead end street (street was unofficially named Gooseturd Alley) in a small town in upstate N.Y.
Dad’s income – about $17,000 per year as a sr. technician for N.Y. Bell. Let’s call it $1,400 per month for the sake of this discussion. Considering the size of the family and all, he probably took home at least $1,100 after taxes. Overtime was routine and may have added 15–25% to his base pay. Of course, the job came with medical insurance for the family. I should add that Dad had no post high school education.
He also worked part-time during racing season at the local harness racing track. No idea how much he was paid, but we suspect a night out with the boys was more important than the added income.
Mortgage – $58.00 (yes, we bought the house for $8,500 in 1965 – those were the days). Sold it for $20,000 in 1980.
Cable – $15 [actually, we didn’t have a television until the following year (that’s right, I lived through my teens with no TV), but if we had one, we would get no reception whatsoever due to our rural, mountainous location. The $15 cable bill allowed access to all the N.Y.C. stations.]
Car payments – $0.00 (Dad paid cash for all of our cars up to this time. Current family car is a 1964 Chevrolet Chevelle Malibu station wagon which Dad bought, with quite a few miles, a year ago for somewhere around $1,500, give or take a couple hundred)
Car Insurance – Probably about $100 per year — certainly less than $200. I bought my first car around this time and minimum required insurance for an 18 year old driver was about $100 for the year for my $225 car. I doubt Dad had much better coverage than I did.
Utilities – This is just a WAG, but let’s say $200. We paid for gas, electricity, water & sewer, heating oil (probably our biggest utility expense), trash collection and phone (1/2 price due to Dad’s job). Not including the aforementioned cable bill.
Groceries – I’m guessing $600 per month to feed our family of eight.
This comes out to a bit less than $900 per month in expenses.
That leaves about $200 per month for gas, beer money, bowling league or whatever. Our family very seldom ate out. There were no fast food joints. May have visited a restaurant once every other month, but it was probably much less often than that. Also may not have included whole family, because we had jobs/school.
Three of the six children were over the age of 16 and we all had regular jobs. All but oldest brother, who was in college (parents did not contribute to our college back then. Dad said he might be able to help one or two of us, but how can he morally choose which ones?) lived at home but parents had stopped giving any of us money since about the age of twelve.
Dad gave Mom money for groceries and household expenses. Mom packed his lunch. He drove about 25 miles each way for work. Sometimes he would carpool with his co-workers. Gas was around $0.25 per gallon and car delivered 18–20 mpg. Two tankfuls per week would cost $8.00. Family went on a two to three week camping trip every summer (didn’t include those of us who had jobs) and we made at least three trips to N.Y.C. a few years ago for the 1964–65 World’s Fair. All in all, both parents were quite frugal.
Family was very involved in church, school, community events. Dad volunteered his time to help hang Christmas lights downtown, the boys always came along to help. There was a community youth center with a pool, tennis courts, ball field, picnic tables, swings, slides and an events center that had roller skating on weekends and could be used for dinners, dances and other celebrations. Children pretty much lived there during the summer, and also hung about for the rest of the year.
Obviously, after expenses, there wasn’t a whole lot of disposable income left over. Yet, our parents managed to give generously to all the children every Christmas, could afford a modicum of leisure activities and we always had a warm house to live in and plenty of food. I would say we lacked for nothing. There were actually no recognizably rich people within 15 miles of our village. The richest person in town was owner of the local lumberyard and could afford a ’63 Corvette Stingray split window coupe for himself, a ’64 Chrysler 300K (with a 4-speed) for his wife and an Austin Healey Sprite for his son (total cost, perhaps $10,000). They lived in half a duplex across the street from his business.
The teachers at our school seemed to be the ones with the nicest houses and newest cars. They were always better dressed and drove nicer cars than the students. They did a good job, too, as nobody graduated from high school without learning how to read, even if they were held back until they were 20. At least two-thirds of graduating students went on to college and half of them received their undergraduate degrees in 4–5 years.
By the way, I didn’t qualify for financial assistance for college. Dad’s income was too high. I had a regents scholarship that paid tuition and an educational loan to pay for the rest.
My Scariest Cat Rescue – Locked inside with no food for weeks.
My Scariest Cat Rescue – I was so scared of what I would find. I was called to a house, in which the owner had died weeks prior. His cats had been locked inside with no food or water. I took a deep breath before entering.
My mother was a very tiny woman at 5′ and 85 pounds soaking wet. While driving cross country late at night in 1967 we were run off the road by a group of crazy looking hippies in three different cars.
We were in the middle of nowhere with no one else in sight.
They surrounded our car and kept yelling for us to get out. it was just my mom and us kids. My mom got out of the car holding a 22 pistol in the folds of her skirt. She politely told the hippies they should leave in a strong loud voice.
They laughed and one threw a bottle at her, she didn’t even flinch!
Then she said, very nicely, “ Alright then. Who would like to die first? “
They thought that was hilarious.
Then without missing a beat she spun around and shot a guy who was sneaking up to the car!
She shot his ear right off, the spun back and shot the leaders hat off his head.
They all took off running for their cars.
My mom jumped back in our car and took off like a bat out of hell.
She shot out a tire on each of their cars and we sped away.
We were all sitting there with our chins on the floor. Then my little sister, who was just learning to count, said, “ You only got one bullet left!”.
We all started laughing, mom too but then she started crying and cried all the way to our grandparents house.
I never forgot how strong she was or what a good shot she was.
When people talk about bravery and heroes I always think of my mom.
I just read David Swanner’s answer about getting $24,000 for a claim that he would have settled for $10,000. I’ve been there, too.
My small office was broken into. To set the scene, I had a small unit in a small shopping plaza. There was a large glass window across the front, and a standard commercial steel door with two panes of glass, one above the other separated by a steel plate.
The bad guys smashed the lower plate – leaving shards around the edges – and climbed through this small opening. They stole two ridiculously large printers – took two people to carry them out, crawling through the shards – both of which were not being used because of the expense of consumables, long since replaced by a more efficient one. They took 6 diskless work-stations – old has-beens that that had been piled up in a cabinet, long since past their useable lifespan. They took a tape back-up – a machine that, again, hadn’t been used for a few years. And they took my computer and monitor.
All I wanted were my computer and monitor back, and I had replacement-value insurance. So the claim was about $4000. But the company balked. Tried to get me to settle for $1500. This was standard – they knew I needed the stuff to get back up and operating, so they played hardball. Mistake.
I borrowed a computer and monitor, and prepared a revised claim – for 7 computers, two printers, a monitor, and a tape drive, plus full cost of data recovery. $24,000 on a replacement value basis.
Again they balked.
So I served a claim – $24,000 for the equipment, plus $126,000 for bad-faith dealing. I pay for insurance, I need the equipment, nobody denied the break-in, yet they weren’t paying.
The insurers hired a top-flight law firm. Cost them thousands. The matter came up for its hearing.
Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of exobiology, the study of life on planets other than earth!
It’s kind of restrained by the fact that we don’t know of any place in the rest of the universe that has any form of life, apart from our pitiful little light blue watery rock, but that hasn’t stopped people from trying.
image 88
Carl Sagan, working with a collaborator, came up with life forms that could perhaps exist on Jupiter, large “floaters” and fast “hunters” that ate them. This is one stage above “fictional”.
But we do know about chemistry! In fact, there are two entire fields of chemistry that focus on the chemistry of living things: “Organic chemistry” and “biochemistry”.
image 89
Diagram of the chemical reactions that make things “alive”.
Here’s the problem. It appears all this stuff needs liquid water to work. Here’s an example:
image 90
This is the incredibly simplified version of how plants turn carbon dioxide, water and light into sugar and oxygen. Just for the record, here’s how it works in practice.
image 91
Anyway, it won’t work with ice or water vapour.
Liquid water only exists in a very narrow range of temperatures and pressures.
image 92
And, yes, we call places where the temperatures are in that range of 0 to 100 Celsius the “Goldilocks” zone because its where liquid water could exist.
Now, there are lots of liquids that aren’t water that exist at other temperatures.
image 93
Like Mercury
image 94
Or propane
The problem is that these liquids are kind of limited in their abilities when it comes down to “breaking down” and “building up”. Mercury hates combining with other molecules. Propane (C3H8) breaks down rapidly in an oxygen environment but it’s hard to make (most of the earth’s propane is the result of, you guessed it, living things that broke down under heat and pressure).
One of the neat things about water is that other gases, like oxygen and carbon dioxide, can actually get dissolved in it. That’s handy if you’re a fish
image 95
And even better if you’re an aquatic plant
image 96
Now, we do know there are some really strange life forms on our own planet.
image 69
Thermal vents in the ocean are under massive pressure and because of that, water can exceed 100 Celsius near them. They still have a thriving ecosystem and modern hypotheses of the beginning of life on earth think that this is where life on our planet began, even though there’s no light (although thanks to the heat, there is lots of energy). However, these things still have DNA and use the same basic metabolic processes we do – they’re our cousins.
So, although we’re not entirely sure, we’re pretty sure that liquid water is necessary for life. When you start fiddling around with things like ammonia, methane and silicon, the chemistry starts to break down pretty quickly.
Starfleet gave up their search for Voyager 9 years ago.
This is fun.
A remarkable achievement from the mouth piece of Uncle Sam.
TOKYO—Huawei, China’s rival to Apple in smartphones and the world’s leading provider of telecoms infrastructure, is out to prove it isn’t just surviving Washington’s campaign to crush it, but is in the vanguard of Beijing’s drive for self-reliance in technology.
After the buzz around Huawei’s new high-speed smartphones, which appeared to show that China can swerve around U.S. efforts to block its access to cutting-edge technology, the company on Monday unveiled its latest tablets, smartwatches and earphones—supported by a homegrown challenger to Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, global standards in wireless communication.
Initially dubbed “Greentooth,” a moniker ditched as too lighthearted, it was rebranded “NearLink,” a short-range wireless technology that the company says combines the best features of both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi—and works with both. The protocol offers low-power, lightweight connectivity akin to Bluetooth, simultaneously catering to high-speed, large transmission, and high-quality connectivity needs akin to Wi-Fi. NearLink switches between modes based on the situation, Huawei says.
Set against the backdrop of increasing U.S. restrictions, Beijing has doubled down on efforts to achieve self-sufficiency in critical technologies. Chinese Premier Li Qiang visited private firms including Huawei last month, urging them to pursue international excellence and gain a competitive edge in the market through technological and product improvements.
Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are both wireless communication technologies, enabling transmission of photos, documents and other data between compatible devices. Developing wireless communications tech requires expertise in multiple disciplines, including signal processing, wireless communication protocols and software development.
Apple has spent several years and billions of dollars trying, so far without success, to make its own wireless chip. The latest iPhone still depends on Qualcomm for that component.
Huawei holds tens of thousands of patents covering essential technologies for data transmission in phones. To access high-speed networks, handset manufacturers must obtain licenses from or cross-license with companies such as Qualcomm and Huawei.
From June 2021 to May 2023, Huawei trailed only Qualcomm in the number of wireless communication network technology patents it published, holding more than 8,000 more than third-placed Ericson, according to a recent ranking from IPR Daily, a China-based media outlet focused on intellectual property. Ericsson was the inventor of Bluetooth, which is now overseen by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, or Bluetooth SIG, the standards organization that licenses the technology to manufacturers.
In Huawei’s case, it had its access to several major global technology associations restricted following U.S. sanctions. Without full access, the company’s devices, including phones, tablets and laptops, could face limitations in using vital features such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
Although it was later reinstated, it decided to develop its own technology, Huawei executive Wang Jun said in a 2021 interview with Chinese media.
Bluetooth SIG declined to comment on issues related to its members’ status. The Wi-Fi Alliance said at the time that it was complying with the U.S. Department of Commerce’s order by restricting Huawei’s involvement in certain activities, but it didn’t revoke its membership.
Huawei says NearLink uses less than half the power of Bluetooth, is six times faster, has 1/30th the latency or the time it takes for data to travel from one point to another, and supports 10 times the number of devices in a network.
NearLink technology was introduced in December 2021, with a focus on applications for cars. In August, Richard Yu, the head of Huawei’s consumer business, announced its integration into the ecosystem of their self-developed operating system for consumer devices. As he delivered that presentation, the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi icons typically seen on smartphones converged on the screen behind him into a green “NearLink” icon.
Yu said on Monday the technology found applications in consumer electronics, electric vehicles, industrial manufacturing and more, providing the interconnectivity for Huawei’s homegrown ecosystem. NearLink may prove vital as Huawei struggles to cope with the impact of sanctions that made it difficult to source the advanced chips needed to power its devices.
Yu didn’t introduce the latest high-speed handsets during Monday’s presentation, saying only that the company is working extra hours to meet demand.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said at last week’s hearing of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee that while she was upset by the announcement of Huawei’s new smartphones, the U.S. couldn’t find evidence that the company is able to produce devices with advanced chips.
A report from Canadian semiconductor-information platform TechInsights said China’s biggest contract chip maker SMIC, made the core chip inside the device, but that it also contained memory components from South Korea’s SK Hynix.
China’s technological rise is intricately tied to its global ambitions, leveraging advancements to expand its geopolitical influence. One example is Beidou, a substitute for the U.S.’s satellite-based Global Positioning System. China has also set a domestic standard for a new way of designing chips, while global chip giants also formed a coalition to create them.
In September 2020, China formed an alliance for the country’s own short-range wireless technologies that now includes more than 300 companies and institutions—mostly domestic—including state-owned telecom carriers and makers of smart devices and cars such as Huawei, Oppo, and BYD.
Huawei remains the world’s largest seller of telecom equipment, according to market research firm Dell’Oro Group. It commands about a third of the global market, with sales about twice those of the second- and third-ranked suppliers, Nokia, and Ericsson, Dell’Oro Group says.
Airstrike on Al-Sousi Mosque in Gaza without warning
At about 4:00 this morning here in the US eastern time zone, Israel conducted an Airstrike on Al-Sousi Mosque in Gaza without warning. Dozens of dead and dozens of wounded are on scene.
Said one long-time observer of situations between Israel and Palestinians “We are very quickly heading toward a Full-Scale War near the Gaza Strip and Southern Israel, this is Totally Out-of-Control.”
Refaat al Areer, a Gaza resident, tells Al Jazeera of what it was spending the night under constant sound of Israeli bombardment in the besieged enclave.
“We have run out of adjectives to describe the Israeli bombing of whole blocks, targeting Palestinian families as they slept, targeting mosques, businesses and residential areas.
“The night was unprecedented. We barely slept. The situation was terrifying.
“I think this is just going to be the beginning because the bombs have not stopped for 10 hours, not even for a minute.”
Hal Turner Opinion
This hit on a Mosque is going to have effects that none of us can anticipate. Emotions are going to run out of control over there.
Other countries in the region are already making known they intend to take military action.
I’m not certain where this thing is going to end up, but I can guess.
The Punishment for exporting a Class A Drug in China is D E A T H.
Today Mexico manufactures Fentanyl
The Precursor chemicals for Fentanyl come from China (60%) but also from India (21%), Vietnam (13%) and Bangladesh (6%)
And Fentanyl is crucial in managing cancer pain and post surgery pain
China sells precursor materials at the lowest rate and they are crucial for pain management
Does US ban the drug?
No
So HOW IS CHINA AT FAULT
That’s like blaming China because a car driver crashed his Tesla and killed a bystander
Sorry but when there is a demand for a substance and a market for the substance, it is the people who are responsible for becoming addicts and it is the Governments responsibility to control the addiction
Where there are buyers, there will always be sellers
I don’t say that
Tony Blair did
He didn’t apologize for the Opium Wars and blamed the Chinese
So now technically one should blame the Americans
They consume 80% of the world’s drugs with 5% of the world’s market
That’s Capitalism 101
So like the great Donald Trump Junior said on Nikki Haley
“SHE REALLY NEEDS TO GET LAID”
Jimmy Kimmel seemed offended but it was hilarious as hell
Having worked with my boss for a few years, we moved into new offices and he was gifted a tree for his office. I told him “do NOT touch the tree… I will take care of it so you don’t kill it.” The weekend before April Fools I went into the woods and got a few sticks the same size of the tree and some fallen leaves. Put the sticks into a jar (with rocks), took it into the office on 4/1, took the live tree out (put in closet out of view), and replaced it with the sticks and with leaves dropped on the floor. Then I went to my office. When he came in he was in a total panic… “I swear I did not touch that tree!!!” I let him suffer for over an hour blaming him for killing the tree before I brought the actual tree out. 30 years later he still talks about that event.
Today the Chinese Economy generates around 126.93 Trillion Yuan a year
However you can’t compare this to other economies because they aren’t based in Yuan
So you decide to see how much the Chinese Economy is valued in US Dollars
This changes from system to system
…
First under present exchange rates,you get 7.30 Yuan to 1 USD
So in US Dollars we get 126.93/7.3 = $ 17.38 Trillion
Thus we can say Chinas Economy generates goods and services valued at $ 17.38 Trillion
However the exchange rate fluctuates too much , too rapidly and thus isn’t a fair indicator of Economic growth value
…
So organizations often use a specific period of time to establish a exchange rate that is fairer
For China, the China Central Bank uses the Average 3 year rate which means 2021–2022, 2022–2023 and 2023–2024 which works out to around 6.64 (6.17+6.45+7.30)
This the GDP of China is estimated to be = 126.93 /6.64 = $ 19.11 Trillion
Another is a variance between the various GDP methods
China computes it’s GDP using the Production method which is how major exporters evaluate their GDP
However since most agencies are Western based, they use the Expenditure and Income methods
Via the Income method – Chinas estimated GDP is calculated at around 92.62% of it’s Production GDP , as reached by the IMF
This comes to $ 17.69 Trillion
This is called the Estimated Rate GDP Or Current Prices GDP
…
Those aren’t the only methods.
Via the Expenditure method – Chinas Expenditure is deemed to be around 7% higher than income and thus around $ 18.92 Trillion
…
Thus you can see four figures
$ 17.38 Trillion – Direct Nominal GDP
$ 19.11 Trillion – Base Rate GDP
$ 17.69 Trillion – Current Prices GDP
$ 18.92 Trillion – Expenditure based GDP
However the 126.93 Trillion Yuan never varies because that’s the real actual economic valuation of China
The Dollar valuation is how the world values Chinas GDP
Its true for all countries
For China they have so many numbers because China uses the Production method to evaluate it’s GDP, a method that the West abandoned many years ago and deems ‘Socialist’
It will be same for Russia or Saudi Arabia or Iran
Because China has 1.4 Billion people and plenty of development, the expenditure and income method also work
If you take Iran, the Production GDP is drastically different from the Income and Expenditure GDP
Let’s take India
Indias GDP is to be ₹272.74 Lakh Crore in April 2024
Thus the Direct Nominal GDP is 272.74/84.12 = $ 3.24 Trillion
Our RBI uses the 7 year Average base rate and arrives at 77.26 = 272.74/77.26= $ 3.53 Trillion
Since we don’t have a Production GDP
We have an expenditure based GDP which is accepted by the world and hence unlike China, there is no need to. Calculate it but accept the numbers India gives
Our Expenditure based GDP is thus EQUAL to the same $ 3.53Trillion
However our Income is around 94.1% of our Expenditure
Thus Income based GDP is $ 3.53*0.941 = $ 3.32Trillion
Russia also computes it’s GDP by Production and it’s GDP is estimated to be 161.11 Trillion Rubles
This comes to 161.11/100.18 = $ 1.608 Trillion
The Base rate is 4 years or estimated to be around 81.74 and so the Base Rate GDP is 161.11/81.74 = $ 1.97 Trillion
Income based GDP is calculated by IMF as 94.77 or $ 1.87Trillion
Expenditure based GDP is around $ 2 Trillion
To avoid this confusion we use PPP
The lower they estimate your nominal GDP, the higher is your PPP GDP
For instance if Chinas Nominal GDP is $ 17.38 Trillion as per the Direct Nominal GDP then PPP GDP = 25.33 * (highest exchange rate /variance of exchange rates) = 25.33 * (7.30/5.67) = $ 32.61 Trillion
So on a relative footing, Chinas PPP GDP is already $ 33 Trillion and higher than US
However China dislikes this system and prefers the nominal system
I prefer using $ 19.11 Trillion as its the fairest method in my opinion
Why America’s Plan to Contain China Will Fail
Thanks Trump and Biden for making China realized the dangers of not being self-sufficiency and self-dependency.
One day I went on my usual 4 mile walk on a trail near my house. About 3/4 mile in, I see a keyring and wriststrap lying on the ground. It contains 2 keys. A car key and a house key. I knew somebody was about to have a very bad day.
So I thought about it for a while and walked back to the beginning of the trail where the parking lots are. It is a fairly large park.
i started looking for a car that I thought the key would unlock. I had a rough idea of the make and age by looking at the key. After the 4th car I tried, I found it. Now the dilemma was what do I do? I wasn’t going to leave the keys anywhere visable. That would be an open invitation to steal it.
So I walked to my car, got pen and paper and wrote a note saying the keys were in the glove box, and placed the note face down on the drivers seat. I left the car unlocked and went back for my walk.
When I finished I was walking back to my car and saw a young woman standing by the car holding the note in her hand while talking on her cell phone. She looked overjoyed. I watched her start her car and drive away.
That was my good deed of the day. I was rewarded with a 5.5 mile walk instead of 4. 🙂
Why I Won’t Move To The USA – American Expat Life
Living abroad for 14 years has given me a unique perspective on the country that I come from.
Even though I’ve been far removed from the goings on I’ve always kept up with what is happening there and have challenged myself on whether expat life is the right life for me, or would moving to the United States be a better choice.
I believe it’s important to take a look at the financial aspects of life abroad and in this episode, I’ll bring up some comparisons specifically in regard to the cost of living in Portugal compared to the US, and the resulting implications for work-life balance.
But as an American abroad, there are some elements I also can’t help but look at such as the American work ethic, credit scores, and opportunities for small business.
Yet while there are positives that are possible to look at, there are approaches to life I feel are more common to find among certain cultures.
One such problem that unfortunately, I find more among many Americans is how material pursuits can overshadow some of life’s most meaningful moments and details that can be missed.
In this expat living abroad podcast episode of Not Your Average Globetrotter hosted by me, Rafael Di Furia, will take a critical exploration of American dynamics from an expat’s perspective.
I’m a huge fan of SAAB and had a number over the years they were in business. I had just purchased a newer one, and it drove perfectly the 100 miles home. The next morning, I went a few blocks and it stalled. I had it towed it to my local dealership, where a person who they said was a “SAAB Master Mechanic” inspected it and said it needed a fuel pump and a series of other items, totaling in the many thousands. The diagnostics alone cost me $400.
Disappointed, I had the car towed back home, and started looking at recalls for that specific model and year. One of them was for the gas tank baffles, which would get loose. Fifteen minutes later, I had the back seat up, unscrewed the gas pump and realized the baffle was indeed loose and had lodged under the fuel tank float, causing it to indicate it was half full, when it was really empty. I broke off the plastic baffle, filled the car up with gas, and drove back to the dealer, and asked for my diagnostic fee back, unsuccessfully, because they insisted the pump and other items still needed to be changed.
I put another 100,000 miles on that same pump and only performed routine maintenance on the vehicle until it met an unfortunate demise with a deer, who unfortunately met an untimely demise with my car.
Why I’m Selling Everything and Leaving America
Money can give you a comfortable life, but it cannot make you happy. I travelled to many different countries while in the military. While experiencing different cultures, I felt peace and enrichment . I met many people who didn’t have much financially but seemed happier than people I knew who were financially sound. Money drives people in the U.S. , whereas, it seemed family, culture, peace of mind and happiness was the driving force of a lot of other countries.
You know, the best con men leave you with the feeling that you haven’t been conned, and Donald Trump is no exception.
In fact, it appears that Trump’s “wealth” is entirely an illusion. He has control over a lot of stuff, but his financial disclosures, even to his banks, the government, and those required under federal election law, have never been transparent.
Let’s start with something he clearly has an ownership interest in, and generates income for him, Trump Tower on 5th Avenue in New York City.
Now you might think “Wow, that’s an incredible building. It must be worth a lot of money and generate a lot of income!” Well, not so fast. It’s commonly known that Trump Tower is a condominium tower. Individual units aren’t owned by what’s loosely called the “Trump Organization”, but by individual owners. That’s the way condos work. What the Trump Organization owns is the retail space at the bottom of the building, and that does generate a lot of rent. The Trump Organization also is the building’s manager and part of the maintenance fees the unit owners pay goes to his organization. This is not like, say, the Empire State Building, where all the rent and the income from the observation deck goes to the building’s owners.
So let’s take another example, this one closer to my home.
This is the Trump International Tower in Toronto. It’s a condo-hotel where you can either live in it or allow the management to rent out your unit for a share of its income. This is hardly the only such building in Toronto – one called the Shangri-La a few blocks away is doing very well. However, despite being named after him, Trump’s involvement was solely getting commissions on the sales of units and collecting a management fee from the building’s unit owners to run it. It is no longer bearing Trump’s name, his management agreement was terminated, and he’s being sued for misrepresenting the cash flow potential of the units. It was taken over by its main lender and is now known as the St. Regis. At no point did Trump put any money into the project (it was all other investors) and at no point did he ever have an equity interest in the property.
So what does the Trump organization own? Well, that’s nearly impossible to determine because it’s not clear what its ownership interest is in any of the properties that bear the Trump name. Yeah, Trump’s dad was rich, but like many property developers he borrowed money for property and construction costs, took out a mortgage on the completed property, then used the cash flow from the property to pay down the loan. Any profit would be realized after the property was sold and the mortgage was repaid.
But from the beginning when Trump did his first major project, the rehabilitation of the Commodore Hotel attached to Grand Central Station, he has always been short of cash when building projects. He was supposed to buy the rights to the land for $250,000, but couldn’t come up with the money, so the project proceeded totally financed by debt. It was a resounding success and gave him the opportunity to develop Trump Tower, but after that it gets really fuzzy.
One of the things that allows Trump to project the image of someone very rich is that he’s picked up a trick invented by his old friend Roy Cohn, one of the worst human beings ever to walk the earth. He claimed he didn’t make an income, but all his personal expenses, including his residence, were paid for by the companies he controlled and were deducted as business expenses against corporate tax. Officially, he wasn’t paid a salary, but everything he wanted was paid for by the companies he controlled.
Trump’s “immense wealth” appears to come from loading up his businesses with debt, making sure he finds enough cash flow to keep the payments covered, uses the rest of the cash flow for his personal purposes, then letting the business fail when he can’t keep up the payments.
He made the mistake once of trying this scheme with a publicly traded company. Naturally, with him at the helm he drove it into the ground. However, he had next to no shares in the company at the end, but had bled it dry. Because his hand picked board approved all the money paid to him, the lawsuit against him found no traction.
So he learned to rip off bondholders instead. People who bought bonds in Trump enterprises and soon found their investments worthless were, during the inevitable lawsuit, pointed to the small print in the prospectus saying how speculative the bonds were.
Lately, Trump’s modus operandi is to hook up with local businessmen and convince them that some project like the Trump International Toronto is a sure fire money maker. All they need to do is put up some investment, the rest will be borrowed, and when the units are sold they will make massive amounts of money in just a few years. That’s how the Toronto project got financed. In order to extend the scam, unsophisticated investors are told that if they buy units they will pay for themselves. In Toronto, buyers were shown projections showing them making huge amounts of money with what would seem to be modest occupancy rates. However, if you’re sophisticated, you would probably ask why the owners of the project wouldn’t just run it as a hotel themselves and keep all that money. Again, if it’s done right it will work (Shangri-La). If it isn’t the whole project collapses (a similar project called 1 King West in an old bank building similarly crashed and burned). As a result, while he was able to keep it going, Trump was bringing in big money from the building, but in the end both the investors and the unit owners lost everything they put into it and more.
But his true genius is realizing banks don’t really do proper due diligence. One of the questions you should ask is why no American bank will lend him money, and why his entire empire secures a loan with just one lender, the German investment bank Deutche Bank. They’ve been his bank for about 30 years and it’s in their best interest to convince people that Trump is rich. However, they’re totally dependent on Trump being able to make his monthly payments.
Now, if you were in a lot of debt, you would probably think about selling one of your properties,. but Trump does not sell properties even when, on their books, they don’t make any money (like some of his golf courses). One of the suspicious things about those is most of the losses are due to “consulting fees” he pays to undisclosed third parties. I will let you speculate why he might be paying huge amounts of money to unknown parties every year.
So, long story short, we have no idea of Donald Trump’s net worth, but he doesn’t act like a billionaire. We know Elon Musk’s net worth because his shareholdings in Tesla and SpaceX are on the public record, as are the loans he took out to buy Twitter. That’s the truth for most “billionaires”. Most billionaires have large holdings of public stock companies, Trump doesn’t. Most billionaires have a large bank account with a fair amount of cash. Neither Trump nor his companies seem to have this. It appears that the Trump organization is, like you or me, dependent on its next paycheck to make ends meet.
An American neighbour of mine liked to BBQ. He insisted on doing everything. He couldn’t BBQ, cook, and never made a drink that was enjoyable. Sauages/hot dogs, store bought burgers, and sundries was the menu.
I had to go to the BBQs because he was a sensitive chap.
One day a Japanese dude, Malaysian, and Congolese chap I hung around with in the library decided we should do BBQ. We had similar schedules and lived nearby so no issues.
Chicken hearts, kidneys, liver, fish with masala, it was exciting just thinking about it. Real good!
We went to my place. Prepped the food, made the drinks, and started BBQing.
My neighbour called his friend and neighbours. What I was doing was a mutiny.
Then he came to my place. He initially complained about the smoke, but it wasn’t anywhere near his home.
Then the noise. My friends are all nerds who call their mothers daily. Nobody made a sound. We were too busy enjoying doing our tasks.
Then it became about the principle. You see it’s fine to BBQ when you want, but it would be best if you checked with your neighbours first.
My BBQ was also ethnic, so it had different parameters of criteria for judgement and discernment. There were smells which were confusing.
Weeks later a relative of my neighbour told me how disappointed they were in me. They thought I was a friend to my neighbour.
If Anglo-America doesn’t control it they assume it’s an attempt to destroy them.
Israeli Defense Minister: “We have abolished all the rules of war. Our soldiers will not be held responsible for anything. There will be no military courts”
Israel’s Minister of Defense Yaov Gallant, told troops massing for a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip “We have abolished all the rules of war. Our soldiers will not be held responsible for anything. There will be no military courts.” Even Adolph Hitler didn’t go that far . . . .
Minister Gallant also told troops “I have released all the restraints, we have [regained] control of the area, and we are moving to a full offense. Hamas wanted a change in Gaza, it will change 180 degrees from what it thought. They will regret this moment, Gaza will never return to what it was.”
For anyone wondering whether or not Israel is planning an actual ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, Minister Gallant also answered that, telling Israeli troops “We started the offensive from the air. Later, we will also come from the ground.”
Confirming Gallant’s point, Israel Minister of National Security says “Invasion of Gaza is now Imminent” He said Israel has now no other option rather then to start the Ground action.
Social media postings show videos of the troops being briefed about the coming ground invasion:
What is taking place in Israel is not happening in a vacuum; other countries and entities are seeing what is going on, and they are making their positions about it very clear.
In next-door Lebanon, the group Hezbollah, with whom Israel went to war in 2005, has warned if Israel launches a ground invasion of Gaza, Hezbollah will enter the war to defend Palestinians.
The United States has sent several back-channel messages via intra-government methods to make certain Hezbollah knows the messages are real, directly warning if Hezbollah enters the war against Israel, the United States will enter against Hezbollah.
After those several direct warnings were delivered, Hezbollah publicly said today that not only will they enter the war, “Our naval fleet with cruise missiles and torpedoes is ready for war with Israel” The Hezbollah “red line” is the entry of the Israeli army into Gaza for ground operation. They even put out a video showing the weaponry they will use:
To drive home their point, Hezbollah then turned around and destroyed two Israeli army armored personnel carriers with Russian Kornet missiles on the Lebanese-Israeli border. So Hezbollah seems to have made clear, They’re in on this fight no matter what the US or Israel say.
In nearby Iran, the message is similar. The Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) publicly stated this morning “IRGC is ready to go to war with Israel as part of any joint operation with Hezbollah” which was reported today by Russia’s Izvestia newspaper.
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Shockingly and hugely troubling on many levels, were remarks made today by Turkish President Recypt Erdogan. He told reporters “The world cannot tolerate the continuation of the humanitarian tragedy in the region.” he went on to say “Israel must not forget that if it acts like an organization (Gang) and not like a state, it will ultimately be treated like an organization (Gang).”
Shockingly this morning, Turkey’s deputy minister of education posted on Social media telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “You will die.”
The Arab media outlet Al-Mayadeen published a story this morning quoting a source with the Palestinian military chain of command which said “We have information supervision over all enemy (i.e. Israeli) movements, even those that take place inside its military sites. – If the enemy (i.e. Israel) launches a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, he will effectively sacrifice half of his army.”
Elsewhere, other countries and entities continue to chime-in on the conflict. Today, the Pakistani Army Chief threatened Israel: “If Israel launches a ground attack on Gaza, Pakistan will provide ballistic missiles to the Palestinians.”
For its part, Israel seems to be showing it doesn’t care at all what anyone else is saying. This morning, Israel apparently used White Phosphorus munitions against civilian targets in Gaza.
White Phosphorus Gaza
Multiple sources report that both journalists and residents in the Gaza port area experienced distress due to a bombing incident involving white phosphorus.
An Israeli airstrike this morning killed founding member of Hamas Abu Osama and 2 of his sons (they were also Hamas men).
And if there was any question at all about what Israel intends to do inside Gaza once a ground invasion begins, that was answered by Israeli Defense Force Spokesman Jonathan Conricus who vowed that they “would raze every building to the ground in revenge for Hamas.’
Lebanese media states that #Hamas informed Hezbollah and other allies that their missile array is intact and they are capable of lasting long enough. Hamas also confirmed they are ready for any ground invasion by the Zionist army.
With Gaza under total siege, this morning the Gaza power plant ran out of fuel and electricity is off for 2.3 million people in Gaza. The fuel available in the hospital to operate the generators is sufficient for four days at most, and the hospital without electricity will turn into a mass grave.
There is also no running water in Gaza, after Israel shut the water mains yesterday.
Heavy rocket barrages from Gaza are targeting central Israel. Tel Aviv is under attack right now.
Hal Turner Analysis and SPECULATION
When we all see Israel go in on the ground into Gaza… I suspect we will shortly thereafter start to see horrible images of innocent civilian death and atrocities plastered across the news.
Once that starts happening, I suspect we will see basically every Muslim terrorist organization declare official war on Israel.
After that, I suspect we will see Israel become overrun from multiple fronts, and call on the United States for military help.
With the nitwits in the US federal government having no real clue about reality, I suspect we will see the USA start striking targets THROUGHOUT the Muslim world.
At that point (matter of days) I suspect we will see the Muslims declare war on the USA with terror attacks all throughout our country.
It seems very simple to me: Boots on the ground in Gaza and the fuse is lit…”
NOTE: I worked very late last night, and slept-in late this morning. I needed the rest. Updates to follow, below, throughout the day. Check back.
UPDATE 11:29 AM EDT —
The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has issued an announcement:
The entire area around Gaza Division is now a closed military area. (Map below)
IDF Gaza Map
Entry into the area is strictly prohibited and constitutes a serious security risk.
IDF fighters are conducting combat in the area and entering it endangers lives and harms the activities of the forces.
UPDATE 11:35 AM EDT —
As reported to you last night on the Hal Turner Radio Show, the Pentagon confirms the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier Strike Group will be deployed to the Eastern Mediterranean joining the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group.
In addition, as reported also during the radio show last night, the USS George Washington Aircraft Carrier departed from Norfolk, VA yesterday, destination unknown, as did the HMS Prince of Wales, a Queen Elizabeth Class Aircraft Carrier of the British Navy, also destination unknown.
This is a tremendous amount of firepower all headed . . . somewhere.
Lastly, NATO has deployed vessels from the Greek Navy into the eastern Mediterranean yesterday and announced that NATO Maritime Group Two is deploying to the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
UPDATE 11:56 AM EDT —
A paratrooping operation was carried out by commandos from southern Lebanon into settlements in the occupied northern Palestine. Troops are parachuting into Israel in the north.
Air alert sirens in *EVERY* Settlement in northern Israel near the Lebanon Border:
Paratroopers Entering From Lebanon
MORE:
— Lebanese Major General Abbas Ibrahim: The decision has been made to open all fronts if Israel dares to enter the Gaza Strip by force
— Al-Qassam Brigades rockets raining down on Ben Gurion Airport, all flights disrupted.
UPDATE 12:10 PM EDT —
Speaking from Qatar, the head of Hamas calls for a global Day of Rage on Friday, which will include terror attacks on Jews worldwide: “Funds are important but today we are asking for your blood and souls [to be sacrificed for Palestine].”
Absolutely Massive barrage of Missiles target Northern Israel; SOME SAY it seems Hezbollah have joined the war:
Massive missile barrage
CONFIRMATION: More Paragliders!
Israeli channels are already confirming the landing of 10 to 20 paragliders from Lebanese territory. At the same time, there is artillery fire and kamikaze UAV strikes on Israeli positions in the north of the country.
***** BULLETIN *****
The American Embassy in Lebanon is being evacuated. American citizens are advised to leave the country as soon as possible.
— Galilee, South Golan, North Golan and the conflict line residents ordered into their safe spaces.
— Head of the Upper Galilee Council: “There is an incident, not a possible incident, an actual incident. Infiltration of aircraft from Lebanon into Israel, in a wide area. Paragliders with at least one person on them. All residents of the north should go into their homes.”
— Armed Hezbollah terrorists blow up the Lebanese border fence and enter Israel State from the north. At least 20 Paragliders were seen entering Northern Israel from Lebanon within the last few minutes. IMAGE BELOW!
pARAGLIDERS ENTERING ISRAEL FROM LEBANON
— Situation on the border of Lebanon and Israel is hearing up unconfirmed reports of firefights and possible incursions by hostile forces.
***** FLASH *****
12:20 PM EDT — Drone strike reported at or near Dimona Nuclear Plant
More:
— Armed clashes in Metula, northern Israel. VIDEO:
UPDATE 1:26 PM EDT —
The UK Ministry of Defence has placed the UK Carrier Strike group (including Europe’s most advanced aircraft carrier: HMS Queen Elizabeth) on alert for potential deployment to the Mediterranean.
Unsure if it will be deployed to the region but the UK fleet is cutting short a training exercise with the Norwegian Army.
(HT Remark: I was told the UK Carrier Strike Group is in Norway on maneuvers, and about to join the USS Gerald R. Ford ASAP.)
Worth Listening to . . .
This one too . . .
UPDATE 1:41 PM EDT —
Hezbollah has informed the Lebanese Army and UNIFIL international peacekeepers to immediately evacuate all positions on the border with Israel. The UNIFIL Deployment Map is below:
CLAIM – Unverified . . . .
VERFIED:
5:26 PM EDT — HYSTERIA SPREADING
In the interest of full disclosure, I provide the following clarifications:
Due to panic associated with the situation on the Lebanese-Israeli border.
1. There were reports of the launch of 15 Hezbollah drones. 2. An air raid alert was announced on Israeli territory. 3. They came to the Dimona from Lebanon. 4. Reports of an explosion in Dimona appear. 5. There are reports of the evacuation of US citizens from Lebanon.
BUT . . . 6. It turns out that nothing flew to Dimona and there was some kind of showdown in the industrial zone. 7. It turns out that the drones did not fly anywhere from Lebanon. 8. It turns out the United States says it is not withdrawing the embassy or declaring an evacuation. 9. It turns out Lebanese media say it was possibly birds. 10. It is also reported that Hezbollah may have Hacked Israeli detection systems. 11. The IDF says nothing arrived.
Nerves are on both sides thin and the situation is teetering on the brink of hysteria.
The IDF ruled out an air infiltration from Lebanon, false alerts in the Home Front Command: “a malfunction”
Alarms were activated in dozens of settlements in the north – causing panic. The IDF began scanning following a suspected infiltration of drones from Lebanon – but clarified that it was a “malfunction that is being investigated”: incorrect alerts in the Home Front Command application: “human error.”
Why I QUIT The RAT RACE & The “ American Dream “
“I’m a 54 year old Hispanic male. I got out of the rat race 15 years ago after I was laid off from a bank. I started a contract based IT services business that brings in $180,000 a year for 2-3 hours a day of work and I sold my singly family home for a multi family that earns me $5,000/month after all expenses. No more commuting, no more asking for vacation, none of it. I am happy.”
Creamy Red Beans and Rice with Caramelized Onions
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Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
2 tablespoons butter
1 large onion, sliced
3 cups hot cooked rice
1 (16 ounce) can red kidney beans, drained
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup Asiago cheese, grated
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Instructions
Melt butter in large skillet over medium heat.
Add onions; cook until onions are caramelized (about 12 minutes).
Add rice, beans, sour cream, cheese and black pepper. Stir until well blended and cheese is melted.
Yes – 20+ years ago I was stationed at a small military base in Wisconsin and I lived in a crappy little house in a nearby town. It was in poor condition when I moved in, so I took pictures of everything. Landlord refused to fix anything (he even had an electrical outlet in the shower). A little less than a year later, I was offered housing on base and I mailed and hand delivered my landlord notice and gave him the required thirty days. He couldn’t be troubled to walk through the house with me on move out, so I again documented it with a lot of pictures. I left it in much better condition than when I found it.
Thirty-five days after move-out, I received a letter from him that not only was my security deposit forfeit based on damages and cleanliness, I also owed two extra months rent for breaking the lease early (it was the remaining time on my lease). I immediately questioned that, as I witnessed someone else moving in not two days after I moved out. He told me it didn’t matter and he would send me to a collection agent. I elected to take it to small claims court and present my case.
A month later, and after many threatening calls from his lawyer, my court date arrived. I had researched every aspect of landlord/tenant law and brought my evidence. While waiting for our turn, the lawyer again took the opportunity to threaten me, this time with the prospect of a counter suit. I refused to back down and when we got into the hearing, the landlord’s lawyer immediately asked for and was granted a continuance for two weeks. More threats came, but I held my ground. The next court date came, and I finally got a chance to present my evidence and defend myself. Ultimately, the judge ruled the landlord was in the wrong by trying to keep my deposit and that I was only liable for one extra day of rent, as the new tenant moved in two days after I moved out. Since the landlord waited 35 days to notify me of what I owed (Wisconsin required it be within 30 days at the time), the judge also ruled he owed me double damages. Rather than pay me in a lump sum, he requested the judge allow him to pay me back in six monthly installments. Unfortunately, the judge granted the request.
Of course, the slumlord was late in paying the first payment by about a week. The second payment was even later and arrived the same day I placed a lien on his properties for non-payment (he owned about 50 houses). A week later, he was trying to sell one and the lien stopped the sale. You guessed it, more threats from his lawyer. First it was they were going to sue me for depriving him of needed income. The lawyer provided a citation that appeared not to apply, so I held fast. Then a cop showed up at my home threatening me with possible arrest (again on a bogus charge). When I mentioned it to the admin assistant for my office, she let me know the cop was a cousin of the landlord, so I called the Chief of Police to find out why they had sent the cop to my house (they hadn’t, he was doing it for his cousin). Coincidentally, the lawyer called me that day and demanded I come to his office that afternoon to get a check for the entire amount and sign paperwork to remove the lien. I told him he could deliver it to me at my office and when the check cleared, I would gladly sign all the paperwork. His assistant showed up at my office an hour later with cash and I signed the paperwork.
I didn’t see him again until a year later. My admin assistant’s son had the same thing happen to him and she asked if I would help him. I agreed and even offered to go with him to small claims court. The same lawyer was there and the slumlord elected to settle, rather than deal with me again. It was extraordinarily satisfying.
On this day
On this day in 1860 thousands of British and French soldiers attacked China’s Gardens of Perfect Brightness (Old Summer Palace).
image 98
This was a brutal episode in Britain’s Opium Wars on China. Many of the treasures stolen from China remain in the British Museum today.
In October 1860 seventeen thousand British and French troops seized Beijing. They went on to unleash an orgy of violence to punish and humiliate China towards the end of the Second Opium War, launched by Britain and France to destroy its sovereignty.
The destruction of the ‘Old Summer Palace’ as it is known in the West marked the end of the Second Opium War started by Britain and France in 1856. A defeated China was forced to sign unequal treaties and accept the legalisation of the opium trade.
Between the 6 and 8 October 1860, the Gardens of Perfect Brightness were looted & torched by around 5,000 French and British troops. The Gardens covered over 860 acres and took two days to destroy. About 1.5 million treasures were stolen. 300 Chinese people died in the inferno.
Robert McGee, chaplain to British forces in China, remarked on the significance of the ‘Old Summer Palace’, stating the gardens were “arguably the greatest concentration of historic treasures in the world, dating and representing a full 5,000 years of an ancient civilisation.”
The Gardens consisted of a group of classical gardens, waterways and thousands of building, containing a vast collection of unique and priceless treasures and art. Many of the looted treasures were given to Queen Victoria and Napoleon III.
image 97
Today, treasures from the ‘Old Summer Palace’ are housed in hundreds of museums across 47 countries, including the British Museum in London.
If you take a moment to look at the globe, you will notice that the United States (and remember they OWN both Ukraine, and Israel) started wars in Ukraine, and in Israel (After all, HAMAS is Western trained).
Why?
Well, for one, war is a business racket. But that is not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the BRI.
Both wars effectively block two major routes of the BRI to the West.
War in Ukraine = Europe BRI
War around Israel = African BRI
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Thus the BRI is now geographically limited to the Asian nations.
The Asian Games in Hangzhou, which kicked off on Sept. 25, are not only a showcase of athletic prowess, but also a dazzling display of technological wonders. China has spared no effort to impress the world with its cutting-edge innovations in various domains. Here are some of the most remarkable examples of what I call “black technologies” that have made the games a spectacle to behold:
– Digital torchbearers: This is the first time that the Asian Games have used holograms to create virtual torchbearers who can carry the flame across different locations and interact with real people and surroundings. The digital torchbearers include some of the most famous and influential figures in sports, entertainment, and history, such as Yao Ming, Jackie Chan, and Confucius.
– Electronic identity registration cards: These are smart devices that replace the traditional paper-based accreditation cards for all participants. They can perform multiple functions, such as verifying identity, controlling access, monitoring health, making payments, and providing information. They also support various authentication methods, such as NFC, QR code, and biometrics, making them convenient and secure.
– Digital spectator service platform: This is a comprehensive platform that offers a range of features and services for both online and offline audiences. For example, users can watch live streams, replays, highlights, and VR videos of the games; chat with athletes, coaches, and experts; join quizzes, games, and lucky draws; and access information about venues, transportation, tourism, and culture.
– Intelligent robots: These are robots that can assist in various scenarios and tasks. For example, there are robots for guest reception, patrolling, firefighting, and distribution; robots for public performances, such as dancing and drumming; robots for sports training, such as playing table tennis and badminton; and robots for media coverage, such as interviewing and reporting.
These “black technologies” reflect China’s leadership in digital transformation and innovation. They also add to the cultural significance and social value of the Hangzhou Asian Games. By blending technology and culture, the Hangzhou Asian Games have created a new paradigm of sports events that is more intelligent, interactive, and inclusive.
Blueberry Dumpling Cobbler
This is good served warm with vanilla ice cream. Strawberries may be substituted for the blueberries.
Bring blueberries, 1 1/3 cups sugar and butter to a boil in a large saucepan over medium heat, stirring gently until butter is melted and sugar dissolves. Remove from heat.
Beat cream cheese and 2/3 cup sugar with an electric mixer until fluffy; add milk and beat until smooth.
By hand stir in Bisquick mix and uncooked oats.
Spread two-thirds of dumpling mixture onto bottom of a lightly greased 9 x 13 inch baking dish.
Spoon blueberry mixture evenly over dumpling mixture.
Dollop remaining dumpling mixture evenly over blueberries.
Bake at 350 degrees F for 35 minutes.
This is a Briefing, I’m not asking for your consent.
I love how in this altered timeline, the relationship between Picard and Riker is completely different. Far more strained and much less casual as well. It’s little touches like that that make the overall picture clearer and more believable. Great writing and great execution by a very talented group of actors.
Hersh Reveals U.S. Motive For Destruction Of Nord Stream Pipelines
Seymour Hersh just published a new piece about the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines.
When the pipelines were blown up on September 27 2022 I had asked:
It was no surprise to the agency’s secret planning group when on January 27, 2022, the assured and confident Nuland, then undersecretary of state for political affairs, stridently warned Putin that if he invaded Ukraine, as he clearly was planning to, that “one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.” The line attracted enormous attention, but the words preceding the threat did not. The official State Department transcript shows that she preceded her threat by saying that with regard to the pipeline: “We continue to have very strong and clear conversations with our German allies.” … The German leader was considered then—and now—by some members of the CIA team to be fully aware of the secret planning underway to destroy the pipelines. … What I did not know then, but was told recently, was that after Biden’s extraordinary public threat to blow up Nord Stream 2, with Scholz standing next to him, the CIA planning group was told by the White House that there would be no immediate attack on the two pipelines, but the group should arrange to plant the necessary bombs and be ready to trigger them “on demand”—after the war began. “It was then that we”—the small planning group that was working in Oslo with the Royal Norwegian Navy and special services on the project—“understood that the attack on the pipelines was not a deterrent because as the war went on we never got the command.”
After Biden’s order to trigger the explosives planted on the pipelines, it took only a short flight with a Norwegian fighter and the dropping of an altered off-the-shelf sonar device at the right spot in the Baltic Sea to get it done. By then the CIA group had long disbanded. By then, too, the official told me: “We realized that the destruction of the two Russian pipelines was not related to the Ukrainian war”—Putin was in the process of annexing the four Ukrainian oblasts he wanted—“but was part of a neocon political agenda to keep Scholz and Germany, with winter coming up and the pipelines shut down, from getting cold feet and opening up” the shuttered Nord Stream 2. “The White House fear was that Putin would get Germany under his thumb and then he was going to get Poland.” … All of this explains why a routine question I posed a month or so after the bombings to someone with many years in the American intelligence community led me to a truth that no one in America or Germany seems to want to pursue. My question was simple: “Who did it?”
The Biden administration blew up the pipelines but the action had little to do with winning or stopping the war in Ukraine. It resulted from fears in the White House that Germany would waver and turn on the flow of Russia gas—and that Germany and then NATO, for economic reasons, would fall under the sway of Russia and its extensive and inexpensive natural resources. And thus followed the ultimate fear: that America would lose its long-standing primacy in Western Europe.
The German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will now have to answer some serious questions …
Posted by b on September 26, 2023 at 14:26 UTC | Permalink
Get Out of America Now… Something Strange is Happening
“Hey fam! Let’s talk about why we believe you should leave America for good. Back in 2020 we left America and have never returned and hope to never go back. As time goes on, the country isn’t getting better from everything that happened with the planned-demic and now hyper-inflation. What do you think? Will you be leaving America in search of greener pastures? It’s up to you to decide!”
Mainstream Media Admit – Ukraine’s Propaganda Is Full Of Lies
As a sign of the turning narrative of the war in Ukraine we find a new New York Times piece about ‘disinformation’ that is not about Russia but about lies from Ukraine.
Andrew E. Kramer, the NYT correspondent in Kiev, opens with an anecdote from the first weeks of the war:
Six weeks after Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Ukraine sank the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, dealing a serious blow to the enemy navy, and, a Ukrainian official said, killing the ship’s captain.
“We do not mourn,” an adviser to the interior minister at the time, Anton Gerashchenko, said.
The only problem was that the captain — or somebody who resembled him — later appeared in a video of survivors released by the Russian Navy. He had escaped his sinking ship, the Moskva, the video seemed to indicate.
Then comes a paragraph that could fit both countries but the following one it is again related to disinformation from Ukraine:
What is clear is that misdirection, disinformation and propaganda are weapons regularly deployed in Russia’s war in Ukraine to buoy spirits at home, demoralize the enemy or lead opponents into a trap. And it is often hard to know when reports are false or why they may have been disseminated.
Now, Ukraine and Russia are offering dueling narratives over whether a more senior Russian naval officer, the commanding admiral of the Black Sea Fleet, is alive or dead.
Few military analysts, […], believe the Ukrainian military’s optimistic daily account of Russian casualties running into the hundreds that is nonetheless reported widely in Ukrainian media.
It is the first time I see a public refutation of Ukraine’s laughable claims about Russian casualties in the mainstream media. It is also an indictment of the Biden administration and the Pentagon who publicly use the Ukrainian numbers.
The piece ends with a wise acknowledgement:
Mr. Gerashchenko said that, in the end, war propaganda is only effective when it accompanies battlefield successes. The missile strike on the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet last week, he said, was a “stunning success of Ukrainian intelligence and the air force that fired the cruise missiles on a supposedly well-defended site.”
“You cannot win the propaganda war without winning the real war,” he added.
Good to see that this obvious truth is finally sinking in.
—
Yesterday the Minister of Defense in Russia, Sergei Shoigu, gave an update (in Russian) on the war in Ukraine. The speech seemed to include a time frame for the war to end (machine translation):
The United States and its allies continue to arm the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and the Kiev regime throws untrained soldiers into senseless assaults, for slaughter.
Such cynical actions by the West and their cronies in Kiev only encourage Ukraine to self-destruct.”
“Under these conditions, we continue to increase the combat power of the Armed Forces, including through the supply of modern weapons and improving the training of troops, taking into account the experience of a special military operation. Consistent implementation of the activities of the Action Plan until 2025 will allow us to achieve our goals.”
Shoigu expects the war to run throughout 2024 and into 2025. But if the current loss rate of the Ukrainian army continues the country will be running out of soldiers and armored vehicles before the end of next year.
Posted by b on September 27, 2023 at 13:50 UTC | Permalink
Ask Prof Wolff: China Vs. a Myth of Stolen Technology
China has pulled it off because it is unique with huge, diligent and hard working population, and a one party state with consistent long term goals but flexible enough to adapt and adopt so as to be pragmatic.
Other Asian and South East Asian countries have similar ethos but their populations and geographical size are much smaller.
More to the point, those countries have multi-party political systems that would ensure continuous changes to whatever the previous government has done, ie no consistency in long term targets but all short term political gains (Western style).
Vietnam is actually a communist country but the US and the West like Vietnam; they rarely publicly criticise or smear Vietnam because it is not seen as a “threat”.
Singapore is a prosperous city state virtually dominated by one political party.
Rarely, if any, have I seen negative opinions of Singapore from the West. Some local and Asian people think that Singapore acts like a dictator.
So you know what I am leading to.
Political system may or may not matter. It is a matter of effective governance.
During an interview, the founder of Huawei questioned that how could the West accuse Huawei of stealing technologies from them that they had not got?
A senior employee said in an interview about 5G that the company had been researching on 6G several years ago.
By the end of 2020 the entire underground transport network in Shanghai was covered by 5G.
In contrast, the Mayor of London has promised to cover the entire London Underground network with 4G by the end of 2024.
That’s how much more advanced Chinese technology is in terms of development and implementation. Without Western interference of all kinds, I bet that African nations with help from China will leapfrog the West.
This may sound far-fetched.
The US will do its utmost, including starting a war and regime change, to next suppress the rise of Africa.
Many areas on the Belt and Road Initiative have since 2013 had bombings, massive political protests and chaotic civil wars etc.
This is the dirty work done by a particular organization to stop the success of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
If China and the Chinese had the technology to migrate to live in Mars, I bet the US would try to stop the Chinese travel in mid-space.
Grounding an adult has no effect other than making them more belligerent.
Instead, I changed her living conditions…
Turned off her phone service
Changed the wifi password
Changed the password for all TV services and accounts
Put a lock on the laundry room door, where the breaker box just happened to be located
Flipped the breaker for her room
Finally, I ordered take out for me for a full week and bought no groceries
After a week, she came in throwing a tantrum. I was abusing her! How dare I do this to her.
I calmly told her that family enjoys the perks of living in a family, including my electricity and food…but they also are respectful, do household chores or pay their share. Squatters get no considerations of family. And next week, there will be a lock on my room and no hot water in my guest bathroom.
She was a butthead for another week. She talked to other adults and the cops and CPS (who asked if she was a vulnerable adult who needed guardianship)…then decided being pleasant and respectful and doing about 2 hours of chores a week was worth the perks of being family.
I never raised my voice, never argued with her, simply impressed upon her what I no longer HAD to provide for an adult.
‘Armed to the Teeth’ Frankish Warrior’s Untouched Grave Found
In a discovery that has left historians and archaeologists astonished, a completely untouched grave from the Merovingian period was uncovered in Germany. Hidden among other graves that were plundered over a millennium ago, this singular grave had rested undisturbed for over 1,300 years.
The discovery was made by the archaeologists from the Kaiserpfalz Research Center , who have been digging at this early medieval burial ground since 2015. Christoph Bassler, excavation manager described the discovery:
“We first spotted the edge of a shield boss…It wasn’t immediately clear which grave it belonged to. But, as we dug further, the realization dawned that we had stumbled upon a grave that, for some reason, had been overlooked by ancient grave robbers.”
A 7th Century Frankish Warrior, ‘Armed to the Teeth’
The grave’s occupant, known as the “warrior from grave 447,” was evidently someone of importance in his time. A splendid double-edged sword, or ‘spathe’, lay next to him, measuring nearly 93 cm (3 foot) in its entirety. Its blade, even after so many centuries, remains slightly flexible , pointing to an impeccable state of preservation, noted Bassler.
The sword wasn’t the Frankish warrior’s only companion in the afterlife. A massive broadaxe, another heavy knife, a lance tip, and a shield were found, showcasing an array of almost every weapon from that era—except for a bow.
Interestingly, while adorned with an impressive weaponry collection, this man was not a full-time soldier. In the early Middle Ages , there were no standing armies as we know them today. Free men were expected to gear up and respond to their leader’s call to arms when required.
The Franks in Europe
The Franks, one of the prominent Germanic tribes, played a central role in the reshaping of European geography and politics after the fall of the Roman Empire . Their history in the region was rich and transformative.
Between the 5th and the 8th centuries, with the decline of Roman power, the Franks under King Clovis I unified various Frankish tribes and expanded their territories. In 486 AD, Clovis defeated the last Roman governor in Gaul, marking the end of Roman rule in that region. Clovis and his successors, known as the Merovingians, expanded the Frankish kingdom into what is now Germany, establishing a significant portion of the region as “Austrasia.” Under the Merovingians, the Franks converted to Christianity, and the fusion of Germanic and Roman traditions began.
Secrets Remain intact, For Now
While the grave’s goods have been handed over for restoration, further studies are expected to shed light on the precise dating and intricate details obscured by rust. For instance, silver inlays hidden beneath the rust layers, might offer deeper insights into the artistry of the time. “This incredible discovery adds a significant piece to our understanding of early medieval Ingelheim,” remarked department head Eveline Breyer.
Analyses are also underway to ascertain the cause of the man’s death, who was believed to be in his 30s or 40s when he passed. Whether he succumbed to illness or fell in battle remains to be seen, but given his grave’s martial ambiance, a warrior’s end in combat wouldn’t be unexpected.
Typically China doesn’t use political muscle to counter Anti Chinese sanctions or Anti Chinese hostility
image 103
China is in a very good position today
It is very strong, it is bustling with emerging technologies, every day sees new developments and it’s people are enjoying the lowest inflation possible and saving the most money in the world with very little personal debt
China is developing at a very rapid pace and surging ahead
It’s Military and Navy are building up at a rate that the US has not hit since 1944
image 104
Israel placed an order for 1.5 Million units of Body Armor Vests for their Paramilitary with China
Delivery within 30 days
Express order at 2.5 times original tender price
Bangladesh can do it, India can do it
Yet the quality, price and time taken combo is entirely Chinas baby
No Nation on earth can come even 50% close
At this stage, China is too prosperous to get into fights and get into any situation that could jeopardize it’s progress
In fact if you go to China, you will realize that a Company sanctioned by US is a MARK OF HONOR in Beijing
DJI is flush with orders from South America, Central America and the Middle East today
They lost a potential $ 4 Billion of deals in US and Europe and gained almost the entire $ 4 Billion in Saudi, Oman, Qatar and Brazil and Peru
Huawei has China
The Sheer Network in China alone would ensure Huawei covers 5G for 1.4 Billion people
Add the BRI Nations and another 36 Nations and you have a whopping 3.47 Billion People who are using Huawei equipment for their 5G
Plus Chinas smartphone market of 867 Million Units a year is more than US and EU and UK and Japan combined (574 Million Units)
Plus Huawei is an expert at using Western IP developed for Billions using a few tweaks and minting money on the same by spending pennies on the dollar
Best example is 3G and 4G.
The Collective West spent almost $ 15 Billion on the development
Huawei modified these IP and developed their 5G Patents by spending a mere $ 600 Million
Thus while Cisco hasn’t even recovered 15% of it’s investments, Huawei has already quadrupled it’s investments in 5G
image 102
China thus is in the best position to just sit by and surge ahead while doing very little
Things are so good for them that any counter action could make things worse
Huawei too is building a base among its Global South clients and will ultimately reach the peak without the West or their markets
Don’t under estimate China
They use their soft power for other things
This UNHRC is the best example
The Collective West twisted arms until they broke
Yet China grinned and became a full member for 2 more years
The Collective West twisted arms until they broke to avoid the BRICS expansion or the G20 condemnation of Putin
China crushed both these plans through tough diplomatic manoeuvres
The US is in a very weak place
It’s breaking up and is in deep trouble
Thus all this posturing to divert attention from the problems at home.
Same for UK, Canada and Europe
China has no such diversion needed
They just want to keep doing their job – developing Technology and soft power and surging ahead
FIRST TIME REACTING TO | Merkules ”Rich Men North Of Richmond” Remix
He’s been around many years. A true badass rapper. Dudes flow is always crazy.
I was 14. No friends. Each day I dragged myself home to where I lived with my schizophrenic Mother, just the two of us.
I would be in trouble for something: I lived in a perpetual state of confusion as I often couldn’t remember what she told me I had done.
She told me I was stupid and needed to go to a special school because I didn’t know what I had done wrong.
In the past she had often slapped me until my nose bled and beat me with the metal pole of a fly swatter, but that stopped the summer before high school.
She told me she didn’t love me repeatedly for months.
According to her I was a horrible daughter.
Her friends from church had stopped coming weekly to yell at me and slap me senseless as well. I knew when she sent me away with my Aunt and Uncle the summer that had passed she had read my diary, where I detailed all the abuse and talked about wanting to die.
She denied reading it, but it stopped the physical abuse so now it was just verbal and believe it or not that hurt just as bad.
I was unloveable and alone.
She didn’t work and depended on government assistance.
She just sat at home chain smoking and playing cards.
During the week I woke myself up, made breakfast, went to school. She complained about the smell of eggs in the morning and of course I was useless.
I had a hard time socializing, and she decided she didn’t like the friends I’d managed to make the previous year, so put me in a very small private Christian high school the church paid for.
As a low income, single parent house I was a freak among higher income two parent families.
So I spent my days an outsider and bullied at school and then came home to be bullied some more.
I got in trouble once because someone told her I walked around with my head down and never smiled!
I remember trying out and making the school play that year. I was so proud.
My Mother decided to use that as leverage for her every whim: if I did anything wrong (sang doing dishes) she threatened to not allow me to be in the play. It got so bad I just quit the play rather than have it continually be held over my head as a threat.
A school councillor regularily made me talk to him.
I refused to give anything up.
He persisted. He asked me if I was abused: as she was no longer hitting me I said no.
I had no words to explain the verbal abuse.
Being stupid and unloveable didn’t seem to qualify.
Then one magical day a girl at school approached me and we became friends.
A few weeks later she asked me if I could spend the weekend at her house.
Her house was beautiful and she lived with her parents and siblings and it was loud, noisy and chaotic.
On the Saturday of this weekend sleep over, my new friend had to take piano lessons so I was to hang out in her room until she got back.
I was surprised when both her parents wanted to speak with me while she was gone.
They informed me that the school had asked them to be my foster parents and presented me with a ‘contract’.
They gave me 30 minutes to decide if I wanted to live with them.
I was 14 years old.
I had no friends.
My Mother was the only family I had ever known.
I knew I was stupid. I knew that I was worthless and unloveable. 30 minutes was a ridiculous amount of time for a decision that would change the course of my life that I was too young to make. I didn’t know these people at all.
But a voice in my head screamed at me to do it, with everything it had.
So I took that leap of faith. I jumped off the cliff away from everything I’d ever known.
My roller coaster ride wasn’t over my any means, but to this day I am so grateful I left.
My life 30 years later is wonderful and I often wonder where I would be if I had stayed growing up in that horrible house.
The United States is confirming that the first (official) group of M1A1 Abrams tanks have arrived in Ukraine to be used against Russia. The escalation of fighting between Russia and Ukraine continues.
At some point, and we are now very close to it, Russia is going to declare the US a “combatant” in the fighting, and when that takes place, it will be public notice that we — here in the USA — are now subject to Russian military strikes.
Americans will be caught completely blind-sided if and when this takes place; they won’t understand how or why we got attacked by Russia – because our Mass-Media has not done its job to inform the public just how far our government public servants have escalated the fighting.
China just gave US chip materials’ permission, the US ordered to escalate sanctions against China!
For me, the most surprising thing about being rich is that it’s an incredibly isolating experience. What I mean by that is you can’t really complain about your problems except within your small circle of rich friends. Otherwise, you will sound like a douchebag. Even if you do, non-rich people can’t really empathize with you.
There are a few problems associated with being rich such as general (lack of) motivation for work, family/friends asking for money, worry for how to motivate kids, spouse with different attitudes toward life after getting rich, potential spouse being a gold digger, unexpected jealous reaction from friends/family, pressure to deal with more complex tax, estate planning and investment planning and etc.
The joy of “set for life” doesn’t seem to offset the anxiety from hoarding the huge sum of money. In addition, when you don’t work because you are rich but can’t hang out with your friends who have to work during the week, you feel like an outcast of society.
Overall, being rich is very isolating and that’s the most surprising thing I have experienced.
China’s new missile DF 51, called a small Sarmat, can evade the Aegis defense system at sea
The New DF-51 ballistic missile can carry 10 miniature missiles. When the DF-51 flies to a certain area and launches 10 atomic bombs at the same time, the power is so great that the existing air defense system of the United States cannot bear it at all.
I watched a 90 lb female put a 235 lb guy in the hospital. This was a fight between 2 neighbors in my neighborhood. This guy harassed her for weeks then for some reason he decided to walk up to her front porch and knock on her door. I was sitting on my front porch when it happened. I was thinking this is not going to be good, and had my cell phone within reach.
She open her door and in a clear loud voice, she requested he get off her property. He said, what are you going to do about it. She said, I’ll call the police. He laughed at her and reached for the screen door. Before I could move she kicked him in the head twice, swept his legs out from under him, and he was down and bleeding.
I started to call the police, but again before I could dial the number a patrol car pulled up and the officer put the guy in handcuffs. I just sat there, drank my coffee and waited for him to come over and ask what I saw. I told him and signed the bottom of the form.
As he walked away he said you know the woman? I replied yes, she’s a former Marine. He chuckled and said. I guess the guy didn’t know that, and I laughed.
How I see the US after living in Europe for 5 years
“I moved to France 5 years ago. Came home to Maryland to spend Christmas with the family. I got sick, went to the ER, and came out with a bill worth $1,900. The doctor saw me a week later for a follow-up. I needed surgery and it would cost more than $ 45,000. I went back to France after the holidays, saw a doctor, got surgery, 2 months off work and I PAID NOTHING. “
In 1974, Xi volunteered to go to Liangjiahe, a dirt-poor village in Northwestern China. His dad was getting the rough treatment during the Cultural Revolution, so he probably felt that getting out of Beijing was a safer move. So he volunteered.
China’s GDP per capita in the 70’s was around $100 per year, which is obviously not great. But Liangjiahe was a totally different ball game. It was a famously poor place. I would guess the GDP per capita was maybe $20 a year. No, I did’t miss any zeros. It was really that poor. There was no electricity, no indoor plumbing, no toilet, no heat, no rice or flour. Corn was a luxury, millet and wild grass were the normal diet. and people just dug dirt caves out of mountains to live.
The villagers that Xi lived with – were mostly illiterate and covered in fleas. So Xi looked around, and was like, fleas, oh well, I just have to get used to it. Food? That’s OK, I’ll take a hoe and go farm with the villagers. We can feed ourselves. Electricity? Water? Nah, nothing can be done about that. So what do we have? Poop! OK, so we have poop. We can make something with that, maybe.
So he read about fermenting poop to make methane gas, and tried to build a poop-fermenter in his village, so that people can use it for light and cooking at night. He was only 16 or 17 at that time, so he wasn’t very good and got the pipe stuck, so he had to jump into the cesspool to clear the pipe, and got poop all over himself, but he got it working. The next year he traded his motorbike for a water pump and some other tools for the village, and pretty soon his village was getting more prosperous. He stayed and worked in that village for 7 years, applied to join the CCP 10 times, got rejected 9 times, and finally got admitted on the 10th time. The villagers promptly elected him the Party Secretary of the village.
That was how he started his political career in China.
He’s not unique.
Actually, all of China’s leaders have been through absolute hell to get to where they are.
CCP tradition is that unless you start from the very bottom, you’ll never get to the very top. I mean, you are selecting 7 out of 80 million, once every 10 years, so the CCP traditionally has been absolutely ruthless in terms of discipline and promotion.
Election bribery? Expel 70.
Industrial accident? Send 25 to jail.
Corruption? Punish 100,000 in one year.
Get GDP to grow at 10%+, while keep your nose clean? OK, you get a one step promotion.
A small purge once every 2 years.
A big purge once every 5 years.
You’ve got to beat out 80 million people to get there, and everybody is swimming as hard as you are. The ones who pop out at the end, after 35 years, are all NOT your normal people!
When Beijing announced the plan to eliminate extreme poverty in 2015, most foreign observers were dubious. Can China Wipe Out Poverty By 2020?
Since the announcement, People Daily, the top Chinese newspaper, has been literally reporting on poverty reduction DAILY – success, failure, method, strategy, recidivism, lessons learned, statistics, etc. Everyday! I suspect the guy is actually serious about it.
Why I Am Leaving The United States and Never Coming Back
In this video I will be explaining why i am leaving the united states and never coming back. this discussion consists of reasons like social life in the united states, dating in the united states, cost of living for quality of life and more. I am going to thailand for the first time leaving the country in a couple months. expect upcoming traveling vlogs.
I sit behind the students and use an iPad hooked up to a projector to show them things on a screen in front of them.
It’s a really big screen, too. It’s one of those “backyard movie projection” screens, for which I built a frame and now it’s taking up the better part of one wall in my classroom. I have the projector at the back of the classroom, aiming over the students’ heads. And, since the projector is next to my desk (which is a sit/stand desk, by the way), I can physically plug my iPad into it. I tried doing this all wirelessly a few years ago, but it was more trouble than it was worth.
Usually, I’m showing them pages from their textbooks or workbooks. I snap pictures of the relevant pages for that day, turn them all into a single .pdf, and work my way through them, for the class to see. I use an Apple Pencil to mark them us as I go.
If the students seem bored, I ask for volunteers to come over to the iPad and do a few problems for everyone to see. The students enjoy it when one of their classmates takes on the role of “teacher.” The students who are taking on that role enjoy using the iPad and Apple Pencil.
Every now and then, I have to sub in another teacher’s classroom for a single period. No one else at this school has a set-up like mine. I genuinely don’t understand how teachers can stand being in front of their students while they’re trying to teach them, writing things on a whiteboard. Turning your back on your students while you write on the board is nerve-racking for me.
As an added bonus, when I’m using the iPad as a whiteboard or e-reader, and our textbook mentions something interesting, I can quickly and easily pull up YouTube or Safari, to enlighten the students a little more. Just this morning, our lesson on appositives featured 10 sentences about jazz music, including several about Louis Armstrong and Wynton Marsalis. I was able to pull up videos of both men, so the students could see who we were learning about. I was then able to find out that, not only is Marsalis still alive (the students asked me), but he’s playing in Chicago next spring.
At least once per day, I pull up something online that one of our textbooks mentions, to teach the students a little more about it.
Originally, I sat behind my students so I could see their screens when they were online. Yes, there is monitoring software, but just looking around at their screens in much easier. That was 15 years ago, when I began teaching. I’ve been doing it like this ever since.
The Video I Never Wanted to Make.
This is honestly getting scary hopefully it doesn’t get as bad as we all think but something tells me that we may not get that lucky. Crazy to think I am only 28 years old and I am prepper but i might have to start teaching my family how to do this stuff. Everyone stay safe.
Several years ago I inherited a “team” of people that included a lady I’ll call “Nancy.” She was what we called a houseplant: she’d been there forever and didn’t do much, but firing her would be a mess.
Nancy was a disaster from day 1. She would take two hour lunches. She’d hand in work so poor I could have just done it.
I once asked her to compile a spreadsheet and all she did was dump files into a folder and send it to me. She literally had one job of compiling a single report that she was doing. We even made her a simple guide that anyone could follow. We had her do this because it kept her away from everyone.
She also had beefs with three of my other people, so much that I moved people around the office to avoid her. She once accused a lady of drinking beer at her desk and it turned out to be some generic cola from Winn Dixie. When she wasn’t satisfied by this she reported me and the lady to HR. One fellow on my team was on long term pain management after being wounded by an IED in Afghanistan. He took some serious pain medication but he was a fantastic employee. Again, she called HR on him after telling her to mind her own business. When HR didn’t do anything she called the police and tried to have him arrested for drug possession.
One day we were doing end-of-year reporting and needed the report that Nancy was running. I go to the share drive and it’s empty. I ask her for it and she claims it’s there. I check again and it’s just raw data from our database.
I go over to her desk and ask what was happening. She immediately lies and says I never told her about the report. I point out the file detailing the steps on how to pull the report on her desktop.
One of my other employees, Wondah (pronounced Wanda) walks over and is trying to help. Nancy keeps trying to just push her away or delete files. Wondah tells her she’s costing us time and resources and it hits. Nancy looks at Wondah and yells “Shut up n*gger!”
The office goes quiet. I take two steps back. I put my hand on Wondah’s shoulder and gently pull her back a bit. I call over a neutral guy on another team. I ask him to walk Nancy out of the office and wait.
30 seconds later I’m on a conference call with HR confirming she’s getting fired. Wondah and five other employees confirm what she said.
I walk out in the hallway. Any illusion of civility is gone. Now she’s spitting and swearing at everyone. I tell her she’s fired. I get deluged by a string of racist screeds and threats to send her sons to my house to kill me. Security is there to escort her out. She turns and spits at me.
She tried suing the company for everything under the sun. On the stand she was a total disaster of a witness and I think the jury hated her as much as I did at that point.
She lost and had to pay our legal fees. Last I heard she’d fled the country to avoid paying a bunch of debts.
As a gullible 30 y.o. I met a really cute man that seemed to like me. We started dating. His car broke down and he asked to borrow $80. I loaned it to him and he returned it. About 6 weeks later, his Mom had an emergency and he needed $400 and asked to borrow it until the next payday. I loaned it to him. Then I found out he had a live-in girlfriend and child. She came to my work and tried to beat me up for trying to steal her boyfriend. I broke up with him but I tried to get my money back. That wasn’t happening. He kept trying to get back with me, but I found a note that he had written about how much money I had in my checking account. He didn’t realize it had fallen out of wherever he put it. So I decided to beat him at his own game. I asked him to meet me for lunch at a restaurant. I had stashed a dear friend of mine at another table within ear shot and vision of what I was doing. I had handwritten a small “loan agreement with interest” that I told him I needed him to sign for me to rebuild trusting him. The Sucker signed it thinking it wasn’t valid. My friend witnessed it and signed as a witness. I then took him to Small Claims Court, asked for damages and Court costs, garnished his wages, and got my money back over time, including interest.
10 Reasons Why You Should NEVER Move to the United States
The USA has become a TERRIBLE place.
Apricot Cobbler
Apricot Cobbler
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
Filling
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 cup water
3 (15 1/4 ounce) cans apricot halves, drained
1 tablespoon butter
Topping
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons cold butter
1/2 cup milk
Instructions
Filling
In a saucepan, combine sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon and nutmeg.
Stir in water; bring to a boil over medium heat. Boil and stir for 1 minute; reduce heat.
Add apricots and butter; heat through. Pour into a greased 2 quart baking dish.
Topping
Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a bowl; cut in butter until crumbly.
Stir in milk just until moistened. Spoon over hot apricot mixture.
Bake at 400 degrees F for 30 to 35 minutes or until golden brown and a wooden pick inserted into the topping comes out clean.
When I was 14 years old my Mom suddenly decided she wanted to move to Colorado. Apparently it was a place she had always wanted to see, so next thing I knew we were living in the ultra small town of Limon, Colorado. I was not happy about this at all. My brother, who was 19 at the time, had stayed in South Carolina. All of my friends were still in South Carolina. I was miserable.
I spent my freshman year in Limon, and hated almost everything about it. The one part I didn’t hate was that my freshman class of 30 students included 5 guys and 25 girls. That was fun. On the other hand, I was the fattest kid in school, so even playing football didn’t help me in that arena.
One day, about a week after school let out for summer, I was sitting in my bedroom listening to music when I suddenly really wanted to hang out with my brother. I didn’t even think about it. I grabbed my rucksack that I used for camping, loaded it up with clothes, my radio and some tapes (this was 1990), and I walked out the door. I was going to hitchhike the almost 1500 miles to South Carolina.
It took me 63 hours to get there. To this day I am amazed at how easy it actually was, and how fast I made it there. What’s even more amazing is that when I showed up at my Aunt’s front door (my brother was living with her after we moved) it was my Mom who met me at the door. As soon as she had gotten home from work and I wasn’t there she knew what I had done and where I was going. Since she was able to drive straight through she made the trip far quicker than I did.
My Mom was angry, but she was just as relieved that I was safe, so she agreed that we could stay for one week before we headed back to Limon. That was on a Friday. The following Wednesday was June 6th, 1990. That date might not matter to most people, but it was very important to us, because of this:
A tornado ripped through the town, destroying almost half of the town – including the apartment we were living in at the time. If we hadn’t been in South Carolina, I would have been home when it came through, and likely would not be alive right now.
Oddly enough, this would not be the last time something like that would happen to me. In 2010 I made the split-second decision to move back to South Carolina again, leaving behind my apartment in Joplin, Missouri. I had already been planning to move, but my plan had been to go to Florida to be near my parents. At the last minute my Mom told me not to come because the Space Center had just laid off 10,000 NASA employees, and that was a job market I did not want to try to compete in during those hard times. I could have stayed in Joplin, but I had already sold off most of my furniture, so I just decided, “Screw it, I’ll go back to South Carolina.”
A year later, Joplin was hit by an F5 tornado that destroyed almost 25% of the town — including the apartment I had been living in when I was there. Combined with the fact that an entire street I lived on in South Carolina was destroyed by a tornado a couple years after I moved away, and the fact that I left South Carolina months before Hurricane Hugo hit, and again just before Hurricane Andrew hit, and now my friends joke that if I ever move away they are all coming with me.
Jamaican Sista Warns Black Immigrants, The American Dream Is A Farce Because US Is A Plantation
“You will work until you are literally DEAD!”
Stacked 1,400-Year-Old Zhou Dynasty Emperor’s Tomb Uncovered in China
Archaeologists in Shaanxi Province, northwest China, have discovered the tomb of Emperor Xiaomin (birth name Yuwen Jue), the founding emperor of the Northern Zhou Dynasty (557-581). Emperor Xiaomin’s tomb, a medium-sized one in the context of the Northern Zhou dynasty, is situated in Beihe Village, Weicheng District, Xianyang, an area known for its concentration of high-quality tombs spanning from the Northern Dynasties (439-581) to the Sui and Tang dynasties (581-907).
Uncovering Zhou Dynasty Emperor Tomb: Medium-Sized but Power Packed
The tomb itself faces south and is a single-chamber soil cave tomb with four patios along the sloping tomb passage, according to a press announcement by Shaanxi Academy of Archaeology on Tuesday. Covering a total length of 56.84 meters (186.5 ft) from north to south, the bottom of the tomb lies 10 meters (32.8 ft) beneath the current surface.
According to the press announcement:
“The archaeological discovery of Yuwen Jue’s tomb from the Northern Zhou Dynasty is of great significance. It is the second Northern Zhou emperor’s tomb that has been excavated after the Xiaoling Mausoleum of Emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou Dynasty.”
Though the tomb had previously been looted, archaeologists have managed to recover 146 burial objects, primarily pottery figurines in a single chamber holding funerary offerings, depicting warriors and cavalry units. Furthermore, the presence of an epitaph on the tomb’s eastern side has allowed archaeologists to confirm that the tomb belonged to Emperor Xiaomin (542-557), reports Heritage Daily .
This discovery holds immense significance for historical research into the emperors of the Northern Dynasty , as highlighted by Zhao Zhanrui, an assistant researcher at the academy.
Northern Zhou: Foundation of a Short-Lived Dynasty
Rather than assuming the title of emperor, Xiaomin, also known as Emperor Ming of Northern Zhou, chose to adopt the Zhou Dynasty’s title of “Heavenly Prince.” However, his reign was marred by internal strife and power struggles. A significant conflict unfolded between Xiaomin and his cousin, Yuwen Hu, who sought to consolidate his own power.
In a dramatic turn of events, Yuwen Hu managed to depose Xiaomin from his position and subsequently had him killed. This political maneuvering further highlighted the instability and internal divisions that plagued the Northern Zhou Dynasty during its relatively brief existence.
The Northern Zhou Dynasty , which reigned from 557 to 581 AD, was a significant but relatively short-lived era in the history of ancient China . Founded by Yuwen Tai, who took the title of Emperor Wen upon his ascent to power, the dynasty was established following a successful rebellion against the ruling Northern Wei Dynasty .
The Northern Zhou’s capital was Chang’an, an influential city located in what is now Xi’an, Shaanxi Province. Chang’an was known for its cultural richness and strategic importance as a center of trade and governance .
One of the most notable aspects of the Northern Zhou Dynasty was its association with Buddhism. Emperor Wen and his successor, Emperor Wu, were fervent Buddhists, and they played a pivotal role in promoting Buddhism as the state religion. They supported the construction of Buddhist temples , sponsored the translation of Buddhist scriptures, and actively contributed to the growth of Buddhism in China. This period marked a significant turning point in Chinese religious and cultural history.
Emperor Wen and Emperor Wu also implemented important political reforms aimed at strengthening the central authority of the emperor. Land redistribution was one such reform, aimed at reducing the power of the aristocracy and redistributing land to the common people. These efforts were indicative of the dynasty’s desire to create a more equitable society.
Despite these reforms, the Northern Zhou Dynasty faced challenges. The empire’s unity weakened over time, leading to regional fragmentation and conflicts among various power centers. Eventually, the Northern Zhou Dynasty succumbed to internal strife, and it was conquered by the Sui Dynasty in 581. This marked the end of the dynasty’s relatively short but culturally impactful existence.
Legacy and Historical Relevance of the Northern Zhou
The legacy of the Northern Zhou Dynasty lives on in several ways. Its patronage of Buddhism had a lasting influence on Chinese religion, culture, and art. The dynasty’s contributions to calligraphy and sculpture, particularly in the context of Buddhist art, marked significant advancements in Chinese culture. Furthermore, some of its political reforms, such as those related to land distribution, influenced subsequent Chinese dynasties, including the powerful Tang Dynasty.
Notably, the Northern Zhou Dynasty was unique in its ethnic background. Its founding emperor, Yuwen Tai, belonged to the Xianbei ethnic group, making the dynasty one of the few in Chinese history to be ruled by a non-Han Chinese ethnic group, a rarity.
FILIPINA WIFE DEFENDING PASSPORT BROS.
One of the best, most intelligent responses to these woke, American women. Thanks Leah. You and Gary have a great family and life. Wish you both the best!
Man oh man! The Geo-political changes are happening hot and heavy! HEAVY!
My MM articles are now at a 35 post backlog. Shit! Half of you will be reading 1/2 month old articles by the time I get around to posting them.
Do not freak out.
Lots of things going on in the world today. It’s a massive realignment of the world AWAY from the USA dominance. The thing is that the Western peoples, and their “leadership” are clueless as to what is really going on. They still believe that they have some kind of power or ability in these matters.
Nope.
It’s all strategic retreats… for now.
The running away and full-scale, across the board, running and galloping rout comes later.
Maybe this year. Don’t ya know.
Have fun. Enjoy yourself.
Today I am catching up. We have a typhoon raging outside so I have an opportunity to play some catch up. Israel, Ukraine, and all the rest, especially Africa are in states of flux.
I’m not worried. The USA will retreat and the rest of the world will be secure.
The long-term forecasts clearly favor China by every measure.
If American companies fail to use this period of time to invest, they will not be able to “jump on the bandwagon” and take advantage of opportunities that are presenting themselves today.
If the Biden “government” insists that all American (and allied) companies “sit this one out”, then the entire American and Western industry will fall back and will NEVER be able to catch up.
…
China is being kind.
The United States NEEDS to “carefully consider” the long-term ramifications of their current actions.
As China gets stronger, more important, more dominant in all areas, the United States is at risk to not only falling behind, but going absolutely obsolete in the process.
This is not something that China wants.
…
China wants and prefers a vibrant world; one where different regions; nations, societies and people thrive. In the world that China envisions, it is a WIN-WIN for everyone.
However, the path that the United States has embarked on is fraught with danger. And the United States appears to be on fast-track towards becoming a blight; a mawed gouge in an otherwise improved world.
…
So China is being very polite, and very understated.
However, the truth is the truth.
Philly Cheesesteak Stuffed Peppers
Philly Cheesesteak Stuffed Peppers 1200 7517
Ingredients
1 pound bottom round steak, thinly sliced
2 bell peppers, halved and cored
Avocado oil
Bell peppers, sliced thinly
Red onion, sliced thinly
White onion, sliced thinly
Pickled jalapeños, chopped
1/2 pound Monterey Jack cheese, shredded
Onion salt
Sea salt
Pepper
Instructions
Heat oven 350 degrees F.
Drizzle avocado oil on bell papers. Bake for 17 to 20 minutes.
Heat a large frying pan over medium-high and add a little avocado oil.
Season steak with onion salt, sea salt and pepper. Sear each side of steak for about 1 to 2 minutes and remove to let rest a couple minutes.
Cut steak into small 1/4 to 3/8 inch square pieces.
Heat frying pan over medium heat and add avocado oil when warm.
Add thinly sliced onions and bell peppers to pan and cook while stirring often for about 10 minutes.
Mix steak, cheese, bell peppers, onions and jalapeños in a bowl.
Fill bell peppers, then bake for 10 minutes until cheese is melted.
In 2001, two ancient statues were blown up in Afghanistan on the orders of the Taliban. The monumental statues were called the “Buddhas of Bamiyan,” and they were carved into the side of a cliff in the Bamiyan valley of Afghanistan.
They were destroyed after the Taliban declared the ancient Buddhist statues to be false idols and had them blown up.
image 68
In a crazy twist of luck seven, years after the statues were blown up, an Afghan-led archaeological team discovered a series of hidden caves behind that statues. In the caves, they found oil paintings that dated back to the 5th century. This pre-dates the common perception that oil paintings originated in Europe hundreds of years later.
The Israeli Defense Force has declared they are in “a state of war” after over eight hundred rockets were fired into Israel today. Fighters from HAMAS para-glided into southern Israel using fan gliders to cross over the border, landing and killing everyone they see! Today’s “state of war” declaration has not happened since 1973.
Numerous Israeli civilians are already dead, some shot dead just standing in Bus Stops; many more are injured.
At about 1:17 AM EDT Saturday, the Israeli Defense Force made a public declaration that this is a “State of War.”
The last time Israel announced a “State of War” was in 1973. And the first time Israel was surprised by an attack like today’s was in 1973.
Air Raid Sirens are blaring throughout Israel as the Iron Dome air defense systems engage more incoming missiles.
This is taking place NOW. Live updates to appear below . . .
Casual Observers of the never-ending situation between Israel and Palestinians are commenting publicly right now “This is quickly heading toward a Full-Scale War near the Gaza Strip and Southern Israel, this is Totally Out-of-Control.”
Terrorists from Gaza invaded southern Israeli civilian cities – and they’re shooting whoever they see. This is unprecedented. Israel in under attack. pic.twitter.com/5Ngrjm4uts— נריה קראוס Neria Kraus (@NeriaKraus) October 7, 2023
Fighting is widespread and fierce:
Video below shows the Iron Dome air defense system engaging multiple inbound rockets:
By 1:00 AM eastern US time Saturday, at least sixteen Israelis were confirmed injured and at least ONE was confirmed dead, but there is already ample evidence of MANY dead.
(HT NOTE:I am already reaching out to my former colleagues in the Intelligence Community from during my years working with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) to get more detailed info and the “Back Story” but things are a bit chaotic right now over there, and it is very early over here, so information is coming very slowly . . . .)
— Hamas military chief calls on armed groups in Lebanon to join the fighting against Israel
— Civilians massacred by Hamas terrorists in Sderot.
— According to Al Jazeera television, Israel has begun bombing Gaza by Air, Sea, and Artillery.
— Israeli Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant has Approved an order to begin the Call-Up of Reservists to Reinforce and Support the Israeli Defense Force.
Below, images of what are reported to be an Israeli “Merkava” tank, burned-out and smashed outside of the GAZA Strip:
image 73image 72
Palestinian Fighters taking Israeli’s Captive:
An IDF soldier has reportedly been Captured . . . Israel calls that “kidnapped.”
Hostage situations reported in Southern Israel.
Palestinian infiltrators have taken over a police station in Sderot and are currently in an active firefight with Israeli police.
Livestreams from Palestinian infiltrators show them executing/ shooting Israeli citizens.
Unconfirmed reports of 10 killed and 2 IDF soldiers captured after clashes on the Gaza border.
Due to rocket salvos throughout Israel, Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv is closed.
— The Government has just declared an “Emergency situation” for an 80km perimeter from Gaza borders
— The Israeli army announces the loss of control of an Israeli military site in the northern Gaza Strip. The soldiers are either captured or dead.
Ashkelon Burning
Map showing Air Raid Alert areas in Israel:
image 71
Heavy rocket barrages on Jerusalem area, rocket alert siren in Wadi Ara in northern Israel; emergency situation declared in entire southern & central Israel.
WARNING – GRAPHIC IMAGES
Below, a man reported to have been an Israeli Soldier, but who is already clearly shot through the head and dead, is dragged from a car and stomped in the street:
WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES
An Israeli soldier has been taken by Palestinian fighters into the Gaza Strip.
The guy circled below is in the last minute of his life.
He and the guy in the vest were talking trash to each other, escalating a situation and having an ego battle.
image 70
What the guy in the red shorts didn’t realize, is that the other guy was armed with a knife. As he goes to tackle the armed man, he is fatally stabbed. The knife severed a major artery and blood poured out of the man’s body. He couldn’t have survived this wound if it happened in a hospital.
All because he wanted to get into a fist fight with someone who disrespected him.
To the men reading this, especially, getting into a fight with a complete stranger is one of the most dangerous things you could ever do. To you, it might be a fist fight. To them, it might be much more.
On March 25, 2022, 17-year-old Michigan teen, Jordan DeMay put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger. His demise came as a huge surprise to his parents, who noticed nothing unusual before the tragedy.
Unknown to them, Jordan had been in an online relationship with a ‘woman’ he met on Instagram. They had exchanged nu*de photographs, but he had no idea he was chatting with two Nigerian men: 22-year-old Samuel and his 20 year-old brother, Samson Ogoshi.
image 62
With Jordan’s nu*des in their possession, they resorted to extortion. They demanded $1000 from him, and although he managed to send $300, it wasn’t enough. They threatened to leak the photos to his Instagram followers if he didn’t send the rest.
After several failed attempts to change their minds, he sent them his final message: ‘I am k-illing myself right now because of you.’ To this, they responded, ‘Good, do that fast, or I will make you do it.’
The brothers have been apprehended in Nigeria and extradited to the US to face trial.
Once I lived across the street from a high school and every day at lunch the students would cross in front of my house on their way to get food. A lot of them crossed through my yard which was annoying but not a big deal. Well one day there was this long hair stoner punk standing in my yard gouging a hole in my lawn with a big stick. I shouted at him to get the fuck off my lawn, he shouted back at me and we got into a low grade shouting match (fuck you! No fuck you! —that sort of thing) as he walked away.
I thought that was the end of it, but then a few days later in the morning I realize my house and truck had been egged. These geniuses had egged me during a rainstorm, however, so all the egg had washed off. The only way I knew was from the eggshells and a little residual yolk in my truck bed that I easily wiped off with a paper towel. Still, the principle of the situation called for vengeance. I was a grad student with a lot of time in my hands, so I got onto myspace (kiddos, myspace was like a proto-facebook popular for a minute in the mid-2000’s) and spent hours clicking through the networks of kids attending that high school until I found his page. Bingo!! This kid was a stoner raver dude and not exactly a genius ( egging in the rain, eg). His myspace page was full of pics of him drinking vodka, smoking blunts, and arranging smalltime drug deals on his and his friends pages, out in the open with no privacy controls!
Next I clicked through all his friends’ pages and happened to stumble on one where he had left his phone number (home phone — this was when only grownups had cells) on a girl’s page. So I paid $5 to reverse-lookup the number and got his parents’ names and address. Then I printed out all his pics and references to drug use and buying/selling along with a handy glossary of drug terms, put it in an envelope and mailed it to his mom. For good measure I emailed a link to his page to the principal and school police officer at his school along with a note expressing how concerned I was that this kid was dealing drugs in school.
I continued to monitor his page to see if I could find out what happened. His activity ceased and his friends were leaving messages on his page saying ‘Dan where are you??’. Apparently he was not in school. After a while his friends began to learn what happened and were discussing it on their pages. Apparently, he got expelled and his parents sent him to reform school!! So delicious. It was great revenge, and hopefully the intervention steered him toward a better path in life. Wish I had a way of finding out what happened to the kid in the long run, as this was 13 years ago.
Once, while in high school, I went to a store in my small town to buy a gallon of milk for my family. I paid the cashier with a $5 bill but she somehow gave me change for a $20.
I didn’t notice her mistake until I was almost home- I had too much money. I told my Mom that I was going to return it to the store. When I walked in the store, the cashier was not at her place so I went to the back and talked to a man in the meat market area (it was a small business not a chain store like we have nowadays).
I told him I had received too much money in change. He looked at me with a look like “WOW”. He then said, “You are an honest young man, aren’t you?”
I told him that I would have felt like I was stealing if I didn’t return the extra money.
Come to find out that he was the owner of the store. He thanked me and said he would not forget about my honesty.
Well, three years passed and I needed a job. I went in to fill out an application for a job at the same store. When I asked for an application at the front counter, the owner came out of the meat market area and asked if he could help me with anything. I asked him for a job application. He said, “You are hired. Can you start tomorrow?”
Now it was my turn to have a “WOW” look on my face. He told me that he remembered me from when I had returned the extra money.
So…by me not keeping $17 three years earlier, I made way more money for three years while I went to work there after high school.
He also trained me to be a butcher, too.
It does pay to be honest.
This is a true story that I told my kids (and every sports player I coached) as they grew up.
This case was famously called the “ Mormon sex in chains case.” In 1977, 17-year-old American Mormon missionary student Kirk Anderson was in the UK when he was kidnapped from the steps of a Mormon church in Surrey.
Kirk Anderson was kidnapped by 24-year-old Keith May after posing as a fake Journalist. He was then driven to a house in Devon, where he was chained to a bed. He was then seduced and raped by Joyce McKinney for three days against his will, while chained to a bed.
image 64
Kirk went straight to the police to report Joyce and her accomplice Keith May. The two were charged and during a committal hearing Joyce, claimed to be in love with the victim. At the time, under the Sexual Offences Act 1956, no crime of rape was deemed to have happened due to the perpetrator being female.
Although Joyce couldn’t be charged with rape, she was charged with kidnapping, along with her accomplice. Joyce McKinney and Keith May absconded to the US under fake names, skipping their trial. They were sentenced to a year in Jail for skipping bail, but extradition orders were never filed by UK authorities.
image 63
She became quiet infamous and even appeared in some raunchy photos for a magazine. She still lives in the US, and to this day, she has never seen a day inside prison for her crimes. She also received a suspended sentence for using a fake ID to enter the US.
BUSTED: Trudeau’s Plane Filled With Cocaine, Psychedelic Drugs!? Diplomat Outs Scumbag Canadian PM
Mr Benny, I’m Canadian and we are not all under Trudeau. I think he should be charged and tried for treason.
Fighter jets from multiple countries played relay
in a reflection of how geopolitics have changed
when President Assad and his family left China after attending the Asian Games and State visit on Air China Special jet B6131. It was escorted by Chinese fighter jets.
as soon as the plane left China and entered Pakistani airspace, fighter jets from Pakistan Air Force escorted the plane
when the Special jet left Pakistani airspace and entered the Arabian Sea, fighter jets from the Iranian Air Force escorted the Special plane along the Persian Gulf
jet fighters from Saudi Arabia subsequently took over and escorted the special plane to Jordan
at the Syrian border, Russian jet fighters took over for the last leg of the journey.
countries that were once bitter foes are now coming together under a BRI Eurasian world
and demonstrating their military coordination
it is now clear that Muslim countries of the Middle East will now COLLECTIVELY provide a powerful and decisive military contingent as part of a BRI Eurasian world in the war that will be fought
triggered by the Angel of Death himself who will once again lead a world wide coalition of countries obsessed with racial superiority, brutality and consumed with hatred against others not like them to complete what he had failed to do in World War 2……to burn the world down
You are not going to exist forever. You’re just a tiny speck in this vast universe and your time in this world is limited.
Anything harsh said to a loved one in anger leaves a permanent scar, no matter how much you try to bandage it.
Health is the most important wealth you can acquire. No matter how much gold you own, it can not quell the torture of an illness.
Every old person was once as old as you are today. Time stops for none.
Things which are most important for you today might be worthless tomorrow. Avoid spending money on urges.
Something as simple as saying sorry first can prevent countless disputes. It is not a sign of weakness.
Who your friends are determine who you become.
To become good at conversation, learn to be a good listener first.
Luck favours those who don’t give up
Be grateful if you have a roof for shelter, clean water for drinking , food on your table and a healthy functioning body. Try to imagine the absence of even one of these in your life.
This Kitten was LEFT FOR DEAD: What Happens Next Will SHOCK YOU
When I still worked for the Forest Service, right after 9/11, the newly created Department of Homeland Security went crazy issuing all kinds of new rules for federal employees. One was knives and sharp objects were no longer allowed in federal buildings. We all shook our heads and muttered “WTF!!! This is the Forest Service. Axes and knives are part our EDC. Tools of the trade.” All field going personnel carried a 4″ folding blade knife, that was mandatory, and most had a favorite tool they carried. Mine was a double bit axe I shaped and filed to my specifications. I did not leave it in my pickup at the end of the day. I carried it to my desk. Most others did too. Walking down the hallway carrying a sharp hand tool was a common sight.
We had a warehouse full of sharp tools and chainsaws. We used incendiary devices and napalm for prescribed burning. We used a scoped rifle to shoot cones out of trees for seed collection I received fire investigation training that showed me how to commit arson without detection. Yet we could not be trusted to carry a knife in the office.
The rule was ignored by everyone, including top management.
You Won’t Believe Who’s The Mastermind Behind Failed Coup Against Ibrahim Traoré!
Stay Strong My Brother, All Africans we need to STAND TOGETHER.
The BRI is a very simple idea on a very grand scale:
China will help to buiid ports, highways and railways in other countries, to facilitate mutual trade and commerce.
If you don’t have enough money, China will lend you some.
That’s about it. Participation is voluntary – China doesn’t force you to have a port or take a loan. And of course, before any country takes any BRI loan, its government, with its Finance Minister and accountants and economics advisers, will think carefully about the pros and cons. Simple as that.
The criticism came about because, well:
… the US government is paying USD 500 million to get the media to criticize the BRI.
The U.S. made more money on trade and business with China than any other nation in the last decade and within a decade it will double.
Think about this for every outlet of McDonald’s, KFC and Starbucks and Coffee Bean open in the U.S. they opened 10 in China! China alone buy more GM than the entire U.S.! Every Apple and Dell sold they make 300 USD due to China’s productivity low cost of production. China’s middle income is now 3 times the size of the U.S. middle income consumer! Most of US brands produced in China is laughing all the way to the bank.
And what did the U.S. do? Yes the fxxk it all up. They pick a fight with their biggest customer and about to be bigger than the next 5 biggest customers put together! The U.S. is now facing an unbearable inflation and an impending recession due to your two 80 year old leader jointly and severally starting a trade war with China! And China have not really retaliated yet.
About the only thing the U.S. is able to make and sell to China. It stupidly ban China from selling! Ok to be fair it bans the 1% of high end Chips. Thinking China will buy the 99% that China could make but thought it let the U.S. share the piece of the pie! But since the U.S. says has evil intentions. China immediately stopped buying the 99%. And the entire U.S. chip industry crashed. Now China has the ability to even take over the 1% high end chips too.
You cannot find a more foolish government on planet earth or perhaps the universe. They even think that China will collapse if the U.S. stop buying or trading with China. China in their mind says if the U.S. wants to have a long rope to hang itself that is their right. China suffers a mosquito bite!
Amidst Laos’ rugged mountainous landscapes, a daily spectacle unfolds as dozens of trains race through, carrying a diverse array of goods, from electronics to cold-chain fruits, bound for destinations in China, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, and beyond. For the people of Laos who had endured the impact of dire transportation for decades, however, these sights have lost their novelty.
Two years have passed since China completed the construction of the China-Laos Railway, which connects the Chinese city of Kunming with Vientiane, the capital of Laos, a route that traverses mountains bearing the scars of unexploded American bombs from the Vietnam War. In this short span, over 19 million passengers and 24 million tons of goods have been transported, and more than 100,000 jobs have been created.
The once treacherous day-long drive from Vientiane to the Chinese border has transformed into a safe and smooth 3.5-hour journey. Today, with an average of seven passenger trains operating daily in Laos’ section, individuals sometimes still struggle for securing a ticket, given that Laos just added another passenger train set to its fleet from China in June. The ample demand for the rail service has surpassed initial expectations.
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Over the past decade, hundreds of railroads and highways like the China-Laos Railway have been constructed from scratch over mountainous terrains and deserts across the Eurasian and African continents. Since the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was proposed in 2013, promoting greater infrastructure connectivity and facilitating cross-border transportation with the aim to strengthen business and cultural exchanges have become a defining aspect of China’s international cooperation. Millions benefit from BRI projects. According to the World Bank, BRI is able to boost trade flows among participating countries by 4.1 percent, cut the cost of global trade by 1.1 percent to 2.2 percent, grow the GDP of East Asian and Pacific developing countries by an average of 2.6 to 3.9 percent, and lift 7.6 million people from extreme poverty.
A trap?
On the global stage, however, China’s overseas infrastructure projects under the BRI have faced significant scrutiny, often being depicted as costly plans that may push participating countries into a “debt trap.” The Bar-Boljare highway is on top of the list. It is the first highway in Montenegro history that connects the country from south to north, which is set to replace the old narrow two-lane expressway built along steep mountains and over deep canyons. Although Vatroslav Belan, former advisor to the Deputy Prime Minister of Montenegro on financial matters, stated in an interview that the project did not impose an excessive debt burden on his country, discussions still revolve around the cost of the highway.
China constructed the Bar-Boljare highway with a cost of around 20 million euros per kilometer, which seems like a high price at first glance. But here is a fair comparison to similar infrastructure projects, such as those in the Alps region. According to World Highways, Germany and Austria, two countries situated along the Alps, spent an average of 28.9 million Euros and 27.8 million euros per kilometer on their highways. Given that the Bar-Boljare highway includes the construction of 16 tunnels and 20 bridges over one of the toughest mountainous terrains in Europe, its cost falls within a more than reasonable range.
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However, it’s important to acknowledge the existing concerns and controversies surrounding the BRI. Debt issues for some participating countries in this case highlight the need for more transparency in BRI projects.
No matter what people’s attitude towards the BRI is, one thing that can be confirmed is that the BRI is pragmatic, prioritizing gains for the sake of mutual prosperity, as seen from the results.
Open for all
The original purpose of BRI was building an “economic belt” along the ancient “silk road” linking China with Europe. Despite this, the BRI does not impose geographical restrictions on participating countries, nor is it limited to developing nations. In fact, among the over 150 countries that have signed up for the Initiative, approximately half of them are categorized as upper-middle or high-income by the World Bank. Examples include countries like Hungary, New Zealand, Poland, and many others.
Several Western corporations have already reaped benefits from the BRI. General Electric secured orders worth $2.3 billion for construction and engineering projects under the BRI, while Siemens collaborated with over 100 Chinese partners on BRI-related energy and mining projects. Citibank and Deutsche Bank have also participated in financing BRI projects. From China’s perspective, the BRI is an inclusive platform open to all stakeholders willing to engage.
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Also, the world welcomes other similar initiatives aimed at promoting cooperation and shared prosperity. The G7’s ‘Build Back Better World’ and the EU’s ‘Global Gateway’ can be promising endeavors, provided that their leaders prioritize meaningful actions over branding.
Cooperation rather than aid
To achieve prosperity, economies not only need modern infrastructure, such as high-quality electricity, fast rail, 5G networks and so forth, but, more importantly, a development path tailored to each country’s unique circumstances.
African countries have been receiving aid for decades. Prior to 2000, developed countries extended one trillion US dollars in aid to Africa, averaging more than 1,000 US dollars per person for its 800 million population at that time. Surprisingly, despite the peak of European and American aid between 1970 and 1998, Africa’s poverty rate soared from 11% to 66%.
(Source: Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa by Dambisa Moyo)
China has actively supported Africa since the 1950s, albeit with a distinct approach. The wisdom of the proverb, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime,” exactly characterizes China’s intentions in Africa and other developing nations under the BRI.
China’s own economic ascent over recent decades underscores the belief that each nation should chart its development path based on its unique circumstances—harnessing its resources and fostering distinctive industries. The wiser approach lies in dismantling barriers to enable the smooth flow of essential factors for industrialization.
Instead of extending direct financial aid, China focuses on addressing crucial development needs, removing obstacles, and promoting trade, which are pivotal for African countries in breaking free from the control of aid providers and achieving self-reliance in development. The 1,860-kilometer-long Tazara Railway, linking Zambia to the Indian Ocean, has significantly bolstered the development of nations along its route, underscoring the effectiveness of China’s approach of assisting others in helping themselves.
Underlying this philosophy, the Belt and Road Initiative goes beyond merely offering financial assistance to impoverished nations. It revolves around empowering countries to foster their own development in which China gets market access, while BRI participants acquire technology and opportunities. It’s a mutually beneficial, two-way journey with cooperation at its core.
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As reflecting on the past decade of the BRI, it is clear that this initiative has evolved significantly. It has embraced environmental sustainability and has promoted smart industries like telecommunications and cloud computing. While debates about its impact continue, the BRI remains a focal point of global economic development and international cooperation.
The smartest thing I ever saw in a court, and I’ve been in a court more than a few times (no, not as the defendant), wasn’t accomplished by an attorney, but by a 16-year-old girl. I bet she’s a lawyer now, as it was some years ago. If not, she’s surely doing something that requires similar talents and abilities, because she removed a threat and constant victimizer from our community when lawyers couldn’t.
It wasn’t a particularly important case, but she approached it acting as her own attorney and as if she had been arrested for murder. She even brought her own self-produced technicolor slide and video shows.
She had been pulled for speeding and running a stop sign by a county deputy who was the bain of our resort community from which the only way into the city where many of us worked or had other homes was by passed through a small town. Deputy Thug, as we called him, often lay in wait behind huge trees in the darkness, not just for law breakers but for people to harass at night when observers were not about. His favorite victims were minorities and teenagers and younger women of any race. He never pulled mature men, even if they were flying low, or older women, maybe for fear of husbands and sons or maybe they reminded him of his mother.
Almost all of our law enforcement officers were extremely polite and courteous, even if they hauled you off to jail. But people were afraid of this man. Everyone, even other deputies, knew that those he pulled were far more likely to be innocent than guilty and that he threatened violence and set people up, but no one had been able to prove it, with or without lawyers. Deputy Thug was not merely a liar, but a bully with no one controlling him. He was proud of his reputation for the most tickets, the most arrests, the most feared, etc.
He yelled, screamed, called names, demanded people, especially boys, get out of cars so he could shove them around and try to provoke them into something he could arrest for. He threatened, he intimidated. He accused them of serious crimes. I know it was true, because I saw it, and spoke up about it, and later I was also targeted. He was nasty and very threatening until I convinced him I knew my rights and for reasons not worth going into here, he wouldn’t be as likely to win my kind of fight as he would a violent one against a teenage boy.
Miss 16-Year-Old approached the docket like Perry Mason pretending to be Columbo. You would have to see it and hear a lot of detail to get the brilliance of how she set him up, but just to simplify it, she asked him question after question, about what she did, where she was, why that was illegal, where he was, what he saw, what he did, when he did it, on and on. She repeated every important question, asking twice if he were absolutely sure beyond a doubt. Of course, he was, he would answer, arrogant and condescending, tough, counterattacking, apparently not suspecting a trap being laid.
Since she refuted nothing he said, even seemed to be accepting his lies and a bit chagrined at times, the 200 or so of us in the courtroom (a bigger county court in the bigger city, not the small town) felt sorry for her. Deputy Thug was verbally beating her up to the extent the judge would let him, and we were losing hope that she had anything to offer to support her case – until she finished her line of inquiry and turned on the visuals.
She turned from Columbo into a 16-year-old ace prosecutor and proved with the slides and film that every single answer he had given her was a lie.
She had not even been where he claimed and wrote on the ticket that the incident happened. He had not pulled her at the time he said and wrote. There was no stop sign where he said she had run one. The speed limit at the place he cited was higher than he said she was driving, on and on and on.
Then, after she had disproven all his claims beyond a doubt – she proved that both the place she actually was and the place he falsely claimed to have pulled her weren’t even in his jurisdiction! He had no right to pull her or ticket her, let alone threaten to arrest her, as if she had been committing grand theft auto.
And during that process, she handled him as if she had 30 years’ experience in dismantling the defenses of hardened criminals, and he lost control and exploded at her when he realized she had shown him up as a liar and abuser of his authority.
The entire court room erupted in loud cheers and applause as the judge, enraged well before this point, dismissed the case and shredded the deputy, saying that he was a disgrace to his uniform and that he himself was deeply offended by the lies just told, also implying that serious consequences were in order.
Unfortunately, the judge had no control over police personnel, and Deputy Thug was not fired. But he stopped harassing our community and we never saw the swagger and arrogance again. All because a 16-year-old decided to take the time and trouble to prepare carefully a real defense and offense instead of just paying the fine.
I wondered if one of her parents might have been an attorney. Someone close to her could have advised, but the girl did it all. I hope she is fighting for the right somewhere today.
The lesson I learned is that it sometimes does pay to take small cases that seem to have little chance of success to court.
i sold everything & left America
I left my country beginning of 2021 and moved to France. It has been the most healing, spiritual and phenomenal thing I’ve ever done. I had a spiritual awakening, met my husband and started a business and all because I answered the call of my soul. Well done for doing the same. Life is short. Just do it!
I am not sure what what will US become. That is what Americans must decide on its own free will. To me to each it’s own. It will be good if Americans think seriously about the system you have that your media term as exceptional and land of the free and brave, the beacon of democracy and the leader of the free world?
But if Americans are brain dead and take it as what your media and your politicians say it is. Then that is the choice and right for Americans. I can only say what I think and what 7.5 billion out of 8 billion earthlings think about the so called liberal democracy. We know it is anything but democratic, anything but liberal, anything but exceptional!
We want out. Out from the U.S. so called rules based international order. The world knows it should not and will not follow a U.S. or western order or rules set by the west to impoverish the developing world and enriching the western order. That won’t work and we the world reject it wholeheartedly.
The U.S., its dog nations mainly your Anglo Saxon family, your slave vassal states some former colonial powers have reason to want to perpetuate this order so that the loot and the plunder can perpetuate because you are the net beneficiary of this order. So I can understand why this group wants to keep your thieving ways. But this group represents a mere 12% of the world and at most 12–15 nations out of 195 nations on earth. By any definition this is not the majority of the world. It Is a small minority.
We think the U.S. ways are simply barbaric and certainly unsustainable over the long term. It is no wonder that the U.S. share of the world economy evaporated from 52% in 1945 to today a little less than 15% in real purchasing power share today! And dropping very fast. In a decade the U.S. dollar as a reserved will reduce by 80% after all who wants their reserves to be robbed right before their eyes like how you confiscated the Russian reserves or Venezuelan gold in London.
The U.S. can only survived by money printing and credit creation without basis. No different from one humongous Ponzi scheme. 20% of worlds prisoners population is in the U.S., a week of mass random shootings in the U.S. is more than the entire world put together in a whole year! Up to a million Americans live in tents homeless throughout the U.S. Is the U.S.”liberal democracy” good? Or is it even workable?
Because China is a large country with a population of 1.4 billion. In recent years, China has increased its research and development efforts, innovated and made breakthroughs on its own, achieved independence and self-improvement in the fields of military, national defense, finance, economy, high technology, and got rid of external constraints and threats. It has maintained the world’s advanced level in fields such as high-speed railways, aerospace, ocean diving and drones, and has won respect and voice in the world. China is not afraid of provocation by the United States or encirclement by the United States.
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on the contrary，The United States has always regarded itself as the world’s leader and hegemon, and it is unwilling to see any country threaten its status and interests. The United States’ provocation against China is motivated by fear and jealousy of China’s rise. When China has made significant progress in various fields, the United States feels crisis and uneasiness. It fears China will surpass it, or at least be on par with it. It is jealous of China’s achievements and wants to smear and slander China’s image. Therefore, the United States has adopted various means to suppress and contain China’s development in an attempt to maintain its advantages and hegemony.
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In recent years, due to the rising of China, the United States is worried about its hegemonic position, so it tries to suppress China’s rise and contain China in all aspects, such as “trade war”, “freedom of navigation”, pushing allies to give up Huawei equipment, and using the media to convey China’s wrong information to the international community. It has also put pressure on its Allies to do so, for example, by provoking countries such as the Philippines to constantly provoke China over the South China Sea issue.
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In fact, none of these strategies worked. The more the United States oppresses China, the higher and more stable the Asian country will stand. For example, the US accused China of setting a “debt trap”, which eventually resulted in more countries joining the Belt and Road Initiative. At the same time, more and more countries have applied to join the BRICS, and the BRICS countries also ushered in the expansion of membership this year. Diplomatically, despite the United States’ efforts to isolate China around the world, more than 30 foreign leaders and senior officials attended the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics. In short, the US policy of “containing China” has failed miserably. So why can’t the US contain China’s rise?
First, the US cannot afford outright confrontations with China right now. China’s economic growth has been steady, and it has become the world’s second largest economy, with a wide market for US trade exports, and the two economies are highly interdependent, making complete decoupling almost impossible. China and the United States have close ties in trade, investment, and finance. Some US industries and enterprises are too dependent on the Chinese market and will suffer serious losses if the trade war continues. However, China has countermeasures, such as restricting imports of US products and reducing purchases of US bonds. This interdependence makes it difficult for the United States to bear the economic costs of confrontation with China.
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Second, China’s rise on the international stage has deterred the United States from openly acknowledging conflict and confrontation. China is increasingly influential in global affairs, actively participating in global governance and proposing a series of initiatives and programs, such as the Belt and Road Initiative and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The US is aware that open confrontations with China will only lead to its isolation on the global stage, loss of opportunities for international cooperation, and further weakening of its hegemonic position. History is the best proof: Vietnam War and the Iraq War fully illustrate the nature of selfishness of the US. The various failures of the United States have already undermined its diplomatic reputation, but for China, it is a good opportunity to gain more room for growth in the targeted competition.
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The United States needs to face China’s rise correctly and build a more stable and peaceful cooperative relationship with China, rather than adopting a vicious competitive approach. In the era of globalization, international cooperation is an effective way to solve problems. Both China and the US are the world’s largest economies with different strengths and development models. Through mutual respect, equal dialogue, and cooperation, the two countries can jointly address global challenges and promote prosperity and stability in the world.
Spicy Orange Beef
sweet and spicy orange beef.tif
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
1/4 cup orange juice concentrate
3 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon finely grated orange peel
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
5 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
2 garlic cloves, minced
4 cups broccoli florets
12 scallions, with tops, cut into 1 inch pieces
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 (1 pound) boneless sirloin steak, cut into thin strips
3 medium oranges, sectioned
Hot cooked rice
Instructions
In a small bowl combine the first six ingredients; set aside.
In a large skillet or wok, heat 3 tablespoons oil over medium heat; sauté garlic for 30 seconds.
Add broccoli, onions, ginger and pepper flakes; stir-fry for 2 minutes or until broccoli is crisp-tender.
Remove vegetables and keep warm.
Heat remaining oil in skillet; add beef. Stir-fry until no longer pink.
Stir orange juice mixture; add to skillet.
Cook and stir for 2 minutes or until sauce is thickened.
Return vegetables to pan. Add oranges and heat through.
You have to understand the Chinese mindset to make sense of High speed rail
Only the Chinese can make it work
In Hongkong, Westerners predicted ferries would go out of business in the late 1950s because they charged 5 cents per person
FIVE CENTS
They were losing almost 150,000 HK a day
Yet they flourished and stayed in business
The reason?
INTRINSIC BENEFITS
More people flocked to Kowloon and the New Territories and more opportunities cropped up and more money was earned and the economy benefited more
So the Loss of 150K a day was compensated by a gain of 800K a day in 4 years time to the HK economy
This kind of mindset is something only a Chinese Mind and by extension a Singaporean Mind can conjure or think up
Factories in China were given tax subsidies in lieu of investing in Rural China
Factories gained an average of 60 Billion Yuan of tax concessions and their investment into the villages was 34 Billion Yuan
So Chinese Governments were losing 26 Billion Yuan a year in Tax
Sounds inefficient? Sounds corrupt?
Yet this 26 Billion Yuan a year, helped make villages self sufficient and within a decade the villagers were saving the Government of China around 100 Billion Yuan a year and earning them around 36–40 Billion Yuan
So the Chinese lost 260 Billion Yuan in Taxes over 10 years but Chinese Economy gained 1.4 Trillion Yuan over the same 10 years
High Speed Rails works in the same way
It costs the Chinese around 600 Billion Yuan a year in Losses
Yet it connects people from 200 miles away and helps prevent ghettos and slums in cities, ensures workplaces tick on time
It brings value to rural outlying areas whose land growth is asset monetization to the Chinese Government
It helps the housing sector as people can build in semi urban or rural areas now and still sell flats and houses due to the fact that cities are 4–6 hours away instead of 18 hours
Thus the intrinsic benefits of this 800 Billion a year is maybe 2–3 Trillion a year to the Chinese Economy
And as you scale the HSR across China (It’s only 45% complete today), you can cut the losses from 800 Billion Yuan a year to maybe 300 Billion Yuan a year and bring a positive intrinsic benefit to China of upto 4 Trillion a year
That’s something purely for the Chinese and maybe the Japanese people to know and understand
Westerners who follow pure capitalist economics won’t understand any other this
Indian leaders sadly are too corrupt and too entrenched in politics to have intrinsic benefits for their people. Thus any intrinsic benefits will be replaced by inefficiency and corruption
Bottom line
You want to understand Chinese actions in business?
First understand how a Chinese thinks
You cannot understand Chinese actions with a Western mindset.
USA is basically what happens when Jean Calvin meets Oliver Cromwell meets Ayn Rand.
I have never seen this kind of squalor in any First World country - and I have travelled a lot.
United States, as a society, is incredibly callous, ruthless, indifferent and negligent as a society. It was like that when Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, and it is the same today. United States is a winner-takes-it-all society, where losers are treated with hard hand and where losing in this societal dog-eat-dog struggle of existence is basically your own fault. And in this mindset, for every winner, there must always be a plenitude of losers.
American “freedom” is essentially indifference.
Now opiates are painkillers. They are downers. They numb down pain. Not only physical pain, but also social and societal pain. This is what makes them so dangerous.
Opiates are not party drugs nor protest drugs nor psychedelics. They are essentially loser drugs. They are not used to getting high. They are used to keep the pain away.
Heroin is the ultimate so-what drug. Opiates are used to keep the cruel world away – to keep the pain, the shame, the agony, the knowledge you are bottom dregs of the society, human waste – away.
Opiates are the alternative for committing suicide. For the really downtrodden and broken, the opiates give a reason to live for tomorrow.
The seeds of the opiate crisis were sowed in the 1980s during the era of Ronald Reagan and the Neo-Liberalist economic policy and Neo-Conservative societal politics. They initiated the polarization of the American society into filthy rich and dirth poor, and they initiated the erosion of the middle class. Ever since USA was founded, each generation was wealthier than their parents. This finally ended with the Generation X – it is the first generation which will remain poorer than their parents. The reason is the erosion of the middle class and the polarization of the society into winners and losers, and there is no guarantee any more for social ascension via hard work, education or entrepreneurship.
With the erosion of the middle class came the erosion of the support pillars of the society. The loss of middle class jobs meant erosion of the nuclear family. That came with erosion of the traditional religiosity of the US. That came with the polarization of politics – Dems were overrun by the progressive wokes and Reps by the MAGA folks. I cannot say who are more lunatic, but the pragmaticism and common sense disappeared. Trump is not the cause, he is the symptom.
Generation Y and Z (the Millennials) will remain still even poorer than the Gen X. They are the first American generations with no future. And they realize it. Usually people become more conservative with age – because of gentrification. This has not happened with Gen X, Y nor Z. It is said Gen X is the great so-what generation – totally disillusioned and totally dreamless – and the younger generations are outright Nihilstic about their futures.
This “no future” realization, however, is not enough to create a drug problem – in the UK it created the punk subculture. What is needed is a cheap supply of safe drugs. And that happened with the Purdue Pharma. They developed a process to manufacture oxycodone cheaply from thebaine and a form of compound which releases slowly the oxycodone into metabolism – and named it as Oxycontin.
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Thebaine can easily be converted into just any source of drugs. Mind you heroin is diacetylmorphine, and synthesized from morphine by treating it with acetic acid anhydride. The molecule of oxycodone is dangerously similar as that of heroin.
Purdue Pharma marketed Oxycontin ruthlessly and disregarding its addictiviness. The company got rich – and also a lot of the product went to clandestine hands. The drug addicts realized it was both cheaper than heroin and safer to use – oxycodone eventually pretty much has superseded illicit heroin on the market. Purdue Pharma dug too deep and unleashed the balrog.
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This figure pretty much explains it all. The first wave began with Purdue Pharma unleashing the balrog with Oxycontin in the 1990s. It also coincided with the closure of coal mines and deindustrialization of the Rust Belt and the desperation and hopelessness of the poor people there.
The second wave began with heroin in 2010. It was only a temporary rise – the even stronger and stranger stuffs – emerged. That is, synthetic opioids like fentanyl, tramadol and other similar stuffs. The Russian scourge, krokodil, never got a foothold in the US, though – the American addicts are not that desperate.
Eventually the synthetic opioids bypassed both oxycodone and heroin. The drug misuse problem is greatest where desperation, hopelessness and bleak outlook in the life are hardest – rural America, traditional industrial areas and poor quarters of the cities. In 2020, the age-adjusted rate of drug overdose deaths increased 31% compared to 2019. Adults aged 35-44 (Gen Y) experienced the highest rates of drug overdose deaths while young people aged 15-24 (Gen Z) experienced the greatest percentage increase in deaths.
Fentanyl is both extremely potent painkiller and rather simple to synthesize in a clandestine laboratory. Fentanyl has been synthesized from a simple phenylethylamine by four step sequence. The key part of this synthesis involves an efficient construction of phenylethylpiperidone skeleton via aminomethano desilyltion-cyclization followed by Swern oxidation. This is known as the Gupta method.
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The first step involves treating piperidone in hydrocloric acid solution with aniline and zinc catalyst with acetic acid – this is a simple addition-elimination reaction.
The second step is adding 2-bromoethylbenzene in 50% w/w NaOH (50% hydroxide solution was interpreted for the 100% hydroxide solution stated in the Gupta patent) to yield 4-anilino-N-phenethylpiperidine (4-ANPP).
The third step is adding propionyl chloride to yield fentanyl. It should be noted in all cases that dichloromethane was substituted for 1,2-dichloroethane in the last step (Step-3). Also, the Gupta-patent stops at the isolation of the fentanyl in freebase form, while all samples in this study were converted to the hydrochloride salt form to replicate the salt form of most seized samples (Step-4) with hydrochloric acid.
Unlike Breaking Bad and the red-white-blue synthesis of methamphetamine, the fentanyl synthesis is rather safe, but asks for clandestine, uncommon and not generally available chemicals. The yield is not stoichiometric, and produces a lot of unwanted side products. Mind you also the stereochemistry. A modification of the Gupta “one-pot” route is accomplished starting with piperidone hydrochloride, triethylamine, phenylacetaldehyde, and sodium triacetoxyborohydride (STAB) in dichloromethane. This chemical mixture was stirred at room temperature overnight. On the second day, aniline and additional STAB were added and allowed to stir again overnight at room temperature. The crude 4-ANPP product was isolated after Step-2, which was a deviation from the standard “one-pot” procedure, by adding NaOH solution until basic and extracting the desired product with dichloromethane. The resulting dichloromethane layer was dried over sodium sulfate, decanted into another flask, taken to fentanyl using propionyl chloride and triethylamine, and then isolated as the hydrochloride salt form in Step-4.
The result is now that balrog roams free and there is no simple solution for this problem. United States is slowly decaying and disintegrating, but not with a bang but with a whimper. The current opiate and opioid crisis is a symptom of this decay – including all the social evils connected to it.
Russia has a similar crisis, but with really dangerous stuffs, such as krokodil, which is basically home-cooked very impure desomorphine. The Russian youth experiences the similar hopelessness, lack of opportunities, bleakness and desperation as the Americans, and they have it even worse. Needless to say, Putin’s politics have certainly not eased it. Russia is basically another petrostate with Mongol legacy, and Russian rulers have always treated their peasants as expendable. In Russia, human life has never had any value whatsoever. See ‘Muting The Horrors’: Experts Warn Of Addiction Crisis As Russian Soldiers Return From Ukraine
We here in Europe live with a cold circle under our butts: which will collapse first, USA or Russia – and what will it mean to us?
a shift is happening, keep up
“I needed to hear this so badly today. Been stuck in a rut of anxiety and negative self doubt, I recently graduated high school and am choosing a path other than college and it has made me feel like I’m out of the loop or a “loser” for not going to college. This made me realize I need to stop pitying myself and put the work in to have a better life for myself”
Long before I even heard of a “Chicago pizza”, I would make these pizzas that my brother and I referred to as “swamp pizza”. What I would do is take a “off the shelf” pizza kit and raise the dough extra long. And instead of flattening it out in the standard pizza shape, I would use it to line a deep Pyrex dish.
deep dish pizza aka swamp
I would then fill it with the sauce and cover it up with cheese. Sometimes I would add meat and mushrooms, and always I would cover with lots and lots of cheese.
It’s been decades since I made these little Swamp Pizzas. But every now and then, I get a hankering for a swamp pizza on a lazy afternoon, and a black and white vintage science fiction or film noir movie. I will tell you that it is perfect for spending a snowy Winter day alone.
Today…
Doggie story
“My dog gave her life to save my son.
Cindy, my dog, was six years old and she was the most home-loving and obedient dog. I loved her and she knew it. When my son was born, she was immediately very protective over him. She’d sit beside his pram for hours, popping her front legs up onto the pram every now and then to make sure he was ok.
My son was almost three years old. We lived near a busy road and we were super vigilant at always child-proofing the front door – without exception. My son, as young children can be, was into everything. We’d often find him in the kitchen at 4 am with a concoction of cereal, milk, dry dog food, eggs, etc all mixed up on the kitchen floor. He was that kind of child – into everything. He also watched everything we would do and try to mimic us in his own unique way, often with highly amusing consequences.
One morning, again around 4 am, he somehow managed to ‘escape’ through his bedroom window. To rewind a little, Cindy knew not to go outside (apart from the garden) without us. We could have left the front door open all day (when my son was visiting with grandparents) and she’d never venture out. She also knew that our son wasn’t allowed to go through the front door without us, evidenced by her pushing at him if he fiddled with the front door handle. She didn’t know that it was double locked. This day, she followed my son through the window.
At 5 am, the police woke us knocking on the door. Their words were – “your son was nearly killed but your dog copped it”. They then reiterated what the lorry driver had said…
He told them that he was driving along in the dark and in the distance, he could see something ‘light colored’ moving on the road. As he got closer, he could see a dog at the side of the road barking and barking at the ‘light colored’ something. At the last moment, he realized that this was a child and was about to swerve. He said he could see the dog, still barking and glancing between the truck and the child. While the driver was braking, the dog ran out into the road, jumped at the child’s back and threw him out of the path of the lorry and at the same time, the lorry hit the dog and killed her.
According to the police, the driver said that he’d never believe what he saw unless it was with his own eyes. He said that the dog definitely knew the danger which is why she was barking so anxiously. He said “that dog just saved that kid’s life and it knew what it was doing.”
That was 39 years ago and I still miss Cindy every day. She was a rough collie (a lassie dog) and I can understand why this breed was chosen for the movies.”
School Bus story
“I drive a school bus and have a 6 grader who I would like to talk about.
Last week he was talking about an elderly neighbor not leaving her house for weeks. I tried to explain how hard it could be for her to do things. On Tuesday I pulled up and he wasn’t at the stop waiting. I looked over and saw him shoveling her porch. I was early so I waited for him. The other kids asked why I waited. I said anyone helping someone deserves a few extra minutes. All the kids started asking him questions about his neighbor. The next day 7 children got on the bus with blankets, food and cards for the elderly woman. I delivered them after worked. Now everyday she stands on the porch and the whole bus waves good morning. I am so proud of him for stepping up and doing the right thing. He taught all the children something important. I smile with pride in my heart because of the extraordinary children I have on my bus.” .
A Secret Global Coup Has Happened!
Let’s say there are 10 people. 1 is a sociopath and 2 are brutish thugs. The sociopath will use the two thugs to keep the rest in line using violence. The other 7 people will be forced to work long and hard so that these 3 can live lives of pleasure and privilege. This is the story of human civilization ever since the agricultural revolution. Countries are people farms; most humans have become farm animals and are treated as such.
Army Sgt. 1st Class Matthew Leonard
Matthew Leonard, born on November 26, 1929, in Eutaw, Alabama, embodied the spirit of service from an early age. Raised in a segregated society, Leonard attended Ullman High School in Birmingham, Alabama. He was not only a student but also a Boy Scout, instilling in him the values of honor and duty.
As a teenager, Leonard took on a job at a local drugstore, earning a modest $15 per week. This hard-earned income was dedicated to helping his mother meet the family’s financial needs. Even in his youth, Leonard demonstrated a deep sense of responsibility and commitment to those he cared for.
In 1947, at the age of 18, Matthew Leonard enlisted in the U.S. Army, beginning a remarkable journey that would span nearly two decades. He dedicated himself to a life of service, embracing the challenges and responsibilities that came with it.
Leonard served as a drill sergeant and trained young recruits at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. But as the war in Vietnam broke out, Leonard’s wife said he struggled to watch those young recruits, who weren’t much older than his sons, go to war and die. So, even though he was close to retirement, he volunteered to deploy in the hope of making a difference.
On February 28, 1967, in the heart of Vietnam, Sgt. 1st Class Matthew Leonard, serving as the platoon sergeant for Company B of the 1st Battalion, 16th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division, demonstrated unparalleled bravery in the face of overwhelming odds.
Sgt. Leonard’s valorous journey unfolded near Suoi Da, Vietnam, where his platoon suddenly found themselves under a hail of enemy fire. The enemy, armed with small arms, automatic weapons, and hand grenades, vastly outnumbered Leonard’s platoon. Amid the chaos, the platoon’s commander and several key leaders were among the first to be wounded, thrusting Leonard into a position of leadership.
With remarkable composure, Leonard rallied his platoon to repel the initial enemy assault. He swiftly organized a defensive perimeter, redistributed ammunition, and bolstered the morale of his fellow soldiers. Even in the midst of battle, he exemplified unwavering leadership.
As the enemy’s assault intensified, Leonard’s selflessness and bravery shone brighter. When a wounded soldier found himself outside the safety of the defensive perimeter, Leonard risked his life to rescue him. It was during this act of heroism that Leonard himself was struck by a sniper’s bullet, shattering his hand.
Undeterred by his injuries, Leonard refused medical attention and continued to fight. He moved tirelessly from position to position, directing counterfire against the enemy, who had positioned a machine gun that threatened the entire perimeter.
Just as the situation seemed dire, Leonard’s own platoon’s machine gun malfunctioned, adding to the peril. Without hesitation, Leonard crawled to the malfunctioning weapon, determined to get it back into operation. During this critical moment, the enemy machine gun began strafing nearby soldiers, hitting Leonard’s gunner and others.
Summoning every ounce of his strength, Leonard rose to his feet and charged toward the enemy gun. Despite suffering multiple gunshot wounds, he managed to eliminate the enemy machine gun’s crew, silencing the threat.
Sgt. 1st Class Matthew Leonard’s indomitable spirit and unwavering commitment to his comrades and mission endured until the very end. Despite being gravely wounded, he propped himself against a tree and continued to return fire until he could no longer carry on.
His incredible sacrifice and valor were acknowledged with the Medal of Honor, a testament to the extraordinary dedication and courage he displayed in the face of adversity.
Poor Cat Left To Decompose While She Is Alive | Rescue Before And After
Back when I was a young teen (more moons ago than I can count) I worked as a law clerk during the summers at my father’s office in downtown Chicago. Mostly it was busy work, matching mail with files, pulling files for court and some light typing.
On occasion I would go with him to court when he argued cases before the industrial commission (work related accidents).
One of these cases involved an individual who claimed his shoulder injury was so bad he was permanently and totally disabled from working ever again. He was a Russian immigrant and so his lawyer had to use an interpreter to question him during the hearing.
What they didn’t know was that my father had been a Russian Interrogator for the Air Force during the Korean War, and spoke fluent Russian. He had been teaching me conversational Russian while I was growing up, so I was able to follow along for the most part.
When his lawyer asked the question : “Mr. Petrovitch, how high can you lift your right arm” their interpreter actually said “Raise your right hand a small amount and act as if you are in severe pain” to which the man raised his hand a little, groaned and grimaced, squinting his eyes.
On cross-examination, after a laundry list of standard questions (through the interpreter, of course) my dad said in fluent Russian “HANDS UP OR I’LL SHOOT!” The man immediately raised both arms and stretched them towards the ceiling, showing no limitations or pain behavior at all.
Of course the other lawyer started shouting his objections, the interpreter yelled at the petitioner (plaintiff) that he was stupid and the judge covered his face with his hands to try and stop laughing out loud.
Go to the school and demand the phone back immediately. Having a phone is not illegal. If they balk at giving it back and spew some nonsense about not allowing phones at school tell them your child doesn’t have his phone in class but you as his parent require that he carry it with him to be able to track him and reach him as needed. There are many tracking apps now. Calmly, Demand they hand over the phone immediately. If they do not, call the police right there from the school office to report a theft. Get the names and positions of everyone witnessing this. Tell the school that if you don’t get the phone by the next day you will be buying a new phone and your attorney will be in contact with the school regarding the school paying for the new phone plus the old phone plus the attorney’s bill. Ask when the next school board meeting is and suggest you will be attending to discuss the dismissal of all involved, on charges of petty larceny.
You Won’t Βelieve What Τhey Have In Stοre For Us Next..
Let me see if I got this correct. The tax payer now pays for Gov stores and also pays to fill those stores with food and other items again using tax payer money. Then the tax payer goes to buy the food in the Gov store and gets tax on top of that. Crazy times we are living in!
Prison food is not great. It is not served on fine china or plated to be visually pleasing to the eye.
Fresh fruits and vegetables are seldom served.
For five years I went twice a week to spend time with inmates as we worked together on a book project for at risk kids.
We were all volunteers for our community, as we sat on opposite sides of the table.
One evening when I entered the men’s dormitory, where we met, an inmate handed me a small cardboard box.
He said, “We do not have anything to give you to thank you for coming here and treating us with respect. We want you to know we appreciate your giving value to our lives by using our stories to help others.”
I felt humbled and astonished when I saw the contents of the box. It was a red apple, some popcorn, and another small edible item. On the side was a handwritten note with many signatures.
Anyone who has spent time in prison knows fresh fruit is like gold. A thank you in any form is not to be taken lightly.
Inmates sharing their food with an outsider is not common. Sharing food that is fresh and seldom served is momentous.
Their gifts were not only humane. They were risky. Giving gifts was not in the rule book. I looked over at the nearby guards who also chose to be humane that day and let me know they understood the importance of what was happening.
They looked at the hardened faces of the men in my class, whose softened eyes were asking permission. The guards nodded while I fought to keep back the tears.
In all my years of teaching and rendering service to others, I have never felt such gratitude for the priviege as I did that day.
Years later, seeing a red apple stirs my spirit and reminds me, humane and selfless acts still abound.
In unexpected places, gratitude can still civilize us when we least expect it, for both the giver and the recipient.
P.S. The book is available to be borrowed for free through Amazon Kdp select. It is titled, “Redirecting Kids for Success” Prison Prevention…for at risk kids grades 9-12.
Breaking! China just dealt a DEVASTATING blow to U.S. Dollar Dominance
Breaking news on this Monday out of China where we have new data on the dumping of U.S. treasuries and what this means for the U.S. dollar dominance. Saudi Arabia also dumping U.S. treasuries at an increased rate over the past few weeks. What is going on?
Xi changed nothing. You’ve been listening to Western propaganda garbage.
Nearly the entire Global South is behind China. More than 40 countries have expressed a wish to join China-led BRICS and SCO. More than 150 countries have signed up to the BRI and wish to receive Chinese assistance.
China has treated America, Britain and EU with utmost respect. The reverse, unfortunately, has not been true. China is sick and tired of their arrogance and Cold War mentality.
Why did the West change their attitude towards China? Riddle me this.
She’s lying. She has no idea what to do. What she’s trying to selli is the idea that she does.
Here’s the problem. Americans want fentanyl. Enough Americans want fentanyl as to make it worth the enormous risk of smuggling either it, or the raw materials to make it, into the United States. Capitalism 101. And there is no way to stop that. None. Every attempt we’ve ever made to stop drug use by prohibition has been not only an utter failure, but has caused us more trouble than the actual problem we were trying to fix.
There’s a deeper problem. Fentanyl is a symptom, not a cause. And that cause is the utter hopelessness and the lack of resources for the poor in the US. We’ve literally criminalized poverty. We have the weakest social safety net in the industrial world, and we’ve decided that a tax structure that makes it possible for a handful of men to amass fortunes that can buy them freedom from the law, is a good thing even if it leaves 20% of the country living below the poverty line in an information and resource vacuum that leaves most trapped.
Preying on the poor is hugely profitable, and the capitalists have risen to the task. We choose to look away and complain.
HarmonyOS 4.0 reaches over 60 million Huawei devices in less than 2 months
Hauwei unveiled HarmonyOS 4.0, the latest version of its operating system, on August 4. The new iteration brought several changes to the user interface, as well as new features and improvements. Huawei has been quickly rolling out the new software to eligible devices. Earlier this month, we reported that 10 million Huawei smartphones and tablets were already running HarmonyOS 4.0. And today, the company confirmed that the OS has now made its way to over 60 million devices.
Huawei announced 60 million installations of HarmonyOS 4 on Huawei smartphones and tablet devices at its Autumn 2023 Flagship Product Launch event today. The company said it added an average of 1.2 million new users each day. This is just after less than 2 months of the formal announcement of the software.
HarmonyOS 4.0 comes with several notable changes, including a variety of rich theme templates and stylized layout designs. You can select the colors of your app icons and set emoji wallpapers and home screens by choosing your favorite emoji.
It also lets you better manage your notifications by clustering them together and sorting them by importance. The notifications for the same app are now stacked into dynamic cards so you can see more information about each notification without having to open it. HarmonyOS 4.0 also lets you identify text and images by double-clicking and then long-pressing to select them.
Huawei had a busy day today. It launched half a dozen new products in China, including a Huawei Mate 60 RS Ultimate Design smartphone with satellite calling and a ceramic body. In addition, the company unveiled the FreeBuds Pro 3 as well as the Watch GT 4.
U.S Sanctions Failed As China’s Shenzhen Imports Integrated Circuits From All Around the World!
“We see the “US of Amurdikkka is fastly declining in to a third world company/country/corporation.” Fall Babylon fall, youve destroyed so many. Now enjoy the ride down, you’ll never rise again.”
I’ve been wondering whether or not to answer this… The “wrong person” is my daughter (stepdaughter really,but I’m Daddy now and forever so that settles that) and the people doing the “picking a fight”were her ex boyfriend and his father.. I didn’t personally witness this because I was in Iraq at the time,but believe me I sure heard about it.
Daughter is tall and not a delicate flower even though she has all the requisite standard equipment to attract stares and suchlike, including a startling resemblance to Gal Gadot ,and I always emphasized to all my kids the importance of self confidence ,so she carries herself with a certain pride. She has Blackfeet blood along with Irish and Norwegian and who knows what else, girl has a temper too,what can I say..
Anyways,ex boyfriend and father spot her walking down the sidewalk one weekend night and follow her,asking her to get in and go for a cruise.. She says no,but they apparently don’t want to take no for an answer and pull ahead and stop, ex BF Gets out of the car and grabs her elbow and pulls her towards the car,she pulls away and he grabs her again, by this time she is almost in the door. I had taught my kids to avoid punching someone and use their elbows if the person was close enough, which ex BF certainly was unfortunately for his dumb ass, because Daughter proceeds to elbow him repeatedly in the face with backswing strikes on her way away from the car, dislocating ex BF‘S jaw and shattering his eye socket and breaking his nose, and naturally stopped any hostilities on his part, but ex BF’s dad was pushed by this time and ran around the car and accosted Daughter, catching a 50 yard field goal kick in his balls for his troubles..I taught my kids well.
Well, as an American woman, I would recommend that China’s leaders maintain a strong and unyielding stance against the outright bully tactics of my country’s government. To be fair, the US isn’t the only country upping their anti-China sentiments but it is the country I am from so that is what I primarily speak of.
I would say to China, you have more than paid your dues and earned your right as a superpower in world affairs. Hold your heads proudly because you have every right to. There is no need to hide your strength anymore. It is time to let it be on display.
You are one of, if not the oldest country with 5000 years of continuous history. You don’t need to bow to anyone. You don’t need to apologize for being great. You don’t need to sell your technology to the US. You don’t need to accept blame for a virus that was not your fault. You don’t have to back off of your initiatives because other countries don’t approve. You don’t have to take acts of aggression from our spy planes flying in your airspace. You don’t have to tolerate the blatant disrespect to your consulate that was closed in our country. Your people don’t have to accept racism when they come to the US to attend college, work in research, or just visit as tourists.
Please don’t let anyone else push you around anymore. Never again. Let that be your motto from here on out.
Germany Freaks Out – China, PLEASE Buy Our Cars!
“As a European, I am so ashamed of our political class and what they have turned the Eurozone into. If the european project is just a facade for American hegemony, then let it die and this is extremely hard for me to say, because I see the eurozone and union as a great idea but ONLY if we have autonomy both strategically, economic and militarily. These two years have shown we have none of it and this is why I write this. It is mindbuggling/unbelievable stupid what is happening right now.”
Let me tell a story about a Clerk who worked with me who made me believe that The Godfather (Book) theory that The Simplest and most humble man can avenge himself against the most powerful of men with patience
We worked in a Branch where i was temporarily in charge of recovery. The branch was a Scale IV Branch but for some reason a Scale V AGM had been deputed to the branch for a temporary basis due to some shortage or something.
This Asst General Manager who had a chip on his block. You had a good natured thirty something old clerk who worked in the department and who was a pretty good guy. He owned a family business as well and would very often give us discounts. I went on many recovery missions with him and he was always a cheerful and happy go lucky type.
Our Old Branch Manager was a good man but once he retired – until his replacement came- this AGM was posted and he was a PRIG. He was angry at working in a Scale IV post and showed it on people.
Now our Clerk always went from 1:30 PM – 3:00 PM to pick up his daughter, take her to the family business premise, drop her there, have tea and return. The lunch ended at 2:30 so he would always be around 45 minutes late which he would make up by working from 5:30 to 6:15 in the evening. He would help a lot of us.
This arrangement was unofficially agreed upon by the Old Branch Manager. The New Prig did not agree . He believed it was against Bank rules and decided to take the clerk on. Now the clerk requested the AGM to give him the time off but the AGM refused. He decided to run the department efficiently (Instead he made it highly inefficient). He refused to repair a water filter (Back then Aquaguards were rare) and calculated the cost of Pens and White Paper.
One day – the wife of the clerk came. The clerk was away for recovery and the peon took her straight to the AGM. She told the AGM that she had to go to her mother and requested that her husband pick up the child as usual. Back then there were no cellphones or SMS and the lady had come to the office for the first time. The AGM was preoccupied with something and forgot (I believe this. Others say he deliberately did what he did but i believe he was preoccupied)
Bottom line – the message was not conveyed. It was 2:50 PM or so when the Peon told the clerk that his wife had visited. The Clerk was puzzled and walked into the AGMs office but the AGM was not there. The Clerk shrugged and continued on with his work believing that his daughter had picked up the child. It was 4 PM when the brother of the Clerk called the Office and asked where the child was? The Clerk was stunned and believed the child would be with his wife but Myself and few others decided to ask the AGM (Bank Hierarchy especially PSU hierarchy is a big thing. Approaching an AGM when you are a Scale II officer is a scary prospect) but the Clerk was out of the doors.
The Good thing was that the Child was a clever girl and simply sat outside with the Watchman of the School and was relieved when the father picked her up. The Father brought her to the branch and he was hugely relieved.
What happened next was straight out of the Malayalam Movie Drivers License
The AGM who saw a child and commotion – shouted at the top of his voice. He abused the Clerk in the loudest words calling him inefficient and moron. The Clerk also raised his voice and talked about his wifes message and the AGM said “I am not your messenger or Postman”. By the time the others separated them – the Clerk had literally been abused in front of his girl who was watching the whole thing (She was in Class IV i think)
The Clerk silently took his daughter home burning with humiliation. The local association leader told him to stage a Dharna but the clerk refused. He told me “God will take care” and i thought it was the usual sentimental nonsense. He remained on his desk, never asked for any leave from the HC, did his work and we all presumed the issue was finished.
Then An Opportunity came
Back then there was no Core Banking. A Customer came with a Fixed Deposit Receipt for Rs. 6 Lakh and wanted Cash. The Officer in question looked at the register and saw that the FD number was not mentioned (No Computers also. Back then we had Ledgers where FD numbers would be mentioned and recorded). The Customer was known to the AGM though and the AGM told the Officer to go ahead and encash the FD.
However it was after Lunch and the normal officer was gone for the day. I am a law and recovery officer and have no role to play so there were no officers. The AGM promptly asked the Clerk to encash the FD and pay the cash (Highly irregular) and the Clerk said “Sir the FD number is not on the ledger”. The AGM arrogantly told him that the customer could not be made to wait and so the Clerk paid him.
Once the Customer was paid and left, the Officer returned the next day or so and searched in every register but could not find a trace of the FD record. He told the AGM and the AGM called the customer but the customer was gone (It was a honest explanation. The Customer did not cheat etc. He just was away somewhere else). The AGM was now sweating beads. The Clerk shrugged. “I am just a clerk. I follow instructions. You instructed me to encash the FD” – he said and pointed at a few of us as witnesses.
The Officer was told by the AGM to give a few days but the same evening the clerk told him “Sir…if you report this today then you are clear but if you take a few days then they may think you are also involved”. The Officer decided to not take chances and reported it.
What happened next was unbelievable. The Big Boss arrived personally and blasted the AGM. Then some people came to go through the ledgers and found Rs. 6 Lakh shortage (A Huge sum back then) and told the AGM he had to make the amount good or they would report to the cops. The AGM was shivering but nothing could be done. The cops arrived and took him to the station. Now the Clerk was a local and the cops were locals. The AGM was an outsider – so they sweated him, threatened him, took him to his house in a jeep in front of his wife and children, talked to his neighbors etc. I was asked to be there at the station as a lawyer and the cops took iron rods and torture devices in front of me. When i said “What the hell is this ??” – the SI laughed and said “Sir! We are not mad. This is just for getting him to talk”
The poor man stayed the entire day at the Station. The next day the Customer returned. He had presented an FD receipt for another branch of our bank so the number was not in our ledger. He gave the FD receipt of our branch and the ledger confirmed the number and everything was okay.
But the AGM was finished. He was humiliated in every way possible. He took leave for 4–5 days and asked for a Transfer
It was then that the clerk told me “Sir. On that day itself i saw that this FD receipt was from a different branch. Had he been a better man – i would have told him then and there. I would have told the customer itself. None of this would have happened”
I told him he had been too cruel but he said “There is nothing worse than being yelled at in front of your child for no fault of your own”.
The AGM who was destined to become CMD – resigned from the bank unable to bear the humiliation of the incident (Though it lasted exactly for 14 – 15 hours after which it was all over). He joined Madura Courts and his career was never the same. He later began to sell Reuters Screens on a commission basis.
The Moral of the Story is – Humiliation by your boss unjustly will always come back to bite the boss. This Clerk who was such a good man that when i was transfered – he travelled in a lorry with my furniture to ensure that the local packers dont take me for a ride. Yet he never forgot his humiliation and destroyed the life of the AGM.
If you are a Boss – Never humiliate your underlings. Call them separately and tick them off but never in front of others. Easiest way to make enemies.
True for all fields.
Pizzeria Uno Chicago Deep Dish Pizza
This is a clone recipe of the best Chicago-style pizza you will ever eat!
Servings: 8
Pan Dough 1 cup warm tap water (110-115 degrees F) 1/4 ounce active dry yeast 3 1/2 cups flour 1/2 cup course ground cornmeal 1 teaspoon kosher or sea salt 1/4 cup vegetable oil
Pizza Topping 1 pound mozzarella cheese, sliced thin 1 pound Italian sausage, removed from the casing and crumbled 1 (14 1/2 ounce) can diced tomatoes, drained 2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced 5 fresh basil leaves, chopped fine 4 tablespoons grated parmesan cheese
Pour the warm water into a large mixing bowl and dissolve the yeast with a fork.
Add 1 cup of flour, all of the cornmeal, salt, and vegetable oil, and mix well with a spoon.
Continue stirring in the rest of the flour 1/2 cup at a time, until the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl. Flour your hands and the work surface and knead the ball of dough until it is no longer sticky.
Let the dough rise in an oiled bowl, sealed with plastic wrap, for 45-60 minutes in a warm place, until it has doubled in size.
Punch it down and knead it briefly.
Press it into an oiled 15-inch deep dish pizza pan until it comes 2 inches up the sides and is even on the bottom of the pan.
Let the dough rise 15-20 minutes before filling.
Heat the oven to 500 degrees F.
While the dough is rising, prepare the filling.
Cook the sausage until it is no longer pink and drain the excess fat.
When the dough has finished its second rising, lay the cheese over the dough shell.
Distribute the sausage and garlic over the cheese.
Top with the tomatoes.
Sprinkle on the seasonings and Parmesan cheese.
Bake for 15 minutes at 500 degrees F, then lower the temperature to 400 degreesF and finish baking for 25-35 minutes longer.
Lift up a section of the crust from time to time with a spatula to check its color. The crust will be golden brown when done.
Serve immediately.
Cat Sisters Meet After 9 Months Apart – Do They Recognize Each Other?
The Ukraine War was one of the worst miscalculations of the West and the Stupidest
The aim was to
Weaken Russia and destroy it Economically
Weaken Russia Globally and make it a Pariah
Give China a strong message and frighten China into following the Biden Doctrine
What’s happened is:-
A resurgent Russia that has something to fight for at last and has grown stronger every day
A Russo Sino Alliance that is fast becoming a nice power bloc with many nations with resources and heavy sanctions now drifting to them
Loss of Confidence in the West by 80% of the world and belief in a Multipolar world
Waning Western impact of Sanctions
Ensure China knows it’s War and prepare for it instead of catching them off guard
Today, Ukraine has been brutalized badly
It has lost 33.7% of pre SMO population as Refugees or now Russian Citizens in the Donors region and Kherson and Zaprozhye
It has lost its entire production capacity and it’s own weapon reserves have been brutally depleted and it relies on western arms and money which is dwindling every day
The West has spent $ 130 Billion so far on Ukraine and most of this money has been salted away due to severe corruption
Ukraine is sending more and more men to die
Russia meanwhile is happy with it’s grind and move strategy, minimizing casualties and enjoying the growth of their own industries in the MI complex
Scenario 1:-
The West want to FREEZE the conflict
Russia said No
Maybe Russia would be incentivized to do so like say offer to remove sanctions on Russia or maybe persuade China to convince Russia
Bleak chance of this happening
Scenario 2:-
Ukraine is destroyed
Russia decides to move from SMO to war and start hitting and destroying Ukraine like US did to Iraq or Afghanistan
Zelensky would flee and most leaders would flee then and Ukraine would capitulate
Timeline: 2025 March or April
Biden will not be President. He may not even be nominated as the Democratic candidate, so he will vindictively carry this till 19/1/25
Scenario 3:-
Trump is elected
Trump only has one term left and knows once he is elected, he has no more fears and no need to worry about voters again
He may make a deal and force Zelensky to surrender and make a deal with Russia and China
Unlike 2016, he won’t have the fear now because he can’t stand for any more elections
Scenario 4:-
The famous BAKYAN scenario
Poland moves into West Ukraine on invitation from Ukraine and forms a protectorate for West Ukraine
Central & remaining Ukraine is given security guarantees akin to Article V by Poland (Proxy by USA) and formally remains as the NEW UKRAINE
Donbass, Zaprozhye, Kherson are abandoned by Ukraine and Poland but not recognized by the West or UN as part of Russia and only as break away republics
However in reality, those territories will never return to Ukraine again along with Crimea for a long time
Russia will declare a cease fire to avoid clashing with Poland, a Nato power
Zelensky will be mostly arrested due to corruption and replaced by someone else
Timeline :- 30/6/2024 , a clean 4–5 months before the US Elections
The Destruction of Los Angeles | 2012 (John Cusack, Morgan Lily, Liam James)
I have not, but an interesting backfire happened with a close friend’s father, George.
Meet George, he is a PhD Astrophysicist and works in a very specialized field for the United States Department of Defense through a Defense Contractor. He has developed a number of unique solutions over his career that solved some very big problems for some very expensive black projects.
After over 30 years on the job he had moved to the top of his career path, he led a sizable group of physicists and engineers, but was not in management. Following a reorganization, George and his band of merry eggheads found themselves under a manager that had very little experience managing. When budget cuts came down, the green manager started reviewing the personnel files and, unsurprisingly, George was the highest paid person in the department. George was given the option to take an early retirement or be laid off. He was getting close to full retirement age and taking early retirement took a large chunk out of the pension he was counting on. He even offered to give up salary or work part time to address the budget needs. The manager would hear nothing of it.
Once George’s retirement was announced, a number the physicists and engineers approached the manager to warn him that there were solutions that only George fully understood and if there became a need to update or change some of the solutions, they may not be able to do it. George gracefully retired from the company and headed off to teach at the local university. About a year later, he heard from a number of his former team that there had been layoffs and terminations from the team by the same manager. A contract had come in to the company to modify one of George’s unique solutions and the remaining team was unable to make it work. The manager was under the gun to deliver and when it wasn’t working, he was accusing the team of being lazy and incompetent.
Not too long after, the Manager contacted George and asked him if he would come back on a short-term basis, George declined because he was happy teaching at the university. The manager continued to pester George until he finally agreed to come into the office to talk about what it would take to bring him back. George told the manager that he would come with his terms and that the meeting had to include the HR Director and the department Director.
George’s terms:
The company take back his early retirement and bridge his service so he could reach full retirement. (The manager groaned, but grudgingly agreed.)
Any of the team that was fired or forced to resign would be offered the option to come back. (The manager was furious, but George demanded that he had to have his team to be successful, so the manager agreed)
He become the manager of the department. (The manager threw up his hands and said it would never happen, there was only one manager of the department.)
The department director agreed to George’s last term.
We have A guardian Angel his name is Harry Kim.
Kathryn Janeway was a mother figure to almost ALL the crew … the clear exceptions being her first and second officers … but she ESPECIALLY was so to Harry Kim.
Oh my god, no. God, no… no no… I’d rather they stay dead.
Jesus, the mere thought of it gives me anxiety and stress.
My father died very suddenly last year. It was like my aunt talked to him on Friday, and he died of a heart attack on Sunday in his house.
For a few months, I kept thinking if I had any regrets. If I knew he would die, what would I say to him, or what would I want to do with him?
I came up with nothing.
It’s not like I don’t have anything to say. In fact, I have a LOT to say, so much so that I had therapy for years so that I could process and perhaps recover from all that childhood trauma from his abuse and neglect.
Would I say that to him? No. Because he wouldn’t listen. Not only he wouldn’t listen, he would turn it around and make it my fault. He would make me feel that I somehow wronged him, that I should feel guilty and ashamed and beg him for forgiveness and ask him how I can make it better. He’s an emotional manipulator, and he will never change. Not even in death.
He had, in his own domineering kind of way, made some attempt to mend our relationship after his 3rd wife died. But I couldn’t help but think he was doing that not because he genuinely wanted to fix our father-daughter relationship but because he did the mental calculation and realized with his wife dead, I was the only person who would take care of him if he couldn’t care for himself. It’s all about him. Never about me.
After he died, I wondered if he’d come back and haunt me or if he would come visit me in my dreams. Not that I believe in such things, but my aunt said her father (my grandpa) had visited her several times. And I thought, “Oh, you want to come and haunt me? Go ahead. I have something I want to scream at you. So come and haunt me and see how it ends for you, Dad.”
I’ve never even dreamed of him once since he died.
Having him back to life for 24 hours is not going to change anything between us.
The same goes for my mom, who ran off with some artist when I was 18 months old. The same goes for my grandma, who had raised and abused me…
You all better stay the fuck dead because you ain’t gonna like what I have to say to you.
Quit Your Job In 2023, This is my way out
No more 9 to 5 job for me. Do you also struggle with not having time for more valuable things in life than your work, do you spend too much time working for others? Are you feeling frustrated and stressed about not having time to live your life to the fullest, this is my story of how I realized my dream of living a simpler and less stressful life by quitting my job and stopped working for others.
In the ever-evolving landscape of the global smartphone industry, Huawei, the Chinese tech giant, once relied heavily on Qualcomm chips to power its devices. However, recent years have witnessed a significant shift in Huawei’s chipset strategy as it began to develop its own chipsets and reduce its dependence on Qualcomm. This change in course raised questions and curiosity in the tech world. In this comprehensive article, we will delve into the reasons behind Huawei’s decision to distance itself from Qualcomm chips, explore the challenges and opportunities that this shift presents, and assess the implications for both Huawei and the larger smartphone ecosystem.
1: The Historical Nexus
1.1. Qualcomm’s Dominance
A brief overview of Qualcomm’s leading position in the semiconductor industry.
Huawei’s early partnership with Qualcomm and the Snapdragon chipset series.
1.2. Huawei’s Ascendancy
Huawei’s rise to global prominence as a smartphone manufacturer.
The integral role of Qualcomm chips in Huawei’s international success.
2: Huawei’s Push for In-House Chip Development
2.1. The Emergence of HiSilicon
The birth of Huawei’s semiconductor subsidiary, HiSilicon.
The strategic importance of in-house chip development.
2.2. The Rise of the Kirin Chipsets
Introduction to Huawei’s Kirin chipset series.
Technological advancements and innovations in Kirin chips.
2.3. The Competitive Edge
How HiSilicon’s chip development aligns with Huawei’s long-term goals.
The advantages of vertical integration and control over chip design.
3: U.S. Sanctions and Supply Chain Stumbles
3.1. The Unfolding U.S. Sanctions Saga
An examination of the U.S. sanctions imposed on Huawei.
How these sanctions impacted Huawei’s access to critical technologies, including Qualcomm chips.
3.2. Vulnerabilities in the Supply Chain
The precariousness of relying on foreign suppliers for critical components.
The central role of chipsets as a strategic resource in the smartphone industry.
4: HarmonyOS and Huawei’s Ambitious Vision
4.1. Huawei’s Vision for HarmonyOS
Introduction to HarmonyOS, Huawei’s proprietary operating system.
The strategic significance of developing an Android alternative.
4.2. A Unified Ecosystem
How HarmonyOS aims to provide a seamless user experience across devices.
The role of chipset compatibility in achieving the HarmonyOS vision.
5: Implications and Challenges
5.1. Disrupting the Smartphone Market
How Huawei’s departure from Qualcomm chips impacts the competitive landscape.
Implications for consumers, industry players, and market dynamics.
5.2. Pursuing Technological Self-Reliance
The broader implications of Huawei’s commitment to technological self-reliance.
Lessons for other tech giants facing similar geopolitical challenges.
5.3. The Road Ahead
The technological and market challenges Huawei faces in developing its own chipsets.
The importance of innovation, research, and development in overcoming these hurdles.
6: Consumer Perceptions and the Future Outlook
6.1. Consumer Reactions and Preferences
How Huawei’s decision to utilize its chipsets is perceived by consumers.
Factors influencing consumer preferences in the realm of smartphones.
6.2. Shaping the Future of Huawei Smartphones
Prospects for Huawei’s smartphone business in the absence of Qualcomm chips.
The role of design, innovation, software, and competitive pricing in defining Huawei’s future offerings.
Conclusion
The divergence of Huawei from Qualcomm chips signifies a monumental shift in strategy with far-reaching implications. While the impact of U.S. sanctions and supply chain disruptions are undeniable catalysts for this transition, Huawei’s investments in in-house chipset development and the vision of HarmonyOS underscore its unwavering commitment to technological self-sufficiency and innovation. As we conclude this article, we gain a comprehensive understanding of the complex factors influencing Huawei’s strategic decision and what the future holds for one of the world’s foremost smartphone manufacturers.
INDIAN NEWS is Cheap Western Propaganda
The Indian news channels like WION and ANI (Asean News International) have become cheap propaganda outlets for the Western Colonial Masters that have always ruled over the Indian population. This video shows beyond any doubt that India News is part of the Anti China propaganda network set up by American Politicians and Main Stream Media. It is no secret as they admit to it in this video that they have joined this movement of hate against China.
A young German soldier during WWII was ordered to check the house for Jews. After minutes of searching, he declares the house clear.
His commanding officer is unconvinced. “Schauen Sie in den Dachboden,” he orders. Check the attic.
“Die Luke ist offen! Die würden sich nicht dort verstecken!” The young soldier says. The attic door is wide open! Surely they wouldn’t hide there!
His commander shakes his head. “Schauen Sie trotzdem nach.” Go check anyway.
The soldier climbs the ladder. As he peers into the darkness, he sees at least a dozen Jews hiding in the attic. All women and children.
Their terrified faces look back at him. Nobody dares to move. The young soldier turns and shouts to his commander.
“Alles klar!” All clear.
The soldier closes the trapdoor, leaving the Jews in the dark. He will never see them again.
Decades later, one of the young children in the attic will recall the anonymous soldier’s kindness. Every single person in the attic survives the war. Many attribute their lives to the young man.
The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird was a remarkable aircraft that could fly at speeds over Mach 3.2 and at altitudes up to 85,000 feet. It was the fastest manned aircraft ever flown and still holds many speed, altitude, and distance records for a manned aircraft.
Flying in such an extreme environment required special training and equipment for the pilots. The pilots of the SR-71 wore full-pressure suits that resembled those worn by astronauts. The suits protected them from low pressure, low temperature, and lack of oxygen at high altitudes. They also provided protection in case of an emergency ejection.
The pilots also had to cope with the high g-forces and acceleration that resulted from flying at such high speeds. The SR-71 could accelerate from Mach 1 to Mach 3 in less than 15 minutes, which put a lot of stress on the human body. The pilots had to undergo rigorous physical training and medical examinations to ensure they were fit for the mission. They also had to use special techniques to breathe and move their limbs during high-g maneuvers.
The pilots also experienced a unique sensation of speed when flying the SR-71. They could see the curvature of the Earth and the stars in broad daylight. They could also see the shock waves forming around the aircraft as it broke the sound barrier. The SR-71 flew so fast that it could outrun any missile or enemy aircraft that tried to intercept it. The pilots had to rely on their instruments and their instincts to navigate and control the aircraft.
Hang on, this is VERY strange!
This is the equivalent of China recognizing Puerto Rico as a sovereign nation….
My ex husband and I got married at Gretna Green with just 2 friends for witnesses. On the day after the wedding on the car journey home, we were passing a field of higland cows (ginger and hairy like me apparently) and said in an insulting tone, “oh look Sarah, there’s your relations”. I immediately fired back with “yes, but only through marriage”…. friends were in stitches, he never even cracked a smile. He had no sense of humour and had been trying to belittle me in front of people as he did the entire 9 years I was with him…
Another time when I was about 25 or so, at a neighbours bbq, I approached a small group of people listening to one guy in his late 50′s or so telling sexist joke after sexist joke. At the end of each joke all the men laughed loudly and the women kind of awkwardly. I had always found this guy a bit of a chauvinist and quite ‘sleazy’ so stepped in with my own joke… Mrs Smith went to hospital to give birth. After the baby was born the doctor said to her “I’m really sorry Mrs Smith but your baby is a hermaphrodite”. “A what?” asked Mrs Smith. “A hermaphrodite, it has features of both sexes” said the doctor. Mrs Smith gasps and says “Oh my god….it has a penis AND a brain!”. The women in the group all belly laughed but the sleaze not so much
A well-told lie is worth a thousand facts. The debt-trap narrative is a lie, a powerful one.
There are three main fallacies in the West’s hype about China’s “debt trap theory”: First, in terms of debt causes, countries in debt distress today often fall into debt traps before the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative.
Second, in terms of debt ownership, most of these countries’ debt is owed to Western or pro-Western institutions, not China. Studies show that 80 per cent of Sri Lanka’s external debt, 70 per cent of Pakistan’s and 77 per cent of Zambia’s external debt is owned by Western private and public institutions.
Third, in terms of the nature of debt, Western loans tend to be short-term with high interest rates, leading to unsustainable debt cycles, while Chinese lending to developing countries is long-term, low-interest credit that helps improve infrastructure.
The characteristics of China’s BRI financing is that it breaks through the traditional model, with no political conditions attached, and the forms of financing are pragmatic and diverse; The Export-Import Bank of China and the China Development Bank both emphasize debt sustainability, with commercial needs flexibly integrated with national strategies.
The irresponsible monetary policy of the United States is the real reason for the concentrated outbreak of debt problems in developing countries. The United States first implemented an ultra-loose monetary policy, allowing low-interest dollars to pour into Africa and emerging market countries, and then aggressively raised interest rates to attract dollars back to the United States, resulting in insufficient liquidity in developing countries.
Since China is not the largest creditor of developing countries, why does the West hype the “China debt trap theory”? The answer is that China’s “Belt and Road” initiative helps developing countries improve their economic capability. Once these countries achieve independent economic development, they do not have to rely on borrowing money from Western developed countries to maintain production and life, which is equivalent to cutting off a financial route for Western countries.
How I See the USA After 14 Years of Living Abroad & Expat Life
After 14 years of living abroad and enjoying expat life, I wanted to talk a bit about how I see the US now… This week, we’ll be taking a look at the USA through an Expat lens… Is the U.S. truly the “leader of the free world”, or is that just a perception we’ve grown accustomed to? One of many topics that are worth thinking about is the education system. Does it really prepare us for life, or is it more about scoring high on tests?
What about healthcare access? Is it as straightforward as it seems, or are there nuances we’re missing when comparing American Healthcare with European Healthcare? Another important factor to consider is safety and quality of life, is the U.S. the gold standard, or are there elements of community and culture that we’re overlooking in comparison with overseas?
We’ll also touch on the topic of zoning. Is it just a mundane urban planning concept, or does it have deeper implications for our lifestyle and mobility? Finally, we’ll take a look at the geographical isolation of North America. Is it just a geographical fact, or could it be shaping our understanding of the world in ways we don’t realize? There’s a lot to unpack, and these are the conversations that need to be had.
In this expat podcast episode of Not Your Average Globetrotter, hosted by me, Rafael Di Furia, I’ll share how I view the US and American culture and lifestyle in comparison with the culture and lifestyle in Europe and elsewhere having been abroad for more than 14 years, questioning everything from its global leadership role and education system to healthcare access, safety standards, connections in local communities, cultural rituals, and the implications of its geographical isolation.
My husband and I entered an elevator in a hotel in Vegas, headed to the lobby and extraordinarily tall black man was already in there. I smiled and tried not to stare because he was simply that enormous.
Husband, a sports fanatic, asked the giant of he’d ever played basketball and the giant responded that yeah, he’d played some ball in his day and DH told the giant that if he hadn’t, he would have missed an opportunity. The giant chuckled and sort of shook his head.
When we arrived in the lobby, we all kind of nodded and smiled and went out separate ways. I asked DH what his little exchange was all about.
The giant was Shaquille O’Neill, the Shaq Attack. My husband told Shaq that he would have missed an opportunity if he hadn’t played basketball.
I told a story about a kid threatening to kill himself. Let me explain.
I didn’t think I was going to get the job. Not in a “I don’t believe in myself” kind of way, I mean in a “I have direct evidence” kind of way. A meeting I’d had fell through, so I showed up for my interview super early. This meant I was sitting there in the lobby when the head of the special education department opened the door, profusely shook another woman’s hand, and said:
“You are exactly what we’re looking for. We’ll send out an offer to you as soon as we’re done with today’s interviews.” Then she looked up and saw me waiting. “Oh, you’re here early, come on it.”
So I walked in knowing I was wasting my time, but I was already there and decided to have fun with it. I told jokes. I made fun of the number of people they had in the room to interview me (7!). I was as casual as possible and answered every question off the cuff instead of trying to think of an answer they wanted to hear. Then they asked me one of those awful, super generic questions you always get when you work with kids, something along the lines of “What was your moment when you realized you knew you were supposed to be a teacher?”
I have no patience for those questions, and find them to be really performative and all about showing how generically kind and sensitive you are. For a job I thought I was going to get I might have played along and told an exaggerated story about teaching a kid to read or something. I didn’t do that.
Instead I told them about one of my students in the Emotional Disorder class I was teaching at a middle school. The little guy had a severe anxiety disorder, and we were trying to support him while also ignoring attention seeking behaviors. So when he started yelling I escorted him to the quiet break area. When he started shouting he needed to go to the hospital I assured him I would check in on him to make sure he was ok. And when he started screaming that he was going to kill himself I pointed out there was nothing in the area he could use to do it, and if he decided to bang his head against the wall it would probably just really hurt. Two minutes later he poked his head out and calmly asked if he could do his math work, and I realized that some of the interventions I was using were actually working. It was a pretty cool feeling. Everyone in the room was silent, and more than a few looked really freaked out. No worries, I already knew they gave the job to someone else, and went on my way.
They offered me the job that evening. Apparently they had an elementary school moderate/severe class with a lot of difficult behaviors, and my story had convinced them immediately that I could handle it. Oh, and that other woman I saw getting offered a job? She was a speech therapist, and not a teacher at all. Looks like we both crushed our interviews.
We had 4,000 employees and had been the world leader in our field for about 10 years at this time.
We were not the price setter, though. But we did very well and had a reasonable operating margin, enough to satisfy our corporate owners and shareholders.
Then we got a new president, an American B-school graduate. He came from Stanford, as I recall.
After some time he declared to us in the sales department (about 90 people), operating worldwide.
Raise all prices 15 percent
Go back on all orders in house and negotiate a 15 percent higher price.
I tried.
We all tried.
We suffered, badly.
No new orders for nine (9) months.
The customers with orders in place said a flat “are you out of your fr…..g mind?”
Our build cycle, order to delivery, was about 18 months.
Nine months later the factories started to look empty and were laying off staff, weekly — NO NEW ORDERS.
“Biggest boss” at our owning company got wind of this and came to town.
Our president was fired the same day and we all in sales got new instructions.
“Forget all orders about price increases — go sell as competitively as you can.”
It took about two years for the company to regain its world-leading position.
By that time, I and just about half of our previous sales organization were gone, replaced by eager young souls.
The “American Dream” Is A Big Lie
I talk about how the “American Dream” is a big lie. Too many people around the world are victims to debt, consumerism, and care too much about what other people think. I give my all knowing wisdom via Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
The neocons are marching the world towards war. Lordy!
We are all going to die!!!!!
2023 10 28 13 15
All these videos MUST be watched to get the FULL IMPACT of what is going on right now. It’s so insane. So crazy. So very disgusting. You have to laugh.
I have worked in the video games industry for over a decade. During this time, I introduced several Western games to the Chinese market. This experience taught me a great deal about the cultural and behavioral differences (and similarities) between Western and Chinese users.
One thing I found fascinating is how Western users and Chinese users absorb information.
The Chinese language is information-dense. Reading Chinese, you absorb a lot more information compared to reading English of similar length. There’s a reason why when Western (English) literary works are translated into Chinese, they usually “shrink” in length. Chinese Bible, for example, is thinner than English Bible.
Chinese users are very used to absorbing large amounts of information all at once. Chinese websites usually have a very busy (by Western standards) layout packed with headlines and texts. At the same time, English users are more comfortable with a minimalistic layout.
In game design, this reflects on UI and HUB design. Chinese users are very used to busy UI and packed HUB design, while Western players are more used to the “less is more” kind of design, sometimes no HUB at all.
A lot of times, when Western designers were presented with this problem, they often considered Chinese users “backward,” or “still live in the 90s,” or “just not sophisticated enough to appreciate a minimalist design.” While it was my job to explain the cultural differences, the designers didn’t always listen. They believed they could “educate” Chinese users with their “superior” design. They thought once these “backward” people saw my awesome modern design, they’d love it!
LOL.
That is not to say there isn’t minimalist design in China. It’s just what’s considered “too busy and overwhelming” style in the West is accepted or even preferred in China because of how our language functions differently than English.
USA knows the only thing it can do is to talk shit on China. It cannot out compete, out innovate and out succeed with China. It certainly cannot bomb or nuke China as it will will received the same from China. The only thing it can do is to talk shit.
UK,Canada and Australia. Are the U.S. fellow colonialist and fellow native slaughterers. They did so much shit in the past few hundred years and are scared of reprisal and reparations. They had no choice to get a mafia hoodlum to protect them. Talking shit on China is a given.
Japan shared the loot and plunder of Chinese and Asian people in the 2nd world war and refused to accept responsibility for her aggression and prefer to pay protection money to the U.S. they had to talk shit on China.
if you are smart and intelligent enough. None of these nations ever whisper a grain of truth on China. The truth hurts them too much.
MINISO’s global expansion strategies; Q3 online sales in China, and consumer reactionsAmber ZhangOct 26∙Preview READ IN APP *This post is our premium content.
MINISO (NYSE: MNSO), a Chinese low-cost retailer and variety store chain, is gaining global attention. As of June 30, 2023, MINISO operates 5,791 stores worldwide. Its annual revenue for the period ending June 30, 2023, increased by 13.8% to 11.47 billion yuan. Revenue from China reached 7.651 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 2.8%, while revenue from overseas markets reached 3.822 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 44.6%.
MINISO’s rapid overseas revenue growth has made it one of the most successful Chinese companies to go global.
(For the year ended June 30, revenue from overseas markets accounted for over 33% of MINISO’s total revenue.)MINISO is on track to reach the peak price it had since its IPO in October 2020.“一切面向海外，一切面向商品” (“Everything is oriented towards overseas, everything is oriented towards products.”) —— Guofu
Ye, CEO and founder of the MINISO [source]Expanding into global markets has always been a key part of MINISO’s strategy.
As of 2023, MINISO had already established stores in 107 countries and regions, including North Korea, with over 2,100 stores overseas. Notably, in May 2023, MINISO achieved a significant milestone by opening a store in Times Square, New York, becoming the first Chinese brand to have a presence in that iconic location.
As of year-to-date 2023, MINISO (NYSE: MNSO) has gained over 150%, despite the pessimistic sentiments towards Chinese equities.In today’s post, we will share some winning strategies of MINISO to help you understand how the company managed to succeed domestically and internationally, and whether these strategies will be sustainable.
We will also provide an update on MINISO’s domestic online sales and consumer reactions ahead of MINISO’s upcoming earnings report in November.*
Understanding the psychology of overseas consumersMINISO adopts unique sales methods in various countries to connect with the psychology of local consumers. To scale this strategy, MINISO has chosen the “agency model” by partnering with local leaders.For instance, in Vietnam, MINISO initially thought that inexpensive small umbrellas would be popular, but they ended up having an excessive amount of umbrellas in stock.
This was due to MINISO underestimating the actual preferences of local consumers. Vietnam, being a “motorbike country,” is the fourth-largest motorcycle market globally, with over 45 million motorcycles in circulation. As a result, people in Vietnam use raincoats while riding motorcycles.MINISO later collaborated with Le Bao Minh Group and specially developed arm sleeves and masks for the Vietnamese market, which immediately became popular locally.Le Bao Minh is the exclusive distributor of Canon in Vietnam and has over 200 sub-agents in 64 provinces.
With such a leading enterprise leading the way, MINISO avoided many pitfalls and reduced a significant amount of trial and error costs. [Source]The low-cost advantage has given MINISO a boost amid a slow economic recoveryAs we have previously observed, Chinese consumers are increasingly prioritizing practical purchases.
The combination of Miniso’s low-cost advantage and its creative and personalized products has given them a boost both in China and globally in 2023.Similar trends are observed among other low-cost retailers. For example, Pinduoduo is estimated to reach its target of $10 billion USD GMV for 2023, and SHEIN recorded a revenue of up to $23 billion USD in 2022. In China, there is also a growing trend among e-commerce players to adopt the low-cost strategy to remain competitive in 2023.To create a feeling of consumers “getting a bargain,”
MINISO focuses on the “golden price point of 10 yuan” in its stores.Ye Guofu, the CEO of MINISO, explained: “To make customers buy when they want to buy and use when they want to use, that’s the best thing. We must achieve this situation, so 10 yuan is the golden price point, allowing customers to have no pressure.” [source]
However, despite the growing importance of value for money to consumers, the demand for personalized and stylish products from MINISO’s main customer base of young consumers remains strong.
As a result, MINISO has made significant investments in “大牌平替” or “substituting big brands with generics” products, which are self-made products that imitate the popular themes and styles of well-known brands:
For example, from the same supplier, a water cup is priced at 379 yuan in MUJI, while MINISO is priced at 49 yuan; the same goes for socks, with MUJI priced at 158 yuan and MINISO priced at 29 yuan.
The management of MINISO stated, “The perfumes in our store are made by perfumers from Dior and Chanel, using their fragrance ingredients. The luxury brand perfumes are priced at $200 per bottle, but I only sell them for $20 per bottle.” [source]
Not me (sadly) but a guy I met when I worked at a steel mill.
It was a very big company, 17.000 employees at the time, the size of a small town with their own small hospital, fire department and armed securities with patrol cars, shops and even a gas station. So quite a big area.
I was working at the contiunous casting facility. Basically where molten irom from the blast furnace is poured into a casting unit and becomes a rectangular block of steel.
The whole company was incredibly split up in different departments each with their own hierachy and leadership. One casting unit consisted of a Foreman (which belonged to department X), 1 quality control inspector (department F), 1 guy in the control room checking all the parameters, looking at several graphs and so on (department Z) and finally 3 workers doing actual work (department A). Just to get the hang of it, 6 people working on the same unit belonged to 4 different departments. And the whole company was like that!
Like every few years some higher ups decided to reinvent the wheel and restructure the electrical maintenance department. There used to be 6 departments and after some calculations they decided to cut it down to 5 departments and integrate the workers from the sixth department into the remaining five.
It went surprisingly smooth aside from the old foreman. There was only one foreman position per department and they were already filled. Because he was 30 years with the company, starting as an apprentice and rose through the ranks after a few years they told him “We need to hold a meeting about your position but dont worry we find something for you”.
Time went on but he heard nothing at all about the meetings outcome despite several inquiries. So he simply came in his office everyday and waited for news. He had nothing to do because the sixth department didnt exist anymore so nobody could call him to fix a problem, he simply didnt exist.
But it gets even crazier. A new office building for the departments was built and he stayed in the very old 2 story building because how could he move into the new one if he didnt exist at all?
So he strolled around all day through the different units, chatting with people and drinking coffee, had an awful lot of house plants in his office, even one of those Japanese Bonsai trees he used to cut regularily (it looked like a rain forest, not gonna lie) and found himself another hobby, modelmaking. If he wasnt walking around he sat in his office and assembled those 1:24 models of planes, helicopters, cars…
It took the company 4 years to somehow recognize he is still here! But nobody could figure out how he had gone missing. HR had him listed as Foreman of department 6 and higher ups of the casting facility somehow assumed he left the company and went into early retirement or something because department six did no longer exist.
In the end, he had two years to retirement and they decided to let him carry on for the next two years. It was apparently cheaper to pay him for literally nothing than dealing with all the legal issues. Our worker protection laws are really strong and firing somebody so close to retirement means the company has to pay a massive fee to the government.
Ah. An insight into what life on other planets might look like. -MM
The obvious choice would be Socotra, that little Yemeni isle off the Horn of Africa, home to the iconic dragon’s blood tree. However, I think there’s another island which has even more interesting flora – New Caledonia. Sitting in the South Pacific, well over a thousand kilometres from the nearest major landmass, New Caledonia has been biologically isolated since the Cretaceous period.
Because of this, it has unprecedented, record-breaking levels of endemism: around three quarters of its plants are found nowhere else on Earth! Despite only being around the size of the nation of Israel, it’s home to four and a half thousand plant species.
image 192
Back in dinosaur times, New Caledonia broke off from a vast southern super-continent known as Gondwana. Because it remains remote, it still harbours the primeval flora of Gondwana, which has long since gone extinct in most mainland regions. First of all, it is the world’s only true stronghold of the araucarians.
The most famous species today is the monkey puzzle tree, which is native to Chile, but New Caledonia’s most recognizable variety is the coral reef pine, Araucaria columnaris. It has a thin, pillar-like shape, and grows directly on shallow limestone coastlines, especially on the Isle of Pines (a popular tourist attraction).
image 191
The araucarians are an ancient family of conifer trees, dating back to the beginnings of the Jurassic Period. During the reign of the dinosaurs, they dominated forests all over the world, and were the first trees in Earth’s history to grow extremely tall, as many stood over 60 metres in height. In fact, they are likely the reason sauropods like Brachiosaurus were so damn tall.
Despite their former success, araucarians have been out-competed by more advanced lineages of tree, but they persist in various parts of the Southern Hemisphere. The only place where they still predominate, however, is New Caledonia, which is home to 18 species.
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They thrive in all kinds of habitats on the island, from its tropical rainforests and iconic limestone islets to its hilly “maquis” scrub and dry woodlands.
The closest relatives of the araucarians are the podocarps, which were also abundant in Gondwana long ago, and also maintain a strong presence in New Caledonia despite extinction in many other regions. The island has an especially interesting (endemic) genus called Parasitaxus.
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As its name suggests, it’s a parasite – in fact, it’s the only parasitic gymnosperm plant in the world. Believe it or not, it has no roots, and does not perform photosynthesis (hence its rather alien purplish-black colouration). Instead, it grows exclusively out of the roots of a different endemic podocarp species, sucking nutrients from its host.
Another example of New Caledonia’s very unique flora is Amborella. This genus contains a single species, and it is in fact so unique that it has a whole taxonomic family and order to itself! It’s the most primitive flowering plant on Earth, having diverged from the rest a staggering 130 million years ago. It’s a pretty good proxy for what flowers would have looked like while T. rex was roaming the Earth.
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Lastly, I’ll introduce you to Sphaeropteris intermedia, sometimes alternatively called Cyathea intermedia. With a woody trunk that can stand over 30 metres tall, one would think it was a palm tree, but it is in fact a fern – the largest fern on the planet. It further contributes to the exceptionally prehistoric feel to New Caledonia’s vegetation.
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So, those are the most charismatic and fascinating members of New Caledonia’s flora. There are many, many, many more endemic species Mesozoic relics and the like, but I’ve just selected the ones which are of particular interest to the non-botanist.
Now, you all know me by now, so I doubt any of you are surprised that I can’t bring myself to finish this answer without going off-topic and talking about the animals. First things first, the wonderful birdies. The most fascinating of all the island’s avians is undoubtedly the kagu.
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This species is highly unique, genetically – it is the sole species in the distinct family Rhynchochetidae, and shares the whole order Eurypygiforms with a single other species, the equally weird sunbittern of South America. The kagu is practically flightless, and probes the forest floor for invertebrate prey.
To prevent soil from getting up its nose as it digs around the ground, it has structures covering its nostrils called nasal corns, something not seen in any other bird. For mysterious reasons, it has around a third of the number of red blood cells most birds have, but thrice the amount of hemoglobin per cell.
Another highly notable New Caledonian avian is the New Caledonian crow, one of the world’s most intelligent birds.
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In the wild, they fashion sophisticated tools out of ferns, feathers, thorns, grass and twigs, carefully trimming and folding them down to size. These are used to extract insects from trees, and remarkably, different styles of crow tools can be observed in different parts of New Caledonia. This could mean that these crows are the only non-mammals in the world which have distinct, evolving cultures.
The island is also home to a diverse array of tropical pigeons. Pigeons seem boring to us, but closer to the equator, species are much less drab. Some in New Caledonia are huge, measuring over half a metre in length, whereas others have vibrant colours, such as the cloven-feathered dove.
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There’s also the crow honeyeater, a strange-looking bird, which – at over 40 cm in length – is the largest species of honeyeater in the world. Sadly, it’s now critically endangered.
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Moving onto the reptiles, we have some very cool geckoes. This includes the rather polite-looking crested gecko, who’s got killer eyelashes:
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And of course Leach’s giant gecko. Measuring up to 36 centimetres from nose to tail, this lumbering beast is the world’s largest gecko.
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On the topic of larger-than-life lizards, here’s the dramatically-named terror skink. It’s even bigger than the aforementioned reptile, at around half a metre in length. It was presumed extinct until being rediscovered in 1933, although to this day it is extremely rare.
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Then there’s a plethora of endemic invertebrate fauna, of course. The largest insect on the island is the giant coconut grasshopper, a freakishly big creepy crawly which is longer than your hand.
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What are even more interesting, however, are New Caledonia’s marine invertebrates. For example, its waters are the only home of one of the only four living species of nautilus, Nautilus macromphalus.
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And it has the New Caledonian Barrier Reef, which is the world’s longest continuous barrier reef, stretching across over 1,500 km of shallow sea. That’s about two thirds the length of Australia’s much more famous one, which is actually a smattering of smaller, disconnected reefs! This reef is highly biodiverse, and is home to rare dugongs.
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My final words in this very long answer about a very small island will be on New Caledonia’s extinct animals, from the time of the last Ice Age, prior to human arrival. Back then, it was home to even more amazing wildlife, such as Mekosuchus inexpectatus.
Up until its extinction 4,000 years ago, it was the very last land-dwelling crocodylian in Earth’s history, the end of a story lasting hundreds of millions of years. It would have been an apex predator on the island, despite being only 2 metres long.
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A possible prey item of Mekosuchus was Sylviornis, the largest galliform ever to live. The galliforms are an order of birds which include chickens and their relatives. Specifically, Sylviornis was a member of the megapodes, odd Australasian birds who incubate their eggs in huge mounds of earth.
It weighed in at about 30 kg, and its skeletal anatomy was markedly similar to that of the non-avian dinosaurs.
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Other extinct creatures endemic to New Caledonia in the Pleistocene include a variety of other megapodes, flightless rails, huge hawks and several monitor lizards.
So, what was meant to be a quick answer about some cool plants ended up being an exhaustive ecological and paleontological survey of New Caledonia. If you stuck around for the full article, thank you very much, and if you didn’t, just try to sleep well in the knowledge that you’ll never know what a terror skink is.
America Compared: Why Other Countries Treat Their People So Much Better – US American Reaction
This is a very good video. Please take the time to watch it.
Irresistible Exotic allure! Russian tourists flock to China’s border city of Heihe for breakfast, shopping
It may seem surprising, but a growing number of Russians are making the trip to have breakfast in Heihe, a border city in northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province, before heading back home.
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Heihe sits across the Heilongjiang River from the Russian city of Blagoveshchensk. The river is known in Russia as the Amur River. Since the resumption of visa-free group tourist trips between China and Russia in Heihe on Sept. 21, 2023, there’s been a noticeable uptick in Russian visitors. A simple boat ride allows for easy movement between the two nations.
Many Russians are attracted to Heihe’s breakfast offerings and shopping experiences. They indulge in local breakfast staples such as soybean milk, tea eggs, and Baozi — steamed stuffed buns. Some have even crafted a unique dining blend, pairing Baozi with beer.
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Many vendors at morning markets have added bilingual Chinese-Russian signs, and some have picked up basic Russian to better serve their visitors.
Given its strategic location, Heihe has long been a nexus for China-Russia trade. It stands as China’s primary supplier of everyday Russian products, which are then distributed nationwide.
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has made trade between China and other BRI partner countries increasingly convenient.
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Beyond Heihe, many other border areas in China exude an exotic allure. Cities and regions such as Dongxing in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Manzhouli in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Horgos and Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, and Mengla county in Yunnan Province have thrived due to the expanding cooperation under the BRI. These places now serve as critical ports connecting China to Southeast Asia, Europe, and Central Asia, and beyond via railways and economic corridors.
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Over the past decade, these border regions have directly witnessed, participated in, and benefited from extensive cooperation under the framework of the BRI.
Meanwhile in the United States…
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Texas Chicken-Fried Steak with Cream Gravy
texas chicken fried steak
Yield: 6 large servings (2 pieces each)
Ingredients
Steak
3 pounds 1/2 inch thick round steak
2 cups all-purpose white flour
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
Vegetable oil (corn, peanut, safflower oil) for frying*
Cream Gravy
1/4 cup pan drippings
1/4 cup all-purpose white flour
3 cups warm milk
Salt
Black pepper
Instructions
Steak
Trim the fat off the meat, remove the bone and cut the meat into 6 equal size pieces. Use a meat mallet to pound the steaks on both sides, until they are 1/4 inch thick. Then cut each pounded piece of steak in half (making 12 pieces total).
Combine the flour, salt and pepper in a large shallow bowl. Beat the eggs and milk together well in another large shallow bowl.
Dredge the steaks in the seasoned flour, coating them well on both sides. Then use the meat mallet to pound the flour into the steaks. Dip the steaks in the egg-milk mixture, then dredge them again in the remaining flour. Set the steaks aside in a single layer on a large piece of wax paper.
Heat the oven to 200 degrees F.
Pour the vegetable oil to a depth of 1/2 inch into 2 or 3 large heavy-bottom skillets (iron skillets are best). You will have to cook the steaks in 2 or 3 batches, depending on the number of skillets you have. Set the skillets over medium heat. The oil will be hot enough for frying when it pops when you sprinkle a few drops of water on it.
Carefully put the steaks in a single layer in the hot oil and cook over medium heat until the bottom side of each steak is golden brown (about 7 to 8 minutes).
Turn the steaks over, cover the skillets, reduce the heat to low and cook until the bottom sides are golden brown and the steaks are tender (about 8 to 10 minutes).
Transfer the steaks to a heatproof platter, cover loosely with aluminum foil and keep them warm in the oven while you cook the remaining steaks and prepare the cream gravy.
Cream Gravy
Pour the remaining oil out of one large skillet into a heatproof bowl or measuring cup, but leave in the skillet any particles of batter that stick to the bottom of the pan.
Return 1/4 cup of the oil to the skillet and stir in 1/4 cup of flour. Cook for about 3 to 5 minutes over low heat, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom of the pan, but don’t let the mixture brown.
Slowly add the warm milk to the pan, stirring with a fork or wire whisk to prevent lumps from forming. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the gravy is smooth and thick.
Add salt and black pepper to taste.
Serve the chicken-fried steaks with the cream gravy poured over them.
Notes
* Beef suet, lard or solid vegetable shortening are traditionally used for cooking chicken-fried steak
In Belgium you could join up “for life” (until retirement, you can’t do that anymore) and get a shitload of perks.
You got a free apartment, free water, electricity, telephone, gas, and cable TV.
You could eat for free and you got your uniforms for free. You also got free cigarettes’, free beer, and free condoms.
Whatever else you needed you could get at substantial discounts.
When you traveled from Germany to Belgium (every weekend … yes, we went home for the weekends during the Cold War), it was on military trains where the customs officials had no jurisdiction. So our kitbags were loaded with cigarettes which we sold on the black market in Belgium.
We always used public transport as it was free as well.
You could get a free university education as well if you passed the screening tests. The better your education, the easier promotion came, the more money you made.
Basically, you could put your whole monthly pay in the bank and then some.
In the days of the Cold War, most joined for the perks. You had a good job and job security.
What did all that amount to? A free house.
HUGE BOMBSHELL! China & Russia Sign $160 Billion Strategic Project
Best ever friendship China- Russia helps to build up global prosperity.
I experienced many times when I worked as a cashier. 99.9% of the time the customer was mistaken. There was a woman who came into our store every 2 weeks and usually made a stink about some aspect of poor service , etc. We suspected her of stealing also. She was not happy unless she made a clerk or cashier cry.
Once she tried to pull the wrong change scam on me and it backfired on her. While I had a fully loaded till, I only had rung one sale that day and that customer had paid with a $20 bill that was ripped. I put the bill under the removable cash drawer so that I could tape it back together later. .
The store got busy so I opened my register. The scammer purchased a few small, inexpensive items and paid with a $50. When my drawer opened, I noticed the damaged $20 was sticking out so I lifted the drawer and stuffed it back in and also put the $50 under the drawer. I make the correct change. The customer starts screaming that I made the wrong change and that I’m stealing from her. She calls me a thief repeatedly. I locked the register down as the manager comes running over.
Customer is throwing and all out hissy fit, crying and screaming about how I should be fired for stealing from her. She also started throwing her purchases at me, hitting me in the face. I know the manager is going to pull a reading on the register and count the money in and under the drawer. I stepped away and discreetly called the police. I knew we finally had her.
Surprise, surprise. My drawer balanced. Evidently she saw the damaged $20 and assumed it was a $100 and thought she would try to take advantage of us. The police show up. I explain that she has slandered and assaulted me (I have a raised red welt on my face), I want her arrested and I will sign a complaint . My manager tells them that we have video. She also explains what happened with the customer trying to scam us financially. As the police walk her out, some items fell out of pants, so stealing was added to the charges
Long story short, it goes to court. She got community service for assaulting me and a substantial fine for the stealing. But the best was the store manager printed out the customer’s image from the store video and made a poster stating that she was banned from the store. She taped it to the entrance door. Lol Plus she made smaller versions and taped one to each register telling the cashiers to call a manager if she is spotted in the store.
The vice president of Korean Air, Heather Cho, in 2014, was so angry about being served Macadamia nuts in a bag instead of on a porcelain bowl that she forced the plane to return to the gate at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport so the flight attendant could be removed.
She also demanded that the flight attendants get on their knees to apologize to her.
Heather Cho, the daughter of the CEO of Korean Air at the time, Cho Yank-ho served five months of a one-year prison sentence after South Korean court found her guilty for violating aviation law.
The flight attendant filed a civil suit against Cho and Korean Air, asking for a total of 400 million South Korean won ($354,000).
“The Seoul western district court ordered that Korean Air pay him 20 million won for attempting to coerce him to drop the case.”
“He was also entitled to another 30 million won ($27,000) as compensation for Cho’s assaults and insults.”
In all, $18,000 was all he was able to get.
It took one and a half years for the flight attendant and cabin crew chief to get their jobs back.
Her father could have just said “yes, my daughter is batshit. Here, have your jobs,” but that did not happen.
This was a perfect example of the abuse of power that seems to be all too common in South Korea and amongst a good number of Asians even here in Africa.
There is always a better use of your high influence than using it to make people feel like a puppet.
6G is 100 times faster than 5G. Nothing we have supports this. It is 100Gb/s. I think there are fiber lines that support this. But that is in PC, not mobile.
It is a challenge to do this in the power factor that mobile phones have. You don’t have access to 300W of power.
So everything has to be done from the fundamentals and re-engineered to work in a mobile form factor.
Wired, whether copper or fiber is completely different than wireless. This is brand new territory for human technology.
Overrated?? America Compared: Why Other Countries Treat Their People So Much Better
BYD is an EV company and China sits well above the US in this field
They control
The Rare Earths and lowest extraction and process costs
The Patents are theirs
The Raw Material supply is theirs
The Technology is entirely owned by China
The Software and Electronics are theirs
You take them out of GPS, they will laugh and use Beidou in 10 seconds or Galileo
At best US can prevent their sale in US but BYD expects that anyway
The only area where US hold some away is AUTONOMOUS DRIVING
Here US holds the edge while China hasn’t yet gone full flow into autonomous driving because it’s superfluous and expensive today
The ADS for Tesla costs around $ 13000 to make in the factory and design
China will get it to $ 4600 by 2025–2026
Then my guess is Oppo and Baidu will take over the Autonomous driving revolution in China
China is immune against their development of High Speed Rail, EVs, Solar Panel, Rare Earth Extraction, Steel and Alunimum and Nuclear development and Aerospace
US can’t do squat except prevent these models from being sold in US but frankly Automobiles always depend heavily on their domestic market with the sole exception of Germany
When my son tragically died she bought groceries, put them on the doorstep, knocked on the door and left so I didn’t have to engage in conversation if I didn’t feel like it (she stayed just inside her front door in case I did want to talk).
She cooked meals I could put in the freezer for me and my daughter that I could eat (I have several food intolerances she knows about and which mean I can’t actually find ready-meals in stores).
She put our bins out every week until I could do it myself (it was one of my son’s jobs each week).
She was always there when I needed a hug. Even now, four years on, she is there to talk to, to reminisce with about my boy’s antics, to share a tear with about the loss of him. She is never afraid to bring him up in conversation and talks to her young sons about him, holding him up as an example of the type of young men they should strive to be.
I have had a lot of bad neighbours, but she is a blessing that outweighs the others a million times over
Florida Businessman Dies from Virus : Meets Three Guardian Angels (Near-Death Experience)
Bill Tortorella shares the story of his Near-Death Experience, occurring after contracting a virus at a jewelry trade show in Tucson, Arizona. During his encounter on the Other Side, he describes being transformed into a beautiful beam of light, being guided by three guardian angels, reuniting with his deceased brother, and having it revealed to him where we come from and why we are here. Bill shares what it was like to feel that he was back in his True Home on the Other Side and how the love and forgiveness he experienced helped him to live his life differently after his Near-Death Experience.
What happened to some of Hong Kong protesters who got prosecuted for breaking Hong Kong’s national security law?
The legal system in Hong Kong works slooowly… it took them 3 years to prosecute me for not wearing a seat belt on a bus. A woman who rioted in Mong Kok in 2016 went to trial in 2020.
So what’s happened?
Open court trials happened. Open court trials YOU can attend by sitting in the galleries.
Some were convicted some were not.
The trials and convictions began in 2021. Convictions and acquittals are going on as you read this on 26th October 2023. Last week 4 rioters from PolyU were sentenced to around 4 years. That means we’re likely to find out in 2024 as some of those sentenced in 2021 and 2022 of 2–3 years will be released from prison.
My guess is that they will be absolutely unemployable Yer see Hong Kong doesn’t have the rehabilitation of offenders act like the UK. In the UK if you’ve served a prison term you no longer have to declare it but it will show up on a CRB check.
As such they will likely be exploited for the rest of their lives.
You go jogging in the morning and you see old people sweeping streets. It’s hard work as I see them leaving trails of sweat. They may get jobs in those areas and the bosses? They can exploit the shit out them as they wish. What are they going to do? Quit and work somewhere else?
Those last chance employers have ALL the power.
Even the leaders of the rioters and politicians. When was the last time you heard from them? The Nathan Laws who ‘escaped’ to the UK. When was the last time he was in the limelight? When was the last time he said or did anything?
Or they may become homeless. Way back in 2021 there was a rioter who was sentenced for 8 months and was released. He was homeless and had a piece of cardboard begging for money. You can’t go any lower than that and once you get down to that level all that’s left to help you are charities.
You sweat. Especially in an M48A3 Patton tank. You’re cramped, well the guys in the turret were but the driver didn’t have it too bad though he had 30 rounds of 90 mm stacked around him along with control panel in front and to the left plus fire extinguishers.
The driver had three telescope views to the outside world. One to the front, one to the left and one to the right. In the jungle, he could barely see anything out of them but green. And he could only see about eight or so feet ahead. He had help from his TC who had a better view and told him which direction to go through the com. You can’t hear conversations in a tank unless you are wearing your CVC helmet with the com speakers in it. Tanks are very noisy. Don’t let the movies fool you. You cannot talk and hear each other normally in a tank. Not in a 48 anyway. Not unless you are wearing your ‘Bone Dome.’
Tank crews in Vietnam, especially in III Corps sweated because inside the tank the temperature could reach 130 F or 54.4 C. Without gloves, you could burn your hands on the surface steel of a tank. Crewmen wore either T shirts, no T shirts.or just flak vests, if they wanted to. And their trousers of course.
So before moving up into the tree line, or jungle, you sit there sweating and waiting and sweating and waiting and sweating and waiting. That’s the worst part of eminent combat. Waiting…..and thinking. Too much time to think. Too much time. That was the problem. You were praying to get moving. Thinking too much was not good.
So you sat and waited and listened to the chatter on the com. A big ice block could be felt in your stomach and you got thirsty as hell and gulped evil tasting warm water.
Your eyes detect everything, right down to the flies that land on your vision block and you think, ‘You won’t want to be there in a little while. Fly away little guy.’ At times you wish you could fly away with him but here you stay, seated in a 52 ton steel hot box, a hot box that is nothing but a killing machine manned by 18 and 19 year olds just out of high school. They look tough in their combat gear but take off the combat uniform and give them t shirt and jeans, and you’ve got innocent looking kids. They are the ones fighting your wars.
Then, all changes. You’re ordered to move up.
“Time to find the bad guys,” you hear your gunner say on the com.
“Or time for them to find us,” the loader chimes in.
“Cut the chatter chipmunks,” the TC says sternly. It’s not like advanced training anymore, a crew being in combat together often is much less ‘Army’ and more personal.
Moving into the jungle is not pleasant especially in a buttoned up tank. It’s nerve wracking everytime. For a new guy it’s nerve wracking because he doesn’t know what to expect. For a combat vet it’s nerve wracking because he knows.
The pack or engine of the tank is loud. All you can hear is that and the voices on the coms. Combat can happen in seconds. You have to remember you are not alone. That’s hard to do in the lead tank because it seems like you are. However there are ground troops, M113s or ACAVs and other tanks with you. You are all going through this shit together.
You do not know when it’s going to happen then suddenly, you are in it. Green tracers are steaming toward you, sometimes you see sparks then a smoke trail snaking your way and mortar explosions falling around you. If there is a lot of this happening and does not stop, you know it’s an NVA regiment and not the VC. A VC fire fight only lasts 15 minutes or so. Hit and run. With the NVA, it’s hit and hit. You know your in for a fight. Now you hear the TC’s voice on the com telling you where to drive, telling the loader what type of round to slam into the breech, usually it’s canister or Beehive if they are available which they usually are not.
In close combat the gunner is not needed, shots are eyeballed by the TC who can fire the big 90 from his cupola. Canister rounds spray shot like a huge shotgun. The gunner is on the back deck of the tank armed with either an M79 or an M3 grease gun or if lucky to get one, a Car 15. He’s watching for jumpers who usually try to climb onto a tank and disable it with packs of ChiCom grenades. Surprisingly, it is fairly safe on the rear deck of a 48 because as I mentioned, a tank is never alone.
The nervousness has left you and you concentrate on doing the job you’ve been trained to do. A good tank crew operates like a well oiled machine. Their sole purpose is to kill the enemy and get their fellow crewman back to base alive, in a month or so.
Being in combat is an experience few people have had. There is no other experience like it. It is loud, time is sometimes sped up or slowed down, there’s no time to be scared as you are too busy to be scared and some of the sights you see are locked in the deep recesses of your mind only to come out later in life to haunt you.
It is after combat that the full effect of what you have just been through hits you. Some get the shakes, some talk fast and crazily, some are too tired to move and a few joke about it to hide their true feelings. There is no exhaustion ever felt as the exhaustion you feel after a lengthy combat action. Some men are dead and some are dead tired.
Seeing your own dead you usually have two thoughts in quick succession. You feel for the guy and what his family will soon learn and nearly at the same time, you are glad it wasn’t you laying under that poncho.
I found out what “the China threat” really is–and it’s hilarious
References to “the China threat” are widely used to justify the diversion of public money to weapons makers. But what is it? Look closely and we find “the China threat” is a series of vague allegations that China is planning to impose its system on the world—evidence-free claims that no scholar believes. Yet at the same, a very different “China threat” DOES exist, and it’s not what people think!
A peace proposal was reached early in the conflict last year. But it was vetoed or blocked, only not by the Russians.
There was no Chinese involvement.
In the meantime, China hasn’t shipped weapons to either side, or provided monetary aid, unlike, ahem, Nato members. Ukrainians soldiers are being paid in US dollars, while a select group of young Ukrainians are driving brand new Teslas and German cars on the streets of Kiev, partying into the night while conflict ravages their country.
China has instituted export control of commercial drones, after these were found weaponized in large numbers by Ukrainians. WHO paid for them?
China’s consistent position has been, let’s sit down and talk this through, and overtures have been made. Unfortunately, this isn’t a bilateral quarrel between Russia and Ukraine, but with the entire NATO.
Joe the elder(ly) will have to take the pedal off the gas and walk back from escalating this conflict.
There is little China (and the rest of the world ex-first) can do, just like Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen…
The only difference this time is white people feeling the economic pain of war.
And I mean the whitest of white, not the “not white enough” cannon fodder being slaughtered and displaced in the tens of millions.
You want it that way, you can have it.
Leave Asia out of it. We have had enough suffering the horror of war, particularly the Muslims of the Middle East.
“Europe” does not accept Russia as part of “Europe”, despite Russia being sovereign over the largest piece of EUROPE.
This quarrel needs a shift in mindset, and I am not referring to the russians.
“Europe’s” problems need not be the world’s problem.
Note: Hundreds of thousands Ukrainians are dead, and more than 20m Ukrainians have turned refugee. Is Ukraine in a better position today than 2014–2015, when the Minsk agreements were signed (and reneged) TWICE? Ukraine gave the finger to Russia for 8 long years, ignoring two brokered agreements.
Zelensky and co. belong in jail.
China and Malaysia’s Rare Earth Metal Deal, Put U.S in Panic
Today’s video is a deep dive into the significant geopolitical decisions made by China and Malaysia regarding the export of rare earth minerals, which play a crucial role in driving today’s tech-savvy society.
Here are the main changes that may take within you.
Lack of sensitivity towards your own self and your own needs. – Monks and nuns are constantly under immense public scrutiny in culturally Buddhist countries. At first you feel extremely sensitive and it’s a huge pressure. But with time you get used to it. Also the lack of freedom and comforts compared to laity may make one quite selfless and tough.
Sensitivity towards others – People keep looking forward to you in their bad times and you have to act as their guardian angel. But in their good times they may somewhat forget you. You learn this nature and learn to deal with it.
Whatever you do, you do not expect anything in return – You are a public figure. Being a public figure (specially if a monk or nun) is the same as being anything public. Everyone uses you but there is no one in particular to look after you. And again this will make you very tough, independent and very strong.
Even the worst introvert can become the most outgoing person – This was the case with me. If you want to do something for the society you get so much support from the laity. It is very easy to do social service.
Develop leadership qualities – People always want you to lead them in everything so if you do not have nor develop leadership qualities you are more or less doomed. So you learn it.
Patriotism – A lot of monks/nuns in traditionally Buddhist countries gets criticized specially by the Western Buddhists for this. But as a monk or nun you have very little things to call yourself apart from your country, ethnicity and religion. So the patriotism comes naturally and it is quite inevitable.
You become very patient.
It was originally intended to be a very calm and quite solitary life style but you can also make it the busiest life if you want it to be. You have the choice. However you have very little bonds and you feel so free whatever you do.
Inner calmness.
More understanding of life and worldly nature.
The immense discipline.
Sense of family towards other monks and nuns.
Respect for the elders
As a nun I MUST specially mention the discipline of the Buddhist monks and the way they treat the nuns specially in my country Srilanka. I had been a lay person till I was 28 years old. And there hasn’t been a single day that I did not face some sort of a sexual harassment from lay men in public places. But once in the order you don’t even feel that you are a woman. Suddenly gender has completely disappeared and you all just become human beings – monks and nuns. It’s so beautiful.
These qualities may increase if you stick to the practice as well. But just being in the robe without doing a minute of meditation can make you a different person in itself.
I see it among the monks who have been in the order since their childhoods the most. Eventhough they may not meditate as a habit there is a significant patience and an inner discipline among them. The later you enter the order the lesser the change may be. Ofcourse when you keep up the practice a lot of changes start appearing but it also can go down when you stop it. And the farther you keep away from the laity and the more you stick to the company of fellow monks and nuns the more changes will take place within you.
My own experience here. Back in the 1980s when I worked in a BR (British Rail) information kiosk, I had an American couple come up and ask for a train itinerary to get up to Fort William in Scotland. They were keen to stop off at various places en route so it took a good half an hour to work out times and optimum ticket prices.
Once they had collected all their notes, the gentleman pulled out his wallet and proffered me a tenner (£10 note) whilst thanking me for my diligence.
Naturally, I turned his “tip” down and said that what I’d done for them was simply my job and that we weren’t permitted to accept such things.
Blimey, that was it! The gent was visibly taken aback then his partner launched into a very loud verbal lashing of me saying that I was extremely rude for embarrassing him in front of everyone else, adding that they were “only trying to help your poor wages”.
Somebody in the queue piped up with “we don’t need your money, pal”, at which point the couple stormed off and kicked the door on their way out.
It could be argued that I went “above and beyond” but all BR clerical staff were salaried back then and we’d be mortified to have people announce that they thought that we were poor!
Generally people in Europe are paid a living wage so we don’t need to extract a tip out of everyone at every transaction to make ends meet. We leave that to our American cousins!
This is a HUGE PROBLEM for all of us!
This is a must watch for anyone who cares about our country and We The People !
Yes in a huge way it is. Though China and the Chinese people Confucian character and ethics itself is a phenomenal force.
If the U.S. had not foolishly fought wars that achieved absolutely nothing and cost tens of trillions of dollars that literally bankrupt America that pave the way for China to speedily caught up the U.S. and overtook it in most aspect of superpower status.
Just imagine this. Korean War is to stop North Korean to being communist. Today 80 years latter it is still a communist nation. The same goes to Vietnam. After 10 trillion lost 3 million dead and most U.S. gold reserves evaporated yet today half a century is still a proud socialist nation. Iraq is fought to introduce democracy to them. After 5 trillion dollars down the toilet Iraq is as i lambic nation as it was. But worst it now ally with Iran now. Another 3 trillion dollars thrown into the money pit is Afghanistan to get rid of the Taliban after 20 years the U.S. surrender the nation back to the Taliban.
The U.S. achieved nothing but hate and a broke and bankrupt nation! But worst. During the 60 years of continuous self created conflicts while the U.S. real standard of living standard of living stagnated back to the 1960 level today in 2023. During these same duration China grew 50 times in 60 years! By 2021 The Chinese life expectancy overtook the U.S. having doubled from 39 to now close to 79 years old!
You would think the US learn lessons from this nonsense but no. But today in 2023 the U.S. is fomenting coups in Africa, doing regime change in Russia, fighting another 10 trillion dollar un-winnable war in Ukraine, seething a stage to begin another war with China doing another Tokin lie in Taiwan and South China seas. It seems the U.S. won’t stop till it is finally collapsed in a total civil war! But that is the U.S. where popularity of leaders triumph over rationality.
China is laughing all the way to the bank metaphorically and factually. While the U.S. economy is is dire straight. Ukraine requires a billion a day Chinese provocation cost another billion a day and CIA and NED activity will totally burn up their cash but heck, your million homes less living on tents can wait, your 35% of Americans without medical insurance can die without help!
Israel Has just CUT OFF Water Supplies to Gaza – Just Like Ukraine did to Crimea
NEW AL JAZEERA REPORT SAYS ISRAEL JUST COMPLETELY CUT OFF THE WATER SUPLY TO GAZA! Just like Ukraine did to Crimea.
It was a Crime Against Humanity when Ukraine did it. It is a Crime Against Humanity now that Israel is doing it.
To deny human beings water means death in as little as three days.
During those days, people will have to take a crap into a five gallon bucket and haul it out to dump it somewhere.
With THAT type of sanitation, disease outbreaks will come fast; killing many who have some water stored and are otherwise surviving.
The shear hatred between the two sides over there would be mind-boggling were it not so long in coming.
Most of us have known for years this type of day would come. Few of us thought it would be in our lifetime.
Meet Frane Selak, the world’s (un)luckiest man.
In January 1965, Frane was aboard a train travelling through a cold, rainy canyon.
At one point of the journey the train was somehow flipped off of its tracks, and tumbled into a river.
A bystander rushed to the train’s aid, and pulled Frane out of the river. Unfortunately, 17 people drowned, trapped inside the train as it sank to the river’s bottom.
A narrow brush with death.
The next year, Frane was aboard the only plane ride he would ever take.
During the flight, the plane malfunctioned, and Frane was blown out of the aircraft.
He tumbled through the air— and landed safely in a haystack.
The plane crashed in a field, killing all 19 of its passengers.
Yet another close call.
It seemed that Frane had experienced his fair share of near-death experiences, but life still had quite a lot in store for Mr. Selak.
1966- A bus Frane was aboard crashed into a river, killing four. Frane was able to swim to safety with only minor injuries.
1970- While he was driving, Frane’s car suddenly caught on fire. He managed to escape just before the fuel tank exploded.
1973- In yet another driving incident, the engine of Frane’s car was doused in scalding oil from a malfunctioning fuel pump, causing flames to shoot through the air vents. Other than singed hair, Frane was unharmed.
1995- While on a trip in Zagreb, Croatia, Frane was struck by a bus. Luckily enough, he only sustained minor injuries.
1996- As Frane was driving, he was forced to swerve into a guardrail to avoid an oncoming truck. The rail collapsed under the car’s weight, sending it plummeting into a gorge. However, Frane wasn’t wearing a seat belt, so he was flung out of his car—right onto a tree. He held on, and safely watched as his car tumbled down into the gorge.
While he’s lucky to have survived more than seven brushes with death, Frane Selak seemed plagued by misfortune.
That is, until 2003 rolled around.
Two days after his 73rd birthday, Frane purchased a lottery ticket—- and won. It wasn’t a small amount, either: Roughly $1.1 million USD.
Perhaps even better than his lottery win?
He’s gone over twenty years without being placed in a life-threatening situation.
Frane Selak truly has beaten all odds.
My Son Didn’t Want to be Born; Pre Birth Memory and Near Death Experience
“I really appreciated the whole “I want to go home” statement. I never wanted to kill myself but I have that feeling of wanting to go home all the time. My husband never understands this because I will be at our house but I feel lonely/a longing to ‘go home’”
Small things amuses small mind. To most Yanks the world stood still since 1945. That is their failure to recognised that the world has move on.
Americans stood still while China advanced beyond recognition in a space of a mere 74 years since 1949. ASPI the acronym for Australian Strategic Policy Institute coincidentally an off shoot of the U.S. Neocon group concluded that today China lead the U.S. in all 37 out of 44 most key and strategic technologies and material sciences going into the future.
Hubris, over estimation of themselves, racial bias and frown upon Chinese people, wrongful dismissal of Chinese progress and achievements. Coupled with being so full of it attitude caused the U.S. to lose all its lead in technology. While China work their guts out the U.S. simply deteriorated by by feeling entitled and foolishly ignorant and naive about their collapse going into the 21st century.
Another way to put it they slumbered into deep sleep mode till it is way way way too late. And any counter action on China hurts and harm the U.S. way more that it affects China. It hasten China’s lead. And speed up US implosion. And being full of it they did in the space Center ban GPS threat, trade war and Chip act all of which cost the US an arm and a leg. And padded China’s lead further.
I added a drug in my food which induced diarrhea and waited to catch the culprit.
I was fed up with the lunch thief. Every other day someone would eat my lunch and this was a common phenomenon happening in our class. Any day a student bring something delicious it was bound to disappear. Some students stop bringing lunch others used to carry their lunch box wherever they go. Complaints were made to the school principal but, couldn’t catch the thief. I suspected few students which included some senior students also but, didn’t dare to say anything. Then I decided to do something extreme.
I brought a local delicacy for lunch one day and invited every possible classmate to have a bite during lunch hour. The morning hours were chemistry practicals and we had to leave our bags in our classroom. I knew if the thief got news about my food, he will strike during this time only. We all went to the practicals. Nearly one hour later we heard a commotion and saw principal and few teachers rushing upstairs, immediately followed by nurses. My teacher also went outside to see what was happening and then we saw one of my seniors crying loudly and taken on the stretcher by the nurses. He was the one who tried to eat my food but, didn’t know that I had mixed a drug extracted from a plant which induces diarrhea. He ate my entire lunch went back to his class and within 15 minutes started to have uncontrollable loose motions. That class was opened only after disinfecting which took 2 days.
He was admitted to hospital for a week. Later on, he confessed that he ate food from my lunch box before falling ill. My parents were called to the school and I was asked what happened to your food and I confessed to mixing in the drug for which I got nice beating from my father.
But, that incident made me famous in my schools and students started to bring lunch without fear. I felt like a savior of the world.
Edits 1- Lot of people have commented regarding the legality of this situation. I was in 8th grade when this happened. I didn’t mix the entire potion of drugs in my food, it was few drops. The diarrhea was contained within few hours but, the culprit felt weakness and took a week to recover. To everyone knowledge, I won’t use that drug again but, if someone tries to mess again with my food…….hahahahahahahahahaha (beware)
US decrypts the secrets of Kirin 2035, Huawei did not respond. The discovery scares the U.S.
The United States decrypts the secrets of Kirin 2035, Huawei did not respond.
Yes. One of the major regrets of my life. Let me explain……
As a young single sales engineer for Digital Equipment in the early 80s I attended a european sales meeting held in a posh hotel in Majorca. We were told that junior ranks (like me) were to share rooms, so after picking up my key I went to my room and saw a suitcase on the other bed. No probs, I thought, until I took a slightly closer look and noticed it was opened and full of female underwear. Hmmm, there must be some mistake, thought I. So I trudged down to reception, they assured me the room allocations were made by the company organisers not themselves, but they sent me to another room, which did in fact have a male engineer in it.
I subsequently discovered that the female in the original room was an absolutely stunning blonde Swedish girl, also single, and the organisers (a couple of girls from the Geneva Head Office) had mischievously allocated us together hoping that love would blossom.
What a wasted opportunity, I should have stayed in the first room and seen how events played out.
My middle school was relatively clean cut. It was a private school.
Most of the kids came from good homes. They weren’t the fighting types.
There was this kid Brandon, who used to bully everyone. (There always seems to be at least one doesn’t there?)
He was one of those early teenagers who had a big early growth spurt. He was bigger than everyone.
He was angry for no reason all the time. A perpetual scowl on his face.
He’d constantly be in the face of kids much smaller than him, egging them to fight him. He’d say, “You are a pussy.”, “Do something you pussy.”, “I dare you. Push me you pussy.”
I occasionally was the target, I’ll admit.
He’d throw a 12 year old boy into a locker right as the kid was talking to his crush. It was brutal. He had no qualms embarrassing people.
Nobody in our school was much of a fighter. And most of us were smaller so we didn’t really want to test our luck.
That summer, apparently there had been a meeting with school officials where it was communicated that his tenure at this private school should probably end.
Code: expulsion.
He didn’t learn from his expulsion from our school. His ways continued.
But he would learn soon.
He went to a new public High School with the same assholish attitude, that “looking for a fight” approach.
Unfortunately, the new pool he was swimming in had bigger fish: kids from a rougher side of the train track.
One particular kid “opted in” on his invitation to fight and Brandon got himself a badly needed public ass-kicking.
My conclusion, that actually gives me some solace:
Every bully will change his ways eventually.
Or he’ll have his ways changed for him.
There’s always a bigger, badder dude out there, gladly willing to be the “vehicle of his enlightenment”.
No it does not want to be a super power. It wants a fair and just world! The U.S. can still pretends to be the superpower and spends its way into oblivion. Go right ahead. Prepare for another hundred US wars!
China just wants to make money and give its people peace and prosperity. If the U.S. prefer to see 5 million homeless in the U.S. but fund Hong Kong poor and hoodlums to pretend to protest. That is their right of the US to deprived its own people and interfere in every corner of the globe.
China wants the world to be a better place. It wants to help build a better and fairer world. The U.S. can necked it’s citizens to death in bright daylight or shoot 16 years old due to his skin colour. That is their right. The U.S. can fund another 10 Ukraines wars and cause 10 million deaths that is the U.S. right.
China knows what it needs, better roads, better high speed railway, better infrastructure better access to IT and facilities for its people to progress. China won’t do shit like the U.S. China won’t bankrupt itself over muscles flexing like the U.S. It wants to give its people better food and more food and better homes and nicer cloths. Better health care and free education.
You ask this question because you see from a western lens. China needing to over lords the world now that they are rich and successful. That is the western way. Not China not the Chinese people. They want to sell to the world. They want to make stuffs for the world. They want to trade with the world. Sure they are super duper ready if you ever threat them.
Yeah, from my dad but AFTER he’d died, when I was given a load of his stuff.
I knew my mum had left him, but we were told she left me and my brother with dad because she couldn’t take us with her as we were on our dads passport and he was in the army.
Well it turns out my dad kept the “Dear John” letter she wrote him when she left us all.
She made it clear that my dad was to stay in contact with her parents, but to not contact her about us.
The courts naturally awarded her custody in the divorce, but she never came for us.
We ended up living with our paternal Auntie, long story, and she hated our dad and did her best to ensure he couldn’t take us back from her.
She made us wards of court and sought a custody of sorts, which she won.
In the paperwork for that was a note saying our mum had a new life, spouse and a daughter with him and didn’t want to be involved with her two sons.
Reminder — she left us, she didn’t come get us after the divorce and didn’t prevent our Auntie from keeping us.
My dad never ever told me any of that, not even a hint and I had years of on and off again contact with mum before eventually going to live with her when I was 17.
He’d kept a load of her photos, original birth certificate, all the court documents from divorce and ward of court stuff, everything we’d need if we’d wanted to find her when we were older but to also show she’d left us and he’d tried his best to keep us.
He was civil to her the few times they saw each other, like when he came to visit me when I was living at hers and when I got married, but he never mentioned the past.
Even when my brother estranged himself from dad after years of our Auntie drip feeding him lies about dad, Dad never said anything about Mum and what our Auntie did to him in regards to taking his boys off him.
Dad left the Army, left his girlfriend in Germany with whom he’d settled down with after Mum left and they were going to raise us as a family when he came to get us back from his sister…he left everything behind to come and live round the corner from us and start all over again with nothing.
He had to die before I could find it out the truth, I never got to speak to him, to hear his side because he just left it in the past and was the best dad he could be in the circumstances.
I miss him and honestly the wrong parent died early in my view.
It was a Sunday morning, and I was bored, so when the phone rang, I jumped to answer it.
I forget the detail, but the first sentence spoken by the caller gave the game away.
I put on my best British upper crust accent, and demanded to know where he got the number from.
He umm’d and arr’d. I demanded again, whilst I turned around and barked an order to trace the call to the non-existent millitary staff behind me.
Tapping on my computer keyboard, for sound affects, I informed the caller that he had called a millitary number restricted for use by 10 Downing Street (and no-one else), and I continued to question him, whilst having secondary conversations with the non-existent personal behind me.
I kept the call going for 30 minutes, and I’m pretty sure that I heard the precise moment the poor guy shat himself.
In the end, I let him off with a warning and an instruction to ensure that this number was not called again.
I didn’t receive an unsolicited call of any description for more than two years after that.
Initially, I felt cruel, figuring this was just some kid in a scam call centre. That feeling wore off when I realised what a tale this guy had to tell his mates later on.
You politely say, “Are you sure you want to part with it?” Then depending on the item, you can say that you will keep and cherish it as a family heirloom, or, you can be honest and say, “While this is lovely, it doesn’t fit with my decor. I will be glad to take it and find the perfect home for it where it can be loved and enjoyed.”
The biggest fear many older people have is that after they die, people will come into their home and not respect the things that were special in their lives. My mother’s fear was that her “special items” would simply be thrown away.
While your older relative is alive, ask them to walk you through their home and tell you the history of the various items throughout their house. You may gain a new respect for those items, as well as get clues to another family member who may actually want that item or have a connection to it. You may also find out if the items have significant monetary value or just sentimental value.
Your relative may think some items have high value, such as old or expensive sets of china or some collectible figurines, but the reality is that people no longer are interested in china sets or other items and they are worth very little. Older people can be devastated at the loss of value, so if that is the case, you don’t need to tell the older person, just reassure the person that you will take those items and care for them, then you can later dispose of them appropriately. If you don’t have room to store items, it may work to say, “I know you love this figurine (or whatever.) Why don’t you keep and enjoy it, just put my name on it for the future.”
The key is to respect the feelings of your older relatives and help them care for their special items in a respectful and caring manner. After they are gone, you can do what you need to do.
Years ago, my then-girlfriend gave me a pair of Bluetooth headphones as a birthday present. I appreciated it and tried so hard to make them work. But they kept irritating my ears and always fell out. Eventually, I went back to my regular wired headphones — not realizing this would trigger a huge point of contention.
Every time we went to the gym, she’d cross her arms and lament, “It’s a shame you won’t use those $150 headphones I got you.” She brought it up for months and months and it started to feel like I’d loaned money to the devil.
Humans are strongly reciprocal in nature. Any healthy relationship is built on giving and receiving in a fair manner. When there’s a gulf in this reciprocity, it creates a power imbalance. This is why gifts are a common tool for manipulation by people who score high in machiavellianism (having a desire to control someone).
Bestowing presents is also a common tactic by abusers. Each of Michael Jackson’s accusers made similar claims of him showering them with amazing gifts. They felt a sense of loyalty to him, particularly when it was time to defend him in court.
With my aforementioned ex, we eventually reached a resolution that once a gift is given, it is released. There are no claw-backs. There is no weaponizing them during arguments or using them to create resentments. That relationship taught me to keep an eye out for scorekeeping. Anytime someone tries to lord over me that they did this one nice thing for me — just to get their way on an entirely different subject, I tend to get prickly.
Even favors can be used against you if you aren’t careful. The most advanced manipulators use them, and you can too, in a good way.
Ben Franklin had a political enemy who was making speeches against him. Franklin remembered an old quote, “He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged.” Then he asked that political enemy to loan him a rare book. Ben eventually returned it to him with a nice thank you note inside the cover. Suddenly, their political rivalry vanished and Franklin had a new friend.
Asking for a favor is a conveyance of trust and need. A person feels chosen. You’re suggesting they have something you don’t: knowledge, ability, and resources. It also appeals to their insecurities. If you don’t know the requester or are angry at them, it creates a cognitive dissonance: why am I helping someone I don’t know or whom I’m mad at?
Your brain watches you behaving in conflict and creates a subconscious conclusion: you must like the person. After all, we ask favors of people we trust and care for, right? Beware of pro bono favor requests from people who have something to gain from you.
China Just REVEALED Update Plans For NEW Moon Base
China, who has seen a dormant phase recently regarding its lunar exploration program has recently released updates regarding the continuation of its lunar exploration program. As this important endeavor continues, China is on track to land its Taikonaut on the lunar surface and achieve one of the biggest milestones in its sector.
BOOM! Turkey Enters Israel-Palestine Fight — Warns U.S. to STAY OUT
The President of Turkiye, Recypt Erdogan, has publicly come out in support of Palestinians in the ongoing HAMAS-Israel conflict and has PUBLICLY WARNED the United States to STAY OUT of the conflict.
Erdogan says that his country is “with our innocent Palestinian brothers” and explicitly warned — everyone — that Turkey is “willing to defend Palestine at any price.”
It looks to me as if he just threw down a Gauntlet. To the US. To Israel. To pretty much everyone; perhaps even including NATO!
Erdogan knows that Poland, just yesterday, said they were sending military transport aircraft into Israel to evacuate Polish nationals and that if those aircraft are attacked, Poland would invoke NATO Article 5, resulting in the 31 country NATO alliance making strikes against Palestinians!
With today’s announcement, Erdogan just dumped cold water all over Poland . . . AND NATO. Neither will be able to do anything if Turkey says no. NATO requires unanimity before the bloc can engage in military action.
This HAMAS-Israel thing is spinning out of control so fast, it’s hard for me to even keep track of it.
Frankly, in my opinion, this has “Disaster” written all over it.
They are deluding themselves. Most Americans still think they are exceptional. They are so deluded that they think it is alright for their government to use chemicals like ‘Agent Orange’ in the battle field. They think it is alright for them to torture captured prisoners with ‘Water Boarding’ and all other forms of ‘Tortures’. One picture has kept me awake at nights for a long time is the one showing a naked young girl running away and crying because she and other kids were being chased by American soldiers after they saw the unarmed civilian grown ups being tortured and killed by the American soldiers. And of course who can forget those picture showing prisoners being torture in Abu Ghraib prison, on the outskirts of Baghdad. There are too many pictures for the American Authority to deny their existence. And a former US President got the nerve to say that ‘Water boarding’ was not torture.
Another picture that come to mind is when Secretary of State, Colin Powell, a former 4 Star General, holding up a tube containing washing powder and claimed that as proof of Iraq’s ‘Weapon of Mass Destruction’. He mis-spoke. He should have said. ‘Weapon of Mass Deception’.
China will not start a war. To China it knows wars don’t resolve anything. It focus on being able to do tit for tat.
So if the U.S. talk shit and do daft muscle flexing and chest thumping like a gorilla, China will do nothing. China’s view is
It will intelligently let the US have a long rope to hang itself if that is what the U.S. wants. But if the U.S. hit China in China it will reciprocate by hitting US in U.S. if you kill a hundred in China it will kill a hundred in U.S. mainland. If you kill a thousand China will kill a thousand. If you use a nuke on China, China will use a nuke on U.S.
So if you want to stay safe stay in your shore in Florida or California. If you are loitering in South China Seas. The U.S. had 2 choices. One blow trillions for nothing. Or two, murder equal number of people in China and the U.S. or worst turn earth into a nuclear dust.
Right now the U.S. choose blowing billions like a faded and aging hoodlum flexing its muscles no one bother to pay attention to. All it needs is it swing accidentally and hit China to start a mutual self destruction. I think it is suicidal.
It wasn’t a patient, but the sister of his wife who demanded that my girlfriend tell a big lie to her patient. According to my girlfriend, it happens all the time in Muslim families.
Only a couple of days ago, my girlfriend found out that the patient was dying from bladder cancer metastasis. He did not have much time left — quality time, that is. She explained that to the family members who had come to the consultation room.
Not only his wife and children were there, but also his wife’s sister and an even older aunt, and some other family members — there was a bunch of them. The man himself was in his room. Asleep.
The sister and his wife asked — well, actually insisted — that my girlfriend would not tell the patient how bad his condition really was, and she certainly was not allowed to mention that his end would be very painful and bad.
My girlfriend kindly explained that she cannot tell this kind of lie to a patient — that he had every right to know about his condition, and that there were also the options of palliative care or euthanasia, which he had every right to think about before the pain would get even worse.
The problem is: in Muslim families, euthanasia is a no-go, and they rather have beloved uncle-husband-father patient succumb to the worse imaginable pain, than to help him go finally asleep without pain. Their way of coping with it is simply to not tell the patient.
But my girlfriend refused (she always does).
And she also told them that she had already spoken with him, and that he had dearly thanked her for telling the truth. He had suspected for a while that this was going the wrong way, but he needed confirmation — which he now had. And he planned to think about the options, now that the pain was getting worse.
His wife’s sister was furious, and exclaimed that the proposed therapies were not an option.
Yeah. But, you know, she was not the one in pain though.
I purchased a brand-new Honda Civic, which I drove very little and kept garaged. At 21k miles, I was told by the Honda dealer that the car needed brake work in order to pass inspection. I was highly skeptical, since I’m not hard on the brakes, and my previous vehicle did not require ANY brake work until around 80k miles. However, I was recovering from surgery and not able to do much myself, so I agreed to the work. I questioned this, and got a long BS story from the Service Manager about how I didn’t drive the car often enough, and as a result, the brakes were wearing. Something didn’t seem right, and I should have known better.
At 25k miles, the vehicle had other service work done, and the Honda mechanic reported that the brakes were fine. However, as I was leaving the dealership, I overheard the Service Manager having the exact same conversation with another customer about her brakes. The same BS reasons (not driving enough) were given, verbatim.
Roll forward to 31k miles, and the Honda dealer tells me they need “immediate attention”. By now, I was recovered and strongly smelled a rat. So I declined the work, and put the car up in my own garage. I was pissed when inspection showed nothing wrong with the brakes whatsoever. In fact, they looked almost new.
Since that time, I have driven the car for 2 years and over 16k miles, passing state inspection (which includes brakes) both times, without any brake work!
Took my business elsewhere, and didn’t look back. That was the 5th car bought by the family at that dealership, it will be the last.
I have a good one. I had long had a suspicion that my father was not my biological father. We looked nothing alike, not that it bothered me, but he was a 5′4″ Egyptian man and I’m a 5′9″ very white woman. At some point, my sister’s MIL gave her an Ancestry DNA kit for her birthday. Sure enough, it came back with 0% anything related to Egyptian. Both our parents have been deceased for several decades so we couldn’t ask them. At that point, I figured I should just go ahead and take the DNA test myself. Sure enough, same with me. I told my sister than I had heard a rumor from my mother’s best friend that our parents had fertility problems. I had quietly assumed that we had been a product of a sperm donation for years. My sister and I appear to be half sisters. She’s three years younger than I am so it makes sense. Sperm donors usually don’t donate for years and they may have tried to get a donor with at least some darker features. She was somewhat more shocked.
Fast forward six weeks after my results came in and I get an alert from Ancestry, I have a match. I open up the email and the first line is something like – “John Smith (not real name) is your father”. I was ready to acknowledge that I was not biologically my father’s but, for some reason, it startled me that I would find my actual biological father. I didn’t contact him. I was in my forties at the time and I imagine when he donated sperm that many years ago anonymously, it never occurred to him I’d show up.
That being said, a couple weeks later, he contacted me. After a few back and forth messages, it turns out he was a sperm donor, a retired OB/Gyn (not my mother’s for the record) and was indeed my biological father. On top of that, I have three other half sisters, the youngest of which is three months older than I am. He likes to brag/joke that he had two women knocked up at once. Of course, there may be more of us out there.
I’ve met the family multiple times. They’re a very nice group of people and my biological father calls me his fourth daughter. I look a lot like my sisters. At 5′9″, I’m actually the shortest sister. My bio dad at his tallest was around 6′5″, I think.
As crazy as all of this sounds, it didn’t really cause any identity crisis. I was in my 40’s. I knew who I was at that point and who my “real” father was, the one who had raised me. On top of that, I had fertility issues myself (just age related) and had used donor egg and sperm for my daughter. I discovered all of this after my child was born. It would never occur to me that my daughter wasn’t my “real” daughter. I gave birth to that girl and raised her and I’ve been honest with her about all of it, in an age appropriate way, of course. My mother died when I was eight so my Egyptian father was a single parent raising two girls. I still feel half Egyptian. As far as I’m concerned, I just have more nice people in my life.
Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond (Remix by Patryk Pryce)
Another fantastic remix. I really love this version.
Bluegrass rock.
Shit, I must of listened to this version about a hundred times! Damn!
China averages around 65 Billion RMB a year on Losses on the HSR and an aggregate loss of 5.77 Trillion RMB totally
Sounds huge doesnt it?
It would be if you were an American
For a Chinese system, this is a pittance
Let me explain
First
HSR is regarded as a PUBLIC SERVICE in China
Public Services are always subsidized by the Governments from Beijing to the Local Governments
So these losses are reimbursed by the Taxpayers
The estimate is the average Chinese taxpayer pays 3.77% of his tax money to maintain his country’s railway network
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Meanwhile an Average Indian contributes nearly 3.11% of his annual income for a railways that’s maybe a fifth of the level of Chinese quality
This is why I keep saying India isn’t ready for a HSR
Our people are too poor today as a whole to pay for the HSR unlike China whose population is way more middle class and have larger pockets plus the fact that HSR has an entire massive hub ensuring the lowest cost of operations
A HSR of 1/10th the size of Chinas in India would cost the Indian Taxpayer 8.41% of their annual income (Around 2100 Kms length)
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It’s why despite the operating losses of 65 Billion RMB a year , only 10 Billion RMB or 15.4% is reimbursed from borrowings or debt
In India, a whopping 57% is reimbursed from borrowings
In Pakistan, 77% is reimbursed from borrowings
In short the people happily pay for the losses because (a) they are capable enough to pay for the losses with a near 50% middle class (b) the amount is not that high, around 3.77% of their total tax money
Second
Intangible benefits
The HSR enables development of areas and places deemed uninhabitable a decade ago
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In Shenzhen a worker pays 870 RMB for 32 m² Apartment while 240 Kms away in Guaoxi he pays 400 RMB for 60 m²
Earlier Guaoxi took 6 hours by Road
Today Guaoxi takes a mere 65 minutes by HSR, the 230 kph line, not even the 418 kph fastest line
Thus he saves almost 500 RMB a month which translates to 6000 RMB disposable income a year
The fare for the train is paid out of profits by the employer
This extra 6000 RMB can be spent on other things and thus enhance the economy
The Value of intangible benefits is estimated to be close to 7 Trillion RMB or so
Third
Asset Monetization
The Benefit of Socialism
China owns the land on which the HSR is built, valued today at close to 21 Trillion RMB and that’s not even market price but a 60% discounted government local land price
Thus the total losses are barely 33% of the Assets owned in land alone
Thus the HSR is in vibrant and excellent economic shape
Well, in my defense . . . oh, never mind. It was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. I have no defense.
Remember this excellent product, ladies?
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It made our hair wonderfully moisturized and conditioned, silky, shiny, and lustrous. It comes in small tubes, and you put it in a glass or cup of hot water to heat it up, apply it to your wet hair and work it through, leave on for just one minute (!) and then shampoo it out.
Alberto VO5 products (made by a company named Alberto-Culver) are very good and inexpensive hair care products. They go back a long way; even my Grandma used them. In her bathroom was always VO5 shampoo …
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and this …
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And never mind “conditioner” .. we used this, Tame Creme Rinse …
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I remember, when I was a young girl, wondering why “cream” was spelled c-r-e-m-e, and why a guy named Toni was making stuff for girls (?) And why the heck was Tony’s name spelled with an ‘i’ instead of a ‘y’?
Okay, sorry. I got sidetracked by nostalgia. (Love and miss you, Grandma and Mom.)
So, the dumbest thing I’ve ever done? I gave myself a “hot oil treatment” but not with VO5. Not that time. That time I did it with this:
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I melted some (probably more than a tube full, but, ya know, I was putting Vaseline in my hair. What’s one more dumb thing?) in a small saucepan on the stove, applied the “hot oil” to my hair, and well – did I let it sit on my wet hair for one minute? Hell no … I let it sit for ten minutes.
Yeah, I hadn’t thought it through.
It completely congealed. Back to its original state. Petroleum Jelly. My hair lookedlike I went swimming in an Exxon oil spill.
I shampooed .. and shampooed .. and shampooed. It wouldn’t wash out. In desperation, I even called an Ask-a-Nurse hotline for advice, which was a fairly new service at the time, around ‘78 or ‘79. (I was only 21 or 22 at the time. Is that a good defense? . . . No? Yeah, you’re right.)
The nurse I spoke with told me to try laundry detergent or an astringent, which sounded reasonable. I bought two bottles of Bonnie Bell astringent. It rolled off my hair like a car windshield that’s been treated with Rain-ex.
NEXT…
Yes, I washed my hair with powdered laundry detergent. Was there no end to the dumb shit I’d try? Apparently not. That didn’t work, either. Perhaps the nurse meant liquid laundry detergent. Well, dammit. Then she should’ve specified.
Finally I spotted something that gave me hope, in the kitchen of all places. Like a shining beacon of relief from an ordeal of my own dumb doing, one I’d been dealing with for three days running. It was a fairly new product, too. One that had “grease cleaning power”, or whatever their slogan was back then. And .. hallelujah! It worked!
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason nothing but this adorns my kitchen window ledge.
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Have I done dumber things than giving myself a hot oil treatment with Vaseline? Oh, I’ve done a couple of dumb things since, sure, but nothing quite as dumb. My brother-in-law thought it was the funniest freakin’ thing he’d ever heard. He told everybody. I’d meet friends of his and they’d say “Oh, are you the one who put Vaseline in her hair”? I never lived it down.
The idea came from a conversation with my therapist.
“You need to find meaning outside of work,” she said. “What are you passionate about?”
And get this— Even in the *safe space of therapy* I felt awkward telling her: “I want to normalize vulnerability between men. I want to support other dads. I want to feel their support.”
“That’s a beautiful idea,” she said. “Go for it.”
So I: – Posted on a local Facebook Group – Got hundreds of likes and comments – (ironically, 80% from wives tagging their husbands)
I felt imposter syndrome every step of the way.
“Who the hell are you to start a men’s group?” “What do you even have to offer?” “No one’s going to come.” “You suck.”
But I did it anyway.
(While responding to that voice with a healthy dose of: 🖕)
And now, 7 of us meet in my basement every two weeks.
It’s: – 10% parenting advice – 90% “I need to get this off my chest” – And 100% “Why don’t men do this more often?!”
There are two things I’m trying to say here:
The first is that I have three boys at home, ages 16, 12, & 8.
I don’t want them to grow up like me: – Terrified to share their feelings – Show weakness – Be vulnerable.
Incapable of connecting with other men on an emotional level.
Because life’s short. We’re social creatures. And finding our shared humanity is one of the greatest joys of life.
The second thing is that: – The inner critic is a liar – Your comfort zone is a liar – Imposter syndrome is a liar
Each of us has unique gifts to give to the world.
But it takes stepping out of that comfort zone. Taking risks. Falling.
Getting back up. Doing hard things. Being the change you want to see.
Write Down Your Goals Twice Every Day. You cannot get the things you don’t remember you wanted in the first place.
Do Something For The Goals Every Single Day. Success and excellence only come from what we do behind the scenes every day.
Work Harder Than Everyone Else. To be the best you must work like the best. Period.
Get Over Yourself. Get over the fact that you can do this all while staying comfortable and do the things you do not like to do and that scare you.
Believe You Are The Best Before You Are. If you do not believe it, why should anyone else?
Focus All Your Energy On Improving. You are not the best yet, so you must grow into the best by improving everything you can as much as you can.
Invest In Yourself. Spend the time, energy and money required for you to become the best.
Do Not Give Up. This will take longer than you think it will and will be harder than anyone told you, but if you give up, you will never be able to reach it.
It has no effect because defense and foreign policy are not made in the Defense and Foreign ministries. These ministries are only involved with policy implementation.
Foreign policy is formulated by the Director of Foreign Policy 外事办主任。 This office is now headed by Wang Yi, who took over as Foreign Minister after Qin Gang was put under investigation in June. This means that Wang Yi is responsible for foreign policy, and is also responsible for foreign policy implementation as the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Defense policy is devised by the Central Military Commission 中央军委, of which Xi Jinping is chairman. The Defense Ministry is responsible for defense policy implementation.
China is not ruled by Xi Jinping individually, but by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, of which Xi is the face and the spokesperson. Because it is not rule by individual ego, as is often done in the west, it has no significant effect on Xi himself.
Hezbollah is waiting for Israel to start the ground invasion of Gaza then they will open the northern front. With Iran, Russia and China potentially backing this war, what will be the situation if this escalation happens?
Israel does not have the stomach to take heavy casualties nor the capability to fight a prolonged war of attrition on three fronts i.e. Gaza, West Bank and Lebanon. Israel has a Jewish population of 7.1 million, around 50% of which are of fighting age (18–55) male and female.
[1] Size of its army is 634,500 including reserves, that is around 18% of population which is in the 18–55 years bracket. With these statistics, how much casualties can Israel take? Without US soldiers to die for it, Israel will run out of soldiers long before it runs out of ammunition.
Hence the only way Israel can survive this war is if US comes in with full force to fight alongside IDF and die for Israel. Short of that Israel is in deep trouble, as it is surrounded by the ocean of Muslim world with unlimited supply of manpower ready to fight Israel given half a chance.
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It remains to be seen whether American public is ready for another “never ending” war, and whether American taxpayers are willing to fund it.
Our somewhat spoiled and entitled 34 y/o son invited a couple friend of his to join us at an expensive beachfront restaurant. We had graciously picked up the tab for him and his friends on previous occasions, so we expected it to be more of the same. No big deal except that couple brought another couple we’d never met, and they all proceeded to order filet mignon. They also ordered two more to-go for their large dogs waiting at home! I whispered to my husband to keep his wallet in his pants and to order us two hamburgers. Oh how sweet it was when the check came and I loudly told the server that my husband and I would be on a separate check. You could hear the gasps and watch them all struggling and asking each other if anyone had cash or creditcards. I didn’t need to order dessert as that was the most delicious moment. Got tired of being mooched.
Typically a 3000 Km has 10 Phases of 300 Km each, which are finally linked into a single mesh network
The Chinese learnt this from Singapore & Japan both of whom work this strategy
This way, if the project is cancelled, the Phase completed can stand alone and have it’s own financial viability model
So if China quoted $ 5.5 Billion, it’s always for a Single Phase
The Whole cost will never be revealed and depends heavily on other factors
Since a Phase is around 300 Kms or definitely not more than 400 Kms, China is likely quoting $ 5.5 Billion for maximum 400 Kms
Still that’s astronomically different from Indias $ 17 Billion for 500 Kms
India is at least 250% higher
India was rather short sighted with the Bullet Train
Initially Chinas bid to India was for almost $ 4.3 Billion for 250 Kms but included Tech Transfer over 15 years
However five areas of disagreement emerged
China quoted 2.6% interest on composite terms
China demanded a 33% contingency payment knowing Indias history of delays
China insisted on having first refusal to build additional routes along the bullet train at later dates , basically saying if and when you expand, we get first choice
Chinas last condition was that their engineers felt very strongly that Mumbai to Ahmedabad was not a good pilot route due to many estimated problems that they predicted. Instead they wanted the Pilot Project between two other points rumored to be between Karnataka to Tamilnadu due to ease of terrain and other reasons.
At this time Japan who was terribly eager to get the contract offered to regard the entire 500 Km as a single phase at 0.1% interest but at double the cost
They agreed to Ahmedabad to Mumbai route
They agreed to no contingency payment
The agreed to no first refusal at a later date if India chose to expand
However they said no Tech transfer
In the end the Chinese were absolutely bang on
Proving that Political decisions never work
They perfectly predicted Delays in the whole project
They perfectly predicted that this 500 Km had a much lesser chance of becoming 5000 Km than with Indonesia Or Thailand
And Japan is stuck with the Project having had a opportunity loss of around $ 1.488 Billion to this day
An old friend of mine received 1 million dollar through a private investment savings account when he retired as a university professor. He was sixty-five at the time and had plenty of other savings, so you would think that he would do all right. Wrong.
His Chinese wife — who was a tad younger — had different ideas.
She first used part of his money to start a female clothing store in a local mall, without knowing the next thing about clothes, selling, or money management (she had a PhD in Physics and had no clue about what selling was about).
The shop went bankrupt in no time.
Some time later, he noticed that his private savings accounts were shrinking rapidly. She had gotten into investing (again, with no knowledge about it whatsoever, besides her prior dramatic clothing shop experience), and she was essentially flushing his money through the drain.
He could stop her (barely) before it was all gone.
In the end, nasal and sinus cancer hit him (very) hard when he turned eighty, and almost nothing was left to pay the very expensive surgeries and therapies — he also had a young daughter to take care of, and she came first. (His wife ignored their daughter altogether.)
He died not much later in “relative peace” (as they say), but kept worrying about one thing and one thing only till the very last seconds, as his daughter would be all alone now.
NATO has published an Op-Ed article by a retired American defense official, which calls on the bloc to fight and win a limited nuclear war against Russia. Should the US and China clash over Taiwan, the author claims that a full-scale war in Europe would likely follow.
The Op-Ed article was written by Gregory Weaver, who served as the principal nuclear and missile defense advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In it, Weaver argued that, counter to Moscow’s long-standing nuclear doctrine, Russia may use tactical nuclear weapons either to stave off a battlefield defeat or bring about a swift victory to a conventional conflict, such as that in Ukraine.
In such a scenario, Russian military leadership would assume that the West would not respond in kind, for fear that the situation would “escalate uncontrollably to a large-scale US-Russia homeland exchange.”
Instead of fearing nuclear war, Weaver argues thatthe West should embrace it. NATO should equip its fighter jets and submarines with tactical nuclear weapons to deter a tactical Russian strike, and “convince Russian leadership that NATO is fully prepared to counter limited nuclear first use with militarily effective nuclear responses of our own.”
Russian nuclear doctrine allows for the use of atomic weapons in the event of a first nuclear strike on its territory or infrastructure, or if the existence of the Russian state is threatened by either nuclear or conventional weapons. This position has not changed since 2010, and makes no exception for the use of tactical nuclear weapons (which are far less powerful than the strategic nuclear weapons that NATO and Russia would fire at each other in the event of an all-out exchange).
Despite these clear guidelines on nuclear use, Weaver claimed that Russia could launch an attack on NATO states in Europe if the US were preoccupied with fighting China over Taiwan, a scenario that he treats as possible without further explanation.
To counter this, he recommends that NATO move “more deep precision strike capabilities” to Europe, form “several modern armored divisions” in the Baltic states and Eastern Europe, and press European members to “provide more conventional capability,” while the US sends them tactical nuclear weapons.
Weaver did not mention the consequences that nuclear war would wreak on the European countries where such a conflict would be fought.
Speaking at the UN General Assembly in New York last month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that Western leaders have become so obsessed with inflicting a “strategic defeat” on Russia that they have lost their “sense of self-preservation.”
The writer of the NATO Op-Ed Piece is Gregory Weaver.
Filipina SHOCKED by “DELUSIONAL WOMEN” | Rubeauti reacts
I watched a recent speech by Biden in Asia. It was a press conference in Vietnam. Biden was so bad that while he was still talking, his own US press secretary cut him off halfway by muting his microphone, declaring abruptly that the conference was over; and turning on jazz music in the room so that Biden’s voice could not be heard anymore. This was damage control. The US press secretary did it, to stop Biden from continuing to ramble on spouting nonsense in front of a roomful of journalists and media crews.
The poor man is senile. He is still President, of course. But surely he is no longer making the real decisions for the USA. He is just the front, the puppet on stage – the people in charge are the ones behind the curtains pulling on the strings.
It’s pointless for Xi to meet Biden. Xi probably knows it already. Any meeting with Biden would just be for ceremonial purposes and publicity reasons. Nothing will actually come out of such a meeting, because Biden doesn’t make decisions anymore.
Xi is a busy man and I wouldn’t be too surprised if he decides never to meet Biden again. There’s not much point in such a meeting.
Is 65 TOO OLD for a YOUNG FILIPINA? | Street Interviews
Chinese Weaponry is more than capable of taking on NATO weapons
Oh don’t get me wrong. Maybe technologically, NATO weaponry is more advanced
Yet NATO weaponry has been exposed in Ukraine as woefully being inadequate for a battle with a formidable ally
They have been designed since the 1990s with the aim of maximizing profit and fighting small nations like Iraq and Afghanistan rather than design them to COLD WAR STANDARDS
NATO weapons are designed for rapid strikes and rapid breakthroughs
Their offensive capabilities, mobility, speed are their key design parameters
Yet their defense is weak, their loading rate is compromised and they are not meant for heavy use
The Leopard and Challengers are the best example
They move faster than Russian Tanks yet their load rate is slow and their external body is vulnerable due to lower weight and allows them to be crunched by a simplest cheapest $ 20,000 drone or an 155 mm Artillery Shell or an Air to Surface missile
Chinese and Russian Weaponry are still designed per COLD WAR STANDARDS
To fight NATO
To fight US in an eventual war
They are designed for slow, territorial attrition, rock solid defense and grinding the enemy
Plus their numbers are superior due to better industrial productivity
Logic says Chinese Weapons should take on NATO weapons
When there is no rival, all you need to do is to change a little to fool consumers to buy your new product.
Sometimes you purposely do not want to change too much either. Otherwise you may not have new things next year.
Huawei is different. Huawei must find a way to go around US sanctions. It is this urge to survive a harsh condition that people become more innovative & get breakthrough.
It’s STARTING! Biden Just SHOCKED The World With This Move Towards GLOBAL WAR
As Biden seeks vast new sums for wars in Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, will his rambling and incoherent speech propel America hurtling towards a global war?
This video is great.
He absolutely captures the sheer insanity of this moment! I mean it’s so insane that you all have to laugh.
Psychologist, Paul Piff, ran a famous social experiment using Monopoly. They had two strangers play a game against each other — but first, they flipped a coin.
The “heads” player got double starting money, double bonuses, and rolled two dice instead of one. The tails player played the game normally.
By design, the Heads player would eventually begin winning. Then, scientists watched.
The heads player began talking louder, raising their hands to celebrate. They slammed their pieces down louder on the board as they moved them. Eventually, they were outright rude and hostile to the other player.
When interviewed about winning, they talked about their amazing strategies and tactics. They rarely mentioned the 2x bonuses they began with. They also never acknowledged those advantages were the result of a coin toss.
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They were displaying the Self-Serving Bias, where people tend to seek out and over-weight information that is favorable to them (and their ego).
In sports and video games, it’s why teammates often point fingers at each other over a loss. In business, it’s why unethical managers blame employees for their own incompetence.
It’s as Upton Sinclair once wrote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
I try to fact-check the beliefs I have against this powerful bias — because it sneaks into every minor decision we make.
This is a schematic diagram of the recent situation in the Middle East, where the armed forces of China, Russia, and the United States are located near Israel, Palestine, Iran, and Syria.
The top three countries in the world’s military power rankings are all gathered in this small region.
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The reason why the US military dare not directly intervene in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is because they are unwilling and because they dare not.
No one will act recklessly.
No one wants to break the current balance.
They Just Did It! America Unleashes Economic Chaos – Shutdown Crisis Escalates
Congress has just ousted Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House. This one move just ramped up the shutdown crisis to the next level. We are in for a rollercoaster ride which could lead to a government shutdown where the economy could get dangerously impaired. Here’s what you must know!
This was in the early days of the internet, and I would find the articles, and then print them out. I ended up with piles of stacks of unsorted articles, (also known as the Rush Limbaugh style “stack of stuff”) and huge expenses for printer ink and boxes of white paper.
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Towards the end of the 1990’s I just gave up, and simply saved the articles on hard drive. i used something called a “ZIP drive” back then to store the articles. It was a “hoarding” habit. A sign of… coping… perhaps. To a stressful life. And then, oh Lordy was my life stressful.
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I did this with everything. I was like a big vacuum and magnet that recorded everything that passed my screen. Articles, images, porn, stories, cat pictures and memes. Ugh!
And I would collect these things on disk and then put the discs in boxes, and just store them. I had so many boxes of “my precious archives”.
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Funny thing though, I never really took the time to go back through them. Not really. They just were vacuumed up, stored, and boxed. Only to be forgotten and ignored over the dust of time.
…
Today, we can put the stuff “in the cloud”.
But you know what?
If you never get around to reading the articles, looking at the pictures, viewing the movies, then why bother with the effort?
You are wasting your time.
STOP.
Just STOP.
Go outside and get drunk… play with your kitties, doggies, or go fishing. How about watching a ball game? Or better yet, playing ball. Spend time with your loved ones.
I live 3 blocks north of my local police station and 3 blocks south of a tiny strip mall. The strip mall has 1 entrance and 1exit so basically it is a 1 way drive and many use it to make a u-turn
I had picked up a moron about a mile from my home because I was only doing 30 in a 25 residential neighborhood – tailgating, honking, etc. There was no shoulder on this road. I was not about to speed up since it was the time that school got out and there were kids walking home.
Even though the moron had a few opportunities to pass me or turn off the road, he stayed on my bumper. I drove into the strip mall and he followed me so I knew I had a serious problem on my hands. While driving, I discreetly called the cops, explained what was happening and headed to the station. Moron kept following me. He was not thrilled when the cops were waiting for him.
While they held him and ticketed him, I drove home and parked my car in my garage. The next day, I dropped off a basket of cookies for the cops and found out that the moron had a couple of outstanding warrants for assault. I’m so glad that I never stopped my car and just kept driving.
Blackstrap Steaks with Caramelized Onions
blackstrap steaks
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
Caramelized Onions
1 1/2 cups sweet onions
3/4 cup red bell pepper
2 tablespoons fresh basil
2 tablespoons pine nuts
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1/2 teaspoon pepper
Steak
4 chuck eye steaks (Delmonico)
1/4 cup molasses
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
Salt
Fresh basil
Instructions
Caramelized Onions
Spray a medium nonstick skillet with nonstick cooking spray. Heat over medium to medium-high heat until hot. Add onion; cook 5 to 7 minutes, stirring frequently.
If necessary, re-spray skillet with cooking spray. Add bell pepper; continue cooking for 3 to 5 minutes or until onions are browned and bell pepper is crisp-tender, stirring frequently.
Stir in sliced basil, pine nuts, vinegar and black pepper. Season with salt, as desired; keep warm.
Steak
Combine molasses, Worcestershire sauce and vinegar in small bowl.
Heat second large nonstick skillet over medium heat until hot. Season steaks with black pepper. Place steaks in pan; cook 9 to 11 minutes (ranch steaks, 8 to 11 minutes) for medium rare (145 degrees F) to medium (160 degrees F) doneness, turning occasionally and brushing with molasses mixture during last 3 to 4 minutes of cooking.
Season steaks with salt, as desired; serve with caramelized onions. Garnish with basil sprigs, if desired.
Why are SO MANY Americans Retiring in Europe Right Now?
For the U.S. to decide this Chip Act it must have been debated at length by hordes of parties and institutions including dozens of companies in the U.S. and throughout US allies.
Why?
Well simple. The repercussions are simply gigantic and colossal if indeed this act fail. It will cause trillions upon trillions of dollars lost over time. At least a hundred U.S. and its cronies chip firms may simply go out of business all together.
Worst is that this is the last thing the US can do to stop and contained China if this fails, that will be the end of US hegemony in technology. So for the U.S. to take this measure is like putting everything at stake into this one act. Billions has to be spend to build a plants in the U.S. that hinge on China’s failure to counter act. Billions need to be spend to protect and subsidise these hundreds of firms in case it fail.
Countries whose livelihoods depend on this precise technology and business to survive and thrive have to be bribed and coerce to cut out China.
These bribes probably run in the trillions of dollars figures.
…
And all these hinge on one and only one assumption.
That is China will not be able to design, make and manufacture this high end chips for at least a generation! If this assumption fail to materialised then the U.S. will be thoroughly fxxked for a generation and it will forever not able to compete with China.
In other words, there is absolutely no room at all for failure.
Failure means China will now totally controlled every aspect of Chip making technologies from materials, to designing, to developing , to mass producing in the billions. And it will do it at a fraction of the costs of doing it in the U.S. which simply means the total implosion of all the U.S. chip firms!
So after a mere 3 years China did precisely what the U.S. fears most.
Their worst fears has come true.
The Chinese simply do not need a single technology from the U.S. and its cronies to launch this 5NM chip capable of 5G and satellite communications which also means there is zero possibility for the U.S. to hack it. 150 million orders have been placed and 40 million orders has been fulfilled in a mere 20 days from its launch.
This Huawei Mate 60 series including the Mate 5X is such a blow to the U.S.
For a start the U.S. already lost 3 billion in profit had they not banned themselves from selling to China and up to a few trillion dollars have been wiped off the stock values of these chip firms from 27th August till now. The melt down will carry on and on and on till the U.S. economy collapse all together. We in the rest of the world call this Karma.
The US is lagging behind China because the US is a plutocracy, a system where the rich and powerful have a stranglehold on the political and economic spheres. This is not a matter of opinion, but a reality that can be verified by various sources and indicators. In this essay, I will show how the US is a plutocracy, how it affects its performance compared to China, and what are the consequences for the future of both countries.
First, let us understand what a plutocracy is. According to Wikipedia, a plutocracy is “a society that is ruled or controlled by people of great wealth or income”. Plutocracy is not based on any established political philosophy, but rather emerges from the accumulation of money and power in the hands of a few. Plutocracy is often linked to corruption, inequality, social unrest, and environmental degradation.
How can we tell that the US is a plutocracy? There are several indicators that reveal the extent of the influence of money and power in the US political system. One of them is the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC in 2010, which allowed corporations and other entities to spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns and advocacy. This decision effectively gave the rich and powerful a disproportionate voice in the electoral process, undermining the principle of one person, one vote. Another indicator is the lobbying industry, which spends billions of dollars every year to influence legislation and policy in favor of their clients’ interests. Lobbyists often have access to lawmakers and regulators that ordinary citizens do not have, and they can shape the agenda and outcomes of public decisions. A third indicator is the revolving door phenomenon, which refers to the movement of personnel between positions of public office and private sector jobs. This creates conflicts of interest and reduces accountability, as public officials may favor their former or future employers over the public interest.
How does plutocracy affect the US performance compared to China? One way to measure performance is to look at the economic growth rate, which reflects the increase in the value of goods and services produced by a country over a period of time. According to World Bank data, China’s GDP growth rate was 2.3% in 2020, while the US GDP growth rate was -3.5% . This means that China’s economy expanded despite the COVID-19 pandemic, while the US economy contracted significantly. One reason for this difference is that China has a more effective and responsive government that can mobilize resources and implement policies to deal with crises and challenges. China also has a more balanced and diversified economy that relies less on consumption and more on investment, innovation, and trade. The US, on the other hand, has a dysfunctional and gridlocked government that is captured by special interests and unable to address the needs and demands of its people. The US also has an unbalanced and fragile economy that depends heavily on consumption and debt, and suffers from low productivity, inequality, and environmental degradation.
What are the implications for the future of both countries? If the current trends continue, China will surpass the US as the world’s largest economy by 2028 . China will also gain more influence and leadership in global affairs, especially in areas such as trade, technology, climate change, and security. The US will face more challenges and difficulties in maintaining its economic competitiveness, social cohesion, democratic legitimacy, and international reputation. The US will also have to deal with more internal conflicts and external threats, as its plutocratic system erodes its trust and stability.
In 1959, the American inventors of the integrated circuit chose silicon as their substrate and gave birth to a new industry. Now other materials, with virtues suited to new applications, are beginning to replace it. Graphene, for example, is a potentially exciting substrate, but it lies years further out on the R&D schedule.
As with silicon, whoever mass produces the new substrate will probably dominate the trillion-dollar industry it spawns.
Gallium oxide is much closer to mass production, and China refines 80% of global gallium and exported 94 metric tons of it last year, up 25% YoY. But only a few companies – one European and the others in Japan and China – can make it at the required purity.
Thanks to their low energy consumption, gallium oxide semiconductors are ideal for communications, aerospace, radar, and maglev. Among ultra-wide band gap materials like diamond, boron nitride and silicon carbide, only gallium oxide forms single crystals at atmospheric pressure after solidification from a melt
While drastically reducing fabrication costs, this requires large amounts of iridium to make crucibles for the melt. But iridium is three times more expensive than gold, and a 4 inch crucible requires 11 lb. (5 kg.) of the stuff. Also, for China, this raises IP concerns since Japan and the US pioneered the method.
Battle of the substrate stars
August 2022 —US government imposes export controls on two substrates of ultra-wide bandgap semiconductors – gallium oxide (Ga2O3), and diamonds – as well as EDA software “designed for the development of integrated circuits with Gate-All-Around Field-Effect Transistor (GAAFET).
July 2023 —China: ‘Gallium and germanium require an export license’.
August 2023 — China: ‘Gallium nitride (GaN) and germanium dioxide (GeO2) exporters must apply for licenses, identify importers and end-users’.
September 2023 — “Chinese researchers cut iridium use 80%, make four-inch gallium dioxide wafers, slash production costs, smooth the path to mass fabrication”. Interesting Engineering.
Why is China releasing a blizzard of new technologies?
It’s committed to development through technology,
It outspends the USA by 400% on R&D,
It has 300,000 researchers with an IQ of 160+ vs. 30,000 in the rest of the world.
China is doing for ICs what it did for railways and renewable energy.
It’s doing the same for EVs and will do for medical care: make them affordable by the 90%. And make a fortune doing so.
I saw a woman wrap a line once, it was fascinating.
We all know those lines, boarding planes, at the store, the Post Office. People arrive too fast, the line grows out of control and takes over the space.
Takes over everything.
It’s an operation crisis, new people arrive faster than they are processed and the system overloads.
Everyone grumbles but no one fixes it.
It’s conformity. Everyone doing the same thing: standing behind the person in front of us.
I used to go to a Dunkin Donuts in Boston. It was just off the North Station T stop so, between 8:20 and 8:30 am, the line grew exponentially. Each commuter stood behind the last and inadvertently created something that consumed the small space and made everyone uncomfortable.
Quickly, the straight line went right out the door, and in winter people near froze, no longer waiting for coffee, but for warmth. To get inside.
It always felt selfish stepping inside, away from that person behind you. Like you were separated, different. But we all did it.
Fact was, it was too early and we were too tired to take responsibility for anyone else.
One day, in February, a day coated with the most vile wintery-mix, a woman with winter boots, two bags, gray face, looked just like me, just like all of us – she just woke up.
Quietly, almost to herself, “This is stupid, those people are freezing.”
And then she did something about it.
She gently pulled arms and pushed backs and said ‘excuse me’ and ‘I’m trying to get those people inside’ and one by one she got strangers to ribbon themselves in such a way that everyone fit, everyone was inside and everyone was still behind the person in front of them.
What an amazing person.
Who steps up and takes responsibility for strangers like that? Especially when it matters so little. And so early in the morning?
What a lady. Fascinating. I’ve wrapped a few lines since then, I always think of her.
“A Revolution Against The Elites!” – WEF’s Klaus Schwab Openly Worries
Huawei Mate 60 Pro may not have shocked the world as much as the news reporting on the Chinese government instructed all its personnel to refrain from bringing any foreign brand phone into government building and subsequently ………
Apple immediately lost US $200B of its market capitalization.
So what is $200B?
Well, that’s 50% of the total Apple revenue generated in 2022. Any ideas how many senators and congressman/women hold much shares in Apple ? 🤭
Isn’t that a sweet revenge for bullying Huawei and for holding hostage of their princess CFO Meng Wenzhou.
I was at a swanky resort hotel in Niagra-on-the-Lake and some obnoxious young women in their early twenties were hanging off a baggage cart for an Instagram shot. I was annoyed because they had been acting all day like they were in their own private reality show, and I suppose since they had two videographers, maybe they were.
I brushed right through them to get through the door they were blocking with the luggage cart, only to hear one yell “Later, Grandpa” as I closed the door. Doing the math, yep I could be their grandpa if had children at age 20. I have no biological children so those kind of “mile markers” are generally not present in my life.
I have to stop myself if I’m at a coffeeshop and there is an attractive young woman. Otherwise paying too much attention makes me a creep. In my mind, and probably many other people, we think of ourselves as mid-20s for a few too many decades.
Modern Women Regretting Feminism Loneliness is Affecting them Badly
The US is not a democratic, it is a die hard interventionist, meaning it interferes with the world Sovereign States’ affairs . Every single year of its existence is spent on warring with others, if not in physical wars then it would be on non physical ones.
But why the the Sovereign State of US alone spent so much time , money and energy on wars while other Sovereign States don’t? The reason is simple, so long as the US government views you as a threat, an enemy to its preeminent *dominance, it will target you , the US government even admitted this themselves , the key words here is “ America’s **adversaries” :—
So based upon the US clampdown on all things China like , the Chinese students study of STEM subjects, the banning of China from the Space technology, space station, the purchase of companies in the US, and recently in year 2023 , the Huawei , and the EVs , we know that the US never stop targeting China for demise even though the US Biden administration said it is derisking the Chinese government. The Derisking of China here is actually to destroy the competitive threat the Chinese is posing to the US economy! So, the US has been all out to stop the *money making opportunities of the Chinese to stop the Chinese from rising economically.
The archives Fantabulastic physical war list of the US:
The signs are written on the walls , the undeniable truth is the money making Chinese companies are the ones being targeted by the US for it’s ‘derisking’ strategy against China!
There was a rule at home when I was in middle school called no questions after 7:00 pm. If I broke that rule I got a lip numbing face smack. Not by the creator of the rule, my mom, but by her boyfriend. Mom actually made the rule to try and curb Dale’s anger. He was only allowed to slap me if I broke a rule. No crying. No talking while the tv was on. No staying up past eight. No complaining. The point is, I got the shit slapped out of me a lot. I watched men abuse my mother and my brother for years. Some would say it’s all I ever knew.
Jessica and I got together three years ago. We live together with her two teenage (16 and 13) sons. I don’t have any children. Their curiosity and love of life can be challenging for me. I don’t know how to be a parent. Here’s an example. The eldest, Corey, likes fire. I caught him flicking a lighter after I took the last one away. If that were me, I’d be bruised for ten days. Being constantly pounded on as a kid made me promise myself I’d never do that.
So, the question I asked myself was, how should I discipline him? How can I get the point across without being that monster that I hated so much? Well, I’m making a light up skateboard and since you enjoy lighting things up, you’re gonna help with soldering the lights for one hour every time I catch you with a lighter.
It’s eight at night, so, we set up our phones to aid with lighting and I taught Corey how to use solder. Once I was confident he could use the iron safely, I strung lights beside him while he soldered for an hour. It ended up being really fun for both of us.
Another point of contention is bedtime. Boy oh boy, getting two teenagers in bed by ten is like trying to hit the Powerball without playing. I’ve told them for two years now to go to bed at ten. So what do I do when I wake up at 3:00 am to use the bathroom and find them sleeping on the couch?
I cover them up, kiss their foreheads and say goodnight.
I’m followed on Quora by five ex-girlfriends, my mother, my current girlfriend, her two children and my ex-wife of 18 years. I don’t know how to be a parent and I can be a shitty boyfriend at times. What I do, when I’ve done all I can do, is anything other that what Dale did to us.
I have never raised my voice or hand to a woman or a child, ever. There is no version of me that finds that acceptable. Eighteen years of marriage, never once did I raise my voice to her. The point is, I’m not sure what to do sometimes. But I know I’d rather Corey remember having to learn how to solder as a punishment over being smacked. Yelling at the people I love is never the answer. My job is to do everything I can to protect my family. Not yell at my girl or smack a kid.
Leon
A Death Row Inmate’s Thoughts, Days Before His Execution
Not many people have seen a real death warrant in person, let alone been issued one with their name on it.
I remember the warden instructing security to escort us in restraints from our cells, one at a time, to a small office where we were surrounded by prison officials. The warden read aloud the information off the warrants, which included our names, our crimes, and the jury’s verdict.
There was silence. My mind remained unaffected, having undergone this very thing before only to later receive a stay of execution. There was a measure of calm, knowing I wasn’t alone, that there were seven others—though, given the love I have for the other guys, I would rather have done it alone.
I was handed the death warrant, a longer-than-usual sheet of paper with the golden seal of the State of Arkansas fixed on it. At the bottom, there was the signature of Gov. Asa Hutchinson.
Death, one step closer. Tick, tick.
When you’re issued a date, you want to be the first to break the news to your family. But often the press gets to them first. For the prisoner, as the fatal day approaches, the hardest part is knowing you’ve condemned your loved ones to a bitter fate. Once you depart, they have to carry on.
It is vital that I reach a place of self-forgiveness, so that I can write to my 21-year-old daughter and break the news to her. I could soon be joining her mother in the afterlife, leaving her parentless. Just writing that letter is enough to make me consider beating the executioner to the punch, but I’ve been stabilized and sustained by the inner peace and forgiveness I’ve received through a relationship with Jesus Christ.
Oh boy, do the letters come pouring in after an execution date has been set! During mail call, I receive more mail than ever before about the well-being of my soul. Do you know God? Have you accepted Jesus Christ as lord of your life? If you don’t repent before you die you will go to hell. They send typed letters, handwritten letters, cards, books, etc.
Most of these materials are destined for the trash. Where were they all those years, when I was sitting on death row, when I might have embraced what they had to offer? I see them as opportunists, who want to brag to their friends about how they tried to win my soul.
At this point, an individual has already made his peace with God, or hasn’t.
Some of the prisoners opted out of petitioning for clemency, knowing the board usually issues a denial. They figured they’d save themselves the disappointment.
I, on the other hand, saw opportunity. I wanted to appear before the board so I could show them I was no longer the person I once was. God has transformed me, and even the worst of us can be reformed and renewed. Revealing these truths meant more to me then being granted clemency. I’m still going to eventually die someday, but to stand up for God in front of man, that’s my victory.
To the families of my victims, to whom I have brought pain, great loss, and suffering, as shallow as “I am sorry for robbing you of your loved one” can sound, I would rather say it, and mean it, than not say it at all.
I was asked by mental health personnel, “Have you been thinking about harming yourself?” I was offended — the train of thought behind the question is to get ahead of anyone thinking of ending their life before the state can do so. They don’t want us to beat them to the punch.After a death row prisoner has received a date, others who have befriended him make their pitch: Let me have those tennis shoes. Leave me that watch. Let me get your radio. The poor guy may feel like he’s being picked apart. Other things he doesn’t want to give to prisoners, like family pictures or old letters, he can send home in a box, shortly before he too is sent home in a box.An officer showed up at my cell door today and asked, “Kenneth, how are you?” Then he asked, “What is your shirt and pant size? What size shoe do you wear? How tall are you? How much do you weigh?”
Talk about the lamb being sized up before the slaughter. I thought: Have they forgotten I am human, or do they just not care? Then I thought: Wasn’t it my disregard for human life that got me in this situation to begin with?
I know that midazolam, one of the drugs used in the cocktail to put prisoners to death, doesn’t always anesthetize the prisoner completely. Since I am one of the last to be executed, there are some people who think that if one of the first executions is botched, it could prolong the lives of the others, including me. But I don’t want to live only because someone else suffers that agony. Others suffering in order that I live for however much longer — that’s no hope at all, not if I have truly learned my lesson to value other people’s lives.
Kenneth Williams was sentenced to death for murdering Cecil Boren during a 1999 escape attempt from the Cummins Unit in Grady, Ark. Williams had just begun a life sentence for the murder of university student Dominique Hurd. He also confessed to a third murder, and was responsible for the death of a fourth victim in a traffic accident during his escape. This essay was derived from Williams’ written correspondence with Deborah Robinson, who is writing a book about the eight men scheduled for execution in Arkansas.
My Mom passed in 1999. My sister and I were cleaning out her home. In her closet were a bag of wigs. My sister said, Toss these, I replied, No let’s give them to a cancer charity. As I was taking them out one by one, to check the condition. Money flew out of the wigs.
A total of 22 thousand dollars. Looking back I should have kept it all. After I went thru her paperwork. All of my older siblings owed my mother thousands of dollars over 10–15 years. She kept emaculent records dates, reasons, payments all in a book.
Not one of my 5 siblings ever paid her back! My oldest brother and wife owed my mother $30,000 with one payment years before of $100. Others were just as bad.
I never owed my mother any money!
Dax – Oliver Anthony “Rich Men North Of Richmond” Remix [Official Video]
Wall Street analysts tore down a Chinese Tesla competitor and found a great Model 3 alternative — for a fraction of the cost.
The Seal, a mid-sized electric sedan made by Chinese EV giant BYD, backed by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, is a close rival to the Tesla Model 3. Analysts at UBS recently investigated to see just how comparable to Elon Musk’s popular model it might be.
Ultimately, tearing down the Seal — “a good example of Chinese EV models’ technological edges and cost optimization” — reinforced the bank’s belief that Chinese auto companies are here to stay and dominate the global electric car market, it said in a note to clients.
The Seal rivals the Model 3 in many ways, according to UBS, and it does so at a “20% lower selling price.”
Analysts noted features such as its larger interior space, 5G connectivity, and rotational central cockpit screen, as well as how it “opts for slower acceleration, lower top speed, slower charging speed” as some of its advantages over Musk’s popular car.
They also noted BYD’s battery technology (coined cell-to-body), allows for more in-vehicle legroom, a unique car shape, improved performance, and — given the tech introduces a more efficient way of integrating the battery — lower manufacturing costs.
“The floor carpet of the passenger cabin is directly above the battery cell stack, and the top cover of the battery pack serves as the floor of the car body, eliminating one more layer of aluminum or steel,” UBS analysts noted. “Such a thin battery pack occupies less floor space than others, allowing the car’s profile to be low, which reduces aerodynamic resistance and creates a more spacious interior for drivers and passengers.”
UBS also said that, when comparing power performance, cost efficiency, and energy density, the BYD Seal’s electric system “is in-line with the competition despite being at the relatively lower end of the range, especially compared to the leading solution provided by Tesla’s Model 3.”
Interestingly, unlike Tesla, BYD seems to be steering clear from autonomous driving technology, and instead, is opting for a standard, Level 2, advanced driver assistance system. The company is also outsourcing this tech instead of developing it in-house.
At a high level, UBS analysts said the BYD Seal is “cost competitive, thanks to its vertical integration, suitable specs, and volume scale.”
And experts suggest it’s not unlikely they’ll find success in the US in the near future, too.
“Chinese carmakers currently have systematic EV cost advantages versus US and European incumbents while offering wider product line-ups than Tesla and covering more segments (especially mass market),” they added.
I sued my general contractor who was also my neighbor.
We hired him because of the great price and he gave us and because he could “squeeze us in right away.” We trusted him because he lived across the street.
Who would screw over his neighbor?
Well. He took our 10k down payment, ripped off our siding and roof, demolished the garage where the new addition was going, and then hit us with sob stories about his grandma dying (seriously) and the expensive adoption of a baby from overseas and the other people in the nieghborhood who weren’t paying on time, etc.
He asked for more money upfront to buy the roofing materials.
And we gave it to him.
He was our neighbor, right?
He was working on another 5 or more homes in the area, surely he was a trustworthy guy.
The roof was finished. Then the asks for more money.
Considerably more that was outside the payment plan we agreed to.
More excuses. And interestingly, more new stuff was showing up at HIS home!
Like a new SUV for his wife.
New siding and windows on HIS home across the street!
Eventually he comes over to say all these other people have stiffed him, and he’s going bankrupt. I have no siding.
It’s Fall. It’s cold.
I have a gaping hole in the side of my house where the addition should be.
So I go out and meet some of these other homeowners whose houses he was working on. And they all have the same story I do.
Excuses.
Lots of money paid upfront.
Broken houses with winter coming.
I go to lawyer after lawyer.
Each one says you lost a lot, save your money. Fix your home. You won’t win. You’ll have to stop his bankruptcy to recover anything.
Not gonna happen.
I dont accept this.
It’s like the perfect crime!
I finally find a lawyer who will take my money and fight the bankruptcy. We need to prove theft by deception.
We get statements from a half dozen angry homeowners.
We get the story in the local papers.
I get Fox News’s consumer reporter to run the story of the neighborhood builder who screwed his neighbors.
They even sent a helicopter to shoot all the half built houses from the air- and his mansion sitting across the street from my tarp covered ranch.
I talk to the prosecutors office too.
They tell me you won’t win in court.
I say wait.
We block the bankruptcy.
We prove theft by deception.
I pitch and get more media coverage.
I go back to the prosecutors. I join up with another hurt family and they finally take our case, and we win.
The judge orders the contractor to pay me damages AND to pay back all the other families who were hurt in a settlement over time.
He also can’t work as a GC anymore.
Plus, our county enacted new law the forced GCs to operate with a license.
By now though I’m dead broke, and my house is still a mess.
We had to pay for so many things 2x.
Once to our criminal GC and again to the suppliers and subcontractors to actually complete the work.
We start getting payments from the settlement, but they come in a little every month.
God blessed my family though, because we won 10k out of the blue in a contest Betty Crocker was running on their fruit roll up boxes!
It paid our legal bills.
Moral of the story, sometimes we need to fight back.
God opened doors for me throughout the whole ordeal.
He needed someone who would be His hands and voice and soldier here on Earth to stop this criminal from hurting so many people.
We found out this guy had run the same scheme in other towns too and had moved around a lot.
Now he’s stopped. Justice is slow. But Justice is done.
President of Turkey Says “may have to part ways with EU”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogansaid on 16 September that Ankara could “part ways” with the EU if necessary, following the release of a European Parliament report rejecting the possibility of Turkiye joining the EU soon.
The report instead suggested the EU explore “a parallel and realistic framework,” such as a customs union, to determine its ties with Ankara.
“The EU is trying to break away from Turkiye,” Erdogan told reporters. “We will make our evaluations against these developments and if necessary, we can part ways with the EU.”
Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said the European Parliament report contained unfounded allegations and prejudices and took “a shallow and non-visionary” approach to the country’s ties with the EU.
Visa liberalization, which would give Turkish citizens visa-free travel to the bloc for long periods, is a significant reason Turkiye wishes to join the EU. Many Turkish citizens work in EU states, most notably Germany, and EU membership for Turkiye would free them of the difficult bureaucratic process needed to obtain visas.
The European Parliament report follows renewed Turkish efforts to join the EU. Earlier this summer, President Erdogan sought to link Turkiye’s EU accession to approving Sweden’s bid to join NATO.
However, EU officials balked at linking the two issues, citing human rights abuses and the deterioration of the rule of law in Turkiye under Erdogan.
“We have recently seen a renewed interest from the Turkish government in reviving the EU accession process,” said the lead lawmaker on the file, Spanish Socialist Nacho Sánchez Amor, upon adopting the report on Wednesday.
“This will not happen because of geopolitical bargaining, but only when the Turkish authorities show real interest in stopping the continuing backsliding in fundamental freedoms and rule of law in the country,” Sánchez Amor said.
EU officials accuse Erdogan of stifling the media and imprisoning dissidents, including during a crackdown after a failed coup in 2016, which Erdogan blamed on the Gulen Movement. Turkiye’s occupation of parts of EU-member Cyprus has also led EU officials to criticize Erdogan.
In 2018, the European Council said in a statement that negotiations for Turkiye to join the EU “have come to a standstill.”
Hal Turner Analysis
Erdogan of Turkey keeps trying to burn the candle at both ends between Europe and Russia. He pits one against the other regularly and BOTH sides are growing weary of his antics.
Biden Afraid As U.S Finds Itself In A WEAK Cold War Which Can Turn Into World War III!
How can you have a WAR when there is only one combatant? The world is moving past this, hopefully the US will see their future as a major player amongst all nations and join in as an equal for everyone’s benefit. Everyone should benefit and no-one needs to win.
From afar one gets the impression that Iran’s fortunes are improving. The exchange of prisoners between the U.S. and Iran and the return of $6 billion stolen dollars to Iran is a positive. Iran also has joined BRICS, the Global South is more or less rejecting Western hegemony, Africa is pushing off French colonialism, and U.S. and Western dominance is unraveling some like never before since World War 2.
Europe is sinking into a self-inflicted economic morass and the U.S. is not far behind with its unsustainable debts built up this century especially. The U.S. has all but lost the proxy war on Russia in Ukraine, the Russian economy so far is doing okay, Putin remains popular and Russians in general are united in their own sovereignty with resolve. Apartheid Israel is a divided mess what with the incompetent Netanyahu government staffed with evil clowns, racists, and belligerents.
However, it must be said by this American observer from afar, that Iran could prosper even more than it may in future if it can dispense with any perceived oppression of its own population by its own citizens. Doing so is no threat to Iran’s Islamic orientation.
But at this juncture here’s a few prognostications with commentary.
The worst President this century, senile Joe Biden now facing an impeachment inquiry in the U.S. House, is being pushed by important voices in the U.S. not to run for a second term. The Washington Post confirms this. He is likely to be forced to cancel his candidacy later this autumn or winter.
The bloody, ill-conceived and provoked U.S./NATO proxy war on Russia is likely to end early in 2024 with negotiations. But Russia will never abandon Crimea or the regions it occupies among Russian-speaking and leaning former Ukrainians in the eastern parts of Ukraine. They are Russians now. And a neutral Ukraine is imperative to Russia. The war is unsustainable but if NATO/U.S. enters the conflict directly that could spark a nuclear apocalypse. Russia will NOT permit a threat to its existence.
With respect to China, the U.S. cannot abide competition anywhere. (Huawei, one of China’s leading hi-tech companies, is under attack again given fear of Huawei’s latest 5G consumer mobile phones which have been supplied with a Chinese-made advanced chip after being cut off from buying them elsewhere. The U.S. House of Representatives has proposed sanctions against Huawei and SMIC, not only severing all commercial relations with them but also filing criminal lawsuits against their executives for managing to compete! This is beyond petty.
The U.S. has stationed an alleged 375,000 thousand personnel at 66 military bases in the Indo-Pacific region, and focused the US defense budget for 2024 on China. It is pushing war with China on its gullible Pacific allies, too. This is waste on a gargantuan scale by a U.S. that is virtually bankrupt even without war. The Pentagon, playing war games from time to time, has concluded the U.S. cannot “win” a war with China, not to mention any war with Russia that cannot be won. As long as the U.S. maintains economic wars on competitors and even Europe, it will backfire on the U.S. economy. Expect more erosion of the dollar as a reserve currency.
The “American Century” is dying. Multipolarity is rising. No one can weep about this.
Expect increasing military, social, economic, and political decay in the U.S. and vassal Europe. Ukraine is the last of militant U.S. imperialism on steroids, which is why it’s so dangerous to humanity. Too many psychopaths in Washington remain, fewer in the general populating by the week. One must ask simply: what’s wrong with a more peaceful world, one where competition is acceptable to spur innovation and the U.S. isn’t the hegemonic beast throwing its weight around waging wars of choice, and none of them to date have “won” a thing but dollar profits for the Military Industrial Complex in the U.S. and for politicians. Average Americans also are in desperate need of attention and are suffering relatively. Corrupted Zelensky is coming to the U.S. and will appear at the UN in New York. Would that he were shunned and ridiculed there. He’s coming to beg for another $24 billion atop nearly $200 billion already wasted and he’s likely to get another lame infusion to prolong the bloody proxy war on Russia.
West Africa is likely to avoid a general conflagration and Nigeria probably won’t be able to lead a war on Niger.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has threatened to leave the Democratic Party in his bid for the Presidency in 2024. Biden won’t even give him as a candidate normal Secret Service protection and he faced a distinct threat of assassination last week. He or Vivek Ramaswany could win the 2024 election in a truly free and fair election, which the U.S. will never see again if the so-called Deep State has its way again. The U.S. has not really been a “democracy” of merit for many years.
The “American Century” is dying. Multipolarity is rising. No one can weep about this.
Beef Pepper Steak
instant pot pepper steak 7
Ingredients
1 pound beef top round or top sirloin steak, boneless, cut 3/4 inch thick or flank steak
1/2 cup prepared Italian dressing
Salt and pepper
2 large bell peppers, any color, cut into 1/8 inch strips
1 onion, cut into 1/8 inch wedges
Instructions
Cut beef steak lengthwise in half, then crosswise into 1/8-inch thick strips.
Place beef and 1/3 cup Italian dressing in food-safe plastic bag; turn beef to coat. Reserve remaining dressing for vegetables. Close bag securely and marinate in refrigerator for 30 minutes to 2 hours.
Remove beef from marinade; discard marinade. Heat large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until hot.
Add 1/2 of beef; stir-fry for 1 to 2 minutes or until outside surface of beef is no longer pink. (Do not overcook.)
Remove from skillet.
Repeat with remaining beef.
Season beef with salt and pepper; keep warm.
Wipe skillet with paper towel.
Heat remaining Italian dressing in same skillet until hot.
Add peppers and onion. Stir-fry for 5 to 6 minutes or until vegetables are crisp-tender.
Return beef and juices to skillet. Cook and stir for 1 to 2 minutes or until heated through.
Total: 30 to 35 min | Marinade: 30 min to 2 hr | Yield: 4 servings
China’s Luxury Car Is A Threat To Rolls-Royce, Mercedes, BMW, and Bentley
My father was very conservative and extremely protective of me.
When I was little – seven or eight – he often joked I’d have to wait until I was at least forty before I could date anyone.
When I did start dating, the rule was the boy had to pick me up and come inside to meet my father.
Oh oh.
The first time I had someone over, I was nervous. What would my father do? How would he act?
I hoped he wouldn’t scare him off forever.
The boy came in and sat on the living room couch. My father shook his hand cordially, sat down and asked him a couple of questions, mostly logistical. Where are you going? How will you get there? What time are you bringing my daughter back?
That was it.
“That’s it?” I whispered to my dad. “No tests, no threats?”
“Dushka,” said my dad. “You have a very good head on your shoulders. I trust you. If you like him and want to spend time with him, my assumption is the kid is worth spending time with.”
Then he said “One day you will make the wrong choice and get hurt. Getting hurt is how you learn. I am here to keep you safe – not to take away your life experience. So please, be thoughtful and careful about who you choose because beyond that I can’t protect you without causing more damage than good.”
China is looking to hire engineers from other nations to bolster local chip production in the face of crippling US sanctions, with Huawei – one of the country’s largest tech giants – said to be creating a network of covert semiconductor plants across the country.
As Washington tries to curtail China’s access to advanced technology, Beijing continues to seek ways to advance its semiconductor ambitions, including discreetly reviving a past initiative to recruit top foreign-trained scientists to import much-needed expertise.
The new initiative, called Qiming, is overseen by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
Qiming was set up to run in parallel with other recruitment initiatives from local and provincial authorities plus a government-backed hiring drive by Chinese chip companies themselves, which favor applicants trained at elite foreign institutions.
In related news, Huawei is building out a covert network of semiconductor facilities across China to tackle the limitations of US sanctions that have chocked off its supply of chips.
According to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), the trade body for US chipmakers, Huawei has taken possession at least two existing factories and is building a minimum of three others. SIA claims it is doing this under the names of other companies to conceal its involvement.
Doing so may allow Huawei to circumvent restrictions and indirectly purchase chipmaking equipment and other supplies that would otherwise be off-limits to the company. As a reminder, earlier this year, Washington was pushing for an all-out block on any and all US technology export licenses to Huawei.
No wonder that BRICS is spearheaded by China to bring USD’s demise sooner than later. There has to be a tit for every tat and who knows this better than China which started with Gallium and Germanium products, Micron and now Apple card being played.
Just imagine this, with the news of few Apple phones being discouraged to be used in the offices and Apple lost 200 billion dollars (this is akin to GDP of Hungary) of its share value overnight. What happens if there is a official ban a la Micron on Apple? They will lose trillion dollars = 33% of its share value in a single day because China is responsible for 25% of Apple’s revenue.
Its easy to do business with China, yet its tough to do business with China if you arm twist China.
The US is all talking. They don’t have the resources to push for their “comprehensive” plan in blocking China’s development.
Rome is not built in one day. The Belt and Road Initiative started 10 years ago and to date, 147 countries—accounting for two-thirds of the world’s population and 40 percent of global GDP—have signed on to projects or indicated an interest in doing so.
No one, including the US, really wants to cut off their ties with China as they all benefit from the big Chinese market and investment.
The US’ goal of containing China’s rise is evil and despicable.Who do they think they are? The US is working against the trend of history and against the wish of 1.4 billion Chinese pursuing a better life. Their effort in containing China’s growth will prove to be useless and 100% be crushed down to nothing. China’s rise is inevitable, no one can stop.
Qualcomm generates two-thirds of its revenue and profit from China. Instead of manufacturing the chips it designs, the company derives income from licensing fees related to its intellectual property. Following the embargo, Qualcomm has been permitted to supply 14nm and higher Android chips to China to sustain its operations. since most cell phone vendors in China, are converting to Harmony, enabling the chip for Harmony OS enhances Qualcomm’s prospects in China, as it involves minimal expenses to adapt the microcode it possesses
Trouble Ahead! Western Lithography Machines Shutdown En Masse.
The United States has restricted the export of high-end chips to China, but China has made significant progress in mid-to-low-end chips. This has reduced China’s dependence on US chip imports, leading to a decline in integrated circuit imports and Western photolithography machine shutdowns. China’s semiconductor industry has developed rapidly, although there are still technological gaps and market share issues compared to American chip companies. China has provided an opportunity for American chip giants like Qualcomm, Intel, NVIDIA, and AMD to expand their business and generate significant revenue, with over 30% and up to 60% of their revenue coming from the Chinese market. They even develop tailored versions of their chips to comply with export control regulations and continue doing business in China.
When I was taking care of my mother in Pennsylvania (she had cancer, and was living alone) I was responsible for the house care taking. This was a “manor”; a massive old house on 11 acres of land.
I did a lot of work on the property; renovating buildings, fixing things, and what-not.
One day, I went about the property and painted fresh white paint on all the water taps that littered the yard.
As I was painting, I heard something that sounded like a shaking rattle and then suddenly there was a blur in front of my eyes, and then nothing.
…
Sigh.
…
I hopped back on the tractor and rode to the manor, parked it in the “carriage house” workshop and started to notice that my arm seemed to be sore. I felt a little dizzy and so turned in early.
The next way I woke up with “cotton mouth”, and my arm was all yellow and swollen up and puffy. It was one big lump of piss-colored balloon / eggplant / muscle. I looked in the mirror and I looked like shit.
When looking at my arm, I saw two tiny puncture holes. That to this day I still have.
And that is my story of what it is like getting bit by a rattlesnake.
One of my favorite Vietnam veteran stories the likes of which never get told. I had a buddy in college post army who was a “Vietnam Vet”. Why the quotation marks? He gets to Nam and settles in at repl. During the first formation an NCO asks if anybody there has experience as a bartender. Having grown up in his father’s bar in Rochester, NY he raises his hand. After checking him out to their satisfaction he packs his shit and is flown to Guam to run the officer’s club bar for the length of his tour. His total time in Nam was about 36 hours!!!
U.S., Japanese and South Korean fleets scurried away during military exercises last month. Do they want to repeat?
Why don’t they stay? It turns out that they were afraid that the PLA would take over their nest!
If it were an actual battle, Apra Naval Base and Andersen Air Force Base would have been reduced to ruins long ago. The United States Indo-Pacific Command is in danger.
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Taiwan is Chinese territory, Taiwan is in China.
The Yankee fleet only dared to circle around, but did not dare to enter the area near Taiwan.
Transport ships, transport planes, the PLA lets them in, they can come in. If they are not allowed in, they can only fire with their mouths on the other side of the network.
Nice Picture
2023 09 26 16 54w
Herbed Steak
Herbed Steak is excellent served with hot buttered noodles with dill.
Herbed Steak 610×407 1
Ingredients
1 pound round steak
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon seasoned salt
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup
3/4 cup water
1 tablespoon herb seasoning
Instructions
Cut steak into serving-size pieces.
Combine flour and seasoned salt.
Pound into steak. Brown meat on both sides in hot oil in heavy skillet.
Add remaining ingredients. Cover; simmer 45 minutes, or bake at 350 degrees F for 1 hour.
so I decided to walk over to them and I asked her ” how was the meeting today darlin? ” she looked at me and said ” it was good, I’ll tell you more about it when we get home in a few “. I replied with ” wonderful I’ll pick up your favorite for dinner”.
The two guys left in a hurry and she told me ” you have no idea how much that meant to me …. thank you.” I said “you’re very welcome ma’am …. you can never be too careful. “
I made sure the guys left before I walked back to my car and as I was walking back all I could do was think ” I hope a man does that for my future daughter one day”.”
~ Cody Bret
Confession of the Day
$300k in debt (no mortgage). $297,677.49 to be exact.
$215k law school debt, $40k graduate school debt, $25k credit cards, $11k car loan, and a personal loan.
After 5 years of deep denial- I think I’ve finally accepted how badly we fucked up. I feel like I’ve gone through the stages of grief multiple times this year.
We paid for very expensive degrees that didn’t need to be. We racked up a shit ton of credit card debt by spending money like entitled a**holes and not using a budget. I wish I could go back in time, slap 23 year old me (and my husband) and ask, repeatedly- what the hell are you doing??
We would go out to bars and dinners every weekend with friends. insert Discover card. We would regularly order takeout. insert Amex card. We went on yearly vacations. insert Jet Blue card. We financed furniture???? Not to mention we walked right into the “prestige” private school bullshit.
We ate that shit up. And for what? To impress people? To prove that we’re worth something? All the above? It’s so normalized to be in debt as a millennial.
Everyone had credit cards, everyone was going out, everyone had student loans. We were super normal! You’re only young once- amiright?!
I found Dave last year, when I was hitting rock bottom. My debit card was getting declined at the gas station and the grocery store regularly.
After listening to The Ramsey Show for a couple weeks, I realized how screwed we were. I remember the first time he talked about the borrower being a slave to the lender.
That’s exactly how I felt. I couldn’t breathe. I had a mental breakdown. I haven’t really been able to relax since. My husband and I spent all last year fighting about money and almost got divorced.
We’re on BS2 right now. We should bring in around $170k this year before side gigs. We have paid off $12k since June. We started FPU last week. We’re throwing everything at the debt. I’m working my ass off. Husband is working 65+ hrs a week and donating plasma.
We dropped more than half of our “friends.” It’s a humbling experience to say the least. My mother in law makes us dinners a couple days a week to help out.
Family and friends ask why we’re not having kids or buying a house yet. The whole situation is embarrassing, but we deserve it.
I don’t blame anyone but myself. I’m not expecting anyone to “forgive” or payoff our dumpster fire. We were extremely stupid and entitled, but we need to get out of this ourselves. I just need prayers that we can make it out of this. We will. Hopefully better than who we were before.
Just trying to “embrace the suck” and keep up the motivation.
Europe-US tech war breaks out! 17 European countries boycott the US!
I’m serious when I say this is actually one of the cruelest things you can do in a battle because it exploits human’s basic survival instinct.
Leave your enemy a way to escape.
Human beings aren’t so different from the many types of creatures that roam the planet, One of the universal traits shared by so many species is this. Fight or flight or freeze.
In a situation that presents danger, living creatures will perform one of these actions. Fight, meaning we leap into action and confrontation. Flight, meaning we try to remove ourselves from the danger. Freeze, where we are facing an unfamiliar situation and do nothing.
As the last several thousand years of recorded history has shown, humans have yet to grow beyond these basic instincts. It’s a part of who we are.
The brilliance comes in exploiting this mindset in a military situation. Consider a classic military tactic. Encirclement.
The idea of encirclement is simple. Use your forces to surround an enemy and isolate them. Cut off their means of supplying themselves with material and reinforcement. Strangle them as you make sure that you don’t run low on supplies. It’s classic thinking for military warfare, especially in regards to sieges.
But I want you to think of that in terms of what I just told you. “Fight, flight or freeze”.
If you take away an enemy’s ability to retreat, you are actually giving them a subtle advantage.
This might be hard to understand for people who don’t expect to face life or death situations. Facing a scenario where you have a high chance of dying without chance of survival is less stressful than a situation where you might survive. Why is this? Because it’s less complicated.
if you make your enemy think they can’t escape, you remove the “flight” option. And you have increased the chances of them choosing “Fight”.
I’ll use a real world example to explain this better. Pirates.
Now back in the days when piracy was men in giant wooden ships sailing through the Caribbean, there were several unspoken rules of piracy. One of the most important of which was FLAGS. A lot of successful pirates had their own heraldry, much like Noble Houses of Europe.
Pirates would hide their flags from plain sight. They would only unfurl their banners when stalking targeted ships. They would suddenly spring the flag from cover, displaying to their prey their intent to rob and plunder.
Now if you were some poor merchant ship who was suddenly ambushed on the high seas, your greatest fear was seeing THIS flag.
If you saw a RED Pirate flag unfurled that meant you were in serious trouble. Pirates who used red flags intended no mercy for their prey and were going to kill and do unspeakable things to whomever they captured, even if they surrendered and begged for their lives. Red flag pirates were torturous, murdering bastards who would probably laugh as they set you on fire or tossed you into the sea with weights tied to your ankles.
What you wanted to see was a white pirate flag.
Pirate flags that had white (or lacked red generally) were from pirate crews who were more reasonable. Generally if you surrendered to these pirates (either immediately or after a short battle), the worse they would do is steal your valuables, most of your food and maybe abduct some of your crew. After that they’d let you go peacefully. They would usually kill you only if you fought to try to stop them. If you happened to be belligerent and refused to give them your supplies, they would probably torture you or threaten to torture you.
Defeating your opponent isn’t just skill at arms. There’s a mental component to combat and sometimes you can defeat an opponent before you even cross swords.
If you are a pirate with a red flag, here is what your opponent is going to be thinking.
“Okay that pirate ship is coming for me. If I surrender or do nothing, they are definitely going to kill me. If I fight back, they MIGHT kill me. But if I fight back, maybe I’ll kill them before they kill me. I might even be able to win and go home. I think I’m going to fight back.”
If you are a pirate with a non-red flag, here is what your opponent will be thinking.
“Okay that pirate ship is coming for me. If I surrender or do nothing they are probably going to let me go free if I let them steal everything. If I fight back I might be able to win. If I fight back though, I could lose, be captured and then tortured to death in front of friends. Combat is unpredictable, I could be killed fighting before the battle is over. If I die I won’t be able to go home, get a drink, make love to a woman and live a peaceful life. I think I’ll take my chances with surrendering.”
Contrary to what you may think, it is a poor sign of a warrior to seek battle over capitulation. Fighting is unpredictable. On the high seas, pirates defined success by captured treasures, not the number of people they killed. Sailors knew this. This is why when pirate offered fair terms their enemies surrendered almost immediately.
If you back a man into a corner, he will fight to survive. If you back a man into a corner and give him a way to escape unharmed, there’s a good chance that man will take the escape route.
This is why professional armies don’t massacre their prisoners. It’s why armies take prisoners in the first place. If you have an enemy surrounded, that enemy faces a choice. Fight and likely die or surrender and likely live. It’s much harder to have a man fight knowing he can surrender than fight until he stops breathing.
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Facing death when it’s the only option is easy. Facing death when you want to survive is hard.
Now here comes the brutal part.
As your enemy runs through that corridor of escape you strike HARD. Your enemy thinks they are safe. That they still have a clear path to run away. Then you attack them at their most unsuspecting. Take advantage of their weakness.
This is a tactic that is used in battles of annihilation. Where the objective is to annihilate enemy spirit, not just manpower. There are countless examples of this used in history. But there is one example that chills my very soul when I think back on it.
Napoleon’s Folly
image 1
It was the year 1812. Napoleon had just realized he couldn’t conquer Russia. Napoleon’s campaign to dominate the largest European kingdom had ground to a halt. He could win on the battlefield, but an extended conflict would ultimately accomplish nothing. The Russians refused to surrender, even when their own capital had been seized and the Tsar had fled. Facing an impossible situation, Napoleon ordered a withdrawal.
Now the Russians could have counterattacked, encircled Napoleon and tried to capture him with their superior numbers and knowledge of the land. What they did was worse. They let the French walk back the way they came.
image 2
The French army marched back through lands they had already conquered. These areas had been picked clean of food. In their places was less than nothing. Napoleon’s grand army, the largest on Earth at that time, was cut off from supplies. This was literally as the Russian winter was beginning.
But they could still escape. The Russians were only behind them. So they started walking back.
image
Yellow line represents French invasion into Russia. Black line indicates retreat. The thickness of the line represents amount of men.
All the while, the Russians bled them with raids. Mounted horsemen, Irregular militias. Pin prick attacks from a thousand directions. But never a concentrated military attack. The Russians kept bleeding the French. Bit by bit by bit.
The French couldn’t turn around and retaliate. The invasion had failed and now all they wanted to do was go home. They thought they would be safe if they just kept walking west. And they kept getting more and more hungry. The weather became worse and worse.
image 3
This is when the Grand Army began to break down. Deserters abandoned the army in droves. Their equipment was insufficient for fighting in winter and broke down in unrelenting cold. And the Russians kept circling their flanks. Never surrounding them. Never stopping them from retreating.
So the French kept walking west. There was still a chance they probably thought. If they endured a few more days, a few more hundred miles, they could make it. They kept weakening themselves. Structure and order were undone as desperation infected the French ranks. They lost whatever advantage they may have had fighting the Russians directly and weakness began to suffocate them. Hunger, disease and deprivation on a massive scale.
The retreat from Russia lasted from October to December of 1812. By the time the Grand Army had entered friendly territory, they had been reduced to barely 20,000 emaciated survivors.
image 4
And that’s how you destroy an army of 700,000 men. You give them hope of escape.
The Nurse
“Today I woke up feeling like I had a hangover. I’m starting my 4 day break from the ICU, after working 6 of the last 8 days. I drug myself down the stairs and starting cleaning house as I normally do on my days off. I glanced at myself in the mirror at the bottom of my stair case. Horror. My face blatantly shows the pure exhaustion that I feel, and my hair looks a complete mess. “Thank god I’m off work today and my patients won’t have to see this worn out version of myself” is my first thought.
People who aren’t nurses always tell me, “You only work three days a week? Wow! That must be great. I wish I had your schedule!”..Only three days a week? ONLY!? I wake up at 4:30AM, shake off my fatigue, drive an hour to work, and then begin my scheduled 12 hour shift. 12 often turns into 13 hours or even more depending on the patient load and if I were able to keep up with my charting. When I’m done and finally clock out, I drive home arriving around 8PM, where I strip out of my scrubs and collapse onto the couch where I snuggle my cats and tell my husband about my day until I pass out from exhaustion. I slip upstairs to bed, to the disbelief of my husband that I could possibly be so tired, and I set my alarm and prepare for my next shift.
ONLY 36 hours a week. But does anyone who’s not a nurse know what those 36 hours consist of? Juggling all my nursing tasks for each individual patient while also trying to communicate with the doctors, pharmacists, respiratory therapists, PT, OT, social work, our aides, the patients themselves, and their families?! Yes, that’s right, I communicate with all of these people on a daily basis. I am personal coordinator for my patients. I am their voice, their advocate. I must be aware of my patients needs at all times. Room 101 is going up stairs to cath lab at 0900. 102 wants their pain medicine at 0915. 103 needs to be turned at 0930. Got it. My mental check list is a never ending dynamic that I must prioritize and rearrange constantly.
My job is scary. Always thinking, always analyzing, ALWAYS aware of my actions. I could cause a patient to lose their life if I am not critically thinking about everything that I do and every medication that I give. Is this dosage appropriate, does this patient need this medication? It is all my responsibility to keep the patient safe.
Even when I am doing everything that I can it isn’t always enough. I’ve had family members displeased that I took a little longer to answer a call light. I’m sorry that I couldn’t get you a coke right away, I was busy titrating a lifesaving medication in the room right next to yours. I have been asked by a family member if I were qualified to even be a nurse, surely I was too young for that. I have been told that I am too weak to help lift a patient when in reality I can lift more weight that I weigh. Nursing is hard. I take all these comments and offer a kind response to remain professional even though it can make me feel really small at times. Not feeling appreciated is hard when all I am trying to do is help.
I have been there when a patient said their lasts words before being intubated and never being able to come off of the vent. I have been there as a patient has taken their last breaths on the earth. I have been there when a patient has decided that their body can no longer fight, and they would like to receive comfort care. I have provided comfort care as family members are silent, with tears streaming down their faces, as I turn the lifeless body of their once resilient family member. I have been there when a doctor has told a healthy, active patient in front of their spouse that they have stage 4 cancer, and will not survive. I have stood and held my tears to remain strong for family members who have had their hearts shattered by the news that their loved ones will not be coming home again. I have sobbed on my way home from work because my heart is shattered too. I am so sorry that you have to go through these things. I am so sorry that your loved one has cancer. I am so sorry that myself and the doctors couldn’t get your loved one to wake back up after being sedated on the ventilator. Nursing is hard. I am human. I care about my patients. How could I not? My heart breaks along with my patients and their family members. Then I go home and try to pretend that I have not been broken during my shift. I don’t want to burden my husband with my sadness, and I need to pull it together so I can go back to work in the morning and do it again.
So how do I do it? How do all nurses do it? How do we manage ONLY 36 hours a week? Because nursing is beautiful. I have been there as a scared patient on a ventilator has woken up so I held her hand and told her that everything would be okay. She could not speak as she had a lifesaving breathing tube down her throat. Somehow she managed to grasp a pen with her weak hands and wrote “I love you guys.” My heart exploded with joy. I have provided comfort to someone when they were far from comfortable. I have been there when a patient has come off of a ventilator after being on it for a week, and watched as they cried and said they were so happy to be alive. I helped bring that person relief. I have bought lip gloss for an elderly patient whose son forgot to bring in her lipstick. The smile on her done up face was priceless as she put on the lip gloss to complete her look. I have made a patient genuinely happy even though she is sick and in the critical care unit. I have been there providing comfort care to a dying loved one and family members have hugged me and thanked me for being the angel that their family member needs. Nursing is beautiful. Life is beautiful. I watch lives change, I watched lives end, and I watch lives get a second chance because of the care and medicine that I have provided.
Nursing is hard. Nursing is stressful. Nursing is exhausting. It drains me both physically and mentally. I come home tired, sweaty, and defeated. Not all days are good days. Nursing is not all sunshine and rainbows. But nursing is my life. I dedicate my life to saving the lives of others. Those break through moments when a patient miraculously recovers, when a patient holds your hand and tells you how thankful that they are for you, and the moments when myself and a patient can share in a good laugh. The feeling of pride I feel when my patient came in on a ventilator but walks out at discharge, makes it all worth it. All the wonderful, precious moments are why I love nursing. The great moments are what get myself and my coworkers through the long, difficult 12 hour shifts. Thank god for fantastic coworkers. My coworkers are like my family. I know that they understand the mental turmoil that I go through after a hard day. Only nurses understand truly what nurses go through.
So the next time that you want to tell a nurse that it must be great to work ONLY 36 hours a week, please be mindful of what those 36 hours are like. Give a nurse a hug today, and be thankful that we continue to do what we do, and don’t judge us when we drink a little extra wine. If it were easy, everyone would do it.
Sincerely,
the exhausted,
but still smiling ICU nurse.”
“Men Deserve To Be Lonely!” Responding To Backlash Over ‘The Male Loneliness Epidemic’
“Shoe, I don’t think you’ll ever know how much these videos mean, but thank you. It’s absolutely heart-warming to realise that not everyone in this world is crazy and I don’t have to feel so isolated, that not everything has to be a war, that I could go outside and not be scared to socialise based on things of which I have no control. Thank you.”
Confession of the Day
We got married almost 3 years ago. She started having an affair with her coworker 1 year ago. I got to know that because I saw his car outside my house one day. I had my suspicions. I hired a PI and gathered evidence that she was having an affair with him. I was angry.
Then I got a call from the coworker’s wife that she came to know about the affair. She only had texts they used to send but I have all the receipts of their hangouts. Together we decided to confront them. We used to meet up a lot. She told me she had suspected his affair since her pregnancy. They have 3 children together. One day we had an idea that we should sleep with each other as revenge.
We did and not going to lie it felt good. We have been meeting and having sex for a while. She is an amazing woman. I would say she is better at some things in bed than my wife. Mostly, I am very angry towards my wife. Because in some of her texts with her affair partner she and AP made fun of AP’s wife. Saying things like she has gained weight, her vagina was destroyed and other disgusting stuff. I cannot believe that she would say something like this while being a woman. She even made fun of my fertility issues saying that I am not a man because the chances of me having kids is very low.
I do not feel bad about my affair. I like the sex life I had with AP’s wife way more than my wife. She hardly ever gives me oral but expects me to give her one. At least AP’s wife was more enthusiastic about it and it was the best oral I ever had. AP’s wife wants to tell his husband.
I guess we are both tired about carrying out the revenge affair. We both got carried away. We were both so driven by the revenge that we got addicted to it.
I will confront my wife soon. I already have the divorce papers ready. Since we do not have a joint account or marital assets it will be easy for us.
AP’s wife might have some problems because they have kids but she has the power to take him to cleaners. I know I sound like an awful person. But I am already checked out of my marriage.
Last weekend, my boyfriend asked me to make some creme brulee, so I did. After dinner, I served the dessert.
My boyfriend then pulled out from his pocket a small spoon with an owl on it and handed it to me. I love owls very much (I have a lot of owl things around the house). He told me this is the designated spoon for creme brulee – just for me.
I was happy. And he, after finishing the creme brulee, also was happy.
I find that a lot of people, myself a few years ago included, tend to think and look for big things to be happy in life, like a big house, a fancy car, a steady career,… But then, I learned that, it doesn’t take much for you to be happy.
Life is a difficult journey, lots of things we have to deal with every day. But if you try to collect small and small pieces of happiness along the way, you will be much happier.
Couple finds cats in new home. Guess how they responded.
I laughed and laughed. He was a maintenance guy at Nabisco back when Nabisco had a Houston facility and he decides to steal a big bench grinder. It maybe weighed a hundred pounds and would have cost around eighty or ninety dollars. Anyway, he couldn’t get it past the guard house so he decided to back his truck up to the building and drop the bench grinder into the bed of the truck from the top of the second floor roof, that would be about a thirty foot fall. Now just doing this in my head and playing fast and loose with the numbers I’m figuring that the bench grinder is going to exert somewhere around ten thousand pounds of impact force when it meets the bed of that truck, and I stood back and smiled.
The grinder hit just in front of the third member and went through the bed of that truck like a cannon shot. It was fabulous!
Man Dies Car Accident; Learned The Truth About The Matrix (NDE)
While living in Atlanta, I met a guy who told me he wanted to move to New Zealand. I was a little surprised. At the time, it wasn’t a country you heard Americans talk about often, at least not in Georgia.
He was a culinary arts graduate though, and in my country (Jamaica) they tend to be pretty cultured people. Partially because of the classes but also because it attracts a lot of upper-middle class students (not sure why!). So I figured this guy likely just knew something I didn’t.
“Why do you want to move to New Zealand?” I asked.
“Because they speak English!” he answered. “I don’t want to have to learn another language.”
I puzzled over this in silence for a moment and then I asked. “Ok, but that’s an interesting choice just for English. I mean, why not Britain?”
“Well, I don’t know what language the British speak,” he responded.
I thought he was joking so I burst out laughing, but I soon realized he wasn’t joining in. “Wait….are you serious??”
“Yes, it’s not like I’ve ever googled that or anything.”
“England is part of Britain…” I hinted, still wondering if maybe he was just toying with me.
Nope. He started to get angry. “I don’t know what language they speak either.”
I was flabbergasted. “DUDE…what language do you think THE ENGLISH speak??”
“I just told you I don’t know,” he started to say, until it dawned on him. He stared at me in awkward silence for a moment and then he got up and left, lol.
He never spoke to me again. 😂
I don’t remember his name or even how we met, but every so often, I think about him and wonder if he’s gotten any smarter with time.
While living in a housing community, one morning I returned to where I left my car the previous night, it was gone. Wondering why someone would steal such a crappy car, I called the local police. I wanted a police officer to come out and take a report. Instead, the officer asked me over the phone where the car was removed(address), and license plate number. While we were talking on the phone, other community tenants were wandering the parking lot looking for their car too. The officer informs me that my car was at a local low yard and had been impounded with twelve other cars. It seems the community had issued new parking permits yet failed to notify ALL the tenants.
With a ride from a friend, off I go to the impound lot. When I arrive, I’m welcome by many young retired gang bangers covered with jail and prison colored tattoos. They hold my car hostage, demanding over two hundred dollars I didn’t have to lose. After I pay the ransom, I lean over the counter getting as close to the cashiers face as I can. I tell him I will be suing their company, and it will cost them far more than I’m paying. He responded, laughing, “I hear that threat a dozen times a day”. I respond, “get a good look at my face so you’ll remember me later as the one person who actually did sue you!”
Due to rampant predatory towing, in 2004, California signed into law a detailed code and section listing nearly 12 specific criteria that a towing company must preform prior to impounding a car. No towing companies ever satisfy these requirement. That same law listing the requirement also lists the penalties for towing company and possibly security staff non-compliance. I’m my case, it was four times the extortionist tow charge that they charged.
Off to court I go, filed and waited several months for scheduled court date. When our court date arrives, the company didn’t bother to appear. I was awarded everything I asked for, plus interest.
Off again I go to the tow yard with copy of court order demanding payment, they told me to “pound sand!” The next day the towing company attempted to appeal the order not knowing that you cannot appeal an order issued on a case in which you failed to appear.
Now the fun starts. Off to the Sheriffs Department with my court order to request a till tap levy. Due to the sheer volume of deadbeats in Orange County, this task takes another nine months to arrive. After nearly a year since my car was stolen and held for ransom, the Sheriffs department forcibly collected over a thousand dollars in restitution, penalty, and interest, from a very angry business owner. When it was all over and I’d received my money, I went back to the towing yard and thanked them for stealing my car.
I am Answering the question. I am not the one who asked it. I said how I handled it. To the one who asked it.
I am single. No girlfriend or wife to keep me company. I bought a house in a really nice neighborhood. After settling in one weekend I decided to go for a swim in my pool. Lo and behold, there were kids already in there. I thought, am I in the wrong house? I pinched myself. Nope I am in my home. So I sat outside to watch the kids to make sure they stay safe while swimming. After a couple hours they got out and left, saying hi as they left. Just as they were leaving. I told the kids that I really do not want anyone in my pool except me or my family, because of liability issues. Plus I am afraid the kids will urinate in the pool. (I did not tell them that.) So I told them my pool is off limits. They looked at me as if to say “Whatever “. Then they left.
It was OK for a couple days. Then one Saturday I heard the sound of someone in my pool. So outside I sit and watch the neighborhood kids. Like I said before I am single. With no companion. I had always wanted a dog. I thought not only would I have a life companion, I would also have a way to guard my home. So one day I brought my friend home. I installed a dog door and got him a huge comfy dog bed. Now since my dog has access to the back yard I posted warning signs by the gate to state “Guard dog on premises. Do not enter.” Did not think too much about it. Now since I got a friend I wanted to be active with him. We go on walks, go to the park to let him stretch his legs and run, as well as mine.
One morning I heard the doorbell and the dog barking to let me know someone is at the door. So I got up and went to the door. There were kids with towels standing at my door. I asked what they wanted. They told me they are afraid of my dog, and could I put him up so they could swim. I told them “I am sorry, but you are going to have to find another place to play.” I also told them every once in a while it would be OK, but only if they asked first and one of their parents was there to supervise them.” I never heard from them again. I am not saying you should do this, but that is how I solved my issue. Also I am glad I got a dog. He is my best friend and goes with me pretty much everywhere. Where you see me, you see Kronos.
It started so innocently. I asked my son to get me something out of the refrigerator. I forgot the word “refrigerator”. I pointed to it and said get me something out of “that.”
I opened the mail once and I received a ticket for running a red light. A camera saw it and I could view what it saw. It was early in the morning and I never tried to stop when the light was red. I could have killed someone. No cars were coming. I don’t remember even being there. Twice I have pulled out of a parking lot and for some reason, I touched the gas pedal hard instead of the brake. I have taken two driving tests by the VA. I passed. I have to focus on every aspect of driving. My driving days are numbered.
My doctor has given me two tests for dementia. Part of a test involves her giving me five words like “apple” to remember. Minutes later, when I am asked to repeat the words, I remember maybe two. I’ve seen a specialist for a four hour session. Drawing a clock, etc. are part of the test.
I have minor to mild dementia. It’s hard to scare me but dementia sure does.
I write and forget grammar rules I’ve known for years.
Any disease is a label, it doesn’t define me. I get to choose what defines me. I was diagnosed with dementia three years ago and I’m fighting it like hell.
Never take for granted looking in a mirror and knowing who you are. Someday I fear I will have no clue who the hell the person is that’s looking back at me.
I plan to fight dementia as hard as I can. I hope it will be years before I slip into total darkness.
My wife was moving from Virginia to Ohio, had a U-Haul reservation, and showed up on Saturday morning to pick up her truck. There was no truck, they had rented it out to somebody else, who showed up earlier that Saturday without a reservation. When asked about why they had done that, they blamed us for not being there earlier, on an 8–12 pick up window, when we showed up at 9:00.
Within an hour, we had a Ryder truck. However, later that afternoon, when we were nearly done packing up her stuff, U-Haul called to say they had her truck ready. We said “no” in very definitive terms. Sure enough, two weeks later, when my wife got her credit card statement, U-Haul had charged her for the rental in spite of not having the truck. The customer service representative at U-Haul was inflexible on the charge, stating that they had a truck for her, and it was her fault that she didn’t pick it up.
Never again, they suck. If you rent with them, it will happen to you.
China proposes a new domestic EUV lithography machine plan: “super large lithography factory”!
Wow, China is very innovative by proposing to build EUV lithography as an infrastructure project to get the advantage of large scale production.
This is a great idea as chips will always be needed in the future and it’s applications will be in every product.
By consolidating all the chips manufacturers together one can reduce the price of chips significantly.
No other country will be able to compete as it will be integrated in the infrastructure project. China will be self sufficient all the way through the 21st century.
My friend had something like this happen, the rented garage where he worked on his race car was broken into and burgled. They didn’t take the car but took a set of wire wheels with Dunlop Race Tires (a special order option for wet conditions) on them, along with all his tools, etc. He filed a police report.
Well, a week later my friend is downtown and sees an MG B parked at the curb, with his tires and wheels on it. He knew they were his because he had marked them with chalk showing which locations on the car they were on.
He went to a payphone on the same block called the police, and went back to stand by the car.
A cop showed up within a few minutes. He explained to the police officer, and. They waited a while, but the owner didn’t come back.
The police took all the information off the car and called a tow truck.
They eventually tracked down the owner of the car, who was related to the people who rented him the garage. They searched his garage and found all my friend’s tools and other things that were stolen.
I’d vote it would be Ben L. Salomon who was an army Dentist during WWII. In June 1944 he volunteered to replace a wounded surgeon due to there not being much need for a dentist during combat when all hell broke lose.
The Japanese General Saito, after taking massive casualties and being pushed back so far, ordered his remaining 3000-5000 to advance to attack the American forces and die with honor. Outside the medical tent Captain Salomon saw a Japanese soldier bayonet some of the wounded soldiers. He grabbed a nearby rifle and killed the Japanese soldier and went back to tending the wounded inside the medical tent. At that point the defensive line collapsed, unbeknown to Salomon, and two more Japanese soldiers ran into the tent. Salomon clubbed both of them with the rifle, then shot one and bayoneted the other. Four more Japanese solder started crawling under tent. He shot one, bayoneted another one, knifed the third, and head-butted the fourth, allowing one of the wounded soldiers to shoot him. Realizing the dire situation, he ordered the medics to evacuate the wounded. Meanwhile he stayed to provide cover for the soldiers evacuating.
When the military retook the area 15 hours later they found Captain Salomon’s body slumped over a machine gun with 76 wounds from being shot and bayoneted (autopsy revealed 24 of them were inflicted before death), and the bodies of 98 Japanese soldiers piled in front of his position. Based on the blood trail of the wounded Captain, Salomon relocated the machine gun 4 times to maintain a clear field of fire due to the build up of piles of bodies.
Ben L. Salomon is pretty much the embodiment of “Going Out in a Blaze of Glory”
The Feline Couple Came to the Family’s Doorstep Every Day
Nice story.
My wife is a parasite and I feel stuck
My wife (37f) and I (38m) and I have been married for 11 years, together for a few years before that, and have known each-other for over 20 years. We met online when she was 16 and still in high school, and I was 17 and just starting college. For the sake of this rant we’ll call her Connie.
Connie and I lived several states away and, at first, there was some attraction on her part – but I just wanted to stay friends. Over several years we grew closer and decided to have a long distance relationship. I was always awkward with girls in high school and it continued into adulthood. With Connie things just felt natural. After a couple years, when we were talking about meeting in person, she destroyed me. She let me know that she had been having multiple other online relationships and one of these men came to meet her and she wanted to be with him.
Looking back, the smart thing to do would have been to end the story there. Nearly a year later she reached out to me, saying she was sorry and that she missed our friendship. I decided to give friendship another chance and, for a while, it worked. She had a couple other relationships. We’d talk and text regularly. But, over time, the old feelings came back. I admitted them to her and she said she felt the same.
We decided to give things another shot. Eventually she came to visit me and then we would alternate visits. We talked about her coming to live with me, and she did. She worked for a national chain store, so the plan was for her to simply transfer locations. She didn’t do that. Instead she quit. After a couple attempts at finding work, she asked if she could stay at home and take care of the house. Cook, clean, etc. I agreed, since we didn’t really have many expenses. She also refused to get her own bank account, instead using mine and calling everything ‘our’ money. Looking back, the red flags are so blatantly obvious – but I was young and in love.
She never cleaned and rarely cooked.
Instead we ordered out most of the time, wasting any money I had saved. We got several pets, at her insistence. She begged me for over a year to get her pregnant because she wanted a baby. I said I wanted to get married first, which is what ended up happening. When my daughter was an infant we bought a house in order to have more space. She also wanted to be nearer to one of her world of warcraft friends, who we’ll call Aaron.
It was because of Aaron I learned of her fixating behavior.
She will find a male friend online, become ‘besties’ with them, and then eventually find someone else. After Aaron it was Roy. Roy lived further away, but was in a bad relationship with his own wife (ironic) and suicidal. Connie begged me to let him come stay with us until he could get on his feet, admitting she’d already invited him. Defeated, I agreed since I didn’t want to make someone homeless.
He lived with us for a year before he was able to get a job. He is still living with us nearly 9 years later. And to be quite honest it’s because of him I haven’t gone completely insane yet. Connie still barely does any housework. Roy is the one who does the dishes, laundry, and yardwork. All of it.
He does not pay rent, but Connie has access to his bank account and regularly spends his money to the point of overdraft. In the interim years I’ve mostly separated my money from her. There is a bank account she does not have access to, with some savings and from which I pay our bills. If I didn’t do this, she would spend me to overdraft as well. Some of my paycheck goes into a shared account for her, which she regularly overdrafts. After Roy lived here for a while she found another man to be friends with and the cycle continued.
We have two children now, and she barely spends any time with them. Preferring instead to smoke weed (it’s legal here) and play video games for the entirety of the day. Sometimes she cooks, sometimes she’ll even straighten up a bit. However she has filled my house to the brim with clutter. Every room has boxes and boxes of useless shit. Some of it untouched.
I knew she had mental health issues when we were dating, but they have gotten worse and, with the use of tik-tok, she has weaponized them against me. Every time I criticize her for ordering stuff we don’t need (such as groceries that we already have, or junk we will never use) she defends herself by saying she has ADHD and it’s a symptom. She probably does have it, but she’s undiagnosed. She won’t go to a psychiatrist for it. Her medical doctor prescribed her antidepressants, which have helped, but not with everything. The thing is, I have plenty of friends with ADHD. They view it as a part of them which needs to be addressed and worked around/through. She sees it as an excuse to do whatever she wants without consequences.
Recently we went on vacation and she asked if her her latest friend, who is recently divorced and looking for jobs in our area, could stay at our house while we were away (though Roy would be there). I agreed, since it felt bad to make him spend several thousand dollars a week on a hotel room. He’s still here, and it’s been weeks. He’s done some Zoom interviews and occasionally does door dash to make extra cash, but he’s still here. We’ll call him Joe.
Connie and I have hit a breaking point and are talking about divorce. After a long conversation she’s admitted she sees nothing wrong with her behavior, and finds it aggravating that I try to ‘fix’ her. I realized then that there is nothing for me in this relationship anymore. She’s also admitted to having feelings for Joe, and he is in love with her.
The problem now is money. We have 60k left on our house and just bought a new car. She wants to keep the house and the car when we split. I’m fine with this because I would rather live somewhere that isn’t full of her garbage and I don’t drive. But she can’t pay for them, and no bank in their right mind would give her a loan to buy me out. Even if they did, she couldn’t pay it on her own (either Roy or Joe or both would be paying for it).
I want to be done with this relationship so badly, but I feel like I’m trapped here. My kids love their school and I don’t want to make them move. I’m more than happy to get my name off of the house and the car, get some money from the equity, and start over. It would be great to take my kids each weekend and actually DO things with them. But I don’t see a path to get there. I feel trapped in my own house, which is becoming increasingly full of my wife’s pets (both human and otherwise) and all of her garbage.
Even though I want out, I still love Connie (in a way) and don’t want to hurt or destroy her – even though it’s probably better than what she deserves. She first broached the topic of divorce, but now she gets sad regularly thinking about it – and is confused at why I am so often upset with her. All of the stress of having her, and Roy, and Joe, and two young children is eating away at me. And I feel ashamed of the divorce. Ashamed that I couldn’t fix her. Ashamed that I couldn’t put my foot down and say no. Ashamed that there are multiple people living in MY house that I don’t want here. I haven’t told my extended family or friends yet, though I am going out with a friend tomorrow and plan to tell him. And we haven’t told the kids either. It’s all eating me up inside, but just typing this out has helped. I hope it wasn’t too bad of a read. And I hope I can get through this situation sooner rather than later.
I asked DIGITAL NOMADS how they MAKE MONEY in Bali
Nice Picture
2023 09 26 16 5f3
The How And Why Of Heroin Addiction
Let me explain it to you, I’ve been an opiate addict for a long time and tried many drugs.
Drugs that are ‘uppers’ have the most ‘obvious’ euphoria.
For example if you take adderall/coke/meth/speed/MDMA you will get this shining bright euphoria, self confidence, energy, and other drug-specific feelings (for meth like you are king or for MDMA like you love everyone).
However, you owe these drugs back what they delivered to you.
After a meth binge, or lots of MDMA use, or staying up all night on coke you will feel like shit.
To an extent this aspect is similar to an alcoholic hangover.
On the other hand, for many people who experiment with heroin they are underwhelmed (not including IV usage, but most experimenters rarely ever IV first time).
They just feel good, chill, happy, but they feel like this spooky drug ‘heroin’ hasn’t delivered. They are just mellow.
Oh obviously it has all been a lie they will think.
Heroin isn’t spooky, it’s chill.
It’s not addictive like everyone else thinks. It doesn’t make you do stupid shit or stay up all day and hallucinate like amphetamines or coke. It doesn’t empty your serotonin like MDMA or give you a hangover like alcohol.
People tend to just think oh, what a nice drug.
So the next day they wake up and everything is normal. No headache or shitty feeling–just a slight afterglow of that nice feeling. Oh it was cheap as well! It only cost $10 for a whole night of being high! I thought people said heroin was expensive?
And then next weekend comes… There are all these drugs I could do but I liked heroin. It didn’t ‘fuck me up,’ I could still think clearly. No hangover. No feeling like shit later. I still was awake. It just made me happy and content with life. Oh and it’s only $10! Well, I should get some more for the whole weekend.
This is great!
I will use Heroin on the weekends now!
Now let’s say this person works and has responsibilities. He knows he can’t go into work drunk, or on MDMA, or high. So he doesn’t. It’s actually simple.
But heroin… Well the user might actually find they do better work on heroin.
Instead of being sad or grumpy or depressed with his job… he is just… happy. Mellow. Content. Everything is fine and the world is beautiful.
It’s raining, it’s dark, I woke up at 5:30AM, I’m commuting in traffic. I would have had a headache, I would have been miserable, I would have wondered how my life took me to this point.
This point I’m at right now. But no, no, everything is fine. Life is beautiful. The rain drops are just falling and in each one I see the reflection of every persons life around me. Humanity is beautiful. In this still frame shot of traffic on this crowded bus I just found love and peace. Heroin is a wonder drug. Heroin is better than everything else. Heroin makes me who I wish I was. Heroin makes life worth living. Heroin is better than everything else. Heroin builds up a tolerance fast. Heroin starts to cost more money. I need heroin to feel normal. I don’t love anymore. Now I’m sick. I can’t afford the heroin that I need. How did $10 used to get me high? Now I need $100. That guy that let me try a few lines the first time doesn’t actually deal. Oh I need to find a real dealer? This guy is a felon and carries a gun–he can sell me the drug that lets me find love in the world. No this isn’t working, I need to quit.
To answer your question, heroin feels nice.
That’s all, it just feels very nice. Y
ou can make the rest up for yourself. Attach your own half-truths to this drug that will show you the world and for a moment you will feel as clever as Faust.
Redfin Reports San Francisco Is About To Collapse
“I’m happy that we sold our house there a few years ago. I didn’t want to risk that for an AirBnB rental.”
Boxloads of New COVID-19″ Death Darts Arrive at US Military Bases Marked “2023-2024”
Box loads of Pfizer’s latest COVID-19 Death Dart, marked with its brand name COMINARTY” are arriving at US Military Bases. The boxes are labelled “2023-2024.” They’re planning another COVID outbreak to steal the Presidential Election (again) next year.
This has got to be one very smart virus; it seems to KNOW that it can only come out when a Presidential Election is coming, so they can demand mail-in paper ballots, and steal the election again; just like they did in 2020.
Except we’re not falling for this again. DO NOT COMPLY.
No more of their death dart, phony, “vaccines. No more masks. No more social distancing, and for damn sure, no more “lockdowns.”
That whole thing was total bullshit for a virus that is no worse than a nasty Flu.
These were words spoken by a 5-year old girl under my care when I worked in a Paediatric Oncology ward a few years ago.
She was a Beta Thalassemia Major patient. A real cutie, i can still remember her curly hair, friendly smiles and she was always very talkative on her good days. She had undergone two bone marrow transplants in the past, but came back with recurrent complications from the procedures.
We tried our best, but she was dying. And she knew it. We were on the verge of crying when we did our morning review that day, and heard her; comforting her parents. She then passed away peacefully in her sleep, after weeks of fighting.
(May you rest in peace, baby girl).
The “American Dream” is actual Slavery (It’s all a Lie)
Outstanding message! It’s such a materialistic world and we’ve been brainwashed to think the more possessions the better. It’s not true. Sad that it takes us all our lives to realize the lie.
The news is full of headlines about ‘China’s economic collapse’ — ignore them
Once again, the Western media Establishment, and sadly some on the left, are talking up an impending economic disaster in China, when the truth is quite the opposite, argues JOHN ROSS
IN THE last four years, covering the period of the Covid pandemic, China’s economy has grown two-and-a-half times as fast as the US, 15 times as fast as France, 23 times as fast as Japan, 45 times as fast as Germany, and 480 times as fast as Britain.
To add in smaller G7 countries, China has grown four times as fast as Canada, and 11 times as fast as Italy.
China’s outperformance of advanced capitalist countries is even greater in per capita terms — a still better measure of productivity changes and potential for increasing living standards.
China’s per capita GDP grew three times as fast as the US, five times as fast as Italy, 44 times as fast as Japan or France, and 260 times as fast as Britain — while per capita GDP fell in Germany and Canada.
China’s outperformance of developing capitalist countries shows the same pattern — China’s per capita 4.4 per cent GDP annual average growth compares to 2.6 per cent in India, 1.3 per cent in Brazil, or 0.9 per cent in South Africa.
What is important about such economic growth, of course, is not abstract statistics but its meaning for the real lives of ordinary people.
The International Labour Organisation data on real, inflation-adjusted, wages shows that up to the latest available data — for most countries to 2022, and for India to 2021 — China’s annual real wage growth was 4.7 per cent.
For Britain it was 0.1 per cent, for the US it was 0.3 per cent, in France it was minus 0.4 per cent, in Germany minus 0.7 per cent and in India minus 1.3 per cent.
Given this enormous economic outperformance by China of capitalist countries, any rational discussion that should be taking place in Western mainstream media about the international economic situation would be, “why is China’s economy hugely outperforming the US and the rest of the capitalist West?” and, “what lessons are to be learned from China’s socialist economy that is so outperforming the West?”
For the left, the issue that needs to be assessed and publicised is, “Why are real wages rising 18 times as fast in China as in the US, 44 times as fast as in Britain, while in France, Germany or India real wages are falling?”
Indeed, the present author would argue that much greater stress should be placed on the latter point. The international left has begun to absorb that China has lifted more than 850 million people out of World Bank-defined poverty in 40 years — by far the greatest poverty reduction achievement in human history.
But it has not yet internalised how rapidly not only the poorest but average living standards are rising in China — far faster than in any Western country.
But, of course, this real economic situation can’t be discussed in the mainstream media, because its conclusions would be too damaging for the capitalist West.
Instead, a type of mad discussion is unfolding, with US claims about China’s economy becoming increasingly bizarre — one might say deranged — as they get further and further out of touch with reality.
President Joe Biden, for example, recently made a speech claiming China’s economic growth rate is “around 2 per cent,” when it was 5.5 per cent in the first half of this year and, as already noted, China’s economy is growing two-and-a-half times as fast as the US.
Biden bizarrely claimed that in China “the number of people who are of retirement age is larger than the number of people of working age” — entirely false, and inaccurate by a figure of many hundreds of millions of people.
Discussion in the US financial media equally refuses to face real facts. Because I am an economist, every morning, after the overall news, I switch on Bloomberg TV to catch up on the latest economic data. Discussion there is like Alice Through the Looking Glass — the book the principle of which is that everything is reversed compared to the real world.
Apparently, according to Bloomberg’s analysis, China’s annual average of 4.5 per cent a year growth in the last four years is an economy in severe crisis, whereas the US’s 1.8 per cent is allegedly strong growth — not to speak of Britain’s 0.1 per cent. Similar rhetoric, out of all contact with factual reality, pervades the Financial Times, The Economist, or the Wall Street Journal.
The left is well used to such US political lying — the completely fake claim that North Vietnamese ships attacked US naval vessels on August 4 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin, used to launch the Vietnam war, or the equally untrue claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction to justify the US invasion, were classic examples.
Today, the US systematically lies about the state of China and its own economy because it is crucial for US capitalism to prevent its own citizens, and close allies, from understanding the real economic trends.
It is further proof, if one were needed, of the truth that if the real world and a theory do not coincide only one of two things can be done. One is to abandon the theory, the other is to abandon the real world.
In this case, the theory is that the US, because it is capitalist, should outperform socialist China. The real world is actual economic performance — in which China continues to outperform the US and other capitalist countries by an enormous margin.
Unable to abandon its theory the US is therefore forced to abandon the real world — hence the demented denial of comparative economic performance noted at the beginning of this article.
While the left should expect lies from capitalism what is rather shameful is that some sections of the left repeat such nonsense — apparently believing that if they put in a few left phrases into an analysis taken from the Western press this constitutes “socialist” commentary.
For example, an article in the New Left Review’s Sidecar called China a “zombie economy.” Some “zombie” when China’s economy is growing anywhere between two-and-a-half times and 480 times as fast as any major capitalist economy.
The real data shows the reality is simple. China has far outgrown any Western capitalist economy for more than 40 years. It continues to do so.
The result in China is by far the world’s most rapid rise in living standards — not only for the poorest but for the whole average population. It is known as the practical advantage of socialism. It is fact. We know why the US has to make up big lies about it. There is no justification for sections of the left echoing them.
I’ve been married for 6 years together for 8. Every single year we celebrate both of my husband’s parents birthdays. And every single year they don’t even acknowledge mine or my daughters. We both reach have one daughter from a previous and no children together. My husband spends hundreds on each of their birthdays year after year with custom ordered cake from the fanciest bakery in the area and we don’t get so much as a card. His parents don’t dislike me they just wish he would’ve stayed in a relationship with his ex who he never married but shares one child with. They still hold hope they will get back together after all these years so they pretend we don’t exist. It makes me want to stop showing up on their birthdays but I don’t know how to do that without hurting my husband who has had several private conversations asking them to please atleast acknowledge my daughter on her birthday but to no avail.
Italian Beef Stir Fry
Few ingredients – fast and flavorful!
2023 09 25 14 56
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
1 pound beef top tip steaks, cut 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 small zucchini, thinly sliced
1 cup cherry tomato halves
1/4 cup fat-free bottled Italian salad dressing
2 cups hot cooked spaghetti
1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese
Instructions
Cut beef steaks crosswise into 1-inch wide strips. Cut each strip crosswise in half.
Heat oil in large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add garlic and stir while cooking 1 minute.
Add half of the beef strips. Stir-fry 1 to 1 1/2 minutes or until no longer pink.
Remove with slotted spoon and keep warm.
Repeat with remaining beef strips.
Add zucchini to same skillet. Stir-fry for 2 to 3 minutes or until tender-crisp.
Return beef to skillet with tomato halves and dressing. Heat through.
Salt and pepper to taste.
Serve beef mixture over hot pasta.
Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.
Attribution
From the kitchen of Martin James – Copenhagen, Denmark
Confession of the Day
My fiancé has a micropenis
Wow, it’s almost a relief just to write that down. IRL I have not told a single person- not anyone in my family not my bestie. I really have no one to vent to.
Obviously it’s not a deal breaker for me- I want to spend the rest of my life with him. He is an amazing man, treats me so well, highly intelligent. He is tall, very good looking and fit. He is basically the whole package and I’m so proud to be with him.
Now- his dick. He is 3 inches hard and very thin. Basically the size of my thumb. The one area in this world he is insecure about. It was definitely a shock for me at first. We do have sex often. Pretty much every day without fail. He has magical hands & tongue and he is a very enthusiastic lover-making sure I cum every time. He has a tremendous imagination. We do use toys, such as dildos, sleeves and straps ons from time to time. It’s good and all, but it’s just not the same.
Now here is the real get off my chest stuff. He would ask me if I ever miss a bigger dick. I don’t have it in my heart to tell him ABSOLUTELY YES. I was always a very sexual being and I was very orgasmic from PIV. I absolutely miss cumming from PIV. I absolutely crave that full filling that I don’t get now.
I wake up horny and just crave it.
It’s not a deal breaker because of the amazing man he is and my love for him. He is very much the greatest man I have ever met. I would never cheat- I’ve never cheated on anyone and I won’t start now. But I admit, my mind is dirty and can wonder. I would imagine fucking a big dick while I masturbate- and I would cry with guilt after I cum.
I feel so bad that the world is so unfair. I would read on Reddit about men being so sad and insecure over their average cocks. 5-6 inches and your insecure? Like STFU!!! Whoever, I’m part of the problem myself. I was the girl that previously bragged to her girlfriends about how well endowed my ex boyfriend was. It’s funny how the world works.
He was the tallest person I had ever seen, and he saved my brother.
It was the early 80’s, and that meant unsupervised play, staying out until you heard your Mom’s voice, or the street lamps coming on.
Our neighborhood, and everything in it, was our playground.
Including our car.
While I was busy building a ramp for my bike, my brother had climbed into our family car, and was doing his best Knight Rider impression.
That’s when I saw him.
A giant. I was stunned as he bolted through our yard. So stunned that I failed to notice our family car backing quickly out of our driveway, building up speed, and heading straight for our neighbors house.
I watched as The giant stepped in front of the car. It was like seeing Superman in real life.
The momentum of the car was slowed, but it didn’t stop, and he struggled to bring it to a stop.
The car, with my brother inside, was still rolling towards our neighbors house.
Then little by little, inch by inch, he stopped the car.
I watched in stunned silence.
He was our quiet neighbor. A single guy in a family neighborhood that kept to himself. His name was John, he was a giant, and the closest incarnation of Superman I’d ever seen.
Oprah DELETES Accounts, LOCKS Comment Section in Maui Fire BACKLASH
Oprah could’ve given $50 or $100 million and not even felt it…. Or she could’ve had cabins put onto her land, far away from her home and shown true charity towards the residents. Instead she showed her true colours and at the first hint of criticism she threw a tantrum, went on the attack and then stopped people from being able to give feedback.
This little post is going to make me the most hated man on the internet. Or, perhaps not.
Sigh.
But that is not it’s intention. Instead, my intention is to break down what happens when a woman decides to have a relationship outside of her marriage to her husband.
It’s about a woman who decides to cheat on her husband.
…
When a couple falls in love and starts a family, it is like a match being lit. The flame might brighten or dim, but it will still be ignited.
Events will cause the light to fade, or brighten.
But nothing is quite as devastating as an affair.
It will snuff off the light, and render it unable to ever be re-lit.
…
It’s life.
And, Well… Life is what we all experience.
And, that includes the non-physical with the physical.
Sigh.
…
Infidelity.
…
It is something that is going on with one of the MM followers right now.
And, you know, this is my “advice” to that contributor.
…
Life can be very painful, but we have to be very careful on how we deal with these events that we end up enduring. To do it right, it will take time.
I’m not a novice in these matters.
Lordy! It happened to me. Too.
…
Now, truth be told, this is a unique subset of the infidelity sub-culture. I will do one on men cheating on their spouses at a later date. So in all fairness, expect both sides to the same coin.
I have experienced both.
Sigh.
This is not intended as a DIY, “how to” guide, nor is it intended to be salacious. It is intended to break down, in really simple terms, what is going on and how to avoid having one HELL of a train-wreck in the process. Because (ask anyone who has been there) catching a partner cheating is DEVASTATING to everyone.
There’s absolutely no up-side to it.
It’s a toboggan to Hell.
Why and background
There is an MM influencer that is going though this right now.
Words really fail on how to comfort this person. I have no easy answers, but I can relate my own personal experiences, and these were TERRIBLE.
Thus, to prep for this response, I have, of late, been torturing myself listening to you-tube renditions of reddit discussions on infidelity cases. Ugh! Talk about a dark world! Very addictive, but leaves one drained.
Sheech!
Really horrible stuff.
But, you know, as a man who went through of a couple of divorces, I can (unfortunately) relate.
Now some of the videos and readings sound like fiction. Others are probably elaborated truths.
You have to take what you find on the internet with caution.
Nevertheless…
I want to offer something positive to this world. So, thus in this post, I am trying to address the singular issue of a woman who cheats outside her marriage, and what the ramifications are, and what her options actually are.
I will cover the absolute importance in truth in resolving this matter. And how to avoid the great calamity that is looming up ahead of you.
In the future, I will make a post of a man cheating on his wife.
Let’s start with some solid truths.
Some important notes
This is written by a man discussing men’s impressions and attitudes.
The internet is full of twenty-something single women, and 40+ cat ladies who have very different opinions. You can view those if you disagree what is presented here. This is my opinion based on my experiences.
And one more thing, this post is intended to HELP someone. Nothing more.
The best thing you can do is… don’t even think about it.
Truth One
Your infidelity will be found out. It will be uncovered. One way or the other, and once it is uncovered, you can expect from three years of LIVING HELL to as much as twenty years of horror.
Do not be blind to this fact. It might happen in hours, or over decades, but it will eventually be discovered.
I advise anyone who dares contemplate such an action to proceed very, very carefully. Your actions should not be taken lightly. Regardless of your feelings, you are MARRIED, and thus the weight of your actions affects both you and your HUSBAND. As well as any children that you may have.
Truth Two
When you get married, the man gives up part of his life for RESPECT from the wife. And in exchange for that respect, he provides SECURITY and STABILITY to the wife.
RESPECT for SECURITY
That is why a man gets married.
This is an absolute fact. He does marry to have sex, make money, have kids, or anything like that. He marries to have a partner who RESPECTS him.
The partner who truly respects him will get everything he has. In traditional marriages, he gives all; 100% of his salary, all of his earnings, his time, his devotion, and everything else to the wife.
From the wife’s’ point of view, this is SECURITY. A house. A home. A steady and growing lifestyle. Children, and all the good that comes from the family unit.
SIGNS OF LACK OF RESPECT
Saying derogatory comments about the husband.
No or little amount of sex.
No intimacy.
Hurtful comments.
Truth Three
Wife Instituted change.
When there is a loss in RESPECT by the wife, the husband will change.
He will start to get depressed, and sad.
He will start to get angry and short tempered.
He will see as cascading of troubles to his life.
In every case, to some matter of degree, the SECURITY (of the wife) will diminish.
Perhaps he will lose his job. Maybe he will take on addictive behaviors. Maybe get sick and ill. Maybe he will go “nuclear” with a divorce.
SECURITY is intimately tied to a man’s RESPECT.
If respect is reduced, so too will be the security.
In every event, the SECURITY (of the wife) will reduce. In worst case scenarios, it could be a precipitous fall.
Truth Four
If you have it “good”, human nature will assume that it will stay that way.
So many times, a wife is fine and content with her family life. But it is missing something. So she takes and makes efforts to “improve” it. Thinking “what he doesn’t know, won’t hurt him”, and additionally (and most importantly) my lifestyle is immune to change.
People, not just women, are great at making rationalizations.
He’s not as intuitive as myself. He’ll never know.
He would NEVER do this to our kids.
I deserve this, after all <enter excuse here>.
He cannot do anything. I’ve gotten away with it before, so…
A woman who cheats on her husband risks a great deal.
A sub-par life with a weakened spouse.
A divorce.
A very enraged and violent husband, and a life chained to a living Hell.
Torture and death.
All of the above mentioned outcomes are historically accurate. Do not think that anyone is immune.
Truth Five
RESPECT can be quantified.
Here are some elements that men consider to be strongly tied to RESPECT.
Sex on demand.
NEVER saying anything bad about the husband outside the home.
No infidelity.
Husband comes before friends, family, work and all else. Husband is #1.
There is a woke movement that says the opposite of this. Don’t believe it. Most women of the “woke movement” are retiring in single lives with pet animals.
Truth Six
SECURITY can be quantified.
Here are some elements that men consider to be strongly tied to SECURITY.
Shelter; home, house.
Transportation; car.
Food.
Being an active parent.
Shared future.
A man who is Respected will do his best to maintain the highest quality of SECURITY for his family.
Truth Seven
Precautions.
If you do decide to have a relationship out of marriage (even if it is trivial a “one night stand”) the following precautions will help postpone discovery.
No text messaging. Do not even think about it. Often texting is a #1 sure-fire tell-tail that indicates infidelity. ZERO text messaging, and do not think about “work arounds” like getting the message and then deleting it. The Server, often by law, keeps full records of all texts.
Nophone calls. What can be said about texting goes double for all phone and video conferences and calls.
No sex pictures, and videos. Absolutely. No exceptions. Once recorded, and you are told that they will be deleted, or are secure, and all the rest; do not believe them. In a hostile divorce proceeding, nothing goes against you more than the entire judicial chamber watching you take in three husky men plowing into every one of your orifices while you moan in pleasure.
Do not change routine work hours. This is a common gambit. You state that you have to work extra hours, and then use the time for dating and sexual activities. This is often one of the first lies that are uncovered. Do not even think about it.
Pictures. Never, ever, ever stand beside your “boyfriend” (or girlfriend) in group photos, or in any photos. Don’t do it. No excuses.
Home Visits. Nothing enrages a spouse more than to find out that the interloper has invaded their home and defiled it. This is a big no-no. It can mean all the difference from a simple divorce, to a torture session. Do not even dare contemplate it.
Presents. If you feel the need to purchase a present for your “special friend” never hide it in your house. Never use a credit card to purchase. Never use a QR to purchase. Pay in cash. Hide it outside of the home.
Truth Eight
Maintenance
You must (as a woman) perform three times (3x) to your husband for every act of infidelity. It is not one on one. It might seem like a lot. However, you NEED to over compensate to dispel any doubts.
Even if caught, your husband will think that he is too much of a “lover” than any outsider.
So here’s the guidelines…
Fuck a lover = fuck your husband three times the day after.
Oral or anal sex. Do it three times with your husband.
Give a gift to your lover, provide something of value x3 times in value to your husband.
You do not want to get caught. Right?
And if you are caught, at least your husband would be “scratching his head” as to why you would want someone else. As it would not make sense to him. He would think “Shit! We are fucking like animals all week, where in Hell would she ever have time for an outsider?”
Truth Nine
Cautious behavior.
You can never get your aggrieved spouse to see your point of view. But you can perform “damage control” to minimize the impact of the horror that will be unleashed once discovered.
Avoid local and well-used restaurants. If you are out in public with your lover, go to places “off the beaten path”.
Never compare your lover to your spouse. Ever!
Never “confide” your secrets to anyone (outside of your husband).
Be careful about your new lover. If they are getting emotionally involved then a stop-watch is started for the collapse of your life.
Truth Ten
It is a slow descent into Hell.
It is unusual for a husband to discover cheating immediately. It will take time, but he will notice a few things. No matter how smart and careful you are, and how dull and dim-witted he is, he will eventually know.
It’s not an EQ thing, but rather being married, you two are emotionally and spiritually joined. And he will FEEL something different.
Initially, the man is apt to “brush it off” as his imagination.
But all it takes is one tangible minor issue that will trigger the detective in himself.
And the elevator to Hell will begin.
The stages generally are (variations in duration, and investigation, with actions) will vary from person to person.
Feeling off.
Strange changes in life and behavior.
Detective mode.
Discovery with SHOCK!
Planning to resolve, or end the situation.
Implementation.
Truth Eleven
Fighting a man.
To have an extramarital affair out of wedlock with your husband is to violate your marriage, and attack him personally.
Your actions with your lover is a personal violation of your husband. Period.
You are now in a battle with him.
It might not look like it, and it might seem that everything is just fine and stable, but battles and wars are often fought in secret long before the eruption of violence.
The tools of battle available to the man…
Deletion, erasure, and corruption of all SECURITY.
This means that your savings will disappear, any joint accounts will be emptied, your workplace will fire you, and your possessions will disappear. He might alienate your children from you, and will try to erase your friendships and turn your parents and siblings against you.
Violence
Your husband would get very violent against you. And he could really hurt your lover. He could do this himself, or hire goons / friends, or associates to perform the actions.
Abandonment
This is the softest but most infuriating technique. He just disappears. And the wife is left with a mind spinning trying to figure out what is going on. This is an intentional MIND-FUCK. And it will change body chemistry for the worst.
Head Games
The husband would start dating outside the marriage. He would start playing games and doing things that would trigger the detective in every woman to go into over-drive. A woman's mind can be set into a whirling nightmare, and a husband though careful manipulation wan whip that mind-fuck into a hurricane and tornado.
Truth Twelve
Detaching from your lover
The smart wife (or man) would realize that the road that they are on will result in a fiery crash with significant collateral damage. Sooner or later an off-ramp must be put in place, and the illicit romance or series of escapades must end.
There are many ways to do this. But the most important one is to go “cold turkey” and abruptly call it off immediately with ZERO follow up communication.
Depending on where you are in your marriage, it can be timely and productive, or far too late.
NOTE: Your lover will NOT go “quietly into the night”.
Truth Thirteen
Sorting out the truth for full closure
If the husband finds out, and WANTS to resolve this and keep his marriage intact… then the good news is that your affair will be forgiven.
However, invariably, he will ask for the FULL truthful story as to what actually happened.
Human nature, mean and women, will minimize the truth. This is for all kinds of reasons, but the real truth will never be admitted to.
“a single fling while drunk”
When in reality the wife was having monthly swinger sessions with multiple men at group orgies.
“Sex was fine, but he wasn’t as good as you”
When she is caught on tape saying terrible things about her husband and comparing him to her studly lover.
“It was only once”
When the husband knows of multiple occasions though friends, associates and the internet.
No matter how you parse it, the odds are VERY HIGH that the husband knows much more than what he is letting on.
If what you say does not match his proof, he will call you a liar, and your opportunity is shit-canned.
When he asks for the TRUTH, he means a truth that will match and fit with his evidence in hand. And believe me, when he comes to you and offers to forgive in exchange for truth… this is D-Day. You must be completely forthcoming.
Truth Fourteen
Truth is difficult to obtain
It is in our nature to keep things private and secretive. Even if you want to be open and honest, you will invariably avoid saying the raw truth. And this problem, being serious, can absolutely torpedo any resolution to the infidelity issue.
There are techniques that are guaranteed to get the truth.
Sodium pentathol (truth serum)
You can have family doctor administer the serum while a social worker or psychologist asks questions in a relaxed environment.
Hypnosis
A trained hypnotist can ask questions to the person, and invariably in that relaxed state, the person will more likely than not, tell the truth.
Truth Detection Equipment
Truth Detection Equipment often works on changes in amplitude or frequency of voice, electrochemical reactions in the body or the combination of both.
LSD, MDMA
These illegal drugs offer an unconventional means of dealing with the issue. You will need to both take the drugs together, and you both will talk and emote about this issue.
It NEEDS to be said, that unless professional means are obtained to extract the truth, the husband will continue to doubt his wife for the rest of his life.
You cannot fake this.
It has to be solid and tangible; something that the husband will believe.
I recommend a trained hypnotist, or a doctor administered shot.
Refusal to do this WILL result in unintended consequences to the opportunity presented to you at this time.
Truth Fifteen
The crawl back from the edge of the pit is possible.
But, the solutions are Black and White with absolutely no ambiguity.
Non-contested divorce.
Contested divorce.
Full STOP with the infidelity, and zero communication with the lover.
Staged decoupling, husband, lover, or both.
Open marriage.
Start an alternative lifestyle.
You pick one. Both of you agree to it. And you stick to that decision.
Truth Sixteen
Closure and Future
When a wife cheats on her family, a change in the relationship occurs. How the couple works it out is wildly interconnected, but it really just boils down to two solid events.
Closure. The full truth is shared. Guarantees are made to prevent reoccurrence.
Future. What changes will be made in the relationship and the expectations with them.
Final Comments
This post is about a wife cheating on her husband.
I experienced that myself.
We resolved it by the two-choice method. After my wife returned from a weekend in a distant city with her boyfriend, I sat down with her and made the situation very clear.
[1] Say with me, or [2] go with the lover.
Pick one, and we will move on from there.
But having both a lover and a husband can not continue.
Long story short. My wife chose me, and left him.
And he was pissed!
…
I did not ask for details. I already knew enough. And, you know, I really didn’t need a blow-by-blow of events.
She had sex numerous times. Ok. Meh. This is a no-brainer. Of-course.
She spent a lot of time with him, too much.
He was active in trying to peel her away from me. (A big headache!)
He was /is an investment banker. (He had a LOT of money to spend on her.)
I was just then getting back on my feet. (I was just scraping by.)
He was younger, studlier than myself. Alpha male.
His parents already made arrangements for a mansion, cars, and a lavish lifestyle under the observation of his mother once they “got married” after our marriage was annulled.
Sigh. MM life. Not for the feint of heart. Eh?
My concern (my “big deal”) was “shared relationship” and one where large portions of time was not spent with me, instead she was emotionally attached with her lover. Guys. I don’t like sharing emotions. It’s difficult for me.
Us guys are like that.
When your wife spends “too much time” with another guy, we start to get insecure. Whether it is just talking, writing, texting, or sex… it doesn’t matter. We want your undivided attention. Otherwise, we get insecure.
Insecurity is the result of a lack of RESPECT.
So, I had to end it.
And I respect any man or woman that makes the same decision. Including certain MM influencers living in Europe. Don’t you know.
…
The wife initiated this chain of events.
But it is husband’s responsibility to end them. And, you know, so I did.
I did what I preach. The decision on how to proceed must be clear and unambiguous. The choices were clear and stark. Two men. One a husband, the other a lover. The wife had to choose, and the loser could NEVER, ever communicate with the wife ever again.
Once presented, it was up to the wife to make the decision.
And my wife chose me.
Most wife’s will not want to throw away the relationship that they have with their spouse, but the guardrails and rules must be firm and adhered to. Or else it is just a continuation of torture.
…
In the future, I will make another post about men cheating on their wives. I also have experience in this. And it’s called life experience. Ugh!
Please don’t judge.
It is natural to do so, but we all experience the highs and lows of life, and some are not pretty to look at. And, as I have repeatedly said, I am not an angel. Just a man, full of mistakes and faults.
Relationships change. People change. Life changes us.
No one is an angel. Accept that fact, and be understanding to your spouse who has made mistakes. It’s not a forgiveness; it is rather an acceptance.
Men. Do not be an absolutist.
Be understanding, show kindness and compassion. Most especially to your wife. Everyone deserves to have one major fuck-up. Let her absolve her sins, and move on forward.
Be like water. Adapt to the changes.
…
It is common to be devastated and turn into a solid cube of ice. Fight that force.
Offer the wife a choice, and a firm and clear option with “guardrails”. Allow her a “face saving” out, and a chance to repair the marriage, and then build something new and better from the ruins.
Some good Videos
The following videos will help explain what is discussed herein. They were difficult for me to watch. If you want to watch just a few videos, then just watch the first three.
VIDEO #1
Husband Finds Spicy Video Of Wife With Coworker, Sends It To Her ENTIRE Family And Then Leaves Town!
This video illustrates well what is at stake.
VIDEO #2
Husband Took My Dad’s Business & Left Me W/ No Inheritance Cuz Of My Small Misstep.
This is a pretty good story. Probably the best on the Internet. And well illustrates all the points made up and above.
VIDEO #3
She participated in group sex for years!
This is also a pretty good video.
VIDEO #4
My Cheating Wife Is Going To Be Homeless Because Of A Prenuptial Agreement
When I lived in Indiana USA, we (my wife and I) took a welding class for fun and enjoyment. This was a college course out of the local college, and we attended classes on Saturday morning. We really enjoyed the class, aside from learning how to weld.
I had a blast, and my wife really thought it was fun.
2023 09 28 10 29
Anyways, we were in a class of around 30 students, and we were the oldest students. The rest were kids in their 20’s. Maybe one or two almost our age.
But there was one kid, a teenager, who came every Saturday, signed his name and left.
In and then two minutes later… gone.
He never stuck around.
Never learned anything.
Didn’t chat or talk with any of us and never even attempted to learn.
He never actually learned anything. He didn’t get to enjoy any fun, and he certainly didn’t get anything out of it. I couldn’t figure out why he came, signed in and left.
So I asked the instructor.
He was arrested on possession and sales of illegal drugs. He was 18 years old. The judge cut him a deal instead of sending him off to prison for a few years. He would be free and not go to jail or prison, as long as he attended the welding class to learn a skill. If he did that, his record would be purged, and he would be a better person with a skill to rely upon.
I think that the judge made the right decision, but failed to police the actions of the young kid. Now, that kid will “on paper” appear to have a skill, but in truth all that happened is that he is going to keep on doing what he has been doing, no hope off the treadmill, and he has no idea that he is on one to begin with.
Next problem will be far worse, and then the recovery will be equally worse.
Dumb smuck.
…
Take advantage of every opportunity, never think that you are getting more for less by cutting corners. Life does not work that way.
Today…
RUSSIA LAUNCHES 50 MISSILES INTO UKRAINE; 48 HIT ***NATO*** INFRA-STRUCTURE AND AMMO DUMPS!
Breaking: Russia has bombed NATO Infrastructure across Ukraine as an apparent message is sent . . . loud and clear.
Logistics Hubs, “Mercenary” (NATO, UK, and USA) barracks, quarters and Bases, Weapons and Depleted Uranium Ammunition Depots have all been set ablaze in a gigantic strike with more than 50 missiles.
The __only__ purely Ukraine target was the Rivne thermal power station . . . which was was completely destroyed.
Carpetbagger Steak
800full carpetbag steak
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
1 cup fresh oysters, drained and chopped
1/2 cup chopped fresh mushrooms
2 teaspoons chopped fresh parsley
3 tablespoons melted butter
4 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
1 ounce crumbled bleu cheese
1/4 cup sauterne or other dry white wine
4 thick-sliced rib eye or filet steaks
Instructions
Sauté oysters, mushrooms and parsley in butter until mushrooms are tender; drain.
Stir in bacon, cheese and sauterne; set aside.
Make pocket in side of steak. Stuff pocket with oyster mixture; secure with wooden picks.
Broil steaks about 6 inches from heat for 8 to 10 minutes on each side or until desired degree of doneness.
Give a kid dinner, and he eats for a day. Teach a kid to make dinner, and THE PARENTS EAT UNTIL HE MOVES OUT.
Before our 11-year old had even finished expressing his interest in cooking, we were handing him whisks and salted butter. Get started, kid!
Kids curing their boredom by cooking? That is SO much better than building model rockets. Can you eat a model rocket? You cannot. And, half the time they wind up stuck in trees.
But can I eat this pasta sauce that he made? Yes. Yes, I can.
image 95
Wait, he wants to start a restaurant in the kitchen, so that mom & dad can sit at the table on a Sunday morning and be waited on? SOLD.
image 96
Sure, he forgot to put coffee on the menu, but the waiter was accommodating when we asked for it.
Mom opted for the egg sandwich:
image 97
I went for the BLT because… bacon:
image 98
I’d give him 5-stars on Yelp, if he were on Yelp.
After he suggested he wanted to try his hand at baking, I was immediately racing to the store to get him a 9″ springform pan. I had no idea what that even was until he mentioned it. It helps him make things like this:
image 99
I’m all for it.
After school yesterday, he decided he wanted to make a dessert. I told him to pick out a recipe. I had to make a special trip that evening to buy almond flour, but the payoff was I got to have his Olive Oil Cake:
image 100
Will he stick with it? We’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, while there are plenty of things for an 11-year old to do when bored, this is one of my favorites.
No. The US has had four years of trying to kill Huawei and it is not working.
While Huawei has dropped to #6 position in global smartphone sales. It has created its own Operating System thereby avoiding android. Their OS is available for other phone manufacturers to use. The company has also designed its own chipset. Production of their own 14nm and 7nm 5G chips is said to begin this year.
Meanwhile Huawei has been working on 6G which expectations for 2030.
Huawei Q2 2023 revenue was up 4.8% y/o/y to $25 billion USD.
I was looking for old mystery novels—the kind of 1950’s cheap pulp crap that never even hits a second printing. I didn’t find any, but I did find a couple of Agatha Christies, so I went to check out.
The shop owner was unpacking a new box from somebody who’d gone “you can have the whole thing for five bucks, I just want it gone.” She’d set aside one book about the same size as an adult woman’s hand, a nasty little grubby thing that looked like it might have a bad case of mold. I was curious, so I asked about it.
Her reply: “I don’t think I even have a place for it on the shelf. It’s going to sit forever.”
I bought it for 50 cents and took it home.
There was no title page, and neither my mom nor I recognized the work in it, so my mom—now also curious—bought a baby toothbrush and spent a lot of hours teasing the dirt off the cover with the barest amounts of water and a lot of paper towels. Just one word for a title: “Essays.” But now we knew what the cover looked like—not grunge black, but a pretty tan and green—so she started doing research.
First edition of Emerson’s Essays, as confirmed by the cloth color on the cover and the lack of a title page.
BUT WAIT.
You think that’s the find of a lifetime. And for someone else in another bookshop, it is.
But here’s the thing. There were TWO first editions of Emerson’s Essays. A binding error led to the release of a few hundred copies with about 20 pages missing, and a couple of others upside-down. These error copies were quickly destroyed, barring those that had already been purchased, and the current going price for such a copy was several hundred dollars, possibly as much as a thousand—as opposed to the $50 or so garnered for a “first” (corrected) edition.
My mom and I read this on an appraiser’s website and stared at each other, barely daring to breathe. I asked if she’d looked. She said no. “You bought it, you look.”
I picked it up and flipped to the page numbers indicated. Missing—but that wasn’t good enough. Pages can be removed. I had to confirm the other error, too.
I flipped the pages—so, so carefully. I was shaking. I looked.
I gasped so loudly you could have heard me three counties over, dropped the book, caught it, and set it down like it was made out of glass.
And that’s the story of how I paid our mortgage AND electricity for a month for just fifty cents.
VIKING tells the COLDEST truth about the female nature
“At 55 years old. I live on my own now for 6 years. Never will I allow myself to be treated poorly again. I relate to this man.”
At every level, America is ready to explode.
He is speaking TRUTH. It stings. And it is real. Agony.
My ex gf had a son around 10 years old at the time who is on the Autism spectrum. He was the sweetest, smartest little boy just didn’t have the best socializing skills. One day I stopped by their home to pick up my watch that I left there that morning. Me stopping by wasn’t part of the daily routine or planned ahead of time, and he was surprised when I got there. Every time I’d get to their house and he was home I would always talk to him first before even giving my gf a hug. So after saying hello and telling him why I was there I sat on the couch with him to chat while he was playing with play doh. While we were talking he was writing something in a flat piece of play doh. Then he handed it to me. It said “why don’t you leave?” I read and it thought I’d mess with him a little. I said out loud, “don’t leave!” I said ok, bud! I’ll stay all day!” He yells “No! It says why don’t you leave!?!” “oh ok, I said I didn’t see that part. Ok, I’ll leave I didn’t mean to bother you.” Mom jumps in while hearing this and tells him that was very rude and blah blah blah. I interrupted her and told him it’s all good!!! I always want you to tell me the truth about how you feel. You never have to hide your feelings because of me. So if you don’t want company when I’m here you just have to say so. You can always talk to me. I asked him if I could give him a hug before I left and he said yes. I gave him a hug and gf walked me out. She apologized over and over. It was all good. I know he has a hard time socializing so I wasn’t too upset.
It all began when the US started playing dirty and Trump sanctioned Huawei
Other players in China began to start stockpiling Chips and placed large orders with TSMC
So TSMC sales boomed but in reality all that was happening was the mainland was buying more and more chips to stockpile
Every smartphone maker feared a similar ban from the demented United States
Today China has between 140% -170% of the 7 nm Chips it needs
Global Demand has weakened which means these Chips can last until 2025 November
Until then TSMC won’t get any more orders from China or will get minimal orders
Who else buys 7 nm Chips?
So TSMC will see a fall in sales for the next few quarters
Meanwhile if the Chinese in these two years cost effectively crack the 7/5 DUV Stacking Chip process of Huawei and make the imported equivalent of 18 Billion ICs a year, then it’s likely Chinas TSMC imports will fall by as much as 70% from 2026 onwards
So obviously they have slashed 40% of their orders from 40 to 24 EUV Lithography Machines
No need for Xi Xinping to say it, the world already know it and the world except for some dozen or so cronies and slave nation do not like it and the world will slowly but surely, step by step dismantle this so called International Rules Based Order.
To the world every nation or group of nations cannot have a right to fxxk up any nation using arbitrary sanctions. And the world have acted. The unfair and unjust U.S. and European actions on Russia in war blamed on Russia although fully goaded and provoked by the U.S. and UK. Is the straw that break the camel’s back.
International norm must be truly international not set by some white Caucasian Anglo nations. Especially when a nation like the U.S. and UK failed every test on a truly international norm. Plundering, looting, stealing, bombings, war mongering, unilateral sanctions, regime change, orchestrating coups, demonstrations, revolutions are not international norm. They are bullying, mafia behaviour. Coercion by force.
The world has moved on from this western bullying.
On June 17, 2022, the FDA authorized emergency use of the mRNA Covid vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech to include use in children down to 6 months of age. Turns out, it KILLED a lot of them.
Just over a year later, the report – which was quietly released by CDC and subsequently suppressed by the mainstream media – revealed that nearly half a million children and young adults have now died since the injections were approved for use on most children.
Over 118,000 of those deaths are suspected to be DIRECTLY linked to the Covid vaccines’ side effects.
Despite the staggering death toll revealed in the report, it has been met with deafening silence from the mainstream media.
The latest data from the CDC has just been published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OEC).
The OEC is an intergovernmental organization with 38 member countries and it hosts a wealth of data on excess deaths, including data from the CDC that isn’t easily available to the American people.
The thing about nm claims is that they turn out to be marketing.
So you have to go with the economics of semiconductors. The first company that invests in top of the line semiconductors has to spend a ton of money on research and development that go nowhere. For example, there are two ways you can produce 7nm, one that works and one that doesn’t. Intel put all their money on a process that just doesn’t work, whereas TSMC put billions of dollars in two different processes, once of which worked, which means that you spent billions on a dead end.
Because the leading companies have to recover the costs of dead ends, they will sell the best chips at a huge premium. Once you’ve figured out how to produce the chips the cost of the chip is low and you are just recovering R&D costs.
This is why China can produce mature chips super chip. Once you know that you can produce chip X using process Y, then you just do it. It turns out that this is really symbotic because it means that Taiwan and South Korea can focus on R&D and then Mainland China focuses on mature chips. The thing about this is that most of the advanced chips end up in Mainland China where you have Santa’s elves put these together into consumer goods.
The thing about Biden’s semiconductor policy is that there seems to be absolutely no strategic thinking behind them, and a lot of this has to do with US politics in which different groups want different things. The basic problem is that you have people that want to “starve”China from semiconductors, whereas most of the people that actually understand how semiconductors work haven’t bought in on decoupling.
My personal opinion is that US policy will end up screwing over Taiwan, and by 2028 this is going to be so obvious that you will have a blue wave in 2028.
Did you feel the earth move?
On April 19, 2010, a Muslim cleric in Iran blamed earthquakes on women who dressed – immodestly.
Jen McCreight was a student at Purdue University when she heard this. She didn’t like the idea of natural disasters being blamed on sinful women so decided to do something about it. She wrote a blog post entitled: “In the name of science, I offer my boobs”.
I was playing Galaga in the basement of the Student Union building at CUNY Queens College about 35 years ago. There was this gorgeous, Asian, punk girl who I was somewhat acquainted with who sat opposite me. We played for about 15 minutes and I said, “crap. I’m all out of quarters”.
She said, “What do you want to do now?”
I said, “Take you up to the roof and bang the hell out of you.”
I had no idea how this just came out. I wasn’t thinking at all. I had removed the filter between my brain and mouth and it just happened.
The discoveries will help shorten mining time by about 70 percent, reduce the impurity content by 70 percent and increases the recovery rate of rare earths by about 30 percent.
The findings were made by He Hongping’s team from the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. They presented the research results at a scientific evaluation meeting in Meizhou City, South China’s Guangdong Province.
This new mining technology is mainly applied to the mining of weathered crust rare earth ores, a characteristic resource in China. It aims to solve the problems of present in-situ leaching technology in ecology, resource efficiency, and to promote efficient and green utilization of rare earth resources in China.
Professor He’s team creatively developed a new way of using electric currents to extract rare earth elements (REEs), compared to traditional methods which uses ammonium chloride as leaching agents to extract REEs. The new technology is more environmental friendly as it avoids soil contamination caused by leaching agents, which responded to Chinese government’s demand for environmental protection and green and efficient mining.
With a 5,000-ton earth-moving scale demonstration area, professor He’s team was able to test his findings on soil and achieved design outcomes on the ground. This key technology and its results have helped He’s team publish 11 high-level papers in journals such as Nature Sustainability, and to obtain 7 patents for inventions. Citing a report from Nature Sustainability, Anouk Borst, a geologist at KU Leuven called the strategy “A game changer, providing that it is feasible on a large scale.”
Through years of efforts, China has formed a complete industrial chain around REEs. In 2022, China accounted for 63 percent of the world’s rare-earth mining, 85 percent of rare-earth processing, and 92 percent of rare-earth magnet production, according to Politico.
The new rare-earth extraction technology could increase China’s advantage in rare-earth sectors by making the extraction process greener and more efficient. The strategy could help China keep its leading position in the global rare-earth industrial chain.
If You Think The Last Few Years Were Difficult…
Mark Twain once said that “If voting made a difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.”
“This sense of unease. People of upset. There is a sense of anger and frustration.”
China’s total national debt to GDP is high, pushing 300%. Government wants to control it. It sees this as a serious impediment to sustainable growth. This is a critical part of the structural change in the country. Another critical part of the structural change is to drive consumer expenditure, such as to improve consumer confidence, such as through better access to healthcare, personal insurances, and pension and retirement plans. These structural changes underway have slowed growth, which could persist in the next 2–3 years.
Overwhelmingly, the debt is owed by corporates, as part of business finance, and by local authorities, in pursuit of their development plan. The debt owed by the central government is very small, at 21% of GDP. The overwhelming amount of the debts are domestic debts in RMB. RMB is issued by PBOC, the legal tender in China. China has very little foreign debts. Its net international financial position is in surplus. Indeed, the single most important factor for the slow take-off to internationalize the RMB is that it has low international liquidity, due to China’s persistent current account surplus.
China has no problem to borrow more money. (1) Central government has low debt at only 21% of GDP, (2) the overwhelming debts are owed by corporates and local authorities in RMB, (3) PBOC has full control over the RMB, and (4) China’s net international financial position is in surplus. Quite the opposite. China does not want the debt to rise in the country. The most visible of this is the 3 red lines regulations on the real estate sector.
US government debt at about $33 trillion is pushing 130% of GDP (compared with 21% for China). It rose dramatically from $31.4 trillion when debt ceiling was raised in June, to $33 trillion at end-August. About 30% of US TBs are held by foreigners, the 3 largest are Japan, China, and UK. China has reduced its holdings from the high of over $1.1 trillion to less than $850 billion.
US government is in chronic deficit, running at an annual rate of over $1 trillion, and rising. US government debt will rise in consonant. Rising issue of TBs will require an elevated interest rates regime to attract investors, which increasingly will be domestic investors as foreigners could shy away. Elevated interest rates have driven the government’s interest bill towards $1 trillion, growing faster and exceeding the defense budget.
Rising US government borrowings and elevated interest rates could distort the financial markets. One consequence of the Fed’s interest hikes has been the loss of the market value of TBs. It has stressed the banking system, including the collapse of a few regional banks. Bloomberg estimated that as of May, the banking system was sitting on unrealized losses of $1.84 trillion on their holdings of TBs. The regional banks are the most stressed. They are the main lenders to commercial real estates. An estimate by Newmark Group, a brokerage, has it that $1.2 trillion of such debts are potentially troubled when refinancing is due, the combination of lower quantum from falling property prices and lower leverage, as well as, higher interest rates. Many property owners have defaulted and let the lenders take the properties rather than to put up more money.
You are right that borrowing more money in the US may become more difficult.
China Laughs at American Sanctions
It seems that when the United States can’t compete fairly they revert to underhanded tactics. They can’t handle a peer competitor and that is exactly what China has become.
The Chinese automotive manufacturing is the largest in the world as is most sections of manufacturing. China built their own space station and now 7nm Semiconductors built by SMIC. Huawei although sanctioned has come up with an amazing cell phone Mate 60 Pro that the Americans say can’t be possible.
It seems sanctions no longer work against Chinese growing economy and the United States is getting nervous.
Taiwan is in China. The island of Taiwan is surrounded by Chinese warships and the American, Japanese and Australian fleets are unable to approach Taiwan.
Biden did not tell the US citizens that he wanted to invade China, only “to defend Taiwan”.
So, I ask, how does the US plan on doing that? with some sort of video game competition?
I mean, in order to “defend Taiwan”, you have to have military troops pertorming military actions, aka combat inside of China – And that’s because Taiwan is in China.
So currently America has soldiers in Taiwan, which is either illegal, or at the very least gray area because that’s part of China. And the government of China doesn’t approve of that and hasn’t allowed it. So that’s the current status.
If US start performing miltary action, that’s an effort to militarily conquer at least China or push them back inside of China.
That‘s called an invasion.
Sorry, everybody, if you don’t agree with this definition, but that’s what it is.
The 1.4 billion Chinese people have told the small hooligans led by the United States countless times that the Taiwan question is the bottom line of the Chinese people, and foreign forces are not allowed to get their hands on it.
China can use all its forces to resist the invasion, and after this naval battle all the warships of China, the United States, Japan and Australia will be destroyed.
Do you think that after the end of the naval war, it will stop here? No, it has not come to a stop yet.
At the same time, China will fight back against its territory. Although all of China’s warships were sunk in the war with the United States, Japan and Australia, let us not forget that China has the largest number of civilian ships in the world, and Chinese soldiers will be present in those countries.
No matter what era we are in, apart from the indiscriminate bombing in the early stage of the war, the later stage of the war will be a ground war.
Does Australia have 50,000 soldiers combined? China can send 500,000 troops to Australia and take it over.
Japan: China does not need to send troops to occupy, dropping a few atomic bombs would be enough. The four Japanese islands are so resource-poor that even if China occupied them, they would be a liability and would be better off being completely destroyed.As for the US, China wouldn’t send troops to occupy it either, but a huge army landing on US soil would be enough to make the US pay. China’s huge population could provide a steady stream of soldiers. You have to be prepared for America to become a battlefield.
The United States is keen on Preemptive war. However, China has always adheres to the principles of defense, self-defense and post-strike response, and adopts active defense. It keeps to the stance that “we will not attack unless we are attacked, but we will surely counterattack if attacked”.
“post-strike response“,”we will surely counterattack if attacked” →→→ We have already told you what we will do!
Don’t think that if China is bullied, it will swallow its anger and not take revenge. There are limits to tolerance. Modern China is no longer the China a hundred years ago.
This is like a group of American hooligans always bullying a high-achieving Chinese student at school. Chinese students usually don’t give a damn about the provocations of American hooligans, but once they can’t stand it anymore and decide to fight back, the American hooligans will have to start paying a high price for their previous stupid provocations.
This question has been asked for years, if not decades.
The key problem is that, as a westerner, you have no idea how fast China has been developed.
In the place where you live, things around you don’t change much even after one or two decades. The layout of streets, the buildings, even the stores don’t change much.
They also don’t know the size and population of China. They just assume that China is more or less the same as where they live, maybe slightly bigger.
Above link is about a man called Kevin and his family.
He went to China from Belgium when he was 6 with his parents, to one of the poorest province, Guizhou, and lived there for 20 years. In this video, he talked about things when they went back to Belgium.
He described the scene when he was chatting with his relatives about China. His relatives in Belgium thought that when Kevin said they need to go to another city to take a plane, they assume it is like 50 kilo or something, but the reality is 300KM. People in Belgium cannot imagine a country which is about the same size as Europe.
Then they mentioned certain people think China is all city, and others think China is all village and nature.
Then the camera guy asked them a question: “Don’t they go online?”, and this is how they react:
2023 09 27 14 49
“Yeah… but what could we do?”
While the west enjoying their nice infrastructure, meanwhile in China:
image 94
The country was developed in a speed which the world had never seen.
image 93
Same thing happned in Shenzhen too.
The urbanization ratio was very low in China, and began to grow up rapidly.
In 1978, China had 17.92% urban resident, in 2022 it was 65.2%.
In comparison: The US in 80%, Germany is 77.65%, the UK is 84.4%.
If we set China’s standard with the lowest of the 3, Germany, then there is still 77.65–62.2=12.42% of Chinese people waiting to move into urban areas.
That is 1400×12.42%=173.88 million people.
image 28
This is a Japanese news in 2017 reporting about a subway station called Cao Jia Wan in Chongqing.
I don’t fully understand the title, but I can read the Kanjis. It says somthing about looking like a ruin or military base.
image 27
In 2020, a Japanese posting on Twitter about Cao Jia Wan station. It looked very differently already.
It was not very crowed, because of the pandemic.
image 26
In 2022, it looks like this.
China doesn’t count on the invisible hand,
image 92
not entirely at least.
The government plans ahead, then lay down the infrastucture for people to move in.
The actual move happens after most of the plan is finished: shopping, transportation, education, medical care, etc.
It’s rarely that a western media could do a follow up about the “ghost town” they reported. Because in several years, there will be crowded.
They will just make more ghost town news to make their audiences thinking that China is full of ghost town.
Just think about this: If China’s GDP and other aspects are indeed faked as the western media say, then how come that white house considers China as its top rival?
The US national debt reached $33 trillion for the first time
The fiscal milestone comes as Congress is facing a new spending fight with a government shutdown looming – NYT.
Since the “debt ceiling crisis”, the US has been adding $1 trillion to its debt every month. Over the past 5 years, the US debt has increased by a total of $11.5 trillion.
This should be the real ‘war’ Americans should be fighting against. The ‘war’ of relentless money printing but not seeing any significant upgrades to Americans’ standard of living, where did the money go? why no accountability from the leaders who were elected into the office?
Why I’m Raising My Children in CHINA – NOT the UK or US!
What was the stupidest thing someone has called the police on you for?
I lived in a large apartment building, with lots of nosy neighbors.
I was going to a work conference for a long weekend. My kids were teenagers, but I didn’t want to leave them alone. My (very able) mother was available, so I asked her to stay with them while I was gone. No big deal. (They watched out for her more than she did for them.)
The very first night I was gone, the police showed up at my door. My daughter, (all six-foot-two of her) answered the door. The police were a little flummoxed (and shorter). They said they had a report that I had abandoned my kids. (Apparently, they were expecting little children.) My mother, who was very able-bodied, confronted the police. Let’s just say that my mother could teach a sailor how to curse, and she knew a version of the riot act that was applicable. The police didn’t come back.
But the nosy neighbors certainly got an earful regarding their ill behavior. So did the manager of the apartment complex as there was a “police report” on me. He wrote a threatening letter to me. I filed a counter-complaint about harassment, and I wasn’t having it. Again, the riot act was applied.
Children’s Protective Services were also called. And again, we had to have the confrontation. All of this drama because I was doing my job. My mistake was that I was seen carrying my suitcase to my car.
I’ll never understand why some people are happily destructive requiring an overkill of drama, even if it’s not their own.
Online Safety Bill becomes law – internet freedom destroyed
I was 22 and had sudden, sharp pain low in my groin. It was so bad I couldn’t stand up straight and could barely walk. I made an emergency appointment with my OB/GYN. After a very brief and cursory exam he told me it was a “swollen ovary” and it would go away in TWO OR THREE MONTHS.
I went home and told my then-husband what the doctor said. He insisted I get a second opinion. I made many calls. Most doctors didn’t “do” second opinions. I finally got one nurse who (in a bored voice) asked “What are your symptoms?” I explained and she said she’d talk to the doctor and call me back. This was at 11 am one workday. She called back and said he’d see me at 1. I went to his office straight from lunch.
That doctor did an exam then turned to the nurse and said, “She’s the one.” I asked what he meant. He said that 1 in 1000 women claiming they had an emergency actually did, and I was that one. Then he asked, “What did you have for lunch?” I responded (a burger) and he frowned, then said, “You need surgery.” I tried to tell him I needed to go back to the office and close out some projects first. He said, “Oh, you’re not leaving here.”
They put me in a wheelchair and rolled me 200 feet across the parking lot to the hospital. I was given time to make 2 phone calls — one to my husband (I had to leave a message with the office admin — this is long before the days of cell phones) and one to my parents (since I couldn’t reach my husband).
Later, in the recovery room Dr. Horowitz explained. I had an ovarian torsion on my right side. That happens when an ovaries (and in my case also the fallopian tube) bent and twisted around the tissue they’re connected to. The torsion happened because there was a grapefruit-sized tumor on that ovary. It was benign, thankfully, but he said it was so close to bursting (and probably killing me) that he didn’t dare let me go home.
My husband returned to the first doctor’s office and read him the riot act for “almost killing my wife”.
Chicken Fried Steak
The Best Chicken Fried Steak scaled 1
Yield: 6 to 8 servings; 2 cups Cream Gravy
Ingredients
1 (2 1/2 to 3 pound) round steak
1 (5 ounce) can evaporated milk
2 tablespoons green Tabasco sauce
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups all-purpose flour, divided
2 teaspoons paprika
3/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon each salt and cracked pepper
Vegetable oil
Instructions
Trim steak and pound, if needed, to 1/2 inch thick; cut into 6 to 8 pieces.
Combine milk, Tabasco sauce and salt in a bowl.
Measure 1 cup of flour into a bowl.
Combine remaining flour, paprika, garlic powder, salt and pepper in another bowl. Dip steak into flour, into milk mixture, and then into seasoned flour. Set aside until all meat is coated.
Heat 1 or 2 inches of oil in a heavy fry pan. Fry meat until both sides are golden brown, about 2 minutes per side.
Drain on paper towels. Serve with cream gravy, mashed potatoes and biscuits.
Cream Gravy: Pour off all but 6 tablespoons of fat from fry pan; add 6 tablespoons flour into pan (use any leftover seasoned flour) and blend well. Gradually stir in 2 1/2 cups of milk. Cook and stir over medium heat until thickened.
Hi, Krennick . Thanks for your very interesting question!
In China, we only have 56 official ethnic groups. I’m sure this pales in comparison to the number of ethnic groups in Western countries, but it is what it is, and your question appears to be asking for a number, so ask and ye shall receive, bruv!
Yes, 56.
There you go! Sorted! Done and dusted!
I don’t have time to post pictures of all 56 ethnic groups, so instead, I’ll just post the traditional wedding attire of a few of those 56 ethnic groups.
Because who doesn’t like looking at pretty wedding dresses, amirite? 😀
So, without further ado, here we go!
The traditional wedding attire for Han, Miao, Mongolian, and Hui:
image 101
The traditional wedding attire for Zhuang, Qiang, Manchu, and Tibetan:
image 103
The traditional wedding attire for Yi and Bai:
image 102
There you go! 10 out of the 56 should do for now, aye.
As always, I’m happy to help with your questions, Krennick ! I hope this has helped sate your curiosity!
The Rock ANGRILY Oprah Winfrey True Role In Maui Wildfire
In early August 2023, a series of devastating wildfires broke out in Hawaii, primarily on the island of Maui. These wind-driven wildfires led to extensive evacuations and widespread destruction, particularly in the town of Lahaina, Hawaii. As a result of these fires, at least 115 people lost their lives, and over 1,000 others were reported missing.
https://youtu.be/TMqRQNsGrSk
A preacher
A preacher was making his rounds to his parishioners on a bicycle when he came upon little Johnny trying to sell a lawn mower. “How much do you want for the mower?” asked the preacher.
“I just want enough money to go out and buy me a bicycle,” said little Johnny.
After a moment of consideration, the preacher asked, “Will you take my bike in trade for it?”
Little Johnny said, “Mister, you’ve got yourself a deal.”
The preacher took the mower and tried to start it. He pulled and pulled on the rope until he was dripping with sweat but the mower refuses to start.
The preacher called little Johnny over and said, “I can’t get this mower to start.”
Little Johnny said, “That’s because you have to cuss at it to get it started.”
The preacher said, “I’m a man of the church and I can’t cuss. It’s been so long since I’ve been saved that I don’t even remember how to cuss.”
Little Johnny looked at him happily and said, “Just keep pulling on that rope. It’ll come back to ya.”
China’s cancellation of UK’s $240bn nuclear power plant order shocks Europe US!
In this video, host Steffan explores China’s recent withdrawal from a £24 billion nuclear project in the UK. Nuclear technology’s global evolution and its applications in various sectors are discussed, highlighting China’s leadership in nuclear technology. The video delves into the reasons behind China’s withdrawal, touching on carbon neutrality goals, coal combustion phase-out, and the UK’s role in the project.
https://youtu.be/g0Z2lSJmHjI
Confession of the Day
My husband(31M) has never gone beyond a kiss to me (28F) in the 4 years we’ve been married.
My husband was my best friend: knew each other in 2014, and I wanted him to stay with me (he’s from England) with the hope everything would turn into more.
First year of marriage, he had severe back problems and I understood.
Second year was COVID and I understood then.
Third year, we bought our house and I told him I wasn’t happy. He was overtly affectionate for a couple weeks and went back to the same routine.
Now I’m coming up on 4 years and he went through my messages last Monday with some friends and came across me venting to a guy friend I had been semi-flirtatious with about our marriage and how I felt ugly and unloved.
Now he tells me it’s because when he was 15/16 and was an apprentice, an older man took him out back and did things, which is why he has intimacy issues. Which, I completely understand how that is traumatic, as I was sexually assaulted when I was a young teen.
But the past 4 years I’ve felt inadequate while catering to his life. Paying for green card paperwork, driving him everywhere as he has no license (he works nights, I wake up at 5:40am every morning tuesday thru saturday to pick him up), making his doctor appointments for him, handling all the loans and bills, and all big decisions that really should be joint decisions. All while feeling unloved and ugly.
On Saturday he tried to initiate sex with me while drunk and it made me so mad and upset. That the only way he could fuck me is if he was intoxicated. And now I feel I am so mentally and emotionally clocked out that unless he pulls a miracle change, that I will leave him by the end of the year.
I don’t know what to do going forward but I’m just so sad because he was my best friend and if it weren’t for this issue, I think we’d be fine. But I’m not equipped to be anyone’s therapist, and this was definitely something I should have been told, as he has kept hanging the possibility of children over my head, knowing I desperately want them.
Before anyone says anything: I have initiated every single aspect of our relationship. I wanted him to do this one thing and made it clear to him. Never has he said anything. I’m just. Ugh.
Saudi Arabia Rejects US Demand, Send $70 Billion in Project Orders To China
My husband and I have raised 4 kids to adults. When our youngest was an infant, we found out she had brain cancer. Talk about a stressful time for our family! My MIL was and is very close to us geographically, as well as one I consider a friend and ally. With 3 kids in school and a seriously ill baby, we leaned on her for emotional support and she was there! We tried to go on snowmobile trips with our kids, her and extended family. (The oncologists gave us suggestions on how and when we could safely take our youngest with us — we followed his advice and still maintained her drug regimen protocols.)
One member who accompanied us all was one of my SILs. She didn’t have any kids at that time and was impatient to get on the trails the first morning. I got my three older kids ready and equipped with extra hats, gloves, snacks, drinks, helmets and snowsuits as well as any other cold-weather gear they would need. Next was my baby. Cleaning her Hickman Catheter (her drugs and all blood draws were done through it), making sure she had the blankets, toys, vanilla PediaSure (the ONLY thing she could hold down and that was the only flavor she would drink), making sure I had her anti-nausea and anti-seizure medications, as well as diapers and extra clothing she might need in case of accidents or nausea. Most of this was packed the night before, but I am in the habit of double checking (I HAVE forgotten her meds before).
My SIL complained about my incompetence as a mother to our MIL. Our MIL looked her in the eye and asked her if she had ever had to mobilize an army of sleepy young children before dawn and take care of the needs of a baby with cancer that was well enough to go on this trip? My SIL said “NO!” Our MIL then said, “I have experience with 6 sleepy kids. All of them were healthy. It is not easy in the best of circumstances. I think she is doing an excellent job.” When our MIL finished what she was doing, she went and helped me. I am blessed to have her in my life!
When my husband met my family for the first time we were all so nervous.
As you may know, he’s American. Meaning he’s pretty clueless about some of our traditions and concepts.
As he and my father were discussing important matters and the tension rising in the air… he did something he shouldn’t have…:-
He crossed his legs, putting his calf on his knee!
My inner self was going “no no no Mike please put that leg down!!!”
My parents’ eyes went to the his feet. I could already see what they are going to say later.
Anyhow, after we went home. My mother said “He really lacks respect. He talks aggressively and did you see how he put his leg up so rudely?!”
I was like “ugh I saw that coming”.
I had to take them a step back and tell them that he’s not an Arab and he doesn’t know that this is rude in our culture. They didn’t seem convinced.
So yeah, if you’re in a serious setting with an Egyptian, don’t ever let the sole of your shoes/ feet be seen. Especially if it’s in front of someone older than you.
Feet here symbolize humiliation.
So for example some people here would view a woman rubbing her husband’s feet as a humiliating act.
And a man giving his wife a foot rub is so rare and if it’s done then it’s in private.
That’s why until this day I feel very guilty if I’m getting feet pedicures at salons. Similarly, if I’m sitting at home, spreading my legs on the couch, my father would yell at me to move my feet because they are facing him.
My mother was astonished to know that my husband gives me foot rubs, and prayed for god to always make him so good and humble haha !
The US commerce minister’s confession that the US does not know how, when, or the scale of Huawei Mate 60 series production could be seen as evidence that the Huawei Mate series are the world’s most advanced, most secure, and only spy-proof smartphones in the world. However, it is important to note that there is no definitive proof that this is the case.
Huawei has been under intense US scrutiny for several years now, and the US has repeatedly accused Huawei of being a security risk. The US has also imposed a number of sanctions on Huawei, which have made it difficult for the company to do business with US companies.
Despite these challenges, Huawei has continued to develop and produce advanced smartphones. The Huawei Mate series is one of Huawei’s most popular and critically acclaimed smartphone lines. The Mate series is known for its large screens, powerful processors, and impressive camera systems.
The fact that the US does not know how Huawei is able to produce the Mate 60 series could be seen as a sign that Huawei is using advanced technologies that the US is not aware of. However, it is also possible that the US simply does not have access to the necessary information.
Whether or not the Huawei Mate series are the world’s most advanced, most secure, and only spy-proof smartphones in the world is a matter of opinion. There is no definitive proof to support or refute this claim.
It is important to note that the US has a vested interest in discrediting Huawei. The US is currently in a trade war with China, and Huawei is one of China’s most successful technology companies. By accusing Huawei of being a security risk, the US is trying to damage Huawei’s reputation and make it more difficult for the company to compete in the global market.
Ultimately, it is up to each individual consumer to decide whether or not they believe that the Huawei Mate series are the world’s most advanced, most secure, and only spy-proof smartphones in the world.
In my early 20s I lived in an apartment complex. My direct neighbor was an elderly Hispanic man. He always seemed so nice. He would speak to me in Spanish, which, at the time, I knew very little of (had taken 2 years mandatory class in high school). He would say this phrase and nod his head. I would always nod back, assuming we were somehow communicating pleasantries across a language barrier.
5 months go by and a friend I had made in that town, who was a Latina, saw our interaction one day. She got SO mad at the man and started yelling at him in Spanish. I was mortified. I was raised to respect my elders and I thought she was being disrespectful. She grabs my arm and drags me into my house. She explained to me what the man had said to me, HAD been saying to me since the day I moved in was “do you want to see my big fat d$%k?” I was so shocked! Turns out, every time I was nodding to him, I WAS communicating with him 🤣🤣🤣.
To this day, 20 something years later, my friend and I still get a laugh out of that story.
I did decide to take some Spanish classes at college after that. I’m glad i did too! It has been a valuable asset to my work in the medical field. Probably would have never taken those classes if it wasn’t for senor pervy.
A cat was found on the stairs of an apartment building. Two weeks later, his life completely changed
Back in the 1960’s, oh about 1966 or so, we used to read comic books. All of us kids did that. We would read Archie comix, and Richie Rich comix, and war comixs. SO many different kinds of comic books.
And at the back of these comix were advertisements that catered to us young kids. Boys and girls.
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One of the advertisements was an “ant farm”. This consisted of two plates of clear plastic with sand between, and a ant colony trapped in the middle. You could go and watch the ants create their little rooms and passages in this tiny little world that they were trapped in.
Now, my friend “Dino” who lived across the street from me got one of those toys. And sure as shit, he would allow the farm to grow big, with all sorts of rooms, and what not.
ant farm
And when the little tiny ant kingdom seemed to be well and functioning, he would pick it up and shake it vigorously. Thus destroying all the work those poor little ants put into it.
And they would start from scratch all over again.
Ugh!
We as boys, thought it was fun to do, and then we would lay the plastic ant farm on the table and then go outside to play and adventure throughout the day. Totally forgetting about what we had done to those ants.
…
I wonder…
If our “prison planet” existence is something like this. Where some other beings torture us, as a kind of intergalactic pastime. That they enjoy periodically. Then move on-wards to better experiences.
I sure did. I bought a house when I had gone thru a divorce in a nice neighborhood with a lot of retired people. Retired people are the best, free security system ever. One man would see me working in the yard and would always come help me. He might bring a tool to make the job easier or just help with heavy work. He asked me what all I was trying to get done in the yard, so I told him a list of things off the top of my head. He took it upon himself to come over while I was at work and finish some of the projects on my list. His yard was immaculate so I guess he was very nice and a little bored. I’d come home to rocks moved around, plants dug up, etc. Nothing not on my list. Occasionally I’d find a new hanging plant. He and his wife kind of adopted me. So I take care of them at Christmas and birthdays. It’s been awesome.
What changed in the US-China relationship that is pushing the two countries closer to war?
No one seems to know. Readers who follow developments in China closely, know that relations between the two superpowers have grown increasingly strained in the last few years. But while the US has taken a more hostile approach to China, no one seems to know why. Was there something in particular that China did that angered Washington leading to the imposition of economic sanctions, technology blockades and military provocations in the Taiwan Strait?
No, there’s no indication that China did anything. What changed was Washington’s approach to China. And—as you’ll see—Washington’s approach changed very quickly and very dramatically. China went from friend to foe almost overnight.
Here’s why.
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US maintained a policy of engagement with China that accelerated its development and transformed the country into the main engine of global growth. In December, 2001, China was granted “most-favored-nation”(MFN) status which was followed shortly after by its entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO). These developments allowed China to access western markets which turned China into a manufacturing center for US multinationals like Nike, Apple and Dell. China’s opening also triggered a surge of foreign investment which pumped up growth while strengthening its financial assets and bond market. In short, US policy laid the groundwork for the “Chinese miracle” which set the stage for a great power conflict with the US.
No other country in the world is more responsible for China’s meteoric rise than the United States. Now, however, the foreign policy establishment has decided that it doesn’t like its own creation. It doesn’t like the fact that China took advantage of the opportunities it was given to transform itself into a peer competitor of the United States. It doesn’t like the fact that China’s economy is growing more than twice as fast as America’s and is set to surpass the US within the decade. It doesn’t like the fact that China is building a 21st century, state-of-the-art infrastructure grid that will economically integrate a large part of Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia into the world’s biggest free trade zone. It doesn’t like the fact that China’s expansive economic/political strategy will inevitably replace the “rules-based international order” with a Chinese-led system in which the renminbi is the world’s reserve currency and China’s financial markets are the largest and most liquid in the world. America’s foreign policy establishment is not happy about any of these developments especially since it is largely responsible for all of them.
Don’t get me wrong; the Chinese are intelligent, resourceful, creative, and industrious people. And the Chinese Communist Party has played a critical role in lifting 800 million people out of poverty while steering the nation’s economy towards unprecedented growth and prosperity.
But if China was not given access to western markets and entered into the WTO, there would be no Chinese miracle and no Chinese superpower today. Those opportunities were the result of widely-supported policies that were endorsed almost-universally by US foreign policy elites. So, if Washington now regrets having supported those policies, it can only blame itself. Here’s some more background from foreign policy expert John Mearsheimer:
During the Cold War and under the policy of President Nixon, the U.S. decided to engage China and form a quasi-alliance with China against the Soviet Union. That made eminently good sense. And Nixon was correct to help the Chinese economy grow, for the more powerful China became, the more effective it was as a deterrent partner against the Soviet Union. However, once the Cold War ended in 1989 and the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the U.S. no longer needed China to help contain the Soviet Union.
What we foolishly did was pursue a policy of engagement, which was explicitly designed to help China grow more powerful economically. Of course, as China grew economically, it translated that economic might into military might, and the U.S., as a consequence of this foolish policy of engagement, helped to create a peer competitor.
My bottom line is that the Nixon-Kissinger policy, from the early 1970s up until the late 1980s, made eminently good sense. But, after that, engagement was a colossal strategic blunder….
The U.S. was not only expecting China to grow more powerful—it was purposely helping China to grow more powerful. It was doing this based on the assumption that China would become a democracy over time and therefore would become a responsible stakeholder in an American-led international order.
Of course, that didn’t happen. China did not become a democracy. And China, in effect, has set out to establish hegemony in Asia and challenge the U.S. around the planet. We now have a new Cold War.” U.S. engagement with China a ‘strategic blunder’: Mearsheimer, Nikkei
2023 09 22 09 20x
While I agree with most of what Mearsheimer says, I strongly disagree with the notion that US leaders were genuinely concerned about China becoming a democracy. Nor does democracy explain why US policy changed from mutually-beneficial engagement to open hostility. What Mearsheimer fails to acknowledge is that the western economies are controlled by an oligarchy of elites who have been unable to make any significant inroads into the Chinese government’s power-structure. This is not because the Chinese government is ostensibly “communist”, but because Chinese leaders are strongly nationalistic and determined to maintain China’s own sovereign independence against the onslaught of western elites. In other words, the emerging confrontation with China is a power-struggle between the WEF globalist cabal and Chinese nationalists.
In any event, China is not responsible for the strained relations that exist today. The hostility and provocations are all coming from the United States which is trying to undo the damage it did by implementing policies that ran counter to its own national interests. In short, the Biden administration is trying to reverse 30 years of failed policy by doing an about-face and then blaming it on China. It’s a classic “bait and switch” operation. Here’s more from Mearsheimer:
As time has shown, the engagement strategy was a failure. The Chinese economy has made an unprecedented leap forward, but the country has not transformed itself into a liberal democracy or “a responsible glass holder (a player interested in maintaining the current international order).” On the contrary, Chinese leaders see liberal values as a threat to their country’s stability. And they, as the leaders of the rising powers usually do, have a tough foreign policy. We must admit that economic involvement was a colossal strategic mistake. Kurt Campbell and Eli Ratner – two former Obama administration officials who admitted that engagement had failed and those in the Biden administration today – write: “Washington is now facing the most dynamic and formidable contender in modern history.” (U.S. engagement with China a ‘strategic blunder’: Mearsheimer, Nikkei)
The question that immediately arises is: If engagement was such “a colossal strategic mistake” then why did it take 30 years to figure it out? With a population that is 4 times the size of the US and GDP growing at roughly 9% for 2 decades, it should have been fairly obvious that China was going to be bigger and more powerful than the US in the not-too-distant future. And yet everyone in the political establishment pretended not to see what was right beneath their noses.
That’s shocking. And what’s even more shocking is the remedy our leaders have settled on to maintain their current advantage in the global order. They intend to do everything in their power to sabotage China’s economic development. This aligns perfectly with Mearsheimer’s observation that “the only opportunity that can change the dynamics is a dramatic crisis undermining China’s unrelenting growth.” And that explains what’s going on today, the Biden administration is making a concerted effort to target the vulnerable sectors of the Chinese economy and inflict as much damage as possible via sanctions, blockades and supplyline disruption. We expect that this economic war on China will gradually intensify in the next few years along with new provocations in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea. If Mearsheimer’s analysis is correct, then we are still in the early rounds of a hybrid war that will undoubtedly drag on for years to come.
So, when did it occur to our foreign policy geniuses that fueling China’s growth might actually hurt US prospects for the future?
2023 09 22 09 20z
We don’t know the specific date, but it looks like sometime around 2017 the elite consensus that supported engagement began to fall apart as more and more people became aware of the policy’s shortcomings. Check out this comment by the Financial Times associate editor Martin Wolf who explains how quickly western elites turned against China:
I think what is happening is that western policymakers and above all, American policymakers have decided that the rise of China is a major strategic threat. And this has several dimensions. One of these is that the left of center has come to the view that “Well, they are never going to become a democracy as we thought they would, and that is problematic. We don’t like that.” But the bigger element—which is the view of the strategic community and quite a large part of the corporate community—is that “These people (China) are a serious threat. They have immense resources, the defense build up is quite substantial, and they getting are ahead technologically in some very important areas, and we are far too dependent upon them….. They see the interdependence on China as frightening, and this paranoia has now become a dominant element in American thinking…. And it has shifted very quickly and very much across the board in America although we are now seeing it in Europe as well. A paper was recently released by the German Industrial Confederation which basically said, “You know the Chinese technology policy; it’s a threat to Germany.” This is a big change and it’s happened quite recently.”China: Friend or Foe?, You Tube, 12: 35 minute
So, according to Wolf, overall views on China among foreign policy elites changed very quickly and very dramatically. (Wolf’s account is similar to many other elites who tell the same story.) Engagement was increasingly seen as damaging to western interests, and the search for a different approach began. What Wolf fails to tell us is what it was that convinced foreign policy mandarins that China had become “major strategic threat”? Was it due to the CCP’s increasingly activist oversight of foreign corporations or the Communist Party’s refusal to implement reforms of their massive State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) or did it have something to do with China’s impressive strides in advanced technology that put the future of AI and supercomputing up-for-grabs?
What was it?
While we can’t answer that question with 100% certainty, we can make an educated guess.
2023 09 22 09 19
In 2013, Chinese president Xi Jinping launched his signature infrastructure program called the Belt and Road Initiative, which is a vast, multi-continent development strategy that is the most expensive and expansive infrastructure program of all time. The BRI has already garnered commitments from more than 150 nations representing 75% of the global population. The stated goal of the project is “to enhance regional connectivity and embrace a brighter future.” In fact, the project does all of that and much more. The BRI will improve ports, skyscrapers, railroads, roads, bridges, airports, dams, coal-fired power stations, and railroad tunnels. It will create a vast spiderweb of cutting-edge high-speed rail that will lower the cost of shipping while boosting the profits of manufacturers and wholesalers. The BRI projects a vision of a fully-integrated 21st century world in which Beijing lies at the very epicenter of global commerce. This is why the US and its allies—who are the staunch defenders of an archaic, extractive model of neoliberal capitalism—are prepared to do whatever-it-takes to derail China’s development and prevent this futuristic plan from going forward. Here’s how Sir Malcolm Rifkind, politician and former cabinet minister, summed up the significance of the BRI in a recent discussion of China on You Tube:
“I think if we’re going to look years ahead, I think the most important thing is the potential relevance of the Belt and Road Initiative to the relationship of Europe and China. For a thousand years, Europe and China have had to have contact with each other through the sea lanes. That huge central Asian landmass was, like the Atlantic Ocean- a barrier. What is happening now; and if we look 5, 10, 15 years ahead—already freight trains are going from China to western Europe in increasing numbers in both directions. So, what that means is, Europe and China could be looking directly at each other in a way that Europe and North America were able to do because of air travel and because the Atlantic became a bridge. That would be a historic change regardless of the politics China and Europe looking directly at each other and trading with each other in that way. That would have massive implications.” China: Friend or Foe? You Tube, 1:21:10 min
Rifkind is right. The opening of transit corridors and freight lines between China and Europe are “the most important thing” because they draw the continents closer together into a giant free trade zone which will inevitably increase their mutual power and prosperity while leaving the US on the outside looking in. This is why the Biden administration is so determined to make sure the BRI does not become a reality. Keep in mind, the primary foreign policy objective of the United States is “to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.” The vast expansion of China’s Belt and Road across the Eurasian landmass and linking European capitals to Beijing and Shanghai, definitely fit that description and qualify China as Washington’s mortal enemy.
China’s leaders still believe that they can reach an accommodation with Washington that will help to avoid a direct confrontation. But Washington’s red lines have already been crossed and there’s bound to be trouble ahead.
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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.
Italy Foreign Minister Visited China to Get Free From the US’s Rule Over Europe!
Italy Foreign Minister Visited China to Get Free From the US’s Rule Over Europe!
For the U.S. to decide this Chip Act it must have been debated at length by hordes of parties and institutions including dozens of companies in the U.S. and throughout US allies.
Why?
Well simple. The repercussions are simply gigantic and colossal if indeed this act fail. It will cause trillions upon trillions of dollars lost over time. At least a hundred U.S. and its cronies chip firms may simply go out of business all together.
Worst is that this is the last thing the US can do to stop and contained China if this fails, that will be the end of US hegemony in technology. So for the U.S. to take this measure is like putting everything at stake into this one act. Billions has to be spend to build a plants in the U.S. that hinge on China’s failure to counter act. Billions need to be spend to protect and subsidise these hundreds of firms in case it fail.
Countries whose livelihoods depend on this precise technology and business to survive and thrive have to be bribed and coerce to cut out China. These bribes probably run in the trillions of dollars figures.
And all these hinge on one and only one assumption. That is China will not be able to design, make and manufacture this high end chips for at least a generation! If this assumption fail to materialised then the U.S. will be thoroughly fxxked for a generation and it will forever not able to compete with China.
In other words, there is absolutely no room at all for failure. Failure means China will now totally controlled every aspect of Chip making technologies from materials, to designing, to developing , to mass producing in the billions. And it will do it at a fraction of the costs of doing it in the U.S. which simply means the total implosion of all the U.S. chip firms!
So after a mere 3 years China did precisely what the U.S. fears most. Their worst fears has come true. The Chinese simply do not need a single technology from the U.S. and its cronies to launched this 5NM chip capable of 5G and satellite communications which also means there is zero possibility for the U.S. to hack it. 150 million orders have been placed and 40 million orders has been fulfilled in a mere 20 days from its launch.
This Huawei Mate 60 series including the Mate 5X is such a blow to the U.S. For a start the U.S. already lost 3 billion in profit had they not banned themselves from selling to China and up to a few trillion dollars have been wiped off the stock values of these chip firms from 27th August till now. The melt down will carry on and on and on till the U.S. economy collapse all together. We in the rest of the world call this Karma.
The Baptist and Deeply Religious Bible Group Lobby
The Selective Immigration Lobby
This Block mainly support Republicans and like a White Majority to be in charge of the country and preferably like straight men who stick to the gender they were born with
Fox News, Newsmax, Rush Limbaugh (Late), Lou Dobbs are sponsored by this Lobby
Block 2 consists of :-
Big Tech (Google, Meta, Amazon)
The Gun control lobby
The Freedom of Choice Lobby
The Anti DOMA Lobby
The Freely Agnostic, Atheist or Freethinker Lobby
The Pro Migrant Lobby
This block mainly supports Liberal Democrats, like minorities to be ostensibly in charge and have a fascination with Gay people and Transgenders and LGBTQ agenda
All MSM, Whoopi Goldberg, Seth Myers, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon are all sponsored by this lobby
Block 3 also called the TRUMP Block consists of :-
Donald J Trump
Friends of Donald J Trump
Russian Naturalized Citizens in US
East European Naturalized US Citizens
Indian Migrants outside California
The Trade Lobby
US Steel Lobby
Any Group that likes protectionism
Law Enforcement Lobby of 31 States
Blue Collar White Males with High School Diplomas
This Block liases with Republicans and has an uneasy alliance with the Republicans as it hates the democrats more
Tucker Carlson, Jimmy Dore, NTG are
Ultimately no matter who comes to power, there are two groups who have the last word in how the US must react :-
Wall Street
The Military Industrial Complex Or Defense Manufacturers / Contractors
Nobody can cross these two groups in US
These Two Groups give instructions through their tame organizations like
National Endowment of Democracy
WEF
The NEOCON think tanks
Trump, Biden, Obama – they need an OK from these two powerful groups and their tame organizations, or they will be unable to do anything
This Senile Old Man probably needs to be told when it’s time to change his diapers
He is a total puppet controlled by the Neocons
Pennsylvania Dutch Brown Butter Noodles
This is a delicious side dish to a pot roast, fried chicken, baked ham, or pork chop dinner. In true Pennsylvania Dutch style, serve with a side of fresh cottage cheese topped with apple butter!
Pennsylvania Dutch Brown Butter Noodles
Ingredients
Wide egg noodles
Butter
Salt
Pepper
Instructions
Cook wide egg noodles according to package directions, in the amount needed. As the noodles are cooking, melt butter (1 tablespoon per person/serving) in a small skillet and allow the butter to brown lightly (do not burn!). Drain noodles well, place in serving bowl and toss with the hot browned butter. If desired, add a small amount of salt and pepper.
One time my partner and I stopped a vehicle that cut off another vehicle and made a right turn into oncoming traffic. I approached the driver and was immediately told that I had no right to stop him and that I better be careful and to choose my words carefully.
So I slowly said “ Sir, I stopped you for illegal lane change, illegal right turn and impeding the flow of traffic, did you understand the words that I just spoke to you?
He proceeded to tell me that he was a Los Angeles City Councilman and that if I “ gave him any shit, he would have my job.”
I explained that I needed to see his operators license, proof of insurance and registration.
Mr. Councilman stated that he already told me who he was and that he didn’t have to show me anything. I explained to him that I was going to be exceptionally nice to him and politely ask him one more time, but if he was not going to comply with the lawfull instructions from a sworn police officer he would be arrested, period.
He actually said that I didn’t have the balls to “ try “ to arrest him for a vehicle code violation.
I then reverted to my interactions with my 4 year old son.
I said I’m going to count to 3, and if he was not going to comply he absolutely would be going to jail and also that I would be impounding his vehicle. He again refused and he went to jail and didn’t pass go, his vehicle was impounded and all was good in the world.
My favorite scene from “The Sixth Sense”
“I think why this scene is so powerful is because everyone can relate to having lost someone in their life and have that desire to know that they made some kind of positive impact on the lost ones life.”
I was in Scotland on holiday with my husband in May 2023. We were on the Isle of Skye and had stopped in at a remote cafe for breakfast. Behind us in the queue was a lady whose face was so familiar I was sure I knew her really well.
I was wracking my brains trying to remember if I’d worked with her, or if she was a friend of a friend. She was so familiar! I whispered to my husband that I was sure I knew her and he agreed that he’d recognised her too.
I finally decided to just ask her if we’d met before, and where. She looked at me and gently said: “No, we’ve never met. But I’m an actress so we’ve probably spent some time together but just not in person.”
It was Frances McDormand. A real REAL actress- not just a movie star. And then she introduced us to her husband, Joel Coen.
She was so utterly charming, I was fangirling so hard.
I can’t think of a lovelier way to tell someone they’ve made a mistake.
I am Egyptian. Arranged marriages are common here. And don’t get me wrong I actually really like them when done right. They are very close to the concept of blind dating.
However, sometimes you’ll get terrible suitors with no social intelligence. And yes guys there are Arab men who are way more decent than these not-so-bright ones. Take some examples:-
A friend of mine sat with a suitor for the first time and the chat was actually pretty decent. But before he left he looked at her and said “but if you want to get married to me, don’t you think you should lose some weight?”. He was immediately out of the picture from that second. Not only are you trying to change someone on the first time you met them, but you also have no social intelligence to know what should and should not be said.
Another friend of mine sat with a very rigid man. He told her “listen, starting off, I noticed several things about you that I cannot accept in a wife: 1- I noticed that your clothes need to be looser. 2- I heard you travelled with your friends several times before, I believe travelling is a waste of time unless necessary and I don’t like you travelling without me. 3- you mentioned something about having separate accounts? A man and his wife should be one. So one account is a must. 4- I know you’ve been working for years but I prefer that my wife doesn’t work. She politely went through the date and never got back to him. Who does he think he is again?
When my cousin proposed to his current wife, he told her that he actually saw her before but definitely didn’t want to propose because she looked a little darker than he likes a woman to be, but thankfully that time it was just the lighting and she’s not as dark as he thought so here he is ! And yet she still married him. For me, he would’ve been a goner. What will you do if I get tanned in a vacation? If I get a burn on my face one day? Divorce me? Meh.
Lesson of the day : never try to change someone or comment on their appearance (unless positively) on the first date !
China refuses to allow DJI drones to deliver $6 billion in penalties to the US!
Over recent years, the United States has ramped up sanctions against various sectors of China’s industry, including the booming drone sector.
DJI, the leading Chinese drone manufacturer, now faces staggering fines totaling $840 million, along with demands for access to its core source code.
This controversy has not only sparked resentment in China but also raised questions about the U.S.’s approach to China’s technological advancements.
These sanctions are more than just punitive measures; they reflect the United States’ concerns and competitiveness in China’s thriving drone manufacturing industry.
As drones play an increasingly crucial role in modern warfare, tensions have escalated.
However, DJI’s dominance in the global drone market is rooted in its own innovation, not the misappropriation of U.S. technology.
Unlike us mere mortals, Warren Buffett actually reads company financial statements. Even more than that, he understands them. Surprisingly, he’s not big on what lawyers call “due diligence”, where you have a team of accountants and lawyers look at the company to see if they’re hiding anything because, over his years of experience, Buffett has learned that companies always hide their weaknesses in plain sight.
The “Buffet Way” is to go over a company’s public information and then put a question mark next to anything that looks weird. Other people do that too, but then they start asking questions of the company’s management. Buffett doesn’t do that – if there are too many question marks he just stops looking at the company. Plenty of companies to invest in. He’s usually right too.
So, what does he mean by “value”? Well, throughout Buffett’s career, his favourite companies tend not to be “growth companies” or “the next hot technology”. Frankly, unless Buffett fully understands the company’s products and business model, those are both massive question marks and he would rather not risk Berkshire-Hathaway’s money on them. Instead, Buffett has always preferred companies with lots of revenue that are consistently profitable. I remember reading one of his annual reports where he explained why he bought a company that made chocolates – it had consistent revenue and profits, and had a good management team and workforce. Sold.
Now, HP has been in business forever and has often been at the forefront of technology, but lately it has settled down to produce everyday products for consumers instead of specialty products for engineers. It sells a lot of stuff (at wholesale, it’s not a retailer), has a good team of management and engineers, and can be found at both the high and low ends of the market. It has good revenues and profits.
Naturally, most investors ignore HP because its stock price is pretty steady. That’s not a problem for Buffett. He thinks that many stocks of profitable solid companies are undervalued. He bases a stock’s price on its fundamentals, how much it sells, what it’s profit is, and how much it spends on ongoing research and development. In other words, he’s not buying HP’s stock because he thinks it’s going to go way up. He’s buying it because based on its current price, he thinks the share price will keep up with inflation and still have money left over for shareholders.
And he may be right. I bought two HP laptops this year. My printer is HP. My three old computers are HP.
You didn’t necessarily need to be a criminal to receive this punishment. This punishment was meant for vagrants and undesirable people. The punishment was called the tramp chair.
The Tramp chair was invented by Sanford Baker in 1885, and it was designed for towns that were too small for the Jails or for towns that couldn’t afford to build one.
The undesirables as they were known would be locked in the cage as an encouragement to move along. The people being punished were sometimes stripped naked before being locked in the chair, leaving the person to deal with the thick and sometimes rusty bars heating and cooling depending on the temperature outside.
They were even paraded around town to be subjected to harassment and cruel taunts from the public. They would then be wheeled to the edge of town to be released and foisted to the next town.
The Last of Us | Episode 1 | Fungus Pandemic Takeover Explained Perfectly
The gradual shift from amusement to horror on the TV host’s face is just so damn perfect, that scene in particular sends chills up my spine.
Jonathan Stern，I noticed that you don’t understand the military strength of the United States.
Iran’s strength is weak, but the United States dare not blockade the Strait of Hormuz.
Only by understanding oneself and the enemy can we win war.
For decades, the United States has attacked many weak countries. This makes you think that the United States can attack any country on Earth without retaliation. The United States can attack China’s Three Gorges Dam, and China can also retaliate and attack New York, rather than attacking the US warships.
Think about it, can China attack New York City after the United States attacks China’s Three Gorges Dam?
Large numbers of Chinese people could start getting themselves addicted to heroin and fentanyl and dying from overdose.
The China cops could start stepping on citizens necks in the streets or choking them to death or shooting them 12 times in the back for minor offences.
Families could quarrel and argue and split up over differences in political beliefs.
Hate groups could be allowed to spring up and flourish and spread their hate, on the basis that they are exercising their freedom of speexh.
China could let its school standards in math and science deteriorate badly.
China could stop providing universal healthcare to its citizens and make essential medical services very expensive for its people.
China could allow free and easy access to guns for all, and improve its chances of having numerous mass shootings occur each month.
It could choose senile octagenarians or outright criminals to be its leader.
China could deny birth control and abortions to its women and girls.
Instead of building more homes, schools, hospitals and other public infrastructure, it could buy more and more deadly missiles and bombs and mines and use them in wars on foreign soil, faraway from itself.
Well, that would be a very strong start.
Your soul belongs to God Bedazzled
Great scene.
“This scene is so powerful, just by looking at him and the friendliness of his voice, where he states that despite your mistakes everything is going to be just fine. This is by far the greatest interpretation of God I’ve ever seen, makes me happy to have witnessed it :)”
The landlord was this old witch in Ardwick Manchester.
She had a perfect set of furniture which she would move in and take photos of and develop them (this was still the age of paper photographs).
She would then move the furniture out and put some cheapo chipboard furniture into the house.
I took photos of these with time and date stamps.
She was an awful landlord and would always let herself in and root through our stuff. Absolutely nothing was repaired ever and I am almost certain she would steal money locked in our rooms. It was a shared house so when one of us had a day off and slept late she’d walk in on one of us sleeping and make excuses.
When the contract ended we decided to leave.
She of course kept the deposit because of significant damage to the furniture.
I showed my photographs she showed hers. This was back before deposit protection schemes so it went to the small claims court to get the house deposit back. She played the I’m an innocent old woman and these young men are scum.
She won, we lost. She kept the deposit.
The Ukrainian guy who lived with us didn’t like that at all. He went to Do it All bought a big lump hammer and caused massive structural damage to the house and went home to Kiev a couple days later.
Well, this is a prime example of the fog of war descending on America.
By forcing Huawei to cut ties with former partners, Huawei went dark, at least to the US government and foreign corporations vulnerable to US sanctions.
This is a problem America created, for America to solve.
The key pieces are all domestic mainland players who are sanction-resistant, or already under sanction. The US can certainly up the pressure and throw the kitchen sink at them, but they will not willingly divulge information based on a “query” by Americans.
You want it that way, you can have it.
Before 2018/19, the electronics industry was centered around East Asia, and people knew what the competition was working on, more or less, because the supply chain (and talent) was shared. Next-gen Apple and Google features were leaked months in advance, and many were right on the money.
But Donald the Orange changed all that.
Mainland players went dark, as multiple rounds of sanction tore up the eco-system for good.
It’s a brave new world, and there is a lot more uncertainty in the air ex-China, because the biggest unanswered questions are, what’s my Chinese competitors working on, and how is my largest market going to evolve? Remember, the Chinese government has mostly parried, and the Chinese will overwhelmingly buy Chinese once competitive domestic options come to market.
The electronics business is one with incredibly high bars for sunk cost, and mistakes can be very expensive, if not fatal.
The Chinese though, retain excellent business intelligence, because the major players are all represented in the industrial chain.
Good luck to the blind fighting the sighted, even if the spears are a little longer, and the swords sharper… for now.
This is not correct that it always happens, but instead of pointing out instances of this being wrong, because Russia eventually lost, or because Russia actually rolled their enemies right away, I will tell you why Russia has an affinity for this kind of warfare.
The answer is geography. Russia is an immense country, and even if most people live in the western regions it confers massive advantages. For example, Russia can hide things, even with modern intelligence gathering, Russia is so big, that yes you can take satellite images of all of Russia, but by the time that you analyze them things could have changed. For this reason many of Russia’s ICBMs are near invulnerable, as they are moved around Siberia on trucks, making it nearly impossible to have an accurate picture of where they actually are.
Historically, Russia has time on its side. Why? Because it has ample space to recover from defeats. Most enemies only ever fight a portion of Russia, with the rest of Russia supporting the economic efforts. If you advance 600km into Russia you will certainly hurt it, but you will have quite a bit more to go. If you advance 600km into Germany, you’re now in France.
As such, history is very forgiving to the country in Europe with the most natural resources, largest population, and most amount of room for failure. Russia can at least partially recover from nearly any initial failure militarily. This gives them time to adapt to what ever caused their initial defeat, and reverse the outcome of the war, provided they have the will to do so over the particular issue. Other countries have the ability to do this, but rarely the time. For a small country, a defeat is usually decisive and they get no second chances.
The Sopranos || Fix You
The Sopranos is still the best written show to this date. Game of Thrones does some things better, The Wire does some things better, Breaking Bad does some things better, Mad Men does some things better, but The Sopranos takes the cake in terms of character interactions and making real lifelike characters. The Sopranos has more profound characters/character relationships than any show I’ve seen, and in my opinion characters are the most important part of a TV show, so it’s the GOAT no doubt. Plus the fact that it’s the foundation for HBO, TV dramas, and the “anti-hero.” The Sopranos is #1 all-time in my opinion.
Taiwan’s TSMC, which is making an unprecedented push into chip manufacturing overseas, is taking an increasingly optimistic view of Japan as a production base, two industry sources said, as problems persist at its new factory in Arizona.
TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, is frustrated in Arizona, the sources said, where it has struggled to recruit workers for the gruelling chipmaking trade and faced pushback from unions on efforts to bring in workers from Taiwan.
The company has growing confidence in Japan, where an $8.6 billion fab under construction in a chipmaking hub on the island of Kyushu is on track to start producing mature-technology chips in 2024, the sources said.
While keen to ensure a smooth ramp up at the first fab, the chipmaker is considering adding capacity and a second fab in Japan, the sources said, which could include the production of more advanced chips.
Several chip industry sources spoke to Reuters about TSMC’s view of Japan and its global expansion on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Successful expansion by TSMC in Japan could give a boost to efforts by the country to regain its lost status as a chip manufacturing powerhouse and support its automotive and electronics industries amid growing regional competition.
TSMC said in a statement its overseas expansion depends on factors including the needs of customers, the level of government support and cost considerations.
In Arizona, TSMC plans to produce advanced chips but a shortage of skilled workers has forced the company to push back production at its first fab by a year to 2025.
“Any project… will have some learning curve. In the past five months the improvement has been tremendous,” TSMC Chairman Mark Liu said of the Arizona project last week.
Fabs in the U.S., Japan and Germany, where it is also expanding, are “inherently incomparable” due to differences in location, setup and scope, TSMC said.
NATURAL FIT
The U.S., Japan and Germany have offered TSMC billions of dollars in subsidies for it to localise production in efforts to diversify the supply of chips, which are essential to the defence, automotive and electronics industries.
The $40 billion investment in Arizona allows TSMC to add capacity outside Taiwan, where it faces constraints on land, power, water and labour.
But the company views Japan as a more natural fit in terms of work culture, and its government is easy to deal with and generous with subsidies, the sources said.
“The relationship between TSMC and the Japanese government is mutually beneficial,” said Lucy Chen, an analyst at Isaiah Research.
Japan’s advantages for the chipmaker include its network of chip equipment and materials suppliers, similarities in work culture and proximity to Taiwan, she added.
TSMC sees workers in Japan, which is known for long hours and strong commitment to employers, as more willing to work a punishing schedule with overtime as chipmaking machines run around the clock in sterile clean rooms, the sources said.
“A lot of machines cannot be shut down because it costs TSMC to recalibrate on rebooting,” said a chip industry executive.
It is only a two-hour flight to Kyushu, where TSMC is partnering with companies including Sony, a leading maker of image sensors.
Taiwanese workers arriving to help set up the fab are welcome, and the chipmaker will pay higher wages to secure local employees as it competes with rivals such as foundry venture Rapidus, the sources said.
“It seems to us that TSMC is really positive about investment in Japan,” said a senior official at the powerful Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), which has offered subsidies worth up to 476 billion yen ($3.23 billion) for the first fab.
“We will really welcome the second fab project in general but we have to see the detail first,” the official said.
While many equipment and materials makers already have global operations, to meet its exacting standards TSMC has also brought suppliers to Japan from Taiwan, the sources said.
RISING CAPITAL SPENDING
TSMC’s enthusiasm for Japan is being tempered by concerns about higher costs across the business and worries about the macro environment, the sources said.
Capital expenditure ballooned to $36 billion last year from $10 billion in 2018, with the company forecasting a slightly smaller outflow this year.
TSMC thought costs to build a fab would be 20% higher in the U.S. than in Taiwan but they are actually about 50% higher, an investor briefed by company management said.
The chipmaker plans to build an $11 billion fab in Germany with local firms but is also concerned the work culture there, with long vacations and strong unions, will hit output, the sources said.
Investors worry about the effect of higher costs but “the impact on TSMC today has not been that big because its leading technology gives it pricing power,” said Brady Wang, an analyst at research firm Counterpoint.
In a very nice cafe in Malaysia, I was sitting with my husband about to order after we decided on what we want.
I do what I always do in Kuwait and Egypt, raising a hand and loudly saying “excuse me!”, my voice breaking the strange quietness of this cafe.
I’m not even exaggerating when I say that almost everyone in the cafe turned their head to look at me.
I whisper to my husband “um. Seems like this is not how they do it here.”
A waiter comes to us rushing to take the order. He then very politely explains to us that we should use the pieces of paper on the table (which I mistook for tissues till that moment) to write down the numbers next to each order in the menu, then ever so easily press on a button on the table.
There is literally no need at all to even talk to the waiter. He just comes, picks up the paper while smiling at us.
Well, I guess that explains why 30 people or so were staring holes at me when my “excuse me” echoed around haha.
I felt like such a peasant.
The Power Of The Neocon Narrative Is Evil
With respect gentlemen, Europeans are too busy chewing grass. Like most of humanity. The politicians are busy bowing down to the money changers and are firmly in their grip. Peace, love and blessings to those that seek it.
I use to live in a subdivision with my mother when I was under the age of 18 and we had a female police officer that lived at the end of the cul de sac. Whenever she had a party her guests would park in front of others driveways and on others property (I came out of my house to find several cars parked on my mothers front lawn). I had to be somewhere, so I went down and asked her if the people who parked on my moms property and in front of my driveway could move. I was told NO and the door was shut in my face. So, I went home and called a friend of mine that owned a wrecker service and explained the situation to him. He said that he had 3 wreckers in the area and that he would be happy to help. Well, 20 minutes later I had all 3 wreckers pull up and start hooking up cars. One of the ladies at the police officers party must of noticed because the next thing I know I have 4 ladies screaming at the tow truck drivers to put their cars down, each had to pay a “Drop Fee” of $200.00. This was the last time that any of her guests parked in front of my driveway. Whenever I had a party, weather people were parked in front of her house or not, I was guaranteed to have the police called.
Many Worlds Theory: You’re in a Parallel Universe | Can You Visit Your Other Lives?
The ability of this man to explain the complexities of quantum physics in an almost digestable way to the masses is a superpower. Leaves me awe struck at the time, attention, care, & talent that goes into this channel. Bravo.
TSMC is on course for reduced margins, just because it is forced to build plants beyond Greater China, which are more costly to build and run, not to mention having to hire local and deal with culture and language barriers complicating operations, especially the crucial ramp-up.
These are risk management strategies, and not economically driven.
That is baked in, regardless of Huawei.
This is a rather curious time to ask the question, because we have arrived at the plateau of mobile computing. A cheap phone today has similar performance as the cutting edge 5 years ago, and that is enough computing power for the average user, even the occasional gamer. The same happened with laptops some years back, when the node dividend began delivering machines with all-day battery life.
Huawei’s Kirin 9000s is a 7nm chip with 5nm performance, and there are compromises to raw computing power, die area, and of course, power draw, compared to the cutting edge from the competition.
Huawei’s customers know the Mate 60 pro isn’t as good as the iPhone 15 Pro performance wise, but this hasn’t stopped them from joining the queue for the phone. My dad told me enthusiastically “even Jackie Chan can’t get a set!”. Wonder where he heard that from.
Obviously, different dynamics are at work here.
What made the difference was the return of Kirin and more importantly, the 5g modem. At the mobile computing plateau, the “speed” of a phone is more likely bottlenecked by the network rather than the CPU/GPU, unlike mobile gaming and other specialized tasks.
The Kirin 9000s has decent performance (especially the highlight: 5g network speeds), enough to join the flagship club in 2023. More importantly, it offers a package that cannot be found anywhere else, including Hongmeng, AI driven gestures and automated payments, and a really snazzy camera.
These features directly impact lifestyle usability, and breed customer loyalty, because it is technology that just work. A lot of engineering was committed to refine and polish them, and these are major selling points.
So Huawei has a “good enough” flagship for 2023, in terms of specs. But is there a future for a node-bound Kirin? I believe Huawei will struggle to meet demand for the next year or two, but beyond that, we will have to see how far along the indigenization of the chipmaking supply chain is.
What interests me more isn’t the chip, but the independent direction Huawei will forge with AI, Hongmeng and its integration with the IOT. Even Qualcomm is sending overtures to develop Hongmeng devices, just because it doesn’t want to be left out of a 700m user base market.
For example, what will a Hongmeng-enabled 5.5G IOT ecosystem look like in maturity? What other AI-enabled features are in the works? I’ve heard some impressive forecasts but I’m bound to secrecy.
American expat living in Denmark. I’ve been here for 12 years, and I can honestly say that I have far more freedoms than I ever did in the US.
Things I can do here that I couldn’t do in the US-
Get injured, sick, or have a baby without having to pay to see a single doctor or hospital bill. This includes having an MRI, x-rays, ultrasounds, EKG, various blood tests, several days in hospital while in labour, and quite a number of procedures during labour.
While mental health care isn’t free, there are ways to get mental health care which is free. I’ve finally been able to get a diagnosis of ADHD and bipolar disorder, after living my entire life struggling.
Because I am on medication I’ll need for the rest of my life, I’m able to afford it without going bankrupt.
I’m going to school to get my degree, free of charge. In fact I even get paid to go to school!
Other things less personal- we can walk around with open containers of alcohol. We can drink while sitting in a park, on the beach, or pretty much anywhere else within reason.
I could, if I so wished, walk down to the beach and sun myself completely naked. I could also sunbathe topless most anywhere.
I don’t have to worry about including enough tax when mentally tallying up the cost of groceries or a meal out and. Tax is included in all prices.
I also don’t have to spend even more money tipping since the wait staff, bartender, busboys, etc. are all paid properly.
I can bike safely, even in the middle of the city, without worrying about getting hit by a car. We have such excellent bike paths which are much like a sidewalk with a curb dividing it from the street. My 7 year old can bike as well without worry.
I could go on, but these are just the basic ones that I thought of first.
The Sopranos || Wonderful Life
That one clip of Carmela and Furio dancing, while the line, “It’s a wonderful life” plays in the background is so perfect. What an absolutely brilliant video. This brought tears to my eyes. Nothing will ever match up to this show. Masterpiece.
Cars were left on roadside by their owners as they couldn’t start them.
And 6am in the morning there was a knock at my door. The milk delivery boy was standing in front of me. Sleeves of his trousers folded, and with a smile on his face. I asked him “how did you manage to reach here?”. He replied “sir, I walked through the water with my friends, it is essential to make milk available to everyone in such conditions. Those who have kids can’t manage without it”.
It was a small incident but really worth giving a thought.
Education makes us capable but professionalism is self-taught.
The CRAZIEST MYTHS I’ve heard about CHINA! | UTTERLY SHOCKED***
Exactly, a young man who speaks the truth and not brain washed by US media.
Strictly speaking, it isn’t a “breakthrough” yet, because this is the Chinese being very creative with a set of heavily crippled tools and components, producing a world-class flagship mobile device against immense odds.
The Chinese came together and dug a tunnel using shovels because the excavators were taken off the market.
Nevertheless, they persevered… and saw light.
But, and here’s the but, they have one tunnel, and still don’t own any excavators.
Before we go on, we should take a cursory glance at the chipmaking industry.
To reduce the clutter, we can divide the history of chipmaking into two epochs, pre-2007, and post.
In the first period, Intel was dominant, and it almost drove AMD out of business, taking Global Foundries along with it. AMD was a “fabless” foundry model developed to challenge Intel’s vertically integrated model, betting that superior design married with partners who could better control (and share) manufacturing cost while keeping pace with Moore’s law would deliver competitive products. AMD ultimately failed because it couldn’t wrestle sufficient market share in the x86 market, which was already past its exponential growth phase.
In other words, the scraps that fabs fed on ex-Intel were not enough to drive progress.
What changed in 2007?
That’s right. The arrival of the smartphone, in Steve’s hand.
It ushered in a new eco-system, ARM, that was completely separate (but even more profitable) than Intel- and Microsoft-controlled x86.
Another watershed happened in 2007, but it was quietly announced to little fanfare, unlike the iPhone. Nvidia announced CUDA, ushering in the era of GPGPU.
ARM and the GPU revolutionized the business of fabs. The chief beneficiary was TSMC, and to a lesser extent, Samsung.
Set free from the chains of x86 and Windows, the singular pursuit of mobile computing in the early days of the iphone 3GS and 4 was this: how to squeeze ever more power (flops) from engines shrinking in size (die area) but increasing in fuel economy (flops/Watt)?
To be perfectly honest, the early smartphones were pretty much unusable from a modern standpoint. That’s because the fabs lagged far behind Intel, despite the same tools and ecosystem available to the competition. [The original iPhone was powered by a 90nm Samsung chip]. Apple’s orders and the potential of the smartphone becoming the one piece of tech everyone MUST own finally gave fabs the nitro-fuel needed to beat Intel at its own game.
The secret?
As with most economic problems, lots of cash to buy the best tools and talent.
As late as 2014/15, TSMC was still tapping out chips at 28nm for the flagship Snapdragon 800 series. The contemporaneous A8 was preferentially made on the 20nm node, TSMC’s cutting edge offering 8–9 years ago. Intel tapped out Broadwell at 14nm, the clear industry leader.
It was around this time that truly functional smartphone computing arrived, delivered by process node improvement. Apple’s A8 tapped out at 2 billion transistors, and TSMC completed its leapfrog past Intel in 2017 with the A11, a 10nm chip with >4 billion transistor on die area slightly smaller than the A8. Intel’s Kabylake was still stuck on the same 14nm node, albeit with finfet improvements.
Why did I attempt a grandfather’s monologue of seemingly disjointed developments?
TSMC completed a doubling of transistor density in less than 3 years to leapfrog past Intel, and subsequently broke new ground conquering sub-10nm physics with novel methods and tools, including the all-too-familiar EUV.
Most of the talent that achieved the breakthrough were Chinese, and a good number of them (several thousands) are currently working for mainland competition. Key managers were offered “out of this world” renumeration that were unheard of in the industry to sign up. These are cutting edge talent that know the business of chipmaking inside out, baptized by the fire of success that successfully dethroned Intel.
There are experienced captains steering the Chinese ship through the hurricane of US sanctions.
My friend, who still works at TSMC, thought the battle was lost the moment Donald the Orange declared war on Huawei. In fact, it was American belligerence that finally persuaded several of her colleagues to jump ship, and not the numbers on the contract. These were people who worked tireless to push yields to records during ramp-up, and methodically improved workflow for novel methods and equipment, without the benefit of recipes and practical limits. I like to think of them as chefs experimenting with a new menu earning three michelin stars, despite having to learn new ways of cooking with never-seen-before ingredients.
You can’t lose, with master chefs like that.
As she likes to say, 欺负中国没人，门儿都没有。
America picked the wrong fight, and boarded the wrong train.
路选错了是没有尽头的。
Pennsylvania Dutch Chicken and Flat Dumplings
e4ecfe55efd46a26b8bedb61cb91c66d
Ingredients
1 large (5 pound) washed chicken
1 large onion, quartered
3 stalks celery, cut into large chunks
1 teaspoon whole peppercorn
2 1/2 teaspoons salt
Instructions
Place chicken in a 6- to 8-quart stockpot. Add remaining ingredients. Bring to boil. Simmer until chicken is done, about 2 hours.
When cool, remove bones and fat from chicken. Cut into pieces, and return to pot.
Noodles: In a bowl, mix together 2 cups flour and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Make a well in the center, and gradually work 4 eggs into the flour until stiff dough is formed, adding water a little at a time if necessary. Knead until smooth. Divide dough in half. Roll each half as thin as possible then cut into thin 1-2 inch squares.
Bring the broth back to rolling boil. Drop noodle squares one at a time, making sure each are drenched in broth. Reduce heat, cover and continue to cook until noodles are done, about 8 minutes. DON’T PEEK!
Serve in large bowl and ladle onto plates at the table. Serve with chopped onion.
When we lived in Indiana, we lived in a mobile home. We moved that home from park to park, and must have lived in perhaps eight different locations. Living in a trailer park is an experience in itself.
I do not recommend it.
Weekends are non-stop grass mowing and 200 families take turns on the hour mowing their grass from the crack of dawn to sunset. And let’s not talk about the poor quality of people that invariably inhabit SOME of the trailers.
I have many stories of this period in my life, but today, I wish to relate one that is charming.
It’s late July.
The sun is setting, and the fireflies come out.
You can still see them, but they turn on their mini lights and pop in and out of sight. And there, my wife and I are sitting outside on our chaise-lounges enjoying the evening when we notice our cats playing.
They all try to catch the fireflies. The light attracts them, and then they go pounce up and catch the little bugs.
I will tell youse guys that they all were having a blast, and we were truly enjoying watching them. Those little guys were just having a blast! It was the time of their little kitty-hood. Don’t you know.
…
These little moments… we all have little moments… but they should be treasured, and appreciated. Who knows what little moments that you so absent mindlessly ignore though the day, only to one day twenty years from now, look back in wistful nostalgia.
Like me.
Today…
More Voices Call On Biden To Withdraw From The 2024 Race
I do not know who is supposed to manage Biden’s public relations but whoever that is is doing a bad job.
The strategists for the Democratic Party and those concerned with winning elections should seriously think about replacing Biden with someone who is better at handling himself.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday directed top congressional Republicans to open an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, reversing his previous stance that such an investigation should be initiated only with a vote of the House.
In doing so, Mr. McCarthy leveled a series of accusations against Mr. Biden that he said amounted to a “picture of a culture of corruption” and warranted the House using its most potent investigative tool to try to make the case for removing the president.
The impeachment proceedings, like those against Donald Trump, are mostly a public relation gimmick. But they are also likely to show that the Biden family business is as corrupt as they come.
The British establishment, largely on the Democrats side, is clearly concerned.
Yet although Mr Comer’s investigation is failing to prove the existence of what Donald Trump calls the “Biden crime family”, congressional inquiries will now multiply. … Indeed, the younger Mr Biden’s legal problems are intensifying. On September 6th prosecutors serving under David Weiss, the special counsel investigating Hunter, announced that they expect an indictment by the end of the month. The president’s son is likely to be charged with not paying taxes and lying on a form when buying a gun at a time when he was addicted to crack cocaine. A plea deal that would have kept him out of jail on those charges fell apart in July. And other, more damaging charges—such as lobbying for a foreign government without registering—have not been ruled out.
None of that implicates the president. Yet he may suffer for it nonetheless. According to a CNN poll, three-fifths of Americans think Mr Biden was involved in his son’s business. Pump out enough smoke and you might create fire.
The CIA’s influence peddler and Washington Post columnist David Ignatius is the latest establishment voice to warn of a likely defeat of Biden should he decide to keep running:
Like the Economist writers Ignatius is as friendly to Democrats as they come. The CIA and FBI had both intervened after the election of Donald Trump. They launched Russiagate, a series of fake stories, to hamper Trump’s ability to govern and to get Biden elected. That its senior management has commissioned Ignatius to call on Biden to give up can be understood as a warning.
Ignatius names two points that put Biden’s reelection into jeopardy:
Biden would carry two big liabilities into a 2024 campaign. He would be 82 when he began a second term. According to a recent Associated Press-NORC poll, 77 percent of the public, including 69 percent of Democrats, think he’s too old to be effective for four more years. Biden’s age isn’t just a Fox News trope; it’s been the subject of dinner-table conversations across America this summer.
Because of their concerns about Biden’s age, voters would sensibly focus on his presumptive running mate, Harris. She is less popular than Biden, with a 39.5 percent approval rating, according to polling website FiveThirtyEight. Harris has many laudable qualities, but the simple fact is that she has failed to gain traction in the country or even within her own party.
Biden at least should get rid of Harris who is a bit of a millstone to popularity:
Biden could encourage a more open vice-presidential selection process that could produce a stronger running mate.
Ignatius goes on to ask Biden to step down and to immediately announce that he will not be available for another round:
Biden has never been good at saying no. He should have resisted the choice of Harris, who was a colleague of his beloved son Beau when they were both state attorneys general. He should have blocked then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, which has done considerable damage to the island’s security. He should have stopped his son Hunter from joining the board of a Ukrainian gas company and representing companies in China — and he certainly should have resisted Hunter’s attempts to impress clients by getting Dad on the phone.
Biden has another chance to say no — to himself, this time — by withdrawing from the 2024 race. It might not be in character for Biden, but it would be a wise choice for the country.
I doubt that Joe Biden, or the people around him, will follow that advice. They are too full of themselves to voluntarily make room for others. It will require more intervention, probably from former president Obama, to convince Biden to give up.
Or someone could create some ‘medical emergency’. That should not be too difficult given Biden’s general condition and age.
Anyway. If the Democrats want to keep the presidency, something needs to be done.
Soften yeast in warm water and let stand for 5 to 10 minutes.
Add milk to sugar and salt. Mix and cool to lukewarm.
Add 1 cup flour and mix until smooth. Stir in yeast. Add remaining flour mixing well. Knead dough on floured board until smooth. Put in greased bowl, grease top, cover with towel and let rise in warm room until double.
Punch down dough, and roll into a rectangle about 1/4 inch thick. Brush with the softened butter and spread with mixture of raisins, currants, citron, the 1/4 cup brown sugar and cinnamon. Roll up like a jellyroll and cut into 1/4-inch thick slices. Lay the slices in a buttered 13 x 9 x 2-inch pan. Cover and let rise until doubled.
I’m in my second week of at home suspension for striking a teacher. He locked me in a classroom and attempted to assault me when I wouldn’t consent to his advances on 14 year old me.
The knock on the door was a deputy that served legal papers in our little town. The papers he served me was a summons to court for legal action pertaining to expenses incurred from point there after. I’m being sued by this teacher.
My dad exploded, that jerk has bigger problems than money, just wait I don’t care if he’s in a courtroom. OMG I was saying daddy calm down a lot, I only call my dad “daddy” when I need him to calm down and focus on me so he doesn’t get into trouble or worse.
The day of court arrived and there stands Mr Smug in his neck brace, bandaged nose, and black eye. I am holding my dad by both hands, telling him to look at me, please I don’t want you in jail dad.
It doesn’t help that I’m shaking and I’m sure dad can feel it.
Then the judge starts reading the case notes, Mr Smug is suing one Miss Key for medical expenses incurred during an altercation that resulted in a fractured nose, two chipped teeth, severe painful swelling in the groin, blurry vision, slight concussion, and upper neck pain.
So young lady how do you plead?
I asked the judge if I could present my papers (please don’t laugh we couldn’t afford a lawyer).
He accepts my papers which are the affidavits from the custodian, vice principal and teacher (the witnesses that pulled me off of Mr Smug), the arresting deputy, and the school nurse that treated me before my dad arrived.
His whole demeanor changed. WTH?!
You mean to tell me that you are suing this girl because she kicked your but during an assault?
His lawyer started trying to make an argument about me being malicious, and over bearing about defending myself.
The judge told him to shut up, in what world does a 30 year old man believe he has a case against a 14 year old child that he is attempting to assault?
Lawyer sets in with that is just allegations and hear-say, there’s no proof.
I didn’t ask you lawyer I asked your client because as it stands this is the stupidest case I’ve ever heard of.
In fact it’s so stupid that I’m dismissing it without prejudice, on grounds of incomprehension and competence.
And might I extend my gratitude to you Mr Key for raising an able and resourceful young lady.
After the accident, she was left on the side of the road, no one stopped the car to help her
A severely injured cat was found on the road, accompanied by meowing kittens. A man called for help, unable to afford vet care. Promising assistance, we advised taking the cat to a nearby clinic. Despite financial constraints, we assured the man we’d cover the costs. We directed him to the nearest clinic known to us.
Team members searched for kittens nearby and found three. Unfortunately, the cat couldn’t be saved due to delay, leaving us saddened. Confirming her as the mother, we arranged a burial.
We decided to adopt the motherless kittens and raise them with another cat.
The loss saddened us, but we hoped for a better life for the kittens.
As many of you know, there is a lot of stray paws in Punjab and I try my best to take care of them. When I get off from my job, I go every day to feed these poor hungry cats. On weekends I get a lot of time to help these stray cats and kittens. I go for street feeding everyday. It gives me great pleasure to help these poor animals. I get internal peace. I want to share these moments with you.
My opinion: 5G apps. Apple has yet to produce its own 5G transceiver. Today, it uses Qualcomm. Media reports think it will be 2025. By that time, Huawei will be promoting 5.5G heavily and experimenting with 6G. When Harmony OS can show the same number of apps, it has a good chance of surpassing Apple. In the current generation of mobile phones, Huawei can communicate via satellite, achieve data rates comparable to 6G, and come at a lower price point than Apple. Apple’s annual comfab on its mobile phones revealed nothing exciting, The biggest deal was Apple incorporating USB to charge because the EU forced them to. Everyone is speculating what will Huawei do with photonics, graphene, and quantum chips, the near term poses exciting possibilities.
I bought a home with 16 acres and a week after I moved in while staining the exterior a pickup came up the driveway and a man got out and informed me he would be hunting on my property that fall. I told him that no, no one would be hunting on my property and if I caught anyone doing so I would have them trespassed. He said the pervious owner said he could so he would be hunting. I couldn’t believe the audacity of this guy.
I came down from the ladder and told him it did not matter what anyone had told him before, I now owned the place and he was not going to hunt on my property and was going to get back in his truck and get off of my property immediately. I also told him I had cameras up and I had better not catch him here again or I would take the steps that needed to be taken to ensure he would come to realize how serious I am that my private property was just that, private, and that the previous owner had warned me about him.
I never caught him on any of the trail cameras I put up and never caught him on my property again, but I did catch him on camera leaving deer entrails next to my mailbox which was across the road a couple times during the following deer season, but after than nothing more. The foxes, coyotes, and buzzards took care of his mess in short order too.
No one believe he will alive over the night but he beat all odds and thrive now!
There are some really great answers, but I figure I’ll add mine. I’m going anonymous for my own, personal reasons.
When I was a little kid I had a pretty decent life- upper middle class, two parents, live-in nanny, lots of pets. The works. The problem was, none of it was real. All the money was borrowed, and every piece of luxury was a facade to hide my parents’ crumbling lives.
When I was six my mother got into a car accident. She wound up with nerve damage and went on some pretty heavy duty painkillers- we’ll come back to that. The more immediate effect was that this accident triggered a resurgence of repressed memories from her own childhood. She spent the next year or two in and out of psychiatric care. I don’t know how long, exactly; time is a little blurry.
My most vivid memory of that year is laying awake in my bed, my door cracked, my mother on all fours in the hallway, dragging my father’s safe, and screaming “He’ll never get us again. He’ll never get us again.” This went on for a long time. I pretended I wasn’t there.
When I was seven my father also got into a car accident. He walked away relatively unscathed, but used the accident as cause to start seeing a neurologist. He complained of headaches, which he had apparently always had. He also got a prescription for heavy painkillers. Within months, both my parents were taking enough Dilaudid to kill a horse. Even at seven years old, I could tell that they weren’t as sharp as the used to be.
I have a sister who is much older than I am. Years later, she would confirm my suspicions, the ones that were just starting to form at this time: both my parents were long-time drug addicts, who had only temporarily gotten clean. I didn’t know what to do, so I pretended I wasn’t there.
When I was eight my parents sent me to a private school. Not only were they addicted to narcotics, they were also addicted to the perception of wealth and social status. Sending me to private school furthered this. I didn’t fit in. My grades plummeted.
When my first report cards came back, my father’s belt came out. I’d never been hit before, not more than spanked, anyway. I don’t remember the moment of contact of the belt, or the palms, or the fists. I only ever remember the swing. I only ever remember the feeling of the carpet against my cheeks, wet with tears. I never remember the moment of contact.
Every time I would get beat by my father, my mother’s response would be the same. She would cry, rocking herself to comfort, a few feet away, but watching the whole thing. Sometimes, she would come up to me afterward and say, “Don’t you dare fuck this up for me.” It took a long time before I found out what that meant.
I wonder if I never remember the moments i got hit because I was pretending I wasn’t there.
When I was eleven my father had his major breakdown. We had moved to a new town, a cheaper house. We didn’t have as many cars, and luxuries were becoming fewer and fewer. The facade was crumbling, and the rot inside was starting to show. Both of my parents were high most of the time at that point. I guess part of it was to cope with the stress of their crumbling lives, and part of it was just their nature. It was a cycle, a spiral, and they were coming unhinged.
My father was the first one to snap. One day I woke up to banging and screaming. My parents fought a lot, and I would usually pretend I wasn’t there. Something was different this time, though. I could tell. I went out of my room to see what was happening, and the next moment are a blur. I don’t know if, in the excitement, I failed to form memories for a minute, or if I’ve blocked something out entirely.
What I do remember starts shortly after leaving my room. My mother and I are running down the stairs, each carrying as many guns as we can. My father was running close behind us, screaming, naked. He wanted to kill us. This I remember. He tried to get to his guns, but we got to them first. This I remember. I have never been so scared in my life. This I remember.
He was an avid gun collector, despite a history of drug abuse and instability. For obvious reasons, I am an avid supporter of strict gun control legislation.
Sometimes I think of the boulder scene from Indiana Jones. That’s exactly what it felt like, but instead of treasure, we were running away with guns. Instead of a boulder, it was a doped-up maniac who wanted to kill my mother and me.
We ran outside, pulling things down behind us however we could without dropping the guns. We managed to get to my mother’s car and lock the guns inside. We knew it wouldn’t stop him, but it slowed him down. That’s all we needed. The cops showed up shortly after we got the guns in the car. He struggled, but at least half a dozen cars were there. He had no chance. That was the day I watched the cops take my father away.
I don’t remember the next days very well. I tried to pretend I wasn’t there.
When I was fourteen I went to visit my father. They were always supervised visits, so my mother was there as well. On the way out, she told me to wait in the car, and they stayed back in the entryway for a couple minutes. I started to hear raised voices, then saw my mother try to leave. I saw my father grab her by the arm, twist it behind her back, and pin her against the garage door.
I didn’t know what to do, so I did what I wanted.
I got out of the car, and ran over to the two of them. I yelled at my father. It was the first time I really yelled, instead of screaming. It was a terrifying noise. Every time I have to yell, I still think about that moment. I don’t yell much.
He didn’t respond to the noise, so I did the next logical thing.
I hit him.
I hit him again.
And again.
And again.
I pressed my forearm into his neck and made clear, in no uncertain terms, that he had better never hurt either of us again. I got into the car, and my mother and I left.
That was the day I didn’t pretend I wasn’t there.
When I was fifteen my mother started drinking. She had been clean for a few years, since my father got taken away, but it got really bad, really quickly. She had trouble holding down jobs, kept driving drunk and getting into car accidents. She broke a bunch of bones, lost a bunch of weight. She was killing herself.
We had no money, no food. She could hold a job for maybe a week or two. Any cash she had went into cheap alcohol. I used to look for change on the street. When I had enough, I’d go to the gas station and get a gallon of kerosene for our furnace. That got harder when it started snowing. We went without heat a lot. I stayed over at friends’ places as much as possible. Their parents would let me eat family meals with them. Nobody asked questions. Nobody had to. By January of that year I was stealing money for food. I made a little extra cash by selling small amounts of drugs, but it wasn’t enough to make a living.
In February, my mother got drunker than I’d ever seen her. She kept telling me she wished I was never born, that I was a mistake. She told me why she decided to have a child. My father was planning on a divorce. So she sabotaged the birth control. I was her tool. Now I understood why she was always so upset that I would fuck it all up for her.
After a while, words weren’t enough. She picked up a knife, and tried to stab me in the neck. I was so shocked that I almost didn’t get out of the way in time, but she was very drunk, and I was 15 and spry. I grabbed her by the wrist, took the knife from her, and locked myself in the bathroom until I figured out what to do.
I wanted to pretend I wasn’t there, but I couldn’t.
Instead, I called the cops, and, for the second time in my life, I watched them take away one of my parents.
I was alone, and I had no idea what to do.
I called my father.
When I was sixteen I was living with my father. He had cleaned up, sort of. He was at least functional. We lived with his girlfriend in a huge house in a rich neighborhood. He had found his way back into the glamour. My room was, quite literally, a large closet under the stairs. I read Harry Potter multiple times that year. It made me feel a little better.
Things were generally okay between my father and I at that point. At least, I smoothed things along. He was pathological liar, and used every chance he had to manipulate people. That never changed. But… it was better than foster care, it was better than being homeless. We moved around a lot back then. I think six moves in two years. It made it hard to make friends, but I was biding my time. I knew I’d get through it.
Then I was raped.
Back then, I didn’t think men could be raped, at least not by women. It took a long time for me to call it what it was. In fact, it wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I could really say it. I was raped. Over, and over. The difficulty in calling it rape was that 1) I was so hung up on traditional gender roles at that age, and didn’t know better, and 2) that this happened inside of a relationship. I was in an abusive relationship, and I had no idea. I had no idea that it was wrong.
I thought that I was what was wrong.
Whenever it was happening, I would just close my eyes and pretend I wasn’t there.
Then, one day, I snapped.
When I was twenty I got so tired of pretending. I got so tired of acting like I wasn’t being hurt. I got so tired of letting people have power over me. So I stopped it all.
One by one, ended every abusive relationship.
I called my partner. I told her I never wanted to see her again. I still didn’t call what she did rape at that point, but I knew it was wrong. I knew I was done with it.
I called my mother. I told her I never wanted to see her again. We had tried to repair our relationship after she tried to kill me, but it never really worked. She never could see that she did anything wrong. It was always about how it affected her life. She’s not my responsibility.
I called my father. I told him I never wanted to see him again. Living with him for the two years I needed before I was eighteen was tolerable, but only because I would always pretend I wasn’t there. It was harder to leave him, because I don’t think he’s a bad person. I think he’s just profoundly narcissistic, unable to control himself, and incredibly dangerous to all those around him. In the two years I was living with him, he almost shot me again, but I talked him down. I knew, no matter what his intentions were, I would never be safe with him in my life.
Out of all of these, I do miss my father. Or more accurately, I desperately miss the person he could have been.
That was when I stopped pretending.
I would never again pretend I wasn’t there, because now I really wasn’t.
Leaving was the best, and hardest, thing I have ever done in my life. Beyond every single nightmare moment- leaving was the hardest.
But I’m so glad I did.
When I was twenty one I started my first semester of graduate school. Five and a half years later, and I’m doing really well. I’m in therapy, and have been for a few years. It really helps, but there’s so much left to work through. I have good friends, healthy relationships, and a satisfying life. I’m defending my doctoral dissertation in three weeks, and then starting a job that I’m really excited for. I managed to get my life on a really good track, and I’m immensely thankful.
Leaving was so incredibly, incredibly hard, but it was so good for me.
I don’t have to pretend I’m not there anymore.
Now I’m here.
THIS HITS HARD!!! OLIVER ANTHONY – COBWEBS AND COCAINE (REACTION)
You guys are great. I love your reactions… They seem real to me so if they’re not you’re doing a great job if they are you’re doing a great job. Oliver…. Mr. Christopher Anthony is a blessing to us all…. Unexpected…. Breath of fresh air… With divine timing. We all need more people like Oliver… Mr. Christopher Anthony. We are All just as great as he is…. He is a blessing because he created a spark worldwide . His message is for all …
The Dutch sucked up to the U.S. and refuse to sell their EU.V machines to China. A fatal mistake. China did it with other technology that is cheaper, better and faster. Now the Dutch EUV machines will lose not only Chinese business but businesses across the world. It will go bankrupt in no time or at least until the U.S. stop paying billions of subsidies to them. And if and when the U.S. stop the Dutch company ought to sue the U.S. for trillions of dollars.
What can the US do? If it is smart it change a president and forget containing China. But I suspect it is not smart enough. It will hurt the US to no end by killing US industry one by one.
Opera Singer Reacts to Dio – The Last In Line
Dio wasn’t just a once in a lifetime vocalist… He was a once in a century talent.
The BRICS alliance inducted six new countries into the bloc at the 15th summit in Johannesburg last month. Out of the six countries, five are oil-producing nations that export millions of barrels across the globe every year. The six countries joining BRICS are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Iran, and Ethiopia, while Argentina is the only non-oil-producing country.
There’s a high risk that Saudi Arabia and the UAE might start accepting local currencies for oil and ditch the U.S. dollar.
The new mission of BRICS is to end reliance on the U.S. dollar and promote local currencies for global trade. Therefore, chances are high that Saudi Arabia might consider accepting local currencies as payment for oil to reduce its dependency on the U.S. dollar.
BRICS is looking to control the oil markets, and inducting Saudi Arabia was the best choice. But what could happen to the U.S. dollar if Saudi Arabia accepts local currencies to settle oil and gas payments.
First and foremost, the weakening of the U.S. dollar would begin if Saudi Arabia accepted local currencies for oil trade. If Saudi Arabia demands that other countries pay in local currencies only, then demand for the U.S. dollar would dip drastically. The move could lead to the dollar facing a depreciation in the international forex and currency markets. A weak dollar would make imported goods more expensive in the United States and potentially impact the overall U.S. economy.
Secondly, other nations will begin to diversify their reserves and accumulate other currencies apart from the U.S. dollar. The development would increase demand for other local currencies and put them in direct competition with the dollar. Central Banks around the world will keep reserves of all currencies and commodities like gold, making the USD dip.
BREAKING NEWS: Oprah Winfrey INVESTIGATED For Maui Fires!
That woman needs to be investigated for much more egregious kind that involve the kiddies. There are some serious questions here. Something suggests some profit motives by the mega-wealthy.
I had a daughter. Her mother became pregnant and we moved into a house together. Six months later my daughter was born. Mom had four children from another marriage and made an effort to remind the older children she was their half-sibling. When she was two, the older siblings went from full time with us to half the time with their dad. When she was five, I started to notice mother’s subtle abuses through passive aggression and blame: having my daughter’s hair develop tangles and using a comb to brush, blaming the five-year-old for the tangled hair, and then chopping her hair off. This happened three times by the time she was five years old — and her mom was a hairdresser.
I filed for divorce and custody was joint. My daughter looked a lot like me. So it was a shocker when paternity was challenged. Police knocked on my door and showed me a court order. Mom waited across the street with her ex-husband while a social worker had to pull my daughter away screaming and begging to stay. The social worker kept apologizing and let my daughter come running back when my daughter started to have an asthma attack. After about 20 minutes, a police sergeant came up to the front porch where I was with my daughter, who had started to calm down and her breathing was under control at this point. He just looked at me and said, “I’m sorry,” then walked back to the curb. He spoke to the other two officers, who got in their cars and left. Then he walked across the street and talked to my wife and her ex.
After a few minutes he handcuffed her ex-husband, put him in his cruiser, and left. Mom walked across the street and stood at the curb. I told my daughter that everything was going to be all right, that I’d see her soon, that I loved her and I was so proud of her. I promised her I’d see her soon. Mom told her she’d see me the next week as she took her hand, then they drove off. I haven’t seen her since. I decided a long time ago I was not going to fight it. The divorce court changed the case to divorce without children and it was over.
I haven’t heard anything and have no rights to inquire about how my daughter is doing. She is 8 now and likely can’t remember what I look like, and in a few more years she’ll barely remember me at all. Better for her that I fade away than to risk more traumatic incidents. I miss all of the kids, my daughter and her siblings. I was their father, and now I’m not.
I don’t think I will ever stop hurting.
First Time Hearing Oliver Anthony – “90 Some Chevy” Reaction | Asia and BJ
This guy is just GOLDEN… every. single. song. He could cash out now and put to shame just about any country act out there. 100% pure talent and soul.
Fresh out of the US Navy, I went to work for Burger King as an assistant manager for $140 a week. Six months later, BK raised the starting pay to $150 a week. I asked my boss to raise me to at least the same rate, but he said no, I had to wait for my annual review. I said: You’re going to hire somebody off the street with zero experience and pay them $10 a week more than me with six months of experience? He said yes. I said no. I went across the street to McDonald’s for $175 a week.
Several years later, I was studying accounting to become a CPA and took a job in January with a small CPA firm for $4 an hour. At the end of tax season, Friday, April 15, he called me into the office and said he didn’t need me anymore, the busy time was over. I was shocked. The following Monday, I called him and said I had a wife and child to support, could he at least pay me two weeks severance pay? He said he would pay me one week. I started with another small CPA firm on Wednesday at $5 an hour. So I got a 25% raise AND I was paid 5 days for my 2 days without work.
By the way, a classmate of mine went to work for Touche Ross, one of the Big Eight Accounting Firms, in July 1979. He scored Number One on the national CPA Exam, out of 42,000 participants. He asked for a raise, they said he had to wait for his annual review. He went across the street to Price Waterhouse with a big raise. Some employers are just STUPID !
Give Huawei whatever it needs and then let it compete against the Iphone 15
On one hand you throttle Huawei with every ban on earth and bullying everyone you know of and at the same time you preach about free trade to the whole world
How can you have a fair assessment of which model is better?
This was originally in my drafts because I expected the Iphone 15 to be vastly superior to the Mate 60 Pro
Instead turns out the Mate 60 Pro held its own against the Iphone 15 which was deemed as “Non Innovative” by Western Experts
In my humble opinion, I don’t think so. The population would have declined with the rapid pace of the urbanization and modernization, even if without this One Child Policy. Please come to think about it, Japan, Korea and ROC on Taiwan all witness the declining of the population growth, but without such a drastic social engineering imposing on the people.
It’s quite natural that population would plummet with the transition from an agricultural society to an industrial and urban society. The modern mindsets and lifestyles, the improving health and education standards, the higher cost of having children and raising them up could contribute to the low expectancy among people to have more children.
Chinese people are also people, who have human agencies and vitalities. Chinese people could and would adapt to these changes without having to undergo this basic state policy for few decades. As a matter of the fact, there was a county, Yicheng, which was once a pilot experimenting place, where the policy of two children in a family was implemented from 1985–2015, however, many folks from there didn’t choose to have more children.
Many answers here jump in and are quick to discredit Sun Tzu.
Have you actually read the book, like, really read the whole book?
It’s not a long book. It’s got 7,573 Chinese characters. In comparison, my graduation paper in Chinese University was 20,000 Characters.
Why does the Art of War say to never put your enemy in a corner?
“Really? Did Sun Tzu write that? Ha! How shallow and obviously wrong! What an overrated fraud!”
Urgh….
Had you read it thoroughly, other than seeing this question on Quora and enters “triggered” mode and discredit Art of War, you’d realize why he said that.
I cannot find the exact quote for “Never put your enemy in a corner”, because I have not read the English version, nor would I ever be interested to do that. But here is the Chinese version of, what I assume to be where the idea come from:
Therefore, the art of war lies in: never face a high mountain, never retreat from a down hill, never follow an enemy army faking defeat, never attack an elite enemy army, never bite a shark-bait, never chase after a retreating enemy army, leave opening for a surrounded enemy army, never pressure a desperate enemyarmy. This is the art of war. The Art of War by Sun Tzu, Chapter Army Conflict
Whoever says Sun Tzu is wrong because surrounding enemy happens all the time in reality, it’s a good strategy; or enemy can always surrender, etc., has evidently not read the book at all, or had interpreted it wrong.
First of all, he never said, you shouldn’t surround an enemy force. He said, surround them, but never completely. Leave a small opening for them.
If you have watched Game of Thrones: Battle of the Bastards, you’ll see why this makes sense. Althought it was fictional, I’m sure good medieval European strategists would have agreed with Sun Tzu, if they had read about it.
If you surround an army completely, even the most cowards will forget about escape, unite and fight you with all they’ve got. But if there is a chance to get out, even the bravest will try to squeeze through that hole and flee.
Would you rather fight a united army? Or a fleeing one? This is a no-brainer.
Why should you never pressure a desperate enemy?
First, what is a “desperate enemy”?
Clearly, you could physically surround an enemy army. But if peaceful surrender is on the table, they are hardly “desperate”, or “cornered” as the question put it.
And that is why most formal armies in the world would shout: “Lay down your arms and we guarantee your safety” when they had the enemy surrounded.
Imagine if you shout: “Stop struggling! You have nowhere to go! Stay where you are and we will come to kill you all, piss in your skull, rape your women, and enslave your children!” instead. The surrounded will no doubt fight you to their last breath, and will rejoice for every bullet they managed to put inside one of you, even at the cost of ten of their lives.
That is when you create a “desperate and cornered” enemy.
Sun Tsu’s book does not only focus on winning a battle, it focuses on winning a war. In the book, you’ll find plenty of sentences like, avoid physical conflict if possible, do not fight unnecessary battles, etc. He is trying to make you understand how casualties are costly, and you must avoid it.
This particular argument here is coherent with that idea. An absolutely “cornered” enemy will fight you and possibly injure and even kill your soldiers, no matter how onesidedly stronger your troops are. It will always lower your morale, and put a financial burden on your country. That doesn’t help you win a war.
Is it really so wrong?
Read this book before you comment on it, seriously, guys. You do realize there are Chinese speakers who can read English and prove you wrong with credible sources, right?
The book Art of War is not outrageously long, or even obscure. Most of the language is quite simple and easy to understand.
The U.S. has established a technical team to study the Huawei’s Kirin 9000S chip!
“The Chinese chip is too advanced for the Americans.”
I have spent the bulk of my adult life working at car dealerships, so I have heard a ton of complaints, especially since I was the fix-it person at some of those dealerships.
One day one of the salesmen came up to me to warn about what was walking up to the door.
His customer had been calling his cell phone for days about how pissed off he was that he sold him a lemon. That was all the guy would say or text, never saying what the problem was.
So he gets directed to me of course.
He starts complaing that he just purchased his car a week and a half ago and that the other day an idiot light came on on the dashboard, he was close to home and the car stalled out as he got to his driveway so he slammed on the brakes and had to pay for a tow truck to tow it into his driveway.
I asked him if the tow truck driver looked at anything in the car to see why it stalled and told me no, he only paid him to put it in the driveway and that we will be reimbursing him for that, the days of having a rental car, free repair for the issue and give him at least 1 year of free oil changes.
I went onto computer and googled warning indicator lights for his vehicle and asked him to show me which light was on. He pointed at the indicator light of a gas pump. Yup folks, he ran out of gas.
I asked him how many times he got gas in his car in the week and a half he had it, thinking maybe there was a leak. His honest to god answer was “Why should I have to put gas in my car, I just got it and only drive miles to and from work”
It took just about everything in me not to bust out laughing in face, but then a woman who overheard everything said “and they think us women are stupid”, well that was where none of us could hold it in anymore and just about every employee and other customers busted out laughing.
After finally calming down, I told him I’d be more than happy to have a runner go over to put some gas in the car so he can get to a station, however told him that he needed to pay for it.
He was not happy and needless to say never came back for anything and left a bad review, but all who read the review commented on how it was his fault for being stupid and not getting gas.
Bobby Driscoll was the original voice of Peter Pan and a successful child actor. He was one of the first people signed into a contract with Disney and starred in many successful films for both MGM and Disney.
Known as Disney’s sweat heart, Bobby Driscoll was riding high on his fame. That was all to change once Boddy became a teenager and Disney dropped him.
Up until he got the booth he was one of Disney’s favourite stars, with a salary 1,700 a week. That all changed once puberty set in and he developed a bad case of acne, forcing Disney to drop him
When he was dropped from Disney, his parents placed him in an ordinary school, but the kids rejected him and started to bully him for his roles in movies. This had a big effect on him so he turned to drugs.
Bobby’s career struggled to take off, and he could only land minor roles in TV series. His drug use got worse, and he was arrested in 1956. He had another run in with the law when he was charged with assault with a deadly weapon, and by 1962, he was unable to land any new roles.
He moved to New York to try and land roles on Broadway, but that didn’t work out for him. He gave his last performance in a film called Dirt in 1965.
Three years, later two kids playing in an abandoned Tenement block in New York stumbled upon the 31-year-old’s decaying body lying in a cot with two beer bottles next to him and religious pamphlets scattered around the cot.
Since the body had no identification and police couldn’t identify him he was buried in an unmarked pauper grave. It wasn’t until a year later when Bobby’s mother was trying to get in contact with her son that she discovered that her he had died.
His death wasn’t reported until 1971 when a reporter was researching the whereabouts of the young film star, and learned of his death. Although his name is on his father’s tombstone, his body remains in the pauper’s grave.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee | Sitting Bull meets Colonel Miles
Movie: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (2007)
He’s got a point. The Crow tribe hated Sitting Bull and his tribe – Lakota Sioux – for continuously raiding them and aggression towards them. They were actually devastated by the news of the fate of 7th Cavalry. When the Lakota Sioux gave up, the Crow were relieved that they could sleep soundly at night.
Apple Execs have RUSHED to Beijing to reassure them that APPLE IS NOT RELOCATING ANYWHERE and proposes to expand operations in China
Guess what?
China said “No Need. Thanks”
That is CHINA for you
All these MSM Propaganda and all these “Economic Collapses”
Yet if China announces a small ban, the reaction is worth a $ 200 Billion burn
Sure Apple may recover but that panic and impact – THAT’S THE SIGN OF THE DRAGON AND IT’S MIGHT
Now. Imagine China does a scorched earth and bans all SC companies
China may lose 10 years
US Companies will lose at least $ 1.7 Trillion plus a Tech domino that could hit US Banks and Institutions
China is a patient nation but it’s patience is slowly wearing thin
Xi skipping G20
The Mate 60
The Iphone decision
The Decision to rescind Japanese Seafood Imports
The Decision to ban the Iphone for Government officials
It is even likely Xi will allow Country Garden and Real Estate Companies to refuse to pay their debt and default on their bonds completely and keep doing business in China
After all i doubt Country Garden sells homes in Cook County Chicago
Heres another look at how STRONG CHINA IS
Russian Girl First Time Hearing Judy Garland-Over The Rainbow!
It was a sunny day. I was going to my class. Suddenly I saw a lot of people gathered at one place. I stopped my bike and saw a cow badly injured with her broken leg. She was trying hard to get up.
I just couldn’t take it!
I called a tempo and took the cow to the hospital.
There,
Doctor: it will take around 5000 rs to treat her(a big deal for a 17 year kid)
Me: I will arrange the money you start her operation.
I rushed to my home broke my piggybank and gave money to the doctor
i just saw how calmly the cow was walking after treatment i smiled and got away
after 6 days!
I was going by the same road and suddenly I lost my balance and fell from my bike
I felt like someone took me in hands and put me on road
I got no injury!
when I opened my eyes I had fallen on the road.
I saw the same cow looking at me with the bandages still on her!
I felt she saved me. I was on the 7th sky feeling the feel of karma!
Sorry for the grammatical mistakes if any!
so I made this tag line of my life!
karma right
future bright 😉
What matters is how we achieve things Bedazzled
Much evil that is generated in the world is because of the conviction that the end justifies the means.
I was in a commercial for Campbell’s Chunky Soup about 10 or 11 years ago. It was a massive advertising effort by Campbell’s and was constantly on TV. I was in a couple shots and one was the final shot where there was an extreme close-up of me taking a bite of the “soup”.
When we were filming, there was a person that was “pre-loading” spoonfuls of soup for me to “eat”. They would take a few cans of the soup and disect all the contents and reassemble them in “perfect” spoonfuls. They would bring one up to me every take, and I had to pretend to enjoy it. I had to hold the bowl in an awkward angle, and the soup in the bowl was also carefully arranged.
Little do the viewers know that there was a big, white, spit bucket 🪣, that I would chew, smile, look into the wildernerness….then spit it out.
They had me do no less than 20 takes. Each spoonful was heaping and if I had eaten them, i would have destroyed probably 4 full cans of the soup.
I was game to do anything pretty much for what they were paying me, and said that I would eat it, but they said not to do it. Fair enough.
I was on duty and this 55 year old lady was admitted in ICU. She had breast cancer spread to her lungs and was literally struggling for breath. I went to check on her, as her saturation was dropping. There was nothing much I could do. After asking the nurse to give her some medicines, I turned to leave.
That was when I slipped and fell, as there was a little water on the floor, probably from a leaking iv fluid bottle. The lady, while struggling for her breath, asked me:
‘Son, are you all right?’
You may call it touching rather than shocking. Whatever, it was indeed shocking to me that even gasping for the last breath can not stop a human being from caring for someone else.
I saw an answer for this when the person being ‘lit up’ got a parabolic or dish mirror and affixed it so the light was collected and shone back to the bedroom of the owner of the light. When they asked her to turn off the light, she was able to explain it was their light and they could turn it off.
I just loved that answer!
Pennsylvania Dutch Apple Butter
Pennsylvania Dutch Apple Butter
Ingredients
3 quarts sweet cider
8 pounds ripe, well-flavored apples
2 1/2 cups brown sugar, firmly packed
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon allspice
2 teaspoons cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
Instructions
Cook cider over high heat, uncovered, about 30 minutes or until it is reduced to half.
Wash, quarter and core unpeeled apples. Add to cider, and cook over low heat until very tender. Stir frequently. Work apple mixture through a sieve, returning the puree to the kettle. Stir in sugar, all the spices, and salt. Cook over very low heat, stirring almost continuously, until mixture thickens.
During my senior year in High School, I was blossoming into a fine young man. I was a cultural icon of the time. I wore a “choke collar” around my neck, puffy sleeved and colorful nylon shirt, a big colorful belt buckle, and bell bottom jeans.
I had longish hair to my shoulders. Parted in the middle up top. It was light brown in color. Oh those were the days…
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I cruised around in my GTO (that I affectionately referred to as “the goat”) and alternated between Senior year in High school and my work life.
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Evenings were spent “hanging out”, going to “keggers” in the “bony dumps” (old abandoned strip mined areas) and popping “white crosses” (tiny white amphetamine pills used for weight reduction. We used to take four at a time.) and drinking beer (Miller in Pony bottles).
The “white cross” pills were tiny, tiny white wafers with a cross on one side. We popped them and got “the rush”, and then buzzed, we smoked the marijuana, and drank the beer while we cruised the roads though the countryside.
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Typically, we kept the trunk filled with ice, and the beer would be placed in the trunk to keep them cool. You would be amazed how long the ice would last, too. Easily into the middle of the next day.
Then we would fill up the trunk with more ice for the night’s activities.
Two dollars would fill up the gas tank.
I lived in the countryside. My city cousins spent far more time in bars and clubs, but that wasn’t really possible for me at the time. It wasn’t until I was older, that I started to frequent clubs and bars, and that type of lifestyle.
This falls well into my “room theory” of life. You live in one room, and then enter another room, and you life becomes a long series of rooms. Each one different from the rest. This “room” was my “Senior Year in High School prior to College” room. And come September, I entered my “Freshman year in college” room. New friends. New lifestyle. New place, and new everything.
What “room” are you in now, and what does your next “room” gonna look like?
Dazed and Confused (1993) | *First Time Watching* | Movie Reaction
There was a case in Prince Edward Island about 15 years ago where a lady was being sued because part of her house was on her neighbour’s property.
So she hired a surveyor – who told her her house was partly on her neighbour’s property.
So she didn’t pay him. The surveyor sued. He won. The court noted that when you hire an expert, you pay for their expertise and their informed opinion, not for the result you want.
But let me tell you something else. There was a mall in Northern Ontario. Three engineers over a period of thirty years were hired to investigate water leaks. They all said the water leaks were the result of the waterproofing being done improperly but the structure of the building was fine. A month after the third engineer pronounced the building “structurally sound”, part of it collapsed catastrophically, killing two people. The inquiry noted that the engineer had equipment to ultrasonically examine the steel beams, but didn’t use it. The forensic engineers hired after the collapse noted the steel connection that failed was 89% corroded (meaning the connection was 10 times stronger than it needed to be, but still failed). I’m assuming that’s the kind of inspection you were looking for.
America Finally Did It, The Fuse Has Been Lit!
I’m American and I’m disgusted with the corporate control of our domestic and foreign policies.
I will share with you one of the most moving acts of compassion I’ve witnessed.
When my youngest son, Luke, was 10 years old, he played football on a local rec-league team. One evening his team played against one of the big rival teams from a neighboring town. I was surprised at how many people were at this game. After all, these were young children playing.
At a crucial time in the game, my son got the football and was running for a touchdown. He zigged and zagged, dodging and evading players on the opposing team. His teammates did a remarkable job blocking, as well. Finally, there was only one opponent between my son and a touchdown, and one of Luke’s teammates (Mario) made a hard block, knocking the opposing player to the ground.
There was now nothing between the goal and my son, who ran all out, then, slowed, stopped, turned around, ran back to the boy writhing on the ground, and took a knee.
The crowd went wild. Spectators on my son’s team hurled horrific insults at my young son. People I had known for years said the most hateful things, glaring at my son, threatening him, shooting daggers at me.
I ran down onto the field to be with Luke. As I ran down the bleachers, people said hateful things to me about my son.
When I arrived at Lukes’ side, before I could ask if he was okay, Luke looked up at me and said, “Dad, I had to do it. I had to come back.”
“Okay,” I said.
Luke continued, “Mario hit that kid hard. Real hard. When he hit him, I heard a bone snap. I heard it! I knew he was hurt bad, and I knew if I scored, it would take more time for anyone to notice him, and he would be hurting in all that time.”
I nodded my head. I could barely see at this point, my eyes welling with tears, proud of my son.
Luke continued, “And I remembered that you always teach us that being a good sport is about more than winning, so I stopped and came back.”
He looked at me, his eyes wondering how I would react. I had never been prouder of him. I hugged him and told him how proud I was.
Luke was correct — the boy suffered a broken leg. He had to go to hospital.
This is one of the finest acts of compassion I ever witnessed. And a valuable lesson for me.
Have they threatened anyone? The way I see it US and the former colonials are scary! They come to South China Sea from as far away as 10 thousand miles away to pick a fight with China. I did not hear or see China travelling to English Channel or Florida coast to threaten the U.S.! Did you? Last I check And it is NATO wanting to expand to Asia not CCP expanding to Europe or North America!
So who is scary? To us you are scary. It wasn’t that long ago that the British force fed 100 million Chinese to get addicted to Opium and burn down the imperial palace in Beijing and stole Hong Kong for 156 years! And unsatisfied it cohort with the evil US to pay hoodlums an unemployed to pretend to protest for CNN as props. The U.S. and UK orchestrated a protest! The west is scary not China. You guys are spoiling for a fight. China just wants to do business?
What is so scary about a society wanting to do well for its people. Did they asked the world to be like them and adopt their Socialism with Chinese characteristics. They did not. They went further! The says that every nation should adopt what they see as best for them.
They think that Chinese political system may not be suitable for any nation. And that it is not exportable. The U.S. murdered 3 million to stop communism. The U.S. also murdered another 3 million in Iraq to bring democracy to them. And another 2 million to stop Talibanism in Afghanistan! Don’t you think US behaviour is more scary! I thinks so. And so does 87% of the world.
Where do you get “half” the world? You dream it up? You simply follow some lies from the media? No more than 5% of the world disagree with China. 87% disagree with the U.S. outright!
You know what us scary. You! Yes if there are 5% of the world thinking like you. So wrong, so ignorant and so naive. That is very scary!
My husband and his first wife went from Chicago to New York for a long weekend.
As they waited to cross a busy street, they heard two businessmen behind them discuss how they were going to get the better of someone they were doing a deal with—in St. Louis.
Their ears pricked up because his first wife was from St. Louis originally.
As they walked along the next street, they were able to hear and identify enough details to realize that these two men were going to trick her uncle by not disclosing certain information.
When they got to the hotel, his wife called her uncle—who verified that indeed he was in the middle of doing a deal with these two guys in New York!
So no deal happened then!
What are the chances?
China Warns US on Its Ridiculous Plan to Make 150 Nations Leave Belt and Road Initiative!
On the 9th of June 2021, USA introduced a bill, which passed by 68 votes to 32, known officially as the “US Innovation and Competition Act”. In Washington it is colloquially known simply as the “anti-China bill”. Part of USA’s Anti-China bill, USA has allocated over $300 Million every year, for 3 years, to media trash China.
I just WISH USA would stop their warmongering ways, and join China in uniting the World.
I was struggling for over a year looking for steady work. I finally landed a job unloading trailers at UPS. Contrary to popular belief, they didn’t pay very well.
Growing up, I hung out with some guys whose parents had money. This instilled a sense of undeserved entitlement and pretentiousness in me. Looking down on people who worked these, “sh*t jobs.”
Anyways, I had been down on my luck for a bit in more aspects than one, and one day after a long evening of working my tail off I went to a local McDonald’s (McDonald’s employees being one of those jobs/people I’d mocked). After pulling into the drive-thru I checked my bank account. $3.47. I was so, so hungry. I ordered a few things off of the dollar menu, and proceeded to pull up to the window. Thinking I kept the order minimal, I assumed I had enough. The lady there ran one card, declined. Now, somewhat frantic, I pulled my credit card out. Declined. I, embarrassed as all get out, asked the lady if she could take some things off of my order for me. She paused and looked at me for a moment. I don’t know if she could hear the despair in my voice or saw it in my body language, but she looked around before dropping those items back in the bag with a little extra and handed it right back to me. She wished me a good rest of my evening with a quiet smile.
I told her she didn’t have to do that, but she happily insisted. I thanked her as I pulled away from the window. I pulled out of the parking lot, and immediately broke down crying. An uncontrollable sobbing that I’d never felt before. After all of these years of frowning upon people like this lady, she was the one to help me when I just needed something to eat.
McDonald’s lady, wherever you may be, your small act of kindness changed my life.
The global shift away from the US dollar has increased tenfold since February 2022 compared to the previous 15 years, Stephen Jen, the CEO of Eurizon SLJ Capital Limited, told Die Welt on Thursday.
According to the former International Monetary Fund and Morgan Stanley economist, the majority of analysts are missing the trend because they evaluate the nominal value of central banks’ dollar holdings on the basis of data released by the IMF.
“However, if we take into account changes in the value of the dollar, then, according to our calculations, we’ll see that the dollar share in foreign reserves has lost about 11% since 2016,” Jen explained.
He argued that Washington’s decision to freeze Russia’s dollar reserves after the launch of Moscow’s military operation in Ukraen had been the decisive event.
“This has fueled fear and anxiety in Beijing, but also in other emerging countries,” he said, adding that holding reserves in US dollars had been always considered absolutely safe until the drastic move.
Jen explained that the BRICS countries had been increasingly focused on alternatives to the greenback.
According to the economist, since the BRICS group of emerging economies – which presently comprises Russia, Brazil, India, China, and South Africa, but is due to add six new members next year – the economic power of the union has multiplied. Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Argentina, Egypt and Ethiopia will officially join the group in January 2024.
James Gandolfini’s Best Scene from The Sopranos
The range of emotions showcased here is amazing; anger, disgust, fear, sadness, joy, contempt, and lil’ compassion, all within three minutes. A master class for any actor.
Chinese Innovation Foils U.S. Tech War — Clifford A. Kiracofe
Washington calculated that it could restrain China’s technology advancement and thereby stay ahead of the China. However, it appears that this calculation was mistaken.
China’s rapid advances in technology will inevitably foil the United States-led Western technology war against China. Huawei unveiled its stunning new high tech Mate60 cell phone and timed the announcement with the visit of U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. Sending a message?
The Donald Trump administration launched an intensive trade war and a tech war against China. President Joe Biden continued Trump’s policies and ratcheted them up to a new level. Rather than engage in mutually beneficial trade relations and scientific and technological cooperation, Washington openly admits it seeks to contain and suppress China’s economic growth and development.
Playing this zero-sum game is a dead end for the United States. China is very well equipped in the pursuit of technological innovation. Fundamental to China’s tech progress is the human factor. For example, it is no secret that China every year produces far more STEM (Science-Technology-Engineering-Math) students than does the U.S.
Tech war is economic war
Export controls and restrictions on technology development are nothing new in international commerce. During its colonial period, the North American colonies faced an array of trade restrictions and technology restrictions imposed by the British Empire. These were designed to prevent the colonies from becoming rivals to British manufactures. They also were a factor leading to the American Revolution and War of Independence.
In World War I, the United Kingdom enacted a “Trading with the Enemy Act” which created an export control regime deigned to deny Germany war related imports. After the U.S. entered the war, Congress passed its own Trading with the Enemy Act modeled on the British legislation. These wartime legislative measures were applied again during World War II.
After World War II, export controls on a multilateral basis were created by the West to restrict various exports to the Soviet Union and Communist bloc. The Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (COCOM) was created at the beginning of the Cold War. The U.S. thus coordinates, in turn, with NATO allies, Australia, and Japan to restrict the export of sensitive technologies to designated countries.
So the Western use of export controls for the purposes of economic warfare is nothing new. But the revival of this mechanism intensively directed specifically against China is a key feature of the U.S.-led New Cold War. The technological encirclement and blockade of China, however, is not sustainable.
Washington miscalculates
Washington calculates that it could restrain China’s technology advancement and thereby stay ahead of the China. However, it appears that this calculation was mistaken.
Logically, because China’s population is four times larger than that of the United States, there would at some point be a larger pool of STEM trained specialists in China than in the U.S. This is so because of the continuous upgrading of higher education in China and the massive commitment to research and development.
Several years ago, Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. released a study on the STEM issue. The university’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology reported that in 2000 the U.S. issued twice as many doctorates in STEM field as did China. But in 2007, China began outpacing U.S. universities. The report assessed that by 2025 China would produce twice as many STEM Ph.D. graduates.
Because the U.S. cannot compete with its own population base, Washington seeks to import specialists in STEM fields from India as one stop gap measure.
But Chinese innovation is very dynamic and advanced with great future potential. Therefore, it should have been no surprise that China would develop the necessary technology for state-of-the-art semiconductors. This national objective combines the growing pool of high-tech specialists with a large pool of skilled labor together with billions of yuan for investment.
It was not difficult to foresee that China, through innovation and targeted investment, would be able over time to produce the machines and industrial processes to fabricate advanced state-of-the-art semiconductors. This applies to Chinese semiconductor design capability as well.
Why did the Washington miscalculate?
An inter-agency task force on the Chinese semiconductor issue would have concluded that the attempt to block and limit Chinese advances is not sustainable and thus would fail.
Some critics of the administration point to the lack of competence in President Biden’s foreign policy team. They say that Secretary of State Tony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan are just not up to their jobs.
Be that as it may, it is possible that racial prejudice affects Washington’s assessments. There was a time after World War II when it was common to look down on “cheap” Japanese goods. But Japanese success in electronics and auto manufacture by the 1980s showed another story.
Anyone from the U.S., a tourist or an official who visits China’s National Museum in Beijing will see exhibits displaying many centuries of Chinese skill and innovation not only in art, such as ceramics and bronze, but also in inventions and technology. China’s history of science and technology goes back millennia.
What does the Huawei Mate60 portend?
Clearly, the advanced smartphone is a perception changer at a minimum. No doubt, it will be seen as a game changer as well. Other high-tech breakthroughs are in the news.
It is now reported that the Chinese firm SMIC has a 7 nanometer (nm) N+2 process semiconductor project that is produced entirely in China with no access to Western equipment and technologies. All of the core components in China’s EUV lithography machines are said to be ready and that the prototype is being tested.
On the day that the new Mate60 phone was announced it was sold out in one minute online. Huawei boosted production to 15-17 million units and beginning September 10 Chinese can purchase the smartphone in Huawei’s offline stores. The phone has a satellite capability.
As Chinese firms develop independent semiconductor design and fabrication capacity, U.S. firms inevitably will lose out on this vast export market. It seems logical that the more intense the anti-China trade and tech wars become the more Chinese consumers will turn to homegrown products other than those from the U.S.
The U.S. lifted a stone only to hit its own feet.
The U.S. politicians must come to their senses and adopt a China policy of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, cooperation, and mutual benefit. Washington’s belligerent and destabilizing foreign policy disrupts the international community, increases tensions, and can lead to a war which will harm the U.S. side in the end.
The Special Cat Looked Sadly Around At the People Passing by His Cage
Life was idyllic for Pinat until the inevitable struck. His beloved owner passed away, leaving the poor cat alone and vulnerable.
I had a cherry tree in my back yard. I was really looking forward to them. I got home from work and there were 6 or more kids in the tree, stuffing my cherries into all sorts of containers. I yelled and they all took off. It wasn’t possible to get to the remaining cherries. Some of them left containers in my yard. A mom showed up and yelled at me for not giving her back her Tupperware.
SMIC has been making 7nm custom GPUs for the past 2–3 years, mostly for crypto customers who couldn’t get in the TSMC queue.
This filled real market demand that other players didn’t, or couldn’t.
SMIC used this opportunity to refine its process, on the quiet.
Huawei, in the meantime, found willing partners to share talent and resources, in a concerted effort to save the high-tech industry on the mainland from American destruction through the threat of sanction.
How did Huawei et. al. find the tools necessary for chip design, especially the GPU? What black magic did Huawei use to improve the transistor geometry? How did they penetrate the Qualcomm 5g patent wall? I don’t know. Neither does my friend in TSMC. It’s a separate ecosystem now, and quite independent.
The fog of war has descended, but the outcome point to solidarity across the ranks, with competitors working together like they are part of a conglomerate.
The Chinese are capable of cooperation on unheard of scale, because of long history.
The Mate 60 Pro is merely a first step, lacking polish and maturity. What’s coming though, will be a deluge.
American reacts to: america – What they don’t show you
Thank you for watching me, a humble American, react to america – What they don’t show you…
President Zelensky’s top aide has suggested that Beijing and New Delhi are unable to analyze the consequences of their moves China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning.
Beijing has demanded clarification from Kiev after Mikhail Podoliak, a top aide to Ukraenion President Vladimir Zelensky, suggested that authorities in China and India weren’t smart enough to figure out what the actual national interests of their countries were.
Podoliak characterized the two Asian countries as having “low intellectual potential,” in an interview with channel Vlast vs Vaschenko published Tuesday on YouTube. Speaking about the increasing cooperation of Beijing and New Delhi with Moscow amid the conflict in Ukraen, he claimed that China and India “don’t analyze the consequences of the steps they make.”
The aide accused China, India and also Türkiye of “earning money” on the conflict between Moscow and Kiev. The Chinese authorities believe that doing so is in their country’s national interests, but Beijing is better off distancing itself from Russia as it’s “an archaic nation that drags China into unnecessary conflicts,” he said.
1.) No matter how calm and focused a doctor sounds when delivering bad news, they take that shit home with them.
Now a neurologist has to deliver a lot of shit news. Pretty much, if you end up in my wife’s office, something out of the ordinary has gone wrong. Migraines are the least of her worries. She’s dealing with MS, Dementia, Strokes, Epilepsy, Gullien Barre, Neuropathy, Parkinson’s, Brain Tumors, and the mother fucker of all mother fuckers, ALS.
The last one is the worst for her. Because she knows. Almost right away, and can’t say anything. Because a lot of things mimic the symptoms of ALS on the surface, so the process of diagnosing it is not so much to look for ALS symptoms but to systematically rule everything else that it MIGHT be out. Which takes weeks. And weeks. During which the whole time, she knows. But she hopes. And hopes that one of these tests will show another culprit. You know. Like cancer. Yes. It’s a case where she would celebrate finding cancer. At least they can do something about that.
Can you imagine opening up the files of a brain scan and praying you’ll see tumors?
By the time she’s done and can deliver the worst of all hunks of shit news, it’s been weeks of anguish for her. And when she comes home, it’s time to let all the little petty shit from my day go, because it’s NOTHING.
2.) Care and feeding of your physician is essential to maintaining your physician’s health.
Seriously. How my wife managed to get to work before I arrived on scene to make coffee in the morning, I’ll never know. A doctor’s work is never done, once they get home, it’s time to catch up on charting, and if they have a complicated specialty like my wife (neurologist) those charts are extremely complicated.
You know though? It’s important work, so if I can help just a bit by taking care of dinner? Or cranking out coffee strong enough to wake a triceratops fossil? I’m good with that.
3.) It’s friggin EXPENSIVE being a doctor.
What most people know about being a doctor is that doctors make a lot of money.
Yeah. She has no complaints there (it’s probably not as much as you think, but it’s a damn good living)
But Board Certifications, Continuing Medical Education, Malpractice Insurance, about a Quarter Million in Student Loan debt from 10 years of school, this association fees, that one, fee, fee, fee, fee, fee, it’s no wonder the first thing I learned from my wife was “looking for a doctor? Find the cheapest rattiest set of scrubs, there they are!”
4.) They get into it to practice medicine and usually love that, but generally, find themselves buried in a ton of other crap
I mentioned charts. Not the half of it, although for pure volume of work and time spent, it’s just lovely.
They didn’t mind so much when they were marking up paper charts as they were examining you. Now it all has to be done in an Electronic Medical Records system, and there is apparently no such thing as a halfway decent EMR.
Want to see a doctor fly into a violent volcanic rage? Ask them how they feel about their EMR.
Then there’s just the pile of administrative shit. Especially if you’re running the practice which thank God mine doesn’t have to worry about. But there is always a shitton to do that has not a damn thing to do with healing.
I’m keeping count of the number of times mine laments for the carefree days of being a Starbucks barista.
5.) In my experience, they’re usually just genuinely good people.
Now, I’m biased, I admit it. And I suppose I only meet genuinely good-people doctors because I’m married to one who wouldn’t give someone who wasn’t a minute of her time.
And yes, there are some genuine pieces of shit in the profession, just like any other.
But the vast majority of the dozens of doctors I’ve met as a result of being married to one are just good solid people who usually get into the profession to make a real difference in people’s lives, and out of a genuine desire to do good.
As a citizen of PR China who knows a thing or two about history, I must say that I understand why they do that.
Because Republic of China was and is totally a coward.
Because of the good relationship between Chiang Kai-shek and USSR, during Cairo Conference, the US proposed to give the authority of Ryukyu (Okinawa) to China, also part of Japan’s authority, and invited China to garrison in Japan.
Chiang rejected it.
He rejected the proposal from the US to take over Ryukyu and part of Japan, because he wanted to be humble, and he was a mean character when massacring Chinese.
Above is the photo of surrender ceremony of Chinese war zone. Take a guess about who is the winning side.
The answer is the one on the left, eventhough he looked more humble.
On the left it’s He Yingqin, first degree admiral and 2nd place in Republic of China militray.
On the right it’s Asasaburo Kobayashi, Imperial Japanese Army lieutenant general.
They are not even at an equal level. From Japan side, it should be Yasuji Okamura, the commander-in-chief of the China Expeditionary Army from November 1944 to the end of World War II, handed in the Instrument of Surrender.
In the negotiation conferece of surrender ceremony, ROC sent a lieutenant general, and Japan sent a major general. Not in equal position too.
According to Yasuji Okamura’s memoir:
About the ceremony decoration, ROC side initially wanted to have a round table, to avoid being aggressive. It was because of the US intervention, ROC eventually choose long table.
It was agreed when handing in the Instrument of Surrender, Asasaburo Kobayashi was supposed to salute to He Yingqin for 3 times, and He Yingqin didn’t salute back. This idea was probably from the US “suggestions”. However, when Asasaburo Kobayashi saluted for the 3rd time, General He stood up as a return to the salute.
It was not the same when the US and USSR accepting surrender from Germany and Japan. They both ordered Germany and Japan to redo everything they are not satisfied, until everything’s fine. After all, it was a world war, and they were the winners.
Whereas in China, He Yingqin had to lean forward and stretch his arms all the way to the cernter line of the table, which makes him handing in the paper to Japanese.
Everything Chiang did is to tell Japan that “we don’t want to you misunderstood us, and we are not aggressive at all”.
From Japan side, in their opinion, it was the US which defeated Japan, and China is of course just a weakass shit which survived only because the glory of the US.
I don’t blame Japanese for this. As a matter of fact, they do have reasons to think so.
After all, PR China never kicked Japan’s ass since 1949.
I blame Chiang Kai-Shek.
Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) ‘Confirmation’ & Admiral Husband E. Kimmel’s famous historical quote
“I’ve seen this film so many times as a kid, because it’s really really good. But I always follow it up with the other one, Midway. I joined the US Navy, 89-93, I think these films helped inspire me to sign up. I actually got the USS Lexington AVT-16 as my first ship, I can not describe the chills and feelings I had when I first stepped on board the Lady Lex. I was a little choked up and teary eyed with pride. I had the pleasure of working in nearly every department of that ship for two years, Deck 1st div -Supply Captains Country -Engineering E div – and Air V2. The flight deck crash of October 89 was my first sea cruise. After decommissioning the Lex, the Navy sent me to the USS Normandy CG-60 and straight into war. True story. I got my US Navy Adventure for sure. I only got out to save a doomed marriage.”
I have 13 kids, I have always wanted a big family. I adopted one from China, she is deaf and the sweetest 5 year old ever. We adopted her when she was 3. We get a few racist remarks because we are black and she is Chinese, they think she needs a Chinese family to have a good life. She is happy with us, so nope!
She can’t talk because she is completely deaf and no hearing ads or a cochlear implant will help, she will be deaf forever, unless there is something invented in the future that helps. She is able to say mama because she reads our lips and tries to copy the shape our lips make and make sound, that’s the only word she can say.
She came home from school one day, since she can read lips really good, she is in a hearing school, but in a special class for deaf people or hard of hearing people.
She told her siblings who then told us, that her teacher told her she was “sick” in sign language, Because she is from china. In sign language, you can’t name a virus unless you finger spell it, my daughter is only 5 so it’s hard for her to put words together by spelling it out.
Her teacher was telling her that she brought Covid into this world and that she was sick with it because it started out in China. She was only 2 when Covid started, she didn’t even fully understand about Covid.
The teacher believed every Chinese person had Covid, no matter how old or young. Since my daughter had “Covid” She wasn’t allowed to go to lunch that day and eat, she wasn’t allowed to learn with the class, and she wasn’t allowed to go outside and play. When they were learning, she was sitting in a chair far away with a mask on. I didn’t call the police, but I called the school and got her fired and she might be going to court for a hate crime.
Watch Before it’s Deleted,This is my 3rd Attempt, Oprah & The Rock on Maui
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Oprah Winfrey face backlash for asking fans to donate to Maui fund instead of contributing more themselves The family of a woman who died trying to flee a wildfire on Maui is suing the county, the state and one of Hawaii’s largest landowners, alleging they neglected to maintain their fire-prone property.
No. The guy with a rifle is not the scariest. That distinction belongs to the guy with a much more dangerous piece of equipment:
The humble radio. This is the guy that could pull down everything from a single mortar round up to and including a bombing run by a fully loaded B-52 to naval missiles to armored cavalry reinforcements. He can tell this support exactly where, what spot at what height in what position, needs a proper lesson in violence. He can tell artillery which direction to adjust their fire, he can warn pilots of infantry with MANPADS, he is the man in control of the tactical battlefield.
You have an ankle bracelet that monitors everyone and their movements?
How do you know people disappear?
Anyone you know who disappeared?
A Relative, Friend, Cousin, Girlfriend?
Even the Foreign Minister of China
He didn’t disappear. The Chinese openly said he was no longer minister.
The Defense Minister who apparently disappeared
Turns out he was in secret meetings with the Venezuelans and North Koreans and later in a Military facility taking treatment
People disappear in other places too
They commit crimes and flee
They are kidnapped and killed
They are murdered and bodies dumped
They fall sick and want recuperation from public life
In India or US, because the Public elects you, you have a public responsibility to inform them about your absence
In China, you only inform the party. Same as if you take medical leave from TCS, you don’t publish it on Twitter
1027 Men disappeared in the US and the West and remained missing for an average of 4 1/2 years
They were incarcerated against their will in Guantanamo and tortured and harrassed
No justification to this day
Its harder to disappear in China than it is in India or US
Your digital footprint is so strong and your records are almost everywhere and you have thousands of cameras recording all around you
What you need to know about PHARMACIES in THAILAND before you visit!
Thailand passed most western countries years ago when it comes to medicine, medical aid, medical treatment and certainly when it comes to quick access to medical professionals and advanced imaging systems. In fact, even in many countries in Latin America, a MRI scan is a walk-in compared to canada where it can take 6 months. Thailand in general is AMAZING!
I sometimes buy frozen food online, and the food always arrives in a large styrofoam shipping container.
The first time I got one, I didn’t know what to do with the box after I unpacked the food. I like to recycle all my cardboard boxes and plastic containers, but none of the facilities in my area would take styrofoam.
The styrofoam cooler was thick and sturdy, and it seemed a shame to throw it out after one use. So I chucked it into my garage. Every time I got another cooler, I put it in the garage.
A few years ago, my husband and I were moving, and I was cleaning out the garage. By then, I had amassed over a dozen of these styrofoam boxes. They were stacked up in three stacks, collectively about 4 to 5 feet wide and over 4 feet high. We had to get rid of these boxes before we could move.
I tried to find the containers a home. I looked online for a place within driving distance that would recycle styrofoam. No luck.
As a last ditch effort, I contacted the stores where I purchased my food asking if I could ship them back. They had no use for used shipping coolers.
I resigned myself to the fact that we would have to throw them out. As my husband and I were getting ready to take the boxes to the dump, I suddenly had an epiphany. I ran to the computer and did a search.
Yes! As I thought, there were people on eBay who would pay money for a used styrofoam cooler. I wouldn’t have to throw them away and they would get a second life.
So I listed all the coolers on eBay, and over several weeks, they all sold.
The strangest way I’ve made money was selling my trash on eBay.
Now every time I buy frozen food online, I immediately list the box for sale on eBay after I unpack the food. I get between $7 to $15 per box, plus the cost of shipping to the buyer. It’s not much, but it’s a nice little coupon towards my frozen food purchase.
TSMC lays off 60% of its U.S. factories,Workers demand a doubling of wages;Mate 60 pro
TSMC lays off 60% of its U.S. factories, Workers demand a doubling of wages;
Huawei orders completely lost.
A couple had come to the upscale restaurant, but the woman started screaming at the waitress, wanting her to be fired.
Does the customer always have the right? Does going to a restaurant give you the right to humiliate the people who work there? I hope not!
This is the story of a girl who worked as a waitress in a restaurant! The story was told by her, let’s listen:
“I was lucky to find a job at an upscale restaurant!
Even though I don’t hear very well with my left ear, and not at all with my right ear, I was given a chance to work here. I wear a hearing aid, so I can hear almost everything that is said to me very clearly.
But one day, an elderly couple came to have dinner.
Me: I’m glad you chose our restaurant! Are you ready to order? Wife: Call the manager, NOW!
Me: One moment. Maybe I can help you myself? Wife: No!
So, I had to go and call the manager.
Manager: Good evening! How can I assist you?
Wife: Why do your employees wear headphones? Are they listening to music? We pay a lot of money here, and believe me, we deserve perfect service! This is not acceptable!
Everyone in the restaurant froze.
Manager: Our waitstaff knows they are not allowed to wear headphones.
But if you notice anyone breaking this rule, please let me know. I guarantee that person will be fired!
Wife: Please. It’s her!
The woman pointed at me.
Manager: I’m sorry. Her behavior is beyond any limit. Wife: I agree!
Manager: I was talking about you! Your behavior is inappropriate! The waitress is wearing a hearing aid.
I kindly ask you to leave this restaurant and never come back!
The woman’s husband did not support her at all. The enraged woman left the restaurant in a fit of anger.
I would like to express my gratitude to all the people who defended me! Thank you!”
US phone and chip companies like Apple, Nvidia and Qualcomm don’t produce chips. They design the chips but outsource it to TSMC, Intel and Samsung to manufacture them. Fabless chip designers have been the in-thing for some decades already, popularised first by companies like Broadcom in the 90s.
Same for Huawei – they design it via subsidiary HiSilicon but don’t produce the chips themselves. They outsource it to TSMC and SMIC in particular. TSMC has been banned by the US Commerce from supporting Huawei and other Chinese companies.
Can the USA companies produce the chips themselves today? The answer is YES. It takes time to develop the volume manufacturing expertise all over again. It is a very complex business and it takes guts to put in the money to invest in R&D resources, mainly PhD-type technical talents and capital intensive wafer fabrication facilities and processing machines, packaging and test equipments. Unless you have deep pockets, this is not the business for everyone.
A high-end wafer fab today requires some $12B upfront capital investment. It also requires a whole long list of vertically integrated suppliers locally to support the wafer fab industry – only Asia has it as the cost is low. At the same time, you must have a flexible and disciplined team of technical personnel and production workers who can work 24/7 round the clock to make the business viable. One mistake out of 1000s of process steps can cause a total disruption to production schedules, customer order delivery slips and production scraps. Automation has its own challenges. Manufacturing yields can be impacted from batch to batch due to workmanship and process variations. Honestly, it is not a business for the faint-hearted investors and demanding customers who expect perfection.
USA has the science but not the art of high volume cost competitive manufacturing anymore. To think that the Biden Administration can bring back wafer fabrication industry back home even with the help of Samsung, Intel and TSMC, is a pipe dream. It will fail badly, very badly. Tens or hundreds of billions of dollars will be flushed down the drain when they realised they can’t make it work. Trust me, failure will be the end outcome and it is already full of production delays and major make or break problems between the investors and the government.
M*A*S*H Winchester looses his temper with a bureaucrat over abandoned baby
Unlike Frank, Charles wasn’t a bad person. He had a shield of arrogance, but he was a superior surgeon and a good-hearted individual. At worst, he was used to being removed from the suffering of the world, but that didn’t mean he didn’t care about it. See the Christmas episode where he recounts a family tradition of giving candy and toys to the poor, but realizes that the value of the candy would provide a month’s worth of staple foods for starving orphans.
While at Treasure island in 1962, waiting to be seperated from active duty, in the Navy,i had a lot of free time to see San Francisco. I was and still am, a fan of jazz, so I ended up at a jazz club ( Jazz Workshop, Blackhawk, I don’t recall which one) mid afternoon one day. The bar was open, so I took a stool at the bar next to a well dressed guy. At his feet was a horn case. I ordered a beer and raised my glass to the stranger next to me, to which he responded with a raised glass and a few words.
We talked a little about what I was doing, why I was in San Francisco, where I called home, just a little chit-chat. He mentioned that he was a musician and said something about sitting in for the performances later on. We never did introduce ourselves, we just started talking.He finished his drink, picked up his horn case and bid me goodbye. The bartender asked if was ready for another beer and asked me how I came to know Miles. I replied by saying “Miles who?” Davis, he replied. You have been talking with him since you came in. I carried his Kind of Blue album with me all the years I spent aboard ship and never put his face and name together. Yup, jaw dropped, but as it turned out, it was best that I did not recognize him. We were just a couple strangers having a beer. I still play that LP today.Damn, that was 60 years ago and still fresh in my mind.
“We have alien bodies and the DNA to prove it” Mexican Congress | Redacted with Clayton Morris
You want alien bodies? Here they are. Ufologist Jaime Massaun rolled out two coffins holding “non-human” bodies in front of Mexico’s congress yesterday. He says these bodies are 1,000 years old and were fossilized in a mine. He also presented DNA evidence showing these bodies are not human.
Imagine a world where there are two ways to conduct commerce. One half of the world chooses one method, and the other half chooses another.
In the West, led by the United States, is a commerce system based on an extraction of wealth.
People work, and they labor. The government take a part of that labor in the form of taxes, fees, clauses, penalties, and regulations. Under that layer is another layer. These are the banking transfer fees, the interest and debt schedules and all the associated rules that one must abide by to use that system. Beneath that system, is a system of organizations. Where to use that organization or society, fees are extracted, prices are managed, and profits are massaged. Beneath that system is a system of businesses, that have their own fees, charges, and profit schedules, and then beneath that is the worker.
For a worker to labor and make money, all of the systems of wealth extraction gets paid first. What ever is left, goes to the worker. Who is then taxes on it, and uses it for his and her own purposes.
In the East, led by China, is a commerce system based on ownership.
If a person earns money though labor, that money is converted electronically into a value, and the mass amount of that value is accessible to the worker. No government, person, entity, organization can siphon income away from that value. It is against the law.
…
Now that is the “quick and dirty” overview. Both systems, have very, very complex subsystems of control and monitoring. Both systems have those that get rich and those that get poor. Both systems are independent of each other, and collaboration between the two systems is possible with “guardrails”.
But what about the question?
Why doesn’t China use “credit cards”?
Credit cards is a Western fabrication and means of wealth extraction. A person is not using money they earned. They are borrowing money from a bank and renting the use of it from the bank.
China uses a system of ownership. A person earns money, and it goes into a bank. Then the Chinese person uses a QR, and biometic scan to extract the money to buy something with it.
That being said, there are areas of overlap between the Western system and the Eastern system of commerce. For instance, you can get loans and mortgages inside of China, just like you can in the United States. The big difference is that the vast bulk of transactions differ substantially between the East and the West.
West = Wealth Extraction.
East = Ownership.
Geo-political manifestations
And it is the FUNDAMENTAL differences in systems why the rest of the world (such as Africa, for example) is turning towards China instead of working “with” the United States on massive Geopolitical ventures.
China. Africa sees results from China. They see dams, hospitals, road and rail. they see ports, and real tangible aid. The African nations OWN these properties, and these systems. They are tangible. They can be seen. They can be touched. they can be felt.
United States. Africa hears a lot of “flowery words” from the United States. Promises of this and that, and military weapons, and military bases. But no roads. No hospitals. No trains. No ports. An occasional plane-load of “greenbacks” that are delivered to the wealthy in a nations, but that is about it. Those African nations so entangled in agreements with the United States enter into debt with them. It’s all nice numbers on spreadsheets, and documents with many impressive signatures, but for the average person “on the street” there isn’t any change in lifestyle.
Meanwhile the entirety of the Global South, via the BRI, are investing in a “basket of currencies” one based on tangible commodities; hard physical items that can be touched, felt and measured.
While the West, led by the United States, are forcing a system of debt upon their allies and “friends”.
Let’s perform a sanity check.
If this description, one where the West and the East differ in means of fundamental commerce and economic theory, then it should manifest in a myriad of ways. Let’s look at home ownership.
Obviously, the nation that functions via wealth extraction will have the bulk of it’s citizenry in debt. While the nation that functions on an ownership basis would have the bulk of it’s citizenry invested in self ownership of properties.
Southern Biscuits
Southern Biscuits
Ingredients
1 cup plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons Crisco
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 tablespoon Crisco (for frying pan)
Instructions
Mix dry ingredients together.
Blend in the Crisco until the mixture is coarse and grainy.
Stir in the buttermilk with a fork. Do not over-mix.
Put out onto a floured board and knead just a few times. Pat out the dough to about 1/2 inch thick. Cut with a biscuit cutter or glass. Flour the cutter. Do not handle the dough too much or it will get tough.
Using a heavy cast iron frying pan, place 1 tablespoon of Crisco in the pan and put the frying pan in the oven for about 7 minutes.
Remove the pan from the oven and place the biscuits in the pan. Turn each once in the oil and bake the biscuits at 500 degrees F for 10 minutes, or until light brown.
Kitten Abandoned In The Rain, Cold, Shrinking for Protect Herself – No one heeded his plea for help
When I lived in Boston, there was this Pet Smart (store) that I would visit from time to time to get kitty supplies for my little buddies. It was on the road to my work, and not a big deal. It was a big warehouse like building, much like “Sam’s club” that hosed all sorts of pet supplies.
Off to the side they had a little adoption center for cats. You could look at the cats while you were waiting in line at the checkout.
I noticed one cat never left. It stayed there. Month after month. Season after season.
This was an older cat.
And no one wanted it. No one.
…
And so when I came to ask about it, the gal at the store said that she was really old, and that her owner passed away. The kids of the old man didn’t want the cat, and so the deceased children (adults really) gave it to them to find a home. They didn’t want the cat.
And so the kitty sat there, in the cage, month after month, after month alone.
That was bullshit.
…
So I adopted the kitty and named her Annie.
Poor thing. Sad all the time. Lonely. Depressed.
She became really attached to me.
She was a “rag-doll” breed and super clingy. My other cats didn’t want to have anything to do with her, and as soon as I made it home, she would come to me a meowing and crying. And so I would share my affection between her and all my other cats.
…
Now…
I had this little “thing” that I did with my cats. They all wore collars with two tags. An ID tag and a rabies tag. And when ever I opened up the door, I would get my keys and jingle them. I started to notice that my cats would do the exact thing with their collars.
If they wanted out, they would go to the door, and “jingle their keys” and I would let them out.
But, you see, Annie didn’t have any “keys”.
So we needed to get a cat collar, and some ID and rabies tags, and after a while we did. We ended up with a small box of say ten different collars. And then one day, when it was just me and Annie, I laid them all out in front of her to look at.
Now, she has always been very sad. Missing her owner, and then living with me in a house with other cats.
But something happened… a “light” went off when she saw the other collars.
She got up, and some “light”; some “energy” transformed her body.
And then, right there, in S-L-O-W motion…
I did it intentionally.
I selected the biggest, gaudiest, most “bling bling” fake jewel encrusted, fake diamond and pearl encrusted collar that I could find and placed it there off the side.
And then with it all next to her, she got up and walked over to all the collars.
She looked at big gaudy bling bling. She wanted ME to select.
bling bling cat collar
She started to purr.
So I picked the big bling-bling collar.
And then…
Then she sat up, arched her back and allowed me to put it on her.
…
I wish that I could describe the moment; the transformation. The significance of that moment.
I swear… I mean it… she CHANGED.
So no more moping around. She was one of us.
She was accepted. She was great, and important and special, and she would walk with her head up high and her tail up high. She was so very proud of her collar, and it was truly a sight to behold.
She became a proud ROYAL KITTY PRINCESS.
What a moment.
…
I have never forgotten that.
…
Eventually, I had to move on, and my wife and I separated.
Annie went to live with her, while I had to continue on my life cat-less. Sigh. It’s called “life” and that is what happened then.
My ex-wife moved away to Pennsylvania while I stayed in Boston. And a few months passed.
My ex-wife, later on, however thought that Annie shouldn’t wear the collar, and took it off her.
Oh, yes. She. Did.
But you know the moping and sadness reappeared.
And my ex-wife couldn’t figure out what was going on. She just “chalked it up” on old age and a diet imbalance.
…
One day, I visited my ex-wife and checked on the kitties. And you know, I saw Annie. Sad and depressed as ever. No collar!
I went up to her. Man that was one depressed cat.
So… as soon as I saw that, I asked where the collar was.
My ex-wife went and rummaged around a bit, and found it. And I, well I put it back on her.
Guess what?
And BOOM! It was proud and happy city all over again.
If a cat could skip, then that is what Annie started to do. She was proud and happy all over again.
…
My ex-wife didn’t understand.
She mistakenly thought “freedom!” meant no collar.
But, Annie felt differently.
The Collar meant “belonging”.
It meant a role in the society; a “place at the table”. It meant status, and Annie had the most bling-bling of all the kitties. She was SPECIAL and she felt special.
…
Annie passed on, at a very ripe old age. She was a good little kitty.
She was buried with her precious collar.
I miss her.
…
Todays…
Russian Foreign Minister: “U.S. is waging war on Russia”
Washington’s massive campaign to support Ukraine with arms amounts to a war against Russia, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, adding that the US has long groomed Kiev for this very purpose.
In a comment to Russian reporter Pavel Zarubin released on Sunday, Lavrov suggested that rumors about Washington possibly giving the green light to the delivery of Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), which have a range of up to 300km, were aimed at “shaping public opinion.”
According to the minister, these deliberations would not change the fact that “for many years Ukraine has been groomed to fight with its hands and bodies in order to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia.”Lavrov accused the US of controlling the hostilities between Kiev and Moscow.”
In recent weeks, several Western media outlets have reported that the administration of US President Joe Biden is edging closer to approving deliveries of the ATACMS, which Kiev has been requesting for several months. The US has been reluctant to approve sending these missile systems, arguing that potential Ukrainian strikes deep into Russia could trigger a major escalation in the conflict.
Ukraine has already received long-range missiles from the UK and France, which, according to local officials, have been used to attack civilian targets and infrastructure in Russia’s Crimean Peninsula and Donbass.
While the US has yet to grant Kiev’s request for ATACMS, it has committed more than $43 billion in military aid to Ukraine since the conflict began, including air defense systems, armored personnel carriers, and M1 Abrams tanks.
Moscow has repeatedly warned the West against supplying Ukraine with arms, saying that doing so will only prolong the conflict but will not change its ultimate outcome.
HAL TURNER EDITORIAL OPINION
I was reluctant to report these remarks by the Russian Foreign Minister for a simple reason: If the Russian Foreign Minister is now publicly accusing the U.S. of “controlling the hostilities between Kiev and Moscow” and also publicly saying the U.S. efforts for Ukraine amount to “the U.S. waging war upon Russia” then the only logical conclusion that __I__ can come to over such remarks is that at some point, Russia is going to strike the U.S.
Now, the mental weaklings of our society respond that such a thing is “impossible.” In their little minds, the United States is so powerful that Russia “wouldn’t dare.” In __my__ view, those people are wrong.
The reason they are wrong is because Russia sees the ongoing Ukraine conflict (with full material support from the west) as “an existential threat.”
They’re correct in such an assessment. Want proof?
Back in April, I reported to you that Europe had revealed a map showing its plans to break Russia up into 43 separate countries (Story HERE).
Here is Gunther Fehlinger, Head of the Austrian Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) connected to the United Nations, showing the West’s map of a world without Russia:
The revelation of this map is literal PROOF that it is the actual intention of the West to do-away with Russia. By even manufacturing such a map, the West has shown its intent. Russia now faces an ACTUAL existential threat. Their very existence is at stake.
Think about the time and effort that was necessary to research the populations and ethnicities in each of these areas, where they are, and how to draw actual lines along the geography of the demographics, to create this vision of new, autonomous, countries. The research and planning alone had to take . . . YEARS.
So the mental weaklings who say “Russia wouldn’t dare” have their heads up their ass. Russia may decide it has no choice.
Thus, the remarks by Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov over this weekend, are “building a case” for a massive Russian strike at the U.S. Lavrov’s public remarks are “building a record” for posterity.
Step-by-step the U.S. has escalated the Russia-Ukraine fight. Step-by-step the U.S. and its NATO vassals continue to escalate.
Well, while the West is doing its thing, Russia is systematically building an open, public, historical record of what is actually taking place.
When a man like Sergei Lavrov utters the words he spoke over the weekend, it is as serious as a heart attack.
I will preface my further remarks by admitting I very much admire Foreign Minister Lavrov. In my view, he is the single most competent, most skilled, Foreign Minister on the entire planet. He says what he means, and more importantly, he means what he says.
You never once hear the Russian Foreign Ministry “walking-back” anything Lavrov says. You never once hear the Russian government having to “clarify” what Lavrov said.
That Lavrov has now said the US is “controlling the conflict between Moscow and Kiev” lays actual involvement and responsibility for war on the US lap.
Closer and closer we seem to be coming to the moment when Russia strikes.
None of us will ever be able to say We weren’t warned.
Because it is. If you think about it, World War 2 was a bit odd—it’s one of the very few wars in history where you can legitimately point out who the bad guys were. The evils the Axis committed (Germany got all the spotlight, but Japan was even worse in many ways) was so over-the-top that it seemed like something out of a children’s cartoon.
The Allies were no saints but there’s a very big difference between the Japanese internment camps in America vs literal Holocaust death camps and rape brothels the Nazis and the Japanese ran. To say otherwise is intellectually dishonest. Except for the Soviets, Allied war crimes in World War 2 were not organized or structured (and even with the Soviets, probably a large proportion were also unorganized).
World War 1 is closer to your “average historical wars”. Who is guilty? It’s an extremely complicated topic that is not lost even back in the day. The simplest explanation was “it’s a very convoluted web of alliances and interests that forced everyone to fight for something that would otherwise be a local conflict”.
Why else would an assassination of an Austrian archduke made Japanese soldiers invade the German colony in China?
Nobody was particularly better or worse in World War 1.
Stay Away From Africa If You Don’t Like Us, Africa Leaders Warn Muslim Leaders With Bad Intentions
Voice TV Nigeria is an online community of reporters and social advocates dedicated to bringing you news reports from a Nigerian-African perspective.
Well, it takes a lot for a country to be so bad that it is labelled a pariah state.
For example, look at the USA in the past 40 years. In that time, it dropped bombs, fired missiles, destroyed cities and killed men, women and children in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Grenada, Uganda, Bosnia etc. And the USA still is not labelled a pariah state!
In that same period of 40 years, China fought no wars at all. Sure, it had a few skirmishes here and there. For example, its navy vessels sprayed sea water at other countries’ fishermen in the disputed areas of the South China Sea. Another time, a few Chinese and Indian soldiers fought at a disputed border area. Not a single bullet was fired – however, a few soldiers fell into an icy river and later died from hypothermia.
But these were not wars. Nothing like how, for example, the USA made up a lie about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, and then proceeded to kill 250,000 Iraqi men, women and children.
And yet, like I said, the USA is not labelled a pariah state. So clearly China wouldn’t be.
Today, China is even busily rebuilding schools, homes and hospitals in Iraq! (After all the destruction caused by the USA).
Southern Fried Chocolate Pies
0b6fad1e00ec29473402b4259605bf30
Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup vegetable shortening
1/3 cup cold water
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup (1 stick) cold margarine
Vegetable oil*
* Use peanut or safflower oil or solid vegetable shortening for frying.
Instructions
Crust: sift flour and salt together; cut in the shortening with a pastry blender or 2 knifes, until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal.
Add ice water a little at a time while tossing with a fork, until dough holds together. Do not get too moist.
Roll out dough to 1/8 inch thick. Cut into circles about five inches in diameter.
Mix cocoa powder with the sugar. Place 2 to 3 tablespoons of this mixture onto one half of the circle and place 3 very thin slices of cold margarine on top. Fold opposite side over mixture and seal with a fork dipped in flour.
Pour oil to a depth of about 1/2 inch in a cast iron skillet. Heat over medium-high heat until very hot.
Place pies in a single layer in oil and fry, turning to brown each side.
Serve hot, warm, or cold.
WE RETIRED IN AMERICA AND MOVED TO GHANA WITHOUT VISITING!
African Americans are returning to countries like Ghana more than 400 years after their ancestors left Africa as slaves. Many say they want either to reconnect to history, or resettle on the continent. Helen and Timothy are retirees who had lived all their lives in the USA. Timothy was in the military while he worked and Helen was in the field of Social Sciences. They recently made the big decision to move to Ghana. In this video, they share the amazing experiences they have had since moving here.
I have given all my neighbors permission to walk my land. I have posted signs saying private property please treat with respect. I have put up signs saying no motorized vehicles. On a website , the Google pin says you can cross to the river, on my property. Its a pin someone added, because they didn’t like the official pin. So a lot of people thought it was public access, because the website quite rightly says its public access where they have the official pin, but its not the first pin they see. I have had the erroneous pin removed three times, but someone keeps adding it back.
I grew up in the country, all the neighbors were friends, and they all allowed me access to their property. So I try to treat people the same way.
I finally had to block it off, because mudder truckers, atvers, and motor homes, and partiers were driving through. But I still allowed foot traffic.
One day I hear a thunk, thunk sound. So I wander over, and a group of 12–13 year olds were sitting with a raft in my driveway, throwing rocks at my private property, please treat with respect sign. Their parents had dropped them off, and then driven down stream to leave a vehicle there.
I raised my voice, I got all of their names. I threatened to wait for their father, and finally I told them that I would put up a gate, blocking access, with a sign saying access closed, because of the actions of these people, and then list their names. They apologized profusely, and never caused any more trouble.
One day while sitting on my deck on Sunday afternoon, two people walked across my yard, not 50 feet from me. I went and put on my shoes, to have a talk with them, by the time I caught up, they were naked having sex on the lawn furniture around my firepit. I took a picture and I asked them what they were doing, but it was already obvious. They said they were just going to go for a swim in the glacier fed river. They apologized, and put their clothes back on. I asked them why they walked right by my house, rather than use the trail I left open for people to walk to the river. They claimed that they were so excited to get to the river, that they never even noticed my house.
Another time I see somebody run into my outhouse, beside my firepit. So I wander over, and they had violent diarrhea, coating the toilet seat and their pants. I didn’t say anything rude, I just brought over the power washer, and made them spray it out. I also offered them an old pair of sweat pants, and a garbage bag for their pants, which they accepted.
After I blocked the driveway, because of motorized vehicles use, people started using the other driveway that went by my house. So I chained up the only river access past my house, so they would have to drive right back, beside my house on the way back.
Then they started randomly driving through bush and cutting trees to get to the river. I hauled in about 50 1 ton rocks, and placed them in easy spots. After a couple of years the brush had grown up beside the boulders.
One day I’m out splitting firewood, and I hear a big bang. Then this terrible squealing sound. So I wander towards the noise, and there is a truck just getting back on the road, steam shooting out of the grill, and oil dripping. The left front tire was at a 20 degree angle to the right tire. Something under the hood was squealing, and once he started driving down the road, he left a black mark for miles, and the tire screeched as well. I didn’t get the license plate, and I never saw the truck again. But it looked like he made it about 12 km, before the tire blew, judging by the black marks.
That’s what I do to trespassers. It depends on the circumstances
Remy: Try That in a Large Town (Jason Aldean parody)
I’d just spent a solid month working in Boulder, staying in a Residence Inn with a full kitchen… and I cook. I was heading home and decided to bring the small box of kosher salt I had purchased and used almost every night for a month. I got to the airport at my normal time… about 90 minutes before boarding. I checked one bag, and had a computer and a smaller bag that happened to have the salt box. I got to TSA, and the line was horrendous. No problem, I never get hassled, right?
The box of salt lit up the xray system. I got pulled out of line, the bag was to be searched, and just for good measure they were going to search and swab the computer bag. Oh. Damn.
I was asked if I had anything sharp or dangerous in the suitcase, and answered “No.” The bozo checking the luggage pulls out the box of salt and waves a couple of Denver cops over, convinced he’s found a terrorist. Holds the box of Morton Kosher Salt up to attract the attention of his supervisor. And then he pulls everything else out of the suitcase AND the computer backpack. I’m fed up. I’m watching time click down. He intends to make sure I miss my flight. I challenge him and he says it’s a white crystalline substance. I offer to taste it in front on him, and/or for him to taste it. I mean, it’s SALT. He tells me, first, that he’s an organic chemist, and then that salt is a normal constituent of organic explosives. I’m getting ready to go ballistic when one of the cops whispers, “Just calm down and let the idiot finish this thing”… THe TSA supervisor comes over, and calmly suggests I “surrender” the box of salt and the cop whispers “Do it”. I’m getting the sense the cops are really on my side. One’s quietly on his radio and neither are looking more than amused at the TSA agent being a salted idiot. Supervisor tells the agent to reassemble my stuff and get me out of there, and the agent wants to argue that, having had at least one piece of contraband there’s likely more. I think he wanted to find an assault rifle in my pocket or something. A little more persuasion by the supervisor, and my stuff is back in the xray system and is clean. I get my gear and start for the escalators that take you down to the train. Each cop grabs a bag from me, directs me to the escalator, and say, “Run, they’re holding a train.” Damn! There’s a train with lights flashing, and another cop keeping a door open and space clear in the car. We get to my departure terminal, and they still have my bags. Go up to the concourse and we’re a LONG way from a plane that’s supposed to be gone already. “RUN!”. I start heading for the gate and see 2 airline employees running toward me. They go past me and grab bags from the cops. One of the cops manages to get me his business card and says, “We saw everything he did. We have his name and badge number. If you want to file a complaint, we’ll back you up.” I stammered a thank you, and ran the rest of the way to the gate. They’d literally held a plane full of people so I could get home. My laptop was in my seat on the plane by the time I got down the aisle, and yes, my carryon bag was gate checked, and it, too, made the plane and the trip home.
All over a box of kosher salt and someone who might have had delusions of intelligence.
G60: the Story of China’s Other Starlink Competitor
By now, you have probably heard of China’s megaconstellation project to complete with Starlink: “Guowang”. But did you know that a second megaconstellation plan is emerging in the region of Shanghai? Called “G60 Starlink”, this constellation calls for 1,296 and then 12,000 satellites to be sent to low Earth orbit. There’s also a fascinating geopolitical twist involving Germany and the United States, highlighting the global struggle for licenses. Let’s dive deep into this story. Enjoy!
When we bought our house it became obvious rather quickly that we had a problem neighbor. Her property abutted ours at the back fence and she would throw her weeds over onto our property. I asked her politely to stop to no avail. She had also plumbed her washing machine from the garage through PVC piping that ran under our fence and over our property. Once again there was no reasoning with her as she told me she had lived in her house for over 20 years and we would just have to put up with it. Yes, I know I could have called the city to get it stopped but didn’t want to start an outright war in our new neighborhood. I got myself a long 2×2 and three lovely large Idaho potatoes and rammed them way up that drainage pipe. We all know what happens to potatoes in a dark, damp environment and I didn’t have to wait too long to know if my rather mean solution worked. The neighbor next door to her that was friendly towards me stopped to chat one day. He said “Poor Carol, her washing machine backed up and flooded her garage and when she called a plumber he told her it had been plumbed illegally and he had to replumb up to code; it cost her a lot.” “Oh what a shame,” said I and really had no guilt, or no more problems with her either.
Ages ago, I worked for a magazine publisher, and was friends with a terrific editor in another department. She shepherded several “custom” magazines for important clients.
At some point, her husband landed a job in another state. Thinking she might like to live with him, so came up with a plan by which she’d continue with the magazines, working with staff via phone and overnight mail (this was the 1980s, so no email, videoconferencing, etc.) and monthly trips to HQ for face time.
Well, the idea of what today we know as remote working made no sense to the big thinkers in the front office, so they thanked her for her service and wished her well in the years ahead.
And found out that the clients weren’t in love with the company—they were in love with “their” editor! And when they learned they were losing her, they canceled their contracts.
Several million dollars. Gone. Just like that.
Worse: one of our regional competitors (who’d already hired away some of our people), swooped in, hired the editor, and landed at least one of the disgruntled clients she’d previously dealt with.
For the next several years she worked remotely for our competitor, exactly in the manner she’d outlined to her now former employer. Oops.
Footnote: The company we’d worked for, over 100 years old at that time, evaporated a few years later, under the peerless leadership described above. And our competitor? Still going, and bigger than ever.
Niger’s Bold Move: Halting Uranium Export to France and Expelling US Ambassador
“Africa must unite as one continent and kick out all foreign military forces in their counters and remove all puppet governments…..enough is enough how long still have the African child to suffer under the hands of this wicked people….If they want war war it shall be…..But know one thing African child God is with you and God will fight this final battle for your total and completely liberation from your oppressors….”
My husband passed away suddenly 6 years ago. We were living in a fairly remote place, and I wanted to return to the area we came from, in the northeast. It was a huge move, because not only did I have an entire household, but all his tools and musical equipment, and 3 dogs. I was really unsure how I was going to accomplish this.
I had a friend I had never met in real life – we had become friends on a forum for people who had Doberman Pinschers, but it was much more than that – there were ongoing, fascinating threads on philosophy, politics, medicine, religion/spirituality, cooking, crafts, photography – you name it.
Anyway, we clicked, and had become quite close. I helped him tweak a CV for a new consulting business he was building, and he called me every single day for 4 months after my husband died, to make sure I was OK. Even my family didn’t do that.
When I found a place in NY, I began to make plans to move. He told me that when it was time to go, he was going to come help me move. I was floored. I couldn’t believe someone would be so generous of their valuable time. Sure enough, he flew out west, and spent 2 weeks helping pack and load things into a POD, then rent a UHaul, load that up with immediate things, and then we took off on a 10-day, 2500-mile trek across the country.
When we arrived here, he unloaded the truck & trailer, set things up for me, cooked for me, and all kinds of really supportive things. When the POD was delivered, he and a couple of guys unloaded it, and he put things wherever I needed them. He stayed for many weeks, not willing to leave until he felt I was secure and stable, and the house functioned for me.
To me, that was the most generous, kind, selfless and thoughtful gift I’ve ever gotten. We remain the best of friends, even though we are 1,000 miles apart. We do whatever we can to help each other and support each other, and I am lucky to have such a fantastic friend. True friends are more valuable than anything.
Just as Apple benefitted by cannibalizing Huawei’s drastic reduction in volume shipped since 2018/19, Huawei will cannibalize Apple’s increased market share today.
China has reached peak iPhone. Apple will not set new sale records in Greater China anymore.
The iPhone depends on foreign suppliers for many components. America’s trade and tech war with China has forged a divergence in the supply chain, because doing business with certain entities can trigger landmines that cripple and maim. Industry players either have a reduced customer base or can only shop from a limited number of suppliers. This has worsened as America continue to abuse sanction privilege.
This strategy works only if one side is at relative disadvantage, such as a tech/quality gap. But what happens when there are different core strengths distributed between the sides? Apple won’t have open access to the best components, on account of risk or actual restrictions. Apple’s iphone is heavily dependent on Chinese engineering, and these partners have helped deliver new model generations like clockwork for more than 15 years. The very basis for the Apple hardware eco-system may need to be relooked.
As Huawei and partners continue to make independent inroads to the premium space, partners that used to rely heavily on Apple’s business will be enticed to offer their best components to domestic competition. This is prudent risk management, brought to the forefront by the draconian nature of the Huawei sanctions.
There may come a point in time where the best that Apple can find ex-China is a step down from what the Chinese competition can deliver. The smartphone standards of tomorrow will be increasingly written by the Chinese.
Case in point: batteries and chargers today. 6G, and imaging tomorrow.
Honor is headquartered in Shenzhen.
Note: There are really only three legs left in the smartphone business: Apple, Samsung, and the Chinese.
In the Chinese-language reporting on the launch of the Huawei Mate 60 Pro, two Chinese phrases keep showing up:
去美化 which means “de-Americanization” of the supply chain, and in a broader sense, removing anything American;
自主品牌 which means “self-owned (Chinese) brands” as opposed to foreign brands like Apple
Huawei tapped into the pent-up Chinese anger at how China has been treated by the west, but which did not have a chance to show. The launch of the Huawei Mate 60 Pro and its record orders are a way for ordinary Chinese to show that they have had enough of the tough talk coming from the US, and even though the Chinese economy, and especially real estate are slow, they now have a way to show that the old way of doing things no longer work for them.
This is why they have rallied around de-Americanization of the supply chain and Chinese brands.
Chinese brands will now have to face questioning from Chinese customers.
“Do you have foreign components in your products? If you do, why do you need foreign components when Chinese components which are just as good are available?”
This means that the leading US chip brands: Intel, Qualcomm and Nvidia are going to be hit really hard. TSMC will be hit hard for siding with the US and supporting US decoupling from China.
Chinese nationalism is a very powerful force in Chinese history, and the US has released it. Only the Chinese Communist Party can control it and keep it from going completely wild.
While the US and many Americans hate the Party, it is the devil which the US knows.
The other devils are much, much worse than the Party.
MY HUSBAND COULDN’T STOP CRYING!!! OLIVER ANTHONY – I’VE GOT TO GET SOBER (REACTION)
“One thing I’ve been noticing is that Oliver Anthony is making grown men cry, more than a lot of other sad songs people react to. And the reason why, I believe, is because here is this man. This God fearing, manly man, honest and true, expressing himself as a man. There is nothing weak about it. He touches men’s nerves from one man to another man, without any elements of weakness or inferiority or even femininity. He’s allowing men to feel understood and allowing then to express themselves.”
We were in a mediocre restaurant in Arizona having flown there from Canada. Our waitress was in her early 80s and had rheumatoid arthritis in her gnarled, misshaped hands and feet, and there she was working as a waitress. She was suffering with every step and with every movement of her hands. Another waitress was the same. Their hands and feet were swollen. We didn’t know where to look.
In Canada we don’t see this. If an elderly woman with difficulties works in a restaurant it’s because she owns it and won’t go home.
So seeing a waitress this age with rheumatoid arthritis working this way was shocking to us and very upsetting. We ordered tea and toast so she would not have heavy plates to lift. We left her a $50.00 tip and got out of there.
Watching these women struggle this way was heartbreaking. I hope I never see this again.
A friend of my wifes mother responded to my wife’s pleasant email, about taking her getting extra vacation this year, so she would be stopping by when visiting her mother. The mothers friend just replied WTF.
My wife was stunned, and wondered what she meant by it.
I said the best thing is to just ask her
So my wife asked what she intended by saying WTF.
The reply was “Fantastic”
My wife phoned her, to clarify.
It turns out her grand daughter always says WTF in her texts.
So she asked her what it meant, and the grand daughter, rolling her eyes had told her “Well That’s Fantastic”
So she had been using it to appear modern, whenever she heard good news.
My wife phoned her mother’s friends daughter, ( a school friend) and told her, what her 13 year old daughter had told her grandmother, and had her straighten it all out.
She couldn’t bear to let this nice old lady continue to use WTF in completely inappropriate circumstances.
African American moved to Ghana to build a 4 bedroom home and live her dream life |Exploring Asebu
In this video, we meet the very lovely Karen King and check out her 4 bedroom home in Asebu’s Pan African Village. We had such a great time talking to her, walking through her home and learning about her journey in Ghana so far.
My favorite part about Americans and American culture in general is what I call “the American Mulligan”. Here, in the US, failure is expected. Starting a business and having it collapse? Just a part of growth and improvement. Got fired from your senior manager role for performance? That’s okay, these kinds of things happen. Changed careers at 35? Great! We love that because it makes you more well-rounded.
In the US, we love a comeback to such a degree that in my business (tech recruiting), we almost look for candidates who’ve tried and failed to run a business. They are wiser and generally manage better than people who’ve had smooth sailing their entire professional career. When I talk with my professional friends from other countries, they generally cite this as one of the best parts about being in the US.
If Apple were to distance itself from China, it must find another place that has skilled people in suffiucient numbers, the same level of automation as China, and the availability of alternative raw materials that China can provide.
The only country that is big enough to meet the needs is India. So Apple moved some production to India a few years go. But it turned out to be a disaster because there are not enough skilled people in India and they still need to rely on China’s supply chain. As a result of the lack of sufficient skilled workers, the defect rate came to about 50% – pushing costs ridiculously high.
Apple has now abandoned most of the production in India, suffering huge losses, and wants to come back to China.
THE NEW KING OF SOUL!!! OLIVER ANTHONY – 90 SOME CHEVY (REACTION)
We all going to church and didn’t even know it…this guy is showing us all that we do have a common bond…it’s called life…and trying to live it. Keep on preaching Oliver. Take us all to church
As a master electrician, I solved my issue very easily. My (now ex) neighbor was using the outside outlet on my detached garage to build his addition. I turned the breaker off – he turned it on. I asked him to stop and he did not.
I simply rewired the neutral on the 120 volt outlet to convert it to 240 volts, watched (and grinned) as he burned up his table saw, his battery charger and a table router all within one day. He had no idea as to why.
If he has simply asked, as he should have, before using my power, I would probably have allowed it – as least for a reasonable amount of time.
EDIT 1: I have had some suggestions that I could get into trouble with my “fix”. I did disclose to the neighbor what I did a few days later and he called the sheriff’s office. The deputy that came out listened to both sides and then asked ME if I wanted to charge the neighbor with theft. I just let it drop and he moved out a short time later.
EDIT 2: I have had some people say that I should have put “warnings” on my answer about the possibility of fire and personal injury. C’mon people! This is a REPLY to a post – NOT a TUTORIAL!!!
My father bought a horse when I was about 13, mainly because he was very placid in the sales ring. He was an exceedingly nice and smart horse, a very good riding horse who loved people. He would respond to spoken instructions such as, “go and get the bucket and I will give you some oats.” I did not teach him that, I just said it one day and he brought me the empty bucket. Ten years later I was home for a visit and a car stopped by our pasture. A man of about age 30 got out and walked out to the horse who whinneyed and ran up to him, acting like a big dog to his favorite master. The man told us that he raised that horse from birth, but his father sold him when the boy was sent to Vietnam. He started giving him subtle signals and the horse would dance, kneel down, stand up on his back legs, and even gave that fella a kiss on the cheek. He asked how much to buy him back. My Dad said, “Son, he’s yours. Thanks for your service. Your horse is mighty glad you came back for him.”
MY SISTER COULDN’T CONTROL IT!!💔OLIVER ANTHONY – I’VE GOT TO GET SOBER
“I grew up in the mountains of East Tennessee within the USA. Working very hard as a child in a family business. Worked my way through college and into a technical role. So, ladies, my life is very different from yours, but even so, I see both of you as my sisters in my heart because the unifying message within OAM has built a bridge from my soul to yours.”
FLASH: U.S. Moving Combat Jets to Romania – “in addition to others committed to NATO”
The United States is moving Combat Aircraft to Romania — but not for NATO. What does THAT translate to, in your mind? US v. Russia directly? Word of this came from US Ambassador to Romania, Kathleen Kavalec.
“The United States plans to station combat aircraft in Romania in addition to those performing NATO air policing duties” said the Ambassador.
Notice she said “Combat” aircraft. Not refueling tankers or cargo planes . . . . no . . . . she explicitly said combat aircraft.
Did all of us somehow miss a vote in Congress about some minor little detail like direct US war against Russia?
Every Mother’s Day the family would go out for dinner and of course we all chipped in the same amount & it covered Mom’s meal and the tip (10 people + Mom).
We’re 7 adults and 3 ‘kids’ so no big issue, right? But…this one time was too much for me.
Grand daughter came with her boyfriend, daughter & son, 2 of them are drinking age and I can’t remember how much alcohol they ordered but it was at least 3 mimosas and 3 glasses of wine.
Only 2 of their meals were from the Mother’s Day specials.
Rest of us ordered from the specials menu & I think 3 glasses of wine & 2 beers. This place was VERY reasonably priced.
I was single mother of 2, 1 of which was working & not able to attend and the other had health issues, not a big eater.
I ordered a special & my son ordered 2 appetizers & 2 glasses of milk (he asked before ordering the 2nd milk because money is tight for us).
I drank water with dinner & for dessert I had tea & son & I shared the dessert that came with my meal.
Bill comes & I hand over $40 hoping it will cover our share (if you took off the bar tab it should have been no more than $35!).
I asked if they needed more from us.
The grand daughter & crew on the other hand, chipped in $60 – wait? What? For 4 people + chip-in +tax & tip? The person handling the bill said something & I think they chipped in another $30 (really should have been at least another $40!
A year later Mother’s Day coming up again.
Family wants to make plans again to go out.
I told them no, I can’t afford it.
My sister pushed & pushed for why – I finally told them I can’t afford everyone’s bar tab!
We went, everyone paid their OWN bar tab & guess what?
Only cost me $35! Grand daughter & crew ordered more reasonably priced food & had a MUCH smaller bar tab!
Southern Pineapple Pound Cake
pineapple pound cake
Ingredients
8 eggs
2 cups Crisco
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 (20 ounce) can crushed pineapple, undrained
3 cups flour
3 cups sugar
1 teaspoon salt
Instructions
Cream sugar and shortening.
Add eggs one at a time.
Add flour and salt gradually.
Stir in vanilla extract and pineapple.
Bake in a greased and floured tube pan at 350 degrees F for about 1 1/2 hours. Or bake in two greased and floured loaf pans for about 1 hour.
SINGING FROM HIS SOUL!!! OLIVER ANTHONY – AIN’T GOT A DOLLAR (REACTION)
A broken vessel was chosen to remind us GENTLY AND ONCE AGAIN, that we are one. This is generational. Who else could walk onto some side stage at a festival and immediately draw the entire crowd from every genre and have them all know that he’s their voice?…..huggi g…laughing…..crying. Again, this is NOT of this earth. We gotta all be praying for our bizarre, broken vessel RIGHT NOW. Evil despises this man.
This will put strong pressure on the Apple iPhone 15 line which launches on Sept. 12. Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro line is expected to take sales from the high-end for Apple.
Xiaomi, OPPO are going to have a very hard time surviving in this very challenging environment.
Last year China held $1.3 trillion dollars worth of US bonds. … with other asset kept in US bank.. making a total of 3.5 trillions dollars in foreign reserves…ALL kept in the USA.
Last year, Biden confiscated US$300 billions of Russia’s foreign reserves …kept in the US banks. This was a warning to China…the same thing can or will happen to China.
The US is now bankrupt…unable to repay its debts. Biden plans play DIRTY… His plan was to start a war with China and using the war as the excuse …to confiscate all the US$3.5 trillions dollars China has in reserves (10 times more than what Biden has stolen from Russia).
China is not stupid.
Last year, China sold US$580 billions dollars in US bond and bought gold bars. (US bond is the easiest to liquidate). The first six months of 2023, China sold other asset in the US … China bought 108 tons of gold.
China will progressively sell off its holding of US bond and other US debts …to buy more gold …until all the 3.5 trillions dollars in US reserves are completely liquidated.
Holding gold bars is much safer than holding US bonds.
My father was an engineer. He was a metallurgical engineer. Which was a guy that tests the composition of steel. He made sure that it was pure and the alloying elements were in the right percentages. It was a very important job.
You need this, you know.
No one would buy a cake if pickles were substituted for eggs, and salt was substituted for sugar. Right?
Anyways, being older than me, he had his old work clothes that I inherited, and throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s, I used his old safety glasses at work.
LOL.
They were God-awful! Horned rimmed, ugly. Like a scene from the movie “falling down”.
2023 09 18 10 59
Now…
The funny thing was that EVERYONE knew that those were MY glasses. Everyone wore contemporaneous safety glasses, and not those old things.
So, sure as shit, if I misplaced my glasses, after an hour or so, I would find them on my desk at work. They would magically appear out of nowhere.
Not only once.
Not twice…
But every single time! I couldn’t give them away.
i even threw them into the trash bin…
Sure as shit, they walked back to my desk. I’ll tell you what!
…
What do you know?
Life is funny sometimes.
Today…
Thought considerations…
2023 09 18 10 48
War as desirable outcome
The Army War College’s John Deni (Wall Street Journal, 12/22/21) urged the US to take “a hard-line stance in diplomatic discussions,” because “if Mr. Putin’s forces invade, Russia is likely to suffer long-term, serious and even debilitating strategic costs.”
The fact that US officials pushed for a Ukrainian counteroffensive that all but expected would fail raises an important question: Why would they do this? Sending thousands of young people to be maimed and killed does nothing to advance Ukrainian territorial integrity, and actively hinders the war effort.
The answer has been clear since before the war. Despite the high-minded rhetoric about support for democracy, this has never been the goal of pushing for war in Ukraine. Though it often goes unacknowledged in the US press, policymakers saw a war in Ukraine as a desirable outcome.
One 2019 study from the RAND Corporation—a think tank with close ties to the Pentagon—suggested that an effective way to overextend and unbalance Russia would be to increase military support for Ukraine, arguing that this could lead to a Russian invasion.
In December 2021, as Russian President Vladimir Putin began to mass troops at Ukraine’s border while demanding negotiations, John Deni of the Atlantic Council published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (12/22/21) headlined “The Strategic Case for Risking War in Ukraine,” which laid out the US logic explicitly:
Provoking a war would allow the US to impose sanctions and fight a proxy war that would grind Russia down. Additionally, the anti-Russian sentiment that resulted from a war would strengthen NATO’s resolve.
All of this came to pass as Washington’s stance of non-negotiation successfully provoked a Russian invasion.
Even as Ukraine and Russia sat at the negotiation table early in the war, the US made it clear that it wanted the war to continue and escalate.
The US’s objective was, in the words of Raytheon boardmember–turned–Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, “to see Russia weakened.” Despite stated commitments to Ukrainian democracy, US policies have instead severely damaged it.”
OLIVER ANTHONY – 90 SOME CHEVY REACTION
Again, any postings of Oliver Anthony is not about his music. It is about the reactions to his music. It appears that for many Americans, they have a voice. Finally.
Todays reaction REALLY BROKE ME! Anthony’s “90 Some Chevy” really hit home for me!
Their phones are likely to work better with the network equipment than other phones on their network.
But for satellites, they don’t make satellites but they do make network base station equipment. So they might have better knowledge than building to a spec on paper.
You can see with Apple trying to build their own 5G modems and failing. Apple’s 5G modem won’t debut again until 2025. They need time and experts and a lot of testing to make sure that it is going to work in all situations instead of just in the lab. Which was what happened when their modems didn’t work right.
So I would guess yes. But any company can hire experts who have experience to make sure that their equipment works well.
Southern Karo Syrup Chicken
2023 09 16 15 14
Ingredients
1 broiler-fryer chicken
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup Karo corn syrup
1/2 cup orange juice
3 tablespoons lemon juice
Instructions
Cut up chicken.
In skillet over medium heat, cook chicken in butter about 30 minutes or until tender. Drain off fat.
Mix remaining ingredients and pour over chicken. Cook over medium heat, turning often, for 5 to 10 minutes or until glazed.
I didn’t ‘see’ a doctor do this… I was the doctor doing this to a father in a pediatrics emergency room.
Many staff reported this as terrifying, horrifying and other descriptions. I went to many meetings following my actions. If I had to do it over again, with my experience and age, I would have chosen different actions that day and we are outside the statute of limitations for assault and battery.
I’ve never written this one down, so here it goes:
I was the on-call anesthesia provider at the hospital, a children’s hospital. I was moonlighting and doing routine things when I was called to the emergency room to consult. (Moonlighting is when a doctor does his regular job or a lesser medical job, for an hourly wage but usually not at his normal hospital or setting.)
When I came out of the elevator they asked me if I was anesthesia?
I nodded and I was led quickly to a trauma room. There was no trauma but a bunch of people in hazmat suits! They dressed me quickly. I apparently had no choice in the matter. I then was led to another room where a small five-year-old boy was having visible stress and very labored breathing. They were assisting him with oxygen, a bag and mask but his color was just, off. Blue, maybe a little green grey. I had never seen this color for a human before, at least not one alive.
People were screaming at me through their suits. We could hardly hear one another. Unknown poison. Unknown toxin. They told me this patient’s brother is in the next room and fading fast, as well. They then ask me what drugs I want to give to intubate this child.
Holy oral board question from hell!!!! For those of you who are not inside the anesthesia world, the oral-board exams for an anesthesiologist are notoriously difficult. They boast a high failure rate for first-time takers because they are designed to scare the ever living crap out of you so you will be a perpetual student of anesthesiology for life. When you have three minutes to figure something out, you cannot hit the books or even ask “Watson.”
“I don’t want to give him anything!” I thought and said simultaneously.
I am a large male… so… I chose physically to intubate the child without any drugs. I managed not to break any teeth also… always a bonus in my job. I did reason they are baby teeth and if he lived he would be more grateful to be alive than to have all his baby teeth.
I then proceeded in rapid succession to the 7-year-old’s room. He was bigger, stronger and was spasming much worse than his brother, especially his jaw. They could not open it. I thought about man-handling the intubation. Broken teeth, I could break his jaw, but, no, so I ending up choosing and using an older drug to completely paralyze the child to attempt to undo the spastic jaw. This choice of drug was not as fast as some of the modern drugs in the anesthesia arsenal. It was among the most stressful four minutes of my clinical career!
“Please be right. Please be right. Please be right.” In my mind over and over again. I slid my hand to his wrist and felt for a pulse. It was there. Weak, fast, but there.
His color was off, too. Similar to his brother. Our oximeter was not picking up a signal. I was terrified in that moment I had chosen incorrectly and would kill the child. Utterly terrified. Tube in, first time, done. The boys were moved to the ICU.
Had to get out of the small room. Very hot. Hard to breathe myself. Am I poisoned? Did I get exposed?
I threw up.
I was soaked head to foot in sweat and ripped off the headdress.
Yes, you read that correctly. I threw up and THEN I got the stupid headdress part of my isolation bunny suit ripped off. Cold air felt great!
I heard screaming and commotion from the other room.
I’m now pumped with adrenaline. Really pumped. In retrospect, I should probably have not gone to investigate, but I did. An older anesthesiologist would have likely gone back to his on-call duties or hit the call room and slept. I was young.
Nope. Not me. What is happening?!?
I marched in. My bunny suit flapping. The headdress still attached to the back of my neck pulling uncomfortably on the front zipper at my neck. I reached up with my hand and pulled it down away from my throat.
Once in there, I see two police officers, a half a dozen nurses, a pediatric ER doc who was about 4′11″ in shoes and they are screaming at everyone to just stop it!
I am a large male… so… I bellowed, “What the fuck is going on?” Yes, I am a good doctor. Yes, I am human.
Everyone looked and the ER doc said looking at me in the eyes, “the father just drank the poison.”
WTF. WTF. WTF. WTF. WTF.
Toxicology? Still no hit on what the substance was from the poison center but they had said to someone it was likely not transmitted through touching or breathing.
Good to know. It’s ‘not likely’ I’ve exposed myself to God knows what.
I knew one of the nurses standing there, she was holding a nasogastric (NG) tube and the nurse next to her had a charcoal drink and a funnel.
The NG tube goes from the nose to the stomach and allows the ‘forceful’ introduction of liquids such as charcoal to neutralize things, the poison in this case.
The man, for all his abject fright and stupidity, blurted out at me, “None of them know what it is so I drank it to find out, use me to find out, use me!” He pleaded, tears streaming down his face. He was just being a parent. He was just being human. That’s when I saw the small fasciculations in his facial muscles. Fasciculations are involuntary small portions of muscle that ‘fire’ on their own without neural impulses. Have you ever had just one part of your muscle move, twitch and do it over and over again without you consciously controlling the movements? That is fasciculations and both boys had them all over their tiny bodies when I first saw them.
“Nurse.” I said in my ‘Superman’ voice. When I was an intern, some of the staff, younger females mostly, nursing mostly, referred to me as Superman because I always got everywhere so fast in the hospitals and, oh yeah, I am a large male with dark kind of curly longer hair at the time. I used to get that one thick curl on the forehead naturally.
She did not speak but began moving toward the father of the boys. The other nurse followed lock step behind her.
“Fuck no! You’re not sticking that thing in me!” The man backed away reflexively animal like in speed and suddenness. He ran into the wall behind him. His back to the wall, literally.
Not. My. Finest. Medical. Moment.
I used a somewhat unorthodox medical maneuver. I hit, or struck, or punched with the my full force in the father’s face. I caught him with the hand I punched him with and pinned him up against the wall. He semi-slumped, in shock, I believe more than for the blow. Not too certain though.
“Tube.” I reached out with my left hand but did not take my gaze off the man.
I looked at his nose and the one side began bleeding. Well, there are two cops standing behind me. I sighed loudly, I may even snorted a bit. They can write my statement for me at this point. Definitely, battery, maybe assault and battery, and with many witnesses, great. I wonder what jail is really like?
Blood is a lubricant. The NG tube slid down that bloody side quickly and completely. The man bucked hard at me. I let go of the tube and ‘pushed’ well, perhaps thrust with nearly full force upon his chest with both open hands and very physically slammed him the two inches back onto the wall.
The nurse(s) got the tube and out of my peripheral vision I saw a funnel and charcoal pouring down the tube very quickly.
The man made noises. I interpreted that as him having an Airway, he was obviously Breathing and clearly he was Circulating blood as he was semi-conscious. ABC’s checked off. He’ll live long enough to sue me probably.
As the man made a fast grab for the NG tube, I was slammed into and from behind and on either side forcefully.
The two cops grabbed either arm and held them back, pinned tightly on the wall.
I love cops. Even when they pull me over and give me a speeding ticket. Even then.
I let go and slowly slid back a bit. Maybe I was two feet from the man’s face.
… and he threw up charcoal all over me. Along with the ‘poison’ so…
I froze. Kept my eyes shut and my mouth shut. I was led a bit away and then someone poured water over my head several times. I cleaned off with a towel. Several towels, actually.
The man was a farmer. He had left fertilizer of some sort, or perhaps it was a pesticide/fertilizer combo in a mixing jug, an old white plastic milk jug. Some years later, he poured diesel fuel into this same white jug. Years after that, the boys found the jug in the barn and it had brilliant blue crystals in it and some opaque grey liquid. Stunning, they looked like hard candy. The boys shook the crystals out and put them in their mouths.
The reason I told you this story was that it was horrifying to watch. That word was used in reports describing my actions. ‘Terrible. Terror. Unprofessional. Shocking. Disturbing. Ugly. Dysfunctional. Chaotic.” All used in reports to describe the event.
One of the nurses who knew me told me her heart just ‘throbbed’ at the whole surreal situation. Your wording in your question triggered the whole event for me.
Doctors are people, they are human, they make mistakes. It was a mistake striking that man. I know that, now. I was afraid in the moment. My fear and anxiety got the best of me and the human animal part of me reacted, poorly.
Some of you may say what I did is fine. Others will condemn any physical attack or action, especially from a doctor to a civilian in an ER setting.
Everyone lived. They did finally identify the culprit. It was a semi-paralytic chemical. Onset of symptoms in minutes. Spasticity, followed by slow paralysis and then asphyxiation from breathing ceasing with one to two hours in an adult.
What do you think?
~Chris
Dr. Christopher Yerington
Columbus, Ohio
Bio: Retired from clinical anesthesiology by a disability in 2010, Dr. Yerington has turned his love of teaching and service to others to his family, medical colleagues and community. He speaks and educates medical groups and residency programs about the importance of great disability insurance and having an income protection plan. Having attended law and business schools, Chris is a perpetual student, currently working on his financial certifications.
Russia Uncovers US Plot to Eliminate Niger Coup Leaders
“You may not know what must be done but many people like me do. It’s time to start down the road towards ending all of the theft of Africa’s god given wealth. Nationalize all of Africa’s resources and perform all value adding operations in Africa, unless it truly messes up the environment to do so. Doing this will uplift the lives of the people and in the end make Africa the best place to live on earth.”
Not me, my mother. She is Cuban and when she was on her first year of teaching, she was teaching first grade and had a kid that was held back. The teachers called him a bad kid. He found it hard to sit down and pay attention, so he still could not read. My mother made him her “helper” and whenever there was free time she would sit alone with him to go over lessons. He passed first grade and actually did great!
Later on, after the Castro regime took control, my mother left Cuba. She met my father, had children, and moved on with her life.
Years later we were traveling in Florida and a man and his wife came up to her. It was the student! He said he recognized her right away because he never forgot her. He introduced her to his wife as the teacher that did not give up on him.
She is my inspiration!
Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond | Singer Reacts & Musician Analysis
UK girl reacts. Very interesting.
All over the West, the “people” are seeing just how bad and corrupt the American-style of “democracy” actually is. This is the moment in time when quiet people, in secret back rooms, start planning on how to hang people, and burn down their edifices of power.
At a family gathering. It was a birthday party for one of my SIL’s kids. It was a nice day and we were all outside while the kids played with all of their friends and cousins, having a great time while we adults caught up and enjoyed the music and weather.
Then we all hear the terrified scream of a small child. One of the kids ran up and said “Sean is hurt!” We all ran over and there he was with blood pouring from a gash on his head. He had stumbled while running and went head first into the fence and an exposed nail.
Every single adult starts freaking out, running around and NOT HELPING this 4-year-old child who was screaming in fear and pain. WTF did they do when their own kids got hurt??!!
Husband and I were surrounded by not only idiots but dithering, panicking, hand-flapping, weak stomached idiots.
Husband and I picked him up and took him in to the bathroom and we were able to calm him down while we cleaned the approximately 1+″ wound and looked for non-existent bandages (really? in a house with four kids?!) and told him how brave he was and that he was going to get stitches but that it would only hurt a little bit, etc. and that sweet little boy just nodded and said “I’m brave.” We just wanted to adopt him on the spot.
When we brought him out he would not let go of me so husband and I just held him and some paper towels to his wound until his grandmother picked him up to take him to urgent care. Then MIL and BILs start freaking out about all the blood on our clothes (yes, head wounds bleed like stuck pigs) and their biggest concern was that it wouldn’t come out in the wash. IDIOTS!
The next time we saw Sean he showed us his scar and said “I was brave!” Yes he was and much more so than about 12 grown ass adults.
Oh SH*T, America Moves To Counter China!
The US has no (real) money and no railways to speak of…and yet they want to build and finance a new multicountry rail network 10,000 km away from home.
How is the USA going to cough up the money?
Five Russian “Doomsday Planes” in the air 0300 Russia time- Shut Off Transponders mid-flight
Five Russian “Doomsday” aircraft are in the air over Russia or have landed after shutting off transponders near the Ural Mountains, including Aircraft PA-96024, ID RSD309, which is the Presidential plane.
While no one can be sure who – if anyone – is actually on these government evacuation aircraft which took off out of Moscow, and having shut their transponders off, we cannot know the exact landing site, it is very disconcerting to see this type of military aircraft activity inside Russia at this ungodly hour.
In particular, the Presidential aircraft shut its transponder off after crossing over the Ural Mountains.
Did they then make a U-turn to land at Mount Yamantau?
MOUNT YAMANTAU
Mount Yamantau, along with Kosvinsky Mountain (600 km to the north), are claimed by the United States of being home to a large secret nuclear facility or bunker, or both. Large excavation projects have been observed by U.S. satellite imagery after the fall of the Soviet Union, as recently as the late 1990s during the government of Boris Yeltsin.
During the Soviet era two military garrisons, Beloretsk-15 and Beloretsk-16, and possibly a third, Alkino-2, were built on the site. These garrisons were unified into the closed town of Mezhgorye (Russian: Межгорье) in 1995, and the garrisons are said to house 30,000 workers each, served by large rail lines.
Repeated U.S. questions have yielded several different responses from the Russian government regarding Yamantau, including it is a mining site, a repository for Russian treasures, a food storage area, and a bunker for leaders in case of nuclear war.
Responding to questions regarding Yamantau in 1996, Russia’s Defense Ministry stated: “The practice does not exist in the Defense Ministry of Russia of informing foreign mass media about facilities, whatever they are, that are under construction in the interests of strengthening the security of Russia.”
In 1997, a United States Congressional finding, related to the country’s National Defense Authorization Act for 1998, stated that the Russian Federation kept up a “deception and denial policy” about the mountain complex after U.S. officials had given Cheyenne Mountain Complex tours to Russian diplomats, which the finding stated “… does not appear to be consistent with the lowering of strategic threats, openness, and cooperation that is the basis of the post-Cold War strategic partnership between the United States and Russia.”
So why are these Russian military Government evacuation aircraft in the air over Russia at this strange hour? Why have they shut off their transponders mid-flight?
MEDVEDEV MAKES OMINOUS REMARKS “Nuclear 9/11”
On Sunday, Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Federation Council (Senate), made a post to his official Telegram account, calling it “a few words on the eve of [9/11].” In it, he derided the U.S. for what he called its “arrogance and disgusting narcissism” among Western nations and its “universal arrogance on any issue.” Near the end of the post, he also made the ominous prediction that the U.S. would suffer “another 11/09/2001-style attack, but with a nuclear or biological component,” without suggesting outright that Russia would be the nation to launch the attack.
This “mindset” is a direct result of of the “organ of misinformation” funded intentionally to “drum up” anti-China sentiment. This effort is funded in the many billions of US dollars. And it is working.
So…
The question is (better worded) …
“With the American people ripe with rage against China and ready for war… how is China going to respond?”
Oh…
You haven’t noticed?
The value of the USD is approaching that of toilet paper.
The American economy is in tatters, and it is only going to get worse; much worse.
Geo-politically, the “friends” of the United States are slithering away and making arrangments in favor of China.
The American people; uneducated with lofty degrees, a work ethic that resembles a lazy hound-dog on a hot August day, legalized looting at every level, and a media of crazy disinformation are about to ignite a civil war.
Organized crime, mental illnesses, collapsing infrastructure, and crazy levels of inflation, all aggravated with massive drug abuse…
And you (the questioner) somehow thinks that China is worried about the United States and what the American people think?
It’s not even on “the radar screen”.
…
The United States is in CHECK MATE.
Everything that it does; any action it takes, any movement in any direction is a lose move for the nation.
In the slight chance that the United States actually makes a military move against a united China-Russia-North Korean-Iran-BRICS+ axis, the result would be very bad.
Bad as in nuclear bad.
…
Do not go there.
Accept your life and do the best you can for you and yours. Do not worry about things that you have no control over.
I am optimistic about the future.
I really am, but there are many in the West that will have to adjust to a much lower standard of living than they have become accustomed to.
Merkules – ”Rich Men North Of Richmond” Remix (Veteran Reaction)
Here I am doing a reaction to Merkules – ”Rich Men North Of Richmond” Remix. Thank you for taking the time to watch this and for helping me on my journey to 50k subscribers.
Again.
Small Americans are getting a voice. This is the point in time when pitchforks and torches start to get lit.
In fact Francis Ford Coppola deleted a key scene in the movie Apocalypse Now which explains in two minutes what the New York Times couldn’t explain in millions of words in their twelve years of biased reporting.
The United States Office of Strategic Services- the OSS, the precursor to the CIA- invented the Viet Minh to fight the Japanese in wwii. The Viet Minh moved south after the first Indochina war against the French and became known as the Viet Cong. The fact was the U.S. was aware of Ho Chi Minh since he tried to get a meeting with Woodrow Wilson while he was president to elicit U.S. help in his opposition to French colonialism. When war broke out U.S. intelligence agents picked Ho to organize armed resistance against the Japanese and their Vichy French allies in Indochina.
After the Japanese left Indochina in 1945 the British and the French decided that they wanted their respective empires back and instead of holding elections the next year to settle the political situation in Indochina the French battled Ho and General Vo Nguyen Giap for eight years until their ignominious defeat in May, 1954 at a remote valley named Dien Bien Phu.
The United States, which had been bankrolling the French in their losing war at a cost of a million dollars a day continued the war against what was now communist North Vietnam. The United States began it’s war slowly by first setting up military advisory groups in Saigon. Commando missions were initiated from ships at sea to destroy coastal military objectives in the north and naval batteries were used to shell targets up to ten miles inland from the coast. In 1964 the U.S. started launching sorties from aircraft carriers in the Tonkin Gulf to destroy power plants and other targets of high value in the north. The U.S. landed a marine expeditionary brigade (MEB) on the coast of South Vietnam in March of 1965 to provide additional security around the U.S. air base at Da Nang. The marine landing was followed in the next two years by the largest military build up in history with an occupation force eventually totaling over half a million U.S. army troops.
Coppola had to delete the scene at the French plantation because in 1979, four years after the war ended, the truth about the war in Vietnam and how the United States created the conflict and had at various times assisted, armed and bankrolled each side would have been just too much for the American public. Ironically characters in the movie telling the truth about the war in Vietnam would have removed any perceived veracity from Coppola’s film. It was far easier getting the American public to swallow lies about an imaginary ‘Gulf of Tonkin Incident’ or a fictional ‘Domino Theory’ or even that Vietnam was a ‘winnable’ war then it was to get the public to believe actual facts about a long running conflict.
I was going through treatment for cancer back in 2005, and in addition to a surgery I was receiving radiation treatments. There are restrictions on people who receive internal radiation treatments (in my case, it was a large dose of radioactive Iodine 131) and then being sent home after taking the dosage. In the past, I had been kept in the hospital for the treatment in a special hospital room that was lined with lead panels, and the toilet sewer system was sent to a specific tank, where it was kept before being sent to the public sewage system.
At any rate, after taking the treatment I was told to spend three days in isolation, and a few extra days staying away from small children and pregnant women. (It was a a different time, and perspectives on cancer treatments and radiation.)
Anyway, I came home and met my pregnant neighbor near the front door to the building. I stepped away from her and told her I was going through radiation treatment and that I didn’t want to harm her or her baby. She smiled, went in, and a few minutes later I went to my apartment.
About 2 hours later, I heard a knock at my door. It was around 5 o’clock in the afternoon, and I went to the door and asked who is it, but got no answer. I opened the door, and on a tray was a meal of beef tips and noodles, some home baked bread, a single flower in a vase, and a note. The note was from my pregnant neighbor, and she had written something like my mom had cancer and I wanted you to know that I am available to talk if you need anything.
Nicest response I got from anyone who ever found out that I was a cancer patient.
China STRIKES BACK at Neocons as Biden ‘Disappointed’ Xi Skips G20 w/ Carlos Martinez & Ken Hammond
This conversation is so good, unbiased and informative.
Southern Shrimp and Grits
Southern Shrimp and Grits is a cheesy delight, and the bacon and green onions add a ton of flavor!
2023 09 16 15 12
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
2 slices bacon, chopped
3 cups water
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup instant grits
1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
1 pound medium shrimp, peeled, deveined
4 green onions, thinly sliced (about 1/3 cup)
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Instructions
Cook bacon in large skillet over medium-heat heat until crisp.
Drain on paper towels; set aside.
Bring water and salt to boil in medium saucepan.
Slowly stir in grits. Reduce heat to medium-low; cover. Cook for 7 minutes or until thickened. Stir in cheese; set aside.
Add shrimp, onions and garlic to skillet; cook and stir 3 minutes or until shrimp turn pink.
“Just when you think it can’t possibly get any worse, it suddenly does” : Douglas Adams
…
Thirty years ago I subscribed to the “PT News” which was a weekly magazine listing thousands of job opportunities for contract work with a Per Diem bonus. I lived in a class “A” motor home and moved (for a brief while) from job opportunity to job opportunity.
Then, I would eat pizza more often than not, and enjoy a Duncan Donuts coffee and a chocolate frosted cake donuts every morning. I was married. Had cats. No children.
Most of my belongs were in a storage locker two days drive from where I lived.
I daydreamed about inventions, and gadgets. Watched Star Trek, and listened to progressive music. I was active in Majestic, and endured a cubicle worker lifestyle.
I was terribly stressed out. Took anti-anxiety medications. And cared for a wife who mentally ill in a serious way.
Now I live in China. Different environment, and wholly different culture.
…
Today, I commute to my office and watch Douxing videos. I communicate by wechat, and eat zhoufen and doujiang for breakfast. My daughter is in Kindergarten, and I drive a hybrid Japanese car. I no longer have any pets.
…
Sound great, eh: I own multiple homes. Run multiple companies. It’s not as great as you would think.
More of a pain-in-the-ass than anything else. Do not yearn or lust for what you Think the lifestyle you believe others live. The reality might surprise you.
Reality is very often something OTHER than what we envision.
…
I often think about my life, and my parents who are dead.
I miss my little kitty cats. I miss those little guys.
Texie. Phelie. Leonardo. Blue Thunder. Heather. Snowball.
So many kitties. I want to name them all, but it would just bore you all.
…
Occasionally I wonder about my ex-wife, but I know she’s a lost cause. She’s too ill. Too gone.
I look at a life of mistakes, failures and an occasional victory or two, and I wonder about it all… Often over a cup of coffee.
Instead of a cherry pie, though, I eat with some toasted peanut butter longhorn toast. (It’s a HK thing,)
And, by the way, I spend way too much time commuting.
Truth, this.
…
And, of course, not to mention being on my blog, my you-tube channels and Patreon. My time is not effectively being utilized.
I’ve got to make some changes.
…
My time could and should be better utilized.
My pleasures include boxing with my daughter, playing basketball with her, and watching Totoro on the computer.
But yet, I daydream about cruising in my GTO and listening to Boston. I daydream of being with my old kitty buddies. And I day dream of a much simpler time.
A time of climbing trees, going “bottle collecting” in the woods, walking the old rusty railroad tracks, and coming home to my mothers kitchen with a pot of spaghetti cooking all day…
…
And we are VIP in more restaurants, spa’s, and massage centers than I want to be. VIP is a “thing” in China. More common than you might otherwise think. Ah. It’s not as cracked up as you would think.
Changes are part of life, but it is our ability to roll with the changes that define who we are.
…
Today, I started deleting my most potentially controversial you-tube videos. I just came out of a “first strike”, and I do not want to be controversial. It is, after all, the United States that is home for you-Tube.
Mention Jeffrey Epstein, anything bad about Ukraine, anything good about China… you get blocked.
Today…
Freedom of the press – American style
2023 08 23 11 41
Strategic Culture.org and SouthFront.org both lost their (dot) .org domains this past week. Now they can be found by replacing their former suffix .org with (dot) .su, a Russian-based domain.
GADDAFI (2011): “Now, I am under attack by the biggest force in military history. My little African son, Obama, wants to kill me, to take away the freedom of our country, to take away our free housing, our free medicine, our free education, our free food, and replace it with American style thievery, called “capitalism.” But all of us in the Third World know what that means, it means corporations run the countries, run the world, and the people suffer. So, there is no alternative for me, I must make my stand, and if Allah wishes, I shall die by following his path, the path that has made our country rich with farmland, with food and health…
I do not wish to die, but if it comes to that, to save this land, my people, all the thousands who are all my children, then so be it. Let this testament be my voice to the world, that I stood up to crusader attacks of NATO, stood up to cruelty, stood up to betrayal, stood up to the West and its colonialist ambitions… In the West, some have called me “mad,” “crazy,” but they know the truth and continue to lie. They know that our land is independent and free, not in the colonial grip, that my vision, my path, is, and has been clear and for my people and that I will fight to my last breath to keep us free.”
The Montauk Project: The Truth is Darker Than You Can Possibly Imagine
Great story, and fun. Don’t get too caught up with this.
I talked to someone who was an aide/assistant to Deng Xiaoping when the reforms began in 1978, and this is what he told me:
Deng hated any discussion about political theory, and completely rejected them. If you wanted to get on the wrong side of Deng, and never get invited to see him again, all you had to do was talk about Marxist political theory;
Deng’s meetings were always very short, lasting less than 30 minutes. There was never any small talk;
He had a very sharp mind, and would get right to the heart of an issue, discuss it, and make a decision. Once he made the decision, the meeting was over.
This was a sharp contrast with Mao, who obsessed over communist theory. In Deng’s book, the only thing which mattered was what worked, which was why his practice was 实事求是 or “seek truth from facts”. This was why he hated the Gang of Four, who were leftists and rejected the truth.
Judging from what Dima Vorobiev has mentioned in his brilliant and insightful posts about Gorbachev and the decline and fall of the Soviet Union, there was not a single person in the Soviet Union like Deng, who was very earthy and grounded, and had the personality and seniority to force his ways on the rest of the Chinese leadership.
If the Soviet Union had someone like Deng, Yeltsin would have been shot, the oligarchs who stripped the nation of its assets would never have risen, and Putin would likely have never been needed.
It turns out that Putin is like Russia’s Deng, and this explains the good relationship between Putin and Xi Jinping. Not only do they respect each other, they like each other.
The great irony is that the Americans are much more bound by ideology than the Chinese leadership have been, throwing around terms like “socialism”, “capitalism” and treating the words “freedom” and “democracy” like they are some kind of religion to be worshipped at an altar, without having any deep understanding or agreement of their meaning. These words are not used for understanding, but to beat up on their political foes, especially now.
WARNING THIS IS HAPPENING IN RUSSIA 🇷🇺 There is a revolt of beautiful girls in Moscow – HDR Video
“I’ve been living here for over a year. Moscow is an incredible city and the people are the friendliest I’ve known anywhere. Unlike the west, the women here return big smiles if they see you noticing them. Women in the west are scared of perverts and almost always drop their gaze. It’s not due to modesty either. ”
Saying goodbye
“Jules, this is Brian. Listen, I’m on an airplane that’s been hijacked. If things don’t go well, and it’s not looking good, I just want you to know I absolutely love you. I want you to do good, go have good times. Same to my parents and everybody, and I just totally love you, and I’ll see you when you get there.”
Three minutes before United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11, passenger Brian Sweeney used an Airfone to leave a heartbreaking final voicemail message to his wife Julie. At the time, she was in the middle of teaching a high school class, so she missed his call. Though Julie was soon pulled away from her students to learn that her husband had died in the terrorist attacks, she didn’t realize that he had left her a message until she got home.
Originally Answered: What happened that made you realize “My teacher has no idea what they are teaching.”?
I was in high school chemistry class and I’m working away. The teacher does some equation on the board so I write it down.
At home that night, I’m working on my Chemistry homework when Mom walks in. My mother has a Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry and my father has a Ph.D in Organic Chemistry. Between them, they’ve got the Periodic Table down.
Long story short, the high school Chemistry teacher is teaching us things that are just flat wrong. Not kinda, just wrong. Now, if you’re curious, I’m not sure exactly WHAT that was – this was almost 40 years ago.
Every day, when I get home, my mother teaches me the right way to do things. The other kids in class notice I’m not paying attention or writing down anything the teacher says. So I tell them what’s up, they’re all AP, kind of nerdy.
They ask me to show them my Mom’s work every day before class so they don’t get totally screwed up. So I start doing that and, on Day 3, the teacher walks in early.
She wants to know what we’re doing in her classroom, blah, blah, blah. I was a little mouthy back then and I think I said something like “if you don’t know your Chemistry, my Mom can show you a few things.”
Oops, she starts screaming at me, I’m sent to the principal’s office – the whole works. I’m looking at a 5 day suspension for “back talking” a teacher.
So they make the call – Mrs. Fefer, can you please come get your daughter. We’re suspending her for 5 days, etc. etc. Mom has no idea what’s happened and this was before cellphones so she can’t check with me before she gets there.
Mom comes into the Principal’s office and gives me the “stink-eye.” Yes, guilty until proven innocent. I don’t blame her, I’d been a bit of a handful that year. So she asks the Principal exactly what happened and why I’m getting such a big penalty.
He spouts off some total bullshit about my starting an altercation with the teacher, screaming at her, approaching her in a “menacing” way and being generally disruptive to my fellow students “learning environment.” Our Principal was an ex-cop, he read this off like I was a member of the Manson family.
Mom asked him what teacher was involved. The minute she heard it was the Chemistry teacher, she had a good idea what happened. I did tell her when I started teaching the other kids before class.
So Mom asks Mr. Principal to call in the teacher – she tells him to do it so I can apologize to her. Mrs. Chemistry comes in, shakes Mom’s hand and Mom tells her to please describe my behavior so she can determine what “home” punishment is appropriate for my crimes.
That’s when things start to go sideways for Mrs. Chemistry and Mr. Principal. They hadn’t gotten their stories straight, and Mrs. Chemistry didn’t know about the embellishments he’d added.
After lots of back and forth, Mom looks over at me and says “What’s your version?” I tell it like it happened, admitting we were in the classroom when we shouldn’t have been but it was so I could teach the kids “real” chemistry.
That pissed the teacher off a little bit. She wanted to know how we’d gotten in and, I considered lying but, what the hell, I was already facing a 5 day suspension. Not much more can happen — I told her I’d used a plastic card to just slide the mechanism back. (I’d been doing this all over the school since the prior year).
Mrs. Chemistry starts screaming again about how I’m a criminal, there obviously needs to be more discipline at home because I’m going to come to “no good” and, not only am I corrupting my friends’ moral fiber, I’m “ruining” their minds by teaching them things that are against “every rule of science.”
Mom looks over at me and tells me to take out whatever I was using to teach this voodoo to my friends. I get out the notebook she and I have been working in. She flips through a couple of pages and says “Yep, looks right to me.”
If I had the chance to live a couple moments of my life over, this is definitely one I’d choose. Mrs. Chemistry looks at Mom and says “How on Earth could you POSSIBLY know whether anything in that book is right or wrong?”
Mom looks her straight in the face and says: “Well, I just happen to be 1 of 4 women in the United States who received a Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry in 1956. After completing graduate studies at Northwestern University, I went to work for Esso and was on the team that developed UniFlo motor oil, but I wanted a little more time with the kids, so I quit and accepted an offer to teach Chemistry at Rutgers University. Now that we’re in Houston, I’m an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Houston. Oh, and I know that notebook is correct because I prepared it so my daughter could learn how to do ACTUAL Chemistry CORRECTLY.”
It was a thing of beauty! Mrs. Chemistry just stood there with a glazed look on her face. Then, she walked out the door. I got a 2 day suspension for breaking into the classroom. I still had this horrible woman for Chemistry but she didn’t bother me any more and, at the end of the year, her contract was not renewed.
I LOVE my mom. She’s still going strong at 88!
Oliver Anthony IS the HERO we NEED! – I Want To Go Home
Another absolute masterpiece with a deep, deep message@)…ya’llshould LISTEN many, many, many times!
The Democrats Biden Problem
On August 7 2023 a fire burned down a large part of the Lahaina, a city on Maui, Hawaii, with some 12,700 inhabitants. Thousands of homes were destroyed. At least 115 people died, some 850 are still missing. It was the deadliest fire in the U.S. in more than a century.
When President Biden was asked about the incident a week after it had happened he responded with “No comment.”
The government offers an insulting $700 as emergency aid to every affected household. U.S. aid to Ukraine has exceeded $3,000 for every Ukrainian and Biden is seeking another $27 billion to be send there.
It took fourteen days for Biden to show up on the scene of the fire incident.
Being there he joked about the ‘hot ground’ and offered a fake story:
When President Joe Biden met with survivors of the Maui wildfires on Monday, he told them that he could relate to them because he and First Lady Jill Biden knew what it was like to lose a home to a fire.
But the fire in question was described by the Associated Press at the time as “a small fire that was contained to the kitchen,” with the Delaware fire chief indicating that it was under control in 20 minutes.
Later, while someone on the stage talked about how his home and the homes of his son and daughter had burned down, Biden seemed to fall asleep (vid).
I do not know who is supposed to manage Biden’s public relations but whoever that is is doing a bad job.
The strategists for the Democratic Party and those concerned with winning elections should seriously think about replacing Biden with someone who is better at handling himself.
Have you ever beaten your school bully?Yes. I was a 10-year-old girl. They were two 14-year-old boys. They were much bigger and taller, but they made one big mistake.
This is the story:
My school had kids from 2 to 18 years old in the same facilities. 2- to 5-year-olds had different recess schedules, though. But when I was ten and in 6th grade (I started first grade at 4), we shared the playground/sports facilities schedule with kids up to 16 years old.
I was also heavily bullied before this day by most of my classmates. I was the scholarship kid in a pretty fancy private school. They would insult, kick, and push me down the stairs (8 times in 6 years). Teachers did nothing as the other kids were “paying customers,” and I was not. I didn’t want to involve my mother because she was going through a nasty divorce, and I wanted to protect her from more stress. While this school was in the top 5 in the country, the local public schools were terrible, so there was no suitable alternative for me anyway. And I never hit back because although I was taller than most people in my class (Now, as an adult woman, I am 6′1′’), I didn’t want to hurt anybody.
Then, this day came.
These two kids were infamous for bullying anything that moved. Younger kids, mostly, as they were cowards. They had never bothered me before that day but had beaten several of my friends and classmates. But one day, as they started bothering my friends and me, I told them to go away. Their eyes lit up as they approached to beat me, and then they made a foolish mistake: they insulted my mother.
I don’t know what happened inside me. To that point, no one had insulted my mother. I was not allowing my father to insult her; he was a big, 6′4 grown man. These little shitheads were not going to get away with that. At that moment, I didn’t stop to think they were older, taller, stronger, and bigger than me. Or that half the school was afraid of the pair.
I just jumped on them, and it wasn’t pretty.
At some point, I got my rips bruised by knee kicks by one of them while the other held me. I couldn’t breathe. I learned months later at the doctor that they fractured my ribs that day. I didn’t go to the hospital at the time, as I thought they were only bruised, but they healed themselves well.
They ended up worse.
One had a broken nose and a black eye and was all scratched up with deep scratches. He also had a massive bruise around his neck and spoke in a hoarse voice for weeks, but I am not sure how I did that.
The other had three broken fingers (one in one hand, two in the other) and such a kick in the balls he cried tears. At some point, I also trapped his head on my arm and punched him in the head so hard I had bruises on my hands, but he had a big black bruise on the side of his head for a week.
I also remember kicking one in the stomach when they were on the floor until two teachers arrived and held me.
Because they had started it, I got no punishment or detention. Teachers were mostly shocked. I think the two boys were also quite embarrassed a 10-year-old girl had won and didn’t want to bring too much attention to the fact. But it was too late; dozens of students had seen it (none of which had been willing to defend a younger student from two bullies). The word got around the school. From that moment on, these two did not bother a single soul and kept a very low profile, but they would walk away the moment they saw me.
The best part was that because those two had beaten most of my bullies, my bullies were scared of me, and I was never picked on again. It also taught me that bullying is wrong, but defending yourself is good.
I want to clarify that I am not proud to have put two kids in the hospital. What I did was uncontrolled and a bit of an overkill, but it was an unplanned reaction.
I am, however, proud to have been the first and only to stand up to these two older boys.
NUMBERS STATIONS. Not a relic of the past. Intelligence agencies use shortwave to communicate with spies, agents and assets in the field. Right now.
Today. Let’s listen to a few and learn how to tune in from home — for free.
Since World War One, numbers stations have been transmitting coded messages to spies around the world using shortwave radio.
And they’re still transmitting right now.
We’re going to listen to a few in this episode. These transmissions sound strange to casual listeners. But to the right set of ears, they contain information that could change the course of history.
In fact, numbers stations have changed the course of history.
Countless numbers stations are on the air right now — for what purpose, few really know. And the people that do know? They aren’t talking.
They’re essentially pirate stations — operating illegally. But, nobody shuts them down. And no government acknowledges they even exist. Let’s find out why.
In the corner of Africa where I was born and raised, the notion of ‘quality of life’ seemed almost mythological.
This wasn’t just subsistence living; it was an existence dictated by raw survival, painted with the broad brushstrokes of repetition—same sun, same struggle, day after day.
Imagine a primary school journey that felt like an odyssey each day, uniforms stitched together from mismatched threads of hope and need.
We crossed a colossal river and walked miles to school each day, all in a quest for education.
Discipline was high, and no excuse was good enough, and so, when you come late to school, you’ll answer to the ‘good doctor’ —the ‘cane’, you’ll get whooped
To avoid going late to school, we left early, which meant no breakfast, and neither did we take any to school. You’ll have to wait for the arduous journey back home late in the afternoon or evening to eat.
The said meals are a monotonous loop of Soup and swallow, mainly ‘Eba’ eaten twice a day, while Christmas transformed into a culinary carnival featuring the luxury of rice and stew. A real feast once a year, our yuletide cheer was marked by the aroma of meat wafting through our humble abode. Hence we looked forward to Christmas immediately after it passed.
Books were inherited like family heirlooms, although torn and fried. These fragmented tales were lessons in imagination as the front and back pages were almost always absent, forcing us to piece together unknown beginnings and mysterious endings. And my Dad was the happiest whenever he saw me study.
Child labor wasn’t an issue; it was a rite of passage. Before I even clocked 10, my young hands became well-acquainted with the soil, the woods, and the paddles of canoes.
We did all kinds of odd jobs, all kinds of play, walked all kinds of forests, swam in all kinds of water, drank all kinds of water, ate a lot of rubbish we considered food, subjected our bodies to harsh weather, and didn’t even fall sick.
I didn’t need a gym to carve my six-pack; hard work molded me into a sculpture of resilience.
We had large extended families, because in a place where material wealth is scarce, the richness of relations becomes the ultimate currency, and relations are the closest thing to mechanized farming, you plant and harvest more with a big family.
The downside of having such families is in resource management; beds and rooms were hard to come by, and sometimes, you learned to find your place in the world earlier than most—sometimes as young as ten or twelve. Your own parents didn’t have a place for you to sleep:D
Yet amid all this, there’s a striking paradox: the villagers, my people, exude an inexplicable happiness. Maybe it’s the beauty of not knowing any different, of finding joy in the simplest things. Ignorance, perhaps, serves as a cushion against the harsh realities— if you don’t know better how could you worry about doing better?
Today, you might mistake me for someone who’s always been cradled in comfort. But every facet of my being has been shaped by those early years of unrelenting struggle.
Life has taught me that no story is set in stone. Change, as daunting as it might seem, is only a decision away.
I am living proof that even in the grimmest of chapters, the plot can always be rewritten.
Truck Driver Parked For The Night & Saw The Craziest Thing In His Life At A Rest Area
Oh wow. He absolutely IS a highway angel!!! Thank you already for all you truckers do for us. Especially these past 3 years. God bless and protect you all.
Moving out day
No, this isn’t from move-in day. I took this pic three weeks ago when we moved my son out of his dorm. He’s not returning to his (now former) four year college. I’m proud of him for realizing that while his chosen university is amazing, it wasn’t a good fit for him at this time.
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He gave this a lot of thought over his winter break and is going to attend a local, community college to pursue a degree in Automotive Technologies. He’s loved cars since he could walk, so I think this will be a great path for him. As we were leaving, being the funny guy that he is, he said, “I will miss being here, but I will definitely not miss the 2AM fire alarms.”
All I’ve ever wanted is for my boy to be happy. This was entirely his decision, and he’s very excited for this next chapter. I think my brother may have put it best … college is all about figuring out what you like, and what you don’t like. So now, he’s realized what he doesn’t want to do and is moving on to what he DOES want to pursue.
There is NO shame in trade schools and/or community college! I’ve no doubt he will fly high and succeed, and I’m so very PROUD of him.
Kathy Oberst
Braised Slow Cooker Chuck Roast with Roasted Pepper Sauce
Braised Slow Cooker Chuck Roast with Roasted Pepper Sauce is soul-warming and hearty. Make a boldly flavored fall-apart beef meal with this easy recipe.
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Ingredients
3 pounds Certified Angus Beef® chuck roast
3 red bell peppers
4 large garlic cloves, cut in half
3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 large Spanish onion, sliced
2 tablespoons diced, chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
Quarter and core red peppers; toss with garlic and one tablespoon olive oil in a large bowl to coat. Evenly space peppers on a large sheet tray and place under broiler to blister and blacken pepper skins, about 10 minutes.
Remove from oven; when cool, discard skin (it easily comes off), chop peppers and transfer to slow cooker.
Season chuck roast with salt and pepper.
Heat remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil in large heavy-bottom pan. Brown roast over medium-high heat on all sides; transfer to slow cooker.
Add onions, chipotle peppers and paprika to pan. Stir to remove browned bits from bottom of pan.
Add stock and diced tomatoes; pour over roast.
Cover and cook on LOW for 6 hours or until roast is fork tender.
Remove roast from cooker and place on cutting board. Pull apart with forks to bite-size pieces. Skim excess fat from braising liquid. Stir beef back into sauce.
Serve, garnished with cilantro and a dollop of sour cream.
I was in a big steakhouse in California about 30 years ago. The waitress, like many Americans, liked our Brit accent and happened to say their head chef was from England. Thought nothing of it because England is quite a big place with a lot of people . About an hour later as we were finishing up our desserts , the chef came out.
Conversation went something like this.
CHEF: I heard your accents and had to come out because you sound like you are from Essex.
ME: Yes all four of us are. We are from Southend on Sea. ( A very famous large Essex town recognised around the UK).
CHEF: Really. That’s where I’m from. Actually Shoeburyness just outside Southend.
ME: Really! I lived there for 12 years,after I was born.
CHEF: Do you know West Road. I ran the Chippy ( fish and chip shop) there for 10 years between ’71 and ‘81.
ME: You’ve got to be joking. I used to come in your shop the last Friday of every month with my brother and my parents to get fish and chips.
Originally Answered: What is the weirdest thing you ever seen someone do in public?
Story 1. I was sitting at Walmart one day, waiting for my ride to pick me up. I watched a beautiful girl of about 16 walk wearing a really pretty dress that was black down the sides and white in the center accompanied by her mom. I guessed that they may have been after nylons or something, since she was wearing a formal and it was prom night and this was Walmart. I was still waiting when they came back out, and since I was bored, I was watching them when they passed into the bright sunlight. I was shocked to see that in the sunlight, the center white panels of her dress disappeared! I got up and followed them out the their car trying my best to block others’ view of her scantily-clad backside. As I reached the car, I walked up to the driver’s window which was already opened, and said “pardon me, normally, I don’t bother strangers, but do you know that when your beautiful daughter walked into the bright sun, her dress became invisible in the white areas? The woman looked concerned, but the daughter looked at me and said, “It does not!” I just smiled at her and said “Then how do you suppose I would know you are wearing burgundy colored G-string panties?” The girl’s face went white, and her mother took her back into the store with a car blanket around her to get her a shawl or wrap to wear over it. Lol.
Story 2. Again, sitting and waiting for a ride home from a different store, I saw a woman open her car door, and change her baby’s diaper. When she was done changing the baby, she folded the dirty diaper, and threw the dirty diaper under her car, and walked into the store. Just as she entered the store, a older woman who was in the next car, got out of her car, reached up under the first woman’s car, grabs the dirty diaper, opens it, and drops it dirty side down into the mother’s sun roof that was open. I was still laughing when the second lady came by me, and I told her “well played!” Lol.
WHO IS HE?! | First Time EVER Hearing Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond (Reaction)
9 seconds… OMG!
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Olivia Farnsworth
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This little girl in the photo above is Olivia Farnsworth and she has a one of the rarest conditions known to man. In Fact, she is the only documented case in the whole the world with a Chromosome 6p deletion, and the chances of this happening is so rare that the odds are 8 billion to one.
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She has baffled scientist’s all over the world because her condition causes her to feel no pain, hunger or the need to sleep. Apart from the the obvious she’s lived some what of a normal life. When she was a baby her mother notice a few strange symptoms. She never cried as a baby, and never felt the need to take a nap, and would stay active throughout the whole day.
It wasn’t until she had accident and suffered a deep wound to her lip, that doctors notice it didn’t seem to bother her, even after minor surgery.
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A few years later she was struck by a car and dragged 60ft across the ground and then got up as if nothing had happened. She didn’t the feel the pain of the car hitting her and because her body was so relaxed she didn’t suffer any fractures. Not only does she not feel hunger and pain, she also doesn’t sense any danger and that’s why she didn’t try and avoid the car. She’s as close to a superhuman as you could get.
There’s documented cases all over the world with people not feeling hungry or not able to register pain, but Olivia is the only case with all three symptoms.
It’s not that see is missing a chromosome, but the fact that the Chromosome 6 has been altered so much, its unusable.
Patriot Rapper REMIXED ‘Rich Men North Of Richmond’ & It’s A BANGER | Hot DAMN
Originally Answered: What are some of the greatest examples of presence of mind?
This is my favorite one until now. So I was partying at a friend’s house one night and I had to get back to my place for some reason (maybe a work from home thing) and everyone with a vehicle was sleeping. My place was just across a graveyard from my friend’s building, so I opted for a brisk walk. What could happen in 5 minutes?
So, there I was, walking by a cemetery, in the middle of the night, fearing not the dead but the sudden appearance of a living breathing man. I was hoping I wouldn’t run into one during my 5-minute dash to my building but alas I was mistaken.
Enter, a creep.
What happened next, unfolded within seconds.
Halfway through, right outside the graveyard’s gate, a motorcycle approaches from behind, going slow, and the driver had one arm extended; I see the looming shadow of that hand getting closer and closer. I knew the inevitable slap on the bum was coming but my paranoia got the better of me and I started thinking up all the worse case scenarios. Then, I realize I’m wearing a white dress, my hair’s a frizzy disheveled mess, my cheap makeup is smudged, and I’m at the entrance of a graveyard in the dead of the night.
If there’s one thing that strikes fear in the hearts of Indians, its superstition! We’re more scared of cats crossing our paths than serial killers.
So I quickly pulled a few strands of hair to cover my face, turned around, almost lunged towards the bike howling like a demon (I don’t know how I did it, but it was that scary scream that is a mix of a man and a woman’s voice like in horror movies) The guy on the bike not only kept his arm to himself but he almost his lost balance, regained it and zoomed away at top speed.
I reached home safe and had a good laugh.
Dear creep, if you ever read this and realize that the ghost story of night you saw a woman in white emerge from a graveyard (I know you conveniently skip the part where you almost shit your pants) was a fake. The lesson here that eve-teasing is not only wrong but can also be dangerous 😛
In 1994, a crew of fishermen in Hawkesbury in Sydney were out trawling for Squid when they came across a terrifying discovery. As they pulled up their nets to bring aboard the first of their morning catch, one of the fishermen noticed something heavy clinging to the net as he pulled it in.
What they thought was going to be a decent morning’s work turned into something beyond their worst nightmares. Wrapped up in the net was a human-size solid iron crucifix, and attached was the body of a human.
Wires and ropes around the neck and torso, along with the feet and hands, bound the body to the cross to mirror the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
An autopsy revealed that it was the body of a man. Attempts were made to mummify the man either before or after his death. Plastic was poured over his body in a macabre way of preserving him. Identification was almost impossible due to the body being in the water for at least a year, according to the examiners.
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The welding on the cross was done with professionalism and precision, it also fit the arms span of the man perfectly. It was established that the crucifix was custom built, and along with the body weight, it was too heavy for just one person to lift.
A facial reconstruction of the man’s face was made and a 100,000 dollar reward was offered for information leading to the identity of the man.
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He was dubbed “Rack Man” by the media, and for 24 years, the identity of the man remained a mystery. In 2018, with advancements in DNA testing being made, the mysterious Identity of the man was finally made. It turned out to be a 37-year-old gambler named Max Tancevski who went missing in 1993.
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The reason for his gruesome end remains a mystery. The official theory is that he owed money due to his gambling habits and it was done to send a message. Although, the strange religious symbolism attached to his murder and the precise way his body was arranged on the cross, suggest something far more sinister.
Biden White House to Saudi Arabia, ditch BRICS and get nuclear weapons program
Meanwhile Countries like China and Russia and many others, even Arab nations no longer promote any Hatred
They promote growth, development and modernization
Chinese cannot control the sheer hatred against them or reciprocate against the same
They don’t hate even the Japanese and Koreans despite the horrors of WWII
It’s why it’s so easy to lie and badmouth about China
China usually rarely retaliates for words or false news
Thus today to me, the Democracies look like they have regressed by several decades while the erstwhile rogue nations appear to be progressing positively
When I was an instructor in a paratrooper unit in the German Army, there was still the draft in place. As a result, people from all walks of life and professions joined our unit.
Four times a year, our battalion took in new recruits:
In January, people without a job were drafted.
In April, most new recruits were miners and steelworkers (there were a lot of mines in the area).
In July, people who had just finished high school and later wanted to study at a university came to our unit.
And In October, the craftsmen (plumbers, roofers, mechanics, etc.) had their turn.
It wasn’t that in each quarter, there were only recruits of a certain professional or educational background beginning their service, they were just the majority. It was always mixed.
So, who made the best paratroopers?
The more educated guys of the July quarter were the best soldiers. They understood the orders quicker, were more relaxed, and also regarded their service as some kind of fun. Many of them said, “before I spent the next five years at a university, I want to have some adventure. I have to serve anyway, so why not in an elite unit?” These guys were also two or three years younger and physically much fitter than the rest.
The next best soldiers were the craftsmen. We were infantry but you can always need a good car mechanic or a carpenter. These folks were also the ones who most often decided to become professional soldiers. They liked the army and were good Non-Commissioned Officer material.
The miners and steelworkers were fun but not very disciplined. These guys joined our unit, not because they liked to be airborne soldiers but our barracks were close to their homes. Many of them were already married and wanted to see their wives and young kids as often as possible. Lousy material.
The jobless people from the January quarter were a mixed bunch. Some of them were useless high-school dropouts who were lazy and dumb while others were quite okay. Needless to say, a lot of them stayed longer than the fifteen months of compulsory service as they didn’t have a job in civilian life.
In our unit, it was more about how smart you were and much less about your civilian profession. As I said, we were infantry, and there weren’t that many tasks that you couldn’t be trained for.
Of course, in other units (engineers, medics, etc.) the best soldiers are usually the ones who have already worked in similar professions in their civilian lives.
It’s ALL About Taking Responsibility
August 28, 2023
One of the biggest differences between me now and me 3 years ago is simple: I’ve taken responsibility for my life.
Now what I mean when I say taking responsibility, is accepting and taking ownership of my life.
I am responsible for my life, and everything that affects me is my responsibility to deal with.
And you need to be responsible for yours. You need to be responsible for your health by exercising regularly and eating well, you need to be responsible for your social life and ensuring you are social and maintaining friendships, you need to be responsible for everything that affects you. And I’m going to tell you how to get there.
I see a lot of young men in particular, who are angry at the world, they think that life isn’t treating them the same way it treats others.
And guess what…It isn’t.
Some people have far greater advantages than others, and some people are hit with terrible misfortune and suffering. And whichever end of the spectrum you are, you are responsible for your life.
Responsibility isn’t the same as fault: It’s not your fault that your parents are rich, it’s not your fault your dad died. But you are responsible for how these things affect your life, you choose how you deal with them.
Some people have lost family and consequently turned to drugs and alcohol, others have lost family and started charities or companies.
There are ways to deal with every situation, some better, some worse.
Your circumstances don’t define you, your response to them does.
I hear all the time on self-improvement forums “I can’t do that because…” I don’t care about the because, take some fucking responsibility and find a workaround.
The first step to gaining some responsibility for your life is realising that you are someone worth helping. You deserve someone to look after you and make sure you can be the best version of yourself possible. Make that person you. Recognise that responsibility isn’t a negative thing, It’s a privilege.
You GET to be responsible for your own life.
It’s incredible freeing to know that, while life may fuck you, ultimately you are responsible for your misery. You are also responsible for all of your achievements, successes and happiness.
So fucking own it.
The second step is starting to act like you are responsible for your life.
There is no third step.
Is your job shit? It’s your responsibility to either try and make it less shit, or quit.
Do you feel like shit? That’s your responsibility to figure out why and make changes
Are your relationships shit? Take some responsibility for it, cut people off if you need to, try harder, just know that It’s your responsibility to improve them.
Is your body shit? That’s your responsibility too bozo, go for a run or something idk.
Not sticking to your goals? Actually NOT your responsibility – I’m joking, of course it is you muppet.
You don’t have to be perfect, you just have to try. Take responsibility, do the work.
– bigjoerona
Germany Begs China To Help It During Industrial Collapse Which Is Worse Than You Think!
My car was being worked on in a Walmart car care center. Just tire rotation. When I was texted that my car was ready, there was a guy in the short line ahead of me. I knew he was a single dad, had talked to him at the gym where we both worked out, had seen him in a restaurant with his 3 sons. Someone told me that his wife was in prison, I didn’t ask what it was for.
He looked really stressed out, his 3 boys were in the waiting area, playing, goofing off. When the guys card was declined, then he had the clerk try 2 other cards. He asked the person at the register if he could work something out for the new times he had, put on his car. Then, he asked if they could just put the old ones back on. It was very cool in the store; he was sweating profusely.
My heart was pounding with sympathy & sadness for him. He told the clerk that he was going to walk around to try to figure something out. The shop was not allowed to put the old tires back on as it would make Walmart liable if there was an accident.
When the guy walked away with his 3 sons, couldn’t hear or see the tire shop counter, I stepped up. I kept extra cash with me for emergencies. The amount owed was $250. I knew the clerk, was very sure he would do the right thing. I gave him $300. in cash, asked him to call the guy on his cell, letting him know his car was ready, then, give him the change from the $300 & NOT tell him who had paid.
I walked just around a corner, waiting to see the single dad’s reaction. He thought it was a joke at first, then, when the change was handed to him, he looked at it with a big grin. He never found out who had paid for his new tires. That’s the way I wanted it.
I well remember the bus ride leaving prison. I had an hour wait, so I went across the street to a Burger King and a 7-11. I bought a single can of beer, and a Whopper. The bus pulled in, and I got on.
I ate that burger and drank that beer in the darkness, as the bus wound its way out of the rural deep South.
I was in shock.
But I do remember that everyone on the buss were playing with their smart phones. And that was the first time that I ever saw one.
I rode with another felon getting out. He was in for 15 years, and was stunned about this. “What are they doing?” he asked. Indeed. If you are new to the experience, it is shocking to you.
While to everyone else, it’s just a normal every-day occurrence.
We need to step out of the BOX that we are in, and see just how different our life is today from what it used to be….
…
The United States is up to it’s old bag-of-tricks again. This time, it disposed a very popular (pro-China) leader of Pakistan; Imran Khan, and put in a pro-USA stooge. This kind of thing is laying the ground-work for some very exciting times…
And people are pissed off all over the United States about those jackasses in Washington DC….
Sad Reality💔 | Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond (REACTION!)
A packet of the local pita bread known as khubz here is available for a fixed price of 1 Qatari Riyal.
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No matter what happens, the price of khubz is never changed. It has been the same price from when I was a baby until now. Each packet contains 10 khubz and no matter which bakery manufactures it, they are allowed to sell a packet only for 1 riyal. The government authorities that control food pricing are extremely strict about this.
I believe this is the policy for most countries of the GCC. This is to ensure that nobody in the country goes hungry.
Even if people have other financial issues, he/she would have 1 riyal to spare at any given point of time. So they would never not have food to eat. And I personally think that this is a beautiful gesture!
Al Bundy FIRST TIME REACTION to Al Bundy’s Best Insults (British Reaction)
Hopefully you enjoy our style of reactions, including todays video: Al Bundy FIRST TIME REACTION to Al Bundy’s Best Insults (British Reaction)
Flying first class is a way of traveling that offers many advantages and privileges, but also comes with a high price. Flying first class means enjoying a superior level of comfort, service, and convenience compared to other classes of travel. Some of the benefits of flying first class are:
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A larger and more comfortable seat that may recline fully or turn into a bed, depending on the airline and the route.
A more private and spacious cabin may have fewer seats or even individual suites, depending on the airline and the route.
A premium menu and beverage selection that may include gourmet meals, fine wines, champagne, and cocktails, depending on the airline and the route.
A personalized and attentive service from the flight attendants and the crew, who may address you by name and cater to your preferences and needs.
A luxurious amenity kit that may contain high-quality products for your hygiene, comfort, and entertainment, such as skin care items, earplugs, eye masks, headphones, etc., depending on the airline and the route.
Priority access to various airport services, such as check-in, security, boarding, baggage handling, lounge access, etc., depending on the airline and the route.
These benefits can make flying first class a very enjoyable and relaxing experience, especially for long-haul flights or frequent travelers.
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So flying first class is a personal choice that depends on your budget, preferences, goals, values, etc. Some people may find it worth it to fly first class for the benefits and advantages it offers, while others may not find it worth it due to its high cost.
Star Trek Next Generation – Sentient Starship
I might have already included this clip in an earlier post. If so, then please ignore.
I once asked a recruiter what are the most in demand jobs.
Engineering and welding.
“We can’t find enough engineers and welders.”
Average salary is 100k US for engineering. 50k for welders.
…
I’ve found sales, particularly software and advertising sales to be unexpectedly high.
I’ve worked in digital advertising and software sales.
I’ve averaged over $150k most years.
…
My more specialized technical SaaS (software as a service) friends do $200-$400k. Some much higher.
At these higher salaries though, the pressure gets intense.
High quotas, lots of travel, bottom 25% of performers get cut.
Generally speaking, if someone is paying you above average money, they expect above average effort. And results.
it’s all about ROI.
This means that the job is priority #1. Ahead of vacation, family etc.
Not always, but usually.
You have to be mentally prepared.
Fewer people can do this. Or are willing to.
Which is why it pays more.
American Rapper FIRST time EVER hearing OLIVER ANTHONY – Rich Men North Of Richmond
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8 Parents Revealed Why They Home-Schooled Their Children
July 27, 2023
1. My number one reason was I wanted my kids to like learning. And they do, they love both reading and math. But it ended up being so much more. We have a lot more bonding time as a family, and my kids are best friends. They have more time to spend with their friends, and they have friends of all ages, from all around our city, not just the kids their age, in their neighborhood. They have lots of time to pursue multiple hobbies and interests. We as a family aren’t tied to a school schedule.
2. Our homeschool journey started because of food allergies. As we began to research our options we were flooded with reasons to homeschool that really resonated with us.
Safety- pandemic, a growing anti-vax movement and violence (bullying, shootings,etc)
We wanted our girls to get accurate and useful information regarding sex education. Not just the abstinence nonsense that is taught in schools. When our girls eventually go down that path, we want to make sure they know how to protect themselves as well as how to advocate for themselves and what they want.
We want to make sure that our girls are being taught accurate, truthful and fully represented history. I’m not interested in my kids learning a conservative, white-washed version of history.
My kids are only kids once and I genuinely enjoy spending time with them. Homeschooling lets us do that.
Flexibility. We’re able to do extracurricular activities such as gymnastics during the day while public school is in session. This usually means better instructor to kid ratios. Also, it means more time to spend as a family in the evening once my husband gets off work so he doesn’t miss out on time with the kids.
Private school was never an option for us because all of the private schools in our area are religious. We don’t feel that religion has anything to do with education and shouldn’t be included during school time.
3. I personally don’t have too much of a problem with the material taught in public school (though with a lot of recent developments in some states re: religion butting it’s way in, book bans etc, I’m wary of the future) but large classes have to, by default, teach to the middle. The kids who are behind will stay behind, and the kids ahead will get bored and disruptive. There’s also incredible stigmatization of kids held back OR skipped forward, even if they need it, so it rarely, if ever, happens. The way I see it, public schools prioritize putting kids in boxes and keeping them there, regardless of their needs academically or developmentally (it’s really not developmentally appropriate for young kids to sit in one place for hours at a time). I don’t blame them, though, because you kind of have to exercise a lot of control if you are the sole adult in charge of 20+ young children all day.
We looked at a lot of private schools in the area and none of them met our needs. We want our kids to have a low pressure academic atmosphere where they are allowed to act like young kids, and where there are enough teachers to meet kids where they’re at. That’s just not offered around here in a school we can drive to and afford right now.
4. Ultimately, I don’t believe that the material taught or the way it is taught will be of any benefit to my children in their future and may even be detrimental.
5. There’s a lot of reasons..
Like you, I don’t think what is taught in schools is quality information and nothing applicable to life skills.
I also don’t like the idea of my kids sitting in a chair 7 hours a day.
I think kids should be around a lot of different people and different age groups. I don’t see that there’s a lot to gain by being with the same group of kids the same age for 12 years.
I don’t like the political climate of our nation and I don’t like that it’s so apparent in schools. Our children’s education isn’t a game and shouldn’t be messed with the way it is.
I am fine with people having differing opinions than me, and I also don’t want to shelter my kids from different opinions and ideas but I also don’t trust a bunch of strangers having such a big part of my kids lives.
I genuinely love my kids, enjoying being around them and hate the thought of them being gone 40+ hours a week starting at age 5.
We homeschool now. As our kids are reaching middle school levels, we have discussed possibly putting them into private school. Financially, it’s definitely doable for us. Right now, we like homeschool, our kids like it and are thriving. Private school is always an option for us if thats what we decide. There is one we’ve toured and really like near us that will be what we choose if that’s the path we go down.
6. We decided to homeschool after we already had three kids in public school. I watched their love of school, turn into dread. The younger kids, no longer felt safe. They were coming home crying because of their peers or confused over classroom assignments. I watched my older kid turn into robot mode to please the system with A’s.
After my oldest graduated high school, we pulled the younger kids and decided to homeschool. We love the freedom of homeschool. Being able to tackle assignments in a way that benefits each child. Going to zoo’s, museums, and state parks anytime we want too. Learning about any thing we want, just because we want too. I can tailor their education to the career fields that they are interested in. We can enjoy play groups other extracurricular activities at our own pace.
Ultimately, learning is a life long process and I wanted them to have a good foundation. Classroom learning is a small percentage compared to the rest of their lives. I considered their physical, emotional, intellectual, social, spiritual, environmental and occupational well-being when we decided to homeschool.
7. I like homeschooling and the freedom that comes with it. I like that my kids can spend time outside, playing, reading, and I like that we can choose a curriculum that they enjoy and that works for them. My kids are young and I don’t like the idea of them being in public school for 8 hours day. They can sleep late if they need to, and can take days off when they’re struggling. The public schools in my area are overcrowded and there is so much crime; schools are frequently on lockdown due to crime in the surround area or because of threats made.
We actually homeschool through a public charter. So the charter school provides funds for students that we use to purchase curriculum and that is used towards extracurriculars. We use the charter funds for piano lessons, gymnastics, and a learning co-op that meets weekly. Private schools in our area are expensive and also overcrowded.
8. Our catalyst for homeschooling was originally the pandemic and some academic trauma and bullying that came before that. We continued for many reasons but mainly because one of my kids especially needs lots of time to work through struggle and build confidence. If he were in public school his anxiety would be unmanageable and he wouldn’t be thriving as he is. It also fits our lifestyle and gives us flexibility to live the way we want and not be ruled by a societal schedule.
My favorite reason for homeschooling though is that learning and growing becomes an ongoing, long-form conversation. It’s stream-of-consciousness across the years where we reach back, make connections, and are continually building on the day before in an organic, developmentally appropriate way that revolves around hand-picked curricula and materials we believe in. I as their teacher can see where they are compared to where they have been and I can be a better steward of their progress. Pair all this with the ability to do year-round school, friends of all ages and walks of life, field trips around our town or country to learn about their world first hand, 4H and other clubs, and their being involved in a few different family businesses, often working events with adults, and living on and working a farm, and we’ve got invaluable real life living year round. After doing it this way school seems even more artificial and not the right path for us.
Do you really care if Indians don’t acknowledge that China is better?
Its just SOUR GRAPES
It’s embarrassing enough actually
It’s why Indians who badmouth China are not debate worthy.
Tomorrow if Kambli keeps saying how better he was to Sachin, would Sachin bother to reassure everyone he is better
He may pity Kambli and smile
Sachin will take Lara, Ponting or Steve Waugh or one of those guys seriously and counter any potential allegations
Chinas main adversary is US
Like I told our friend MJ – India today is Small Potatoes, however painful it sounds to hear
John Bolton escalation. Removing Imran Khan w/ Jeffrey Sachs
The United States is in the process of “regime Changing” Pakistan. Great discussion. This is REALLY good.
Blackberry Cobbler
blackberry cobbler
Yield: 10 to 12 servings; 1 1/2 cups sauce
Ingredients
Cobbler
4 cups fresh blackberries
1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 tablespoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup milk
1 1/2 cups boiling water
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
Sauce
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/4 cup water
1 cup granulated sugar
3 tablespoons butter
1 cup crushed blackberries
Instructions
Cobbler
Sprinkle berries with 1/4 cup sugar; set aside.
Combine flour, 3 tablespoons sugar, baking powder and salt in a mixing bowl.
Cut in butter with pastry blender until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal.
Add milk, mixing well. Roll two-thirds of the dough to 1/8 inch thickness on a lightly floured surface.
Place in lightly greased 12 x 8 x 2 inch baking dish.
Pour berries into pastry-lined dish.
Roll out remaining dough and add top crust.
Pour boiling water over crust.
Combine cinnamon and 1 teaspoon sugar; sprinkle over cobbler.
Bake at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes. Spoon cobbler into serving dishes and top with sauce.
Sauce
Mix cornstarch with water until smooth.
Melt butter in a saucepan; add sugar, berries and cornstarch mixture. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally until mixture thickens.
Oldest Stilted Village in Europe Found Underwater Behind Defensive Spikes
Stilted village
A team of underwater excavators diving in Lake Ohrid, between Macedonia and Albania, have discovered an ancient stilted village protected by 100,000 defensive wooden spikes. Built around 8,000-years-ago, this is potentially the oldest stilted village ever discovered in Europe.
Lake Ohrid is situated in the mountainous border of North Macedonia and Albania and its depths hold remarkable archaeological significance spanning over 8 millennia. Now, scientists have uncovered what they think might be one of “Europe’s earliest sedentary communities,” and it was heavily defended.
The Oldest Lakeside Community In Europe
A report on PHYS.org explains the team of archaeologists believe the Albanian shore of Lake Ohrid was the location of a settlement of stilt houses. It is estimated that between 200 to 500 people inhabited the settlement at any given time, and that it was built between 6,000 and 5,800 BC. If this dating is accurate, then the site represents the oldest lakeside village ever discovered in Europe.
Professor Albert Hafner , an archaeologist from Switzerland’s University of Bern , told AFP that his team of Swiss and Albanian archaeologists spent the past four years excavating at Lin, on the Albanian side of Lake Ohrid. He said the village is “several hundred years older than previously known lake-dwelling sites in the Mediterranean and Alpine regions.” In conclusion, Hafner said this suggests the site is “the oldest” of its type in Europe.
A Heavily Defended Archaeological Treasure Trove
According to Professor Ilir Gjepali, an Albanian archaeologist, the team found “seeds, plants, and bones of both wild and domesticated animals.” This leads the researchers to speculate that the villagers survived on fishing, agriculture and rearing domesticated livestock.
At the submerged settlement, the underwater archaeologists also identified fossilized fragments of wood, including “prized pieces of oak.” Albanian archaeologist, Adrian Anastasi, counted tree rings and derived valuable new insights about the climatic and environmental conditions during that period.
The divers also discovered evidence that the settlement was fortified with around “100,000 defensive wooden spikes” that were driven into the bottom of the lake. Hafner said this discovery alone was “a real treasure trove for research.”
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Putting The Stilted Village Into Context
Until this discovery upset the apple cart, one of the oldest known stilted villages in Europe, and the world, was the ” Stilt House Settlement on the Lake of Zurich ,” in Switzerland. Built during the Late Bronze Age, around 1100-800 BC, this prehistoric village consists of houses built on stilts over the water. And in Scotland, the Oakbank Crannog in Loch Tay was one of the oldest known stilted houses ever discovered, dating back to around 4000 years ago, during the Bronze Age.
Until this recent discovery on Lake Ohrid, the oldest stilted settlement known to archaeologists was the “Sankt Peter am Wallersee” site in Austria. Dating back to around 3943-3668 BC, during the Neolithic period, the houses in this ancient village were all built on wooden stilts over the water.
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Why Water Worlds Were Preferred
Whether in Albania, Austria, Scotland or elsewhere in Europe, stilted settlements provided insights into early agrarian societies’ ways of life, architecture, and resource utilization. But what were the key motivators that inspired ancient cultures in Europe to build stilted settlements?
Primarily, they were designed for flood avoidance in areas prone to deluge, but right beside this primary motivator comes defence. Locating settlements over water made them more difficult to attack, because the watery surroundings acted as a natural moat making it harder for outsiders to access the settlement, enhancing the security of the inhabitants.
Bodies of water also provided a ready source of fish and aquatic plants for sustenance, and living on water enabled easier movement of people and goods. However, perhaps the primary reason people constructed stilted settlements was to enhance perceived status and prestige, because building over water held deep cultural and social significance, symbolizing the higher status of the community leaders.
Originally Answered: What’s been the most mind blowing example of incompetence ever displayed by one of your coworkers?
A laboratory, many, many years ago, needed some very accurate weights for precision weighing materials, so they ordered the very best set, at that time I think they were Class A, traceable to NBS (National Bureau of Standards, Now NIST, I believe). They were VERY expensive and apparently only produced to order. They waited and waited for delivery and finally called to see what was the hold-up. They were told the set (there were many little weights in the set) had been sent a while back, so they checked with Receiving. Receiving said,”Yes, we have them and we just finished processing them. Will bring them to you right now.” The nice wooden box had the property number on it, as prescribed by the receiving department, and when they opened the box, each of those precision weights had a neat small hole drilled through the stem of the weight, with a property tag affixed! Every. Single. one. of. them.
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For those unfamiliar with these types of weights, they can be made to very precise weights and are picked up with ivory tipped tongs which are under the plastic shield in front. Drilling a hole in them utterly destroys their value as weights. Completely! The whole, very expensive set, was destroyed.
The map shows you where Niger and its capital Niamey are. Note its proximity to two of the nations that have voiced support for the coup, Mali and Burkina Faso. Niger is a majority Muslim nation that was still very much under the boot of its Colonial Master France, which is the primary reason for the coup. This al-Mayadeenarticle from the 4th is packed with info:
Under colonial rule, the people of Niger capitulated in front of French supremacy as a prerequisite for survival.
The country subsequently encountered famines, which prompted the colonial government to introduce food security measures in 1913, 1920, and 1931. A puppet sultan was also installed, which led to marginalization and a notable decline in the North of the colony. French gross exploitation was also characterized by exporting Niger’s own indigenous agricultural products in outlying areas to local and international markets to benefit the French Crown. These harrowing realities are precisely why Niger continues to lag behind most of its contemporaries on the continent, let alone the world.
Fast forward to 2023, then instability in Niamey is being followed up with renewed calls from Paris to militarily intervene and sow chaos. Calls to push back against the coup were the loudest from France with the Military Council stating clearly that the former colonial power is plotting to intervene to restore President Mohamed Bazoum’s rule. Bazoum’s ousted government and its former Foreign Minister, Hassoumi Massoudou, also signed an authorization document, allowing the French to attack the presidential palace. Last week, the junta stated that the ousted government was authorizing France to conduct a military operation to restore the Bazoum government. This is despite the fact that neighboring countries Mali and Burkina Faso issued a joint statement that any military intervention into Niger to restore Bazoum will constitute an act of war.
Even if the veracity of the Junta’s claims is considered questionable, pro-Russia and anti-France slogans from the public after the coup demonstrates that the social contract that France is seeking to erode is clearly in favor of the coup. According to a businessman based in the central city of Zinder, France is not wanted in Niger given that it exploited the country’s uranium deposits, petrol, and gold reserves. Many in the public also hold France accountable for the Nigerien public not being able to afford basic necessities.This sentiment has been echoed previously by populist, right-wing Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni who accused France of ensuring that Niger languishes in poverty.
Niger hosts a French military base and is home to one of the largest uranium deposits in the world. It is also the world’s seventh largest producer of uranium with a quarter of exports going to Europe and France being a major recipient. Yet despite this, its economy has teetered. Agriculture amounts to 40% of its GDP and more than 10 million people or an astonishing 41.8% of its population live below the poverty line in 2021. Furthermore, out of 24.4 million people, two in every five live in extreme poverty or less than $2.15 a day.
It is clear that Niger has not witnessed the trickle-down effect of uranium exports to France and Paris with its penchant for intervening in Niger’s affairs will seek to continue its vicious cycle of exploitation. Based on France’s statements and evidence provided by the Military Council, Macron has no intention to initiate dialogue to settle the dispute or come up with a sustainable peace framework to mitigate tensions. Similar to the American approach in Libya, France has opted to lend unconditional support to one side of the crisis while mounting pressure on the military government. This approach in a continent that has a history of colonialism has only led to a proliferation of terrorism, a breakdown in social systems, widespread poverty, and devastation.
The stats provided underscore the level of exploitation exercised by France as it’s clearly done nothing to upgrade the quality of life for the vast majority of Nigerens. Niger isn’t the only African nation that’s rebelling; rather, it’s merely joining the trend which is why Mali and Burkina Faso both support Niger’s efforts. The main tool employed by France was known as the African Franc Zone, otherwise known as the CFA Franc. Its history is not well known to most but knowing it is mandatory to gain an understanding of why former French Colonies are in such bad shape while those that fought to break free completely—Algeria being the example—are doing so much better. This excellent analysis from 2020 enlightens us on the CFA Franc and much more beyond this excerpt:
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The CFA franc system has, since its origins, rested on four pillars. The first is the fixed parity between the CFA franc and the French currency (the French franc and, from 1999, the euro). Next is the freedom of transfer of capital and income within the franc zone. Third is the guaranteed convertibility of the CFA franc at a fixed rate, namely the French Treasury’s promise to lend the BCEAO and the BEAC the desired volumes of French currency when they no longer have enough foreign reserves.
But as a counterpart to this “guarantee”, France is itself represented in the BCEAO and BEAC bodies – their boards, monetary policy committees and control organs – with a statutory right of veto that has become implicit over time.
The other counterpart is that these two central banks are compelled to deposit part of their exchange reserves with the French Treasury. In the wake of independence, the obligatory deposit quota stood at 100%, before it was reduced to 65% in 1973 and then 50% in 2005.
This, indeed, is the fourth principle: the centralisation of their exchange reserves in the hands of the French Treasury. This implies that the French Treasury is, effectively, the bureau de change of the countries that use the CFA franc. All conversion operations from the CFA franc into other currencies have to pass via the French Treasury. It is worth underlining, moreover, that the Banque de France holds 85% of the BCEAO’s monetary gold stock.
If France has been committed to maintaining the franc zone for over 70 years, that is because it benefits from it. This was explicitly recognised in a 1970 report by the French Socio-Economic Council which listed the “incontestable advantages for France”. First, France could pay its imports from franc zone countries in its own currency. This allowed it to save on foreign currency and keep up its own exchange rate. This has been important in a world where the dollar is the main currency for international trade and the French franc weak and unstable.
French companies operating in the zone moreover benefit from large – and stable – outlets for trade. Added to this, the French economy benefits from a trade surplus with regard to the franc zone countries, which also provide it a far from negligible amount of exchange reserves which have sometimes been used to pay France’s debts. French companies also have the guaranteed freedom to repatriate their revenue and capitals without any foreign exchange risk, thanks to the free-transfer policy and the fact that France decides the zone’s exchange and monetary policy.
Lastly, thanks to the CFA franc France enjoys a system of political control serving its own economic interests. This also costs France nothing, since its supposed convertibility “guarantee” has rarely been put into effect. Indeed, the French Treasury has often offered negative interest rates (in real terms) for African exchange reserves, meaning that the BCEAO and the BEAC have been losing money – it is as if they paid the French Treasury to keep their foreign reserves. And on the few occasions that African countries have had foreign-payments problems, France has appealed for IMF intervention or joined with the IMF to demand a currency devaluation, as in 1994.
The CFA franc’s benefits aren’t just for France, however – they extend to importers and to the African upper classes, whose appetite for imported luxuries explains their preference for an overvalued exchange rate. For African political leaders, the CFA franc is a mechanism to facilitate the transfer of financial resources, no matter how they were acquired. And, as long as they stay quiet on the issue, they have the backing of the French government against political dissidents and their own people in times of trouble. This is especially the case in Central African countries, most of whose presidents have been in power for more than three decades. [My Emphasis]
If that sounds close to the Washington Consensus, it’s because it’s very similar in design and outcomes. This one last citation contains two links whose importance ought to be self-explanatory:
Indeed, French elites are still unable to think about their own country’s future, except in terms of the continued subjection of Africa. Even back in 1957, the future Socialist president François Mitterrand opined that “Without Africa, France will have no history in the 21st century.” This outlook has continued to guide French foreign policy: as recently as 2013, the French Senate expressed the same convictions in a report entitled “Africa is Our Future”.
And thus the outburst by Macron aimed at Russia earlier this year in February accusing Russia of “neocolonial political involvement” in Africa, specifically French Africa. Here’s how RT reported Lavrov’s retort:
French allegations that Moscow is pursuing a neocolonialist policy in Africa turn reality upside down, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said, adding that they are part of the Western proxy war against Russia….
In recent months, Burkina Faso, Mali, and the Central African Republic have shown France’s military forces the door. The Central African Republic invited Russia’s Wagner Group to help with its sectarian conflict. The government in Bangui has said that Russia “saved” the country.
Lavrov called the French allegations “an attempt to demonize Russia” – claims that require no comment, he added. [Emphasis Original]
France’s desperation to continue to continue its exploitation of its former African colonies includes assassination of nationalist leaders and overthrowing governments, often employing the Anti-Communist Crusade as cover for its actions. But that ruse is no longer valid and thus more blatant actions are contrived, like introducing NATO’s Terrorist Foreign Legion into the region thus making it possible to force governments to ask for help in combating the imported terrorists.
And of course, the goal isn’t to eliminate the terrorists as their goal is to be present there to react in France’s interest as in Niger’s case currently. And that’s why the big accusation with Wagner being hired since Wagner will eliminate the terrorists.
Given the history presented above and its expansion at the links provided, France is THE Problem and its tentacles attached to Africa need to be severed and the French will need to learn how to live within their means. And it can be said that Latin America’s condition is due to a similar sort of comprador control exerted by former colonial masters and the Outlaw US Empire. The prognosis isn’t good when we look at Syria when it comes to ousting illegal occupying forces.
Nigeria is the most powerful regional nation but it’s also compromised in this case. The triumvirate of leaders in Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso form a very strong nationalist core, and it’s likely many of the region’s people will back them. On the other side, France will try to continue its grip for as long as it can as it’s in dire condition otherwise.
The outlaw US Empire’s presence is due to the importation of NATO’s Terrorist Foreign Legion and is unlikely to be peacefully ejected. The consensus prior to the Russia-Africa Summit and the Niger coup was Africa’s future would be greatly helped by China, Russia, African, and West Asian development involvement, while it must break free from forms of Neocolonial bondage. So, how Niger progresses will be an important marker.
I was sitting at a stop sign, needing to turn left. This is in the U.S., which means making a left turn takes you across a lane of traffic.
This was at a particularly busy intersection, and the crossing traffic didn’t have a stop sign. Any time there would be a break in traffic from the left, there would be a line of cars coming from the right and vice versa.
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I had only been sitting there for no longer than 2 minutes, but 2 minutes in traffic has a way of feeling like an eternity to me.
But I finally I saw my chance.
The car coming from the left had its blinker on, indicating he going to turn onto the street I was on. That would slow the left side traffic enough for me to be clear that way. Traffic was in sight coming from the right but if I stepped on it, I could safely make the turn without cutting them off.
I knew if I didn’t go right then, I was likely to sit there a while longer.
I took my foot off the brakes, and just as I was about to start accelerating, I got a bad feeling and hesitated.
That moment of hesitation ended up saving me from an accident.
The car with the blinker on either had it on by mistake or changed their mind about turning. If I would have pulled out when I thought I was clear, it most certainly would have lead to a collision.
Practice patience in everything you do.
Learn to listen to your gut instincts.
Never assume you know what someone’s intentions are.
It was the day my bank account balance was instantly multiplied by 200 and the bank started treating me like royalty. I didn’t win the lottery though; it was a computer glitch, and let me tell you about it.
On Jan 1, 1999, the Euro currency was introduced across 19 European countries, replacing each country’s own currency. There was a different exchange rate for each currency. In the case of my country, 1 Euro was worth 200 Portuguese Escudos (PTE).
On New Year’s Eve I had 1,500,000 PTE in my cashing account (around US$8,000 adjusted for 2017), but my daily average throughout the year had been higher. So I was supposed to wake up on New Year’s with my account displaying the equivalent amount in Euro: 7,500.
Instead I woke up to year 2000 with the same absolute figure as before: 1,500,000 but now in Euro!!!, meaning exactly 200 times my previous balance! (That’s $1.6 million adjusted for 2017.) And my daily average throughout the previous year showed up as even higher!!!
I suppose that, if you keep that much idling in a cashing account all year-long like it seemed I did, the bank will notice and assume you are wealthy, very wealthy.
That’s why, on Jan. 6, I received a letter in the mail, handsigned by the CEO of the bank himself, inviting me to a private opera gala, tuxedo-only, the following weekend.
I knew the money was a keep-your-hands-off dream, but this gala was too good to pass on. So I RSVP’d and asked for additional tickets for colleagues and friends.
Sure enough, I got a phone call from the CEO’s secretary, all too obliging to provide for free as many tickets as I’d want.
The opera performance was not that great, but the caviar and the champagne were.
Very soon after, the balance in my account was corrected, and I never heard from the CEO again. How rude!
The REAL HARD TRUTH behind Hong Kong riots 2019
This is a must read for all Chinese and non-chinese alike. I am suprised that till now, no one has come with this analysis and connecting the dots.
The main aim of CIA was to defame the “One country two systems”. And ruin chances of peaceful reunification with Taiwan.
We all know what happened in 2019, massive protests followed by months of endless riots crushing city’s infrastructure. Waves of people with black masks with “Free Hong Kong, Revolution of our times” and an American flag.
Unless you have room temperature IQ, the entire damn thing was sponsered by US and other western countries, but primarily CIA. But why?
Well, CIA achieved ALL its objectives through these riots that it needed to.
First, why did CIA even sponser these riots? The answer lies in Taiwan.
China took Hong Kong back peaceful without using military force. At the time of handover, a vast majority of HKers identified as Chinese and wanted unification. China followed the “One country, two systems” (1C2S) policy and allowed HK to remain autonomous. It gave HK democracy, something which UK never did. After HK handover, more and more HKers started identifying as Chinese and HK economy grew at a stable 3–4% annually, making HK a huge beneficiary of China’s growth. Now here comes the catch.
China wants a “peaceful reunification” with Taiwan too. Given the success of 1C2S, it was widely believed that as Taiwanese integrated more, Taiwan would ultimately also strike a deal similar to Hong Kong and become a part of a superpower. Taiwanese companies benefited from China and would drive the wheel of reunification. BUT…as china grew and grew and grew, US became worried. Given Taiwan’s strategic location, US can NOT afford to give it to the Chinese, disregarding any sentiment of reunification. If china reunifies peacefully, it would be a disaster for USA. Just like how Easy Germany and West Germany were kept separated by force from the Soviet union despite both people wanting reunification, and when the berlin wall fell, the Soviet Union, which had forced separation, also fell. Today, that Soviet Union is the US, keeping Taiwan separated from China with force, be it in 1950 or 1958 or 1997 or today. If china reunifies by the will of people, US empire may also fall like USSR. With time, more and more Taiwanese were no longer pro independence, but pro unification, until 2018.
Now See this:
main qimg 80b7ebc51861ae1d941fa7b652d0a985
RIGHT before HK protests, Pro Independence was at an all time low, with pro unification at an all time high. Despite the US Trade war, most Taiwanese were leaning towards unifying.
So, our angel CIA was struck. It knew of it did nothing this would grow, DPP with its pathetic management of economy would lose, pro business KMT would come back and reunification might happen so that Taiwan can use military funds in RnD to retain tech edge. CIA knew it had lost the economy war. It turned to ideological one. With chinas economy and military growing, it would seriously hard US hegemony. US needed a Porcupine, a cannon fodder to stop, at least slow, china down.
Hijacking Hong Kong
When the HK protests kicked off, they were hijacked soon. The US, after its “PIVOT TO ASIA” had to contain china. If you see, most NED funds to HK were post 2011, when the pivot was announced. The US was building spy networks in HK. At the same time, CIA pushed hard to stop trade toes with “sunflower movement” in Taiwan. As well as sponsoring ETIM terror attacks in china. When the protests kicked of “extradition law” it was really stupid, as a person whose tried in HK could not be tried in china. He could only be extradited cross-border if he tries to run away. MIND YOU, HK had extradition treaties with many western countries too, no crying for hooman roughts then? Huh?
With western propaganda in full force, the likes of which not seen since the Iraq invasion, was enacted. Mainstream media said people with riot shields better than police and with black gas masks and students destroying everything in the city was “peaceful protest”.
The peak of propaganda was when these rioters were called “Pro democracy” and those not supporting these acts called “Pro Beijing”. By this labeling, western propaganda was implying that if you were supporting democracy you can’t support china. And if you were supporting china you were against democracy. Wow. The classic Marvel and DC comics theme. When in reality china gave HK democracy, was supported Universal Sufferage.
These bastards cry about “Police brutality” when in reality HK police did not kill a single person during the enitre damn thing. US police killed 4 during the brief Capitol riots which lasted 4 hours. Using tear gas is brutal? Bitch, you destroyed the entire fuckin city. Every police of every country uses tear gas when you do shit. If you aren’t happy, go to UK and do this shit, and you’ll end up where the IRA ended up.
HK was also a way to recruit spies. After 30 CIA spies were crushed by MSS, the CIA network in china was seriously in peril. By showing HKers as peaceful innocent people being a last becon of democracy being suppressed by a communist dictatorship, it hoped to subvert many MSS agents as well as within the PLA and China itself. By constantly lying with its media, the pro American Chinese might have started working for CIA. This was proven by the fact that the CIA director recently claimed that he had “strong human networks in china”.
The west OPENLY supported acts of violence. Calling the attack on HK assembly as “a beautiful sight to behold” shows the sheer hypocrisy and extent to which US undermines Chinese sovereignty. Apps were made to communicate and sponser riots. Western “journalists” helped them. HK went into total shutdown. It’s people facing unemployment, blamed china for it. Brain drain, thousands of HKers who contributed to China’s economy, being fallen into western propaganda, left and got different citizenships. HK lost itself as a financial centre. US divided HK. As they say in my India, “divide and rule”. US got so damn pissed when Russia “allegedly” interfered in 2016 elections and retaliated hard. The same US did this to HK.
Media also played “china broke its promise, destroyed 1C2S, china untrustworthy, don’t trust china or else this will happen”. And it worked. Repeat a lie a thousand times through a thousand sources and it works majic. People, especially Taiwanese, were convinced china is untrustworthy. The Pro independence people shot up rapidly, leading DPP and Tsia to divert attention from domestic issues and win elections.
In reality, china did NOT break a single promise or article or anything of 1C2S. It didn’t even enact the full 1C2S (no Security Law before that). This entire media talk of China 1C2S breaking was entirely false. Which article did china break? Which promise did china break? Provide proof! Not cheap lies. China did not affect HKs autonomy.
But, the effect was heard. The propaganda war succeeded. CIA undermined HK and destroyed a major hub of Chinese investments thus hurting China’s economy and creating trouble for china in HK, but also completely ended any changes of peaceful reunification. If china had to reunite, it had to with war.
That brings us to Aim2:
Make Taiwan a trap for china and crush china in Taiwan, thereby china doesn’t become a superpower.
Just like how Russia has been crushed in Ukraine, US wants to crush China in Taiwan. Making Taiwan independence group strong this hurting China’s core interest, all the while arming Taiwan to the teeth.
Make no mistake, the invasion of Taiwan would be an extremely costly one. China would totally lose the PR battle, as we saw with people putting Ukraine flag in their DPs. Transport and logistics would be nightmare, and US would love to crush china here.
T hats why, despite Taiwan being so heavily armed, US media claims “Taiwan needs more weapons”. It’s all a distraction, to attract more weapon sales and arm it like a Porcupine.
Finland was always Russia’s biggest threat, as being a Porcupine, if it sided with the west, there was nothing Russia could do about it. Finland did that by joining NATO, and Russia watched helplessly. If Taiwan becomes a Porcupine, and China is engaged in war somewhere else, Taiwan would declare independence and there would absolutely nothing china could do about it. Taiwan would slip, and that’s what US wants.
I f Taiwan slips, CCP would fall. It will lose the support of people, and China would become like Syria, a return to 1850s.
Even if china wins, the US wants the victory to be a costly one. US would likely sponsor a “Taiwan govt in exile” and support insurgency. It would want Chinas resources to be struck in Taiwan so it can dominate Asia and the world.
Taiwan is a cannon fodder and US is playing it perfectly.
8 Guys Who Dated Models Reveal What Their Experiences Were Like
August 14, 2023
1. I dated a fitness instagram model type with 200k followers. Nice girl, but everything was about social media, constantly taking pics and checking her phone
Lots of weird problems around food, couldnt just relax. It was tough so I stopped seeing her.
2. I dated an ex model for about 6 months. There’s no way I would have approached her, instead she gave me her number. She later told me guys never make a move, I guess because they would feel intimidated.
The only thing that really differed from dating someone less attractive (that is less attractive than model caliber) was the number of guys who would double take/stare at her in public. It sometimes seemed like everyone was doing it. She said she was used to it and it began around the time she turned 13!
She had some problems which ultimately ruined the relationship. She asked me to propose to her a month in and she was clearly a hypochondriac. When I broke it off she claimed she was pregnant. Fun times.
3. She could silence an Italian restaurant by waking in, but was a dead fish in bed, had a personality like an oak tree, pretty much parroted Facebook opinions, and was anti anything fun. It was a good month, but I had to walk away
4. My girlfriend is a former model. She used to travel all over the world working shows everywhere. Eventually she transitioned to her own label which she sold off.
I’m not the best looking of guys. I don’t really understand how it was that we got together. I did stop to help her when her car broke down, she invited me to a friends of hers braai (BBQ) and then to her bed.
We have had our ups and downs. Both of us had a tough time with jealousy and suspicion of each other – both of us have been cheated on in the past. I see the way that others – both male and female – look at her, and sometimes flirt with her. I know now that nothing will come of any of it. We have both helped each other mature and grow into the beautiful, annoying couple that we are today.
5. I dated what I consider a 10 last year. Everything was great on paper and we made a good looking couple. That gets old fast though, you stop noticing or caring because it simply isn’t important to your overall happiness unless you’ve got some problems. I understood after a few months how people married to gorgeous celebrities end up cheating or breaking things off. She didn’t want to put as much work into the relationship, presumably after a lifetime of being pursued by men where she didn’t have to. In bed it was a mixed bag as well, very low effort on her behalf and not really meeting me in the middle. She also spent an ungodly amount of money on clothes/makeup.
So while it was cool to be admired by other guys for a bit, ultimately it didn’t work out. She was shocked when I broke things off but not in a good way, almost as if she thought she deserved to be the one doing it.
6. She gets hit on constantly, free drinks on nights out, even if Im standing right there.
Guys always stare just walking down the road. She often dresses intentionally like a slob if we are going for a quick shopping trip or something, just so she doesn’t get as many looks.
When she wants to look good though she is a perfectionists. Takes 3 or 4 hours to get ready sometimes. Different makeup, hair styles to go with different outfits.
Some days she feels unattractive even though she just isn’t and I cant see the difference.
My outfit apparently never goes together so she will pick out one that does.
7. Use to date a instagram model. She was blue ticked and had over 500k followers
Honestly, she was a nightmare. Biggest attention seeker i ever met, wanted to post me to her IG after literally a month of dating..
Safe to say it didnt last long before i ended things
8. I briefly dated a model, she was gorgeous and I’m a very average guy so this was strange for me.
We went to dinner one night and the manager was hitting on her, telling her how he could buy her things, she ended up kicking me under the table to get him to leave.
Others were a guy at the train station trying to hit on her so she kind of just leaned against me, we left. She was actually great, very humble, she moved away but if she hadn’t I’d of been all in.
Talked about trying to be in the same place in the future but it just wasn’t realistic.
In China, every land is owned by China. You have only the land usage rights. Even the farmers don’t own the land they use as they only have the tilling rights. If you don’t build any property on the land provided to you, it goes back to the government. Individuals can privately own residential houses and apartments on the land, although not the land on which the buildings are situated.
It helps in avoiding a separate class of people called as landlords. It helped China create infrastructure projects really fast.
main qimg 8068340b0e4aa5f02f2ce6c2f997bc42 lqmain qimg 133de15718d2bc6786bc3d53c1b65385 lq
China started these reforms in the 1970s which not only made the country strong but the government as well.
How many exchanges give you $1 when you pay them 100 Rubles
This 100–1 or 150–1 or 70–1 is not the same as the 147–1 in March 2022
This is entirely decided by the Russian Central Bank
That’s because there is virtually ZERO Ruble USD trade on open markets now
Rubles are exclusively used within Russia and Russians aren’t living up to vacation in Florida or London where they will need Rubles into Dollars or Euros or Pounds.
In March 2022, Almost 93% of Russia’s foreign Trade was in USD, Euro, Pound and Yen
Thus the 147–1 was alarming because it meant imports were suddenly very expensive
Today less than 18% foreign trade is in the Big four currencies and any USD trade is with China with whom Russia has forward contracts
So this 100–1 or 1000–1 even is merely a number for the West to use as Political Propaganda
Within Russia, prices remain the same or mildly inflated (4.6%) over 2 years almost
Imports are in Yuan and Lire and both are well regulated
So this rate is an indication of the RARITY of the Ruble rather than an indication of the value of the Ruble
As someone else pointed out, high speed rail makes a lot of sense in the most densely populated parts of the country – the east coast, the Great Lakes, Texas and California.
But China is practically the same size as the United States. Here’s their high speed network
2023 08 17 15 11
And here’s their population density map
main qimg 00d52ae8c944ee3581a16c6909fd8ce3 pjlq
90% of China’s population lies on the east side of the “Hu Huangyong Line”, which was created by a geographer to show the difference in population density. Note that even in the less dense parts of the country, there are densely populated cities. Note that the high speed network goes to Lhasa, which sits at an elevation of 12,000 feet above sea level and hasn’t had rail service before this. Most of this network was built in a 12 year period.
And for a last comparison, here’s China overlaid on the continental United States
Now, the U.S. has fewer people than China, but it’s still growing. Moreover, look at this
main qimg 995cbffd87503316722fe95b30ac073d
This is the interstate highway system. It’s over 70% longer than the Chinese high speed rail system, and doesn’t include all U.S. freeways. This thing is just as expensive as a high speed rail system to build, links distant cities with modest populations, and still doesn’t have enough capacity to deal with the people who want to use parts of it.
2023 08 17 15 12w
Ignore the thick red lines for a moment and focus on the thin yellow ones. The United States still though it was a good idea to build expensive highways through areas that hardly anyone uses at peak times.
THIS Has Western Leaders TERRIFIED!
2023 08 17 16 14
Confessions Of A Golden Gate Bridge Jumper AND Survivor
What was so bad in your life that got you to the point of jumping?
It was a number of things! I’ve struggled with debilitating pain since I was 13 and depression, anxiety, and complex PTSD since I was 15 so that’s what the suicidal ideation was but two weeks before my psychiatrist at the time doubled my antidepressants (very bad idea) which threw me into a manic episode. I ended up dropping my savings on tattoos and then jumping off the bridge in a week.
Was there any particular reason why you chose the Golden Gate bridge?
I chose the Golden Gate Bridge first because of how effective I perceived it to be. The second reason is because my family wouldn’t have to deal with my body, I assumed only the Coast Guard would (also not true) don’t do it guys.
Did you hesitate or just go for the jump?
I didn’t hesitate I was afraid someone was going to notice me.
How long did it take to hit the water?
Seconds
What was going through your mind during the fall?
I didn’t really have any fully formed thoughts. I was feeling a lot.
How did you land in the water?
The wind turned me in the air so I landed slanted primarily on my left ankle which is why the most severe damage was to my ankle and the least severe was to my back.
What happened when you hit the water?
It’s like hitting cement. Pain was pretty much all I felt. I dissociated pretty heavily until I arrived at the hospital (and went into surgery immediately) but at no point did I lose consciousness.
When was the moment you realized “oh fuck I lived”
When I hit the water for sure. I processed the pain and then thought fuck I don’t want to drown.
You must be a fantastic swimmer
Hahaha once your body hits the water though there’s no way to move at all. I did it during the middle of the day with the intention to die on impact so when I didn’t a boat just ended up picking me up.
How did the boat come across you in the water? How did they get you on the boat?
They saw me when I fell because they were nearby. I’m pretty sure they threw something and then grabbed me but I don’t remember very well. I was dissociating a lot and my memory is spotty.
Do you know how long it took from when you jumped until the boat picked you up?
I didn’t have much of a conception of time so I couldn’t say for sure but not very long. I was treading water in the bay while bleeding with broken bones so it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes
What are the odds, you are so lucky, how far did you fall and did you get injured?
Yeah there’s like a 2% survival rate? The fall is 200 some odd feet. I shattered my ankle. Tore my perineum (requiring a colostomy bag and surgery though not as much as the ankle) and got compression fractures in my back.
I can’t imagine the pain
I couldn’t either. It was like nothing you could even grasp. Though the bone infection I got from my first ankle surgery was worse than impact I think
I read an article by someone else who survived the same jump. He said the moment he jumped he regretted the decision. Did you feel the same way?
No. I felt immediate relief. That was likely one of the reasons I survived because my body was very relaxed upon impact.
Could you explain the feeling of falling 200 feet? What could you compare it to?
The actual sensation of falling is pretty much like you’d expect. Like the out of control feeling when you trip but you can’t catch yourself but all you can see around you is water coming closer.
Did you realize at any point that all of your problems were fixable?
It was more of a gradual thing. I had really severe pain before my attempt and that wasn’t going away soon so I knew my shit wasn’t that flexible but I knew I needed to learn to cope because I couldn’t do that to my family again.
Who would you have missed the most?
I would have missed my family, the earth, and my future the most.
How did your friends and loved ones react?
With compassion and love and grief.
How are you doing today?
A lot better. Still struggling with my mental health but my medication is stable so now so am I.
Do you regret jumping?
That’s kind of a hard one. I try not to regret anything that made me who I am today. I think it was probably necessary for my path to recovery. I do however regret the trauma it caused my loved ones and the fucking medical bills.
Do you have a any long term injury from the fall?
I will never be able to walk normally. My left ankle has been fused after like ten fucking surgeries. I had a colostomy bag for five months but thankfully that’s been reversed. I broke my back too so there’s been pain and I’m not sure how longterm that is. Every person I know who has attempted said their body was just so dramatically aged in the process and that was my experience is.
Do you think, knowing what you know now, that you’d ever let your metal health get to that point again or would you reach out?
At this place in my life I have the tools (therapy, meds, a good support system) to reach out when things get bad before I get unsafe. I have a hard time with the word “let” because I feel like there’s the implication that it’s within someone’s control? Or implied fault somehow? I’m responsible for my actions (as we all are) but mental illness is a hard situation. I’m not in control of how bad it gets I can only control how I respond to it if that makes sense.
If you had died on that day, what have you experienced since then that you would have missed out on?
Honestly after this I put so much time and energy into recovery and I have gotten so far. I have started going to school for nursing and am in a beautiful housing situation with my best friend. I ended falling in love with myself and the world again as corny as it sounds. My insights are meditation is really important and therapy should be accessible and available to all.
I have a number of Korean friends. All of them were for unification until a couple of things happened.
The reunification of East Germany with Greater Germany astounded many Koreans. They believed, as did the German government, that with a small surcharge “solidarity” tax and about three years they would elevate East Germany to West Germany standards. Years later, that tax is still in place and the former East still is somewhat estranged from the rest of Germany. The problems of the East were simply too profound — social, civil, economic, psychological, etc — that many Germans now believe that there will not be complete reintegration for three generations. North Korea is in far worse shape than East Germany ever was. The estimate is that reintegration of the DPRK would be at least ten times as difficult and expensive as East Germany.
The people in the ROK tended to think of the DPRK like an old uncle that has been away at sea for years. Yeah, he looks a little different, but basically he is still the same guy. But when North and South Korea formed the joint Winter Olympics hockey team, South Koreans realized how far the two countries had diverged. The NorK players were not familiar with most plays because they were never allowed to watch Russian or Canadian or American teams play. They had never even heard of the names of the plays. The North Koreans had mad up some plays of their own, but they were really clumsy schoolboy efforts. And the North Koreans had made up a lot of “hockey words” for communications that were not what hockey players usually call out. Needless to say, they lose every game very badly. But it opened ROK eyes to exactly how different North Korea had become.
Have you ever played a video game on the hardest setting? Not the one where the enemies are tougher, but the one where there are no save points and you have to start the whole game over if you die?
That’s the real difference between rich and poor kids when it comes to success. The poor are playing the game of life on this setting, while the rich have save points.
Neither rich nor poor are inherently “better at” winning than the other. For the most part, we all sat in the same classrooms, read from the same text books, listened to the same teachers. Our capacity is the same, our brains are equally developed, and we all play on the same field. The difference is the number of tries you get.
Having money in the bank is like having a save point. You still don’t want to screw up – you want to win just as much as anyone else. But you also know that you can take more risks. You can run in and try something crazy, and if it doesn’t work you just roll back to that save point so you can try something else. You can keep trying until you get it right without having to start over.
The poor don’t have that option. They don’t have the luxury of taking as many risks, because they don’t have that save point to roll back to. If they lose, they lose everything and have to start over.
That doesn’t mean the poor can never win – it just means they have to be more careful. Both rich and poor have to take risks to win, it’s just easier to be willing to take those risks when there are fewer consequences for losing.
Or another way to look at it; When I was a young guy first learning about marketing and consumer engagement, I was fortunate to be working for a large company with virtually unlimited marketing budgets. As the Internet emerged and no one had any expertise or expectations of marketing results, we spent millions of dollars just testing different things to figure out what worked and what didn’t.
When something didn’t work, we said “Oh well, that didn’t work, let’s try something else.” And we kept trying until we got it right. We could afford to be wrong.
There’s nothing stopping someone without access to budgets like that from executing a winning strategy – but if they don’t nail it the first time, how many do-overs can they afford?
That’s the difference. Money doesn’t automatically make you more successful, and it doesn’t make it “easier”. But it buys you more chances to try.
Who Lives on the Moon? The First Real Photos from the Other Side of the Moon!
I’m 32 years old and have struggled with social anxiety since childhood. I lost both my dad and mom to cancer in 2008 and 2014, respectively. I don’t have any siblings and haven’t had friends since high school. I feel truly alone in this world and desperately crave social interaction. My routine for the past 12 years has consisted of working a dead-end retail job and spending most of my free time watching porn. Despite my low wage, I was able to save a little over $50k through extreme frugality. I bring my own lunch to work, never eat out or get take-out, and have been wearing the same clothes for over a decade. So the concept of paying for porn seemed ridiculous to me before I got involved with a camgirl.
Anyway, on to my story. I would visit cam sites sporadically in the past, but just lurked and never interacted with the girls. If the girl didn’t take her clothes off within 5 minutes, I’d bail and try to find some videos of her elsewhere. I found a lot of these girls to be very attractive, but lacking in the personality department. They were either too sexual or monotonous for my taste.
Then one night, I came across a cute girl who was new to camming. There wasn’t much tipping going on and I kind of felt bad for her. I decided to get out the credit card and load up on some tokens. I tipped her 50 tokens to perform some act and she blew me a kiss. At that point, I was hooked. Just for reference, a token costs around $0.10 for the buyer and worth $0.05 to the model.
Over the next few months, I became completely obsessed with this girl. I’ve never been a social media person, but created a Twitter and Instagram account for the sole purpose of following her. Later, I bought her premium snapchat, which was considered a “good deal” at the time. We communicated via email and she would always call me sweet, generous, and a good “friend.” In the back of my head I knew this wasn’t genuine, but I was willing to suspend my disbelief (loneliness is a helluva drug). I continued to tip her between 50 and 100 every show. I didn’t want to insult her, so I never went under 50. She had a few regulars, but none of them tipped as much me. One of them even thanked me for taking one for the team. It made me feel “special.”
As she became more popular, she would attract big tippers and I felt like I had to compete for her affection. What was once an enjoyable, albeit ephemeral experience soon became stressful.
There was one user in particular who really got on my nerves. He was a software engineer making $200k/year (or so he claimed) and would always talk about how he’d spoil this girl rotten if they were dating/married. He would out-tip everyone and use weird phrases like “Here comes the money bazooka!” If I tipped 400, he’d immediately 500. If someone else tipped 200, he’d tip 300. He once dropped 5000 tokens in a single show and the girl got super emotional. This made me insanely jealous.
The guy DM’d a few of the regulars and myself on Twitter, asking us our age, what we did for a living, and how much we made. I didn’t tell him that I was a retail worker because I figured he’d use that info to make me look bad in front of the girl. I started to hold back on my tipping in the live shows because of him. Instead, I gave the girl offline tips and bought stuff from her Amazon wishlist. I also bought some “fan package” that contained Polaroids, worn panties, and a handwritten letter. Receiving dirty panties in the mail was a low point for me and I truly felt disgusted with myself.
Over the last 9 months, I’ve tried to quit cold turkey several times. I started missing her shows and she would message me expressing concern. She would say “it wasn’t the same without you,” and like a sucker, I’d watch her next show and tip like crazy. I’d also give an offline tip to make up for not being there, which doesn’t make any sense at all.
Last week, I nuked my cam site account and all social media associated with this girl. She sent me an email on Saturday to ask if everything was okay. I told her that I could no longer watch her because it was draining me both emotionally and financially. She responded with two words: “Oh, okay.” Admittedly, I was a little angry. I spent thousands of dollars/hours on this girl and was kind of expecting more. I suppose it’s for the best. If the response had been a bit more sincere, I’d probably be obsessively checking out her Snapchat as we speak.
I’m seeing a therapist next week. I’ve never been to a therapist before and not really sure what to expect. I just hope I can leave all of this behind me.
“This Economy Is Drowning My Children!” – Alabama Mom In Viral Video
The United States is in FULL collapse.
A video recently went viral that featured a distraught Alabama woman in her car lamenting the virtual impossibility her children, recent college graduates, face in a job market and economy that seems designed to deny them the opportunity to succeed. This wasn’t always the way for middle class Americans, she says, and points the finger at the ever-increasing problem of income inequality.
I had a boss who taught me how he “fired” people. He would bring in the employee and say “It’s clear you’re not happy here and it just doesn’t make sense for you to stay. I’ll pay you for the next 60 days to find your next opportunity.”
It minimized stress and normally didn’t involve litigation, retaliation or other negatives.
So, years later I took on a job with an Apple dealership that was transitioning to a product company.
I had a sales guy that had been there for quite some time. When Apple computers were selling for $10k, he would have made a good living, but when the prices came down to $1-2K there just wasn’t enough margin for him to make it. He was a really nice guy and a good sales person but the world had changed.
I brought him in to my office and said “This is just not working for either of us. I don’t want people working for me that can’t make a decent living. I want my employees to be successful. There is no way that I can see you, or anyone here, selling enough computers to survive. You are an excellent salesperson and there are lots of companies that would love to hire you. I have a list of companies you should call and I’ll pay you for the next 6 weeks while you’re looking. You’ll be searching as “currently employed” versus unemployed and I’ll give you a very good recommendation.”
It is the first time, that someone I let go, shook my hand and thanked me.
Russia smacks Sweden. Missiles destroy Swedish plant in Ukraine. Sweden cries…
Sweden wants to attack Russia… just as long as it is not dragged into the war. Well, look what happened!
In the US, politicians have to spend at least 50% of their time raising money to fund their elections.
Time is valuable and limited. This raises the question if you are a politician: “Are you going to care more about the donor who can donate $20, or are you going to care more about the donor who can donate $500,000?”
The donor who can only donate $20 can give you one vote, but the donor who can give $500,000 not only can give his vote, but he can mobilize his friends, family and even corporations to vote for the candidate, and to donate MORE money.
So which is more important for the politician? Obviously it is the major donor.
In the US, EVERYTHING is driven by money.
In order to understand how the society works and who it works for, FOLLOW THE MONEY.
Standard of Living Collapse!
Doug Casey discusses the declining standard of living in Europe. Doug and Matt criticize the article for not mentioning the impact of government actions, such as heavy regulations and high taxes, on the collapsing standard of living. They also discuss the importance of production and saving in becoming wealthy, criticizing the focus on consumption as a measure of economic success.
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Confessions of a Man Who Shot Himself In The Head And Survived
August 1, 2023
What pushed you to do it?
A lot. Losing my girlfriend, the savings account we worked at for years, the business we created. Just exacerbated my anxiety and depression.
My ex really pushed me to get help in the times where I wasn’t struggling, so I became defensive and put it off. I shouldn’t have, because it would have given me the skills to get through the times I was struggling. Therapy is a bitch. I keep learning things about myself that I’m not proud of. Things I could have managed better for years. The more I learn, the more confident I become that I can better myself.
How long did you take to decide that you were ready to end it?
I decided the night before. It took about 12 hours for me to finalize it.
Did you think about your girlfriend before you did it?
She was in the house. I yelled that I loved her. Then I said Im sorry to my mom, and that I loved her (she wasn’t in the house). But yeah. For years, she was/is constantly my first thought.
What did it feel like when you shot yourself?
Nobody prepares you for what getting shot feels like. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t sting. It doesn’t ache. It just burns. Like fire in my head. And blood pouring from my mouth.
I think I was still in shock when I arrived at the hospital, but when they pushed the fentanyl, all that burning went away and I could recognize how much burning pain I was in.
I remember not being able to talk because my tongue hurt.
My pain the first month in the hospital got progressively worse, but high amounts of painkillers will trick you into that.
How did the shot not kill you? How did it “miss”?
I don’t fucking know. It went in by the corner of my left jaw, and came out above my forehead on the right side, taking most of the orbit of my eye with it. I fucked up.
What caliber did you use?
9mm Luger.
Maybe it wasn’t your time?
I wish. I don’t really believe in that mentality. Someone close to me said something along the lines of, “God wasn’t ready for you yet.” And my first thought was, “thousands of years of medicine research and a team of excellent doctors is the reason I’m here, but ok.”
I’ve read stories about how people who jumped off bridges (and survived) immediately regretted doing so and wanted to live more than anything as they were falling. Right after the moment, did you have regrets about doing it with a desire to live or maybe have disappointments that it didn’t work? Or maybe no feelings at all right after?
I woke up with a “what the fuck?” Mentality. I was more confused that I woke up. I didn’t really have feelings about it until a few months later when the drugs wore off.
What was the first thing your mom said to you afterwards?
I’m not sure what my mom said. I woke up post surgery and my whole family was there (they all had to fly in). I was very confused. (Now I know I was in surgery for 10 hours).
What was the road to recovery like for you?
It’s still ongoing. 2 months in the hospital/rehab, lots of follow up appointments, physical therapy, mental/emotional therapy.
Legal battles for custody and household items.
Lots of reintegration with my parents and immediate family, which has been great. It fortunately brought us all closer.
Before I did it, I can’t remember the last time my brother and I spoke on the phone even. It really shook my brother the most. I’m super grateful for his presence in my life now.
Physically, what are the long term consequences to your face and skull from shooting your self?
Physically, I lost my right eye. And I have a plate in my jaw forever. And my forehead is missing a piece of bone they took out during a bifrontal craniotomy. Beyond that, I’m pretty healthy.
Is your face messed up?
Pretty normal for a dude with one eye.
Are you dealing with chronic pain, nerve damage, headaches, etc.?
It’s alright. Headaches suck, mostly because only morphine is enough to dull them. Nerve damage is only in my jaw/tongue/cheek, which is frustrating, but I started vaping because it makes my tongue tingle, and I don’t bite it accidentally anymore.
Is she okay?
Probably not. But she won’t talk to me. I truly hope she is. Of all the negativity between us, I only hope that she’s doing well and that someday, sooner than later, we can sit down and have an honest discussion about it.
What’s something you would want to say to your ex-girlfriend?
This is something I think about all the time. Previously, I was very concerned with myself, and put myself into context when I didn’t need to. That’s something I’d change if I had an hour to sit down with her.
I’d really like her to know that I love her. To this day, nothing has changed. I’d like to have the conversation that I don’t hold anything against her, except for the fact that she knew and didn’t drag me to get help and stand by me, in ways I did for her, and leaving me in the worst of times.
I’d really like the opportunity to listen to her. I don’t know what she has to say, and I don’t need to hear anything. I wasn’t a very effective communicator during our relationship, and I’d like the opportunity to really hear her out, and share those emotions.
Do you still harbor thoughts about suicide?
They’ve mostly gone away. There are times I ponder it, but it’s more the idea of, whereas previously I was fantasizing the roadmap.
Did anything change about your personality or preferences on things as a result of the trauma? Something you would never expect that would change?
Not particularly in personality or preferences. I became a hell of a lot more forgiving and patient, which wasn’t much existent (except with my kids) before.
I think the thing that changed the most was having my emotional brain available. I wasn’t very capable of connecting with my emotions before, I genuinely thought I was broken. I really got down on myself when it came to my ex, because I couldn’t empathize with her when she experienced heightened emotions, and it put a wedge between us, or I did. Now I’m empathizing with commercials, and it’s really bizarre when I become mindful of it, even still.
Do you regret doing it?
I think a lot about regret. I don’t regret shooting myself. I regret the way I proposed to my ex. I regret the way I treated her and other people when they needed me. I regret losing sight of myself because I wanted to be someone else. I regret spending so much time looking for escape instead of looking inward. But I don’t regret shooting myself. It changed my world.
How are things going for you now?
It’s not really going better. I spent years developing a family and life. It’s going about exactly as I predicted before putting a gun to my head. But! On the other side of that, I’ve learned a tremendous amount about love, myself, and bettering myself mentally that I never could have without experiencing tragedy in my previous lifestyle.
And I get to share my story and hopefully help others, which is something I never cared much about.
China has Plenty of Countermeasures to Fight Back Against the US “Neck-hold”!
I kind of understand where this question comes from.
In some countries, one of the functions of the military is to provide disaster relief. It doesn’t matter which branch (but for the most part, it’s the army infantry for the job), if there’s a disaster, the military is mobilized to take the lead on the rescue and relief effort. For example, in China, every time there is a disaster, the first thing the government does is send soldiers to help.
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When I was in China, the military, not the local police and firefighters, provided disaster relief. They bring their own equipment instead of relying on local rescue resources. They bring relief goods, such as water, food, and medicine. But most importantly, the military provides a large number of well-trained and physically fit people to do the heavy lifting so that the locals can focus on recovery. No road? No problem. The soldiers will literally carry the material to hard-to-reach places on foot and literally carry out the wounded on foot. Can’t get the crane or other heavy machinery into the ruins? No problem. The soldiers will dig through the rubbles using simple tools with their hands if necessary. The military led the relief effort in every major natural disaster in memory. The state media also report military disaster relief with full force, so it’s kind of a “staple” scene for every disaster. Every time something goes on, people expect to see soldiers there to help out.
It was kind of mini culture shock for me that the US military usually doesn’t get involved with disaster relief, other than limited support from the National Guard. The disaster relief effort relies mostly on local police and firefighters. It really doesn’t make much sense to me since local police and firefighters are also victims of the disaster. Shouldn’t the central government (federal government) be responsible for providing manpower, resources, and coordination?
Anyway, I understand where your question comes from. In fact, I actually thought about it for a hot minute. Hawaii is a major military base. (Yes, I understand the base is in Oahu, but last time I checked, there’s this thing called “ship,” people use them to move goods and people across big waters). Shouldn’t the soldiers stationed there help the people? Provide medical care support, provide search and rescue support. Shouldn’t the military base provide resources like food and water and fuel or equipment like generators? It really felt that the people of Lahaina are left to fend for themselves. It is up to the locals to drive resources into the city. The images I saw coming out of Lahaina are desolate and desperate. If this were China, I guarantee you there’d be ships sending soldiers to the disaster zone, digging through the ruins for survivors or remains, carrying the wounded to hospital, providing water and food to the residents, etc., etc.
So to answer your question, regardless of where the military bases are, that’s not what US militaries do, except for maybe the National Guard. Other than a few rare occasions where the military is deployed under extreme circumstances (like Hurricane Katrina), you’re on your own with FEMA. That’s why other answers in this answer all seemed very confused, like “What are you talking about? What does the military have anything to do with this?” Because regular Americans don’t expect the military to help out during disasters.
I get the feeling it was designed in such a way because of Americans’ ridiculous fear of a tyrannical government supported by the military. Soldiers walking on civilian streets in formation is every American’s Orwellian nightmare, conservative or liberal.
Chicken Supreme
chicken supreme
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients
4 whole chicken breasts, split, skinned and boned
8 slices bacon
1 (4 ounce) package chipped beef
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 cup sour cream
Instructions
Wrap each breast with a strip of bacon.
Cover bottom of flat, greased baking dish with chipped beef.
Mix undiluted soup and sour cream and pour over chicken. Cover and refrigerate.
Bake, uncovered, at 275 degrees F for 3 hours.
The 5 Countries That Want To Back Niger Against France & ECOWAS Forces
My relative (I’ll simplify and say aunt), is a police officer in Guangzhou and I’m staying at her home for two months.
One thing I noticed about these homes in Guangzhou (high-rise apartments/condos of which I’m staying in one and visited another) is that they all have these tea-making stations on the coffee tables (usually in front of the TV, surrounded by couches). I’ve never seen these before, especially not outside China.
They’re wooden slabs with carved patterns for decoration, and are cut so that water or tea will drain out a hole into an attached bucket. These are usually used to entertain guests with fresh tea, and come with tea cups, teapots, water heaters, etc.
My aunt took me to the police station to get some paperwork done (temporary residence form for foreigners), and we went to an office where a fellow police officer greeted us. There were couches in the office, and guess what? A tea-making station.
My Snapchat from today (cropped to hide the guy’s face):
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If anyone could tell me what they’re called or provide a better picture I’d appreciate it 🙂
Edit: I saw this in a bathroom today.
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Edit #2:
The tea station is called 功夫茶 (kungfu tea). Thanks everyone!
Artificial Intelligence Out of Control: The Apocalypse is Here | How AI and ChatGPT End Humanity
I would 100% choose to be deeply empathetic but not very smart.
Why?
Because you can’t feel joy without empathy. Yes, being intelligent might give you the capacity to understand a difficult concept and solve complicated problems, but the joy that comes from that accomplishment, the fulfillment from learning new things and solving problems, you need empathy to actually feel it.
Life’s many enjoyments come from feelings, not from intellect.
I don’t want to be the smartest person in the world, and doesn’t feel a thing when I see a child laughing. I want to be able to laugh with the child simply by looking at their face. I want to be able to empathize with others, connect with them, to feel their happiness and their pain.
When I was a teenager, I idolized intellectuals. My role model was Sherlock Holmes because he’s smart, and he used his intellect to solve problems, and the world makes sense to him (and to me, the reader.) After I grew older, I started to value compassion and kindness a lot more than intellect. And I reread Sherlock Holmes, and I realized I missed the point of the book. Sherlock Holmes understands human emotion. He empathized with his friend Dr. Watson and the victims. In fact, in many stories, his ability to understand human behavior and emotion helped him solve crimes. It was part of his deduction. Most importantly, his sense of justice and righteousness didn’t come from his intellect. It came from his empathy.
And that’s why the majority of the modern reinterpretation of Sherlock Holmes got him wrong. The modern reinterpretation of Sherlock Holmes often depicted him as this amoral person who just so happens to be on the right side of the law. And he doesn’t give a fuck about the victims. He just wants to solve the problem. That couldn’t be further away from Sherlock Holmes in the original stories.
I don’t blame the modern writers who got him wrong; after all, that’s how I saw him when I was little. It wasn’t until I was much older, after I had some life experiences, I learned to recognize and value Sherlock’s empathy. He wasn’t just so happened to be on the right side of the law. He chose to solve crimes, help the victims, and uphold justice. He did that not because he’s smart and he can solve problems, no. He becomes a detective, not a criminal mastermind, because he has empathy.
And I learned to accept and validate my emotions. My emotion and empathy is not a weakness. It is what makes me human. It is what makes my life meaningful.
I’m not getting any younger. And sooner or later, my brain will start to deteriorate. There will be times when I can no longer do simple algebra or recite the entire periodic table. But I hope I’ll still have the empathy and emotional capacity to pick up a flower, smell it, feel the breeze of the spring, and be happy.
Michio Kaku Panicking Over Declassified Photos From Venus By The Soviet Union!
Thailand has a rule that prohibits the sale of alcohol between 11 AM to 2 PM. I have no clue why this rule is in place, but it’s something that is strictly followed everywhere. So I was at a 7-Eleven shop in Pattaya today and was buying some snacks when I heard a commotion at the cash counter.
Apparently, a few men wanted to purchase a couple of cans of beer but they were not being sold the same. The cashier tried to make them understand about the national law that prohibits the sale of alcohol during those three hours. However, the customers weren’t happy. They were shouting at the cashier so loudly that all the customers inside the shop gathered around the cash counter to see what was going on. My cousin and I were minding our own business but then, we heard their English turn into Hindi.
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The guys who were shouting at the cashier started to talk among themselves in Hindi, still loudly about the absurd rule and were threatening the cashier that they would walk away without billing the beer if she didn’t sell it to him. These kinds of things ruin the image of Indians abroad. Often times we wonder why our passport is ranked so low! The reason is that the countries are not very welcoming to Indians. They would create a ruckus everywhere they go.
There’s a famous saying, “When in Rome, act like a Roman”. So when you’re in Thailand, you should respect the local laws. There might be a reason why alcohol is not sold between 11 AM to 2 PM. I would try to find it out on the internet later, but whatever be it, you need to follow it. You cannot shout at a worker at the shop who is doing her job. It is this unruly attitude of 1% Indian tourists that spoils the name of the rest 99%.
Ex. Pentagon’s Commander Says China Won’t Pick Up Military Hotline, Terrifying the Pentagon!
Once you see Sina Weibo and you see the Local Mainlanders and how they criticize their Government officials
That’s the only way anyone is cured of the Western Propaganda and lies about China
The difference between China and India is – China is heavily localized
In India, most of us have no clue who our Councillor or Corporator is or who our MLA Or MP is and we always look at the CM Or PM
In China, it’s the opposite
Most Mainlanders look at their Governor, Mayor or Provincial Secretary or Local Officials and rarely associate Xi or the CPCs National Party with any of their problems or issues
Xi is this great man in Beijing who is beyond criticism. Just like Mao or Deng were.
Xi will be criticized by the CPC factions and the others in the Politburo or standing committees
So when a local mainlander blames Xi Jingping for lockdowns Or floods – You become suspicious on the spot because that’s not how China works
The locals blame the local officials, mayor, governors all the time because that’s whom they associate with for all their problems
So when anyone criticizes XJP, they are investigated and what do you know? They are Taiwanese or belong to some NGO from US
So they are investigated further and appropriate action is taken
This becomes an action against criticism in the West
Imagine if a Russian funded reporter demands Biden gone
Or a Kashmiri Journalist wants Modi gone
Would they be allowed to report?
Of course not
So Visit China and find out yourself
I bet when you leave, you will realise the basic difference between criticism & punitive action related speech
In 1998, Sony had to recall more than 700,000 video cameras after making a startling discovery.
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The company had boasted of the ‘X-ray’ capability in the new camcorder, equipped with infrared technology and night vision, which allowed people to take videos in the dark. Sounds like a pretty marketable idea, right?
It didn’t go as planned.
When people used this camera in daylight, the ‘Night Shot’ abilities did something a little less appropriate.
It turns out that a group of people had taken photos of women clothed or in bathing suits, but appearing almost naked.
An ABC journalist stated that at least 12 websites were found with photos of women who appeared almost naked, even though they were actually wearing clothes.
‘It’s an outrage, I think it could enrage anyone. You go outside and you don’t expect people to look under your clothes. It is such a basic expectation that any court in the land will find this to violate that right.
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The supposed ‘X-ray’ capabilities of this camera ended up with a lens that could partially see through clothing on certain occasions due to infrared technology (mainly when wearing dark clothing, which would give a translucent effect, so is not transparent).
‘Any see-through top or clothing, if you hit it with enough light, you’ll get a silhouette of what’s underneath; and that’s essentially all you get with these ‘Sony’ camcorders.
The company had to bag all the cameras they sold in a desperate effort to improve the situation.
Unfortunately, people wanted to try revamping the camcorder to get different ways to see properly through clothing, and some even went on the market for as much as $700.
My older twin sisters were career fashion models. They were on TV, in magazines and billboard signs , much to dad’s chagrin. He got nervous when he saw his daughters bigger than life on billboards. He was always nervous that some weirdo (his word) would find out where they lived. He always thought of a Charles Manson type after Lori and Tracy. They did take self defence.
They participated in runway shows in different cities, lots of travelling and were often first on and last off the runway, a privilege given to top models. They both loved modelling.
They were very smart girls and had eidetic memory which also helped. They were top in their class in school and also in college where they took business. Just a little different than their younger brother, me. I would never know what it’s like to be top of my class.
Dad owned two car dealerships. After the girls retired from modelling they went to work with dad at the dealerships. They loved and had a great interest in cars. In their teens, both drove Shelby GT350 Mustangs. They could look at car data sheets and have them memorized quickly so they loved working at the dealerships.
When dad retired the girls took the dealerships over and ran them very successfully winning awards every year.
So that’s what my sisters did after they retired from modelling.
Many models are smart business women and know exactly what they are going to do after retiring from modelling. Don’t worry about them.
When I was a kid, my favorite store was Radio Shack.
It was in the same shopping center as the grocery store we shopped at, so while my Mom was getting groceries I would walk down to Radio Shack, play the video game demos, and basically drool over all of the cool stuff they had there that I couldn’t afford. It became my weekly hangout. The guys who worked there knew me by name. They joked that I should have a vest and name tag, since I often answered other customers’ technical questions about computer peripherals that the staff didn’t know the answer to. Yeah, I was that nerd.
Seriously though, every week my allowance, birthday money, earnings from doing chores, whatever, it got spent in that store. None of that was the stuff I really wanted, though. I couldn’t afford the computers, the drones, the karaoke machines and stereos, wireless microphones, video cameras, the cool surveillance tech. That stuff was way too expensive. But one day, when I was old enough to have a job and make my own money, I vowed to buy all of it.
That day finally came when I was 15. I had gotten a part-time job, clearing tables at a restaurant within biking distance of our house. I pretty much blew the measly paycheck hanging out with my friends, but I had been throwing my daily tip pool money into a big water jug in my room for months. That was my “Radio Shack Fund.” One day when the jug was nearly full, my mom took me to the bank and had their machines count it. All in, it was a little over $1,500, and I walked out of that bank with a big smile and fifteen crisp $100 bills in my pocket.
“Radio Shack?” she says.
So off we go. As I walked through the door, knowing I finally had enough cash to acquire the treasures inside that had been out of reach thus far, something was … different.
None of it excited me.
It wasn’t that I had outgrown it or anything. It was the fact that all of that cool stuff, the very stuff that had motivated me to save in the first place, wasn’t as interesting once I could actually afford it. And once I was in the position to seriously think about buying it, I started second-guessing the wisdom of it. What do I need a $500 stereo for? In the commercial it shattered all the windows; my mom probably wouldn’t even let me turn it on. Did I really want that remote control helicopter enough to pay $1,000 for it? Is that new computer really that much better than the one I already have?
Well, shit.
You know how every once in a while you have this moment of clarity where you realize something isn’t what you thought it was? That was that day for me. There wasn’t a single thing in that store that I felt was worth parting with the dollars I had worked for. I just didn’t need it.
Sometimes people aren’t consciously being cheap or frugal. Sometimes stuff just loses its appeal when the day comes that you can actually afford it.
It happened when four Soviet diplomats were kidnapped in September 1985 by extremists who demanded that Moscow pressure the Syrian government to stop pro-Syrian militia from attacking rival Muslim positions in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli. Soviet Union quickly dispatched its Alpha Group (a unit of KGB ), tasked with counter-terrorism hostage-rescue operations, to Beirut.
Meanwhile, Soviets didn’t bow down to their demands and as a result Soviet diplomat,Arkady Katkov, was killed by the kidnappers and his dead body was found in a field.
This enraged them and they responded quickly by tracking down and locating the relatives of the kidnappers. In order to send a sharp message to the terrorists one of the kidnappers’ relative was castrated and his body was cut into pieces and were sent to the kidnappers. They also sent a list along with the package containing the names of their relatives with their addresses and threatened to kill more of the kidnappers’ relatives if the Soviet diplomats were not free.
As a result, the remaining hostages were released and dropped off near the Soviet Embassy andsince then no terrorist has ever dared to take captive an Russian official!!!
The newspaper ‘ The Guardian’ quoted:
“This is the way the Soviets operate. They do things–they don’t talk. And this is the language Hezbollah understands.”
THIS GAVE ME GOOSEBUMPS ! Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond | Schuyler Reacts
These reactions are about OUR WORLD RIGHT NOW.
The Brain from Planet Arous (1957) Colorized | John Agar | Sci-Fi, Thriller | Full Movie, subtitles
It Will Steal Your Body And Damn Your Soul! An evil alien brain, bent on world domination, takes over the body of an atomic scientist, while a “good” alien brain inhabits the body of the scientist’s dog and waits for an opportunity to defeat the evil brain.
I remember growing up as a boy in Western Pennsylvania and walking though the woods. We had some virgin forests; these were deep and located in ravines. With massive old trees, land of endless moss and loom, and with the smells of rich and dark earth. It was dim, gloomy but so very much alive.
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We had timbered areas where the trees were cut down and soft off, and were now a wasteland with small plants and trees trying to reclaim the land. It was a lot like walking on Mars with an occasional “Christmas tree” here and there.
We had light woods, and pine trees. Aspen forest which were fun to hike though, and areas what was nothing but undergrowth. We also had lands that were dense pine.
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We (us boys) would access these various areas, not by roads, but by the long forgotten railroad tracks of yore that wound in and out between the hills and took us to areas “well off the beaten path”. And there, often enough, we would find the remains of old highways and paved roads that were forgotten when newer and faster roads were built nearby.
I imagine that boys and girls can still enjoy the natural aspects of life if they take the time to branch out and explore.
cooking hot dogs over a campfire tim laman
Perhaps, if you have the time, make a day trip and see what lies just over that next hill. You might well be surprised.
It doesn’t take much to have some fun.
Buy a pack of hotdogs, some buns, and some disposable tubes of mustard, ketchup from a fast food joint. Bring a lighter.
Woman chooses sausages in a vacuum package at the grocery store
Beer is too heavy to carry, but a bottle of wine, or whiskey isn’t. Just take it easy and have a great time.
Remember…
Tomatoes and corn are ripe now, as are apple trees laden with fruit.
Haha. Are you paranoid about China? If yes, you must be listening too much to western esp US propaganda.
Brazil & India are a member of BRICS. Indonesia is applying to join BRICS.
In total, about 44 countries are interested in BRICS with 20+ applying to join. Even France is asking to be an observer.
All BRICS members & to-be-members have 1 thing in common: all suffered from US monetary & financial hegemony. All want dedollarisation & stay out of US SWIFT banking system.
It is a global effort since Ukraine war to “beat” US monetary & financial hegemony.
Now, you are asking these countries to “deter” Chinese influence in, say, Africa???
I bet they all want Chinese has a bigger influence anywhere incl Africa. The bigger the influence is, the sooner they can beat US hegemony.
Do you know 60% of Brazilians are poor? It is because US capitalists have sucked up Brazil’s natural resources. Brazil is the most zealous to beat US hegemony.
Dont be paranoid about China. Dedollarization is not initiated by China. Just that China’s economy is stable & the world find confidence to use Chinese yuan to replace USD. That is all.
Nothing to do with China. Everything to do with USA itself who shoot its own foot.
Star Trek Next Generation – Earth Colony Turkana IV
U.S. War Machine Is KILLING The U.S. Middle Class – RFK Jr.
What can American politicians do to restore the middle class in this country? The first step, says Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is to stop warmongering all over the globe, spending countless billions on weaponry, building military bases and “flexing our muscle” in every corner of the planet. Jimmy talks to RFK Jr. about where the $800+ billion a year in “defense” spending could better be spent.
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I stood there dumbfounded…
I lost my 35-year-old, soulmate husband unexpectedly on Memorial Day morning. I had gotten up to find him on the driveway of our home and had tried to revive him while waiting for EMS but it was too late. He had had a gran mal seizure and had what the medical examiner ruled a “Terminal Event” and was taken from me and his daughter that idolized him, that day. Needless to say, it was a horrible, traumatic day such that I wondered if I would ever be able to get out of bed again.
After several months I had decided to try to return to work when I was met by a co-worker who hugged me and asked how I was and said she was so happy to see me. She then said to me “My family and I have been praying hard to you. We have been praying that you will get cancer really soon so you can be with him because we know how much you love him.” I stood there dumbfounded with the hideousness of that statement. She then handed me a CD she had made for me (that I only played years later out of curiosity) that was full of the most tragic and mournful music I ever heard. I made it through about two hours at work that day but then went home and did not return for several more months. What little bit of healing had been shattered by that comment. When I did finally return, I avoided her like the plague. She was just one of many wholly inappropriate comments made by those who I thought cared for me.
People! Pleasssssssssse just give those new to loss, a hug and tell them you are sorry for their loss. Deem anything else inappropriate.
EDIT: Thanks so much for all of the support. I really do appreciate it.
This woman became famous at work for her strange replies to many things so I came to feel it wasn’t personal. Some examples: She stated it would have been much better if Elizabeth Smart had died instead of being found, because now she was “sullied and would never be wanted or accepted by people again.” She also came in one day telling everyone that her 14 year old daughter had “caught scabies” from holding hands with her boyfriend. The odd thing was she acted proud of it.
Like my granddad used to say ”takes all kinds”.
Sheet Pan Fish and Chips
Please your palate with a Sheet Pan Fish and Chips recipe that’s full of flavor. This dish’s major perk is the convenience of a single pan for cooking (no frying required). And the great flavors of Old Bay® and McCormick® Tartar Sauce.
fish and chips 4
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
1/4 cup buttermilk
5 teaspoons Old Bay® Seasoning, divided
1 pound cod fillets, cut into 4 x 2 inch pieces
2 large russet potatoes, cut into wedges (about 1 1/2 pounds)
1 tablespoon oil
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 egg
1 cup cornflake crumbs
McCormick® Original Tartar Sauce for Seafood
Instructions
Heat oven to 450 degrees F.
Mix buttermilk and 1 teaspoon of the Old Bay in large resealable plastic bag. Add fish; seal bag. Refrigerate for 20 minutes.
Toss potatoes and oil in large bowl. Sprinkle with another 2 teaspoons of Old Bay; toss to coat evenly. Spread potatoes in single layer on foil-lined 15 x 10 x 1 inch baking pan sprayed with no stick cooking spray. Bake for 25 minutes, turning potatoes halfway through cooking. Remove pan from oven. Push potatoes to outside edge of pan. Set aside.
Place flour in a shallow dish.
Beat egg, another 1 teaspoon of Old Bay and 1 teaspoon water in a separate shallow dish.
Mix cornflake crumbs and remaining 1 teaspoon Old Bay in another shallow dish.
Remove fish from buttermilk mixture, allowing excess to drip off into bag.
Coat fish in flour, shaking off excess flour. Dip into egg mixture, then press into cornflake mixture until evenly coated. Discard any remaining flour, egg and cornflake mixtures. Place fish on a wire rack in center of pan with the potatoes.
Bake for 15 minutes or until fish is golden brown and flakes easily with a fork and potatoes are tender.
Serve fish with potatoes and tartar sauce, if desired.
When my oldest daughter was about a year and a half I called my father to ask if my house mate could join our large family for Thanksgiving dinner. You see I had no car and buses did not run in our area on holidays. My father said NO. He preferred I not bring a guest. I said, I don’t have a ride. He said he was sorry and that we would be missed. I was embarrassed and heartbroken as I relayed the news to my friend. Later he was invited to join friends at a party where children were not allowed.
Long story short, we shared a baked potato and I didn’t eat dinner with my family for another 10 years. In those years I hosted dinner for friends and strangers I knew to be alone for the holidays. The pain and loneliness of that long ago day still lives with me. My daughter is now 42, my father is gone and I host gatherings where no one is ever turned away!
Similar headlines or sentiments will be found in pretty much any other ‘western’ magazine that still has some integrity.
The catastrophic consequences of sanctioning Russia without any realistic assessment of its, and one’s own economies should have led to a serious clean up of all state and international bureaucracies involved in it.
Alas, we have yet to see that anyone who was involved has been punished for these horrendous mistakes.
The very same people are now involved in finding ‘solutions’ for the mess their shortsightedness created.
It is no wonder then that people will vote for anyone other than those in charge.
Gonzalo Lira MISSING After FLEEING To Ukraine Border
May God protect Gonzalo.
https://youtu.be/7n_9ueVy20A
The doctor broke down in the delivery room.
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The doctor went on to share the woman’s story, explaining that she had spent 14 years trying to conceive, trying “tried all treatments including injections and artificial insemination” to fall pregnant.
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Finally, she fell pregnant, carrying her baby to term despite having “a large tumour”
“When she was pregnant, this tumour began to melt and everything was fine,” he said.
“During the time of delivery, the husband rushed to me and stayed for seven hours until we decided to cut her abdomen.
“She carried her child in her arms and smiled and then departed.
“The mother died and the child lived, her husband fainted at the news of her death.
The doctor channeled his grief into a powerful message, which feels particularly poignant in the lead-up to Mother’s Day.
“Please respect women because they are dying to bring you new life,” he said.
“If you suffer the pain of childbirth for hours and spend long nights in raising your children, it is the greatest sacrifice.
“If you do not talk to your mother for any reason, please go and contact them now.
Drinking ice water ALL THE TIME. ALLLLL THE TIME!!!!!
Regardless of temperature or occasion, summer or winter, you ask for a cup of water, and most likely, they’ll give you a cup of ice with some water in it. I have to specifically ask for “no ice” every time I visit a restaurant. My Chinese stomach can’t take it. Like many Chinese people, I grew up drinking hot tea or lukewarm/room temperature boiled water (which we call 白开水, white boiled water). Ice water (especially in winter) is said to be bad for you. If you ask for water in Chinese restaurants (in China), 9 out 10 times, they’ll give you a cup of hot water right out of the boiler, and that 1 time you get lukewarm water.
But I understand all the health talks are just groundless old wives’ tales. There’s no scientific study to support ice water is bad for your body. If I seem defensive, that’s because I’ve mentioned this once before on Quora, and a wave of angry Americans came to tell me I was wrong and ice water is perfectly fine.
Ice water is perfectly fine, Americans. I’m not saying it’s bad. No need to get angry with me all over again.
I’m just saying it’s a weird custom for the Chinese, and I personally prefer lukewarm water or hot tea.
Money is: When you are a Doctor or Lawyer or what ever (Business owner) making $450,000 per year and with full benefits but needing to work full time and even overtime to maintain that (60 hours+). You enjoy access to a country club in Beverly Hills for a monthly fee — and you go golfing in the summer — and you go hunting in Canada on yearly vacation.
You also own a big house in Beverly Hills but with a mortgage and a boat at the Marina Del Rey Docs, but it’s financed. Your kids go to private schools and with tutors if need be. You drive both a Benz and a Ferrari but you drive your own cars. The cars are financed. Your wife doesn’t work. You have a private chef that comes over and cooks your family meals.
With a safe stacked with cash incase of a rainy day, you don’t worry so much if you have to call in to work sick or if you need to take off for a few days.
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You have money to basically do what you want but to a degree. You own stocks and wondering if you have enough put away for early retirement or if you need to work ‘till 65 to be on the safe side. You worry about a stock market crash and wonder if that could affect your retirement.
Wealth is: Owning 9 gas stations (inherited from your father). And your older brother has even more businesses than you do. Collectively, your family is like a financial empire (family wealth).
You have private doctors that make house calls — what ever medical specialists you need. You don’t work a job. Your ‘job’ is only to look after your businesses. Not only are you set up for retirement but your children are also set up: financially stable, with their own retirement accounts. You prepare your children to run the family businesses when they come of age. You do not prepare them or encourage them to work a job. ‘You don’t work — you own.’
You have what they call ‘generational wealth.’ Most of the financial assets you have are tied to a family trust. Having both accountants and lawyers on payroll, your most important lawyer charges $750 per hour for legal advice — and he’s totally worth it!
You own a mansion in Beverly Hills, CA and another in the Hamptons, NY — no mortgage, all paid off. You employ a live in Butler and a live in Maid. And you have a chauffeur to drive you around while you ponder your next business venture — or while you just take a nap in the back seat.
A trust says you have 25% ownership of that same country club in Beverly Hills and your siblings own the rest. Including the country club, the gas stations and maintaining both residences, you employ over 100+ workers; most are paid hourly rates.
You have a safe — filled with gold!
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You don’t have rainy days…
You have basically the money to do what ever you want within reason.
A nice portion of your wealth is sitting in the stock market but every time the market crashes you barely blink. From your dividend stocks alone you earn a healthy wage — $332,000 per year and that number seems to be gradually increasing more than inflation.
You have free cash to buy more shares when the market corrects and prices come down, a trick you learned from your father.
Tonight is the gala. You can donate money to your favorite political candidates.
Africa Stands Up to US Cold War Bullying Against China & Russia, w/ Kambale Musavuli
On Tuesday (Aug 1st) during the women’s 100-meter race at the World University Games in China, the Somalian runner performed so badly it had to be a joke.
Even when she stepped up to the mark you could tell she was not in tiptop shape like her fellow competitors.
Questions were asked, and it came to light that she was not a trained athlete and was actually the niece of Somalia’s Athletics Federation Chairperson. It couldn’t possibly be nepotism, right? No way.
I do love to see what happens when people who abuse their little powers in their own countries try that shit outside.
The Chairperson’s face was plastered all over social media, called a national embarrassment and suspended.
What would the average person look like competing against actual Olympians in the Olympics?
They would look pathetic.
It should be acceptable to let hacklers of every sport be thrown onto the field every now and then to see how easy it is.
People underestimate the sheer hard work and sacrifice athletes put in, just because when they’re competing against each other in sporting events such as the Olympics it does not look that impressive. Throw in an average person and we’d appreciate the difference.
When my son was in first grade, the teacher sent home a math sheet that included a problem that went something like: “If a pyramid has five balls at the base, then four, then three, etc., how many balls are there?”
My son went to work figuring that the base would have 25 balls, (5 X 5), then 16 balls (4 X 4), then 9 (3 X 3), then 4 (2 X 2) and then 1 ball at the top. Total = 55.
She marked it wrong.
Evidently the “right” answer was 15 (5+4 +3+2+1).
When I saw this I brought the paper back to her and asked why it was wrong.
When I explained to her that my son had solved for it as a 3-dimensional pyramid, she went beet red and admitted that she hadn’t recognized what he had done.
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Needless to say, he was eventually placed in a G&T (Gifted and Talented) program.
What’s the homework that your child was given by the teacher that shocked you?
Oh SH*T! Now Kenya is INVADING Haiti?
The U.S. government will provide Kenya with the “resources” – presumably this means money, weapons and training – necessary to lead an invasion of Haiti, pending UNSC approval. Kenya will conduct an assessment mission to Haiti in the coming weeks. So, we’ve outsourced the invasion of Haiti. Why? Redacted correspondent Dan Cohen reports on this.
Back around 1995, I received and Bank Draft for an insurance settlement. I opened a separate account with the draft and added $1000 cash. I was told the draft would take 10–14 business days, after a month, 20 business days i was told it would take 10–14 business days. I explained it was already 20 business days. I was told I knew nothing about banking and I should just wait. I asked for $500 cash out of that account and was told that the funds were not available in that account. I tried to explain I had put in $1000 cash and was curious how long cash took to clear. She brushed me off.
I then told her I wanted to close my other accounts at that bank. A small savings account for Christmas had about $800. My checking had a over $5000. My two company accounts had in excess of $100000. I told her I wanted all cash because i didn’t know anything about banking. I let her know I would be back at 3 PM the next day for all my money. I went back to work. By the time I got there I had messages from 5 different people at that branch and other branches. I waited until one called again, the branch manager BM. “What are you closing all your accounts?”
“I am not closing all of them yet, just those 4.”
BM. “Why? What happened?”
Me. “I was told I didn’t know anything about banking. I deposited a bank draft a month ago and the funds are not yet available. Also the $1000 cash deposited at the same time is not available for withdrawal. And by the way, I called the bank the draft was on, it cleared 3 weeks ago. But hey, I don’t know anything about banking.”
BM. “I don’t know who told you that, I will look into it. And we don’t have that much cash at this branch to give you. Aren’t you worried about getting robbed with that much cash?”
Me. “Only if someone at the bank blabs about it. Besides I will be bringing my own security. And I gave you 24 hrs to get the cash in the branch.”
BM. “Come in tomorrow and let’s talk about this.”
Me. “I will be there at 3PM to pick up the cash. I have already have the accountant opening accounts for us. My family and our company have been there over 50 yrs. But I have never been so disappointed in the bank. I asked the teller, how long it took cash to be available and she ignored me. I asked her twice. That’s when I told her to start closing accounts.
The next day the bank arranged a transfer of the funds to our new bank. I closed my personal accounts and refinanced the home loan I had with them.
I may not know about banking, but I do know what customer service is.
China’s DJI Refuses India’s 1.5 Billion Rupee Order, Leaving India in Disarray.
About DJI drones we must remember that at the start of his economic sanctions against China, Trump had ordered the DOD to get rid of all the Chinese products in their arsenal and replace them with more costly US products. A year after there was a ton of complaints from the military personel that the more costly US made military drones were underperforming the DJI drones that they were replacing. That’s why the DJI drones have 75% of the world market. Their quality/price ratio are unbeatable for all of their product line.
DJI is wise to refuse India’s order of 1.5 billion rupees. BYD too knew how India works and demanded full payment prior to delivery of the electrical buses. India has been criticizing China but now trying to fool Chinese companies to grab money. Manny American companies have suffered a huge loss of investments because of India’s ‘money grappling’ policy. Foxconn a.o. are running away from India and back to China as they have great difficulties in India. One should be aware of the risk in investing in India as it may outweigh the benefit.
Russia is there to give them Wheat without them needing Dollars
Russia will sell them Wheat for Barter
Russia will give them weapons, trained troops and Wheat in exchange for Gold and Uranium
Behind the scenes is of course China ready to finance the entire deals in their stockpiles of US Dollars
Why would Niger need French or US Aid now ?
That cutting off Aid isnt gonna work anymore sadly
Hell No! U.S. considers a military DRAFT to build up failing forces
Are you prepared to send your loved ones to war? Members of Congress along with retired military are pushing the idea of a military draft in The United States. One retired colonel is calling for a hybrid approach using both a volunteer force and drafted force. How about we stop our imperial aggression around the world?
Hitman outsourced a murder to a hitman, who hired a hitman, who hired a hitman.
Chinese police charge six, including 5 hitmen with intentional homicide, after all the men tried to outsource the killing to each other. The intricate, would-be job was first contracted by real estate developer Tan Youhui in October 2013, who wanted to kill a rival developer who sued his company over a dispute over a development.
Tan paid Xi Guangan around $282,800 for the job. Guangan then took the money, and used half to hire another hitman, Mo Tianxiang, to do the job.
Mo Tianxiang then hired another hitman Yang Kangsheng and gave him a photo of the target, promising half of the money that was promised to him on completion of the Job. Yang then offered the job to another hitman with the same promise.
The last hitman then outsourced the Job to Ling Xiansi, for a measly $14,000. Ling, rather than pass the job on to someone else, ended up reaching out to the rival developer to tell him about the hit out for him. Ling and the developer ended up faking the murder, staging an image of the developer with his hands tied, which then circulated through the chain of hitmen back to Tan, the businessman who hired the first hitman. By this time the developer had already reported his attempted murder to police. Who were able to quickly arrest the suspects.
All five hitmen were sentenced to between two to four years in prison in a court in the Guangxi region, while the developer who requested the hit, was sentenced to five years.
Things You CAN Do in China (You CAN’T Do in America)
If you’re thinking of visiting China but feel scared about what you can and can’t do, then this video is for you! In this video, we’ll share with you some of the things you CAN do in China that you CAN’T do in America. Most Americans watching this video will be shocked! China is the true land of the free! Chinese people have much more freedom than in the west. Come to China and see it with your own eyes! and see the truth my friends.
2023 08 04 09 17
I love this guy
In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write a famous author and ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut (1922 – 2007) was the only one to respond – and his response is magnificent:
“Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:
I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.
What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.
Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.
Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?
Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash receptacals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.
That’s not why Japan has a low obesity rate. I’ve been to Japan; they are way too polite to be vicious to fat people (or anyone, really). They’re far more the passive-aggressive types.
One thing Japan does have is a culture of walking everywhere. The streets are narrow, the cities are crowded, and nearly everyone takes buses and trains to get around, which means that they have to walk at the endpoints of every trip they take. The average Japanese person is walking six kilometers every day.
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Typical day: Walk to train station, get on train. Get off at your stop. Walk to work. Repeat in reverse later. You get quite a few steps in this way. This picture is pre-COVID, by the way; that’s how much they masked up even before the pandemic.
Another thing Japan has is smaller portion sizes when you eat out. You’ll almost never have any leftovers. And you wouldn’t want them, anyway—will you haul them with you while you take the train home? You’d probably get discrete annoyed looks from the other passengers for stinking up the train car. You most likely walked into that restaurant, and you’ll be walking out, so lugging a box of food in your arms when you leave is kind of awkward. It’s the same with the sodas you buy from vending machines—a typical Japanese soda is 300–350 ml (10–12 oz), while the bottles from a U.S. soda machine are usually around 20 oz. Many machines will also sell you water, coffee, barley tea, or green tea, which won’t be very sweet. If you buy street food, you might be able to buy snacks from a few different places before it fills you up.
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A meal I ate at a hotel in Japan. I took this photo just before I ate it. It was excellent but not huge.
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Here’s another one from the same trip. I think this was a Chinese restaurant. This is a pretty typical portion when you eat out.
There are some other things that probably help. Japanese employers are required to pay taxes to support the public health care system. A lot of obesity happens because people have sedentary jobs and work long hours, so the government decided to penalize companies that have too many overweight employees. Effectively, this means that companies with a lot of obese employees have to pay higher rates for their health insurance. Because companies hate giving away their money, they are motivated to find the cheapest, simplest way to keep employees thin. This might include mandatory calisthenics when you show up for work in the morning, removing unhealthy options from the company cafeteria, making their employees wear step monitors, or even just nagging them constantly. Maybe this is what the question means by “fat shaming.”
To be clear, I don’t think Japan is better in every way, and there’s plenty about their society that America should not be copying. They have some health problems that are worse than the United States (e.g. stress, suicide, stomach cancer, smoking, depression, etc.). Still, they do a far better job than the U.S. at avoiding obesity, and it’s worth paying attention to what about their society is helping them to do that.
It would be tough to get Americans to walk more, but city designs that make transit preferable to driving likely help. Perhaps there’s also a way to persuade our restaurants to (at least) offer smaller portion sizes for those who want them. I’m not sure how we’d “adopt widespread fat shaming,” though. I’m not sure Japan does it any more harshly than Americans do, and I don’t think it would help much.
Smoked Sausage, Potatoes and Onion
OIewewP
Ingredients
1 (16 ounce) package smoked sausage, sliced
1 large onion, peeled and chopped
5 large potatoes, peeled and chopped into 1/2-inch cubes
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
2 teaspoons smoked paprika
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 cup shredded white Cheddar cheese (optional)
Instructions
Heat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Line a large baking tray with sides with aluminum foil and spray with cooking spray.
Put the sausage slices, onions and potatoes into a large bowl. Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt, pepper, paprika and dried thyme. Toss together and pour onto the baking tray.
Bake for 45 minutes to one hour, stirring halfway through, until the potatoes are golden brown and tender.
If desired, scatter the cheese over the top and return to the oven for a few minutes to melt the cheese.
**HE’S HAD ENOUGH! Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond | REACTION
2023 08 20 10 50
United States stories…
100% those stairs the guy built are garbage, but 65k to build stairs in that location? What are they building them out of unobtanium ? Concrete and labor ain’t that expensive.
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BATTLE OF THE WORLDS Remastered Classic Full Action-Sci-Fi Movie
Today, while driving, I saw an accident on the road.
A “garbage granny” (one of those old ladies that are in their 90s or so that collect garbage for coins) was “hit” by a truck in the middle of a busy intersection. Now, you all must know that these folk have a reputation of driving and waking in busy highways with the intention of getting hit, and then being awarded free medical care, and financial reimbursement.
Now, this particular granny looked fine. But she just sat there in the road next to her pile of garbage with this expression… “I’m waiting. Come get me and give me my money”.
Meaning; “Everyone knows what is going on, and why I meander in the middle of six lanes of traffic. This driver was the fool that hit me. He will now fund my life, and there isn’t a damn thing anyone can do about it.”
Ah. I shit you not.
China.
Love it, or hate it. But it is 100% unique, that’s fer sure.
The mother left her 1-year-old child in an abandoned house, but after 10 years she returns there and discovers something that makes her cry
Residents of the Russian city of Yaroslavl will never forget an incident that took place more than 10 years ago.
However, it started when a neighbor heard a baby, crying in a nearby house. He didn’t think much about it and continued with the things he had to do that day. But the next day, the baby kept crying.
No neighbor didn’t see anyone in the house where the crying came from, and the lights were never on, not even in the evening.
But at that point, the neighbors started to worry and called the police.
They came and when they entered the house, it was completely empty inside. Those who had lived there had taken everything and disappeared. The only thing they had left behind was their own child!
The one-year-old girl was found on the dirty floor and it was clear she had been there for several days.
An investigation showed that the girl’s name was Liza Verbitskaya, and her parents seemed to have entered the ground, no one could find them.
Liza was taken to hospital, where she recovered in a few days. In the same hospital was a woman, Inna Nika, who was taking care of her sick son, her mother was sitting at his head day and night, but one day she heard a scream from the next room and went to see what it was all about.
She saw Liza and her motherly instincts asked her to protect and take care of her. From that day on, Inna visited Liza daily and brought her clothes, toys, food.
One day, Inna visited the little one and noticed that she was no longer in her hospital room, then found out that she had been taken to an orphanage. She also went to the orphanage to see her, but then it was clear to her that she had to adopt her!
When the adoption documents were completed, Liza was two years old and still had problems with chewing and was traumatized, she could not stand the loud noises. While growing up, Liza had darker skin than her relatives, but now she is beautiful. She became a model and, thanks to her story and modeling career, she became known throughout Russia. People who laughed at the way she looked bit her tongue when they saw her win, as a teenager, more talent contests.
Now that she has become famous, her biological mother tried to contact her but was not allowed. Liza received the woman’s phone number, but she’s still wondering if she wants to meet the one who left her. Our respect goes to Inna, an adoptive mother who turned out to be the hero in the life of this abandoned child, but with such a special destiny!
Well seeing that they’ve built their own bank, for transactions without using the dollar, using concrete, bricks, steel and glass, that looks fairly concrete to me,
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It’s certainly big enough for every member to have a representative office in the building, you can see even the building next door is connected. So it’s very big,certainly plenty of concrete,
First Time Reaction to Oliver Anthony – I Want To Go Home
In this video, TNT reacts to Oliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go HomeOliver Anthony – I Want To Go Home
What is actually happening in California is actually an interesting case study.
First, the state of California is enormous – close to 40 million people. Most of them are pretty urban, concentrated around the coastal cities (Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego), with a growing number of large and mid-sized suburban and exurban areas (especially spreading east and north of Los Angeles).
For the first time in its history as a state, California lost a US House seat in the 2020 census, and has actually seen a net-net decline in its population. Many of those leaving are middle class people who, despite the plentiful jobs here, find the cost of living too daunting. I live in San Francisco, where the median price of a house recently got close to two million dollars. And for that money, you are not going to get one of the picturesque Victorian homes overlooking Alamo Square. You are going to get (most likely) a 1300–1500 square foot house that was pretty cheaply constructed in the 1940s or 1950s with three small bedrooms and a bathroom, maybe a half bath.
If you have kids, then you are most likely going to have to choose between putting them in a poor to terrible public school or shelling our more for private school (we were lucky – our son scored high enough on the tests to be admitted to Lowell High School, a ‘magnet’ school which is among the best in the state).
It’s a city where a family of four with an annual income of $150,000 qualifies for low income housing. If they can get on the list.
People are not leaving California because of the liberal politics (we could of course argue the role that those politics play in the current situation) or the taxes. They are leaving because the cost to live here – including the ambient and rising crime – is not worth it.
Some (the largest share) are actually leaving the cities for other parts of California – Sacramento, the central valley, the deserts east of LA – where a family that is solidly middle class can still (sort of) afford a traditional, middle class life. Still more are going to Oregon or Washington or Texas. Recently, many more have moved to Florida, to the glee of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
(NB: One of the answers incredibly remarks that Californians are not going to move to “Cleveland or St Louis or other MAGA strongholds,” which of course is true. The comment is laughably wrong because, of course, few Californians are moving to the midwest, because they are moving to places that economically are growing; they are not moving due to politics. And Cleveland and Saint Louis are not “MAGA strongholds.”)
They are not taking “their jobs” with them, mind you. They are taking their tax dollars and the electoral power.
But here is the hidden truth:
this is not really “new.” In fact, for close to 30 years, net domestic migration in the state has been negative.
Net-net, there are more than a million more people who have left California for other states than the other way round. Most are going (as stated) to Texas or Arizona. The outflow of middle income Californians (and Californians with families) has been hidden for two decades by waves of foreign immigration. So despite the gap of (in some years) more than 100,000 people, the state continued to grow.
Due to COVID and other factors (the growing economies of Asia, for example), this is no longer the case.
Without foreign immigration, California is going to see a significant drop in population.
What does it all mean?
First, if trends continue, what we are going to see is growth in the top (many people moving to California are doing so chasing high-end jobs, like AI engineers or medical researchers) and at the bottom (a large number are also low and unskilled workers coming to take entry-level jobs). That is going to make California’s already terribly skewed wealth inequality even worse. There will be more wealthy enclaves that can afford private security, private schools, privately funded infrastructure. There will also be more crowded sub-standard housing, crowded, poorly-performing schools, and deteriorating public infrastructure.
It’s not really too much of an exaggeration to say that the economy in California more and more looks like a third-world country, with a few super wealthy people, a lot of poor people barely hanging on, and a small number of people in the middle who struggle to justify staying here.
With such wealth and capital inequalities, I strongly suspect that the social fabric here is going to fray. The wealthy, insulated from the problems of the poor, will carry on thinking that everything is fine. Crime – especially property crime like car break-ins and home robberies – will grow, but will not really affect the rich and powerful.
The “Hollywood elite” (and other super-wealthy) will be just fine.
The other truth is, life in California is very nice if you can afford it. The weather in the coastal cities is close to perfect. The geography – coastal mountains, beaches, redwood forests – is beautiful. The diversity of people gives us incredible choices in food and culture. The state is home to the UC system (the best public schools in the country) as well as Stanford and CalTech. The knowledge industry is driven out of Silicon Valley, and the entertainment capital of the world is in Southern California.
Originally Answered: What are things you shouldn't do in life?
Don’t abandon someone suddenly after giving them attention. It kills them.
Don’t waste your time by stalking your ex on fb or checking people’s ‘last seen’ on WhatsApp. If they want to talk to you, they will. If they don’t, they won’t, even in a hundred years.
Don’t compare yourself with anyone. You and the rest are so different, that when you realize it, a comparison won’t even be possible.
Don’t ignore your body and health.
Don’t miss out on important engagements – Birthdays, weddings, your child’s first performance, your dad’s retirement party, reunions – its these events that make the fondest memories.
Don’t take things personally. Even if you know its personal, don’t take it personally. Then you win.
Don’t be rude to your parents. Or siblings. When everyone else will run for cover, its your family that will stand with you as you drench in your storm.
Don’t force someone to be in your life. Let them go, if they want to.
Don’t find reasons to be unhappy. It doesn’t pay to be sad. It pays to be joyous.
Don’t underestimate the power of people. Network.
Don’t let anyone make you feel badly about yourself. Always know your good things and your flaws. Accept them. Correct them. Or don’t correct them. But don’t let anyone else capitalize on them.
My fiance suddenly stopped breathing, went into a coma and remained that way for 10 days; after numerous hospital tests we found out there was no blood flow to his brain. We removed his life support and donated his organs.
Since he was only 35 years old when he died, and a former DJ popular in the Chicago and Detroit areas, the funeral home was packed full of people for his wake. One of his childhood friends, we’ll call him “Jack,” was in need of a kidney transplant and VERY sick, and we were able to directly donate his kidney to Jack. Due to the organ donations, autopsy and other things that had to happen prior to the funeral, the wake was scheduled a week after my fiance passed away. During that week Jack received the transplant and was able to make it to the wake.
He stood in front of my fiance’s red casket and spoke of his health issues and how he had given up hope, believing he wouldn’t be around much longer. Now, my fiance had given him another chance at life and Jack would be able to watch his 4-year-old son grow up. Jack’s son was there too, and walked up to him and held his hand during the speech.
I was already an emotional wreck, but through my tears I glanced around long enough to see that there was not a single dry eye in the funeral home at that moment. Though I questioned how I would go on living without my best friend and my lover, Jack provided a ray of sunshine during the wake that day and reminded us all that my fiance would live on in all the people he helped save with his organs.
Awesome Beef Stroganoff
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Ingredients
6 cups uncooked egg noodles
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 pounds beef sirloin steak, cut into thin strips
1 package onion or roasted garlic gravy mix for steak
8 ounces fresh mushrooms, quartered
1/4 cup tomato paste
1 (10 ounce) can beef broth
1 cup sour cream
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley (for garnish)
Instructions
Cook noodles according to package directions-keep warm.
In a large heavy bottom pot, heat the oil over medium high heat. Add meat and brown.
Sprinkle gravy mix over meat.
Add mushrooms; sauté for 5 minutes.
Stir in tomato paste and broth. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for about 10 minutes, or until thickened, stirring occasionally.
Remove from heat, and stir in sour cream.
Top with parsley and serve over hot cooked noodles.
I remember my grandfather telling me the story of buying his first home, and how stressful it was. He was working as a teacher making $2,500 per year, and was trying to figure out how to budget so he could afford to make the payments on the $5,500 house he just bought.
If he had managed to get his hands on $50,000 back then, he probably would have thought he was set for life — a mere 5% return would have matched his annual salary, and he would never have to work another day.
Obviously that plan wouldn’t have worked out — what he made in a year back then is less than most people make in a month today.
Right now, $1 million is about equivalent to what $50,000 was in his day, where a 5% return would put you right at the median income. And, just like in his day, that won’t be enough for someone in their early 20’s to make it to retirement age. In another 50–60 years, one million dollars will be the median household income. Minimum wage will be $200k a year, and it still won’t be enough to support a family.
The only way $1 million will be enough to retire on is if you don’t plan on living that long.
If you think that’s impossible, just remember the story about a how a teacher from Massachusetts once mortgaged a $5,500 house on a $2,500 annual salary — a house that today would fetch about $950,000.
AMERICAN RAPPER REACTS TO -Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond
By “see around them,” I’m literally talking about the people I see here in Chicago. I’m not talking about global poverty or people I don’t literally see with my own eyes.
Compared to the majority of people in my city (Chicago), my family is doing very well for ourselves. Yet there are entire zip codes in this city where practically everyone lives in poverty.
My wealth and their poverty are unrelated. I didn’t steal my wealth from them. I’m not the one failing them. Their political leaders—none of whom I’ve ever supported or voted for—have been failing them for generations now. The concentrated poverty in parts of Chicago is the completely predictable result of political policies enacted by politicians who get almost universal support from those same areas.
There’s been a huge increase in the number of homeless people, beggars, and refugees in the parts of Chicago I travel through on a regular basis. I am actually about to run my Sunday morning errands, and I already know which intersections will have which beggars. I’m not exaggerating when I say that literally every single major intersection (where two two-lane roads meet) has at least one beggar now. Some of one at all four stops at the intersection.
Again, my relative wealth and their poverty are unrelated. The system has failed them. I am not the system.
One intersection near me has a man who begs on the street, while his wife and child sit nearby on the sidewalk. According to his sign, he is a refugee from Guatemala. Assuming he got here via the normal refugee channels, his family has been failed by the governments of at least three countries (Guatemala, Mexico, the USA), two states (Texas and Illinois), and now one city (Chicago). I did not fail this man and his family. Several dozen politicians did. My wealth, or lack of it, would not have changed anything for this man.
I give food to the homeless sometimes. I donate to my church’s food pantry on a regular basis. I never give cash directly to the homeless.
I also have A LOT of money taken from me via taxes which, in theory, should be used to help those in need. The problem is, of course, that, unlike when I give food to the homeless directly, the taxes which are taken from me go through the hands of politicians on its way to help the needy. Shockingly, very little of it ends up helping the needy.
And a lot of the “help” the needy get from the government is designed in such a way as to create dependence on that help. I’m not saying that’s intentional. I’m not saying it’s not intentional, either.
I’m just saying that when I see this:
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But I also see scenes like this increasing all around Chicago:
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And I think about how much the government takes from me in income, property, and sales taxes every year, I realize pretty quickly that I’m not the problem here. I should feel no shame for my lifestyle.
Taking all of my family’s wealth away wouldn’t help poorer people at all. In fact, it would likely make things worse for them, at least here in Chicago. Chicago needs all of the upper-middle class taxpayers it can get. The single worst thing that can happen to a city is for it to lose most of its wealthiest citizens.
Just ask the citizen of, say, Gary, Indiana, or Detroit how well that worked out for them, when anyone who could afford to leave town did so.
This house went viral last year. The highway was located in Zhuhai in Guangdong province. It seems the government had offered the owner 8 million RMB (around 1.4 million USD) to move. The owner refused. Rumor had it the owner thought the government would give him 10 million. But the moving cost has actually exceeded the cost of the (section of the) highway itself. So the designers revised the design to build the highway around this house.
It seems that the owner had eventually moved out of this house to a government-provided location. But the highway was already built.
My First time hearing Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond
2023 08 21 07 36
Chinese mainland suspends mango imports from Taiwan
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The Chinese mainland has decided to suspend the entry of mangoes from Taiwan starting Monday, according to a mainland spokesperson.
In accordance with relevant laws, regulations and standards on the mainland, the decision by the General Administration of Customs was taken as a scientific and reasonable biosecurity precaution, said Zhu Fenglian, spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council on Monday.
The mainland had informed the Taiwan side of the decision, Zhu said, adding that Taiwan is urged to further improve its phytosanitary quarantine management system.
Since 2023, customs authorities on the mainland have detected Planococcus minor, a quarantine pest, in mangoes from Taiwan. This pest could pose a serious threat to agricultural production and ecological security on the mainland.
This is Cobalt-60, the most emissive radioactive isotope currently known. As far as I know, it’s also the only one with a label that says “Drop and Run.” It’s used to sterilize medical equipment and can quite easily sterilize you within just a minute or 2 if you held it in your hand.
There is a stand-up sketch by Ricky Gervais, in which he overhears two morbidly obese American women sitting in a plane. One of them is eating a bucket of KFC chicken, and tells the other:
“This is the best chicken I had all day.”
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We just spent some time in the US, and on one of the last days, we grabbed a movie in a dine-in movie theatre in Las Vegas. (The Meg 2 — don’t ask.) When a waitress came to take our order, we asked for the smallest size of popcorn they had. She had a hard time understanding the question (“why order the smallest size ?”).
She kindly explained that they only had one size, and that was a bucket.
With the three of us, we managed to eat about a quarter of the bucket, but we saw other people finish an entire bucket on their own.
I think this is one of the main reasons of America’s obesity problem: Americans eat by the buckets. In many restaurants, the portions of the food are so grossly exaggerated that it is hardly a mystery why so many Americans are (morbidly) obese. Same for soda drinks and the like.
And besides that, American food is in general much less healthier than your average European or Asian food, due to less strict food regulations and the enormous amounts of added sugar in virtually everything.
Add to that the fact that Americans stopped walking altogether (so to speak), and that more and more, the obesity pandemic is embraced instead of fought. In the places I have lived in mainland Europe, I have never seen a morbidly obese person ride around in a trolley (such as in the picture), but you see them on a daily basis in the US.
Instead of actively losing some weight, such people simply step into a trolley because walking has become too hard. The woman in the image is twenty-three, by the way.
So there you have it: Buckets, Trolleys and Sugar.
The problem is BTS.
For the People! Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond- Reaction
China hopes to do so, China is trying to do so, but it’s no longer an easy task for China to do so now.
There is an old Chinese saying, 树欲静而风不止, which means “the trees may prefer calm but the wind will not subside”, or “the trees long for peace but the wind will never cease”.
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Just like the picture I took in the Summer Palace in a windy day, if the wind is too strong, how could the tree stay calm? Just impossible.
The smear campaigns initiated by the US and followed by some other Westeren nations, are the wind, getting stronger recently as Joe Biden has indeed rallied them once again.
China is the tree. Its roots are still stable in the soil, its major branches are still steadfast, but it really can’t hold all its smaller branches and leaves still. And sometimes, it has to even sacrifice some of its smaller branches and leaves if the winds are way too strong and turn into storms.
But, as long as the roots and main branches are still healthy, strong and steadfast, new branches will sprout out next year!
My grandma passed in 2022, my father had passed in 2020. In her will she had it to where my 2 brothers and I inherited my dad’s 3rd. We were also to be included in any decisions on her property. My 2 uncles thought since they were co executors that everything was now theirs and they didn’t have to say anything to us. They gave away and took a lot of her belongings before I found out. I went to a lawyer and told him what was going on. I then called my uncles and told them they HAD to include us. They said “well, our lawyer says we don’t have to.” I called their lawyer and told him what they said. He immediately went and called them and said they were wrong. My 1 uncle gave his stepchildren first dibs over us and any of the actual grandchildren. The stepchildren who wanted NOTHING to do with my grandma or our family got first dibs. Then they tried to auction off my grandma’s house and 200 acres without telling us. I found out and called lawyers, everyone knew I wanted the house and 10 acres. They were trying to sell it behind my back. Grandma did not have any debt. So they were just being stupid. In the end, they were granted to sell 190 acres. We bought the house. 114 years of family history in this house. I have not heard an apology from any of them. Our trust in them was broken. At this time, they are not allowed at my house.
A man in China has been using a club as a nutcracker for 25 years, until he realised what it was actually used for. A man living in the Shaanxi Province in China was given a gift by a friend and for 25 years he didn’t know what it was.
The mans favourite treat was Wallnuts and the gift was perfect for cracking open the shells. He figured his friend know off his love for nuts so gifted him a club to crack them open, and for 25 years he used the club thinking that’s what it was intended for.
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It wasn’t until he seen the nutcracker on a Government flyer identifying dangerous, prohibited explosives when he realised the club wasn’t in fact a nutcracker, but a Chinese type 67 hand grenade. The grenade which was a nicknamed the Potato masher, was invented by the German Army during World War 1.
The hand grenade had a explosive device at the top with a pulling string running through it to a cap at the bottom. Pulling the string lights the fuse before being thrown at the enemy, but in this case it was used as a nut cracker for a quarter of a century.
The Man Who Discovered a Lost Ancient City In His Basement
A man from Derinkuyu, in the Nevsehir province of Turkey was renovating his basement. Using only a sledgehammer, he broke through one of his walls; and felt cool air coming in from the other side. Inside he found a small room-sized cave. This area of Turkey has complex cave systems so he thought he accidentally stumbled into one. He didn’t. That first small room — was only the beginning.
I was 17 years old. I was driving drunk, with five other kids in my car. It was 1970. We had bought two cases of beer (illegally, of course) and it was pretty much all gone. It was about 1 AM.
We came to the main intersection in the small city nearest to where I lived. There wasn’t a single car in sight. Oddly, there was a cop in the intersection, presumably directing whatever traffic there was. Perhaps the stoplight was not working; I have no recollection.
I stopped at the light (working or not). At which point my friend Ralph, who was 15, leaned out the back seat window, yelled out “Fucking cop,” and threw an empty beer bottle at the policeman. It landed at his feet, where it smashed into pieces.
The policeman calmly walked over to our car, at which point Ralph started yelling “I didn’t do it,” which was rather obviously a lie. The policeman had me pull over. He told all of us to get out of the car. As he did this, one of the passengers, Denise, started explaining to him that she was from another planet. The cop ignored her. He told us to take all the beer bottles out of the car and place them on the hood of the car. When we ran out of room there, we put them on the roof. There were 46 empty bottles and one full one. Ralph asked if he could please drink the full one. The cop said no. Then he had us take them all to a nearby garbage can and dispose of them.
Then came the truly amazing part. He talked to us. For about five minutes. He explained that when he was our age, he also did stupid things. But he never drove drunk. He explained how dangerous that was. He did not tell us to swear we would never drive drunk. He simply told us that he was going to let us go. He did not even say how much trouble we could be in for underage drinking and drunk driving. He did not have to.
Finally he asked if there was anyone among us who was sober and had a driver’s license. My older brother did. He had us get back in the car, handed my brother the keys (which he had taken away when he first stopped us), and told my brother to take us home.
And that was all.
Even then, I realized the officer was an exceptional cop. He gave us a second chance when he could have ruined our lives. I never properly thanked him. So if, by some miracle, Officer Roger Strickland of the Freehold, New Jersey police force is still out there—thank you from the bottom of my heart. I think you would be proud of how my brother and I ended up (I have not seen any of the others in my car that night for over 50 years). All the best to one of the best.
Bacon-Wrapped Filet Steaks Topped with Roasted Garlic Butter
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Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
12 large garlic cloves, peeled
1/4 cup olive oil
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small chunks
Kosher salt
3 1/2 teaspoons chopped chives
1/2 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
4 (6 to 7 ounce) filet steaks, about 1 inch thick
4 very thin slices of lean bacon
6 inch wooden skewers or toothpicks, soaked in water for 10 minutes and patted dry
Instructions
Heat oven to 400 degrees F.
Place peeled garlic and olive oil in 1-cup, ovenproof ramekin, soufflé dish or custard cup. Cover dish tightly with aluminum foil and place in oven. Roast on center rack until garlic is golden and very tender and soft when pierced with knife, about 30 minutes (start checking cloves after 20 minutes and then every 5 minutes until done).
With slotted spoon, remove garlic from bowl and reserve oil. Place garlic, 1 1/2 teaspoons of the reserved oil, butter and 1/8 teaspoon salt in food processor or blender and process, pulsing machine on and off for 30 seconds or less until garlic is coarsely chopped and blended with butter and oil. Transfer garlic butter to small bowl and stir in 2 teaspoons of the chives. (Garlic butter can be prepared 1 day ahead. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate. Bring to room temperature 30 minutes before ready to use.)
When ready to cook steaks, oil a grill rack and prepare grill.
In small bowl, stir together 1 teaspoon kosher salt, coarsely ground black pepper and thyme. Rub both sides of each filet with some of this seasoning. Then wrap each steak around its sides with 1 slice of bacon. Skewer bacon in place with wooden skewer or with 2 to 3 wooden picks.
Grill steaks until lightly charred on the outside and until bacon is cooked, about 5 minutes per side for medium-rare.
When done, remove steaks from fire and place on warm serving plate. Remove toothpicks.
Top each steak with 1 generous pat of roasted garlic butter and sprinkle with some of remaining chives. Butter will start to melt and season the steaks.
I am from India and recently visited China. In india we use to blame the population for all our problems. But China had no issues of it. Atleast not in its urban areas. The people there respected rules and have high value about their culture. They take care of their health and have a proper diet. I don’t know what you mean by uncivilized. But if there are uncivilized Chinese I am sure it’s because they are exposed to western culture and those who embraced west including Indians are certainly uncivilized.
OLIVER WHAT THE F**K!!!!! | First Time Reacting To Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond!
I put in an order for tools for work. The order was for myself and two coworkers. Hundreds of dollars worth of tools, including getting one of our newbies set up with good kit so he didn’t have to scrounge for tools like myself and the other senior tech.
Toolup split the order into two shipments, which is fine I guess. The first package arrive with one wire stripper and one screwdriver. For weeks the other shipment showed “in processing”. Finally I called asking where the hell my tools were. They had no idea. After several days of calls they figured out that six weeks prior the shipper had been unable to locate a fucking Air Force base and sent the order back. Toolup refunded the purchase, but made absolutely zero meaningful contact with me about it. I’d been deluged with promotional crap, but I double checked. The last contact I had about my order was “in processing”. This meant that I missed the purchase window and funding got pulled so I can’t reorder my tools for at least a year.
So in the end they literally tripled the amount of paperwork I had to do by forcing me to amend all my prior paperwork and also process the return credit, and I still don’t have my fucking tools because they utterly failed to do any sort of meaningful follow up communication.
Personally or professionally I’m never doing business with them again.
My ex boyfriend and I dated for three years through college. He had been abusive, emotionally, physically and sexually. We had broken up many times. We finally broke up for the final time when he punched me and the RA had found out and told the college officials. It was his last year of college. I was brought into the deans office. It was up to me if he should be kicked out of college. This was a private college and in the early 90’s.
I told them not to kick him out of college. I knew if I had, he would have killed me. He graduated. One morning I woke up to find that someone had broken into my house, and my earrings that he had given to me were gone. Nothing else was touched. Then the phone calls started. Mind you he had supposedly left town to move back with his parents until he left for grad school. “Hey, I liked that flowery dress you were wearing last night.” Yes, I was wearing a flowery dress the night before. Or .”I can see you wherever you are at all times of the day.” Or “ I am sorry to hear about your cat.” Wait, what?? Only to find out my cat at my parents house was missing. And never found.
I started dating someone else. Then it was, “please tell ____ that I know all about him, and I am watching.”. We found out from friends that he would be coming to the area to fly out of LAX to go to grad school at Harvard. By this time the police had been notified of everything that had happened, and they told me that bc he hadn’t harmed me physically, there was nothing I could do, but it would be a good time to get out of town for the weekend. This is how I met my new boyfriends family. I was in hiding. They lived in Northern California.
We came back to school. The phone calls stopped and then the letters started. The anger, was now put into writing. How dare I hide away from him .He went out and bought a gun and he was looking for away to use it, etc..
I started to work as a nanny that fall. One time as I was getting the kids ready for school on a Monday, the kids went outside to wait so I could walk them to school, I had to get something for the baby inside. I came outside and as we were all walking to school the little girl who was in the 4th grade said, oh your friend says hi. I was like what friend, who knows I work here. I said oh, did this person have a name, no, he just said a friend. I immediately went into that place of panic. I kept my cool, and I asked what he looked like, and yes it was him, he had found me.
Not a lot happened to me after that. I did find out that he had gotten kicked out of grad school for raping someone, and he had been fired from a few jobs. Karma?
Oliver Anthony Rich Men North of Richmond Reaction Video
Not only one time, but every time all of my children are over for a family get together. I don’t consider myself dumb, I graduated high school with honors, I have worked hard all of my life so far, was taught to use common sense by my parents and married a wonderful, smart, and hard-working lady, and we have four children. As they grew up and progressed through school, they have each chosen their own path.
Our oldest son is an I.T. computer “nurd” and works from his home running the I.T. help line for a division of Sony helping any embedded I.T. techs solve problems they cannot solve themselves.
Our oldest daughter just received her Doctorate in Nuro-psychology from Yale University and is proving to be an innovator in the field with her front-line work to advance innovations in Alzheimer’s research.
The youngest Son is a 2018 honors graduate from The United States Military Academy at West Point, Captain, and Company Commander, in the U.S. Army, Working on his master’s degree in military history.
Any our youngest daughter just graduated with honors with a degree in teaching drama and starts her first teaching position next week.
All four are extremely intelligent and found vastly different careers, and when they are together the conversations are so far above my head I can only sit there and smile.
I smile because I look around and think to myself “How in the world did I get so lucky?” And then I realize “it is all thanks to my wife, and God.”
A few months ago I was in the Liaoning province in northeastern China. We met the CEO of a smart city there who was offering us rent-free premises for 3 years, a low interest loan [2%] and cheap electricity if we choose to build our robots there.
Chinese governments really believe that industrialization is crucial to mass employment and need to woo not just large companies but SMEs too.
In contrast, Indian general public attitude towards industrialization is often poisonous. The bureaucrats are too slow to move, the politicians often careless and the common public think “industrialists” make a lot of profits, who just needs to be taxed high.
It is far harder to start a factory in India and the interest rates are substantially high. Land prices near major cities are through the roof and the infrastructure abysmal. Thus, industrialists are not able to fully tap into India’s lower wages.
Indians often moan about the low rate of innovation in India. We moan that very few things are made in India. To really make in India, the society has to put industrialization at the highest priority. It cannot be seen as lower priority compared to agriculture and other sectors.
WHAT IN SOULFUL PAIN IS THIS?! (ADHD Reaction) | OLIVER ANTHONY – RICH MEN NORTH OF RICHMOND
This is perhaps one of my most important Geo-political posts. Much bigger things than Ukraine is going on RIGHT NOW. Much, much, bigger.
Africa is unifying.
The Third-world is rising up against the West.
Russia is supporting the Africans.
The United States is playing the same old games
Guys, Africa is the sole remaining supply of energy supply to Europe. The USA blew up Nordstrom 1 & 2, fully expecting to get gas from Africa. Now Africa says NO!
So Europe is looking to go BLACK.
Europe (via France) is up for a fight, ha! Take on Africa, China and Russia? The situation is very dicey.
Key areas are [1], [2] , [3] and [4].
The first point…
[1] Africa just SHOCKED the world with this and Putin is watching
Oh MY GOD. The shit is really hitting the fan.
You all must watch this. It is happening right now.
Minimum wage in my state is $12 an hour. Which is multiplied to make $24,960 for full time. To “rich” to disqualify taxes.
With that, I have to live frugally to an impossible extreme. After taxes, no benefits I might bring home $13,000 at best.
Now I’m including federal state, local, gas, food, registration, safety inspections etc etc. all the things to stay legal and manage to work in a rural place where transportation is 100% required and not supplied by public methods. If you fail to meet these requirements, Law Enforcement is likely to levy more taxes. (Poor tax)
So less then $1100 a month. I’m single. My rent is $650 for a 1 bedroom. Now I have $450. Somehow I’m buying food to last…(which I almost entirely make myself.)
What if my already paid for clunker breaks down. what if I get injured, can’t afford the “benefits package” offered.
I’m not even going to break down $15 an hour. I CANT work for less then $20 and figure it out. The job market and employers don’t get it. “No one wants to work anymore” is what I hear. I have a job paying $16. Umm sorry.
I do better these day, worked hard to get there. My sense of compassion hasn’t left from those hard days, however. I live in a rural area with a lower cost of living, but…
main qimg fd13fde68fbc746d048421319221ef14
For comparison purposes…
In China, a bottle of ketchup costs 10 yuan. (Roughly $1.40).
Keanu Reeves REFUSED To Sell His Soul To Hollywood
This video calmed me, and erased some earlier strife that I experienced today.
In 2013, a US company was running a routine security check and noticed that someone had been constantly logging into their system from China. Straight away, the company believed it was hackers and hired Verizon to root out the problem and secure their systems.
It didn’t take them long to realise it wasn’t hackers, it was actually a US employee of the company who would only be referred to as Bob.
The quiet and unassuming programmer was outsourcing his job to someone in China. Bob hired a programming firm in China to do the work for him and paid them one-fifth of his 6 figure salary.
Over the years, Bob earned the reputation as one of the best developers in the whole building and received outstanding performance reviews for his well-written code.
As they delved deeper into their investigation, they discovered that Bob had a very relaxed workday. Work at 9 am, where he surfed Reddit watching cat videos. Lunch at 11.30 am, and then at 1 pm, he would browse eBay. From 2.30 to 4.30 pm, he was browsing Facebook and LinkedIn. Finally, sending an email to update management before leaving.
Originally Answered: What's the craziest thing you ever said at a job interview and still got the job?
The interviewer, a very senior technical guy, asked me, “So, do you have any questions for me?”
I thought about it for a moment and said, “What’s the worst thing about working here?”
He thought about it for a minute, then got up and closed his door, and told me. For like half an hour, in painful detail, getting more agitated as he went. Then he was done, and sent me on my way saying I’d hear back soon.
The next day I got called back in. Seems that after he talked to me, he went and resigned, and the HR rep asked what happened in our interview.
After I told them, in detail, I expected to hear nothing further since I would have been reporting to him. Instead, the CTO came in to talk to me, and asked if I would be interested in coming aboard to help him fix all the things that seemed to be wrong with the organization (and solve some cool technical problems as well).
So I did.
Life Lessons
Nobody cares about you, your plans, your goals, or your little dramas. So stop pretending they do, or getting upset when they don’t.
When it comes to reaching your goals, discipline is more important than motivation. If you don’t have discipline, you’ll never stick to anything.
You are the only person capable of changing your life; no one can do that for you. The easiest way to change yourself is to change the things you do each day.
The biggest threat to your progression in life isn’t something or someone around you; it’s you.
The key to a successful life lies not in what you know, but in what you do with what you know.
Failure is just a stepping stone on the road to success.
You can’t change the past, but you can still fuck up your future if you repeat it.
Success is not about what you accomplish, it’s about who you become in the process.
Your comfort zone is a barren place. Nothing ever grows there.
Anything in life worth achieving will not be easy to get. If it were, everyone would get what they wanted. Most people give up on their goals when things become too difficult. Don’t be like most people.
I have been hearing that China is doing dollar-yuan swaps with countries like Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Brazil, etc.
These countries are having difficulty getting dollars to pay back loans because the US Fed has set higher interest rates, drawing US dollars from overseas back to the US. China wants to cut back on its dollar holdings. So China is offering these countries’ central banks US dollars to pay back the dollar-denominated loans. These countries would pay off their dollar loans, and then pay back China in Chinese yuan.
My guess is that in order to get rid of US treasury holdings, China is offering favorable yuan exchange rates to these borrowing countries.
Locking in low exchange rates also helps China because it promotes Chinese exports because they appear to be cheap. Since China is the manufacturing nation to the world, it is very important that Chinese exports be as competitive as possible, especially while the west is trying to set up China-free supply chains outside China.
China has seen the results of the terrible mistake the US made by de-industrializing and letting the dollar rise in parity against other countries’ currencies, hurting US exports, and is likely determined to avoid that mistake.
ASML Not Needed World Shocked as China Makes Domestic 28nm DUV Lithography Machines!
Nothing can stand in China’s way when it comes to technology like it or not!..
2023 08 08 09 28
https://youtu.be/0QHquF8viYM
Best Macaroni and Cheese
This is the tastiest, easiest and fastest macaroni and cheese you will ever eat. DO not skimp on the Colby cheese. Use as much as you can afford.
2023 08 08 14 38
Ingredients
Macaroni (as much as needed)
Colby cheese (lots)
Instructions
While the macaroni is cooking in salted water, dice the Colby cheese up rather small.
As soon as the macaroni is cooked; drain it well. Keep it, covered, in the same pot in which it was cooked.
Add the diced Colby cheese and stir it in. Cover immediately and let it sit for about five minutes so that the cheese melts.
Pilots Report SWARM-LIKE Objects In Military Zones Amid UAP MOMENT
The Hill is a USA Washington Insider publication. Never the less, watch the intro and discard the rest if you want. Point is that swarm drones are fling in and around American bases inside of the USA.
China urges U.S. to stop utilizing South China Sea issue to sow discord
Source: Xinhua
Editor: huaxia
2023-08-07 22:56:30
BEIJING, Aug. 7 (Xinhua) — China on Monday urged the United States to stop utilizing the South China Sea issue to sow confusion and discord, respect China’s territorial sovereignty, maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea, and respect regional countries’ efforts to uphold peace and stability in this region.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson made the remarks in response to a U.S. State Department statement criticizing China for obstructing Philippine vessels that sought to deliver new troops and supplies to a grounded military vessel at Ren’ai Jiao and firing water cannons.
The U.S. statement says such actions are “inconsistent with international law” and “threatening regional peace and stability” and calls upon China to abide by the South China Sea arbitration award issued in 2016. The statement indicates U.S. support for “the Philippines’ lawful maritime operations” and says an armed attack on the Philippines’ Coast Guard would “invoke U.S. mutual defense commitments under the U.S.- Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty.”
The State Department’s statement, in disregard of the facts, attacked China’s legitimate and lawful actions at sea aimed at safeguarding its rights and enforcing the law, and the statement also voiced support for the Philippines’ unlawful and provocative behavior, the spokesperson said.
“China firmly opposes the statement,” the spokesperson said.
For some time, the United States has been inciting and supporting the Philippines’ attempts to overhaul and reinforce its military vessel that was deliberately grounded on Ren’ai Jiao. The U.S. even sent over military aircraft and vessels to assist and support the Philippines, and repeatedly sought to threaten China by citing the U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty. The U.S. has been brazenly bolstering Philippines as it infringes upon China’s sovereignty, but those moves will not succeed, the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said Ren’ai Jiao has always been part of China’s Nansha Qundao and the historical context of the issue of Ren’ai Jiao is very clear.
In 1999, the Philippines sent a military vessel and deliberately ran it aground at Ren’ai Jiao, attempting to change the status quo of Ren’ai Jiao illegally. China immediately made serious démarches to the Philippines, demanding the removal of the vessel. The Philippines promised several times to tow it away, but has yet to act. Not only that, the Philippines sought to overhaul and reinforce the military vessel in order to permanently occupy Ren’ai Jiao, the spokesperson said.
On Aug. 5, in disregard of China’s repeated dissuasion and warning, the Philippines sent two vessels that intruded into the adjacent waters of Ren’ai Jiao and tried to deliver the construction materials for overhauling and reinforcing the grounded military vessel. Such actions violated China’s sovereignty and the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC). The China Coast Guard (CCG) vessels stopped them in accordance with law and warned them off through appropriate law enforcement measures. Their maneuvers were professional, restrained and beyond reproach, the spokesperson said.
The South China Sea arbitration was a pure political drama staged in the name of the law with the U.S. pulling strings behind the scenes. The so-called award contravenes international laws, including UNCLOS, and is illegal, null and void. The U.S.’ attempt to make an issue of the illegal award will not affect China’s firm resolve to safeguard its territorial sovereignty, maritime rights and interests in accordance with the law, the spokesperson said.
There has been much written about the failure of the US elites, with three recent thoughtful cases being that of Aurelian and Charles Hugh Smith and Harold Robertson.
While all three make excellent contributions to the discussion they make some incorrect assumptions and miss important contextual drivers.
All of them seem to assume that at some point in US history the nation was led by a highly competent leadership, rather than by a relatively weak leadership which again and again had its wars fought for it, fought relative weaklings, or had its main opponents commit fratricide while luxuriating in a vast continent full of resources far away from its main enemies.
To put it bluntly, the US elite has never really been tested against a peer competitor.
Let’s start with a little history.
From the founding of the British colonies in North America to the independence struggle the colonists relied on the British Army, and British military leadership, to do its fighting.
Only when the British army had thoroughly vanquished the French in Eastern North America could some of the colonists start dreaming of a safe independence.
The War of Independence would not have been won without the extensive support from France (money, arms, men and the containment of the British fleet), a lack of coordination between the British armies, and a Britain that was engaged in a world war with France at the time; later, the US proved incapable of subduing Canada.
In the next century, the US battled a much weaker Mexico and Spain to take vast swathes of territory, purchased the middle of the country from the much-weakened French, and ethnically cleansed the Amerindian population.
Its elite also made fortunes from Opium in a China subjugated by the European powers and Japan.
All this while its heartland was safe from threat, with vast deposits of every mineral possible – including coal, oil and then natural gas.
At the end of the century it jumped on the decline of the Spanish colonies to grab The Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam and dominate Cuba.
Also, by the end of the century it was an economic powerhouse with a thoroughly dominant capitalist bourgeoisie. It would be surprising if it hadn’t been.
Then its main competitors committed fratricide over a three-decade period. For most of World War 1 the US sat back and made huge profits from supplying the war. By the time it did enter the war, the main protagonists were absolutely exhausted, and it was at the margin that the sheer number of US troops coming to the front tilted the balance.
The actual performance of the US military was awful, committing all of the failings that the other belligerents had at the beginning of the war; with massive casualty rates the outcome.
But the Germans knew that more and more would be coming, no matter how many they killed, and the German home front was in absolute collapse.
The compulsory licensing of all German patents provided a massive scientific and technical windfall to the US in the post-war period.
For more than two years, the US sat out WW2 while again making money out of supplying the conflict. When it did enter its contribution was nowhere near what is celebrated.
Its Pacific campaign was one of limited numbers of soldiers fighting other limited numbers of Japanese for one island after another, while the vast US industry turned to war production.
The Chinese were fighting the vast majority of the Japanese army, which they had been doing since 1935.
Late in 1945, as the two nuclear bombs (developed with extensive help from foreign scientists) were being dropped on Japan, the Soviet army showed how to carry out large scale operations by utterly destroying the Japanese armies in Manchuria and Sakhalin within weeks.
They were poised to invade Japan proper, and a case can very much be made that this was the reason for the Japanese surrender not the nuclear bombs, even the US establishment journal Foreign Policy published a paper taking this position in 2013. In Europe, it was the Soviets who destroyed the Axis armies and the most probable outcome without the Normandy landings would have been Soviet dominance of the whole of Europe.
The forces landing at Normandy fought a force significantly made up of divisions resting from their mauling on the Eastern Front, while having overwhelming air and artillery superiority.
As Big Serge puts it so well, the US “recipe for victory was simple: dispense of a superior volume of sustained firepower. Or, as George Patton would have put it: ‘Shoot the bastards.’”
With the end of WW2, the US experienced its first unipolar moment, as the Axis powers and Japan were destroyed and occupied, most of the European continent, Russia and China utterly devastated and Britain utterly bankrupt.
A financial system favouring the US was set up, and the US once again stole much of German scientific ingenuity though the Operation Paperclip that provided scientists central to the development of such projects as the moon landings. The “father” of the H-bomb was also a Hungarian Jew who had fled to the US from Nazi Germany before the war.
The US was good at covert operations but failed at “shooting the bastards” in Korea and then in Vietnam.
At the same time, its industry flourished until the Europeans and Japanese recovered enough to become real competitors; after which many leading manufacturing sectors had to be rescued by subsidies and tariffs (e.g. the car and computer memory industries).
So, then the game changed to a reliance on the reserve-currency status of the US dollar, the offshoring of US manufacturing, and the movement of elite extraction from the US Empire to the home country itself.
Anyone thinking that the US military was full of brilliant leaders should consider the laughable invasion of the tiny island of Grenada in 1983 against no opposition, where nineteen US military personnel died and others were wounded as shown below (starts at 27 minutes).
Another would be the blowing up of the US barracks in Beirut also in 1983, which killed 241 US military personnel.
The collapse of the Soviet Union, which had much more to do with the decay of its institutions and the demolition-style policies of Gorbachev than any US pressures, removed the US strategic competitor; handing over Eastern Europe on a platter.
Together with the opening of China and the end of the Indian License Raj, it provided the second US unipolar moment. An overwhelming win without a fight.
It is from this period, with the extensive neoliberal policies carried out by the Clinton administrations, that we can point to pure hubris among the US elite.
In addition, these massive new market opportunities covered up the failings of the US elite in building a strong domestic base to support their global empire.
At the same time, two underlying trends were eating away at that base. After WW2, the US state and the US foundations (Ford, Rockefeller etc.) worked hard at supporting the development of a non-communist critical theory, which became a non-materialist post-modernist critical theory.
This really took off in the academy in the 1970s, and then from the 1990s in gender theory (e.g. Judith Butler). This theory “world war” has been documented by Gabriel Rockhill, here and here, and while removing class as a central precept of critical theory (as planned) also spread throughout academy and undermined the modernist assumptions upon which it was based.
At the same time, US universities and corporations utilized H1B visas to keep the remuneration for scientists down through an influx of foreign nationals (and also IT offshoring), reducing any incentives for US students to enter scientific programs. Instead, programs in law, business and the social sciences in general rapidly grew and the escalating cost of a university education produced a customer (as against student) mentality in the student body which was supported by a growing administrative bureaucracy.
Once again, the US benefitted from the output of foreign schools and universities to bolster their research and development activities. At the same time, the native population was continuously denuded of these skills as they focused on the social sciences, the professions, and business.
This was the time of the fad of the “Virtual Corporation”, where everything except finance, sales & marketing, design, and legal could be outsourced, and extra profits could be made through financial subsidiaries (e.g. G.E. Capital). Business groups could be treated like a portfolio of stocks, with laggards pruned brutally, “cash cows” milked, and money thrown at growth areas, and continuous mergers and acquisitions done to hone the portfolio.
No need for experts in production, IT, logistics etc., that could all be outsourced and offshored. Generic CEOs could run any corporation, epitomized by Jack Welch and the many GE spin-off executives that helped break corporations such as GE and Boeing.
Welch’s massive expansion of GE’s finance arm (GE Capital) proved utterly disastrous during the GFC. “Greed Is Good” was the motif of the US executive, epitomized by the corporate raider played by Michael Douglas in the movie Wall Street, as he pumped his stock options with stock buybacks and paid himself exorbitant amounts.
Wealth extraction not wealth creation, handing over industrial leadership to a China who was much more focused on national renewal and far more proficient at playing the hand they had.
The US sleep-walked through two disastrous occupations (both after campaigns against extremely weak opponents) which swallowed vast amounts of money and resulted in the growth of Iranian power in the case of Iraq, and an unceremonious exit in the case of Afghanistan.
Something started to change near the end of the first decade of the new century, as the US economy crashed in the GFC, Russia started to re-establish its sovereignty and strength (and won the proxy war against Georgia), and China emerged as a massive industrialized nation.
Since then the US economy has been on the life support of QE and near-zero interest rates, and the US elites have been struggling to deal with the new geopolitical reality.
After the success of the Occupy Wall Street protests, that focused on class struggle, the “woke” thermostat was turned up to boiling by the elite-controlled media, the elite-controlled state and the elite-controlled corporations; the classic divide and conquer tactics that had always worked in the past, this time on the basis of “identity”.
But this let rip the toxic post-materialist, post-modernist brew throughout a society where so many were damaged by nearly four decades of neoliberalism, stripped of their identities as well-paid competent workers with futures, or even stripped of the hope of that for the younger generations.
Desperately competing with any weapons available for the few remaining “good” jobs.
The wealthy may have been always “not like you”, but as Charles Hugh-Smith notes, decades of financialized asset inflation have separated the asset holders by a yawning chasm from the not so lucky.
With interest rates now rising back to more normal pre-2000 levels and the US dollar slowly losing its reserve status, much of that wealth may prove to be a mirage while the massive debts racked up against that wealth will not.
It’s the courtier class that stand to lose the most from the end of the financial bubble, and even billionaires can lose everything when they are leveraged. With the bubble will go many, many of the “bullshit” courtier jobs that currently pay so much as they extract rather than create wealth.
Robertson points to a change from a “systemic selection for competence” to a “systemic selection for the ideologically compliant” through diversity politics.
He misses the fact that the political-economic base of the US elite has changed, and that they see many of the “competent” jobs as no longer necessary in a world centered around financial and symbol manipulation.
They believe that “competence” can be simply outsourced and anyway they will be long gone before any consequences are felt.
When he goes on about “diversity” hiring, he makes invisible the legions of mediocre rich kids and kids of faculty that get into the elite schools every year.
He also makes invisible the Nigerian-Americans who are one of the richest and most successful ethnic groups in the US, and the Asians-Americans disgustingly discriminated against in US universities, and the Indian-Americans who are also extremely successful.
The issue is not “diversity” hiring, it is a general selection bias for the skills required in a “virtual” corporation where specific knowledge is seen as old fashioned, a trend that has been going on for decades.
Aurelien focuses on the Professional Managerial Class (PMC), but does not understand that these are just the courtiers to the really powerful – the owners. Of course, the owners won’t want competent financial crimes prosecutors when so much wealth today is based upon financial crimes.
A Professor of Human Rights is very useful in creating excuses to invade or regime change another country so that its wealth and ongoing income can be extracted by the US ownership class.
The real “diversity” problem stems from the post-Occupy Wall Street identity politics mayhem that has now invaded so many institutions.
Deep down the US elite has now ruled nearly effortlessly for so long it cannot comprehend of a real competitor, as Russia will be soon be “rubble” and China will “inevitably” collapse.
So, no problem with letting loose an extremely disruptive identity politics as long as the ownership class keep owning. The owners are slowly waking up to the fact that Russia and China (and Iran) are not following the script, and therefore we may see a rapid reversal of the worst aspects of identity politics.
The departments whose name is an anagram for DIE may be doing just that over the next few years. As Aurelien has noted though, there are now legions of PMCs who have happily failed upwards as their failures have served the owners (messed up foreign nations can be very profitable for example), but they are not so useful when the homeland needs to be rebuilt and allies strengthened.
They are the troops of the last war of the US on easy street, but now the street has gotten rough and a much tougher breed are required. But they are generally not available, and any that are may want to go back to their own nations given the increasing racism and state-aggression toward Asians.
The US has been lying about the size of its economy in greater and greater ways since at least the 1990s. Costs (financial system fees) are counted as value added when they are pure rentier taxes, inflation is manipulated downwards, and rent imputed on owner-occupied houses, among many other tricks.
US official GDP also counts value added that is produced in other nations as created in the US, when US corporations such as Apple can capture that for themselves through the control of global value chains backed up by intellectual property, financial and legal control, and state help in the destruction of competitors when required (i.e. the Huawei handset business).
What happens when that disappears, and those nations get to keep that value added? What will be left to fund the US military and stability at home? I tend to agree with Simplicius that actual US GDP, and therefore GDP per capita, is about half of what the US states it is.
If Australia is called the “lucky country”, perhaps the US should be called the “really lucky country”. Its elites have never had to deal with a real competitive threat and have never had to fight a direct war against a peer competitor. The “best army in the world” is really only as good as its ability to overwhelm the opposition with “shoot them” power.
It won’t have that against the Russians, the Chinese and even the Iranians.
Without it, it will be seen to be a shadow of its well-groomed reputation. At home, the US really only had a period of economic dominance in the post-WW2 period which quickly faded as other countries rebuilt their economies.
The US elite may have become significantly worse in the past few decades, but they were never the best.
It’s easy to appear to be brilliant when you have a gun in your pocket and your opponent has a plastic fork.
The US elite have never needed to be brilliant because they have been so lucky; that time is now gone.
The Russian, Chinese and Iranian elites have certainly not been lucky, and therefore their competence level is far, far higher.
There has been much written about the failure of the US elites, with three recent thoughtful cases being that of Aurelian and Charles Hugh Smith and Harold Robertson. While all three make excellent contributions to the discussion they make some incorrect assumptions and miss important contextual drivers.
All of them seem to assume that at some point in US history the nation was led by a highly competent leadership, rather than by a relatively weak leadership which again and again had its wars fought for it, fought relative weaklings, or had its main opponents commit fratricide while luxuriating in a vast continent full of resources far away from its main enemies.
To put it bluntly, the US elite has never really been tested against a peer competitor. Let’s start with a little history.
From the founding of the British colonies in North America to the independence struggle the colonists relied on the British Army, and British military leadership, to do its fighting. Only when the British army had thoroughly vanquished the French in Eastern North America could some of the colonists start dreaming of a safe independence.
The War of Independence would not have been won without the extensive support from France (money, arms, men and the containment of the British fleet), a lack of coordination between the British armies, and a Britain that was engaged in a world war with France at the time; later, the US proved incapable of subduing Canada.
In the next century, the US battled a much weaker Mexico and Spain to take vast swathes of territory, purchased the middle of the country from the much-weakened French, and ethnically cleansed the Amerindian population.
Its elite also made fortunes from Opium in a China subjugated by the European powers and Japan.
All this while its heartland was safe from threat, with vast deposits of every mineral possible – including coal, oil and then natural gas.
At the end of the century it jumped on the decline of the Spanish colonies to grab The Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam and dominate Cuba.
Also, by the end of the century it was an economic powerhouse with a thoroughly dominant capitalist bourgeoisie. It would be surprising if it hadn’t been.
Then its main competitors committed fratricide over a three-decade period. For most of World War 1 the US sat back and made huge profits from supplying the war. By the time it did enter the war, the main protagonists were absolutely exhausted, and it was at the margin that the sheer number of US troops coming to the front tilted the balance.
The actual performance of the US military was awful, committing all of the failings that the other belligerents had at the beginning of the war; with massive casualty rates the outcome.
But the Germans knew that more and more would be coming, no matter how many they killed, and the German home front was in absolute collapse.
The compulsory licensing of all German patents provided a massive scientific and technical windfall to the US in the post-war period.
For more than two years, the US sat out WW2 while again making money out of supplying the conflict. When it did enter its contribution was nowhere near what is celebrated. Its Pacific campaign was one of limited numbers of soldiers fighting other limited numbers of Japanese for one island after another, while the vast US industry turned to war production.
The Chinese were fighting the vast majority of the Japanese army, which they had been doing since 1935. Late in 1945, as the two nuclear bombs (developed with extensive help from foreign scientists) were being dropped on Japan, the Soviet army showed how to carry out large scale operations by utterly destroying the Japanese armies in Manchuria and Sakhalin within weeks.
They were poised to invade Japan proper, and a case can very much be made that this was the reason for the Japanese surrender not the nuclear bombs, even the US establishment journal Foreign Policy published a paper taking this position in 2013. In Europe, it was the Soviets who destroyed the Axis armies and the most probable outcome without the Normandy landings would have been Soviet dominance of the whole of Europe.
The forces landing at Normandy fought a force significantly made up of divisions resting from their mauling on the Eastern Front, while having overwhelming air and artillery superiority.
As Big Serge puts it so well, the US “recipe for victory was simple: dispense of a superior volume of sustained firepower. Or, as George Patton would have put it: ‘Shoot the bastards.’”
With the end of WW2, the US experienced its first unipolar moment, as the Axis powers and Japan were destroyed and occupied, most of the European continent, Russia and China utterly devastated and Britain utterly bankrupt.
A financial system favouring the US was set up, and the US once again stole much of German scientific ingenuity though the Operation Paperclip that provided scientists central to the development of such projects as the moon landings. The “father” of the H-bomb was also a Hungarian Jew who had fled to the US from Nazi Germany before the war. The US was good at covert operations but failed at “shooting the bastards” in Korea and then in Vietnam.
At the same time, its industry flourished until the Europeans and Japanese recovered enough to become real competitors; after which many leading manufacturing sectors had to be rescued by subsidies and tariffs (e.g. the car and computer memory industries).
So, then the game changed to a reliance on the reserve-currency status of the US dollar, the offshoring of US manufacturing, and the movement of elite extraction from the US Empire to the home country itself.
Anyone thinking that the US military was full of brilliant leaders should consider the laughable invasion of the tiny island of Grenada in 1983 against no opposition, where nineteen US military personnel died and others were wounded as shown below (starts at 27 minutes). Another would be the blowing up of the US barracks in Beirut also in 1983, which killed 241 US military personnel.
The collapse of the Soviet Union, which had much more to do with the decay of its institutions and the demolition-style policies of Gorbachev than any US pressures, removed the US strategic competitor; handing over Eastern Europe on a platter. Together with the opening of China and the end of the Indian License Raj, it provided the second US unipolar moment. An overwhelming win without a fight. It is from this period, with the extensive neoliberal policies carried out by the Clinton administrations, that we can point to pure hubris among the US elite. In addition, these massive new market opportunities covered up the failings of the US elite in building a strong domestic base to support their global empire.
At the same time, two underlying trends were eating away at that base. After WW2, the US state and the US foundations (Ford, Rockefeller etc.) worked hard at supporting the development of a non-communist critical theory, which became a non-materialist post-modernist critical theory.
This really took off in the academy in the 1970s, and then from the 1990s in gender theory (e.g. Judith Butler). This theory “world war” has been documented by Gabriel Rockhill, here and here, and while removing class as a central precept of critical theory (as planned) also spread throughout academy and undermined the modernist assumptions upon which it was based.
At the same time, US universities and corporations utilized H1B visas to keep the remuneration for scientists down through an influx of foreign nationals (and also IT offshoring), reducing any incentives for US students to enter scientific programs. Instead, programs in law, business and the social sciences in general rapidly grew and the escalating cost of a university education produced a customer (as against student) mentality in the student body which was supported by a growing administrative bureaucracy.
Once again, the US benefitted from the output of foreign schools and universities to bolster their research and development activities. At the same time, the native population was continuously denuded of these skills as they focused on the social sciences, the professions, and business.
This was the time of the fad of the “Virtual Corporation”, where everything except finance, sales & marketing, design, and legal could be outsourced, and extra profits could be made through financial subsidiaries (e.g. G.E. Capital). Business groups could be treated like a portfolio of stocks, with laggards pruned brutally, “cash cows” milked, and money thrown at growth areas, and continuous mergers and acquisitions done to hone the portfolio.
No need for experts in production, IT, logistics etc., that could all be outsourced and offshored. Generic CEOs could run any corporation, epitomized by Jack Welch and the many GE spin-off executives that helped break corporations such as GE and Boeing.
Welch’s massive expansion of GE’s finance arm (GE Capital) proved utterly disastrous during the GFC. “Greed Is Good” was the motif of the US executive, epitomized by the corporate raider played by Michael Douglas in the movie Wall Street, as he pumped his stock options with stock buybacks and paid himself exorbitant amounts.
Wealth extraction not wealth creation, handing over industrial leadership to a China who was much more focused on national renewal and far more proficient at playing the hand they had.
The US sleep-walked through two disastrous occupations (both after campaigns against extremely weak opponents) which swallowed vast amounts of money and resulted in the growth of Iranian power in the case of Iraq, and an unceremonious exit in the case of Afghanistan.
Something started to change near the end of the first decade of the new century, as the US economy crashed in the GFC, Russia started to re-establish its sovereignty and strength (and won the proxy war against Georgia), and China emerged as a massive industrialized nation.
Since then the US economy has been on the life support of QE and near-zero interest rates, and the US elites have been struggling to deal with the new geopolitical reality.
After the success of the Occupy Wall Street protests, that focused on class struggle, the “woke” thermostat was turned up to boiling by the elite-controlled media, the elite-controlled state and the elite-controlled corporations; the classic divide and conquer tactics that had always worked in the past, this time on the basis of “identity”.
But this let rip the toxic post-materialist, post-modernist brew throughout a society where so many were damaged by nearly four decades of neoliberalism, stripped of their identities as well-paid competent workers with futures, or even stripped of the hope of that for the younger generations.
Desperately competing with any weapons available for the few remaining “good” jobs.
The wealthy may have been always “not like you”, but as Charles Hugh-Smith notes, decades of financialized asset inflation have separated the asset holders by a yawning chasm from the not so lucky.
With interest rates now rising back to more normal pre-2000 levels and the US dollar slowly losing its reserve status, much of that wealth may prove to be a mirage while the massive debts racked up against that wealth will not.
It’s the courtier class that stand to lose the most from the end of the financial bubble, and even billionaires can lose everything when they are leveraged. With the bubble will go many, many of the “bullshit” courtier jobs that currently pay so much as they extract rather than create wealth.
Robertson points to a change from a “systemic selection for competence” to a “systemic selection for the ideologically compliant” through diversity politics.
He misses the fact that the political-economic base of the US elite has changed, and that they see many of the “competent” jobs as no longer necessary in a world centered around financial and symbol manipulation.
They believe that “competence” can be simply outsourced and anyway they will be long gone before any consequences are felt.
When he goes on about “diversity” hiring, he makes invisible the legions of mediocre rich kids and kids of faculty that get into the elite schools every year.
He also makes invisible the Nigerian-Americans who are one of the richest and most successful ethnic groups in the US, and the Asians-Americans disgustingly discriminated against in US universities, and the Indian-Americans who are also extremely successful.
The issue is not “diversity” hiring, it is a general selection bias for the skills required in a “virtual” corporation where specific knowledge is seen as old fashioned, a trend that has been going on for decades.
Aurelien focuses on the Professional Managerial Class (PMC), but does not understand that these are just the courtiers to the really powerful – the owners. Of course, the owners won’t want competent financial crimes prosecutors when so much wealth today is based upon financial crimes.
A Professor of Human Rights is very useful in creating excuses to invade or regime change another country so that its wealth and ongoing income can be extracted by the US ownership class.
The real “diversity” problem stems from the post-Occupy Wall Street identity politics mayhem that has now invaded so many institutions.
Deep down the US elite has now ruled nearly effortlessly for so long it cannot comprehend of a real competitor, as Russia will be soon be “rubble” and China will “inevitably” collapse.
So, no problem with letting loose an extremely disruptive identity politics as long as the ownership class keep owning. The owners are slowly waking up to the fact that Russia and China (and Iran) are not following the script, and therefore we may see a rapid reversal of the worst aspects of identity politics.
The departments whose name is an anagram for DIE may be doing just that over the next few years. As Aurelien has noted though, there are now legions of PMCs who have happily failed upwards as their failures have served the owners (messed up foreign nations can be very profitable for example), but they are not so useful when the homeland needs to be rebuilt and allies strengthened.
They are the troops of the last war of the US on easy street, but now the street has gotten rough and a much tougher breed are required. But they are generally not available, and any that are may want to go back to their own nations given the increasing racism and state-aggression toward Asians.
The US has been lying about the size of its economy in greater and greater ways since at least the 1990s. Costs (financial system fees) are counted as value added when they are pure rentier taxes, inflation is manipulated downwards, and rent imputed on owner-occupied houses, among many other tricks.
US official GDP also counts value added that is produced in other nations as created in the US, when US corporations such as Apple can capture that for themselves through the control of global value chains backed up by intellectual property, financial and legal control, and state help in the destruction of competitors when required (i.e. the Huawei handset business).
What happens when that disappears, and those nations get to keep that value added? What will be left to fund the US military and stability at home? I tend to agree with Simplicius that actual US GDP, and therefore GDP per capita, is about half of what the US states it is.
If Australia is called the “lucky country”, perhaps the US should be called the “really lucky country”. Its elites have never had to deal with a real competitive threat and have never had to fight a direct war against a peer competitor. The “best army in the world” is really only as good as its ability to overwhelm the opposition with “shoot them” power.
It won’t have that against the Russians, the Chinese and even the Iranians.
Without it, it will be seen to be a shadow of its well-groomed reputation. At home, the US really only had a period of economic dominance in the post-WW2 period which quickly faded as other countries rebuilt their economies.
The US elite may have become significantly worse in the past few decades, but they were never the best.
It’s easy to appear to be brilliant when you have a gun in your pocket and your opponent has a plastic fork.
The US elite have never needed to be brilliant because they have been so lucky; that time is now gone.
The Russian, Chinese and Iranian elites have certainly not been lucky, and therefore their competence level is far, far higher.
The Astonishing REINCARNATION CASE of Patrick Christenson
Children usually remember a past life experience when they’re between the ages of two and seven, then as they get older, the memories begin to fade or the children lose interest where they become less interested in the past and are more involved in the present. About 70% of reincarnation stories involve violent or unnatural deaths and most of the lives that the children described took place about 500 km away from their current location.
China has so much manufacturing that China is able to extract rare earths from their Industrial waste by products from the Nuclear or Aluminium or Steel Industry at a fraction of the cost that it would take say Canada or US to extract the same from a fully developed Industrial procedure
China can produce Gallium at roughly 6% the cost that it would take the Canada to produce the same
That is 17 times cheaper
Likewise China extracts so much rare earth metals and has such a huge scale of processing and refining that it can deliver finished rare earths at 25% the price that it would take the nearest competitor to achieve
That’s China’s advantage
Not having Rare Earths
Many Nations have as much or more Rare Earth Raw Materials or Ores than China does
Using these technologies, China now has unique technology in making Rare Earth components that no other nation has due to PROHIBITIVE COST
Example we imported Rare Earth filament sheets for 260,000 Yuan in ISRO from China
Had this been processed and made in US and imported from there at 0% tariff the cost would have been 1.76 Million Yuan
So commercially China has a huge cost advantage that even 40% tariffs cannot stop or mitigate
And they also have the cost effective technologies that no one else has or even tried to develop knowing that the cost would be simply prohibitive
Deadly Chinese Fighter Jets Which Can Fly Before 2030
I am 67 years old. These are among the best things I have ever learned:
You spend your first 20 years worrying what people think about you. You spend your next 20 years swearing that you don’t care what people think about you. You spend the next 20 years realizing that they aren’t thinking about you. A liberation!
Any day on this side of the dirt is a good day. Some people didn’t make the cut last night. I was hit by a speeding taxi as I was walking to a bus stop. I spent a month in rehab with two broken legs, a brain injury, multiple back injuries and other fractures. The night before I was hit, a young, married couple was also hit. They both died. Practice gratitude.
A woman I know spends most of her time thinking about how much she hates her thighs. She can give you a detailed report on what is wrong with them. She forgets all the places those legs have taken her, all the miles they have walked for her. It doesn’t occur to her that when she gets up in the middle of the night to pee, those very thighs walk her to the toilet. Spend more time appreciating what you’ve got— a heart that beats, a way to pick up your cup of coffee, the eyes that see that cup and know what color it is. Blessings abound.
There are two kinds of people in this world – those who believe there is enough to go around, and those who don’t. Here is an example: If Margo is leaning up against the car kissing her boyfriend, and I think how nice that must feel, do I try to steal Margo’s boyfriend or do I go out and get my own boyfriend? I go out and get myself a boyfriend. I don’t need to steal Margo’s. I know that there is enough to go around.
An old Native American woman was asked why she was always so happy. She said that she has two wolves in her heart and they are both hungry— one wolf is angry and evil, the other wolf is filled with love, and that’s the only one she feeds.
Encountering an online robot, or bot, is as frequent as discovering a pair of shoes in your closet.
This occurrence is intrinsic to the internet, yet users have reached a crucial juncture: A growing multitude of individuals are losing their capacity to differentiate between bots and humans.
This is a circumstance that developers have cautioned about for an extended period, and its rationale is easily comprehensible.
A recent study has determined that bot-generated content now constitutes 47 percent of all internet traffic, marking an uptick of over 5 percent from 2021 to 2022. Concurrently, human activity on the internet has recently hit its lowest point in an eight-year span.
Combined with advancements in AI-driven human-like interactions, nearly one-third of internet users are no longer able to ascertain if they’re engaging with a human being.
Senior US China Diplomats Meet to Decide How Biden Should Apologize!
The owner of the Patriots has five of his Super Bowl rings, and Putin has the sixth one, and you won’t believe how he got it. In 2005, the owner of the American Football team the Patriots, Robert Kraft was in Russia visiting a friend Sandy Weill who was president of the Citi Group. They were attending a press conference with heads of state in Russia, and at the time Kraft’s team the Patriots, had just beaten the Eagles at Super Bowl 39, and he was showing off the Super Bowl Ring he had just received. That’s when someone had the bright Idea to show Putin.
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Putin admired the ring, before he put it on his finger. He loved how it looked on his hand and joked about how he could kill someone with a ring like this and proceeded to put the ring in his pocket.
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Kraft held out his hand expecting to get his ring back, but three body guards surrounded Putin and he left. To avoid international conflict the White House urged Kraft to say that the ring was a gift. Although, he didn’t want to give away the 4.9 carat diamond ring, he goes on to say
“Its a great story I get to tell my friends and I can’t believe my ring is in the Kremlin.”
Officials from the Kremlin responded and said if Kraft wants his ring back so badly we will send him one like it as a Gift from Putin.
Putin isn’t a Fool – The Mother of all Miscalculations | Dmitry Orlov
Man oh man, this is a really excellent interview. Wow.
Beef Turnovers (Empanadas)
You can use the discos or make your own turnover pastry. I’ve done both, and they’re equally as good.
OIP googly
Ingredients
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1/2 pound ground beef
1/2 medium yellow onion, finely chopped
1/4 cup tomato sauce
6 stuffed green olives, finely chopped
2 tablespoons sofrito
1 packet sazon with coriander and annato
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
Ground black pepper, to taste
1 (14 ounce) package Goya discos (yellow or white), thawed*
Vegetable oil, for frying
Instructions
Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add ground beef and cook until browned, breaking up meat with a wooden spoon, about 10 minutes.
Add onions and cook until soft, about 5 minutes more.
Stir in tomato sauce, olives, sofrito, garlic, oregano and black pepper. Lower heat to medium-low and simmer until mixture thickens, about 15 minutes.
On a lightly floured work surface, using a rolling pin, roll out discos until 1/2-inch larger in diameter. Spoon about 1 tablespoon meat mixture into middle, fold in half to form a half moon; moisten edges with water and pinch to seal closed, or seal with a fork.
Fill a deep saucepan with oil to a depth of 2 1/2 inches. Heat oil over medium-high heat until hot but not smoking (350 degrees F on deep-fry thermometer).
Cook turnovers in batches until crisp and golden brown, flipping once, 4 – 6 minutes.
Transfer to paper towels to drain.
Notes
* Flattened dough for turnover pastries all rolled out and ready to fill – in the Mexican refrigerated section. Make sure you buy the larger ones.
As far as sazon, you can really use whichever flavor you like. Goya now makes a salt-free version of their seasoning. Or, if you don’t want to use sazon for any reason, just use a good seasoning salt, to taste.
The lack of renewable energy in the US is not a lack of ability, but a lack of will.
The US is a post-industrial nation. Sure, a few holdouts of heavy manufacturing exist, but for the most part there aren’t any high-density factory regions in the US. Nations at this point in the industrial chain are most likely to wean off hydrocarbons, but the US is an anomaly. It puts more and more eggs in the hydrocarbon basket.
The reason is there are too many entrenched interests. People want to take the path of least resistance, and the US is no exception.
Moving to solar, wind, hydro, or nuclear requires the US to get its entrenched hydrocarbon industries to keep up with the times. But of course they don’t want to. It’s far easier to just sit on your behind, open your mouth, and have everything spoon-fed to you. And because the US refuses to actually have a government with power, the result can be seen even by a blind man – power flowed from the public to the private. When you give Exxon-Mobil power, do you really think you’re going to be able to move away from hydrocarbons?
—
And that’s how things are. The US will continue with its “but it’s not economic!” excuses, even though anybody who’s studied a cursory amount of history knows no nation ever developed by doing things that are profitable. Want to know why the Qing Dynasty couldn’t industrialize? Just look at the US today.
This is SUPER GOOD.
Former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter reacts to the Biden’s failed diplomacy with China and points to the ongoing threat of US interference in Taiwan as a major point of tension between the two countries.
Some years ago I was involved in a traffic accident. The insurance carrier for the car which hit me tried to ignore the whole thing, until I filed suit against the owner of the car.
Insurance settled, and then a few weeks later, I got a call from a secretary at a law office which was working for the insurance company.
She asked me if I was satisfied with the outcome, and I replied that I was.
She then told me that to close out the file, they would like me to sign a document stating that the case was closed. I said, “sure, no problem”.
She sent me the documents, which I read carefully.
Then I threw them in the trash.
In the fine print, the documents stated that I accept full responsibility for the accident, and that I would repay the insurance company plus reimburse insurance company for all the other payments they’d made for the accident, AND I’d pay this attorney’s fees!
All this was very thoroughly hidden in lots of pages of gibberish.
I have learned to NEVER sign anything that I haven’t studied in detail.
[2] Another dispute in the SCS – here’s what’s really happening
As typical for the United States, it is trying to ignite a war (where people die) so that it can obtain “opportunity” to loot, steal and gain control.
In this case, fools (prodded, imbecilic fools, greedy, or drug addicted) are typing to claim this “island” as their own territory. As Philippine citizens, they hope that the resultant Geo-political disputes ignite a conflict where they will be the personal victors. They do not expect to be killed in the process, but rather either [1] forcefully removed, or [2] allowed to stay and claim ownership of the island. Thus making each one multi-millionaires as they lobby China for “rights”.
Stoking this issue is the United States.
What is that all about?
Come one, a group of young men, took a derelict ship and rammed it into a Chinese island, beaching it. And now the United States is using this situation to ignite a war between China and the Philippines.
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Complicating this matter is the fact that this ancient pile of rust and shit used to be a commissioned military vessel.
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And the United States WANTS to claim that it is still in active duty. Thus, any Chinese activity concerning it will be a “military conflict”.
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Like I have said; the USA is “chomping at the bit for a war”.
This is how The Guardian reports on this matter…
An international row is growing between the Philippines, the US and China over a rusting ship that has been turned into a crucial military outpost in the South China Sea.
Tensions have intensified under the current Philippine president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, with the country increasingly accusing China of aggression and pursuing closer ties with the US, with which it has a mutual defence treaty.
On Saturday, China provoked condemnation from the Philippines, the US, the EU, France, Japan and Australia after its coastguard directed water cannon at a Philippine coastguard vessel. The Philippines was trying to deliver food, water, fuel and other supplies to its troops stationed in the grounded ship, the BRP Sierra Madre, on Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratly Islands.
On Tuesday, the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, underlined the “ironclad nature of the US-Philippines alliance” in a call with his counterpart, the Philippine secretary of national defence, Gilberto Teodoro Jr.
Austin reaffirmed that the treaty between the two countries – under which the US would defend the Philippines if its public vessels and forces were subjected to an armed attack – extended to those of the coastguard in the South China Sea.
And there you have it.
A pre-packaged provocation is hot, ripe and ready to ignite.
…
I say DO IT. Sink that festering bucket of rust.
Show the world that the USA is a toothless, loud-mouth bully.
China bans Mongolia from using Chinese ports to export rare earth minerals to US
I am not sure you are familiar with this device. It is an automatic soda siphon, known as the Sipholux. It was very popular in Israel in the 1950’s and 1960’s. It uses disposable co2 canisters which are simply broken open in a way that injects the co2 into the water.
How it is related to your question? Okay so this is how:
When the British left Palestine in 1948, they left behind them lots of military equipment, from military clothes and tents, to army vehicles and even some fighter airplanes. Not wanting to leave this equipment in combat ready state, the tried to cripple it in all kind of ways, and then sold it as scrap.
The young Israeli army was putting in much effort and creativity into putting as much as possible of this equipment to use, in any way they could, which sometimes brought to pretty amazing stories.
One of them is about 20 Auster Autocrat airplanes that the British left behind them. The airplanes were disassembled and with most of their fabric made body cover and major parts of their engines and other mechanisms missing. The young Israeli air force aquired them, hoping that maybe they can build 2 or 3 operational airplanes from all the pieces. The work was done secretly in the former underground Templar wine storing chamber in Sarona. Eventually the Israeli engineers got 18 airplanes to go back to fly. An operation that took enormous amount of innovation and resourcefulness.
In one of the airplanes, the mechanism that starts the engine by rotating the plane’s propeller by hand, was missing. There was no way to rebuild it, but one especially brilliant engineer figured out that all they have to do is to compress the air in the pistons to make the engine start. So he made a device that allowed to “fire” compressed air into the pistons from bullet shell like canisters. The same canisters were used later in the Sipholux.
So how did Israel had such a formidable army right ftom the start? It did not. It had a bunch of extremely brave and creative people, and more importantly, there was something it didn’t have: any other choice.
[3] Niger CLOSES AIRSPACE Amid Invasion Threat
American military power… European Energy… and the future of BRICS+ is “on the line”…
The 2023 growth rate of several indicators such as exports and industrial profits has slowed down, and economic activity has weakened. Looking at the world, geopolitical tensions are intensifying, global inflation is running high, and the central banks of the United States and Europe continue to tighten monetary policies, …, etc. The International Monetary Fund predicts that the global economic growth rate will hover around 3% in the next five years, which is at a low level in nearly 30 years. In May 2023, due to factors such as the rapid increase in the base of the same period last year, the growth rate of the exports from China turned from positive to negative year-on-year, and downward pressure on external demand emerged.
The industrial upgrading and industrial chain integration in China have been absolutely fruitful. Our world today is reshaping the industrial chain, redundant production, and capacity backup. What can expand aggregate demand in history is actually related to technological progress. The expansion of demand for new energy vehicles is brought about by technological progress. New energy vehicles are indeed easier to drive and smarter than petrol ICE cars.
In an unsafe anti-globalization world, whether it is for security, for the possibility of war, for market expansion, or for long-term prosperity, technological progress is required. In a globalized world, there may be more. The demand in the anti-globalization world may be more autonomy, and the development of technology may also be linked to security. Logically, China must persist in long-term transformation, but the key is how to avoid all the short-term major risks before reaching long-term success.
Inflation is too low because China is still actively destocking. China is still very motivated to leverage technological progress. The end of the active destocking in the manufacturing industry, the natural recovery of the service industry and the slow recovery of the consumption scene can still be counted on. The employment pressure of 10 million college students every year is always there, and the number of workers required for industrial upgrading has decreased. In the future, the development of the service industry must be required to absorb employment.
Actually, China’s economy in 2023 is not too bad.
Needless to say, China had always been getting worse and worse since 1949 according to the foreign media.
China has been predicted to collapse since May 20, 1988, when the high-tech industries in China have started to be developed.
China focused on exponential economic growth potential through ideas and how to add and export value out of automobile ideas. China succeeded to graduate in creating economic value out of a domestic flow of knowledge and ideas.
Industrial upgrading and technological progress are definitely the road that China must take in the modernization, but this road is definitely not smooth. How to deal with bumps is something that the market and the government need to think about and set a model for. The government has to formulate monetary policy based on the long-term economic growth trend line and favor industrial policy and credit policy for high-tech industries. It is estimated that China’s monetary policy, fiscal policy and credit policy will be the basis for many years to come. Monetary policy also plays a role in preventing financial turmoil.
Markets may still be too pessimistic about the economy in China. China’s economy is in the stage of development from quantitative change to qualitative change. People should not only focus on changes in quantity and speed, but also on qualitative changes. China’s economy continues to transform and upgrade in response to pressure. Although the current market demand is insufficient and the internal driving force needs to be strengthened, these pressures and challenges will not change the long-term positive trend of China’s economy.
Some college students and older low-skilled workers have difficulty finding employment, and some industries and enterprises face a shortage of high-skilled and compound innovative talents. Vigorously developing advanced manufacturing clusters and national strategic emerging industry clusters, promoting the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries and the cultivation and growth of emerging industries will effectively enhance the role of economic growth in driving employment.
From a rational perspective, a lower level of inflation leaves more room for macro policies to stabilize growth, employment, and prices. The decline in prices at this stage is staged and temporary, and its impact should not be exaggerated. Deflation mainly refers to the continuous negative growth of prices, the money supply also has a downward trend, and is usually accompanied by economic recession.
The overall supply and demand of the economy in China is basically balanced. The monetary conditions are reasonable and moderate. The expectations of residents are stable. There is no basis for long-term deflation or inflation.
China’s real estate industry will not pose systemic risks, but there is indeed an imbalance between supply and demand at present, and structural reforms must be carried out in the long run. Preventing and defusing risks is an eternal theme in the financial industry.
Only by coordinating development and security can people ensure the stability and long-term development of China’s economy.
Originally Answered: What’s been the most mind blowing example of incompetence ever displayed by one of your coworkers?
Here’s a good one. Not exactly “incompetence” but just a failure to grasp a simple concept.
The warehouse I worked in stored a whole variety of weird and wonderful things that were in bags, boxes and steel drums of varying sizes. The way our warehouse worked was that the computer would allocate the oldest stock first (obviously) and then the lowest numbered location first if there was more than one pallet of a particular item. Easy enough.
Here’s a pallet of 40 by 25kg bags. 5 bags on a layer x 8 layers… That’s 1000kg… a tonne.
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99% of our customers would order one or multiples of full one tonne pallets. Easy. Grab fork-lift, go to pallet, grab pallet, place on the wagon or in a line ready for loading.
Occasionally a customer would only want half a pallet, or even just a few bags which obviously meant some manual labour but it was easy enough.
We may end up with a pallet with, say, 35 bags on it instead of 40.
The next order would come along and it would be for 40 bags… a full pallet.
The first pallet that the computer wants to allocate is… yes you guessed it… that pallet with 35 on. The computer would instruct us to pick 35 bags from that location and 5 bags from the next location along which had 40 bags in it.
OMG what do we do? It’s so complicated I can’t cope! The drama! The physical exertion!
Actually all we used to do was grab the next full pallet of 40 bags, then relocate the pallet with 35 on to where the pallet with 40 used to be. Easy. No physical work required. It was quicker. The computer’s stock figures are correct and we could only do it if the batch numbers and every detail were the same. Easy-peasy.
Then one day the foreman, Mike, spotted Terry and I doing what we called a “swapsie”.
He’d ambled over for a chat about last night’s football because his beloved Wolves FC had won a game.
Mike – Hi lads. Good result last night for the old gold and black eh.
Me – Yes very good Mike. You’ll be as good as the mighty Albion one day.
Mike – Pah!
Terry appeared out the aisle on his fork-lift with a full pallet.
Mike – What order is this?
Terry – It’s a swapsie for Megachem.
Mike – A swapsie? What’s that?
Me – They want a full pallet of 40 bags but the computer allocates 35 from one pallet and 5 bags off the next one. We do a swapsie as we call it.
Terry – Yeah we do them all the time.
Mike – I don’t like the sound of that.
Me – The sound of what Mike?
Mike – You guys swapping stock all over the place. You should pick stock from where it’s allocated, not just to make your life easier.
Terry – The way we do it means just two movements with the fork-lift instead of manually moving bags by hand. It’s easier and quicker.
Mike – What is the “swapsie” bit then? Sounds like you’ve swapped some stock around to me. Come on lads, I’m not thick.
Me – We take a full pallet of 40. Then move the pallet of 35 to where the 40 used to be. That’s the swapsie bit. The system shows that zero is left where the 35 used to be and 35 where the 40 used to be. Go and look and you’ll see that’s what is left.
Mike went to look and examined Terry’s paperwork. He scratched his head a few times. If only Terry hadn’t used the word “swapsie” we wouldn’t even be in this pickle, but it was a word we used so often it was normal.
Mike – I don’t like this at all lads. Something is wrong here.
Paul the supervisor appeared at this point.
Paul – Come on lads. Hurry up with that Megachem order for fuck’s sake.
Mike – Ah Paul. I don’t like what’s been going on here. This “swapsie” nonsense that John and Terry have been telling me about sounds like a swizz to me. Fiddling the stock figures is not acceptable.
Paul knew exactly what a swapsie was.
Paul – A swapsie is perfectly fine Mike. We’ve been doing them for years.
Mike didn’t want to know and wouldn’t listen to Paul’s explanation. He said we had to stop doing swapsies. Paul tried in vain to explain the mathematics of it. We even put the pallets back where they were before we started and ran through the whole swapsie process again, but he simply couldn’t grasp what went on at all.
He banned us from doing swapsies and pinned a notice to the board to that effect.
We all continued to do swapsies and totally ignored him.
== added on 13/7/2021 ==
I’ve added this image and further explanation to illustrate better what we did. I don’t think I was crystal clear enough.
Obviously in a real warehouse there are hundreds of locations and many different products but hopefully this will help eliminate any confusion.
The computer system would instruct us to pick 40 bags of Batch A for a customer. It would pick the lowest numbered locations first. In this example it has instructed us to pick 5 bags from location 2 and 35 bags from location 3 which has 40 bags in it. Doing a “swapsie” meant that we picked the full pallet (40 bags) from location 3 then relocated the 5 bags from location 2 to location 3.
Therefore we picked 40 bags for the customer, there was nothing left in location 2, and 5 bags left in location 3 which is exactly what the computer system would show.
We would and could only do this operation if every detail regarding the product was identical. We wouldn’t throw a few bags of Batch B into the mix for example.
Therefore no physical work was required, only fork lift movements. We didn’t do this because we were lazy. We did it because it’s quicker, easier and less stress on your back if you were doing many of these movements in a day
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[4] Niger DEPLOYS WAGNER Soldiers For MILITARY INTERVENTION Prep
Good move. These are brave African leaders and this is a noble cause.
Myself, not a coworker. In 1997 I was an assistant manager at a Taco Bell. The gerneral manager spent his days oogling the teen girls and not doing his job. On my day off, at around 8pm he called me said he had something come up and needed to leave, and can I cover him? Sure, I like money, I’ll work. I get there to find out he had already left, and dismissed another employee for the shift as well. That left me, a great guy named John, and a teen cashier who couldn’t stay long. We closed at 10pm. There were already mounds of unwashed dishes, filthy floors, stuff to put away ect ect… at 950 pm, a high school football team came in, about 15 of them. They ordered, ate in, trashed the lobby, left around 1030 pm. My cashier had to leave, he was young, there were work rules ect… So now its just me and John, with EASILY 4 to 5 hours more work ahead of us cleaning and getting that place ready for the next day. Our shift was supposed to be over at 11pm. This wasnt the first time it had happened. I said screw it. Told John we were leaving, didn’t clean anything, and left it all for the manager that screwed me over to fix the next day. They were supposed to open at 6am, they opened closer to lunch time. That was with 4 staff it took them that long to clean up and prepare.
The Slime People (1963) PYSCHOTRONIC
Full movie. Perfect for a lazy Saturday Summer afternoon. Get some iced tea, and light snacks…
When I was a boy growing up in Western Pennsylvania, I had a classmate who lived up the street from me. His name was John and he and his younger brother Paul were my age. We did many things together, and for boys in elementary and middle school that meant a lot of bicycle riding, hikes in the woods, and baseball / basketball.
They had a cat. But the mother didn’t want it inside. So it was an “outside cat”. But for some reason that I could never figure out the mother insisted that it be chained to a small dog house in the back yard.
For the entire time that I knew John and Paul, this cat lived it’s live around that little box and about one yard of roaming space. And it became very mean.
Poor kitty.
Poor. Poor. Kitty.
I didn’t know, then.
But I KNOW now.
Now, being older, I see this kind of imprisonment as terribly cruel and inhumane, but being a boy at that time, I had no clue. Certainly his mother and father were alright, but whats up with the kitty? I don’t know.
Its only when you get older, and have more experience and understanding that you begin to recognize inhumanity, and sick behaviors.
Don’t wait too long. Learn this important lesson early on in life. It will save you much grief later on.
It’s highly unlikely for the next 2 Decades minimum
Based on our present manufacturing statistics, it’s even until 2060
It’s simple we (the United States) don’t have a manufacturing eco system
They do
As on date only China, Russia and Iran have almost fully manufacturing ecosystems
Let me explain
Let’s take a Factory in Pudong that manufactures Customized Wheelchairs
Their components are are all made in factories within 50–100 Kms Radius and can be delivered in 2 hours
The Electronics are made in a factory around 400 Kms away and can be delivered in 6 1/2 hours
The Assembly machinery is manufactured in another factory around 100 kms away
This is an Ecosystem
Everything is available locally and made indigenously
Thus the Assembly Time is very short
You can average 27 Wheelchairs a day per line
Let’s take a factory in Nelamangala Bangalore that had to close down in 2023
The Components are imported from Xilin and take between 45–80 days to arrive post order and payment
The Electronics are imported from Pudong and take between 45–80 days to arrive post order and payment plus an additional 25 days for Certificates (Electronics require approval from Customs)
The Assembly Machinery is fully imported from China or South Korea and a single valve failure takes 30–50 days for replacement
You can average 36–40 Wheelchairs A MONTH!!!!!
That’s 40 vs a whopping 810 !!!!!!!!!!
Despite paying 2.8 times more wages in USD terms ($ 17 a day vs $ 5.72 a day) , China’s final manufacturing price came to $ 307 against $ 595 for India
Thus the retail difference is almost $ 550–600
So the Indian company went out of business
Simply couldnt compete
China has the entire eco system for every product under the sun
India simply assembles and has zero component or supply chain for everything from Toasters to Advanced Engines
China manufactures 94% of the Chips needed for these products. India imports 100% Chips needed
Thus it’s safe to say China outproduces India by 20 times
India has to build a supply chain and an ecosystem
That means at least 20,000 factories which are prepared to manufacture ordinary components at ₹2.40/— per unit profit
That means Loans at 1.75–1.8% Interest instead of 14.7% quoted today
Sadly DABBULU LEVU
We can’t afford the subsidies at all
Factories need minimum 17% profit just to pay off loans and interest and sustain themselves
Most factories don’t do this and keep depending on rising real estate value to keep inflating collateral
In China it’s a mere 4.2% profitability that’s mandatory to sustain themselves
The Mysterious Case Of Manfred Fritz Bajorat, The Mummified German Sailor
By Marco Margaritoff | Edited By John Kuroski
Published October 25, 2021
When fishermen found Manfred Fritz Bajorat inside his yacht as it was drifting in the Philippine Sea in 2016, his body was completely mummified right in the very spot where he died.
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Manfred Fritz Bajorat died of a heart attack and was preserved aboard his ship by the dry, salty ocean winds.
On Feb. 26, 2016, a group of fishermen off the coast of the Philippine island of Mindanao saw a boat suspiciously drifting at sea. The yacht was visibly battered and clearly on its last legs. It had emerged like a ghost ship with a broken mast.
And when they boarded the vessel and descended into its bowels, the fishermen discovered far more chilling than they would have ever imagined: the mummified corpse of a German sailor named Manfred Fritz Bajorat.
Authorities only identified the man thanks to documents strewn about his cabin. An autopsy revealed the 59-year-old had died of a heart attack, and that his 40-foot sailboat had drifted at sea for weeks while the salty ocean air preserved his body in macabre fashion.
The mysterious incident made global headlines and spread far and wide across the internet. People from around the world all had the same question: How did Manfred Fritz Bajorat wind up drifting through the Philippine Sea alone? Before answers finally arrived, there was only an ominous note that Bajorat left behind:
“Thirty years we’ve been together on the same path. Then the power of the demons was stronger than the will to live. You’re gone. May your soul find its peace. Your Manfred.”
As the authorities would soon discover, the story of Manfred Fritz Bajorat was somehow even more chilling than his mummified corpse would suggest.
The Discovery Of Manfred Fritz Bajorat
With clear skies and calm seas, the weather proved perfect for fishing on the day that Manfred Fritz Bajorat was found. That’s exactly what 23-year-old Christopher Rivas had intended that Friday, before things took a chilling turn. A resident of P-4 Poblacion in the town of Barobo, he and his friend were fishing about 40 miles out when they spotted the ship.
The yacht was painted white and christened “Sayo.” It was clear from a distance that it was in dire straits, with its broken mast and partially sunken hull. After encountering Bajorat’s naked corpse inside, Rivas alerted police — who waited to investigate foul play until the autopsy results came back.
“The cause of death is acute myocardial infarction based on the autopsy by regional crime laboratory,” said national police spokesman Chief Superintendent Wilben Mayor. “The German national is estimated to have been dead for more or less seven days.”
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Christened “Sayo,” the 40-foot yacht was spotted with a broken mast and partially underwater in February 2016.
“The air, heat, and saltiness of the sea are all very conducive to mummification,” said Peter Vanezis, forensic pathology professor at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry. “It starts within two to three weeks. The fingers and other extremities … dry quickly, and in a month or two they are well gone.”
The ship itself contained a trove of family photos depicting an overjoyed Bajorat with his wife and daughter. From snapshots at Notre Dame and cafes in Paris to photos of picnics, the albums suggested a wholesome family unit. A photo of Bajorat holding a baby was captioned: “Our first time with our little Button on the sea.”
When the German embassy on Mindanao Island tried to contact his family, they discovered that his ex-wife had died of cancer in 2010. After flying his daughter Nina out to identify the body, authorities learned that Bajorat had been sailing the seas alone for years — perhaps reacting to the dissolution of his family.
How Manfred Fritz Bajorat Lost His Way
Manfred Fritz Bajorat was such an experienced sailor that he tallied over half a million nautical miles at sea. Initially accompanied by his wife, the couple divorced in 2008. After his former spouse died two years later and his grown daughter took a job working as captain of a freight vessel, Bajorat made the ocean his permanent home.
He began aboard the Hyundai Renaissance freighter on Aug. 1, 2008, traveling across the equator from Singapore to Durban, South Africa. After accomplishing that milestone for obsessive mariners, Bajorat sailed to the Spanish island of Mallorca — where he apparently made an impression on a fellow sailor.
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One of the many photos found on Bajorat’s sailboat. He’s seen here on the right, with his daughter Nina to the left of him.
“He was a very experienced sailor,” the Mallorcan named Dieter told news outlets. “I don’t believe he would have sailed into a storm. I believe the mast broke after Manfred was already dead.”
A document aboard Bajorat’s ship revealed the Sayo was cleared by maritime police in 2013, in either Sao Vicente, Brazil or Sao Vicente, Cape Verde. It was then that he began his lonesome seafaring adventures in earnest, regularly posting updates on his Facebook page and responding to birthday messages.
Some reports claimed that Bajorat hadn’t been seen by anyone in person since 2009. Ultimately, it appeared he wanted it that way. No fan of his fatherland’s winter climates, he spent the last two decades of his life on course for more hospitable weather. In the end, all he left behind were photographs — and a note to the woman he loved.
Are the Chinese planning to invade Taiwan and can the US and NATO prevent this and stop them in their tracks by forming naval blockade along the Yellow Sea, East China Sea, and the West China Sea?
CIA director testified at Intelligence Committee at Congress in early March 2023, there is no chance of China attacking Taiwan in the next 10 years.
RAP FANS REACT TO Evanescence – Bring me to life
True and amazing!
In November 2003 on a transatlantic flight from Liverpool, England, to Florida, 67-year-old Dorothy Fletcher was traveling with her daughter to attend her daughter’s wedding.
During the flight, she experienced chest pain accompanied by pain in the back and down the arm while finding it difficult to breathe.
She was vomiting and sweating profusely, which led her to soon collapse. Dorothy had suffered a heart attack while on the plane.
The stewardess rushed to the PA system and made an announcement asking if any doctors were onboard.
Surprisingly, the stewardess found not one but fifteen doctors who all happened to be cardiologists heading to a conference in Florida.
They stood up en masse and rushed to save Dorothy. They fed drips into her arms and used an onboard medical kit to control the life-threatening attack.
The plane was diverted to North Carolina, where Dorothy was treated in the intensive care unit.
She spent two days in the Charlotte Medical Centre after her heart attack and then managed to attend her daughter’s wedding the following week.
After the incident, Dorothy had this to say: “I couldn’t believe what happened. All these people came rushing down the aircraft towards me. The doctors were wonderful. They saved my life.”
“My daughter was with me and you can imagine how she felt when all these doctors stood up. I wish I could thank them but I have no idea who they were, other than that they were going to a conference in Orlando.”
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FIRST TIME EVER LISTENING DIO ~ Last In Line REACTION (The MetalGodFather got me HOOKED 🥺)
China’s export controls on gallium likely to hit US defense industry: experts
By Liu Xuanzun Published: Jul 04, 2023 06:16 PM Updated: Jul 04, 2023 06:12 PM
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China’s recently announced export controls on gallium could hit the US defense industry, as this material, with China with China being the leading producer and supplier in the world, is widely used in advanced radar systems installed on warplanes, warships and ground installations, experts said on Tuesday.
Starting August 1, China will impose export controls on gallium and germanium as well as several chemical compounds involving the two materials, according to a notice China’s Ministry of Commerce and General Administration of Customs released on Monday.
Items meeting certain characteristics shall not be exported without approval, the notice stated.
The move aims to safeguard national security and interests, it said.
Gallium and germanium are used in the making of semiconductors and other electronic components, observers said.
Chinese military analysts said that the export controls, particularly those on gallium, could hit the US defense industry at a time when the US is attempting to militarily contain China’s development.
Gallium arsenide (GaAs) and gallium nitride (GaN) are the most basic materials in the making of the transmit receive modules on active electronic scanning array (AESA) radars, which are widely used on modern warplanes, warships and ground installations, Fu Qianshao, a Chinese military aviation expert, told the Global Times on Tuesday.
For example, US’ defense companies Raytheon and Northrop Grumman are reportedly introducing new AESA radar systems based on GaN, which provide superior performance than previously used GaAs. The latest radars for the F/A-18E/F carrier-based fighter jet and the F-35 stealth fighter jet also incorporate GaN.
Both GaN and GaAs are included on China’s list of export controls.
China accounts for about 85 percent of global gallium reserves, meaning that it is unlikely for the US and other Western countries to avoid using the Chinese materials without significant cost, Fu said.
The US frequently deploys its warplanes and warships on China’s doorsteps for close-in reconnaissance, provocative transits and exercises as well as showcasing deterrence purposes, in addition to continuing arms sales to the island of Taiwan, which are obvious attempts to contain China’s development and harm China’s national security and interests, analysts said.
FIRST TIME HEARING Fort Minor – Remember The Name REACTION
The chart below should answer a part of your question. In addition, all the gallium veins of the third ranked one in this chart have been occupied by the second ranked one.
Another point that should not be ignored is that if gallium is to be produced on a large scale, its main raw material is waste slag from the zinc and aluminum smelting industries, and China also accounts for over 50% of the world’s smelting production of these two metals.
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NOT WHAT WE EXPECTED!!.. | FIRST TIME HEARING Talking Heads – Psycho Killer REACTION
In a demented state of mind, reality becomes blurred, and possibilities appear limitless.
With impaired cognitive abilities and distorted perceptions, rational thinking and judgment are compromised.
This altered mental state can lead to unpredictable behavior, inappropriate beliefs, and a detachment from the consequences of one’s actions.
With this altered state of mindset, Biden carried out his reckless foreign policies while the ruling elites supported by the military-industrial complex cheered him on.
WOW!! FIRST TIME HEARING Chicago – 25 or 6 to 4 | REACTION
How the US politicizes travel warnings
“Americans should reconsider travel to China due to the risk of wrongful detention, the US State Department warned in an updated travel advisory issued Friday.” The level three warning, making China out to be a dangerous location, places the country in category shared by countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Chad, Lebanon and Pakistan, all which are known for protracted political instability, insurgencies and high risk of violent crime.
If it wasn’t obvious already, the travel warning is politically motivated, and is decided to incentivise “decoupling” from China by deterring businessmen, academics, tourists and other visitors by inciting a risk of danger. This is of course ironic and hypocritical, given US officials, such as Anthony Blinken and Nicholas Burns, pledged to continue “human exchanges” with the country, notwithstanding all the other policies they are currently implementing in order to make that increasingly difficult. The truth is, America doesn’t want its people to visit China.
The United States is the most adept and skilful nation in the world in controlling its population via an appeal to a means of fear.
As a federal democracy with a broad separation of powers, which ultimately requires the consent of the governed, US presidential administrations have presided over a centralization of power since the Cold War era through the ability to co-opt, organise and manipulate mass media to their own ends, aiming to invoke public fear on various issues and in turn manufacture political capital for policymaking.
US history is filled with such examples, from so-called “weapons of mass destruction”, “to reds under the bed”, to North Korea being about to nuke the United States and of course today’s wave of mass hysteria pertaining to China. Be it the fear of apparent “Spy Balloons”, infiltration at universities, TikTok and so on. The list is ever growing, and although a lot of this fear is provoked by Republicans, the US administration often chooses to embrace it for domestic political ends, as opposed to challenging it and carving out their own position, which of course negates the idea of so-called “guardrails” Anthony Blinken likes to pay lip service to.
And in doing so, the US State Department is one of the primary instigators of public fear in the United States. In this case, it is producing politically motivated travel warnings in order to incentivize the White House position on China. It does not want the country to become a hub for US investment, exchange, and study, therefore it will whip up fears of Americans being arrested, this is a common theme that it often repeats with countries who it deems antagonistic in some ways. But a sheer look at the numbers, particularly those before covid, would indicate that this is sheer nonsense and that the overwhelming majority of trips to China are trouble free.
Indeed, there are instances of foreign nationals being detained, including Australian citizen Chang Lei, as well as the notorious saga of the “two Michaels” in relation to Meng Wangzhou, but of course, the media often press certain assumptions regarding the “political motivations” behind such cases, while also automatically assuming that they “must” be innocent because of the subject country involved. Yet again these cases indicate high-profile exceptions, not the rule, and without speculating, every country has laws that must be obeyed and followed accordingly.
Either way, it is simply ludicrous to class China, an extremely stable country, in the same classification of risk as war-torn countries in Africa or the Middle East.
Places where foreign nationals actually are at risk of being captured by insurgency groups.
Even if one can make a valid point about the cases above, it requires an obvious exaggeration and act of bad faith to exaggerate the given situation involved. Does China indiscriminately and randomly target foreign nationals or tourists? Purely on the basis of what their national governments might do? The US and the mainstream media want you to believe that narrative, but it is of course, deliberately misleading.
China is a safe place to visit.
Like everywhere in the world, there are of course certain precautions you should take in respect to unique local circumstances, but maturity is recognizing this is all part of a wide co-opted campaign to isolate Beijing. The United States is a master of political theatre whereby it creates scenarios, frames China as the villain but then depicts itself as the ultimate solution.
Don’t buy it.
UNBELIEVABLE | REACTION TO Journey – Don’t Stop Believin’ | LIVE 1981 Houston
Most people don’t know how huge Chinese industrial production is, myself only found out very recently. I was shocked, I had to calculate all the numbers I found through google to verified the data, because I didn’t believe it. How could it be so huge?
I found each country’s automobile production, added all G7 countries up to confirm, China makes more automobiles each year than all 7 countries combined.
Obviously it didn’t happen overnight, so how come I never read about it? How come it was/is not in the news? Maybe it is a good thing that people don’t know.
Chinese industrial and agricultural production is more than U.S., Japan and Germany combined. China makes more cars per year than US, Canada, Japan, Germany, Italy. France and England combined.
OH MY GOSH!| FIRST TIME HEARING Devo – Whip It REACTION
Only The Legs Remain | Spontaneous Human Combustion
We Are Just Grains of Sand on This Earth: Tomás Sánchez Draws Giant Forests and Massive Landcapes
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Tomás Sánchez was born in 1948 in Aguada de Pasajeros, Cuba. He began his studies as a painter in 1964 at the San Alejandro School of Plastic Arts in Havana and later at the Escuela Nacional de Arte.
In 1980 he won the Joan Miró Drawing Prize, given by the Miró Foundation in Barcelona and in 1984 he won the Amelia Peláez Award for painting at Havana’s first biennial. In 1985 he had his first retrospective at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana. In 1989 he left Cuba to live in Mexico and subsequently to southern Florida. He joined the Marlborough Gallery in 1996. In 2003 a substantial monograph on the artist’s body of work was published by Skira with an essay by the South American poet and Nobel Laureate, Gabriel García Márquez and texts by Edward J. Sullivan. Sánchez currently lives and works in Miami and Costa Rica.
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Tomás Sánchez has practiced mediation for the last 50 years, and his work is a manifestation of the myriad experiences and visions from his daily practice. His paintings can be divided into two opposing, yet contrasting, categories: vast paradisiac landscapes and fields of trash, both arising entirely from the artist’s imagination. As Gabriel García Márquez wrote:
“It was not by accident that in a recent interview he let slip from his soul, “I always wanted to be a saint”. There was no need for him to say so. Especially in this period of his prophetic landscapes that we conceive of as models of a joyous world, and in which Tomás Sánchez always paints his man: a tiny, solitary witness who will, forever after, be the guardian of the picture’s legitimacy. In the meantime, he continues correcting real reality, painting without rest, with his gentle, alert, well-informed personality, with the invisible strings that keep us, his friends from all over the world, captive. For no one escapes the spell cast by Tomás Sánchez: the more we know his work the more we love it, and the more certain we are that if the world in fact deserves to be made again, it is because, as much as it can, it resembles his painting.”
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LOOK WHAT I FOUND IN CHINA! 30 Billion Mall To Mars?! – Insane!
What’s going on in Europe?
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Van Halen – Panama REACTION
Buy Chinese, boycott Adidas and Nike
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Something is afoot in China.
It is a phenomenon whose scale and ferocity have never been seen before anywhere.
I am talking about the spontaneous boycott of American sportswear or footwear products. This powerful pushback by Chinese consumers is a quid pro quo for sanctions imposed on cotton or textiles from Xinjiang.
The targets of this consumer anger are US global giants Nike and Adidas. The latter was hit specially hard, losing 36% of its sales in China which happens to be Nike’s third largest market. H&M, a Swedish retail giant, has been brought to its knees a while ago, but pledges to rebuild its brand to win back its Chinese patrons.
Nike and Adidas have joined the US in pushing the falsehood that Xinjiang cotton is tainted by the use of forced labor. China’s angry denials have fallen on deaf ears.
Into this battlefield charged Chinese consumers with a new weapon—a country-wide boycott of US products.
Nike and Adidas have behaved like rude guests in China, abusing Chinese hospitality by badmouthing the host while raking in huge profits. America won’t tolerate such poor manners from Chinese companies on US soil.
It is rich for Nike to project a “holier-than-thou” image when it has a history of using child labor, sweatshops and paying starvation wages to factory workers.
Terrorism is a global menace. Instead of joining forces to fight this scourge, America chooses to attack China’s anti-terrorist measures. Without verifiable evidence, it has lobbed charges of genocide against China, using this loaded word to inflict its damage. It is impossible to prove what you have not done.
It is simply a weapon to cripple China’s economy.
Patriotic Chinese consumers say enough is enough. Their united display of patriotism has smashed US allegations that Chinese people are oppressed by their government. Oppressed people don’t launch spontaneous consumer boycotts against foreign rivals.
There is one side-effect America did not anticipate: US punitive sanctions have united Chinese citizens behind their government in a people-to-people counter-attack.
China’s international behavior is faultless. America has turned to misrepresenting and weaponizing its domestic politics. Aided and abetted by the power of its media monopoly, when America accuses, America convicts. China cannot and will not allow outsiders unfettered access to the re-education centers in Xinjiang, when their motives and intentions are suspect. For America the verdict is a foregone conclusion.
Don’t be a dork. Every single one of the white-race powers, including Britain, America, Canada and Australia accusing China of genocide has a history of genocidal killings or ethnic cleansings of their indigenous populations. The blood is still wet on the accusers’ hands.
China alone has a pristine record in inter-ethnic relations. It alone is free of ethnic discrimination. Foreigners who live in China are amazed at how free of hate crimes this country is. Historically, the Han tribe had never persecuted minorities. It is still true today. In fact, China has delivered a whole raft of measures better known in America as Affirmation Action to benefit all minorities—from lower admission requirements to higher education to exemption from its draconian one-child policy. They celebrate their ethnicity in local festivals. China is a haven for minorities.
China can protest its innocence until the cows come home. Majorie Yang, the MIT-educated chairman of Esquel Group, a Hong Kong textile manufacturer, has given gainful employment to tens of thousands of Uyghurs on her cotton fields and was slapped with sanctions. She hired an international investigative agency which had cleared her company of the charge of using forced labor. But the clearance meant nothing. The sanctions stay.
America is denying China its sovereign right to fight terrorism on its own territory by adopting an educational, rather than a punitive approach. Meanwhile waterboarding and using other forms of torture in Guantanamo are an undeniable fact. Where are the international sanctions against America which has slaughtered millions in Vietnam and Iraq.
Other than counter-sanctions, only one effective weapon remains in fighting unfair double standards: consumer boycotts. Hit the rumor-mongers where it hurts.
Forget megaphone diplomacy. Let ordinary people carry the fight to America and its commercial proxies, using the power of their purse. When reason and common sense fail to prevail, it’s time to let the wallet do the talking.
China Metro vs India Metro – This is truly shocking…
Green Chile Burros
The burro is shown “enchilada style.”
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Ingredients
1 small beef roast, diced
1 medium onion, chopped
2 (4 ounce) cans diced green chiles
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 (16 ounce) can tomatoes, drained (juice reserved)
1/2 teaspoon comino (cumin)
Salt and pepper, to taste
All-purpose flour
Instructions
Brown diced meat in fat in a large, heavy saucepan. Add onion, green chiles, garlic and drained tomatoes. Add enough drained tomato juice (plus water if needed) to cover. Add comino, salt and pepper. Cook, covered, until meat is very tender.
Mix flour with a small amount of water to form a thin paste and add to mixture to thicken slightly.
Heat a large flour tortilla on a griddle. Fill with meat mixture and fold.
Notes
Enchilada Style: Follow instructions above, then place in a shallow serving dish. Pour enchilada sauce over the top to cover, and sprinkle with grated cheese. Heat in a 425 degrees F oven until the cheese is melted.
I sometimes make a fast version of this. I use leftover pot roast, dice it up, mix it with the remaining ingredients and just simmer it until the onion is tender. Thicken it with the flour as stated in the recipe.
Being called a dictator, should Xi meet Biden this November, and why?
According to the proven Principle of Least Interest, China has total power over this US-China relationship. Biden’s name-calling only reflected his pathetic despair.
The Principle of Least Interest is the idea in sociology that the person or group that has the least amount of interest in continuing a relationship has the most power over it. In the context of relationship dynamics, it suggests towards which party the balance of power tilts. The principle applies to personal, business, and other types of relationships where more than one party is involved.
And if they want to borrow money, they need to borrow it from private French Bankers (like Macron) at Commercial rates!
But wait… it gets worse…
Countries like Burkina Faso have gold mines (literal).
And in the “Treaty for Independence”, France gets the right of first refusal.
Only if France doesn’t want to extract resources, can these countries allow everyone else to mine.
Why don’t these colonies break the treaties?
Well, France has thought of that too.
Within the treaty, the Colonies have given France the exclusive contract to sell weapons and train the military in the former colonies.
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The treaties also give France the authority to “pre-deploy” French troops for “peace-keeping” purposes.
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Hypothetically, if there rises a leader like Sankara who wants to nationalize these resources… well French troops rush in to overthrow him in a military coup.
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France has tested nuclear weapons in Algeria numerous times. The first test occurred in 1960, in the desert. They didn’t adequately warn the civilian populations around the blast site. An estimated 40k Algerians got sick from these tests.
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Fast forward to France still having a human zoo where they brought over Africans from Ivory Coast to “live” in a “safari” while Europeans gawked at them in 1994!
It was called Bamboula Village…
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It was sponsored by confectionary company St. Michel’s who made some kind of chocolate sweet called “Bamboula” which had this extremely racist advertising…
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Finally, the artisans made contact with the local performers guild who helped create a “No Human Safari” movement and created a public outcry. In October 1994, they finally shut down the wreched human zoo.
China has developed its own chip technology, with optical chips. These chips do not get as hot as the old chip technology and are faster.
China can do anything because their army is an army of engineers and other professionals.
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WHAT? | FIRST TIME HEARING The B 52’s – Rock Lobster REACTION
Pulled Pork with Root Beer Barbecue Sauce
This is a delightful recipe. It’s especially good served with cole slaw on top, the way the Southerners do it.
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Yield: 8 to 10 servings
Ingredients
1 (2 1/2 to 3 pound) pork sirloin roast, pork shoulder or butt
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 medium onions, cut into thin wedges
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 (12 ounce) can root beer
1 (18 ounce) bottle barbecue sauce, any brand you like
8 to 10 hamburger buns, split (and toasted, if desired)
Cole slaw (optional)
Instructions
Brown the salted and peppered roast in vegetable oil.
Place the pork, onions and garlic in a slow cooker. Pour the root beer over the meat. Cover and cook on LOW for 6 hours or until pork shreds easily with a fork.
After the pork has is done, drain and discard the juices and onion. Shred the pork and place it back into the slow cooker. Pour the barbecue sauce over the pork and stir to combine.
Serve immediately or keep warm in the slow cooker until ready to serve.
Serve on hamburger buns topped with cole slaw, if desired.
Decades ago, the US made a conscious decision to prioritize global military engagements.
This was done over addressing pressing domestic issues.
Issues like education gaps, gun violence, political corruption, social inequality, drug overdose, deindustrialization, infrastructure challenges, high costs, and an unproductive workforce.
This choice has led to losing the nation’s ability to compete through hard work and tangible achievements internationally.
To prevent China from surpassing the US, the current approach has been focused on imposing sanctions, embargoes, and tariffs, and enacting anti-China legislation or instigating China to invade Taiwan.
This has been crafted by nullifying the One-China policy to stamp the rise of China.
Ah. As Biden has repeatedly expressed his determination to prevent China from overtaking the United States.
He has pledged significant investments to ensure that America maintains its dominance in the race between the two countries.
He has been doing so without even knowing the content of the passed funding bills.
As they are just words without the real capability to implement the intent of them and will not make America Great again.
Our leaders in Washington and the collective west in general are lost in their own sea of arrogance, ignorance and incompetence. They are also certifiably insane. They will escalate the world into oblivion.
JustAMaverick | Feb 8 2023 14:55 utc | 4
Crazy times. A little depressing. Sigh.
Check out the death throes of the United States.
From <redacted> …
Unz can find all the MSM stats he wants and maybe he doesn’t leave home, but Florence and I just lost a third good friend in the last year, all younger than us, all jabbed. That’s statistically abnormal.
Our Indian friend, 42 years old, just dropped dead from a heart attack. Fit, practicing Muslim, father of two children, whom we adopted as honorary niece and nephew starting 22 years ago.
He told me he was going to call me for chat and two weeks later, he’s gone.
Luckily, his wife will have the support of her family in India, but that is no compensation.
Interestingly, on French TV, they recently reported that there is an epidemic of heart attacks in India and they actually suggested it was being caused by the jabs.
-<redacted>
In a conversation with CNN, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan says the company is preparing for possible US sovereign debt default. The financial institution is the second largest bank in the country and is reportedly preparing for the worst regarding Congressional conflict over the nation’s debt ceiling.
Moynihan spoke about the Congressional debate, and specifically how that impacts corporate America. Subsequently, defaulting on the country’s debt remains a very real possibility that entities, like Bank of America, cannot disregard.
In the first few months of the new year, the National debt has reached unprecedented levels. Thus, that development has led to debates on both sides of the political aisle on whether or not the national debt ceiling should be increased before the summer months.
“We have to be prepared for that, not only in this country but in other countries around the world,” Moynihan told CNN. Additionally stating, “You hope it doesn’t happen, but hope is not a strategy – so you prepare for it.”
There is some expectation that President Joe Biden could address the debt ceiling debate during Tuesday’s State of the Union Address. Conversely, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has already expressed a warning over the nation’s debt crisis. Noting the possible default as soon as June, if the ceiling is not raised.
The US government has so over-spent, for so many years, it does not have enough cash on hand to pay its debts AND fund ongoing operations. If the debt ceiling is not raised by Congress, then the government would only have the cash on hand which comes in each month from things like Payroll taxes. That __may__ be enough to keeps some parts of the government operating, but it would not be enough to pay off debt – or even interest on the debt.
The China Communist Party (CCP) has quietly passed its Reserve Military Service Law, which will take effect on 3/1/2023. Anyone who is 18 years or older is obliged to enlist after a national defense mobilization is announced.
The notice, instructs China citizens “After receiving the call-up notice, reservists must report to the designated place at the specified time in accordance with the requirements. After the state issued the mobilization order, the reserve personnel who have not received the call-up notice shall not leave the reserve registration place without the approval of the troops and the military service organs of the reserve registration place; if they have left, they shall return immediately or standby in the same place.”
The above was only just published. I am currently busy but will eventually read it and make up my mind.
Update: 13:50 UTC
I have now read the piece but I am someone in doubt over it. The story that Hersh tells seems incomplete and not researched as deeply as possible. I bet that his sources know more than that.
While the Baltops 22 maneuver already took place in June and July of this year the U.S. Sixth Fleet left the Baltic Sea only a few days ago (in German, my translation):
Big Fleet Group From U.S. Navy Passes [German island passage] FehmanbeltOn Wednesday morning the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge, escorted by the Landing Ships USS Arlington and USS Gunston Hall, was en route towards west. Previously, the ships were part of US units that took part in NATO maneuvers and called at numerous ports in Germany, Scandinavia and the Baltic States.
The “USS Kearsarge”, flagship of the association and largest warship of the US Navy, which was in action in the Baltic Sea in the last 30 years, has 40 helicopters and fighter planes as well as more than 2000 soldiers on board, the escort ships about 1000. For the around 4,000 soldiers are heading back home on the east coast of the US after their six-month deployment.
A significant focus of BALTOPS every year is the demonstration of NATO mine hunting capabilities, and this year the U.S. Navy continues to use the exercise as an opportunity to test emerging technology, U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa Public Affairs said June 14.In support of BALTOPS, U.S. Navy 6th Fleet partnered with U.S. Navy research and warfare centers to bring the latest advancements in unmanned underwater vehicle mine hunting technology to the Baltic Sea to demonstrate the vehicle’s effectiveness in operational scenarios.
Experimentation was conducted off the coast of Bornholm, Denmark, with participants from Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific, Naval Undersea Warfare Center Newport, and Mine Warfare Readiness and Effectiveness Measuring all under the direction of U.S. 6th Fleet Task Force 68.
Off the coast of Bornholm, Denmark, is where the pipelines were hit. Just days ago the USS Kearsarge was in that area:
Back then I presented just the available fact and left the conclusion open for the reader to chose.
But it has since become more and more obvious that the U.S. was responsible for the enormous economic damage to Germany that its action has caused.
The gloating by Sec State Anthony Blinken and his deputy Victoria Nuland is just too too obvious. It is a”tremendous strategic opportunity for the years to come” said Blinken and Nuland, in a Congress hearing, was “very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal.”
Most Germans, if not their pliant government, have drawn their conclusions from that.
This is a pretty-looking dough and a good way to get spinach into the kids. The spinach flavor is very mild and the color is a healthy green. A good pizza for a Christmas party could be made from this green crust with a bright red tomato filling.
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Ingredients
1 cup fresh spinach, leaves lightly steamed
1 cup ricotta cheese
1 egg
4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) olive oil
2 packages dry yeast
2 teaspoons light brown sugar
3/4 cup warm water
Instructions
Dissolve the yeast in the warm water and stir in the light brown sugar. Set the yeast mixture aside for at least 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, put the ricotta cheese and the spinach leaves in a blender and blend at high speed until you have a smooth, bright green mixture.
Sift the flour into a bowl with the salt. Make a depression in the center of the flour and add 3 tablespoons of the oil, the egg, the spinach mixture and the yeast mixture.
Put flour on the kneading board and place the dough mixture on the flour. Knead the mixture for 8 to 10 minutes until the dough is uniformly mixed and elastic. Add flour as you knead if necessary to keep the dough from becoming too sticky.
When the dough is ready, place it in a clean bowl that has been brushed with oil.
Brush the top of the dough with oil and place a clean cloth over the bowl.
Put the bowl in a warm, draft-free place for 1 1/2 hours.
During the final minutes of my radio show last night, I told my audience I wish I didn’t know some of the things I know. Now, one of those things has become public: It was the United States that bombed Russia’s Nord Stream 1 & 2 Pipelines in the Baltic Sea. Norway participated by flying-in a sonar buoy which gave off the Detonation Signal. NATO is an accessory, by willfully using BALTOPS 22 “Exercise” as a cover to plant the bombs. War is now likely.
In an article written by long-time, world-renowned Investigative Journalist, Seymour M. Hersh, the truth has now come out.
First, from Wikipedia:
Seymour Myron “Sy” Hersh (born April 8, 1937) is an 85 year old American investigative journalist, and political writer.
Hersh first gained recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. During the 1970s, Hersh covered the Watergate scandal for The New York Times and revealed the clandestine bombing of Cambodia. In 2004, he reported on the U.S. military’s mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison. He has also won two National Magazine Awards and five George Polk Awards. In 2004, he received the George Orwell Award.
Hersh accused the Obama administration of lying about the events surrounding the death of Osama bin Laden and disputed the claim that the Assad regime used chemical weapons on civilians in the Syrian Civil War. Both assertions have stirred controversy.
In his “substack” web site, published about nine hours ago (about 7:00 AM eastern US time today) Hirsh published a story entitled “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline” with the sub-title being “The New York Times called it a “mystery,” but the United States executed a covert sea operation that was kept secret—until now.” (Direct Link to Story)
It’s a long read, but worth it.
In the story, Hirsh reveals that the Operation was planned for nine months. It was planned in the top floor of the Old Executive Office Building, on the grounds of the White House. The biggest concern: How to leave no evidence tying it to the United States.
The story reports that the explosives were placed during the annual NATO Naval Exercise “Baltic Operations 22” (BALTOPS 22) by US Navy Divers. The NATO exercise was used as a “cover” for the explosives to be planted.
It also reveals that months later, after receiving the “Go” signal from CIA Director Burns, a plane from Norway’s military dropped a special sonar buoy into the Baltic Sea which gave-off the Detonation signal, triggering the explosives and destroying the pipeline.
Ladies and Gentlemen, make no mistake: This was a crime. It was a criminal conspiracy to commit a bombing, and later, the actual commission of that bombing. It seems to me, as a layman, the people who engaged in this are personally guilty of federal Felonies.
The planning for this crime was so thorough, they even chose the use of a specific US Navy undersea dive team which would NOT trigger any reporting to the US Congress about its activities!
Now, I could go paragraph by paragraph to report and analyze Seymour Hersh article, but it is much better if you go read it yourselves.
Very long story short: The President of the United States ordered his staff to come up with a way to “deal with” the Nord Stream Pipeline. They did. It got blown up. This was a crime. It is also, an Act of War against Russia.
I suspect the Russians are absorbing and analyzing Hersh’s article. As Russians are well known to do, they will think about this for a good while. Then, they will take well-thought-out and thought-through action.
We have committed an Act of War. Russia now has a Casus Belli – a cause for just war.
I suspect that Russia may publicly demand President Biden be Impeached and criminally prosecuted, along with the other Conspirators. I also suspect that Russia may add, if Biden is not impeached and prosecuted, and the Conspirators not prosecuted, then it will be war.
Knowing that the US Government will never agree to impeach its apparently now-criminal President, nor hold accountable the other Conspirators, I also suspect war is coming — a lot faster than any of us think, and a lot worse than any of us know.
UPDATE:
The Biden regime said an article by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh claiming the United States was behind the explosions of the Nord Stream gas pipelines was “utterly false and complete fiction.”
“This is utterly false and complete fiction,” said Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council.
Spokespeople for the CIA and State Department said the same thing, according to Reuters.
US issues Red Alert on China as Biden launches warships
At this point, insanity is beyond belief, and stupidity has consequences!
The military didn’t clap. That says it all.
Each day is more shocking than the last.
I will strongly suggest to change our leadership quickly before we sink.
We sinkin
To late
too late , point of no return has been reached, asta la vista baby
People believe China will have a hard time invading Taiwan because there is a 100 mile stretch of water between China and Taiwan, but the US will have no issue with the thousands of miles required to move weapons and ships to the China theatre. LOL.
Jerry Finds Out Elaine Faked It
Celebrities Recreated As If They Were In Classical Paintings By Kyès
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Art from the past comes back into our lives once again. The internet fell in love with classical paintings that were turned into memes, therefore, we are sure you will be interested to see what this artist did.
Kyès (previously featured) is an expert in using the style of French 17th-18th century paintings to reimagine what today’s celebrities would look like if they lived back in the day. His first works portrayed French rappers, but later on, he included other celebrities. These paintings are made digitally using computer programs, but the results seem to look just like real paintings from the past.
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Kyès’ first shared digital painting was of Charles Baudelaire, a French poet, portrayed as a joker. The artist seems to give attention to French artists and celebrities first, but over time has incorporated other well-known people such as Rihanna, Beyonce, Kanye West, and others as well.
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Kyès uses Photoshop to recreate old classical paintings into ones with celebrities that are famous today. Such an approach makes us look up original paintings that let us revive our memories of old art. We noticed that Kyès usually uses paintings from the 16th to 18th century as a base. The art style varies from the High Renaissance to Rococo and Neoclassicism.
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Most Renaissance artwork is thought to be made between 1300 and 1600. After that, all the art is classified as High Renaissance. The difference between these two is that while earlier Renaissance artists would emphasize a work’s perspective or technical aspects, High Renaissance artists were willing to forego technical principles to create a more beautiful, harmonious whole.
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George Wants To Get Fixed Up With Marisa Tomei
BREAKING NEWS: Video Proof Ukraine Using Chemical Weapons Against Russian Troops
WARNING. GRAPHIC VIDEO BELOW. VIEWER DISCRETION STRONGLY ADVISED. Video has been put out by the Ukrainian Armed Forces laughing about their use of Chemical Weapons to kill Russian Troops. The video, complete with happy, carnival-type music, appears below.
The video, shot from the drone which drops the chemical weapon, shows two separate cartridges being dropped on Russian troops who have taken cover in a small creek or stream.
The first cartridge has limited effect. The second cartridge, with a blue end cover, is utterly horrifying.
The soldiers go into spasms and convulsions, with balled-fists, and flailing legs.
As the chemicals saturate them, the soldiers clearly cannot control their body movement, and end-up failing to keep their heads above water, presumably because they are neurologically impaired from the attack, and their brain cannot think to keep their heads out of the water. Both soldiers die within minutes.
The Geneva Protocol
The 1925 Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare, commonly known as the 1925 Geneva Protocol, bans the use of chemical and bacteriological (biological) weapons in war.
Based upon this video, it appears Ukraine is now using such banned weapons, and boasting about what they’re doing by releasing videos with happy music.
This is the single most disgusting display of inhuman cruelty I have so far seen from the battlefields of Ukraine.
WARNING: This video is extremely graphic. Viewer discretion is advised.
Combine yogurt and 1 cup flour in the bowl of an electric stand mixer. Mix until combined, scraping down the bowl as necessary until combined.
Knead on medium high for 5 minutes.
Slowly add additional flour as necessary to help dough come together. Depending on how thick your yogurt is, you may need up to an extra 1/2 cup of flour.
Dust clean counter top with flour and remove dough from bowl. Knead a few turns until dough is tacky, but not sticky. Roll out and add toppings as desired.
Bake in a preheated 450 degrees F oven for 10-12 minutes.
Yield: 2 medium pizza crusts or one extra large pizza crust
George Dates A Convict | The Little Jerry | Seinfeld
China Rejects “Shoot First, Talk Later” Attitude
Here is demonstration of typically childish-arrogant behavior of the U.S. government towards foreign countries.
The Pentagon said on Tuesday that China had rejected a request from Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III to speak with his Chinese counterpart on Saturday soon after an American fighter jet shot down a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina.
That statement by the Pentagon immediately raises a question. Why hadn’t the U.S. defense secretary called the Chinese defense minister before shooting down the Chinese weather ballon?
The U.S. apparently detected the balloon on January 29 when it was over the Aleutian Islands. Austin could have called his Chinese counterpart anytime in the seven days between that detection and the time the decision was taken to shot it down:
“We believe in the importance of maintaining open lines of communication between the United States and the P.R.C. in order to responsibly manage the relationship,” Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said in an emailed statement, referring to the People’s Republic of China. “Lines between our militaries are particularly important in moments like this.”It was not to be. “Unfortunately,” General Ryder said, “the P.R.C. has declined our request” to arrange a call with Wei Fenghe, the Chinese defense minister.
The purpose of high level lines of communication between military and political leaders is to prevent that crises happen or, if one has happen incidentally, to prevent their escalation.
Before the shot down the Chinese defense minister Wei Fenghe likely would have taken that call. But the U.S. decided to shoot first and to talk later. That was and is inappropriate.
On January 29 the Chinese weather balloon was drifting westward over Alaska and Canada. There was no expectation that it would cross into the United States. But an unusual low pressure formation over east Canada eventually caused that. Low pressure areas in the northern hemisphere turn counter-clockwise. High pressure areas turn clockwise. The unusually strong low pressure zone over east Canada pushed arctic air masses south through Canada and then south west to west to New England. This phenomenon, on February 1 and 2, caused a cold snap in east Canada and the northeast of the U.S.. But the wind also caused the 200 feet high balloon to turn south.
Picture the coldest Canadian night imaginable. What did you think of it? Clear skies? Calm winds? A deep snowpack? This cold snap had none of these ingredients align because this type of cold is different. Meet advection cold.The cold air wasn’t developed on location. The imported cold was fed south by a strong low and the trajectory of the polar vortex. The polar vortex was swirling near Hudson Bay and was slingshotted south by favourable atmospheric dynamics.
The cold air wrapped around a developing low, lifting across Labrador. Not just any cold air, either — the stratospheric polar vortex mixed down in what’s known as a tropopause fold and occurs near the core of a jet stream.
A wind and pressure map from February 3 shows the then already waning low pressure area in the upper right. The red arrow shows the balloon’s course.
bal5
biggerBoth the cold snap and the balloon’s turn were surprising. The jet stream would usually have prevent both from happening. But this time the low pressure area proved to be stronger if only for a short moment. It is the reason why the balloon ended up crossing the U.S.
Ed Russo @EdRussoWX – 11:37 UTC · Feb 4, 2023Replying to @soonersfan2022
The balloon is flying at the height of the jet stream. The jet stream winds will steer the balloon… even a simple rudder won’t be a match for the 200+ mph upper level winds.
By no means could China have planned the balloon’s course. Any allegations that the balloon was being ‘steered’ and intentionally crossed U.S. missile fields and military bases to ‘spy’ on those are thereby bogus. China has some 300 satellites in the earth’s orbit. It does not need balloons to take aerial pictures of static missile silos in the mid-west U.S.
China has insisted that the electronics-laden machine was simply a weather balloon that had drifted off course.
The balloon debris has not been recovered yet. Based on what fact is the NYT then claiming that it the balloon was an ‘electronics-laden machine’?
China is not happy that the Biden administration is hyperventilating over the incident. But it will keep its calm:
Different political forces within the US, including President Joe Biden and the Republican Party, are still hyping up the incident of a Chinese civilian unmanned airship in the US media in order to gain political interests ahead of the annual State of the Union address, rather than making efforts to cool down the matter.Chinese experts said on Tuesday that it shows that the chaotic, messy and sick political situation in Washington means that China-US tensions are unlikely to ease in the near future. It also proves that the Biden administration is incapable of setting so-called guardrails for bilateral ties under the complex situation within the US.
China will keep calm and observe what the US does next, and whether Biden creates conditions for engagement or Washington allows bilateral ties to keep worsening, China is ready to handle any possible moves by the US, experts noted.
Austin’s attempts to call his Chinese counterpart AFTER the shit happened is seen as an attempt to additionally insult the Chinese government.
Austin will not be given a chance to do that.
Posted by b on February 8, 2023 at 14:34 UTC | Permalink
Banks admit the COLLAPSE is coming and they don’t want YOU to know about it
This article provides a free PDF of the amazing work titled “Forbidden Archaeology” for the MM readership. It is an amazing work that documents OOPARTS that prove the the statist view of what history is, and mankind are is absolutely wrong.
It’s an AMAZING work. And the book is the size of a thick table dictionary. Seriously.
It’s not the kind of tome that you would sit down and read page by page. It tends to be on the dry side. However, just parsing and going though it you will be amazed at the careful documentation of proof of humans on this earth long, long before we were supposed to evolve.
It’s a truly amazing work. And the OOPART section is stunning in it’s volume and background.
In 1993, Cremo and Richard Thompson published Forbidden Archaeology (FA), a voluminous exposé of “anomalous archaeological artifacts” that suggested modern people possibly lived on earth almost as long as the world existed, some 4.3 billion years ago.
Summary
Forbidden Archeology is a work that questions current beliefs about human evolution. Part I of Forbidden Archeology (which covers 458 pages) is based on what the authors call anomalous evidence and
"provides a well documented compendium of reports absent from many current references and not otherwise easily obtainable."
The authors discuss how scientific evidence has been
"systematically suppressed, ignored, or forgotten...not through a conspiracy organized to deceive the public, but through an ongoing social process of knowledge filtration that appears quite innocuous, but has a substantial cumulative effect."
Chapter One discusses information that has been overlooked, suppressed, or forgotten even though a lot of the evidence was discovered immediately after Darwin published The Origin of the Species. This chapter explains the basics about archeology, such as the geological timetable and the incompleteness of the fossil record.
The authors’ thesis is based on the premise that anomalous finds should be studied and possibly accepted along with currently accepted evidence. Perhaps as is the case with other types of controversial information,
"One prominent feature in the treatment of anomalous evidence is what we could call the double standard... evidence agreeing with a prevailing theory tends to be treated very leniently...In contrast, evidence that goes against an accepted theory tends to be subjected to intense critical scrutiny, and it is expected to meet very high standards of proof."
There is a section in Chapter One titled The Phenomenon Of Suppression which perfectly describes what abductees or experiencers and those involved with experiencer research are faced with.
"...there are some observations that so violently contradict accepted theories that they are never accepted by any scientists. These tend to be reported by scientifically uneducated people in popular books, magazines, and newspapers."
Chapter Two covers detailed descriptions of reports involving intentionally cut and broken bones of animals. In other words, bones that have been altered by man. Some of this evidence points toward a theory that there was a human presence in the Americas far earlier than was originally believed, which is thought to be between 12 thousand and 25 thousand years ago. However, many serious scientists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries reported that marks on bones as old as 25 million years old were indicative of human work.
This chapter illustrates that when ‘unbelievable‘ information arises and people are convinced that it cannot exist, the evidence pointing to such conclusions is overlooked or ignored by the scientific community.
Chapters Three, Four and Five continue with extremely detailed studies of anomalous old stone tools and industries. Chapter Six closes out the first section of Forbidden Archeology with a discussion of anomalous human skeletal remains. In their conclusion of Part I, the authors write:
"…the evidence suggests the existence of anatomically modern humans as far back as the early Tertiary - the first period of the Cenozoic era; 65¬37 million years ago."
A partial review of this anomalous evidence is listed at the end of this report.
Part Two of Forbidden Archeology involves discussions of ‘accepted evidence.’ Beginning with a review and discussions of Java Man, and continuing with The Piltdown Case, and Peking Man, which is very interesting. In addition, a highly recommended read is Chapter Nine, Peking Man and Other Finds in China.
The authors write in detail about how the Rockefeller Foundation funded many of the digs in Peking (Beijing). From page 534:
"It thus becomes clear that at the same time the Rockefeller Foundation was channeling funds into human evolution research in China, it was in the process of developing an elaborate plan to fund biological research with a view to developing methods to effectively control human behavior. [Canadian physician Davidson] Black's research into Peking man must be seen within this context in order to be properly understood."
From pages 537 and 538, in reference to a new beginning of philanthropy,
"All programs in various Rockefeller charities 'relating to the advance of human knowledge' were shifted to the Rockefeller Foundation, which was organized into five divisions. Each division was run by a highly competent academic and technical staff who advised the trusties of the Foundation where to give their money. It was not to be five programs each represented by a division of the Foundation; it was to be essentially one program, directed to the general problem of human behavior, with the aim of control through understanding…the Foundation also saw itself engaged in a kind of thought control. Fosdick (1952, pg.143) said: 'The possession of funds carries with it power to establish trends and styles of intellectual endeavor.' "
In a discussion about Beijing man, when actual physical evidence is not available for study, some reports are believed while others are dismissed:
"[The authors] propose that reports about evidence conforming to the standard view of human evolution generally receive greater credibility than reports about non-conforming evidence. Thus deeply-held beliefs, rather than purely objective standards, may become the determining factor in the acceptance and rejection of reports about controversial evidence."
Bigfoot
Chapter Ten is titled Living Ape Men? This chapter reviews and discusses many descriptions of what is sometimes referred to in the Pacific Northwest as “Bigfoot.” The term used by the authors most often is “wild men.” This chapter is highly recommended. It increased my knowledge and awareness about the prevalence of reports concerning this type of creature or being.
Indeed, after pages and pages of descriptions and discussions of evidence, the authors write,
"Despite all the evidence we have presented, most recognized authorities in anthropology and zoology decline to discuss the existence of wild men. If they mention wild men at all, they rarely present the really strong evidence for their existence, focusing instead on the report least likely to challenge their disbelief."
Later in the book during another discussion about skeletal remains discovered in Africa the authors write [pg. 649]:
"Most of the discoveries scientists have used to build up their picture of human evolution are similarly ambiguous, their significance obscured by professional rivalries and imperfect investigative methods."
A Sample of Anomalous Evidence
From pages 795-814 Appendix 2, which is titled Evidence for Advanced Culture In Distant Ages. A sample of anomalous evidence follows:
"Raised letter-like shapes found inside a block of marble from a quarry near Philadelphia, PA. The block of marble came from a depth of 60-70 feet, which suggests the letters were made from intelligent humans from the distant past."
"A metallic bell-shaped vessel that was blown out of pudding stone now called the Roxbury conglomerate, is over 600 million years old...by current standards, life was just beginning to form on this planet...but this vessel indicates the presence of artistic metal workers in North America over 600 million years before Leif Erikson."
"A chalk ball was found...and based on its stratigraphic position, it can be assigned a date of 45-55 million years ago."
The appendix has a long list of other anomalous evidence, but since I’ve already over-quoted from this text, I will leave the remainder of the secrets to be discovered by the reader.
The Book
Do you want more?
I have more posts like this somewhere in my OOPART Index here…
This article discusses the idea that ancient megalithic locations and sites have a non-physical component; a designed energy field for one reason or the other. And it’s an interesting idea and concept. After all, it shakes the entire foundation of the idea of “cave men” being dumb, brute savages. Which is the Newtonian, and Victorian narrative. And instead gives us a picture of an astonishing understanding of things that are far in advance of what their physical accomplishments might say otherwise.
But before we jump into the meat of this article, let’s talk a little about MM here. Because [1] it’s what I want to talk about, and [2] it affects the writing of this article. As this article will be the first article written on this new computer.
I got a new computer! Woo Woo!
Yeah. I have been dealing with a five year old ASUS that ran on Windows 8. It was a budget model, on sale when I bought it. But it met my needs. But then Windows automatically installed Windows 10 on it. And then wouldn’t stop. No matter what switches and commands that I specified.
Windows 10 kept on adding bloatware, and hogging up more and more of my computer resources until it reached a point of saturation. I simply could not run a 4GB ram computer with an OS that required 4 GB just to operate. Jeeze!
Indeed, it was a pain in the ass. Not to mention the periodic (every two day) updates, and so forth.
My solution was to run an Unix based system, and I was all “gung-ho” to do so too. However, the wife ordered me to get a new computer. And guys, you know who is the boss. Right? And so I did.
And I started a looking.
I went into the local stores and found off the shelf computers from 2,000 RMB to 8,000 RMB. (Roughly $350 USD to $1230 USD.) I was just about ready to snag one when I realized that everything was in Chinese, and while I can get by on Chinese, I wanted a wholly English language system. It’s a personal preference, don’t you know.
Enter Amazon
So I figured that I would buy a wholly American computer (made in China obviously) but with American software, American duties, American taxation, and American systems including American spyware.
So I went to the website Amazon.com. I hear that it is a pretty popular website in the States today, and well known. But I cannot verify that. What I can verify is that I went there and found many computers that met my needs, but none were actually available. They were on “waiting lists”. Jeeze!
Prices appeared (in the basic capability range) to be in the $1500 to $2300 USD arena with all the taxes and duties taken into account.
Enter an IT professional
Recognizing my consternation, my wife laid down the law and told me what to do.
So we contacted my IT guy (an employee of mine) and he made up a custom computer laptop for me. He used Windows 10 as that is what I am used to, but used a Chinese modified version. (A scalpel was taken to the NSA backdoors and reporting systems, as well as updates. It’s a “safe” and inert version for Chinese users.) Granted, it’s still bloatware, and a pain in the ass sometimes, but it gets me where I want to go. And on this newer and faster system, it’s like a hot knife through butter.
My old computer had 2 GB ram. Windows 10 needs 4 GB ram just to operate. This new joy used 32 GB ram and the difference is astounding.
My old PC had 100GB storage in SSD HD. And I was told that “everyone” used cloud storage “these days”.
Bullshit.
I couldn’t get anything done without contortions and manipulations.
My new PC has an internal 500GB SSD storage and an outside HD of 2TB SSD storage. Holly Hell!
Connection speeds are off the charts. Typing is easy as all get out, and the graphics are astounding. This system has amazing graphics. Maybe I’ll install a few simulators that I have been Jonesing about. Like the X-Plane 11.
X-Plane 11
Or Flyinside…
Flyinside
Anyways, my IT guy took an off the shelf Shaomi, modified it with Samsung memory and local Chinese graphics cards. The price is much cheaper than what you would get in the ‘States. For certain and meets my needs.
BTW, I have received tremendous support from MM readers who have substantial skill in IT matters. They helped me keep typing while my old computer burped and sighed as it got older.
Now you would think that I wouldn't need this help as I had an IT guy nearby. But I didn't. I have a periodic IT guy that jets around all over Asia, and helps me remotely as time permits. He made up this computer remotely to my specifications and then shipped it to me via the mail.
People! You make do with what is available to you. And never forget the network of friends that you have.
Here a BIG call out to those who have helped me in the past, and the movies, and the step by step instructions that they sent me. It keep MM alive. Big THANK YOU!
I do not play games that often
I do love a good game, and the computer games are awesome, but this is a work computer. Not a gaming computer. It has a lighted keyboard, and the ram, but not the graphics card need to run the modern intensity games. But this computer can run most of the conventional games of interest, and that’s good enough for me.
Though X-plane 11 does look awfully tasty…
X-Plane 11.
My biggest sigh of relief is that the MS Windows will not be trying to jam a watermelon down into a pin hole any longer. I can actually get some work down without MS shutting down the system for lack of resources every forty minutes or so.
Harmony OS
Oh, and Harmony OS is not yet ready for PC operation. Which is a great disappointment to me. But you deal with what you are familiar with and what you work with. And that is that.
Harmony OS
Did I cop out?
Nope. If you need to dig a ditch you grab what ever shovel is available and you use it. If you have a choice, you use the best one available to you.
I wish that I could tell you that I could walk into a nearby store with a Harmony OS or UNIX computer off the shelf with the latest and greatest hardware, but that is not possible at this time. And so you make do with what you have available to you.
All in all…
All in all, a computer is just a tool. It’s like a car, a blender, a lawnmower or a razor. You use it as you see fit and if you use it often enough, you will want to use the best quality tool available and treat it with care and dignity.
And now to the article…
Is there MORE to the eye when you look at these 10,000 year old piles of rock and stone? Are there magnetic alignments, electrical currents, eddy currents and forces that geographically exist, but is not discernible to those without the necessary equipment?
And if so…
Then 10,000 years ago either
Ancient humans had the ability to naturally sense these magnetic or electromagnetic lines of force.
Or,
They had equipment that could.
They’re Alive! Megalithic Sites Are More than Just Stone
It doesn’t take much to stimulate the human body’s electro-magnetic circuitry, in fact a small change in the local environment is enough to create a change in awareness.
People who visit ancient temples and megalithic sites often describe such a sensation. The standard explanation is that such feelings are nothing more than a ‘wow’ factor: the result of visual stimuli from the overwhelming impression generated by megalithic constructions such as stone circles, ancient temples and pyramids.
But the cumulative evidence proves otherwise: that megaliths and other ancient sacred places are actually attracting, storing, even generating their own energy field, creating the kind of environment where one can enter an altered state of consciousness.
Generating Energy Fields
In 1983 a comprehensive study was undertaken by engineer Charles Brooker to locate magnetism in sacred sites. The test subject was the Rollright stone circle in England. A magnetometer survey of the site revealed how a band of magnetic force is attracted into the stone circle through a narrow gap of stones that act as the entrance. The band then spirals towards the center of the circle as though descending down a rabbit hole.
Two of the circle’s western stones were also found to pulsate with concentric rings of alternating current, resembling ripples in a pond.
Magnetomer survey image of the Rollright Stones. Adapted from Charles Brooker. Magnetism and Standing Stones, New Scientist, January 13, 1983.
The analysis led Brooker to state how,
“the average intensity of the [geomagnetic] field within the circle was significantly lower than that measured outside, as if the stones acted as a shield.”
Such discoveries help us decipher what the ancients were up to when they built megalithic structures. At the Temple of Edfu in Egypt there is a wall featuring what amounts to a recipe for establishing a space that differs energetically from its surrounding landscape — a temple. The instructions describe how certain creator gods first established a mound and ‘pierced a snake’ to the spot, whereupon a special force of nature impregnated the mound, which led to the construction of the physical temple.
The symbol of the serpent has always been a culturally shared metaphor of the earth’s meandering lines of force, what scientists refer to as telluric currents.
Egyptian goddess harnessing the serpent energy.
Controlling the Laws of Nature
It seems ancient architects had a fine degree of control of the laws of nature, because a recent study of energy fields in and around Avebury, the world’s largest stone circle, shows how its megaliths are designed to attract a ground current into the site.
Electrodes planted at Avebury reveal how its circular ditch breaks the transmission of telluric ground current and conducts electricity into the ditch, in effect concentrating energy and releasing it at the entrance to the site, sometimes at double the rate of the surrounding land.
Magnetic readings at Avebury die away at night to a far greater level than can be accounted for under natural circumstances. They charge back at sunrise, with the ground telluric current from the surrounding land attracted to the henge just as magnetic fluctuations of the site reach their maximum.
Studies conducted by the late physicist John Burke also discovered how the stones of Avebury are deliberately placed and aligned so as to focus electro-magnetic currents to flow in a premeditated direction using an identical principle to modern atomic particle colliders, in which airborne ions are steered in one direction.
Avebury stone circle. Image by Freddy Silva.
The effect of sacred sites behaving like concentrators of electromagnetic energy is enhanced by the choice of stone. Often moved across enormous distance, the stone used in megalithic sites contains substantial amounts of magnetite. The combination makes temples behave like weak, albeit huge, magnets.
Spiritual Technology
This has a profound influence on the human body, particularly the dissolved iron that flows in blood vessels, not to mention the millions of particles of magnetite floating inside the skull, and the pineal gland, which itself is highly sensitive to geomagnetic fields, and whose stimulation begins the production of chemicals such as pinolene and serotonin, which in turn leads to the creation of the hallucinogen DMT. In an environment where geomagnetic field intensity is decreased, people are known to experience psychic and shamanic states.
An exhaustive investigation into the Carnac region of France, where some 80,000 megaliths are concentrated, reveals a similar spiritual technology at work. At first the leading researcher, electrical engineer Pierre Mereux, was skeptical that megalithic sites possessed any special powers.
Mereux’s study of Carnac shows how its dolmens amplify and release telluric energy throughout the day, with the strongest readings occurring at dawn. The voltage and magnetic variations are related, and follow a phenomenon known as electric induction . According to Mereux,
“The dolmen behaves as a coil or solenoid, in which currents are induced, provoked by the variations, weaker or stronger, of the surrounding magnetic field. But these phenomena are not produced with any intensity unless the dolmen is constructed with crystalline rocks rich in quartz, such as granite.”
His readings of menhirs reveal an energy that pulsates at regular intervals at the base, positively-and negatively-charged, up to thirty-six feet from these upright monoliths, some of which still show carvings of serpents.
Extreme pulsations recycle approximately every 70 minutes, showing that the menhirs charge and discharge regularly.
Mereux also noticed how the voltage of standing stones in the Grand Ménec alignment diminished the farther away they lay from the stone circle, which itself behaved as a kind of condenser or concentrator of energy.
Carnac menhir caption: One of the 80,000 menhirs in the Carnac region. Image by Freddy Silva.
The composition of the stones and their ability to conduct energy was not lost on Mereux and others. Being very high in quartz, the specially chosen rocks are piezoelectric, which is to say they generate electricity when compressed or subjected to vibrations.
The megaliths of Carnac, positioned as they are upon thirty-one fractures of the most active earthquake zone in France, are in a constant state of vibration, making the stones electromagnetically active.
It demonstrates that the menhirs were not planted on this location by chance, particularly as they were transported from 60 miles (97 km) away, because their presence and orientation is in direct relationship to terrestrial magnetism.
Sacred Sites and Magnetic Portals
Ancient Mysteries traditions around the world share one peculiar aspect: they maintain how certain places on the face of the Earth possess a higher concentration of power than others.
These sites, named “spots of the fawn” by the Hopi, eventually became the foundation for many sacred sites and temple structures we see today. What is interesting is that each culture maintains that these special places are connected with the heavens by a hollow tube or reed, and by this umbilical connection the soul is capable of engaging with the Otherworld during ritual. However, it also allows a conduit for the spirit world to enter this physical domain.
In 2008 NASA may have unwittingly proved this observation to be true when it published details of an investigation into FTEs, or flux transfer events, in which this organization describes how the Earth is linked to the Sun by a network of magnetic portals which open every eight minutes.
Such discoveries help to validate, in the scientific eye, the long-held belief by sensitives and dowsers since the recording of history that megalithic sites and ancient temples are places set aside from the normal world, where a person can connect with locations far beyond this planetary sphere.
Certainly the ancient Egyptian priests regarded the temple as far more than a conglomerate of dead stones. Every dawn they awakened each room with orations, treating the temple as a living organism that sleeps at night and awakens at dawn.
Near Copper Harbor, Michigan, USA, at the northern tip of the Keewenaw Peninsula, a large and long protrusion of rock emerges far up the hillside in deep forest.
Many petroglyphs cover this rock. It sits on the ancient shoreline of Lake Duluth. One figure is a large boat rigged with a square sail. Most viewers who trek that far into the forest proclaim it a Viking boat. Other carvings on this stone called ‘Picture Rock’ have recently been defaced as the location becomes well known and the public gains greater access.
A dolmen, a large cap stone supported by three shim stones holding it aloft, is located on the Kelso River out of Sawbill Landing, Minnesota, within the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA) in a national forest. Canada considers these to be lithic works created by the Neolithic cultures long before recorded history. Many others have been found on this continent and around the world, suggesting they are guideposts for ancient man.
lithic
By definition, Lithic means “of the nature of or relating to stone.” Strong and formidable, stone has laid the foundation for infrastructure.
In ancient times, water levels were higher from melting glaciers. The surface of the earth was still pressed down from the Ice Ages and had not begun rebounding with the removal of all that ice.
If ancient boats did traverse the Laurentian Divide (a raised area across North America dividing the direction of water flow) between the watersheds, this spot is a likely possibility. Several times I have trekked to Magnetic Rock on the border trail (prominent on the north side atop the Laurentian Divide) between Magnetic Lake and the Gunflint Trail. It was only after the Ham Lake forest fire in 2007 that the rock ‘reappeared’.
b-stone.
In an article by Wakefield and de Jong on megaliths in the Orkney Islands of Scotland, a standing menhir closely resembles the rock in Minnesota.
Dr. de Jong’s interpretation was sailing data is encrypted in the Orkney stone, explaining the unique shape and lines of the stone on our northern border.
The stone I was sitting on in photo below is possibly a shim placed to hold the stone erect. The rock was raised, by persons unknown, to mark a water passage through the Laurentian Divide. At that date, higher water levels would have created a channel. The menhir sits on the highest elevation, according to USGS maps. The swampy valley below is the headwaters of the Cross River.
Author rests upon may have been a shim placed to hold the standing stone erect.
If this area was used by man in the distant past, supporting evidence was crucial. Further exploration produced indications of the presence of prehistoric man.
Magnetic Lake, Superior National Forest, Minnesota, and surrounds.
Magnetic Rock is the same high iron content igneous rock that makes up the Laurentian Divide. A waterhole near the Gunflint Trail attracted our attention due to the right angles and cut rocks surrounding it. Sitting next to the watercourse was a stone cube. Two other cubes were subsequently located, the smallest on the heights east of the river.
Cubed rocks.
The rock did fracture at right angles.
The lower right image might have been a demonstration of an ancient mining technique, wherein intense fire is doused with water to fracture the rock. Today First Nation, or Native American peoples pour boiling water, during winter, into cracks in the Souix Quartzite to freeze and break apart the rocks, to aid mining of Catlinite, a reddish-brown rock in Pipestone, Minnesota.
On the ridge overlooking this area, large boulders were placed exactly on the top edge of the slope and prepared with trigger stones to be rolled down the hill. They dot the cliff line, and one is shown in detail. They are a fixed defense and would require more than one person to function. The purpose for these rocks is not known, but they are obvious in intent and lethal in scale. The border trail heads north from here along the ridge of a cliff that leads to Magnetic Rock .
On the west edge of this cliff, on a short ledge four feet below the summit, was a cache.
West Edge
It is well designed and skillfully made.
The right image shows where the cap stone was taken from the cliff, then moved horizontally along the ledge through human effort. While the chamber is empty today, detritus has accumulated on the ledge, awaiting qualified investigation.
Across flowing water to the east, on a ledge below steep cliffs, sits a large boulder calling attention to itself by shape and position in the landscape.
Kerri Jones of Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, took a telephoto image.
This rock, upon closer examination by Diane Bruns, showed chisel marks and shaping.
While not a classic dolmen, I believe this qualifies as a piece of Neolithic rock art.
The placement, shape, and expression speak too much of the monuments left by man in this time, contemporary with Stonehenge in Britain and the pyramids of Egypt.
An amethyst deposit was removed directly beside the menhir and a “sun sign” remains. The rock is igneous, so this is not a fossil. Kasey Jones, pointing, said this was found close to magnetic rock. Note the sun sign on the Kelso Dolmen, so-named for the Keslo River (below, hand calling attention to the symbol). Since this photo was taken, the standing stone has fractured due to natural forces and a large slab has calved off the side, now covering this important piece of evidence of man’s activity. I fear to never set eyes on it in the future.
This photo by TJB Archaeological Associates-Thunder Bay, ON.
Kelso dolmen and Magnetic Rock have been shown over the internet recently on YouTube, gaining awareness.
The climb from the Gunflint Trail to Magnetic Rock was improved last year by the Minnesota Conservation Corp.
It is important to evaluate and preserve these unique sites for posterity. While the Ham Lake forest fire brought this menhir back out of the forest, the heat of the fire and exposure to elements has taken a toll.
This unique spot, a transit point between watersheds, may have been used to access the rich copper deposits of Isle Royale and the Keewenaw Peninsula. Four thousand years ago higher water levels and a temperate arctic may have brought conditions allowing this.
A demand for copper clearly existed. Several locations around the prehistoric world were known for stepping up to metallurgy.
It is obvious there must have been a copper period before the Bronze Age could exist. A defining aspect of human culture is trade, and the success of many early groups was rated by the distance their resources were distributed, or the cultural practices they followed.
Float copper would have been available for easy transportation and man has always practiced war and trade, both being methods for transferring wealth.
Our technology offers new data and insights into cultures invisible to written history. Questioning and studying the aquaculture of Machu Picchu is astounding urban designers today. It is only in the last century we understand what the stone masons were doing building the Greek Parthenon.
There are levels of sophistication we are not aware of at this time. These odd spots in the forest must be protected, and require qualified examination and evaluation with an open mind. New paradigms are arising in understanding the activities of Neolithic man.
Some Conclusions
Well, let me suggest some thoughts.
Ancient man at 10,000 years ago had understanding and abilities regarding the ability to sense non-physical actions, and energy better than what we modern humans have.
The mining of metals, notably copper occurred during this time with implies the utilization of metal tools.
How the ancient peoples used their skills to both sense these fields, and fashion metals tools indicates early civilizations of a far greater capability and extraordinary utility than what has been assigned to them.
I like to believe that by studying their actual abilities at this time, we should be able to decipher more about who they were and what their societies were at that remote time in the past.
And now it’s time to go and eat…
Some of my thoughts on food (while I am at it). And why not? Seriously. Why not? When I go on adventures, meet attractive and interesting people, women or animals, or just enjoy a beautiful day, I think about food.
Like a nice steak. Thick, heavy with nice juices.
Some of the best food porn used to be found on Tumblr before it was “perfected” by Yahoo into a sterile corporate money-making platform, instead of a refuge for amateurs and artists.
I must tell you that they make real delicious perfects steaks in two places on this planet. The places are Brazil and Zambia. And you have no idea how well taken cared for you are and with delicious thick juicy steaks in the lands of Zambia and Brazil.
Typical Lusaka, Zambia steak.. Eggs, ham, sausages, french fries, mushrooms, fried tomatoes and icy cold beer. My goodness!
Typical Lusaka, Zambia steak.
Now, for my comment of the day.
Instead of buying five "Fast Food" package meals for lunch all week, how about bagging it with some home made soups and sandwiches, and then spend Friday night eating a delicious steak like the one pictured above. The same amount of money will be used, it's just that the quality of what you will eat will change substantially.
But that’s just my opinion.
My belief is that you move away from five “fast food” fill-up dash-and-burp meals, and replace them with home-made fresh simple but filling meals. Then spend the savings on a deluxe special meal at the end of the week. Depending on your situation and the budget you can decide on restaurants or on cooking at home.
Oh, and don’t forget your friends, and your little guys. It’s a time to go out and celebrate just for the heck of it. You DO NOT NEED an excuse. You just make some phone calls and tell those folk to show up.
If you all are poor…
…make it “pot luck” and everyone brings a home-made dish. Just organize it. Suzy and Jake brings a salad. Tom and Roy bring a bacon / cauliflower dish. Daniel brings some rolls, breads. James brings a case of beer. Tommy brings some potato chips. Etc. Etc. Etc.
What are you waiting for?
An invitation?
And while I am at it, here’s a Zambian Africa version of steak and mushroom pizza. I tell you what, you won’t find such a concentration of mushrooms and steak on a pizza anywhere else. You just won’t.
Zambian steak and mushroom pizza.
Maybe you can make home-made steak and mushroom pizzas as the theme. Provide lots and lots of beverages, and just invite friends to come over, eat their fill, drink and chat with you. I’ll tell you that if one of my friends told me that they are experimenting making steak pizzas and wants me to come over, smunch, jam (with some music) and watch a movie later on, I’d be the first one at their door-step.
What will it do?
Nothing obviously. Stop thinking in terms of “profit motives”. Instead of thinking about changing your lifestyle into something better. Making it a more adventuresome and exciting fun life. A life, mind you, that you share with others.
But, you do know, that it will set things in motion that will manifest later on. Just do it. Trust in the wisdom of MM.
Now…
Talking about themes…
You know, if I lived in the UK, I would take this moment to go visit some of these most interesting megalithic sites that all throughout the region. Maybe not the most famous ones, but the “out of the way” places. Then take some pictures, get a “feeling” for the area. Who knows, maybe I could experience some feelings of the Leigh Lines, or whatever they are called.
Then…
Check out the local pub(s). Try the local meal specialties (if any). Chat it up with the old bar flies there, the townies, and all the rest, and maybe make some friends. I’d make a day of it. But that’s just me.
Fine delicious pub food.
Of course, for me, a beef pie would be awesome. Just awesome, while everyone else might yawn and look the other way. As if (to say) “tourist”.
But really, there’s so much to see and explore in this world.
I well remember a fine meat pie lady who well investigated a OOPART in the UK. Such an adventure, and even though no direct discoveries occurred, the day trip was a wonderful adventure with many, many good times. Memories. Companionship.
Oh, and she did discover a curious abandoned construction that somehow ended right on top of what used to be the ruins. What a coincidence.
And you all know about coincidences, eh?
Anyways, the fact that you go out of your house, and you go forth and explore, and that you go and make friends. Oh, Lordy! It’s so awesome!
If I was in Indiana, Pennsylvania or Ohio, I would tromp out to the local historical parks, and museums and see if I could sense of “feel” any magnetic or patterns around the structures there. I probably couldn’t, but the exercise in trying to discover the effects would actually be awesome. I think.
Mound builders “footprint”.
You never know what life will present to you.
I once had an interview for a job in Deland, Florida.
What a beautiful place. And interesting work on sonar buoys. But they low-balled me on salary. I mean really, seriously offered me a salary just above minimum wage. WTF?
But I told them that I would consider it.
Deland, Florida.
And the wife and I (my first wife) spent a week trying to figure out if that place was good for us. And it was certainly beautiful.
They had fern farms. That’s right, this was were they grew ferns. They has these ferns under the trees that lay under an canopy and it was really deep, dark, lush and calm. Spanish moss hung from the trees.
So nice.
Deland, Florida.
Alas, I did not accept the job. Not that I didn’t want to accept the low salary, but we physically couldn’t afford it. The rents were out of our reach at that salary. Which is probably why the turnover was so high at the company. Sigh.
But it was in the 1990’s. It was at the time when profits over all drove all companies throughout the USA.
Working in the 1990’s really sucked.
But, what I want to tell you all is that next to the area where we stayed was a horse race track. And we visited it during the day to have lunch.
Very relaxing.
The riders were not racing. Just going through their paces, and we got a reasonably inexpensive lunch on an off moment in time.
A nice relaxing lunch at the club or the track.
But as we got back to our rental car, we heard meowing.
And there near the fence was around 16 of the cutest little kittens you ever did see. (Sixteen kittens. So many.) They were all white. Every single one of them.
Perhaps two or three white cats gave birth to all these kittens, and they were so friendly and came up to us. I just wanted to take all of them home.
But I didn’t.
Many white kittens.
I should have taken the event as a SIGN.
“Signs”. They do occur.
Signs are real things. But I didn’t. I was too focused on the material aspects of a functional life. I shouldn’t have been, but I did.
This was just a few months after my only ever white kitten; snowflaker, died.
Instead I took another job. It fizzled and I left it. But maybe I should have listened to the signs…
Maybe I should have listened to the signs…
Maybe I should have listened to the signs…
Maybe I should have listened to the signs…
…but I would never have been exposed to the signs if I did not venture forth and get out of the environment that I was in. Oh, so many MM readers are still in their boxes. It’s tough to venture outward, but when you do, things happen.
THINGS HAPPEN.
Things happen.
…
OK. So what am I trying to say. Well, go out of your “comfort zone” and try to explore the world nearby. You might be surprised at how interesting it is. And if you don’t find it interesting, you might be surprised at all the new experiences you will have.
Even the most bland place has some very interesting stories that are just waiting for YOU to experience.
I well remember living in Kentucky. Bored, my wife and I went for a long ride. Lord knows where we went, but somehow we ended up in the middle of no where. So we pulled up at a lone gas station. There was a glider sofa, on the porch.
Kentucky
We got some ice cream, and spent one hour just rocking on that glider while the world sat frozen in time. It was magical.
Kentucky
I always enjoyed glider sofas. Everyone used to have them. Both of my grandparents had them, and later on my father got a old antique one that he refurbished and fixed up and put on his porch. Most people put cushions or throws on the sofas and set them on their porch.
So nice.
Glider sofa.
Can you just imagine what it would have been like if we lived in France?
France…
France.
In Scotland?
Scotland.
In Germany?
Germany
In Poland?
Female hiker enjoying mountain trip, and taking pictures. Photo taken in Tatra Mountains, Poland.
In Morocco?
Morocco.
In Namibia?
Namibia.
But I lived in Kentucky.
Kentucky
Stop reading about the adventures of others. Use your knowledge and your desire for adventure to experience things on your own.
-Lecture ends.-
Remember, that adventures will surprise you
The thing about going out and going forth doing something new, or something that you don’t often do, is that you will experience some surprises.
I went to visit a 200 year old greenhouse as a day trip when I lived in Massachusetts, and then ended up discovering the best retro diner that I ever sat in.
Or, I once went to visit a butterfly conservatory. It was this enormous network of connected greenhouses just filled with butterflies from all over the world. It was awesome, but what’s more on the way home we pulled off and discovered the largest collection of twine in all of Northern Massachusetts. This crazy old coot spent his entire life collecting twine and made a huge ball of it. They had to make this metal pole building around it to keep it out of the weather.
Who knows what might lurk nearby…
A swimming pool perhaps…
A swimming pool.
Maybe a chance to tour a Craftsman style home that is being sold and has an “open house”…
Craftsman style house.
Or maybe just pull into a campground, and spend the night in the tent (that you keep in the trunk of your car just for that occasion.) You never know.
Time for a nice fire, eh?
You never know.
Final thoughts
It is hot as hell her in this middle of September 2021 in Zhuhai. Temperatures are routinely in the high 90’s F, or the 34 to 36C, and all with abnormally high humidity. I feel like I am swimming when I walk down the halls.
But it will end.
Sooner or later.
What ever your situation or your condition, please realize that it will change. Change is the natural state of affairs in this region of reality. And do not give up up hope or be frustrated. Good times lie in the future. It is up to you to navigate to that crossroads. I believe in you.
Keep on pushing forward.
And…
…never, ever, ever, ever, give up.
Never give up.
And a final message…
Everyone has ups and downs. Everyone gets happy and gets sad.
But you must know, that sometimes life can “bitch slap you” so hard that you lie broken and collapsed. You are hurt. Not just hurt. You are shattered. Financially, socially, physically, mentally and emotionally. You are just burnt out, and discarded.
I know that there are some frustrated folk out in MM land. I know that things are tough, tight, seemingly hopeless or impossible. And upsetting and sad as all get out. I know this.
Jobs.
Work and money.
Uncertain futures.
Even, just Eating.
You feel like giving up. You feel like quitting.
Focus on your affirmation campaigns. Be a good person. Eat only delicious and healthy food. Spend time with your friends. Spend time with your animals / pets. Calm your mind through meditation, hemi-sync, and long walks in nature. Be the Rufus.
Leave the world behind you safer, happier, cleaner, and better because YOU happened by.
And you know…
Never give up.
And that is not just some cutesy saying.
The biggest tool in your toolbox is persistence. You don’t just hop from one project to the other. American style like the USA government, or an American hire-and-fire company. No. You be like China and you plan for the long haul. No matter what happens, no matter what storms lash at you, and no matter how worried you are…
Never give up.
And I mean it. I really, really, really do.
It might seem so strange to talk about visiting parks, eating delicious food, and spending time with friends, when it seems like your entire world is collapsing. But it’s not. Focus. Relax as the rest of the world howls. Relax. And focus on your plans and actions.
And never, ever, ever give up.
Never give up.
And remember your little buddies…
They can help you.
Do you want more?
I have more posts like this somewhere in my OOPART Index here…
The rewriting of history is a hallmark of tyranny.
And today, just like what happened in China during the Cultural Revolution, “modern” and “progressive” busybodies are active in changing society to embrace their own idea of perfection. And much of that involves erasing history, and rewriting it to fit their ideas of perfection. What ever they might be.
Here is a great story of one such event. Here, a “busybody” is successfully rewriting history to pave the way for more aggressive progressive changes in her realm of control.
Crazies inhabit both sides of the political spectrum. Both are dangerous to the stability that us “normals” need to conduct our lives in peace.
‘Pet Shop Karen’ Calls 911 After Being Told to Put On Her Mask – Towleroad
This past April 22, 2020, was the 131st anniversary of the land run that opened the central part of today’s State of Oklahoma to homesteading by non-Indian settlers. These were lands owned by the U. S. Government and not assigned to any organized territory nor to any Indian nation or reservation. It was the first time and one of a handful of times that land was allocated based on who could get there the quickest. Tent cities with populations in the thousands sprung up in a matter of hours after the guns were fired to start the run. The land runs, particularly the first land run in 1889, constitute an aspect of Oklahoma’s history unmatched by any other state, and, as far as I’m aware, any other region of the world.
For many years, April 22 was marked at elementary schools across Oklahoma by land run reenactments. Kids would come to school dressed in cowboy hats and denim overalls or bonnets and gingham dresses, would line up at the edge of the football field, some pulling Radio Flyers made up as covered wagons. At noon, they would rush across the sideline to drive a stake in the ground, claim a homestead, and eat a picnic lunch.
But this fun, child-friendly introduction to Oklahoma’s unique history is threatened by a handful of busybody killjoys who distort the real story of how the 1889 Land Run territory came to be available for settlement and by the school officials who cave into their demands. I’ve done some digging into the treaties and agreements leading up to the 1889 run, and what strikes me is that the U. S. Government bent over backwards to give the tribes that previously held the land a fair deal.
When I was a third-grader, our land-run reenactment was the culmination of a few weeks of focus on Oklahoma history. We learned to square dance. We studied the map of tribal lands before statehood. We learned about the Trail of Tears. On land-run day, teachers led a re-enactment of the one-room school house, complete with dunce cap. One of the covered wagons, belonging to a young Chip McElroy, was motorized, thanks to the assistance of his dad, Art McElroy, then head of McElroy Manufacturing. KOTV covered the re-enactment that year, and the closing credits of that night’s newscast crawled over footage of one of my classmates relieving himself, pioneer style, against a tree.
All of my own children have participated in land-run re-enactments — at “The Barn” at 109th & Louisville, on Augustine Christian Academy’s grailball field, and at Harn Homestead in Oklahoma City, where Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb signed the homestead claims. It’s a fun event that provides a memorable hook on which to hang a beginning understanding of our state’s unusual origins.
As far as I have been able to find, Adams-Cornell offered no evidence for her claims. The first instinct of a typically risk-averse school bureaucrat, when confronted with a claim of oppression by someone who ticks several intersectional boxes, would be to capitulate immediately, without asking for evidence. To resist in even the mildest terms would bring protests and bad publicity, but immediate compliance would bring praise for virtue-signaling.
There is no question that American Indian nations suffered great oppression and hardship at the hands of the U. S. Government, particularly in the passage and enforcement of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. But the guilt that attaches to the actions of Andrew Jackson or, say, gold-hungry north Georgia settlers, doesn’t necessarily attach to the ’89ers who staked claims on the Unassigned Lands. We need to look at the documentation and understand exactly how these lands came to be unassigned.
Indian territory: compiled under the direction of the Hon. John H. Oberly, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, by C.A. Maxwell, 1889. Click on the map to view a high-resolution version on the Library of Congress website. The map shows various tribal assignments and cessions, using colored numbers and outlines and a numbered legend in the upper right corner. Significant treaty dates are noted on the map.
The Unassigned Lands were part of the lands purchased from the Creek and Seminole Nations under the 1866 treaties following the Civil War. The two nations had signed treaties with the Confederacy at the start of the war, in violation of their treaties with the U. S. government. Despite official Creek and Seminole support for the rebellion, the Federal government didn’t simply claim their lands as spoils of war. Instead, the U. S. paid the two nations for their western, unoccupied lands, ($975,168 to the Creek Nation, $15,673,385.66 in 2019 dollars; $325,362 to the Seminole Nation, $5,229,283.55 in 2019 dollars, less $100,000 to the Creek Nation for a new reservation), and then settled several Plains tribes on the land, including Pottawatomie, Iowa, Kickapoo, Sac and Fox, Cheyenne, and Arapaho. Some of the funds were earmarked for paying reparations to Creek and Seminole citizens who remained loyal to the Union during the war and suffered losses as a result.
When the U. S. wanted to open the Unassigned Lands — lands that had not been reallocated to other Native peoples — for non-Native settlement, they had to get permission from the Creek and Seminole Nations, because the 1866 treaty only allowed for other Native tribes and freedmen to be assigned reservations within the ceded land. In 1885, Congress authorized new negotiations to remove the deed restriction on the land:
Most of the enthusiastic home seekers did not then know of that clause in the treaty of 1866--whereby the surplus lands of both the Creeks and Seminoles were ceded back to they United States for the purpose of "locating other friendly tribes of Indians and freedmen." While no other Indians or freed Negroes were to be located on the land, yet the government claimed that while the cloud was on the title, no white citizen would be permitted to make settlement.
By an Act of March 3, 1885 [48th Congress, Session 2, Chapter 341, Section 8], a commission was appointed to negotiate a new deal with these two tribes whereby the clause as to the "friendly Indians and Freedmen" would be stricken from the treaty of 1866 and the unassigned lands would be, without question, public domain and opened to homestead settlement. The negotiations were concluded and the price agreed upon before the country was opened.
("Colonel Crocker and the Boomer Movement, Chronicles of Oklahoma, Volume 13, No. 3 (September 1935), p. 275 [21], hyperlink added)
(And who had the land before the Creeks and Seminoles? Nearly all of present-day Oklahoma was part of the land ceded by the 1825 treaty with the Great Osage and Little Osage Nations. The Osage tribes, with a population of about 4,000 in 1807, had villages in western Missouri and a colony along the Grand River that was founded circa 1796 under the leadership of Chief Clermont (namesake of Claremore) and with the encouragement of fur trader Pierre Chouteau.
With the 1825 treaty, they ceded all their claims for a 50-by-150 mile reservation in southern Kansas. A small number of mixed-blood Osage were granted homesteads along the Grand River. The specific territory that became the Unassigned Lands might have been used as hunting grounds — Washington Irving’s party came across Pawnee and Osage hunters and warriors in the region — but don’t appear to have been settled by any tribe.)
At noon on April 22, 1889, guns were fired and settlers began streaming across the border into a region known as the Unassigned Lands, trying to stake a claim on one of the best quarter-sections for homesteading or a good lot in the new townsites along the Santa Fe railroad, like Guthrie, Edmond, Oklahoma City, Moore, and Norman. They were beaten to some of the best land by “Sooners,” who were in the territory illegally, having stolen across the border ahead of the gun, and by federal officials and railroad workers, who were in the territory legally but were legally barred from competing for lots and homesteads. Collectively, these settlers became known as the Eighty-Niners — the original settlers who were renowned for their grit and determination to survive the harsh conditions on the prairie.
A year later, in 1890, Congress and President Benjamin Harrison would approve the Organic Act for Oklahoma Territory, establishing Oklahoma Territory as a non-contiguous collection of the Unassigned Lands, the Public Land Strip (better known as No Man’s Land and the Panhandle), and the tribal lands that had been assigned after the end of the Civil War (e.g. Pawnee, Tonkawa, Sac and Fox, Pottawatomie). This excluded the portion of the Cherokee Outlet that had yet to be assigned to another tribe or opened for settlement, and the area that the act would, for the first time, officially designate as Indian Territory: the lands of the Five Civilized Tribes, and the tribal lands overseen by the Quapaw Agency near present-day Miami.
The Cherokee Outlet lands would be added to Oklahoma Territory at a later date. The territorial capitol would be at Guthrie, and the territorial government would be elected by the residents of the former Unassigned Lands and No Man’s Land. Greer County, the land between the north and south forks of the Red River, was also excluded from Oklahoma Territory until the boundary dispute between the State of Texas and the Federal Government could be settled by the courts.
The Organic Act makes references to agreements made with the Muscogee (or Creek) Nation, ratified by Congress on March 1, 1889, and with the Seminole Nation, ratified by Congress on March 16, 1889. The western lands that the two nations had ceded to the United States in the post-Civil War treaties of 1866 could only be occupied by peaceful Indian tribes. In order to open the lands to non-Indian settlement, the government had to negotiate an additional treaty with the Creeks and the Seminoles, which included a significant amount of money.
Pursuant to the 1889 agreement, the US made an immediate payment to the Muscogee Creek Nation $280,857.10, and held an additional $2,000,000 in a trust account at 5% annual interest, to be paid to the tribe semi-annually — $50,000 every six months, in addition to the government’s existing financial obligations under earlier treaties. That’s an immediate payment of $7,760,264.84 in 2019 dollars, and a semi-annual payment of $1,381,532.61. An 1890 tribal census counted 14,800 Creeks. These interest rates were set at 5% at a time when the economy was deflating — prices declined by 3.16% in 1889. In the 18 years between 1889 and statehood in 1907, prices rose only by 2.17%
The Seminoles received $412,942.20 immediately, and an additional $1,500,000 in a trust account at 5% annual interest — $37,500 every six months. In 2019 dollars, that’s $11,409,862.30 immediately and $1,036,149.46 every six months. The 1890 census counted 2,427 Seminoles.
Critics may argue with the amount of money that was paid, or the way in which it was paid. It’s fair to say that the Creeks and Seminoles were not in a strong negotiating position after the Civil War or in 1889, but, nevertheless, the U. S. Government didn’t simply say, like Darth Vader, “I am altering the deal; pray I don’t alter it any further.” If the U. S. Government had simply forced its will without compensation — claiming the land as spoils of war and later modifying its deed restrictions — who would have stopped it? Instead, whether from moral convictions or from concern for its reputation for treaty fidelity in the wider world, the U. S. Government negotiated and paid for the changes it sought.
The result was an unoccupied region of two million acres to which the U. S. Government had clear legal and moral title, ready for settlement by Americans who were desperate for land to farm.
NOTE: I started writing this in April of 2019, hoping to finish in time for that year’s anniversary of the 1889 Land run, but it has been sitting in draft since that time. I had in mind to delve deeper into some details, but at this point, I simply want to publish what I have, as I find I keep referring to the information in online discussions.
Conclusion
It is so easy for us to politicize everything. The progressives are bad, and the traditional conservatives are good, and all that “rot”. But the fact is that most people are just trying to live life in the best way that they know how, and in America today there are no “speed brakes on the roller coaster”. No one is reining in the crazies.
Busybodies are crazies. They are people with serious mental illnesses and they tend to be unemployed because they simply are unable to function within society. They are on BOTH sides of the political spectrum.
Progressive crazies tend to be SJW types.
Conservative crazies tend to be neocons.
This is just another story of a busybody, and just because no one is reporting on their lunacy, doesn’t mean that it isn’t going on. It is, and it’s “off the rails” out of control. As this simple article illustrates.
In this case, what’s their disconnect? WTF? Don’t they have better things to do with their time?
Apparently not.
And in our modern contemporaneous life please recognize that the “news” does not report events. They try to manipulate. And much of what is going on all around you is indeed all sorts of social re-engineering by dangerously crazy and malevolent individuals.
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Here, in this post, I am going to discuss the wonderful land of smiles; Thailand. It is an enchanting country. It is filled with happy, easy going people, cheap prices, lots of open fresh air, seas of beauty, mountains and hills, and lots and lots of great delicious food. I haven’t written about this place at all because the vast bulk of my time is spent within China. But this is a great place, as is the rest of South East Asia, and I have a few things to say about it.
Read this post. Then re-read this sentence. As far as a man is concerned, Thailand is really the land of the free.
“The Thais are proud to say their country has never been colonized and delighted to explain that translated in to English, Thailand means "land of the free". Many Thais genuinely believe their country is free and that regular citizens are afforded a level of freedom that doesn't exist outside the Kingdom's borders.
Given the way certain parts of Thailand's history are explained in the local education system, it's no surprise. But the way that some foreigners resident in Thailand also feel more free in Thailand than they do in Farangland (Oh, “farang”, or for those of you who hate that word, Caucasian) floors me.”- Thailand, Land of the Free
One of the places that I would live at, from time to time, was Thailand. It’s a truly amazing place, with beautiful beaches, excellent delicious food, warm welcoming climate, a decent infrastructure, and hordes of sexy willing women. What’s not to like?
“hhahahhha Pattaya! I ran into a few FAT and outraged American "chang nams"...chang(elephant) nam(water)
...chang nam is a hippo and polite word for American (women) wildebeast that seem to stray into Pattaya now and again. (The great white water buffalo.)
There were three American chang nams that ganged up on me, asking me all sorts of "triggered questions."When their mouths stopped flapping, I ran my fingers across my lips, then launched into international sign language dialogue. One of the girls said ".....oh shit, he's deaf---and THEY APOLOGIZED."My sign language is very good and I suggest all ZHers to at least learn a few phrases correctly in dealing with hostile, bat-shit crazy American women and their failed NGOs in Thailand and Cambodia. These American goody-two-shoes are the ones that demonize sex and then run around to the back room to boom Somchai.PS...To call someone "Somchai" in Tai and Kampuchea, really you are saying "John Doe." "Somchai" is better than saying "....where's Woody?"- buttmint (reply to) MaxThrust Aug 12, 2017 10:57 AM
I have visited Thailand with my Chinese wife numerous times. We have stayed at everything from fancy hotels to cute residential home-stays. We have frequented the bars and clubs and sampled the night life there, we have even had an adventure where a taxi driver drove us out into the middle of the jungle and left us there to rot at 4:30 am!
Thailand, since it is so close to China, is my 2nd home.
It’s a very cheap (from China) two hour flight and BOOM!, I am in a land where all the girls call me a “Handsome Man”.
"Hey! Handsome Man!"
Though, I have never sampled the female fun there, it’s enough to know that I could if I wanted to.
Personally, I find the girls there a little chubbier and shorter than my tastes allow. (You can see for yourself in the pictures and videos herein.) However, that’s just me.
My ideal woman is a curvy and robust Chinese gal, with a handsome face, and a smile that last forever. Long black hair is an extra five points. Brown eyes improves the look another five points, and having an oval face tacks on another ten points.
(The taller “girls” tend to be ladyboys… yikes!)
In any event, Thailand is a beautiful place with cheap prices, delicious food, and nature everywhere. It is paradise.
…
People come to visit and LIVE in Thailand for all sorts of reasons;
“There isn't one kind of person that comes to Thailand there are many. There's the sex starved older English gent that finds paradise in the Neon lights of Pattaya to the American couple who have figured out that they don't want to live there lives drowned in debt only to realize they've missed out on Living their lives. You'll find a lot of grumpy old men who are single and spend their time Farang bashing on Thai Visa and younger guys who party to the break of dawn every night. The English teacher who's looking for "world experience" I'm sure you've met all sorts of people in Thailand.”
-From here; http://www.livingthai.org/why-choose-to-live-in-thailand.html
And, for guys, often the reason is for sex…
“The problem with sex is that it’s a natural male instinct to fuck everything that moves, not just the hottest, but anything attractive – you’ll never stop looking, but you might stop chasing. God help you if you’re very good looking, getting ‘opportunities’ thrown at you wherever you live. You may never escape this vice – and it will cost you big time.”-BobbyT
Thailand is a different place for certain. Different is Good.
“Frustrated foreign residents are known to have the odd rant about life in Thailand at times, but sometimes we need to take a look at the big picture and consider that things are not as bad as they may seem. A mate who gets around Bangkok by motorbike tells me that whenever he parks his motorbike, he leaves his helmet resting on the handlebars, attached by a simple clip. This is something he would never do in his native Belgium for it would likely not be there when he returned but in 10 years of riding in Bangkok no-one has ever taken his helmet. Still, I have never seen his helmet and maybe the shocking pink color and the slogan I love ladyboys in Thai on the front has something to do with it?”-Stickman
Pattaya
“Never in my life did I imagine I would ever turn down a girlfriend of mine for sex until I got to Thailand;
...there’s just only so much I can handle. American women (and I’m sure British and Australian women are very similar) use sex more as a tool in a relationship, and they’re usually willing to sacrifice the enjoyment from sex just to prove a point. I don’t find this too often in Thailand and that’s a beautiful thing.”-LivingThai
I’ve been to Pattaya numerous times.
A famous Pattaya themed T-shirt, sold at many of the vendor’s stalls about town, sums up the divergent opinions about the place. “Good guys go to heaven, bad guys go to Pattaya”.
I can’t say the beach is all that great. But it has (had) an amazing street devoted to bars and night life. Both my wife and I felt like we had died and gone to heaven.
The first time we went there, we separated from the group (that we had been with) and went solo exploring this amazing area. Of course, you have the go-go girls, and the bar girls and all of that. However, what really struck me was the presence of old fat western guys who had plopped themselves down at a bar and who were nursing a beer.
What?
You call that fun and exciting?
We bar hopped each and every time we visited that town.
First Impressions
My first experience was awesome. I must tell the reader that when you go into these bars, you will see (easily) 20 to 30 totally nude gals standing and dancing slowly in super high heels.
That has since changed, and as of 2016 they all seem to be wearing some kind of attire.
With a short old 70-year old grandmother walking around them with a meter long switch telling them to arch their backs, etc. The girls seemed fine. (They were) all thin and in their 20’s. A patron might come in and pick a girl and pay the girl and get a blow-job on the spot. (I’ve seen it done numerous times.)
You can even take the girls upstairs for a short-time (this is known as a “short time girl”). However, to be honest, you see 30 girls without a lick of clothing on it’s not really arousing.
Since then, the local government placed laws requiring the gals to wear clothing. I have mixed feelings about it.
It’s just a bunch of nude girls.
Old fat men (Bogan) nursing beers in Pattaya bar street.
Pattaya is known (outside of Thailand) for one place.
Sex.
I think I can safely say that Patong Beach is now Bogan central for Thailand.
A Bogan is a bit of a derogatory term for a person who hails from the western suburbs of Sydney, West Auckland or the working class areas of Melbourne.
In Thailand they are normally identified as blokes, or sheilas, with minimal attire – a beer brand singlet, billabong shorts and flip flops – and whose main priorities in life are knocking back copious amounts of beer and watching their preferred style of footy.
Take a stroll down Soi Bangla in the early evening and the sports bars lining each side of the street will be packed with Bogans getting their fixes of beer and footy.
The thing is, though, if you hang around the place for long enough you’ll soon pick up on the idea there are Bogans from all over the world cruising the streets and crowding the shopping malls of Patong.
Aside from your bog standard Aussie and Kiwi Bogans, there are also English, Russian, German, Scandinavian, Indian and even Thai Bogans to be seen.
That being said, let me be the first to point out that the Pattaya Police Chief say’s that there is no such thing as prostitution in Pattaya. Apparently it doesn’t exist.
And it is true that sex can be obtained.
However, it is not as common and rampant as the British tabloids make it out to be. There’s only a precious few areas that you can get your “fix” for secual excitement. The rest of Pattaya is like the rest of Thailand, very conservative and very religious.
Pattaya City officials, local police units and administrative units of Chon Buri held a press conference on the new policy; Pattaya Happy Zone, which has been immediately implemented with the main purpose of keeping popular areas of Pattaya under control and crime-free.
The Happy Zone is being enforced in the infamous Walking Street in order to control all illegal activities to make sure that the holiday experience in Pattaya is hassle-free for everyone.
Pol Col Apichai Krobpetch, the Pattaya police superintendent, told the magazine “Spectrum” that Pattaya is not a hub for the sex trade.
He was upset about the British media’s stories, insisting they were fabricated.British newspapers The Sun, Mirror and the Daily Star recently ran articles describing Pattaya as “the world’s sex capital” and as a “modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah”, sparking anger among government officials, especially PM Prayut, who vowed to crack down on illegal businesses and prostitution in Pattaya, viewing them as a major embarrassment for Thailand.
“There is no such thing as prostitution in Pattaya,” says Col Apichai. “Where did they get the figure of 27,000 sex workers in Pattaya? Anyone can make up this information.
Ah.
But sex and booze. Well, that’s something that I happen to enjoy.
And I am not afraid to admit it. Many a fine night has been spent with a female companion drinking wine, singing and dancing, and chatting and eating delicious food, and then having some great sex. It’s a wonderful way to pass the time, make new friends, and just relax.
Which brings me to the most awesome bar street.
(Drinking booze, rock music and sex everywhere.) When I went there with my wife, we were just floored over by the sheer size and awesomeness of it. It put New Orleans French Quarter to shame. It is amazing and awesome at the same time.
We first visited Pattaya during a Chinese organized tour for tasting all the food of Thailand.
The reader should realize that I am (what is called) “a foodie”.
A foodie is someone who has a deep interest in food. In addition to being interested in food itself, foodies are also interested in the back story: the history, production, science, and industry of food. As a general rule, foodies are amateurs, rather than professionals working in some aspect of the food industry, and many of them are self-taught.
-What is a Foodie?
We were not disappointed.
After one of the many, many dinners we were taken to the “bar street” for a look around. The tour guide would not let us go alone, so we had to sign a “safety waiver” and off we went. We’ve been in love with the place ever since.
It is not like what is portrayed in the American movie “Hangover II”, that is unless you are a drinker. Never the less it is an awesome place. I actually prefer it over New Orleans “French Quarter”, Reno, Los Vegas, Macao, and some of the more “interesting” places that I have explored.
Both myself and my wife think of it as an awesome place.
First meal I had in Pattaya was fresh crab and shellfish.
The servings are huge and the prices were cheaper than in China. This I’m super surprised about even looking at the western meals around Pattaya are much cheaper than China also. Must be something to do with the amount of competition here. One thing that is first noticeable about the food in Pattaya is it tastes way better than what you get in China. I don’t really know why. This is probably because it’s either Isaan food and central food and I’m in the right place for that.
Since I’m a big foody I fell in love with the place immediately. (Not to mention all the pretty girls calling me a “handsome man”!)
A fine Thai curry chicken dish.
Pattaya is a very small place, well it’s not exactly small but the truth is that really, it’s just not that big. Pattaya is more concentrated making it easier to get around. This is especially true in the center of all “the action”.
Traffic isn’t as bad as people say though there are way more of those little mini-bicycle-car-like things (hoons) here which is expected.
Most of the hoons are either motorbike taxis or tourists joyriding. I hate driving in Thailand but it’s a must if you want to cover more ground quickly and save money and hassles getting taxis.
A lot of people walk in Pattaya compared to Bangkok. Bangkok is a city. Pattaya is a small coastal town.
If you’re a first time visitor to Pattaya then get ready for a surprise. This is like nothing you’ll have ever experienced before. This has to be one of the greatest concentrations of night time venues anywhere in the world.
The famous walking street is the epicenter of the Pattaya’s party scene, stretching from Bali Hai pier in the south to beach road at the north. This neon lit street is closed to traffic from around 6pm until the early morning. This mile long strip of pure hedonism is a mecca for party goers from all over the world. Lined with a mix of Go Go bars, drinking bars, restaurants, world class nightclubs and live music venues anyone who visits Pattaya has to experience this party wonderland.
(Don’t be afraid of entering any of the bars, clubs or go go’s you won’t get bitten (unless you want). The workers are all super friendly and the bad old days of getting ripped off are long gone. So be brave, and go on in.)
Metallicman in a Northern Bangkok 7-11 during the “Water Festival” (Songkran). That white stuff on my face is some kind of talc mixed with water that they put on you after they soak you with water. I don’t understand it, but I’ll bet it has an interesting story behind it.
Water Festival
The reader can just simply forget about staying dry during the water festival. Little children, and not so little adults man each and every corner with plastic water guns, water machine guns, and water bazookas. The wife ended up staying in the room for three days afraid to go out and get soaked.
The Water Festival is the New Year’s celebrations that take place in east and South-east Asian countries such as China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar Taiwan and Thailand.
It is called the ‘Water Festival’ by Westerners because they notice people splashing or pouring water at one another as part of the cleansing ritual to welcome the New Year. Traditionally people gently sprinkled water on one another as a sign of respect, but as the new year falls during the hottest month in South East Asia, many people end up dousing strangers and passersby in vehicles in boisterous celebration.
The act of pouring water is also a show of blessings and good wishes. It is believed that on this Water Festival, everything old must be thrown away, or it will bring the owner bad luck.
Here’s what another expat has to say about this festival;
“Songkran in Pattaya is celebrated for 7 days from the 13th until 19th April. It's difficult to avoid getting wet.
No food carts or girls ordering food get attacked with high-powered water guns and buckets as the Thais respect food. The Thais also consider people walking the sois with their luggage on the way to check-in to hotels.
Even long after the sun has set, the Thais still playing with water don't target people who are dry and heading out for dinner.
You know where I'm going with this…
Of course, some young Thais on bikes riding the sois and drinking too much end up having fights. From my week-long Songkran experience here, having played with water and sat and observed, it's the dickhead Farangs with high-powered water guns hitting people in the face, attacking people with food, people going out dressed for a night out etc.
Even drunk bargirls manage to recognise and respect people who want to avoid water later in the evening. While writing this email in a dry area on sois 7 with 45 baht beers, I have witnessed 2 altercations between Westerners with high-powered guns attacking people who are dry. Only 28 more hours left of this craziness then off to track Everest. I'm confident Everest will be less to endure.“
-https://www.stickmanbangkok.com/weekly-column/2016/04/sensational-soda/
Going for a visit
It’s not just about the sleazy side of Pattaya and thousands of people a night descend here to watch some great live music acts, eat fresh seafood over the water or watch one of the numerous street performers. Even organized tours of Chinese and Korean tourists regularly wander up and down the street to soak up the atmosphere. The smaller alleys are called “Soi”. Check out the map below.
As a man, I have to admit that Thailand has so much going for it.
The cost of living is very cheap. In fact, it is even cheaper than China. If you have enough money saved away (stashed from the clutches of your first or second wives) you can live quite comfortably. Further, it is beautiful. The weather is NOT SNOWY. The food is awesome, though you might need to learn the language or use a cute girl to translate to order. The beaches, mountains, and history are amazing…And, the girls… the girls are all cute, beautiful and AVAILABLE. What’s not to love?
Here’s just some informationt that I collected from my files. As Asia, both China and Thailand is in a constant state of flux, probably the best thing that you can do is chat with a local and get the best deals for your particular situation. Never the less, you can consider this guide as a helpful venue to get you started.
The wave hotel is by far the best combination of luxury, value, and location in Pattaya; this is where the smart ballers stay. The price is around 160 dollars a night, but when you see this place, you will feel like it is a bargain. The rooms are high class, and the location can’t be beat. They offer a nice sized pool and garden area, along with a par. They also have free wifi access. The staff here will treat you like royalty.
Hilton Hotel Pattaya
Located dead center of Walking street and on the beach… What more can you expect from the Hilton? They offer an amazing infinity pool and pool side bar “Shore Bar”, which offers stunning views. They also have many rooftop restaurants with incredible views as well. This is a great getaway no matter what kind of vacation you are having in Pattaya. Don’t forget, Central Pattaya Beach is located downstairs!
Dusit D2 Baraquda Pattaya Hotel
Dusit D2 Baraquda Pattaya Hotel is a little different from the first two 5 star hotels offered here, Dusit D2 Baraqude offers a nice fusion between Thai and Western architecture so you will get a little culture, it is also suited in an excellent location right on walking street and offers amazing views of the surrounding area and ocean.
Pattaya Marriott Resort and Spa
The Marriott name speaks for itself, especially here in Pattaya. The Marriott is one of only a few five star hotels located in Pattaya and it shines here as one of the best hotels. It offers an amazing swimming pool and outdoor lounge, fine dining inside, in an excellent location, and high-speed internet access in every room. The gardens here are also amazing. They also offer a breakfast buffet every morning for all guests until 10:30am… If you are not too hung over!!
Intimate Hotel by Tim Boutique Hotel
Intimate Hotel by Tim Boutique Hotel is easily my choice for a medium budget traveler. It offers free wifi, stunning views across the city, Jacuzzi tubs in some rooms, a great rooftop bar/restaurant. It also provides a small, but nice fitness center and a decent international buffet. From here, you are within walking distance to Pattaya Beach, and also some of the shopping malls in the city such as Central Festival Beach and Royal Garden Plaza.
The Scenery City Hotel
Traveling on a budget? The Scenery City Hotel is my favorite budget hotel in Pattaya. They offer very nice clean rooms with a balcony for under 1000 baht per night. Free wifi is offered in public areas (some rooms can grab access from the public areas if within reach). Located right in the center of Pattaya, the location can’t be beat. The rooms are extremely clean and held to a very high standard, the staff is also very friendly and informative. Basically, everything is within walking distance of here, including the beaches.
Areca Lodge Hotel
Another one of my favorite hotels in Pattaya on Walking Street is the Areca Lodge Hotel. This is one of the most popular hotels in Pattaya with good reason. The prices are borderline cheap/medium so it fits most people’s budgets. They offer free in room wifi, and the rooms are extremely clean. Areca offers two large pools with Jacuzzis and other amenities including a fitness center, sauna and on-site eateries, also all rooms have balconies.
Hard Rock Hotel
The Hard Rock Hotel name speaks for itself, not much explaining needed here. Geared for the active crowd who would rather have a fun time with activities rather than a quiet time. The rooms are all modern, hip, and cool with purple styling. Every room offers a sea view or city view, depending which side of the building you’re on. The pool is one of the best in Pattaya and they offer lots of activities in the pool/garden area. It also offers many restaurants, bars and lounges including the world’s popular signature Hard Rock Café.
Sooi-Tee Guest House
For those of you on a super budget, I highly recommend the Sooi-Tee Guest House. Rooms start around 500 or 600 baht a night and all offer free wifi. The location is perfect and each room has AirCon, which you won’t find in a lot of guest houses in this price range. The rooms are clean and offer a baloney. Staying at a place like this is is good because you get that nice homey feel and special attention from the staff.
View Talay 6 Pattaya Beach Condominium
View Talay 6 Pattaya Beach Condominium by Honey is one of the best medium priced hotels in Pattaya and also one of the most popular. Located on the beach, it offers great views of the ocean and city. There is a nice pool with a pool side bar and massage service on site. The location couldn’t be beat if you want to be on the beach AND close to Walking Street. This hotel also offers free wifi.
Bars and Nightclubs
There are many great nightclubs on the Pattaya walking street. Each has its own vibe and feel and most will be open until the sun comes up.
The clubs are extremely popular and are generally very busy every night of the week. Most don’t get going until after midnight. The clubs are a favorite of both younger tourist and locals. Here are some links to all the bars. (Up to date when I was last there, back in 2017.)
“Walking street really is one of a kind. Little could I have known, that all I had to do was jump on a plane and instantly be transformed into a ‘handsome man’ . It’s a blast. The vegas of the east. Minus gambling.”-学习如何水肺潜水 JANUARY 5, 2017 AT 7:01 AM
I would say that the number one advantage of visiting or living in Pattaya, is the “walking street” and the things that you can purchase there. As a man, I can see distinct advantages in living there.
“Last night we were in Gulliver's and one sight made me chuckle.A large group of Brits walked in and took up about three tables. The women were obese but their boyfriends (how the hell did they get guys) were trim. The group was approached by four waitresses and two beer promotion girls. The waitresses were pretty with slim figures and you can guess how good the promotion girls looked. Needless to say the guys were enthralled by the display and had trouble ordering, much to the displeasure of the blobs sat around them.I bet there were a few arguments back in the hotel rooms later. Welcome to Thailand, boys! I bet they are currently praying for their girlfriends to get food poisoning so they can go out unhindered and get some ‘cultural experiences’.”- Praying for food poisoning!
Buying a Car in Thailand
Yes, the initial purchase of a car in Thailand will probably cost more than it would in the United States. A small-engined Japanese sedan such as a Toyota Corolla or Honda Civic runs from 800,000 baht up to 1,000,000 plus for a fully loaded, top model. This is much more than you would pay in most Western countries. European or luxury cars can cost as much as 3 times what the exact same model would cost in the West.
Used Cars
The initial purchase price of a new (or second hand) car will also be greater than the West, but that is where the idea of car ownership in Thailand being expensive ends.
The good news is that cars devalue at a much, much slower rate in Thailand than they do elsewhere. Indeed, Hondas and Toyotas will command a high resale price due to their perceived reliability. You can pretty much expect vehicles from either of these manufacturers to devalue at not much more than 10% per year. A Honda Civic in good condition and with reasonable mileage that cost 800,000 in 2003 would go for around 400,000 baht now. A two-year old Toyota Vios that has travelled 30,000 km may sell for only 100,000 baht less than the exact same car brand new. If resale value is a concern choose carefully as not all cars from certain manufacturers maintain a great resale value.
Take note. European manufactured vehicles depreciate in value at a frightening high rate.
Pickup Trucks
If the price of a new car is beyond your budget, consider a pickup truck. Pickup trucks are subject to a different tax rate than sedans and as such are much cheaper. You can get a new pickup for as little as 500,000 baht or a fully featured model with a luxurious interior that gives it the feel of a well-speced sedan for around 700,000 baht. Pickup trucks sell very well in Thailand because they represent good value.
Other Costs
The cost of gasoline in Thailand is fairly low. Granted that it is a little bit more expensive than North America and about the same price as you would pay in Australia, but it is however much, much cheaper than what you’d pay in Europe.
Insurance is cheap and policies don’t seem to have an excess so if you have an accident you pay nothing (unless of course the police demands a donation!)
The cost of getting a vehicle serviced in Thailand is ridiculously low. For a small to medium sized Japanese vehicle you’re looking at around 1,000 baht per service at the franchised dealer. No, not a corner garage but a franchised dealer where they use the right oil, genuine parts and the workshop is so clean you could just about eat your rice off the floor.
Not that one should break the traffic laws, but fines for traffic infringements are ridiculously low. If you are miraculously issued with an official ticket, the odds are it will be in the range of 400 – 800 baht. Usually it won’t even cost that much however as the friendly police will invariably offer you a pay now discount.
Conclusion
This is just my introduction to Thailand, and as you might have guessed, I have a lot to say. So expect many more posts.
One of the things that I like about the world is how different other places are. As an American, I was programmed into believing that the “American way of life” was the best; that it was superior to all other forms of governance, and that so many people want to come to America to experience it.
Well, it’s not. Not by a long shot, and when you leave the “Exceptional American Experience” you realize just how much of your life that you have wasted pursuing that “American Dream”.
More to follow.
In the mean time appreciate what you have, and if you don’t have what you need to be happy, open up your horizons and go for it.
Nothing will put a smile on your face quicker than a “romp in the hay” with a beautiful and pretty girl after a day of quaffing beer and eating delicious food.
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
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There is a sizable majority of the American (and by extension, globalist) oligarchy believe that they will be able to “ride out” the coming “shit-storm” of societal upheaval slated for America. They have bought land, and established residences, and constructed mini-fortresses in far away lands for precisely this purpose. Well, I am going to be the first to lay out the truth; you all will not be able to avoid your comeuppance.
It’s coming.
It’s heading and barrelling right down upon all of us, and this time, the oligarchy will be not be spared.
The American second civil war will not be like Bosnia, Rhodesia, Rwanda, or any other revolutionary messes. You know the ones. Where the wealthy creates a situation, and then skedaddles off to a “safe haven” to wait out the societal reconstruction.
Take note. This time is different.
We are coming after you.
The world is connected. There’s a Burger King and Pizza Hut on Tutuila island, for goodness sakes! Internet is everywhere. We know where your “hidy holes” are, and who built them, and when, and what mechanical systems you utilize. We know which planes you fly, who pilots them, and where the pilots families reside.
We know a lot more than you think we know, and (drop the bullshit) you know that us “deplorables” are not at all the under-educated white racists that you so loudly proclaim. We are watching you all with seething anger.
I met Lloyd Blankfein at a Super Bowl. It was the New England Patriots and the New Jersey Giants. And Blankfein came up to me, “I know who you are, but you don’t know who I am.” And I said, “The hell I don’t! You run Goldman Sachs. I know who –” and he was stunned that I knew who he was. He said, “I know who you are,” like, “I know who you are. Ha-ha. I know what you’re up to, but you don’t know who I am.” “Oh, yes, I do.”
-Rush Limbaugh
We are chomping at the bit for an excuse to come after you all. It’s gonna be glorious.
Factory
workers, with their company name badges, in the parking lot of their
employer. Two dead and one dying with his legs shot off. He and his
co-workers had no idea that “world war III” would break out while they
were trying to clock in at work. When one group of people identify
another group, and target them with hate, and violence, it only
escalates. It gets worse. Eventually there is whole-scale blood shed. Do
not be under the illusion that it will never happen in America. There
are enormous groups of people just chomping at the bit to attack
conservatives and traditionalists. All in the name of a progressive
utopia.
See how easy it was to find this information, on just a three key-word search. Very easy.
But you know, escape anywhere will be fraught with problems. We, as humans, are all interconnected. He have histories, associations, and ties. And, it’s not all “black and white” internet data streams either. It’s personal. It’s visceral.
It's not going to be like you all think. With some kind of race genocide, on top of political machinations, with overtures of hicks riding around like some scene out of Mad Max.
There are going to be elements of WWIII, and WMD. There's going to be a great deal of political and sociological changes, and you are right to realize that "blue areas" in America will not be safe.
But you are wrong to think that you all can sneak away and go somewhere where you will be forgotten. You will NOT be forgotten.
Let that sink in.
And, it’s all going to come back and haunt you.
What? You think that you don’t have siblings, who are married with kids? You think that they are immune from the consequences of your evil machinations? You think that you are NOT on watch lists? You think that your behavior is not tracked? You think that your “connections” in whatever government entity will protect you?
Listen up.
The world is not a new “enlightened”, and “progressive” reality where wars are long behind us. Where citizens will turn in their weapons willingly to be serfs under a wise Kingly leader. Nope. Those are all imaginary fantasies that many of you all believe.
They are not true.
Most of human history has been fraught with terrible, terrible battles and conflicts. Where entire blood lines were executed. Where women, if they were lucky, were enslaved as sex slaves, while everyone else were killed. Know your history. Entire cities were decimated. Men, women, children, even the dogs and cats. All killed and the ground salted afterwards.
The time has come that you all must start to live like the Kings of old. With poison testers, thrice-tested body guards, and loyalty oaths that are rock solid. You will not be able to hole-up behind strong stone walls. You will not be able to escape to a land where you will be unknown and untraceable. You will not be able to escape the wrath of your fellow citizens who have spent decades watching you cart your weight around and lord over us.
We are coming for you.
Know your history. This is what really happens when a particular group comes to power and their enemies are disarmed. It is never pretty. Know your history.
You think that your accents, behaviors, and lifestyle won’t give you away. You think that being a flabby old white dude walking on the beach of Mahebourg on Mauritus will be overlooked? Is that what you think? Do you actually believe that an extensive underground lair in Dunedin will protect you? Hey! Am I being specific enough for you? Or, perhaps you think that you will be different…
We are coming for you.
No, you do not have to worry about one singular person. Personally, I not going to do Jack Shit. But what you will need to worry about is the consequences of your support… in all the myriad of ways… for the coming Shit Storm that is going to engulf the United States into a conflagration of an unparalleled magnitude.
Read your history books. You cannot simply take on a defensive posture and hole up like some hermit in a monastery while Rome burns, or the Huns sack your city, rape your women and torture everyone else.
The “bubble” of civility is coming to an abrupt end.
Graphic photograph of a capture and subsequent rape of a young girl by German soldiers. Know your history. This will be common. Know your history.
It had a good run. At least in America, it did. Eighty years. That’s long enough to assume that things will always be a certain way, and full danger is really only the stuff of nightmares. Well, it is ending.
In large part because of your actions.
As such, the historical “normal” is returning. Buckle up. You and yours are all in the cross hairs.
Greek authors rarely go into any detail when describing the fall of a city, so if we want to know what this really means, we are to some extent forced to use our imagination. However, it's clear from what little we hear that Xenophon's 'universal law' usually meant 3 things:
All movable property was taken
All adult men were killed
All women, children and elderly men were sold into slavery.
The first of these points is least well attested, but probably most widespread. Every warrior who was sent against an enemy settlement would hope to come away with a profit.
Homes could be stripped of furniture and metal objects; temples could be robbed of their dedications and temple treasuries emptied. If there was time, even the rooftiles and wooden fittings of houses could be torn off and carried away.
The simple fact that large amounts of ancient coinage and jewellry was preserved in its hiding place (buried, thrown into wells, etc.) shows that people were quite concerned to keep their valuables out of the hands of greedy invaders.
The second point is better known, because it was a matter of justice and pride. When a city was attacked, it could choose to surrender; if it did not, it forfeited any claim to mercy. Those who had decided to resist their enemies would get what they deserved. The most explicit example of this is the fate Agamemnon desired for Troy:
Not a single one of them must escape sheer destruction at our hands. Not even if a mother carries one in her belly and he is male, not even he should escape. All together they must be exterminated from Troy, their bodies untended and invisible.
-- Iliad 6.57-62
There are loads of examples from Greek history of sieges ending with the slaughter of all adult men. These massacres removed the defeated community's ability to fight and ensured that there would be no further resistance.
The third point arises from the fact that the Greeks seem to have considered it barbaric to kill captured women and children as well as men. The few examples of this in Greek history were condemned as savage. Once the needs of revenge had been satisfied, the remaining population was instead considered a potential source of profit:
When they were delivered to her by the Persians, Pheretime took the most guilty of the Barkaians and set them impaled around the top of the wall; the breasts of their women she cut off and planted around the wall in like manner. As for the rest of the Barkaians, she told the Persians to take them as plunder.
-- Herodotos 4.202
There was substantial money to be made from this, which is why commanders sometimes tried to restrain the bloodlust of their victorious troops. Even if it was just, as well as satisfying, to kill the defenders, it still amounted to the destruction of a source of income:
Dionysios' entire army burst into the city (...) and now every spot was a scene of mass slaughter; for the Sicilian Greeks, eager to return cruelty for cruelty, slew everyone they encountered, sparing without distinction not a child, not a woman, not an elder. Dionysios, wishing to sell the inhabitants into slavery for the money he could gather, at first attempted to restrain the soldiers from murdering the captives, but when no one paid any attention to him and he saw that the fury of the Sicilian Greeks was not to be controlled, he stationed heralds to cry aloud and tell the Motyans to take refuge in the temples which were revered by the Greeks. When this was done, the soldiers ceased their slaughter and turned to looting the property.
-- Diodoros of Sicily 14.53.1-3
The beginning of this passage is unique in actually describing a scene that must have been typical when a city fell to a Greek army. Most successful siege assaults were not the result of elaborate circumvallation, but of a surprise assault or betrayal.
As a result, rather than bottling up the helpless enemy from all sides, the attackers usually entered the city from one point and began their rampage from there.
Those left in the city therefore had two choices: either to resist or to flee. The former would result in the brutal fate sketched above - but the latter explains how Greek communities often seem to have survived a lost siege despite the genocidal intent of their attackers. It was often possible for a substantial part of the population to get away.
Their ultimate fate would then depend on what the victorious enemy intended to do with the settlement. Sometimes (especially in the Archaic period) their intent was to seize the territory for themselves; in these cases the town would be razed, and the fugitive population cast adrift. Fear of this outcome was supposed to keep the Spartans in the fight against the Messenians early in their history:
The most wretched of all things is for a man to leave his city and its fertile fields, reduced to the life of a beggar, wandering with his mother and aged father, his little children and wedded wife. Wherever he ends up, he will be as an enemy dwelling among them. He will succumb to need and detestable poverty, bring shame upon his family, disgrace his splendid looks. All forms of dishonour and misery will dog him. Since this is how it is and no one cares for or respects a wanderer or his offspring at all, let us fight hard for our land and die for our children without sparing our lives.
-- Tyrtaios fr. 10.3-14
If they had friends elsewhere, they might be able to obtain a temporary home, or even gain resident status and a home away from home, as the Plataians did at Athens when the Spartans razed their settlement in 427 BC.
In the Classical period, the intention was often rather to plant settlers on the conquered territory in order to expand the victorious city's number of land-owning citizens. This is what Athens did with the land of most of its defeated enemies from 506 BC onward. In such cases, the captured city might be reinhabited - at times by the new settlers along with the old population of women and children, whom they took as wives or slaves.
Alternatively, once due vengeance had been exacted, the remnants of the city's population could simply be allowed to return to it, often subjected to tribute and an imposed political regime. When the Athenians finally lost their fleet at Aigospotamoi in 405 BC, fear washed through the city, because the Athenians fully expected to meet the same fate that they had inflicted upon other Greeks throughout the decades of their Empire - the eradication of their community, the death of their men, and the sale of their women into slavery. However, for reasons that are still debated today, the Spartans decided to spare them. They got away with "only" a sack, the destruction of their walls, and the imposition of the tyrannical yoke of the Thirty.
- What actually happens when a city is sacked?
You should have paid attention to history class. The historical normal is one where no one is ever safe. It is always a short bubble of time, no more than one or two generations in length where people can live together in some sort of sanity.
But that bubble always pops, and the people living their nice safe lives are often overtaken by the shock and brutality of the reality that will overwhelm them.
We
know what will happen. It has been well documented. People will be
collected. They will be rounded up into urban areas, or centers. The men
will be separated out from the group. They will be led to an isolated
area, a cellar, a warehouse, a cluster of tree, an area behind a
bulldozer. They will then be held down by two people and shot dead.
We are coming for you.
It’s going to be historical. It will be Biblical, and it will consist of many elements that are not at all “enlightened” and “progressive”. It will be raw and unbridled.
Who are “we”?
We
have learned all about the great con game, and we are fed up. We know
know what is going on and we are pissed, and desire real, substantive
change. Now, for those of us who have awakened from the con, it is time
for a clean break – a refusal to accept that anything over the past 60
years was any good…a desire, that is, to move forward in an entirely
new way, unshackled to whatever we might have said or done in the past.
Like water, we are not one set person, but rather a very lose and amorphous collection of many well-educated people that will not allow instigators, and criminals to scurry away unscathed. It won’t be me, but I’m telling you that it will be others. And they won’t have any set plans, no set maps, no coordination. But they will see you all for what you actually are; big, plump, juicy, lush, targets to seize and use for purposes that you do not want to read about.
Yet…
Yet, there is still time. You can alter your future and atone for your sins. Your future does not need to be that of fertilizer spread out upon a glassed-over barren wasteland. You can change. You can start taking action to prevent the crisis that is barrelling straight down the Pike for us all. You can make a difference.
Yes, YOU!
Well… listen NOW.
But let’s speak frankly to each other. I’m not the smartest guy you’ve ever met, or the hardest-working. I was a mediocre student. I’m not technical at all—I can’t write a word of code. What sets me apart, I think, is a tolerance for risk and an intuition about what will happen in the future. Seeing where things are headed is the essence of entrepreneurship. And what do I see in our future now?I see pitchforks.
- On Friday Jun 27, 2014 at 12:04 pm Michael Krieger posted an article where he offered up a warning for thouse oligarchs about the coming shit-storm and what you can do about it.
He and others have warned you.
Once
a political ideology takes power, they are ruthless in their treatment
of opposition. They will kill you, and if you are a woman, they will
rape you and then kill you. There will not be any mercy. It is better to
die fighting when they come to your house, than to accept the lies that
they will put you into “protection” for your own best interests.
If we don’t do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising.
There are no counterexamples. None. It’s not if, it’s when.
-From Nick Hanauer’s excellent Politico Op-Ed: The Pitchforks are Coming…For Us Plutocrats
The is something about money, wealth and power that corrupts. It corrupts everyone it touches, and no one is immune. If you are wealthy then you are corrupted. There are no exceptions.
You might not think that you are corrupted.
You might, somehow, think that you are different. “Just one of the guys that got lucky.” You are deluding yourself.
The “freedom from need” corrupts the soul. Thus, the individual finds other pursuits to occupy the void in their being.
"What I do care about is the kind of power that such money can buy, and how that power is then abused to purchase politicians and run roughshod over entire societies. I have also been disgusted with the fact that the 0.01% as a class seem self-absorbed, apathetic and delusional when it comes to the catastrophe the current economic and financial system is reaping upon the planet. So busy are they patting themselves on the back and scrambling to acquire that next billion to see what is rapidly unfolding beyond their moats."
- Michael Krieger
And that is where you are all.
You might consider yourselves smart, intelligent, lucky, fortunate, or whatever.
But you are not.
You have forgotten so much.
The
progressive liberal communists rounded up anyone who could possibly be a
threat to them. They loaded them into trucks. They tied their hands
behind their backs, and they killed them.
You have forgotten, or maybe never had the experience of being a most valued employee; working 14 hour days for months in a row, earning the company millions of dollars and then you suddenly being let go on Christmas eve. Coming home to a shocked wife, with the baby screaming for food, and you being forced to go into your meager savings… savings that will be depleted in a week… to buy some day-old vegetables, and on-sale food-stuffs.
That’s America for the last fucking three decades you God damn son-of-a-bitches!
You think that we are going to turn the other cheek and not find a scapegoat to roast over some burning embers? Maybe you weren’t the the person who handing out the pink-slip, or the manager that approved it, or the VP that authorized it, or the President that demanded it. But all of you… EVERY… FUCKING… ONE… contributed.
We will never forget.
Your time is coming.
At the same time that people like you and me are thriving beyond the dreams of any plutocrats in history, the rest of the country—the 99.99 percent—is lagging far behind. The divide between the haves and have-nots is getting worse really, really fast. In 1980, the top 1 percent controlled about 8 percent of U.S. national income. The bottom 50 percent shared about 18 percent. Today the top 1 percent share about 20 percent; the bottom 50 percent, just 12 percent.
-From Nick Hanauer’s excellent Politico Op-Ed: The Pitchforks are Coming…For Us Plutocrats
Yes.
Inequality is one aspect of it. There are “haves” and “have nots”. But that’s not the point. Many of us watched our life fall apart before our very eyes, not because we were lazy while we toiled in the company, but rather instead to make the bottom-line look better to the investors of the companies where we were employed.
We see pictures in history books and say, “nah that could never happen here”. The roads are dirt. The people are wearing military clothing. There isn’t anything that looks like a part of America in the pictures.
This attitude… one of us being just a useful tool… like a broom or a toilet brush… has altered the emotional fabric of America. And, yes, part of the turmoil that you see all over America today is a direct result of this arrogant behavior.
But the problem isn’t that we have inequality. Some inequality is
intrinsic to any high-functioning capitalist economy. The problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse every day. Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society.
Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will
disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution.And so I have a message for my fellow filthy rich, for all of us who live in our gated bubble worlds: Wake up, people. It won’t last.If we don’t do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality.
-From Nick Hanauer’s excellent Politico Op-Ed: The Pitchforks are Coming…For Us Plutocrats
Oh, do not be under the illusion that the situation and the contributors can all be quantified on some sort of chart. They cannot. Like the school kid relentlessly bullied by the school-hall bullies, an anger has been pent up for decades.
You do not want to be on the losing end of that stick.
During
these times and types of conflicts it is NORMAL for women, and girls to
be abducted, raped repeatedly and then killed. This is a historical
norm.
The only way that you avid this fate is to confront it.
Face on. Right now.
Do good works, and stay out of politics. Help people.
In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It’s not if, it’s when.Here’s what I say to you: You’re living in a dream world. What everyone wants to believe is that when things reach a tipping point and go from being merely crappy for the masses to dangerous and socially destabilizing, that we’re somehow going to know about that shift ahead of time. Any student of history knows that’s not the way it happens.
-From Nick Hanauer’s excellent Politico Op-Ed: The Pitchforks are Coming…For Us Plutocrats
You know that this is coming. Its not a surprise.
You all are not fools. Indeed, you all are investing in property, safeguards and insurance plans.
ISIS
sex slave at a slave auction in an occupied region of Syria. During
periods of change, the plight of women is always a dangerous one.
What I am saying is that clutching your bags of gold and scurrying off to your rat-hole in some remote location is not the answer. Historically it will not end up like you think. This will not be like a Hollywood movie.
Instead, it will (more) be like a barricaded city that tries to deal with an overwhelming and vicious Mongol horde.
Revolutions, like bankruptcies, come gradually, and then suddenly. One day, somebody sets himself on fire, then thousands of people are in the streets, and before you know it, the country is burning. And then there’s no time for us to get to the airport and jump on our Gulfstream Vs and fly to New Zealand. That’s the way it always happens. If inequality keeps rising as it has been, eventually it will happen. We will not be able to predict when, and it will be terrible—for everybody. But especially for us.
-From Nick Hanauer’s excellent Politico Op-Ed: The Pitchforks are Coming…For Us Plutocrats
Imagine that you and your family are living in one of those cities, one thousand years ago.
It’s a very large city for the time. With large stone walls that tower up many, many stories high. You have a great life, based on trade along the “silk road”. You are wealthy. You have a large spacious home. You have a beautiful family, servants, fine clothes and a home filled with fine arts, laughter and parties.
You are aware of the coming Mongols.
You have discussed this matter with your other wealthy friends. They all have strong political connections and everyone reassures you that there is nothing to worry about. Most of the Mongols are over-rated they say. Plus they have provided reassurances that our military, with the best fighters in the world are more than a match for them. They even took you on a tour of the military barracks and you saw first hand how well organized they were.
Rather than agree to the demands of the Mongols, the most intelligent in the city advised that the rulers confront the Mongols with their superior military.
And so a strong force of 20,000 of the best warriors in the city left the city gates and marched forward with trumpets blowing to confront the horde.
You don’t know what will happen. But you have been reassured that your military will be victorious. After all, they have never lost a battle for at least four decades.
Still you worry.
All you know is that the military went out one week ago and never returned. The King gave you every assurance that things are proceeding well, and that you need not worry. But the truth is that you feel very uneasy.
This is a joint suicide by a Burgermeister and his family upon news that the Americans were entering the town.
The wife says that people are beginning to talk and rumors are starting to fly about what happened at the battle last week.
You cannot put your finger on it, but there is this feeling of dread and gloom that you cannot shake. yet, the sky is blue. The birds are fluttering in the trees, and the boys are playing in the yard. Your daughter just bought a nice silk dress that she is going to wear to a religious celebration in two days. Yet, that dread persists.
“Maybe I should flee?” you ask yourself.
Maybe.
At Politicon 2019 in Nashville on Saturday, during a "conversation" with Never Trumper MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace, James Comey said, "Our leaders must reflect the glue that holds us together. They can’t be people who lie all the time. They just can’t. And I hope people see that’s true whether they are Republicans or Democrats.
Wallace then asked, "What if he wins again? Will you still believe that?"
Comey said, "I will be, from my new home in New Zeland, I will still believe in America."
-Townhall
Do you want to place a bet that what Comey says will come true? That he will be safe and forgotten in New Zealand?
Do
not think that in today’s “modern” and “enlightened” society that we
are beyond mass genocide against a particular race, or group of people.
Here are people who were seized out of their homes at the dead of night
by militarized police (the Federal Police), handcuffed with wire-ties
(behind his back) and then killed and dumped in a mass grave. Like this
poor fella. I am quite sure that the person putting the wire-ties on his
clasped wrists was very polite and nice about it. Cool and
professional, most certainly. Then he was handed over to others. Those
others then killed him like one would step on cockroach. And, with just
as much care. What? You think America can’t relive the Bosnia
experience?
Or do you think that he will be in chains before he can ever reach an airplane? Or, barring that, seized by the NZ authorities upon the direction of the American government?
All of you are delusional.
Raped and then killed. This is the fate for most targeted women from the ages of 10 to 40. Those outside will probably just be killed.
You keep on dancing near the fire, unaware that you are dowsed in kerosene and that a single spark can set you, and those around your alight.
Because here’s an odd thing. During the past three decades, compensation for CEOs grew 127 times faster than it did for workers. Since 1950, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio has increased 1,000 percent, and that is not a typo. CEOs used to earn 30 times the median wage; now they rake in 500 times. Yet no company I know of has eliminated its senior managers, or outsourced them to China or automated their jobs. Instead, we now have more CEOs and senior executives than ever before. So, too, for financial services workers and technology workers. These folks earn multiples of the median wage, yet we somehow have more and more of them.
-From Nick Hanauer’s excellent Politico Op-Ed: The Pitchforks are Coming…For Us Plutocrats
Grbavica where a huge complex was set up for the mass internment and rape of women. This is what it looked like at the tail end of the war. 1996.
People! You have jumped over the turnstiles, and gobbled up all the money that you can. Then you set up systems to keep it all for yourself. And somehow you think that the rest of us hasn’t noticed.
Well, we have, and we are royally pissed off over it.
Wal-Mart is our nation’s largest employer with some 1.4 million employees in the United States and more than $25 billion in pre-tax profit. So why are Wal-Mart employees the largest group of Medicaid recipients in many states? Wal-Mart could, say, pay each of its 1 million lowest-paid workers an extra $10,000 per year, raise them all out of poverty and enable them to, of all things, afford to shop at Wal-Mart. Not only would this also save us all the expense of the food stamps, Medicaid and rent assistance that they currently require, but Wal-Mart would still earn more than $15 billion pre-tax per year. Wal-Mart won’t (and shouldn’t) volunteer to pay its workers more than their competitors. In order for us to have an economy that works for everyone, we should compel all retailers to pay living wages—not just ask politely.
-From Nick Hanauer’s excellent Politico Op-Ed: The Pitchforks are Coming…For Us Plutocrats
All of you are fucking guilty.
And if you live in an upscale neighborhood, YOU WILL BE TARGETED.
There will be no avenues of escape. You are FUCKED.
While Donald Trump is undoing many terrible things, nothing is being done about the pre-genocidal conditions already put in place. Unless action is taken by the President or Congress, it is just a matter of time before they will be mobilized against YOU and your family. Take notice.
We rich people have been falsely persuaded by our schooling and
the affirmation of society, and have convinced ourselves, that we are the main job creators. It’s simply not true. There can never be enough super-rich Americans to power a great economy. I earn about 1,000 times the median American annually, but I don’t buy thousands of times more stuff. My family purchased three cars over the past few years, not 3,000. I buy a few pairs of pants and a few shirts a year, just like most American men. I bought two pairs of the fancy wool pants I am wearing as I write, what my partner Mike calls my “manager pants.” I guess I could have bought 1,000 pairs. But why would I? Instead, I sock my extra money away in savings, where it doesn’t do the country much good.
-From Nick Hanauer’s excellent Politico Op-Ed: The Pitchforks are Coming…For Us Plutocrats
Back to the wealthy man living in his villa in the upscale part of the city-state that he inhabits…
Last night over some chicken and some fine vintage wine, you discussed what was going on with a fellow trader friend of yours. He had entered the city and was planning on leaving in the morning. He said some worrisome things.
He said that he used to trade to numerous cities to the East. But he no longer trade with them any more. They no longer exist.
When we went to visit them, they were abandoned. Some still had the walls intact, but most of the homes were empty. Some wild dogs and a goat or two were all that remained. He said that most of the homes no longer had roofs and it looked like the entire city was sacked and set ablaze.
Some had piles of bones blowing in the sand and trapped under broken stone, bricks and walls. Farm fields of plants weren’t harvested and allowed to go fallow. The trees were ripe with apples, but no one collected them.
He couldn’t tell what happened.
All he said was that it looked like it came upon everyone suddenly and no one was spared. Even the churches were burned to the ground. What was not looted, was intentionally destroyed.
He said that he was going to leave in the morning and wanted the family to leave and accompany him.
960403-A-2407B-008
Photo of a suburb in Sarajevo Bosnia after the fighting that took place
between the Serbians and the Muslims,taken by Specialist Nadine Byrnside
from the 55th Signal Company Combat Camera team, in a place called
Grbavica on 3 April 1996.
In Conclusion.
I tip my hats off to Mr. Hanaeur and Mr. Krieger. I think you all should listen to them. But if you choose not to, that is fine. Then listen to me. Your fucking days are numbered, and if America burns, then do not rest easily, for you will be searched out. Located and slaughtered.
It will be historical.
Heed my words. There will be no place for you to hide.
I am talking about the annuals of history and the role that you will play in it. It will not be pretty. But there are things that you can still do about it. You can still make a difference. And running away to hide is not one of them.
This
is what happens to people who do not “go along” with the “new” way of
doing things. It is never pretty. You are rounded up. You are
handcuffed, and you are killed. That is the way it has been for
thousands of years. It never stopped. It will continue.
It is time to atone for your sins. Do not put it off.
Now, you are probably wondering what happened to the family that was awaiting the news of the battle between their city and the Mongol hordes…
Large Urban Cities…
Worse was to come in 1221 — ‘a year to live in infamy’. While Genghis’s other armies had been busy in the east, threatening Tbilisi in Georgia and terrifying the Christian world, Tolui, one of Genghis’s equally reprehensible sons, took Merv (in modern-day Turkmenistan), one of the largest cities in the world.
Promised safety, the citizens surrendered and emerged from behind their walls. Tolui ‘surveyed the masses dolefully gathered with their possessions, mounted a golden chair and ordered mass executions to commence’.
They took four days and nights to complete.
Genghis’s rotten fruit did not fall far from the tree. Terror — and the certainty of its visitation — was a major weapon in Genghis’s arsenal: decapitated women, children and even cats and dogs were reputedly displayed.
- Was Genghis Khan the cruellest man who ever lived?
Complete devastation…
Incursions into Southeast Asia were largely successful, most factions agreed to pay tribute, and only the Invasions into Vietnam and Java failed.
Europe was devastated by the Mongols.
They destroyed near enough every major Russian city, and invaded Volga Bulgaria, Bulgaria, Poland, and Hungary.
If rumours spread that the Mongols were coming, then it would cause a mass panic, and some would run to safety.
There was no guaranteed way to defeat the Mongol hordes, they continuously defeated much larger armies, so numerical strength couldn’t protect you.
Mongol conquests would leave once populous and flourishing areas as wastelands, with little to no people, those remaining would be slaves.
-ESKify
The Women…
Genghis Khan had so much power that he could do whatever he wanted.
For instance, when Genghis occupied some new area, he would kill or enslave all the men and share all the women amongst his tribe.
Genghis Khan would even make beauty contests of captured women to decide which woman is the most beautiful one.
Yeah, he was having his Miss Universe competition before it was cool. So, the queen of those beauty competitions would win the privilege to become one of many Genghis Khan's women.
Rest of the Mongolian army would share all the other contestants.
-The Richest
The Wealthy…
Genghis Khan was the most feared human of the 13th century, who could destroy dynasties just by moving his little finger. He created the Mongol Empire all by himself and earned his eternal spot in the history books.
However, a lot of people had to suffer for Genghis Khan to succeed. Oh yes, the Mongolians were known for their horrendous torturing techniques.
One of the most popular was pouring molten silver down the throat and ears of a victim. Genghis Khan also liked bending his enemy's back until the backbone snapped. If that sounds barbaric, skip this next part.
So, the Mongols once celebrated victory over Russians in a very bizarre way. They picked all the Russian survivors, dropped them on the ground and put a heavy wooden gate on top of them.
Then, Genghis Khan and the entire Mongol army had a huge banquet on that wooden gate. They ate, drank, and watched how Russians were dying one by one from the suffocation, pressure, and wounds.
-The Richest
A return to the old ways…
“The greatest joy for a man is to defeat his enemies, to drive them before him, to take all they possess, to see those they love in tears, to ride their horses, and to hold their wives and daughters in his arms.”
-Genghis Khan.
SHTF Related Index
This is a collection of my posts related to prepping, SHTF (Shit Hit The Fan), CWII (American Civil War 2), Fourth Turning (Strauss–Howe generational theory)
and other posts related to the very sad and sorry tatters that America
is today. Actually, I am a little stunned that I have written so much
about these matters. But America today is very ill and there are things
that really should be said.
Here are the posts.
SHTF and Related Index
Some prepper humor…
Articles & Links
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
Contrary to what the reader might be aware, “prepping” for a national disaster or upheaval is not a wholly American phenomenon. It is a global one, and it is something that has been practiced by various people time and time again, over the years. Here, in this article, we look at examples of what happened to other “preppers” when their nation underwent a period of upheaval.
Here we discuss how prepping (historically) helped out these people to avoid or reduce the amount of stress and turmoil during national turmoil.
Specifically, we will concentrate on political, social, and genocidal upheavals. Prepping to prepare for natural emergencies is pretty much well understood, and accepted, as a desirable and important part and responsibly of the family elders.
Thus, this article focuses on prepping for societal change.
The classifications of “political” prepping
For our purposes, we will refer to any prepping associated with a government, or a social upheaval as “political prepping”. You can refer to it by other names as you wish. You can call it “prepping as a hedge against an aggressive government outreach”, or perhaps “defensive prepping”.
Which means, in short, that the need to prepare for societal change is directly related your government’s behavior. Or, in other words, to the actions of one’s government or the members in the local society where you may live.
Here, we look at the purposes of prepping in this situation, and what the likelihood of success and survival may be. The purposes, or the reasons why someone may set up a prepper situation can be classified as…
“Buying time” to enable one’s family to escape from a conflict zone. These preppers “bug out” with the objective of moving to a safer place or a safer region. This is also known as a”safe house”. These preppers cling on to the “normalcy” vector. They hope that they can keep working on their day to day lifestyle, without interruption.
“Ride out the storm“. Long duration defense of one’s property and family in a fixed, stable location. This is the “traditional prepper” lifestyle, and the one most people associate with prepping.
“Fluidic survival“. The ability to float with your family in a general region in safety, but not be tied down to any fixed hard defensive location.
“Militia Membership“. Being part of a much larger group that in cooperation, defends a community, farms and region from outsiders.
“Hobbyist prepper” . A person who thinks that they are prepared for a SHTF event solely by reading, setting aside some provisions, and the purchase of some land in an isolated geographic location.
“Life Boat prepper“. This is what I did. Long before the start of any SHTF event, I figured to locating a safe haven way outside the USA. Then I relocated my entire life there. The key here is that this type of prepping occurs long before the rest of society catches on that “storm clouds” might be a brewing.
We will look at each one and compare the historical chances of success and endurance.
Buying Time
Firstly, let's look at the "buying time" option. Here, the prepper waits until the last possible moment and then bugs out.
I argue that if there is any possibility of a SHTF event, then you should immediately scram. Do not wait until your being shot at by some militia in your company parking lot.
Factory
workers, with their company name badges, in the parking lot of their
employer. Two dead and one dying with his legs shot off. He and his
co-workers had no idea that “world war III” would break out while they
were trying to clock in at work. When one group of people identify
another group, and target them with hate, and violence, it only
escalates. It gets worse. Eventually there is whole-scale blood shed. Do
not be under the illusion that it will never happen in America. There
are enormous groups of people just chomping at the bit to attack
conservatives and traditionalists. All in the name of a progressive
utopia.
Here, the prepper family realizes that SHTF and a situation is taking place. They may or may not have prepared a “safe house” or secure location outside of the conflict zone. What they need to do, and the sole and entire purpose of all their prepping activity is to create a safe avenue for egress outside of the conflict “hot zone”.
Truthfully, their personal use of situational intelligence caused them to be in the “hot seat”. They ignored the signs. They relied on everything continuing to be “normal”, instead of getting ready for abnormal events.
Often the father, or family head, would be slapping his forehead asking “why didn’t I leave earlier, I should have known better”!
Yeah, yeah. But that’s not really true. Genocides, democides and Policides, are always sprung on an unsuspecting populace. There are few things that a person can do to prepare, short of leaving the country and setting up a second home in a peaceful and tranquil country.
The living room with it’s new occupants after the Bosnian war was over. This is what the owners of the house found when they returned after bugging out at the start of the conflict.
These kinds of preppers should have a [1] bug-out bag, [2] a “safe house”, and [3] escape plan to leave their normal home and make it to the safe house in safety, avoiding crowds, the police, and opposition forces.
The "bug out bag" could very well be a backpack, or bag. But, it just as well be a large roomy trunk in a vehicle with extra cans of gasoline. The "bug out bag" must be specifically tailored for the mission; going from point "A" to your "safe house" destination.
They should also have studied the most basic prepping skills.
Not for a nuclear exchange or zombie attack, but for basic survival in a “scram and bug out” situation. Again, you need to be trained and ready to specifically the situation and scenario that you are prepping for.
The lesson: you have more to fear and are more likely to die from common, localized events than massive, spectacular catastrophes. Train and prepare accordingly.
First-aid skills, driving skills, empty hand-based self-defense. Those should be your trifecta starting out, considering you are far more likely to need to heal than harm, you are far more likely to need to dodge a drunk driver than a zombie, and you are far more likely to need to go hands on with someone than shoot them.
- 3 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started to Prep
The biggest problems that these “bug-out preppers” have to deal with are [1] crowds, [2] lack of reliable routes and transportation, and [3] roving bands of opposition forces. In a social upheaval situation, your biggest problem will be other people.
Also, please note. It is always assumed that they did their proper homework and the “safe house” is truly safe and secure.
During civil wars, and genocides, the local government will go house to house and collect people. They will separate the men from the women, and often they would be taken to bad situations. With rape and sexual slavery for the women, and death for the men. Do not allow yourself to be collected and taken to a “safe area”. Photo is from the Bosnian genocide. Collected men being led to a “holding area”. Most of them died there.
Remember; A "safe area" is one that is "safe" for your captors. Not "safe" for you.
In this prepping scenario, there is a direct link between knowing that the situation is actually SHTF, and when to actually “Bug Out”. The smarter preppers would scram as soon as the “trip wires” of SHTF are activated.
Some “trip wires”;
Roving bands of militia.
Outsiders investigating your property.
Police conducting house to house searches.
The sight of a dead person.
A house or building on fire with no firemen responding to it.
Open looting.
Favorite or often used websites down or seized.
Police standing down, or retreating to defense positions.
Blocked roads – due to accidents, natural events, or erosion.
Blocked roads – due to police check points.
Blocked roads – due to militia or armed groups, or bandits.
Sounds of gun fire, especially full automatic fire.
Bombings of buildings in the local region.
Internet, cell phone, or electricity outages.
Supermarkets and stores running out of food.
Farms not being harvested in time.
Friends, associates, and family all confused.
Local hospitals being short on staff.
Airport closed or protected by armed forces.
Organized convoys of any type.
Advice from loved ones.
Activation of the National Guard.
Close friends and families leaving the area.
Implementation of “special protection measures”, laws, or executive orders.
People in the open carrying firearms.
Groups of roving youth / young adults with firearms.
The sight of someone hung.
A state of “emergency” declared.
Being instructed to move to a FEMA camp.
Rumors of bad things happening.
Phone calls, emails of messages from concerned loved ones.
Everyone is different, and every region and situation is different.
However, the “bug-out prepper” should know what “trip wires” to watch out for, and to pack up and scram when the situation goes “hot”. I would suggest any three within a one week time period and you should recognize that you need to scram big time.
The “bug out prepper” will avoid crowds and main roads. They will take the well planned “safe route” to their destination, the “safe house”.
The “bug out” prepper would take the safe and secure back roads, and avoid people and crowds as much as possible. They would travel in isolation. Hide as much as possible. Keep fires and noise to a minimum. As well as be on the alert to any strangers or situations that they might encounter along the way.
This kind of prepper is one who fully expects to be a refugee.
The only difference between the prepper and the refugee is that the prepper would be far better prepared. They would avoid large groups of people. They wouldn’t trust the government or officials. They would avoid refugee camps, and “safe areas”, and they would have a set destination in mind that they were heading towards.
Refugees fleeing the ISIS in Syria. They gathered up their possessions and flee the battle and conflict zones.
Historically, the well prepared “bug out prepper” is also the successful refugee.
While there are, I am sure, instances of personal catastrophe for these individuals, in general, these preppers have perhaps one of the greatest chances of survival. (Provided they arrive to their “safe house” and not be directed to any FEMA camp or staging area.) Never the less, they do need to constantly be on the alert. Things can go dangerously wrong.
Provided, of course, that their “safe house” is truly out of the conflict zone.
As a quick reminder, whether you are in the rural areas, a small
town, or on the road. Avoid the cities. This is where your enemies want
you to stream towards. It’s a trap. It’s a snare.
The idea is to herd people into places where they are trapped and can
be easily controlled. There will be urban youth terrorizing the rural
areas, small towns and communities, and this will create a situation
where everyone will start to stream into the “safe” cities.
It won’t be safe.
Passport found in the remains of a Bosnian civilian who was trying to escape the genocide, but instead got caught up in a firefight and ended up getting shot and killed. Do not wait until the last minute.
Some lessons from history;
In the 1930's Hitler came to power in Germany.
During that decade he openly and politically declared war on Jews and other "undesirables". Many Jews chose to sit tight. They believed that things would go back to normal... some day. All they needed to do was stay out of the way of the Nazi Germans.
Other Jews; those that I call "bug out prepper" Jews, left Germany. They stayed as long as they could, but at some point in time, the "trip wires" were triggered, and they fled to "safe houses" in neighboring countries. One of which was Poland. There, they were able to live their lives in peace and free from the prosecution by the Nazi Germans.
These "bug out preppers" were successful. All except up to one point. They assumed that their "safe house(s)" would all be safe from the Nazi Germans.
But that is not what happened.
Germany invaded Poland in 1939. And once they obtained control of the nation, they continued their prosecution of the Jews there. Those that bugged-out from Germany discovered that their "safe house(s)" were not really safe at all.
This remained true for all those "bug out prepper" Jews that went elsewhere in Europe. The only ones that were truly safe were those that went to England, the Americas, and Africa.
Of course, it goes without saying that the “bug out prepper” would avoid conflict. They would be the rabbit and run and hide rather than engage any potential enemies or get entwined in any kind of situation. That being said, of course, were the need manifest itself, they would be fully capable of taking on anyone that came their way.
All preppers should be prepared to make the hard decisions if the need manifests to protect themselves and to defend their family.
Ride out the storm
In this scenario, the prepper believes that any SHTF event will be short-lived. Certainly no more than three to four years. They believe that they are isolated enough, equipped enough, and camouflaged enough to avoid the vast bulk of conflict during a SHTF scenario.
They just simply “hunker down” and ride the SHTF storm out.
An isolated cabin in the middle of the woods, and in the mountains. It’s a nice location to bug out to, and better if that is your home, and it is fully stocked with a few years worth of supplies. However, all preppers should realize that there might be strangers of friends that might be desirous of sharing your safe haven with you, uninvited. In fact, your “safe house” might already be on the bug-out list for others. You do need to be aware and secure in your domicile.
This prepper is more often than not, located in a rural or isolated location. Has supplies, a survivalist mindset, and is ready to defend his family aggressively. He does not feel that he would be considered in any way to be a threat to anyone, and so is ready to ride out the SHTF event, and defend his family where necessary.
This kind of prepper is perhaps the best prepared.
They have a lifestyle, and a way of living that is conducive to hiding out and surviving in one place. However, this kind of lifestyle does not happen overnight. Nope. You have to develop it over years.
Depending on the person, and their family, the “ride out the storm” prepper might have anything from a tiny isolated cabin on top of a rocky mountain, to a large farm nestled in an isolated valley. The prepper should keep in mind the importance in simplicity and in self reliance.
Thinking that you can just “jump in” and survive in a cabin that you purchased and stocked up with seeds is unrealistic. You are not prepared to live in that situation. You are not trained. You are not ready, and you are not prepared. You just think you are.
Also take heed. Just because you bought and stocked a home in the middle of the country somewhere does not preclude others from seizing it while you are away. Neglected "bug out safe zones" are always at the risk of use by others.
It would be a grand disappointment to discover that the pristine lake cabin that you bought for a SHTF scenario, and all the effort that you went into the solar cells, and provisioning it, was all for naught when a tribe of 100 Hell's Angels bikers took it over.
In this scenario, “ride out the storm” preppers are ones that not only [1] have an isolated “safe house” in [2] an isolated geographical region, BUT they also [3] have been practicing the “ride out the storm” lifestyle for [4] a minimum of three years or longer. Therefore, just owning property, a storm cellar, and reading a few books will not qualify you as a “ride out the storm” Prepper.
Instead you are a qualified “hobbyist prepper”.
In all cases, the “ride out the storm” prepper should be prepared for visitors, no matter how isolated they are. They should have secret rooms, and hideouts. They should have weapons available and other hidden and buried. They should have food supplies and others well hidden from roving bands of militia and “government” search expeditions.
Door to door searching in America with a blanket “search order” to search everyone, and everything. All “ride out the storm” preppers would expect visits from both government officials, military, as well as roving bands of militia, and opposition forces. These preppers should have a plan(s) on how to deal with each situation as it manifests.
Historically, the “ride out the storm” prepper has a mixed bag of success. It all depends on the type and duration of the societal conflict, as well as how absolutely fanatical the opposition forces are.
At one time Armenia was an independent nation. At that time, Armenia was a Christian majority nation. Then over time, their borders changed, swapped hands, and the majority of Armenians found themselves located within Turkey.
The first widely studied modern democide occurred in Turkey between 1915 and 1923, when the Turkish government decided to eliminate the country’s Christian minority. This group consisted primarily of ethnic Armenians and Greeks.
We do know that Turkey disarmed the populace in 1911, and for around three and a half years went door to door collecting the firearms and ammo from the entire civilian population. Then in 1914, they began rounding up all the disarmed Christians. They tortured them, they abused them, they marched them into the desert where they all died.
I am quite confident that there would be "ride out the storm" preppers who, by geographic location, luck, or fawning being a Muslim managed to escape the democide and purge of Christians. But we will never know how many of these people existed, nor their own individual stories.
What we do know is that Albania went from a 100% Christian majority nation to a 97% Muslim nation in a few very short decades.
"Christianity in Turkey has had a long history dating back to the 1st-century AD. In modern times the percentage of Christians in Turkey has declined from 20-25 percent in 1914 to 3-5.5 percent in 1927, to 0.3-0.4% today roughly translating to 200,000-320,000 devotees."
While it is indeed possible that "ride out the storm" preppers comprise this tiny, tiny minority, one has to wonder if they truly feel safe living in a nation that exterminated an entire society identical to what they believe in. Or in other words, was it worth it?
Raped
and killed. You need to either prepare to fight, or flee. What ever you
do, do not get snared into a collection area for your own safety. It is
not going to be safe. As this young lass learned. Do not trust refugee
camps. Do not trust the government. Do not trust ANYONE. And, finally,
do not allow yourself or your family to be disarmed. Learn to fight both
with guns and blades. Hide and protect yourselves, and take special
note where the progressive liberals live in your neighborhood. They have
the lists that your name will be on.
Fluidic Survival
In this prepping scheme, the prepper would not count on any fixed homestead, nor would they plan on “bugging out”. Instead, they would maintain a migratory movement within the hills, countryside and mountains of their familial “stomping ground”.
They would have advantage in knowing the terrain, knowing the people, and at the same time, being mobile.
Being mobile enables the prepper to inherently evade military, militia, and the government. As they rely on fixed homes, roads and geographical landmarks from which to work upon. Mobility is the fluidic preppers most important asset. They rely on isolation, movement and isolation for their protection.
The walking dead has various scenes that are suggestive of Fluidic prepping. In fluidic prepping the person tends to migrate within a specific and fixed geographic area and avoids people at all costs.
This kind of prepping requires a well-established knowledge of local geography. Obviously county-sized. It would require a well-established knowledge of friends, family friends, and relationships. For it to work, the prepper would be elusive and maybe visit friends as needed but tell them nothing.
The prepper would locate stashes of gear, supplies and equipment at various well-hidden locations for their periodic use. They would visit these sites on a rotating basis and would never stay at one for longer than a week at a time.
Christopher Knight was arrested, charged with burglary and theft, and transported to the Kennebec County jail in Augusta, the state capital. For the first time in nearly 10,000 days, he slept indoors.
News of the capture stunned the citizens of North Pond. For decades, they’d felt haunted by…something. It was hard to say what. At first, in the late 1980s, there were strange occurrences. Flashlights were missing their batteries. Steaks disappeared from the fridge. New propane tanks on the grill had been replaced by old ones. "My grandkids thought I was losing my mind," said David Proulx, whose vacation cabin was broken into at least fifty times.
Then people began noticing other things. Wood shavings near window locks; scratches on doorframes. Was it a neighbor? A gang of teenagers? The robberies continued—boat batteries, frying pans, winter jackets. Fear took hold. "We always felt like he was watching us," one resident said.
The police were called, repeatedly, but were unable to help.
Locks were changed, alarm systems installed. Nothing seemed to stop him. Or her. Or them. No one knew. A few desperate residents even left notes on their doors: "Please don’t break in. Tell me what you need and I’ll leave it out for you." There was never a reply.
Incidents mounted, and the phantom morphed into legend. Eventually he was given a name: the North Pond Hermit. At a homeowners’ meeting in 2002, the hundred people present were asked who had suffered break-ins. Seventy-five raised their hands. Campfire hermit stories were swapped. One kid recalled that when he was 10 years old, all his Halloween candy was stolen. That kid is now 34.
Knight’s arrest, rather than eliminating disbelief, only enhanced it. The truth was stranger than the myth. One man had actually lived in the woods of Maine for twenty-seven years, in an unheated nylon tent. Winters in Maine are long and intensely cold: a wet, windy cold, the worst kind of cold. A week of winter camping is an impressive achievement. An entire season is practically unheard of.
Though hermits have been documented for thousands of years, Knight’s feat appears to exist in a category of its own. He engaged in zero communication with the outside world. He never snapped a photo. He did not keep a journal. His camp was undisclosed to everyone.
There may have been others like Knight, whose commitment to isolation was absolute—he planned to live his entire life in secret—but if so, they were never found. Capturing Knight was the human equivalent of netting a giant squid. He was an uncontacted tribe of one.
-The Last True Hermit
“Fluidic prepping” is very similar to living like Christopher Knight. You live “on the move” in an isolated area. You avoid contact with people. You hide and you live like a rabbit.
This is the most successful prepping techniques, but it is also the hardest to prepare for and the most difficult to train for. The television character Daryl Dixon from the “Walking Dead” best embodies this kind of “Fluidic” prepping.
This is the most successful prepping techniques, but it is also the hardest to prepare for and the most difficult to train for. The television character Daryl Dixon from the “Walking Dead” best embodies this kind of prepping.
Militia Prepping
In militia prepping you are not prepping alone and for the survival of your family. Instead, you are part of a group that encourages prepping as a group. You share resources, you share defensive strategy, and you share intelligence.
In militia prepping, you join forces with others in your area and form a civilian militia for defensive purposes. You train together. You defend shared resources, and operate as a combat force.
This sort of prepping is the “bedrock” of American society. As such, the progressive liberal Marxists have declared war on these kinds of organizations and their membership.
Former President Obama was very active in having the DHS, the FBI, ATF, IRS, and the DOJ investigate and prosecute these groups and their membership. Often going as far as to spy on them, and consider them threats and arrest them long before they did anything wrong. Sort of like the science fiction movie “The Minority Report”.
The United States Constitution relies on the “citizen soldiers” to defend his local region, his family and his geography. This is the basis of militia prepping. It is a way for locals to defend their families, resources, and life from others.
Members, and the organizations should be expected to “be on the radar screens” of any government and Marxist organization when SHTF events occur. They can expect to have all their electronic media monitored, and to have paid informants within their ranks.
They should expect this.
Local militia defending their village and region from the movie “Blood Diamonds”. When the government broke down in Sierra Leone, it was up to the local villages and towns to defend themselves. This scene depicts one such intervention.
Historically, local militia groups from Syria, Bosnia, to the Ukraine have survived and thwarted combat, social upheavals and genocide. In general, radicalized armed youth riding technicals are loathe to risk organized civilian resistance. They prefer unarmed civilians.
This type of prepping is best suited against thugs, criminals, roving bands of ideologically motivated youth, and techinicals. They are not really all that effective against modern military forces using tanks and APC weaponry. Their strength lies at the local level and as such they can hold off large assaults by organized forces for organized retreats.
Not only were they effective against the British during the American independence in 1776, but against the Nazi Germans in the Ukraine and Poland.
Armed militia in the Bosnian conflict. The news media want to say that the conflict was over religion. That one side was against Muslims. But that is not wholly true. It was complicated. In some ways it was an ideological war, one that pitted the urban areas against the rural areas. A decade long period of ideological rhetoric predated the first attacks, and the mastermind of all the genocide was from an urban area.
While membership in a militia has a much higher incidence of conflict with others, and a higher risk of injury factor, it is also one of the safer options that one can have as a prepper. For in this way, the individual becomes part of a larger and thus stronger group. His support network increases, as does his ability to be fed, and support his family during tense times of crisis.
Hobbyist Prepping
Hobbyist prepping is “wanna-be” prepping. You study, you read, you dream, you purchase things. But, you don’t really prepare yourself for a serious SHTF event. You just simply believe that you are ready. You want to take on some zombies, and are ready to live in a bunker during a nuclear winter.
Many Americans are hobbyist preppers. They watch zombie movies, the read the news, and consume books on prepping, but take no serious actions towards actual prepping.
But it’s all Hollywood inspired dreams.
A true and real SHTF event is one where you are cold, and hungry. You itch, and you have been betrayed, and witnessed friends and family killed. Your world is upside down, and everything that you have of value is gone.
The
people, isolated and undefended, in the rural regions were dangerously
exposed. Large packs of armed “militia”, actually ideological youth
armed with military arms and on drugs and in an frenzy against perceived
slights (“privilege” and “advantage”) as promoted by the media prior to
the SHTF event. This is a scene in front of a “road block” that was set
up by local residents to slow down the roving bands of armed urban
youth. Their hope was that it would give them enough time to stream into
the nearby cities for protection. The only thing was that the cities
were all controlled by the very same people who set all the attacks in
motion.
Seriously, if you are not ready to pick up a knife and shove it with all your might into the skull of an enemy, you are not ready for the gritty and harsh reality of a true and real SHTF event. A real SHTF event is one with pools of black congealed blood, flies buzzing and the horrible smell of rotting human flesh. It’s one where you are constantly afraid of everything. Your body is hyper sensitive, and all you want to do is get the fu@k out of there.
Many hobbyists like to imagine a world where they are exploring ruins, and scavenging supplies from the ruins. They imagine themselves shooting others with extreme accuracy using a trusty AK-47 (as if that’s gonna happen), and carrying a large bore .357 magnum revolver on their hip. Yeah. It’s all Hollywood. Hollywood.
People, the bullets won’t magically hit a person. If you cannot aim, you cannot hit. Not only that, but one bullet might not do the job. You might have to open an entire clip into a person, and they will still be lunging towards you. No. Television is not real life.
America
will start to look something like this once the ideological “hounds of
war”; those armed packs of thugs from the urban strongholds are let
loose on the rural, undefended communities.
In sort, hobbyists concentrate on the tools and not on their abilities during SHTF situations.
Believe me, scavenging in wartime does not look anything like what Hollywood presents. The world is in ruin, and everything of value is gone. People who look like you, speak like you, dress like you, and act like you will turn on you in a heartbeat. They would steal from you, rape your wife and kids, and then kill you as if you were nothing more than an insect.
Rural Bosnia. No, CWII will not be anything like Hollywood is trying to portray. You won’t go scavenging for materials or hot-wire a car to drive. Things will be destroyed, dead, rusted and useless. War is very, very ugly. Note the un-harvested corn going to fallow in the background (to the Right).
Look, it is better to be a hobbyist prepper than a “caught by surprise sheeple”. But not by much.
The good news, is that the jump from hobbyist prepper to serious prepping is not a hard leap. It doesn’t take much. Some some steely resolve and a good hard look at the most likely scenarios that lie before you.
Hobbyist prepping has about the same survival rate as an unarmed civilian with two-days warning of an impending assault. It's not much, but it is an edge. It is up to the person to see how far they can take that edge and make some kind of real advantage out of it.
Lifeboat Prepping
Finally, we hit “lifeboat” prepping. This is what I did.
It is called "lifeboat" prepping because what the individual is actually doing is climbing on a lifeboat and sailing away from a sinking ship. As long as you leave early enough, the chaos and confusion of the final minutes of the ship will be completely avoided.
Lifeboat. Also known as Lifeboat Prepping.
You know that sooner or later there will be a SHTF event. You do not know when it will occur or at what kind of severity it would take on. You do not know it’s duration, or any of the particulars.
You just know that there is a likelihood of some kind of event occurring in the future.
As such you decide, often years in advance, to scram and “bug out” of the potential conflict area(s). You do not want to endure the strife, the horror and all the conflict escalations that goes with a sinking ship.
Many “lifeboat preppers” view the United States as a ship that is seriously in trouble. It is on fire, taking on water and sinking fast. These preppers believe that the most responsible thing that they can do in this situation is to scram and bail on to a lifeboat and row, row, row far away from the sinking American ship.
Of course, you wish that it would not happen. You wish that life would normalize. But, you know that wishful thinking is not going to help you if things go “belly up”. What’s going to help you is having a place to go to outside of the United States.
A big help in this matter is having a second passport.
In my case, I have been watching the encroaching progressive Marxism in the United States for decades. I learned a long time ago that that there is absolutely nothing that I could do to stem the tide and the tidal wave that will eventually engulf the United States.
I did not like it. In fact, I hated it. But, the America I was living in was an inherited one. Other Americans, long before I was born, gave me the IRS, the Federal Reserve, the CIA, the FBI, the DOJ, the FDA, and the ATF. And while it was obvious to me that their mere existence was an affront to the fourth, second and ninth amendments, there was nothing I could do about it.
To me, the United States was on an express elevator to Hell. As the situation around me deteriorated, and I began to see how seriously corrupt, inefficient and evil the government was, I realized that I need to bail and scam.
America used to stand for personal liberties, freedom, and self sufficiency. However, there is a very large and powerful group in the United States today that wants to go full-on Pol Pot. The evidence is that the Freedom-Fighter caucus are not fighting back. Therefore, progressive Marxism is destined to become the law of the land.
So I did.
I don’t want to hurt or harm anyone. I just want to live my life in peace. If the vast bulk of Americans want to live in a Marxist oligarchy, it’s not going to be me to dissuade them. It’s their life. Not mine. They can have that life. Not me.
So I bailed.
Being in another country has a lot of trade-offs. One of which is many things that we have taken for granted are no longer available to us. Things that I miss.
A well-made BLT might no longer be available to you.
There are all sort of trade-offs of moving out of the United States in this manner. It’s a new society and a new culture. You need to learn a new language and a new way of doing things. There will be things that you will miss, and new things that you will embrace. It’s not for everyone, but it’s a serious option for those of your preppers that don’t want to wait until the last minute to get out of the line of fire.
The overall success rate for this type of "lifeboat" prepping, is near 100%. But it does come at a cost.
Conclusion
If you are going to something… anything, then it is in your best interests to do it well. Otherwise don’t even bother.
If you believe, seriously believe in your heart that America is up for a major reset, then you need to start taking steps to deal with it. This is known as prepping.
Faced with a chance to move, be first. Nothing is worse than being in line for, well, anything. To avoid the rush, see threats before anyone else and take decisive action. If that means packing up and heading out of town based on knowledge of a specific threat, don’t waste valuable time reconsidering. Start moving.
You can always turn back if information changes. In the meantime, in the event of an actual emergency, being first out means lots of benefits. Stores will still have food, there won’t be lines at the gas station, water is still available.
- George Ure at Urban Survival talks about Continuous Escape Plans.
Depending on you, and your circumstance(s), there are different prepping options open to you. I would suggest that you plan on taking one of the options and prepare for it to the best of your ability. Best Regards.
SHTF Related Index
This is a collection of my posts related to prepping, SHTF (Shit Hit The Fan), CWII (American Civil War 2), Fourth Turning (Strauss–Howe generational theory)
and other posts related to the very sad and sorry tatters that America
is today. Actually, I am a little stunned that I have written so much
about these matters. But America today is very ill and there are things
that really should be said.
Here are the posts.
SHTF and Related Index
Other Blogs that you all should visit.
These blogs and sites have better information than I every could
compile. These people are experts in personal survival and preparedness.
I recommend them wholeheartedly.
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
Yeah. There is a right way and a wrong way to cook marshmallows. And here, my friend is how you learn to do it right. Of course, I was never properly instructed in the art of proper marshmallow cooking, but I learned my technique in the school of “Hard Knocks”. Yes, as a tender child of seven, I did learn how to cook marshmallows, and it is my pleasure to teach you the reader, my technique.
Now, let it be well understood that this the last post in my enormous post of fun and excitement in Asia. It is quite fitting, you see, as campfires and spending togetherness with friends is one of the core and most critical fundamentals of living in Asia, especially in China.
Technique
I am not going to lie to the reader about this. It is all in the technique. You need to carefully select the marshmallow out of the proper bag. Then you need to push it onto a nice and carefully constructed stick (green and moist if possible). Then you need to hold the marshmallow inside the campfire…
On of the best things during the Summer months is to have a country campfire and to cook and “roast” marshmallows over a fire. It is done much as these folk are doing. Only what is at the end of the sticks are things that are anything but marshmallows. Sigh. Well, the technique is shown. Don’t you know. What is missing are some bottles of frosty ice-cold beer, and a pocket knife to cut the branches with.
This assumes that you would build a campfire to roast the marshmallows. Certainly, omitting the campfire would be problematic.
Then you allow, now don’t be timid, allow the marshmallow to get burned. Let it get blackened and shriveled. Let it get hot and toasty. This this perhaps the most important part of toasting a marshmallow. Let it get cooked.
The best way to cook marshmallows is to permit them to be blackened and sooty on the outside. That way you get the fine wood smoke effect that seeps in and flavors the marshmallow.
Now, of course I know about those over protective parents out there. The fire is hot. It is frightening. The marshmallow is too soft, and it might hurt the child. The stick resembles a gun, and the noise of the cooking sounds like the torturing of children. Do not fear. The child will be just fine.
Now, you make sure that you carefully remove the marshmallow from the fire. Slowly. Slowly. Slowly. Then you take the blacked mass and raise it up to your lips.
Charring, smoking, barbecuing, burning or otherwise cooking foods over fire might make them taste great, but these cooking methods potentially increase toxins in foods. These toxins include polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, and advanced glycation end products, or AGEs. The smoke from your campfire or barbecue contains PAHs, which end up settling on your marshmallow when you burn it. Unlike PAHs, AGEs are a natural product of food metabolism. According to a report published in Food Chemistry in 2016, PAH levels in foods prepared in these methods varies, depending on factors such as nearness to the heat source and how long the food is cooked. So burned marshmallows are likely to contain more PAHs and AGEs than their roasted, but not burned, counterparts.
-SF Gate warns against eating marshmallows over a open fire.
Yes, you must slowly and carefully raise the dark, blackened marshmallow to your lips.
Wait!
Do not eat it!
No. No. No.
Blow on it. You know, to cool it down.
Let it cool.
Then. Carefully. Very carefully. Taste it.
The more complex and complicated method of cooking marshmallows. It is not for the novice or those that are afraid of taking risks. You can put two, yes two, marshmallows on the very same stick and cook them together. It’s a risk, I know and it should always be done under adult supervision.
Then you can eat it, and taste the wondrous soft and delicious morsel of a cooked marshmallow.
It’s one of the things that I love to do in China.
China?
Yup China. What? you thought that this activity was only limited to your own backyard and your county in the Untied States? Nope. It’s global. Everyone, all around the world, enjoys cooking marshmallows.
Which is why I put it here in this final section of “Fun videos of Asia during the Summer”, or something like that.
You see, life is meant to be lived, and you (as I am certain, you are a fine person; who else would try to Google cooking marshmallows on the internet? eh?) are one who wants to make the experience a positive one. I can’t blame you, and yes, I agree with your intention.
Let’s live life to it’s fullest.
Summer is a time for enjoying life. I argue that it is a time to enjoy with friends and relatives. It is a time to spend with your children, and take them out to the ballgame. It is a time to be with friends and to enjoy a nice icy cold beer. It is a time to go out and enjoy the wonderful day. Image the great romantic events of the day under a pristine blue sky with white fluffy clouds and a nice warm breeze.
Wine
Ah, not everyone enjoys wine like I do. In fact, I have some wonderful friends from the Sudan that do not drink wine. No worries. They are still some of the most wonderful folk that I have ever met in the world.
Now, I like wine. I like how it tastes. I like how it makes me talkative. And when I get talkative, I just want to spend hours (yes, hours) chatting up a storm with the pretty girls that surround me. Ah, they all are so interesting, and they have such meaningful insight into things… you know, people, relationships, life, and dreams.) It is so wonderful. So wine opens me up to other people and I am so pleased to be part of their thoughts and opinions.
What else is better than to spend the hot summer days with friends and family? You get some lawn chairs and you roast some meats, or vegetables (like corn for example) as is your preference. You enjoy some tasty libation… just enough to get you all into a talkative state and just have a great time. Maybe throw a foot ball around, play some Jarts, or barring that play some croquet. Eat. Drink. Talk. Be with friends. It’s a fundamental need for us a people; for us as humans; we need each other.
Now, of course, wine is not the ideal beverage to have marshmallows with. For when I was a kid, we drank bottles of coke and fresca. Never the less, other beverages of your preference make fine substitutions. For instance, icy cold beer. Or home-made lemonade or Southern style iced tea. To name just a few.
A shady front porch and a glass of this iconic Southern beverage are the perfect combination for a warm summer afternoon. (If you can’t find tea bags labeled “iced tea” at your grocery store, use any type of black tea bag. If family-size tea bags are available, substitute 2 family-size bags for the 6 regular-size bags. If you like your tea super-sweet, use 1 1/2 cups of sugar. If you’re preference isn’t as sweet, only add 1 cup.)
The idea is to have a ready beverage of cold drink to cool your throat after you eat that delicious toasty and roasted marshmallow.
Hotdogs
Historically, hotdogs would be the main meal in any camping and campfire experience. You would eat those delicious treats and then afterwards have a marshmallow. But you know, it doesn’t always work out that way.
A perfect camping food is hot dogs roasted over an open fire. Keep in mind that if you are bringing hot dogs along for a camping excursion, the meat needs to be kept cold until cooking time. You can use sticks to hold the hot dogs in place; you can also bring skewers with you. To avoid overcooking and to stay safe while preparing the hot dogs, keep the meat a couple of inches away from the fire.
-Our Everyday Life
When I was around seven years old, my parents paid for me to enjoy Summer Camp. This was in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and this story took place in the early half of the 1960’s. My folks paid the money for me and my sister to have the camping experience. And every day for two months a car would come and pick us up and we would spend the Summer day in the camp.
What my parents did not realize is that the camp was a scam.
All of us were placed under the authority of other children. Not under the authority of adults.
So, my parents thought that I would be under the care of teen-aged leaders, who reported to adults at the camp. In reality, we were set into groups of about ten kids per supervisor. The “supervisor” was a ten-year old girl or boy who hadn’t a clue as what to do.
We would arrive at the park.
Then, we would get into a group with our ten-year-old leader and then spend six to eight hours next to them doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. That’s right. There were paths that would open up into a clearing. Like a place to have a campfire. Except that there just wasn’t a fire. The ten year old children didn’t know how to make a fire. There were no seats either. No logs to sit down on. So we would spend about four hours just standing around in that tiny clearing.
They wouldn’t have a clue.
We wouldn’t have a clue.
We would wait there until a “leader: would come and tell us what to do. We would sit on the dirt floor in the clearing, and spend four hours doing absolutely nothing.
We would sit there and do nothing.
Now, in case I am not making myself clear; pay attention. We children would be under the are of another child, maybe three years older than us. They would be our “leader”. They would lead us into a clearing in the woods, and there we would sit without doing any activities at all, until it was time to go back home.
My parents paid “good money” for me to have this Summer Camping “Experience”.
Now for my narrative…
The Hotdog saga…
One day, we were told to ask our parents to provide us with hotdogs to cook over the fire. We were told specifically to ask for hotdogs and nothing else. We were told this numerous times. And it was made clear that we were to come to the camp the next day with HOTDOGS.
This is how you cook hotdogs on the fire. You firstly use a stick. Not a metal rod. That’s for city slickers. Then you place the hotdog int he fire and adjust the location of the dog for your own personal tastes. Make sure not to burn your mouth when you remove the hotdog from the charred stick.
Well, my mother didn’t have hotdogs in the house. So she made up some hamburger patties and put them in aluminum foil and told me that “it would be all right“. The leader would know what to do.
It angers me to this day.
Nope.
My “leader” was a ten year old girl.
And, she hadn’t a clue as what to do. She told me that I could not eat because I did not follow the instructions. And as a result I did not eat.
The camp leaders, would only allow us to eat hotdogs. They did not know how to cook hamburgers. To a young child, these “much older” children seemed so knowledgeable to us.
Everyone ate their hotdogs. Me and anther fellow sat on the side hungry.
Yes, I know. You simply put the aluminum foil packet in the hot coals. But a ten year old child does not know that, and try explaining that to a seven year old child.
My raw hamburger was kept in the aluminum foil and left in the bag. I carried it home with me at the end of the day.
Yes, as an adult, I know that all she could of done was put the aluminum foil burger in the fire to cook. But she did not do that. She did not know that she could. She was young and hadn’t a clue.
And after the day, I went home famished. I mean, I was “starving”. I ate in big gulps and chewed down everything, everything even the peas.
I suppose that my mother and father called the “camp” and were assured that everything was fine and right.
Never the less, it still continued. All summer, I was a seven year old under the charge of ten year old children that only followed the instructions of their leaders.
Leaders. Yeah. Leaders, who were just raking in money left and right pretending to do things that they were not qualified to do.
The United States is full of rackets designed to extract money form you and your family. It can be part of a school-sponsored “program”. It could be a “fee” that you pay to do something. It could be a title that you need to purchase to do something. It’s all a series of bribes that con-artists have put in pace by legislation and law to turn you into a serf.
What a racket.
People! Listen up! DO NOT DELEGATE YOUR PARENTING RESPONSIBILITIES TO SOMEONE ELSE. They only want your money and could care less about the well-being of your child.
It’s just another scam.
Like how you need to pay a fee to fish. Pay a fee to add an addition onto your property, or pay for registration of your automobile. It is legislated bribery.
The last one hundred years in the United States has been nothing but law after law to extract money from YOU and your family.
Water fountains replaced with (for profit) bottles of water.
Local swimming pools filled in (for safety) and replaced with entry-fee pools.
Fishing, hunting, and trapping replaced with the need to purchase permits and the associated fees.
Moving on…
Sorry for being such a cantankerous old fellow.
It’s an experience that I had and one that will be lost in time unless I relate it here. I do hope, somehow, that someone listens to my history and adjusts their life accordingly.
Do not outsource your parenting responsibilities to anyone other than yourselves. The mother must stay home and raise the children. You need to budget your finances and place an emphasis on family. Not on money.
My parents wanted the best for their children. Just like you do for your children or your grandchildren. So the rest of this post is for you; the people who care.
Now, all that being said, I would like to conclude my video excursion into Asia. (As this is the conclusion of a long series of posts regarding Asia. )
Girl Loves Boy
This video is from Thailand. It is a music video. It shows a girl musing and thinking about another boy…
This is from Cambodia…
This video is from Cambodia. I happen to really love it. It truly and really captures the rhythm and pace of life in Cambodia.
This is from China…
I’s a song about missing a person that you love.
These kids are in an Elementary school somewhere, either in Cambodia or Laos.
I like it. It’s so cute.
Finally – Be the Rufus.
Rufus was the name of the good Samaritan that helped Jesus carry his cross up the hill. In life, there comes, from time to time, an opportunity or a task that SCREAMS out YOUR name. You drop everything and you go out and help others.
Be the Rufus.
Like this man. He’s driving along the road on his way to work, when suddenly he sees a lost and terrified child in the middle of a busy intersection during rush hour. What would you do?
Watch what he does.
Your reality is all up to YOU.
Be the Rufus.
Ok, everyone. That’s about it.
I’ve decided to change the way I post and future posts will reflect this. For now, if somehow you ended up here, you are at the tail end of a train of posts related to videos of Asia. You can leave or start at the beginning. It’s all up to you.
If you want to go to the start of this series of posts, then please click HERE.
Thank you for visiting. I hope that you enjoyed this post and maybe
learned something new in the process. Have a wonderful rest of the day!
And, may your days and nights be filled with happiness.
If you want to go to the start of this series of posts, then please click HERE.
Links about China
Here are
some links about my observations on China. I think that you, the reader,
might find them to be of interest. Please kindly enjoy.
China and America Comparisons
As an
American, I cannot help but compare what my life was in the United
States with what it is like living in China. Here we discuss that.
The Chinese Business KTV Experience
This is
the real deal. Forget about all that nonsense that you find in the
British tabloids and an occasional write up in the American liberal
press. This is the reality. Read or not.
Learning About China
Who
doesn’t like to look at pretty girls? Ugly girls? Here we discuss what
China is like by looking at videos of pretty girls doing things in
China.
Contemporaneous Chinese Music
This is a
series of posts that discuss contemporaneous popular music in China. It
is a wide ranging and broad spectrum of travel, and at that, all that I
am able to provide is the flimsiest of overviews. However, this series
of posts should serve as a great starting place for investigation and
enjoyment.
Parks in China
The parks
in China are very unique. They are enormous and tend to be very
mountainous. Here we take a look at this most interesting of subjects.
Really Strange China
Here are
some posts that discuss a number of things about China that might seem
odd, or strange to Westerners. Some of the things are everyday events,
while others are just representative of the differences in culture.
What is China like?
The
purpose of this post is to illustrate that the rest of the world,
outside of America, has moved on with their lives. That while they
might not be as great as America is, they are doing just fine thank
you.
And while
America has been squandering it’s money, decimating it’s resources,
and just being cavalier with it’s military, the rest of the world has
done the opposite. They have husbanded their day to day fortunes, and
you can see this in their day-to-day lives.
Summer in Asia
Let’s take a moment to explore Asia. That includes China, but also includes such places as Vietnam, Thailand, Japan and others…
Some Fun Videos
Here’s a collection of some fun videos taken all over Asia. While
there are many videos taken in China, we also have some taken in
Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea and Japan as well. It’s all in fun.
Articles & Links
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
You can start reading the articles sequentially by going HERE.
You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
Thank you for continuing with me in the adventure.
But first, let me explain the photo splash at the top of the page. That picture is of two of the band members from the 1980’s hit rock/pop group “Tears for Fears”.
The Seeds of Love is the third studio album by the British rock/pop band Tears for Fears, released on 25 September 1989.. The album, which reportedly cost over £1 million (GBP) to produce, retained the band's epic sound while incorporating influences ranging from jazz and blues to The Beatles, of which the latter is most evident on the hit single "Sowing the Seeds of Love".
-Wikipedia
Tears for Fears – Sowing the Seeds of Love
Sometimes I really wonder about what is going on in the Western world these days. Back in the 1980’s, yes things weren’t perfect, but at least you knew that there were two genders, that a water fountain was GMO free, and that the English Queen was not transgender.
Now, today, you haven’t a clue. The news media completely and absolutely lies about everything and changes the narrative left and right. For instance, consider the latest mass-murdering shooter…
The Liberal Progressive socialists in charge of the American mainstream media and the software giants have rewritten the narrative of the events that transpired.
He was a Obama-following Antifa member, and now his history was changed to a crazed Trump QANAON.
There’s only one thing…
Real Conservatives, if pushed to violence, would not strike out at innocents. They would attack the instigators, the leaders, and those that finance what ever problems that they are dealing with. This fellow attacked innocents. Ergo – not a conservative.
Leftists Change Shooter Patrick Crusius’s MyLife Page
No kidding!
You have this Antifa progressive Obama follower who shoots up a ton load of people in a Walmart. Immediately the news media is blaming Trump for “Right Wing” Violence. When it was no such thing. Now, plastered all over the internet is the rewritten narrative that he was a Right-Wing Trump following kook and guns must be banned.
Perhaps, a little peek at what the news media did and handled this is in order, eh?
Some history…
A Walmart in Texas was shot up in August 2019 when a gunman rampaged through the store using an AK-47 clone. The event is known as the Cielo Vista Mall shooting in El Paso, Texas. He left a manifesto where he claimed to be a follower of Trump and wanted to kill all the illegal aliens in Texas.
Sounds pretty damning. Why it fits exactly the mainstream press narrative of a typical Trump supporter.
Then they got the guy.
Washington Examiner reporter Anna Giaritelli posted the name and a photos of the alleged shooter, sourced to law enforcement. “A law enforcement official in El Paso told me the Walmart shooter is in custody. His name is Patrick Crusius of Allen, a town in Texas outside of Dallas. He is pretty young, having just turned 21 years old this week.
A law enforcement official in El Paso told me the Walmart shooter is in custody. Patrick Crusius of Dallas. Just turned 21 years old this week. pic.twitter.com/CEJh6rYij1
— Anna Giaritelli (@Anna_Giaritelli) August 3, 2019
But don’t ya know, Patrick Crusius has a profile on MyLife.com.
MyLife is an American information brokerage founded in 2002 as Reunion.com.
MyLife gathers personal information through public records and other sources to automatically generate a “MyLife Public Page” for each person, described by MyLife as a “complete Wikipedia-like biography on every American.”
While people can edit their data, the software organization MyLife can change and rewrite a person's profile at will.
So, you would think that the American mainstream news media would take this information and disseminate it to the public? Nope…
On 3AUG19, at 2:46 PM the website MyLife had this profile for the deranged killer Patrick Crusius. It was quite clear. His original profile at 2:46 said he was a registered Democrat.
Look for yourself…
The deranged killer Patrick Crusius is a progressive democrat.
While he was in jail, right after the police caught him, there were some changes made to his profile. How? I do not know. What I do know is that his political affiliation was changed from Democrat to Republican on the day of the mass shooting.
Here is the changed profile. Check the dates and times. Notice what they wrote on the Summary…
Mall shooter has had his past history rewritten.
Yes. The leftists wrote;
"Before becoming a mass shooter / murderer, Patrick was a registered Republican, and Evangelical Christian. A former campaign worker for Donald Trump, he was also a QANON conspiracy theorist, and INCEL. "
Ethnicity was changed to African American, as well. WTF?
Now, if that wasn’t bad enough, it was changed yet again…
Leftists rewriting history yet again.
By Saturday night it continued to be revised. Now including anti-Jewish racial slurs and all sorts of the things that fit the CNN black & White narrative of what a Conservative is.
Progressive Democrat Socialists rewriting the MyLife profile for a mass murdering Antifa member.
Now what can we take from all this nonsense? Well…
Do Not Believe What You Read on the Internet
As far as his political leanings are concerned… traditional conservatives do not harm innocents. Only progressive leftists do. Don’t believe me? Crack open a fucking history book won’t ya?
Last minute commentary…
It seems strange to me that all of a sudden this push for gun bans and Red Flag laws, and "Alt Right" violence. It is almost like the time-table for the Hillary / Socialist take over of the country never reset after the election of Trump.
It's like everything is just following the same timetable that was put in place under Obama.
Here are six posts that discuss this matter in detail…
OK. That being said, let’s move on out of the 1980’s and into contemporaneous Asia…
Bring back the Summer, lover…
I really like this.
I haven’t figured out what it is. Is it a movie? A cartoon? A music video? A narrative? Or what. Whatever it is, I like it.
Imagine this in the USA… not!
You would NEVER see this in the United States. It would be considered cultural misappropriation.
Remember, boys and girls, China is a meritocracy. You must strive to be the best that you can be, or go begging in the streets. There is no room for sloth, welfare moms, and freeloaders.
Remember everyone…
Universities in the United States have been discriminating against Asian students because their success makes racial minorities look and feel bad. Do not think that there will not be some kind of blow-back to their social re-engineering efforts. Ah. You do not mess around with the Chinese. Fools.
As we used to say in Pennsylvania…
You can put on lipstick, curl the hair, wear eyelashes, and put on a nice dress… but a pig is still a pig.
Diversity quotas are like putting lipstick on a pig. It might sound good, it might make the pigs happy, but very few people will actually find the pig beautiful.
Welcome to YiChang…
China has so many cities. Many (so called) towns would pass as large cities in the United States. Here’s an example of the small town of YiChang. Check it out why don’t ya…
Religious girls in Thailand
Just look at these beauties. They are so very yummy.
You know as I get older I really realize that it is our actions that complement our inherent attractiveness. It is how we behave, and how we interact with others that define our overall appearance.
Chinese Aviation
Aviation. I love it whether it is my very own background in American Naval Aviation, or aviation elsewhere, it is an interest and a passion of mine. Yes it is. Sort of like cats, dogs, and pizza. It’s like how I feel about pretty girls and red wine. I love it all.
Here we have a nice video (micro-video natch) concerning Chinese aviation.
Moving up… stay up
The Chinese culture is one of merit. That permeates the entire society. Anyone who tries to cheat, or get special privileges is pretty much shunned. They are known as “Fu er di” and pretty much considered the rich spoiled kinds of society.
Oh yes. The wealthy buy spots for their children in (the easy to bribe) American colleges, but the vast bulk of Chinese society is based upon merit. Every movie, and every song reinforces this notion.
Here is just a small snippet of how this all manifests within the Chinese society.
Yeah. You show that gal that you moved way past her…
Hong Kong Protests
Yeah. There are these “wanna have democracy” protests in Hong Kong. The American media promotes it as a some sort of a “proof” that China is gonna fall apart any day now. Yah right.
Don’t hold your breath.
China and Hong Kong are totally separate entities. Sort of like how Pago Pago in American Samoa is different from Kokomo, Indiana. (Bet ya didn’t know that Pago Pago is a part of an American territory.)
Yup. Hong Kong has their own government and their own laws, and pretty much Beijing allows them autonomy in their affairs. If it didn’t, you would see many changes in Hong Kong that would better fit the traditional Chinese social model. Hong Kong is NOT run in the way Beijing prefers.
Of course, you would never know this, or even have a clue to this situation by only reading American news media. Their role is to keep Americans ignorant of the true situation, huddled and fearful, and easily manipulated to follow heard and group behaviors.
Screen shot of Drudge Report American news aggregator, taken Sunday 4AUG19. What a load of nonsense.
Now, that being said, here’s a video from the Hong Kong government about the situation.
You’d NEVER see this on American mainstream media. It doesn’t fit inside the narrative.
Actually there is so much information regarding this, that I am afraid that I will need to post 4 or 5 videos about the protests to help put things in context. This is done in the next part – part 13…
I have many more videos, but I just cannot put them into a single
post. It will bog down your computer terribly. So to watch the rest of
the videos in this post, please continue…
If you want to go to the start of this series of posts, then please click HERE.
Links about China
Here are
some links about my observations on China. I think that you, the reader,
might find them to be of interest. Please kindly enjoy.
China and America Comparisons
As an
American, I cannot help but compare what my life was in the United
States with what it is like living in China. Here we discuss that.
The Chinese Business KTV Experience
This is
the real deal. Forget about all that nonsense that you find in the
British tabloids and an occasional write up in the American liberal
press. This is the reality. Read or not.
Learning About China
Who
doesn’t like to look at pretty girls? Ugly girls? Here we discuss what
China is like by looking at videos of pretty girls doing things in
China.
Contemporaneous Chinese Music
This is a
series of posts that discuss contemporaneous popular music in China. It
is a wide ranging and broad spectrum of travel, and at that, all that I
am able to provide is the flimsiest of overviews. However, this series
of posts should serve as a great starting place for investigation and
enjoyment.
Parks in China
The parks
in China are very unique. They are enormous and tend to be very
mountainous. Here we take a look at this most interesting of subjects.
Really Strange China
Here are
some posts that discuss a number of things about China that might seem
odd, or strange to Westerners. Some of the things are everyday events,
while others are just representative of the differences in culture.
What is China like?
The
purpose of this post is to illustrate that the rest of the world,
outside of America, has moved on with their lives. That while they
might not be as great as America is, they are doing just fine thank
you.
And while
America has been squandering it’s money, decimating it’s resources,
and just being cavalier with it’s military, the rest of the world has
done the opposite. They have husbanded their day to day fortunes, and
you can see this in their day-to-day lives.
Summer in Asia
Let’s take a moment to explore Asia. That includes China, but also includes such places as Vietnam, Thailand, Japan and others…
Articles & Links
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
You can start reading the articles sequentially by going HERE.
You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
Let’s continue on our adventure into Asia, but first let’s chat a little bit more about the splash photo above.
Image is from the movie Kelly's Heroes. Let me tell you that that is a fine, fine movie to watch with family on a lazy August afternoon. Just get some icy cold beer and enjoy.
Here’s another quote with a pic for your entertainment. Ah. What a great movie!
OK. Now let’s continue on our exploration of Asia. First stop, China and how they build houses.
Please kindly note that this post has multiple embedded videos. It is important to view them. If they fail to load, all you need to do is to reload your browser.
How Houses are Built in China…
Houses in China are built quite differently than how they are built in the United States. Instead of a concrete slab with a wood-frame pole structure with particleboard floors and wall to wall carpet with drywall, the Chinese build out of cement.
The create a strong cement structure and lay down polished stone over it. Here we see a guy making a small house (LOL)…
A really small house.
And people, that’s exactly how it’s done.
Sappy Vietnam MV video
What? You think that music videos only exist in the United States? Nope. Every nation has them. Just like every nation… every single one… has their very own local bands and local music.
You should listen to some of them out of Australia, and Poland. Pretty darn awesome! I’ll tell you what.
Here’s an older video from Vietnam. I place it being made sometime during the 1990’s. You know when Bill Clinton didn’t have sex with that intern. LOL!
Nice to have in the car…
Back to China.
This is a pretty nice innovation. You inflate it by plugging it into your cigarette lighter. If you have an American car, the chances are that it won’t have a cigarette lighter plug. You can thank the progressive democrats for that “improvement”.
No problem. You can inflate it by blowing air inside the mattress. However, it might take a while. Truth. It might take you an half an hour or so using that method.
Don’t fret though. China makes tons of little micro air pumps that operate off of the USB. So you can either use your automobile USB socket or bring your laptop into the car and inflate the sofa using that plug.
You see just imagine the kinds of fun that you can have in a little subcompact with this kind of sofa mattress. You can keep the toddlers occupied. You can let the dog stretch out. You can kick back and take a nap during lunch, or maybe play with that girl you find rather fetching.
Maybe like this fine lass…
Nice Chinese girl and George Clooney doesn’t even notice…
Yeah. Big Hollywood names get their big pictures plastered all over Asia. It’s part of the Marketing strategy to saturate the commercial markets with images of the well-known and famous.
Don’t ya know.
Night Market (in the daytime) – Vietnam
Vietnam has changed quite a bit since the 1960’s. And yet in other ways it hasn’t changed at all. I mean the mountains are still there, and all the hub-bub about “climate change” the weather still is pretty much the same as what it has been for centuries. The lush banyan (forever) trees are still there. The birds still sing their songs, and the air is all pretty moist and hot.
Time change. People, cultures and society changes. However, people are still people. Boys are still boys and girls are still girls, and that progressive narrative about there being 65 different kinds of genders is nothing more than the ramblings of a crazy person that is socially incapable of fitting within society.
Pretty girls still exist in Vietnam. Here is a dated vintage photo of a pretty Vietnam lass taken in the 1960’s. She is wearing a cute western dress, rather than the more traditional Vietnam dress and hat.
Here’s a nice vintage photo of a Vietnamese food market. Look at it. Study it. Cool huh? Notice the tin can to the far right of the photograph. Looks like the American people wanted to help the Vietnamese, and tell them so in English…
But, only one thing… They speak Vietnamese, French and Chinese in Vietnam. Not English. At least not at that time. So, what’s the purpose?
Look. Study the picture. Note the placement of the tin can. Note the quality of the photograph.
What’s in the photo? Breads. Rolls. Donated butter. Donated oil. Tins of sardines. Not typical Vietnamese fare. Oh, yes they do eat rolls, and baguettes. It’s the French influence, don’t ya know. They do use butter. But the preponderance within one photo tends to be a little deceiving.
American media for ya.
A vintage photo of a 1960’s Vietnamese food market. Notice the tin on the far left of the picture. The words on it says that the tin was donated by the United States people. Pretty cool, except for one thing. It’s in English. In Vietnam at that time they spoke and read only three languages. They were Vietnamese, Chinese and French. It seems that all that English writing is for propaganda purposes. Propaganda, not for the Vietnamese people, but rather for the Americans who would look at the photo from the American mainstream media.
From the article; My first bite into Nuong’s bánh mì thịt evoked in me a sensation that could only be described as “same same, but different” in comparison with bánh mì in Vietnam. It was delicious, especially the perfect firmness of the Vietnamese ham. In a way, the sandwich was very similar to a typical bánh mì in Saigon, yet quite different. For starters, the pickles had a different tanginess to them, owing to the use of non-Vietnamese vinegar, which is similar to the condiment you might add to your hủ tiếu somewhere in District 5. The unorthodox addition of authentic Vietnamese-style char siu made the combination pleasantly sweet and chewier. But the starkest differences were in its main components. Source.
Here’s a modern micro-video of contemporaneous rural Vietnam and the food market there. Now wouldn’t you all want to have one of these Po’ Boy / Grinder / Submarine what’s ya call it’s… fresh from the market counter here?
Oh, and speaking about the fine Vietnamese food experience, here is another photo…
From the article; “Taiwanese flour is so different. It’s sweeter and chewier,” she explains. Her “baguettes” are coated with vegetable oil almost immediately after baking — the secret to their crunchiness after being toasted a second time. Different varieties of bánh mì are made to order when customers appear. Lò Bánh Mì Pasteur’s homemade pâté is several shades darker than those in Vietnam. “The Taiwanese like eating jiànkāng [healthy], [so] we don’t use preservatives. That’s what makes the commercial pâté so pinkish,” she adds. Source.
I have many more videos, but I just cannot put them into a single
post. It will bog down your computer terribly. So to watch the rest of
the videos in this post, please continue…
If you want to go to the start of this series of posts, then please click HERE.
Links about China
Here are
some links about my observations on China. I think that you, the reader,
might find them to be of interest. Please kindly enjoy.
China and America Comparisons
As an
American, I cannot help but compare what my life was in the United
States with what it is like living in China. Here we discuss that.
The Chinese Business KTV Experience
This is
the real deal. Forget about all that nonsense that you find in the
British tabloids and an occasional write up in the American liberal
press. This is the reality. Read or not.
Learning About China
Who
doesn’t like to look at pretty girls? Ugly girls? Here we discuss what
China is like by looking at videos of pretty girls doing things in
China.
Contemporaneous Chinese Music
This is a
series of posts that discuss contemporaneous popular music in China. It
is a wide ranging and broad spectrum of travel, and at that, all that I
am able to provide is the flimsiest of overviews. However, this series
of posts should serve as a great starting place for investigation and
enjoyment.
Parks in China
The parks
in China are very unique. They are enormous and tend to be very
mountainous. Here we take a look at this most interesting of subjects.
Really Strange China
Here are
some posts that discuss a number of things about China that might seem
odd, or strange to Westerners. Some of the things are everyday events,
while others are just representative of the differences in culture.
What is China like?
The
purpose of this post is to illustrate that the rest of the world,
outside of America, has moved on with their lives. That while they
might not be as great as America is, they are doing just fine thank
you.
And while
America has been squandering it’s money, decimating it’s resources,
and just being cavalier with it’s military, the rest of the world has
done the opposite. They have husbanded their day to day fortunes, and
you can see this in their day-to-day lives.
Summer in Asia
Let’s take a moment to explore Asia. That includes China, but also includes such places as Vietnam, Thailand, Japan and others…
Articles & Links
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
You can start reading the articles sequentially by going HERE.
You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
Thank you all for keeping with me and following this video narrative and (sort of) political editorial through humor, adventure and audio visual exploration. But first, let’s explore the picture splash at the top of this page.
About the picture splash above; this is a screen capture of a scene from the movie Roxanne. The large-nosed fireman C.D. Bales is in love with the beautiful Roxanne. Ah, but alas, she falls for his personality but another man's looks.
This is an old movie that I used to have on Betamax.
I thought it was cute, but not really memorable. However, when rewatching the move, I swear, it took me back to a far simpler time in America. A time of smaller communities, and far less problems. For that trip down nostalgia lane… it is worth the watch.
Sometimes movies and pictures can take us back to a simpler and better time. One that is free of many of the worries and concerns that have been fostered upon us within our reality. Like this photo for instance. The family goes out to watch a football game in cool fall air. The housewife prepares some warm coffee and sandwiches for the boys. Simpler times and simpler solutions. Movies and pictures can take us back to those times.
Ok. Now for the micro-videos and dialog…
Welcome to Beijing
Everyone knows about Beijing, in fact, many Americans when asked what cities are in China, they will only be able to name but one or two. Beijing being the first. With Shanghai a distant second.
Here’s Beijing. And yes, outside of the dust-storm season, many days do actually look a little like this… blue skies. I can see those readers just shaking their heads. They tell me, that it is ALWAYS full of terrible air pollution. You can see, they argue, all you need to do is perform a Google image search for Beijing.
Yup. That’s right. Go straight to the largest propaganda outlet in the United States to get your answers – Google.
But, really… Why stop there, how about Snopes?
Here’s a pollution profile that I just screen grabbed for Beijing as I write this.
Beijing Air pollution index. Taken 2AUG19.
And here is one for Los Angles. Again, it’s just a screen grab that I took just a few seconds ago…
Los Angles Air Pollution index 2AUG19.
Hum. It seems that the Air Pollution index for Beijing and Los Angles, at least on 2AUG19, were the same. Imagine that!
Who’d figure, given the near relentless breathless reporting on how bad pollution is in China, these days.
Nonsense.
This is what Beijing looks like, ya all…
American, and British, media will take pictures of the smoggiest days in Beijing. If they can’t get the weather to cooperate, then they will use a very smoggy photo out of their photo files.
Beijing does have smog, and the weather can be nasty at times. Much of it is a combination of particulate matters from the deserts (which create intense Sahara-style dust storms) and Winter related smoke from coal-fired furnaces in the cold-cold weather.
However, it is not ALWAYS like that.
Just like not every American gets FREE healthcare. FREE medicine. FREE homes, FREE cell phones, FREE cars. Nope. America was not called the “land of the free”, because of all the FREE stuff you would get.
It was called that for other reasons.
Reasons that no longer exist.
Check out some of the cities in the rest of China, why don’t ya. If you would believe those trolls on the Internet forums, China is one filthy dirty, smoggy place. With only America being the most beautiful spot int he world.
Guangzhou Air Pollution 2AUG19Hong Kong Air Pollution 2AUG19Yangzhou Air Pollution 2AUG19
Take note…
Comparatively, with say Los Angles, the smog is Beijing is far easier to deal with. Masks are very sufficient to remove the gritty particles out of the air. You can use a HEPA air purifier to keep your office and home nice. However, no such luck on LA. That is a different kind of smog. It’s particulate level micro-beads of acid. It attacks the eyes, the nostrils and the mouth.
I have found that most American news is nonsense. It is designed to manipulate you. It is designed to keep you living in some kind of a box. Part of which is controlled by fear, and constant reassurances that you have it better than everyone else as long as you stay in your box.
American Propaganda; “Since the beginning of this year, the levels of air pollution in Beijing have been dangerously high, with thick clouds of smog chasing people indoors, disrupting air travel, and affecting the health of millions. The past two weeks have been especially bad — at one point the pollution level measured 40 times recommended safety levels. Authorities are taking short-term measures to combat the current crisis, shutting down some factories and limiting government auto usage. However, long-term solutions seem distant, as China’s use of coal continues to rise, and the government remains slow to acknowledge and address the problems. “
What you all need to do is make comparisons ON YOUR OWN. Don’t listen to the news, and even don’t listen to me. Just you go to Beijing, yourself, and if you think it has terrible pollution, then believe it. Otherwise, don’t.
Automobile Problems – Thailand
Let’s go to Thailand.
America isn’t the only place that has beauty. It exists all over the world. It really does. Just like Detroit is not a typical American city that represents what America looks like, nor does the images of other nations as portrayed in American media. Here is a beautiful Thailand beach.
I really like Thailand, but many of the rural roads are not paved, and just simple dirt. Not even gravel. that can cause problems for vehicles during the rainy season. As this poor fella has discovered much to his dismay.
Primitive, yes. But, bad… not so.
While we are in Thailand, let’s head out a little further East and go to rural Vietnam…
But let’s realize that just because the American mainstream media hasn’t been reporting on Vietnam for fifty years, the country still exists. It grows, people live and die. Things progress forward and change. It is not frozen in time, like many Americans seem to think that it is…
Saigon in the 1960’s. Vietnam has changed substantially over the years, and many Americans would not recognize it if their only experiences outside of America is through the American mainstream media.
Of course, Vietnam today is not anything like Americans remember it from the media narrative in the 1960’s. We need to look at the world with new eyes. Eyes that are not colored or flavored by the American mainstream press narrative.
Chicken Noodle Soup – Vietnam
This is modern, contemporaneous Vietnam. Here we have a rural village. (And I do like the rural areas of South-East Asia.)
With that, I would like to post some historical pictures of Vietnam during the 1960’s when America first decided to have a war there. And, while I am at it, let me remind everyone that while many Americans were quite patriotic, they could not understand why thousands of Americans would need to die in a far off land. They argued that the ONLY people who would benefit from such a war was the rich oligarchy.
Historically, we now know that they were ABSOLUTELY correct.
Does this picture strike a bell?
Americans refusing to fight in Vietnam. Looking back, the ONLY people who benefited from the war in Vietnam were the wealthy that had stocks and power within the military-industrial environment. This was something that the Johnson Presidency cultivated, and now today has grown into such an unwieldy monster. You do realize that today 2AUG19, America is currently fighting eight (x8) military shooting wars all over the world. Let me ask you, how are YOU personally benefiting?
This is the Vietnam that Americans had to fight (and protect) for (you know) mah democracy…
Life in Vietnam in the 1960’s when America first started to get involved there. This is obviously outside a cafe or a restaurant.
I am of the opinion that the wealthy oligarchy in the United States couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the people in Vietnam, or the brave Americans that fought, became crippled or died over there.
All they cared about was their own personal profits. You know, like how the American software giants in Google, Facebook, and Twitter care about YOU today.
They do not.
They don’t give a rat’s ass about you, and think nothing about squashing you, your opinions, your thoughts and your life. They have absolute disdain for you, your culture and your family, and would squash your life out like they would step on a cockroach. they despise you.
Look at what the American rich did in Vietnam…
Pretty couple riding their moped in Vietnam. This was in the 1960’s when America was first getting involved in the Vietnam conflict. Apparently the wealthy felt that the deaths of a couple thousand Americans, and many thousands of Vietnam citizens were of no consequence if they could be able to by another mansion.
Well, we did send troops to Vietnam.
Political and business VIP’s would visit Vietnam from time to time to see how things were progressing. They would always return back to America and demand more and more money…. you know, for the cause. Though it was just a way for them to cycle the money into their own pockets. Evil fucking bastards. Here we have one of their aircraft being watched by military personnel.
Many of whom died. Those that came back didn’t like what America had become. So they “dropped out”. They started to take drugs and get involved in non-social activities.
See what happens when the corrupt are permitted to rule over a nation. Everything becomes distorted and corrupted. Nations with long histories, such as China, know that crime and corruption can alter the face of a people in terrible, twisted and bad ways. So they try to do things to change all this.
Here’s some photos of the Vietnam military forces today. Yes they do want to trade with the United States. It’s a new generation, in a new nation. Let’s hope that everyone realizes just how important and precious life is, and the need to ONLY FIGHT to defend your family and way of life.
Modern Vietnam military.
Exploring a Park in China
Ah. Sorry for being so serious.
It’s just that I really hate injustices, and I get really angry when people use their wealth to hurt others. And, I do not care what it is. Hurt is hurt. Whether it is erasing all of someone’s posts on social media, or bribing a politician to send another 30,000 solders to fight a war where many will get killed.
Wealth corrupts.
Here is China. There are many parks in China and many are very lovely.
I am of the very strong belief that a wide selection of different experiences, shared with others, causes us to think different. Since thoughts create our reality, that is how we grow.
We grow physically, socially, emotionally, and spiritually though our thoughts.
Which is sort of why this post-sequence is all about shutting off the American media propaganda, getting out of the fear-cage that many Americans sit within and go forth and explore. You will discover, as I have, that many of us are quite similar, but it is our differences that should be enjoyed and savored.
As I am sure that this American serviceman discovered when dating his pretty Vietnam girlfriend…
A United States soldier in Vietnam with his pretty Vietnamese girlfriend. It is the similarities that attract us to each other, and the differences that enable us to grow.
Water Festival – Thailand
Let’s take a look at the water festival in Thailand.
Let’s take a look at some of the non-big city coastal areas in China. As you must know, there are thousands of these communities. All much, much larger than many American cities.
They all sort of resemble Miami or Fort Lauderdale beaches, more or less. As like this…
I have many more videos, but I just cannot put them into a single
post. It will bog down your computer terribly. So to watch the rest of
the videos in this post, please continue…
If you want to go to the start of this series of posts, then please click HERE.
Links about China
Here are
some links about my observations on China. I think that you, the reader,
might find them to be of interest. Please kindly enjoy.
China and America Comparisons
As an
American, I cannot help but compare what my life was in the United
States with what it is like living in China. Here we discuss that.
The Chinese Business KTV Experience
This is
the real deal. Forget about all that nonsense that you find in the
British tabloids and an occasional write up in the American liberal
press. This is the reality. Read or not.
Learning About China
Who
doesn’t like to look at pretty girls? Ugly girls? Here we discuss what
China is like by looking at videos of pretty girls doing things in
China.
Contemporaneous Chinese Music
This is a
series of posts that discuss contemporaneous popular music in China. It
is a wide ranging and broad spectrum of travel, and at that, all that I
am able to provide is the flimsiest of overviews. However, this series
of posts should serve as a great starting place for investigation and
enjoyment.
Parks in China
The parks
in China are very unique. They are enormous and tend to be very
mountainous. Here we take a look at this most interesting of subjects.
Really Strange China
Here are
some posts that discuss a number of things about China that might seem
odd, or strange to Westerners. Some of the things are everyday events,
while others are just representative of the differences in culture.
What is China like?
The
purpose of this post is to illustrate that the rest of the world,
outside of America, has moved on with their lives. That while they
might not be as great as America is, they are doing just fine thank
you.
And while
America has been squandering it’s money, decimating it’s resources,
and just being cavalier with it’s military, the rest of the world has
done the opposite. They have husbanded their day to day fortunes, and
you can see this in their day-to-day lives.
Summer in Asia
Let’s take a moment to explore Asia. That includes China, but also includes such places as Vietnam, Thailand, Japan and others…
Articles & Links
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
You can start reading the articles sequentially by going HERE.
You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
We continue with our exploration of Asia though videos.
Please kindly note that this post has multiple embedded videos. It is important to view them. If they fail to load, all you need to do is to reload your browser.
Nice Lunch in the Mountains.
If you live in any of the mountainous regions inside China, this is pretty much what lunchtime might look like. You would sit at a table on the side of a cliff face, and look down on the clouds that surround you.
You have to keep in mind that MOST of China is mountainous. All you need do is look at a relief map of China.
This is a relief map of China. You can pretty much see that most of China is very mountainous.
If you lived in and around these mountains, your lunch might look a little something like this…
The Inside of a KTV
Yeah. This is all pretty much what it looks like. This is the hallway in some generic KTV somewhere in China.
Of course, I have a large series of posts about KTV’s and in particular Business KTV’s that you might want to take a stroll looking into after this post is finished. In any event, all KTV’s are pretty awesome and are decorated “to the hilt”. They all look a little like this…
The Interior of a Subway Car
Subway travel is very common in Asia, and currently you can travel to all of the first, second and third tier cities in China using it. Here is the view inside of one of the cars. Here, as is quite common, the rail leaves the tunnels and travels above ground like a monorail would.
Chinese Stewardess Training
All Chinese flight attendants, stewards and stewardesses, are also trained to fight (you do know that Muslim extremist behaviors is not taken lightly by China), and provide medical service when necessary.
One of the things that they are also trained to do is to fly a plane. In the event that the cabin crew becomes incapacitated, the stewardess can fill in and fly the plane if need be.
Let’s continue forward, shall we…
If you want to go to the start of this series of posts, then please click HERE.
Links about China
Here are
some links about my observations on China. I think that you, the reader,
might find them to be of interest. Please kindly enjoy.
China and America Comparisons
As an
American, I cannot help but compare what my life was in the United
States with what it is like living in China. Here we discuss that.
The Chinese Business KTV Experience
This is
the real deal. Forget about all that nonsense that you find in the
British tabloids and an occasional write up in the American liberal
press. This is the reality. Read or not.
Learning About China
Who
doesn’t like to look at pretty girls? Ugly girls? Here we discuss what
China is like by looking at videos of pretty girls doing things in
China.
Contemporaneous Chinese Music
This is a
series of posts that discuss contemporaneous popular music in China. It
is a wide ranging and broad spectrum of travel, and at that, all that I
am able to provide is the flimsiest of overviews. However, this series
of posts should serve as a great starting place for investigation and
enjoyment.
Parks in China
The parks
in China are very unique. They are enormous and tend to be very
mountainous. Here we take a look at this most interesting of subjects.
Really Strange China
Here are
some posts that discuss a number of things about China that might seem
odd, or strange to Westerners. Some of the things are everyday events,
while others are just representative of the differences in culture.
What is China like?
The
purpose of this post is to illustrate that the rest of the world,
outside of America, has moved on with their lives. That while they
might not be as great as America is, they are doing just fine thank
you.
And while
America has been squandering it’s money, decimating it’s resources,
and just being cavalier with it’s military, the rest of the world has
done the opposite. They have husbanded their day to day fortunes, and
you can see this in their day-to-day lives.
Articles & Links
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
You can start reading the articles sequentially by going HERE.
You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
Here, we continue on our exploration of China from the comfort of our
own personal computer, personal laptop, or personal media device. This
is a multi-part post because too many videos will prevent the post from
loading, and also, I tend to get sidetracked on various issues.
Also, please keep in mind that the purpose of this post is to
illustrate that the rest of the world, outside of America, has moved on
with their lives. That while they might not be as great as America is,
they are doing just fine thank you.
And while America has been squandering it’s money, decimating it’s
resources, and just being cavalier with it’s military, the rest of the
world has done the opposite. They have husbanded their day to day
fortunes, and you can see this in their day-to-day lives.
This is why America is currently fighting so many wars.
This is the final ninth of a mighty mega-post.
As a quick reminder, to all the new comers here…
Please kindly note that this post has multiple embedded videos. It is important to view them. If they fail to load, all you need to do is to reload your browser.
Chinese monuments to THEIR history
Conservative traditional nations always have monuments to their history. They revere their past and teach the lore to their youth. They are never ashamed of it, but rather use it as examples of how to live your life in various ways where all the good attributes are passed on one generation to another.
We used to do this with such American heroes as Johnny Appleseed, Paul Bunyan, Davey Crockett, and George Washington. It’s sort about how the Marxist progressive liberal democrats in the United States worship Karl Marx, Che, and Barrack Obama.
Statues are erected to the heroes that have shaped the society that we live in. Those that want to change the society, and demolish the social order, desire to tear down those statues.
The Chinese SJW folk wanted to do just that. Luckily they were stopped in the 1970’s and today, China honors it’s collective past.
For those of you who are fixed in thinking that these are just” statues, you are missing the point. The point is a continuation of societal virtues for a continuation of the positive aspects of ones’ culture.
For instance, where would the Thanksgiving turkey be, if no one celebrated Thanksgiving? What if they called it “Eat a bird day”, like how the progressive liberal Marxists have done away with saying “Merry Christmas” at work in America. We treasure our past through stories, and history. We also eat our history, in great delicious bites…
Cultures and societies all over the world honor their past. They do this through holidays and celebrations that are set aside for the people to enjoy. Thanksgiving for instance is one such holiday that celebrates the “breaking of bread” with outsiders by the Puritans. We celebrate it by eating turkey with mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce, baked candied yams, fresh oven baked bread, salads and other such tasty enjoyments.
Further, we have many variations of this holiday that has developed over the years. Such as having turkey sandwiches (hot and cold) all week long, and turkey soup, as well as the leftovers from the main event. Good eating, for certain. Life is too short, not to eat well.
Now, who wouldn’t want to eat some delicious turkey sandwiches? I for one, love to heat them up with gravy and eat hot turkey sandwiches. I like to use the normal “white bread’ for this, and then pour the hot turkey gravy all over the sandwich.
They be swanging…
Other nations, not having to worry about war and excessive taxation to support the wars, can spend their time on other things. This is often in the form of new and unique parks, buildings, public structures, and just plain fun things to do.
Riding a swing is pretty darn popular in China.
Life is about having fun. We are all so caught up in the news that is designed to frighten and manipulate. Don’t allow that. Think about good things, important things, delicious things.
Life is far too short.
This is a fine and delicious club sandwich. I really like it because it has bacon, turkey, ham and fresh delicious tomatoes. It is really good on toast, with a side of coleslaw and piping hot home fries with salt and a goodly amount of ketchup. Not to mention a great frosty beer.
Racing through the snow
Yeah. I know, I already talked about HSR, but I just cannot help myself.
Why worry about carbon emissions when everyone is using public transportation? What if it was cheap, clean, well maintained, and easy to access? Wouldn’t you prefer to use it for casual rides to the local store? Wouldn’t you prefer to use it to go to work?
I know that I do. It’s stress free (usually).
If only 10% of the population uses HSR and public transportation instead of driving, that means that there will be an extra 10% more of fuel availability. this will be reflected in cheaper gasoline prices. As such everything is affected that is impacted by gasoline costs… like food.
Po-Dunk China
And as I had stated earlier on, let’s keep this all in mind, shall we…
Also, please keep in mind that the purpose of this post is to
illustrate that the rest of the world, outside of America, has moved on with their lives. That while they might not be as great as America is, they are doing just fine thank you.
And while America has been squandering it’s money, decimating it’s
resources, and just being cavalier with it’s military, the rest of the world has done the opposite. They have husbanded their day to day fortunes, and you can see this in their day-to-day lives.
In case I am not making myself clear on this issue. This little po-dunk Chinese town looks like it has nice infrastructure, good roads, is clean and has a happy vibrant population. This could be Detroit. This could be Los Angles, and this could be Baltimore. But No. No. Noooo. The money is for use else where.
That money is for far off wars where large amounts can be skimmed away without any kind of accountability. Who is left holding “the bag” for their greed? We are.
And, you can see how this manifests all over the United States.
Typical street scene in Los Angles. There are many beautiful cities in America. Consider Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Charlotte. These are our cities, and they DO need to be managed properly. They also need to have funds allocated to the people who live there. Not in wars in distant lands.
America. Wake up and look around. These are our cities. If the elected officials have failed we have two and only two options. They are;
Continue using the same methods and elect replacement officials. Hope that they will do a better job than their predecessors. (Don’t hold your breath.)
Scrap the system. “Nuke from orbit.” Start all over from scratch and appoint trained, and talented (real) experts to manage the city.
Look around people. Those whom are running the nation are frigging idiots. They do not have our best intentions in mind. They are evil, corrupt and have gamed the system against us. Either we go along with their game, or we start all over.
These sociopaths are not liberal or conservative. They are not Democrats or Republicans. They are not beholden to a country or community. They care not for their fellow man. They don’t care about future generations. They care about their own power, wealth and control over others. They have no conscience. They have no empathy. Right and wrong are meaningless in their unquenchable thirst for more. They will lie, steal and kill to achieve their goal of controlling everything and everyone in this world. This precisely describes virtually every politician in Washington DC, Wall Street banker, mega-corporation CEO, government agency head, MSM talking head, church leader, billionaire activist, and blood sucking advisor to the president.
-Us vs Them
You can easily see just how bad they have been when you compare the United States to other nations. Oh, it’s one thing when there were only three news stations and they controlled everything. Now they are trying to do that again through Facebook, Twitter, and Google. Don’t let them.
This is not acceptable…
this is Los Angles today. This is not acceptable, and the purists that believe that “one day” this situation will change and reverse itself are deluded.
Do you know what this looks like?
I’ll tell you. It looks like the rich oligarchy in control of the American government has declared war on the American people. That is what it looks like. In many ways, the liberal progressive cities in America look like war zones.
Was this in Vietnam, or Los Angeles? It’s hard to tell. I think maybe we need to complete scrap the system and start all over.
What is needed is to tear out the rich oligarchy that has completely destroyed America, extract them, and set in place preventative measures to guarantee that this sort of thing will never happen again. Sort of like this…
Bonus awards for employees
In China, bonuses are quite common. No, I’m not talking about the (tiny) fractional add-on bonus you get for this or that which are common in American factories. I am talking about the real deal… cold hard cash. Handed to you in person. No strings attached, and no taxes due.
Yah. You spend that money girls.
Guangzhou
Yes, America has been put in a stranglehold by powerful interests. They do not care what happens to the country or the nation. All that they care about is their power. For them, it is not enough to live like Kings. They want to live like Mayan rulers. With the rest of the population treating them as Gods.
These sociopaths are not liberal or conservative. They are not Democrats or Republicans. They are not beholden to a country or community. They care not for their fellow man. They don’t care about future generations. They care about their own power, wealth and control over others. They have no conscience. They have no empathy. Right and wrong are meaningless in their unquenchable thirst for more. They will lie, steal and kill to achieve their goal of controlling everything and everyone in this world. This precisely describes virtually every politician in Washington DC, Wall Street banker, mega-corporation CEO, government agency head, MSM talking head, church leader, billionaire activist, and blood sucking advisor to the president.
-Us vs Them
This comes into sharp focus when you visit other cities elsewhere in the world.
How the factory owners live
In China, as a traditional nation, it is a land of merit. It is a meritocracy and great rewards await the successful person. Many of them are so far removed from what a typical American would be exposed to that I won’t even bother reporting on them.
That’s it for now.
Thank you for visiting. I hope that you enjoyed yourself, got a taste of what life is like in another nation, and maybe obtained a better or worse appreciation of your home nation.
I apologize for my various rants and raves, but it adds some color to the article. Like how you can add hot chili peppers to pizza. Too much and the pizza is inedible. Too little, and it is too bland. What we strive to do is to hit that “green zone”, the “just right” mixture of fact, opinion, humor, and rant.
BTW. I wish you all a great life, and happy travels. No matter who you are, or where you are. Go get yourself a nice cigar, and a tall pint of frosty beer, and maybe some delicious food. Treat yourself. Have a good time.
The time is ripe for a pizza, some beer and good times with your friends. Life is too short not to have beer and pizza. I’ll tell you what. Enjoy yourself, and don’t forget to make sure that the beer is ice cold, and the pizza is fresh out of the oven.
If you want to go to the start of this series of posts, then please click HERE.
Links about China
China and America Comparisons
The Chinese Business KTV Experience
This is
the real deal. Forget about all that nonsense that you find in the
British tabloids and an occasional write up in the American liberal
press. This is the reality. Read or not.
Learning About China
Contemporaneous Chinese Music
This is a
series of posts that discuss contemporaneous popular music in China. It
is a wide ranging and broad spectrum of travel, and at that, all that I
am able to provide is the flimsiest of overviews. However, this series
of posts should serve as a great starting place for investigation and
enjoyment.
Parks in China
The parks
in China are very unique. They are enormous and tend to be very
mountainous. Here we take a look at this most interesting of subjects.
Really Strange China
Here are
some posts that discuss a number of things about China that might seem
odd, or strange to Westerners. Some of the things are everyday events,
while others are just representative of the differences in culture.
Articles & Links
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
You can start reading the articles sequentially by going HERE.
You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
Well, what is China like? Is it a smog filled “hell hole”, or is it a Stalinist storm-trooper stomping dictatorship? Just what the heck is it, and what is it like?
This is a post that I threw together after reading a fellow American justify the eight wars that America is currently fighting all over the globe. As he said “…it our duty to police the world because no one has it better than us.”
Eh? Say what?
Of course he was referring to a United States military presence all over the world. And at this I shake my head. Why is my tax dollars being spent in Timbuktu? Why are we building bridges, bases and helping the Saudi’s fight their wars?
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman wants America to fight a war with Iran. To this end he is very active in providing financial enticements (bribes) to leading American Senators and Congressmen to support yet another military action, only this time in Iran.
Don’t the Saudi Arabians have enough money?
Why do WE have to do it? Why can’t THEY deal with their own issues?
Some background
To best understand what this question and the answers that it garners, we need to have a little background first.
Most non-Americans would be absolutely surprised to discover that the bulk of Americans think that the world is one big garbage dump, and only America is a half-way decent place to live. With this belief, it makes sense that America spread “American-style democracy” all over the world. No matter what the cost.
And so we do. Oh, yeah…
Linda J. Bilmes and Michael D. Intriligator, ask in a recent paper, “How many wars is the US fighting today?”
Today US military operations are involved in scores of countries across all the five continents. The US military is the world’s largest landlord, with significant military facilities in nations around the world, and with a significant presence in Bahrain, Djibouti,Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Kyrgyzstan, in addition to long-established bases in Germany, Japan, South Korea, Italy, and the UK. Some of these are vast, such as the Al Udeid Air Force Base in Qatar, the forward headquarters of the United States Central Command, which has recently been expanded to accommodate up to 10,000 troops and 120 aircraft.
Citing a page at US Central Command’s (CENTCOM) website, they highlight the “areas of responsibility” publicly listed:
The US Central Command (CENTCOM) is active in 20 countries across the Middle Eastern region, and is actively ramping-up military training, counterterrorism programs, logistical support, and funding to the military in various nations. At this point, the US has some kind of military presence in Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, U.A.E., Uzbekistan, and Yemen.
US Africa Command (AFRICOM), according to the paper, “supports military-to-military relationships with 54 African nations.”
[Gosztola points out that the U.S. military is also conducting operations of one kind or another in Syrian, Jordan, South Sudan, Kosovo, Libya, Yemen, the Congo, Uganda, Mali, Niger and other countries.]
Altogether, that makes 74 nations where the US is fighting or “helping” some force in some proxy struggle that has been deemed beneficial by the nation’s masters of war.
-U.S. Currently Fighting 74 Different Wars … That It Will Publicly Admit
Good thing that we are in Turkmenistan. I can see how a farmer in Iowa would trudge down to his Congressman, and demand (by pounding on the desk) that his son goes and fights “the good cause” way off there. Just like you and your relatives have. Just like everyone in Ohio, Kentucky, and Illinois have. </sarcasm>
By the way… where is Turkmenistan? Do you even bloody know?
But those are just the public operations; the public stuff that you might be able to find in a newspaper or two. However, there are many, many secret and covert operations all over the globe, don’t you know.
Beyond that, there are Special Operations forces in countries. Jeremy Scahill in Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, writes, “By mid-2010, the Obama administration had increased the presence of Special Operations forces from sixty countries to seventy-five countries.
Scahill also reports, based on his own “well-placed special operations sources”:
…[A]mong the countries where [Joint Special Operations Command] teams had been deployed under the Obama administration were: Iran, Georgia, Ukraine, Bolivia, Paraguay, Ecuador, Peru, Yemen, Pakistan (including in Baluchistan) and the Philippines. These teams also at times deployed in Turkey, Belgium, France and Spain. JSOC was also supporting US Drug Enforcement Agency operations in Colombia and Mexico…
Ah, yes. His statement stuck to me. I mean, it really did. I thought, you see, that that bunch of ignorance pretty much died off during the Bush years. So I was really taken back to have it repeated again, to my face.
I guess he is just fine throwing away money that is Constitutionally intended to be in our wallets. Hey! Some people don’t care what happens to the money once it is removed from their wallet. They justify it.
Obama was very liberal with the tax monies, as well as the money not yet collected. He gave it away like party favors at a drunk frat party.
However, I for one, do.
It affects MY quality of life. It affects my family. It affects what I do, how I eat, and my general health.
Hey! Dear reader, how much do you manage to save out of each paycheck every month? Not only that, but you and your family (with both working) how much are you able to save? You cannot. That is because of taxes, and you know what? Most of our tax money goes in to wars. War. Endless, endless wars…!
And no amount of bafflegab is going to change that.
Feminist bafflegab.
America is not supposed to be like this.
You have to understand that America, as founded, was the most amazing nation ever to grace this good earth. There are many reasons for this, but nothing can say it better than this…
America's founders embraced a previously unheard-of political philosophy which held that people are "...endowed BY THEIR CREATOR with certain unalienable rights.." This was the statement of guiding principle for the new nation, and, as such, had to be translated into a concrete charter for government. The Constitution of The United States of America became that charter.
Other forms of government, past and present, rely on the state as the grantor of human rights. America's founders, however, believed that a government made up of imperfect people exercising power over other people should possess limited powers. Through their Constitution, they wished to "secure the blessings of liberty" for themselves and for posterity by limiting the powers of government. Through it, they delegated to government only those rights they wanted it to have, holding to themselves all powers not delegated by the Constitution. They even provided the means for controlling those powers they had granted to government.
This was the unique American idea. Many problems we face today result from a departure from this basic concept. Gradually, other "ideas" have influenced legislation which has reversed the roles and given government greater and greater power over individuals. Early generations of Americans pledged their lives to the cause of individual freedom and limited government and warned, over and over again, that eternal vigilance would be required to preserve that freedom for posterity.
-Footnote: "Our Ageless Constitution,"W. David Stedman & La Vaughn G. Lewis, Editors (Asheboro, NC, W. David Stedman Associates, 1987) Part III: ISBN 0-937047-01-5
You see, America today in no way resembles what our Constitution says it is supposed to be. It has turned in to a huge enormous monstrosity.
"Allow me, just now old enough to apprehend the freak show for what it is, to put something radical to my conservative forbearers:
Little about the presentstate of American life is worth conserving. Nothing of what the Founders envisioned remains."
-Andrea Yung
We Americans, living in this mess, move along with the flow and ebb of the political and social winds. Often making the most absurd statements, and rationalizations. Thus this fellow that I was chatting with.
He then went on to say that “We need to police the world. We need to spread democracy... ...the rest of the world is one big shit-hole, seriously.” And then asked me, “Have you ever seen the Mexican side of the border?“
America is very beautiful once you leave many of the urban areas. The sky is often awesome, the roads are wide and often clear of traffic. Many of the houses are large and spacious. When compared to other nations, the United States appears to be (hands down) the most desirable place to live. So it is natural to assume every other place is a hell-hole.
Now this is coming from a guy who doesn’t even has a passport, has never tried to get a visa, and his only experience outside the borders of our country was by watching reruns of Baywatch.
Ah. that old “no one has it better than us Americans” argument. We are so fortunate. Eh. Well, it plays well in Peoria. And it’s a good conversation stopper. As we, as Americans, have all seen the “Save the Children” commercials. That money-generating venture brought images of poverty into the living-rooms of Americans for decades.
So the argument seems to have some validity.
Seems to.
Being older with some experiences…
But, you know, I am from a different generation. I grew up in the 1970’s, and at that time between all the smoking blue haze we came to appreciate the strengths of the American system. We did so cranking Jimmi Hendrix, Robin Trower, Yes, Jefro Tull, Alice Cooper, Boston, Manfred Mann, Traffic, Uriah Heep and Three Dog Night.
"I'd love to change the world... but I don't know what to do.
That 70s show was a television comedy that sort of reflected what it was like living and growing up in the 1970’s.
And…
We knew, since the Vietnam war was still fresh in our minds, that America should be for Americans. We did not need to be off throwing money, and wasting lives in some off-the-beaten track for some globalist oligarch.
We knew that America was wasting money in Vietnam. We knew that people were dying there, and many of them were friends, or relatives. We knew that what ever benefit would come of that war, none of us would ever see that benefit.
We knew that the war was just pissing away American resources.
Americans in Vietnam. We fought and died there for “democracy”. When the truth was that it was an effort with the wealthiest in America to game the situation for their very own personal advantage.
We, almost my entire generation, felt betrayed by those older than us. Those who ended up throwing away lives in far off rice paddy’s, and making laws against marijuana that everyone was obviously breaking. What was the matter with these people? We asked.
Why can’t they just let us be? Why do they have to take too much of our money, regulate too much of our lives, and go off fighting wars that are too far away? Why?
Things were so different the. We weren’t expected to apologize for being born. We weren’t ashamed of our nation. We were American gosh darn it!
Well, that was only the tip of the iceberg.
A few more years passed. Ronald Reagan did put the breaks down to some degree, but he made some other blunders that (sad to say, eventually) set the stage for what was to come…
President Bush Senior spent most of his Presidency trying to undo the good works of Ronald Reagan. In many ways he was very successful.
First, was President Gerald Ford Bush (Senior) who made it his life’s work to undo “Reaganomics”, and implement The New Global Order. Then came a succession of socialist criminals, such as Clinton, Bush Jr and finally Obama.
Each one, in their own way, contributed to the state of affairs that America is enduring today. Each one played a role. Each one created the situation leading to all the complaints that we Americans have about “our” government.
They snipped the brake-lines to the American Constitutional government, and it has been in free-fall ever since.
Free-fall.
Ahhhhhhhhhh.
Those of us, still trapped in a rapidly decaying world try to grasp for straws trying to make out some sense of reason to the hordes of pink-haired ignorance, the black-thugs of Antifa and the BLM that seem to want to put average Americans in concentration camps.
So we listen to the news. Many, well meaning of course, have no idea just how tainted it really is. They believe the news.
They believe CNN when they announce that there are spontaneous protests all over the nation to ban plastic straws.
They believe MSNBC when they announce that President Donald Trump is a full Communist spy on the payroll out of Russia (oh and he likes to pee on bed sheets, too). And they believe FOX when they say that our military isn’t big enough and another “few” trillion dollars would be all that is needed to make the world whole again.
The most dangerous lies are the ones that you WANT to believe. Which is why FOX is just as dangerous as CNN. They both lie. It's just that they focus on different target audiences.
You maybe should open up a window or two and let some fresh air get inside your house. You’ve been cooped up way too long. Maybe since when the Partridge Family, or the Rat Patrol was on television, me thinks.
The world has changed, bub.
Beautiful shanghai at dusk showing the Huangpu river and financial district skyline in sunset. The fellow that I was talking to considered this city, Shanghai to be a “Hell hole” worthy of fighting to “free those imprisoned by the evil communists”.
While you have been sitting there reading American news, American politics, American music, and viewing American-centrist shows, the rest of the world has moved on.
We, as Americans have been boxed in by wealthy and powerful forces. Their objective is for them to achieve “ultimate wealth and power”. As such, they are an evil oligarchy, and they control you, the reader, through media lies, and intentional omissions of news.
Some parts of America has been completely engulfed by this poison. You can see it. It’s not pretty.
Modern Detroit today. At one time Detroit was the automobile capital of the world. It produced products like no other. But successive generations of leadership decided to focus their energies elsewhere, and Detroit fell onto bad times. This is not the only place where this has happened. We have the “rust belt” in the Midwest, and of course, we all know about the crime riddled Seaboard cities.
Luckily, many parts of America has been spared. There are really very nice areas that have not been polluted by this blight. But the dark days are fast approaching.
Beautiful Cleveland, Ohio. This small Mid-West city is typical of what America and is is populated by people that it represents. While there is a major blight in most progressive liberal areas, the rural and smaller cities has so far been spared the progressive influence.
But, why has this blight effected the USA in the first place?
While Bush had the United States fighting in the deserts of Africa, the rest of the world were planting trees, building malls, and rapid mass transit.
While Bush was giving the dictator of some unpronounceable tiny county, trillions of dollars to build up THEIR infrastructure, and build THEIR hospitals, our infrastructure was allowed to decay and fall apart. And when we complained about it, they came after us. Accusing us of tax evasion, or sexual deviance.
While Obama was working on “diversity initiatives” all over the Untied States, the rest of the world were improving their hospitals. While we Americans were being told by Obama to pay more in taxes, to tighten our belts, the rest of the world were having their tax burdens eased, and living under substantially improved lifestyles.
Yes, let me be the first person to tell you, the reader this, while we have been spending bundles and bundles of money in places that you cannot find on a map, the rest of the world has been getting wealthier, better, stronger, and healthier.
Kanye West – Stronger
No longer does the rest of the world look like a “Save the Children” commercial. For the most part, it tends to look like an upscale suburb of Chicago.
“In terms of financial cost, the numbers are staggering. Afghanistan alone has cost a trillion dollars. Just think what we might have accomplished at home if that money had been spent on education, job training, medical research, infrastructure improvements, water purification and sanitation. You can add to this list. It’s all important, but taking a backseat to our military funding.”
-Endless war is bad for America
Scene from the Science Fiction comedy called Idiocracity. It traces the dumbing down of the average American and the resulting effect that it has on society.
So, here’s the slap in the face for you all.
Laugh-In is no longer broadcast on network television, Hugh Hefner is dead, and Playboy magazine is no longer published like it used to be. No one wears “Earth Shoes” anymore, and “love beads” are worn as often as the waitress tells you that your elephant bell-bottom jeans are “groovy”.
Times have changed. The rest of the world has moved on.
The rest of the world has moved on, and I believe that we need to pay attention to what is going on. We need to open our eyes, look around, ask questions and just listen.
We need to look at the world around us.
The American mainstream media has failed us.
Politicized media, from both sides of the spectrum lie and tell partial truths.
There are no “experts” that have all the answers. They are all frauds.
You might need to visit Australia, Germany, Poland, or Thailand. Americans, listen up, the rest of the world does NOT have it worse than America. They have it differently, true.
But, worse… I don’t think so.
The rest of the world could care less about what is going on in the USA. They don’t know what the IRS, who the NSA is, and why the FDA is important. Though, they do have a pretty good idea about the CIA, LOL.
I’m in China, so we are gonna talk about China.
If I were in Australia, I’d talk about that absolutely amazing nation. Indeed, those Aussies have no idea how fortunate they are. Australia is an amazing place. It really, really is. From Kings Cross to Brisbane, it’s awesome from the top to the bottom, and I cannot find anything wrong with it at all.
Beautiful Brisbane, Australia. Australia is a land of wonderful weather, beautiful girls and impressive scenery. Also, you should try their prawns. They are amazing!
And you know, what? The same is true about some other places, like New Zealand. Those Kiwi’s have it good too. I’ll tell you what. The thing is that they don’t go strutting around like a peacock, or like a big cock that is so sure of himself proclaiming “New Zealand is the best!”. They know they are good, and decent. They know that.
Milford sound in New Zealand. Queenstown is known to be the adventure capital of New Zealand, and actually, the world! However, in case you’ve been living under a rock, New Zealand’s beauty is the true draw.
Thailand is in a class by itself and I won’t spend too much time on all the great fun that can be had there. You just need to go out, and experience it yourself. After all, where else in the world will all the pretty ladies call you a “handsome man”, eh?
Getting ready to have some fun in Thailand. It the land of great food, amazing natures, and many, many smiles. This is a photo of a foreigner getting some money out of an ATM. If you are frugal, you will need to husband your money carefully, as Thailand has an enormous tourist industry, and you will need to be careful or else watch your money disappear before your eyes.
Canada has it’s charms, I’ll tell you what. But, it seems too much like a sister-brother nation to the United States. They seem to want to copy whatever progressive pronouncements come out of liberal academia. I know, I know, they speak French, and have politics more in like with the UK than anything resembling America, but it’s a very beautiful nation with some outstanding parks and scenery. Not to mention, just great people.
Still, still, it’s a gorgeous place, with some great fishing. If you ever get a chance to go fishing in Canada go do it. You will not be sorry. Just remember to take some bug-repellent. You will need two or three gallons of it.
Watch out! One of the signs features a large mosquito carrying someone away. Well, maybe they don’t get that big, but you’ve got to be well equipped.
Well, I’m in China. So I am gonna talk about China.
I’m not gonna narrate too much. Just a little wee bit. It will help you, the reader, better understand the context of what is going on in the videos, and that should lead to a better understanding of what you are witnessing. After all, watching Cirque du Soleil without any context would leave anyone confused and disoriented.
So, I’ll just let the micro-videos speak for themselves. You all can come to whatever conclusion you come to. That way the ignorant can’t blame me for “brainwashing” you, the reader.
As they often tend to do.
The following videos describe the China that exists today, and not the “Save the Children” image so rampantly promoted in American media on both sides of the political spectrum. As we used to say in the industry “don’t shoot the messenger”.
They are fun videos. I hope you enjoy them.
Also, please keep in mind that the purpose of this post is to
illustrate that the rest of the world, outside of America, has moved on
with their lives. That while they might not be as great as America is,
they are doing just fine thank you.
And while America has been squandering it’s money, decimating it’s
resources, and just being cavalier with it’s military, the rest of the
world has done the opposite. They have husbanded their day to day
fortunes, and you can see this in their day-to-day lives.
This is a Paleo-conservative response to the hordes of Neocons that argue in favor of global armageddon.
This is what China is. (Video 1)
Please kindly note that this post has multiple embedded videos. It is important to view them. If they fail to load, all you need to do is to reload your browser.
It is rare for a single company to make everything for their products. They buy screws from a screw manufacturer, they get rubber parts from a rubber manufacturer, and get glass from a glass manufacturer. Over the last two decades a system has developed where a company can retain control of it's products, but utilize cheap off-shore labor.
While the rest of the world was “off shoring” their products, China was learning, acquiring, and building. While the rich oligarchy in the USA and Europe were taking their enormous profits and investing in political power, liberal initiatives, and spending the money on lavish entertainments, China was working hard and studying.
It’s paying off.
Scene from the television show “Star Trek”. TOS season 2. It pictured a world where America adopted the way that Rome ruled the world only doing so contemporaneously. I wonder, would Americans recognize the similarities between Ancient Rome and modern Washington DC?
While all this has been going on, some curious trends started to manifest.
Today, many manufacturers all over the world implement “supply-chain management”, which means (in layman’s terms) that they farm out critical sub-assemblies, and parts to other factories in other nations where the manufacturing costs are low. As such, they are able keep their core factories and manufacturing facilities and maintain their local labor rates, social benefits, and environmental controls, but only conduct final manufacture of components.
We know about this every time we call a help line that gets rerouted to India, or when we discover that it will take a month or longer to get a spare part for our American made product.
Many companies do this. Many, that you, the reader, have no idea has so many off-shored components and assemblies. Hey! Surprise!
And now for my first video…
China is about selecting the interior color scheme in your car…
I really love Bentleys. I love everything about them. The primary assembly plant is in Crewe, England. They do a lot of supply-chain management and most of it is with Chinese and local suppliers. One of the things that I admire about Bentley is how they installed solar panels over their parking lot. How’s that for innovation, as well as keeping the parked car cool and out of the hot sun?
Bentley parking lot, all protected from the sun with solar panels.
The point of this is simple. While almost every American company is outsourcing products, parts, and sub-assemblies to China, they are not alone. EVERY developed nation is doing this. America is not the only nation that out sources.
Getting close to nature – Camping Chinese style. (Video 2)
People are people everywhere. We like to eat, talk, and play with our friends. We like to fish, play sports, and just have a good time.
China is about having fun with your friends. Here we talk about camping in the wilds “Chinese style”.
I think that everyone should experience camping with friends and family. In fact, it is the core of some of my greatest memories. Though, for me, putting a tent up often meant getting rained upon. Sigh.
Notice that there are a couple of things that I would like to point out to the reader to take note of and observe.
It is done as a group. The Chinese find strength in friendships. In America, it’s every man for himself, lone-wolf style. So camping in the USA is usually in small groups of two to four people. Camping in China is often a much larger communal experience.
There are different activities to meet the different styles and pleasures of the individuals. Some gals just want to sit at the table, drink wine and watch the guys play. Some want to play around and have a good time, while others want to cook and play some sports. What ever makes your boat float, I say.
Tents are there for passing out, sex, and naps, not to mention spending the night. They are usually the first thing to go up, and the last thing to take down. They serve as the anchor to the campground or camping area. Not the fire-pit, which would be more common in the USA.
They use portable tables, and stoves. It is rare to have open fires in China.
The point of this is that people all over the globe enjoy themselves. They fish. They eat. They get drunk, fall in love, and have a great time. (Maybe not in that exact order.) The rest of the world is not a Brazilian garbage dump or a smog filled desert. It’s not.
New, big and modern. (Video 3)
With two decades of rapid advancement, it should come as no surprise that antiquated infrastructure would be replaced, and new systems put in place. What is surprising is the pace, and the extent at which is is done. The speed, pace, and quantity of new structures is unlike anything seen int he United States.
China is about miles and miles of big, brand new, impressive skyscrapers, modern efficient public transportation, and fun night light shows.
This is not confined to the first top level cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. It permeates the entire Chinese society. It is everywhere. China was not squandering it’s resources fighting eight wars all over the globe, nor policing the Muslim world. They were solving their own domestic issues.
It is evident if you take a gander. Here’s a small town in China. Yes… believe it or not 4 million people is a town in China.
"It's all Chinese propaganda from behind the red-firewall. He's gone full Chicom. All you need to know is to check out his other postings. You shouldn't read or listen to anything he says."
-(Name removed by request)
The point of this is that the money wasted on wars against primitive people in crude terrain for appease the oligarchy could be used on Americans. It could be used on Americans to improve the lives of Americans. Or at the very least to curb the out of control devaluation of the US dollar.
China is all about the party. (Video 4)
Chinese culture is traditional conservative. They follow the model that has been in place in China for 5000 years. They tried the progressive liberal Marxist technique under Mr. Mao and it darn near exterminated 30 million people. Since the 1970's they have implemented a new type of government. They call it "Socialist with Chinese Characteristics".
What it is, using American vernacular, is a Conservative Dictatorship following Reaganomics, and a "Make China Great Today" philosophy.
Being conservative, and traditional, drinking alcohol is part of the culture. All those attempts to cub “vices” stems from progressive and liberal schools of thought.
In past in America, people could drink and smoke and party to the wee hours of the night. This all started to change when progressive liberal values began to “improve” American life, society and culture. One of the first things that they tried to do was ban drinking. It failed, so they started to tax it. Then came smoking. Then came all sorts of restrictions on various other vices. Don’t let the progressive democrat narrative of freedom to “get high” fool you. They only want to control you, and the most effective way is to control access to vices.
If you talk to someone who says that they visited China, but they cannot tell you about the KTV experience, they are either lying or lived a very exclusive life. You know, how Hillary Clinton mingles with the people in Walmart. The Chinese party scene is not like what you have in the United States, where a certain percentage of the population, maybe 20-40% might want to go out and drink and dance. In China, it is ingrained in the Chinese culture.
Everyone, to one extent or the other, parties.
Friends, family and business associates will naturally invite you to dinner and drinks, and if they and you are worthy of friendship, a KTV. If you are not worthy of such an experience then you are, and will forever be, an outsider.
Thus one way that you can determine just how knowledgeable a "Chinese expert" is in the understandings of China, Chinese people, and Chinese culture, is to ask them about their experiences drinking, singing, and hanging out with the Chinese people on a personal basis.
The more experiences they have, the more visceral their understanding is of the Chinese sphere.
China is about going out to the clubs or the KTV’s with tons of pretty girls and getting drunk to the gills…
Most people around the world party and have a great time. This would continue whether or not Americans burn money in wars or not. However, the kinds of parties that you have and the extent of your enjoyment at them are a function of the value of your currency. By devaluing the USD through constant fiscal mismanagement, and endless wars most Americans have to settle for the cheaper kinds of entertainment. It’s beer and Doritos instead of steaks and galas.
China is ENORMOUS. (Video 5)
China is an enormous nation, about the same size as the USA, but with a billion more people.
Yes it is. In fact, it is geographically similar to the size of the United States. That means that it is enormous.
United States is around the same size as China. China is approximately 9,596,960 sq km, while United States is approximately 9,833,517 sq km. Meanwhile, the population of China is ~1 billion people (1 billion fewer people live in United States).Size of United States compared to China - MyLifeElsewhere
A size comparison between the United States and China. They are roughly the same size. Though, I would tend to say that while China has more mountains, the USA has a longer coastline. Also there is a greater difference from the one end of the nation to the other.
China is about amazing parks, scenery that seems like it came from a science fiction movie, and strange and exotic wildlife…
"These videos that you post aren't from China. They are actually from parks in America. You should stop being so deceptive."
-Gonzoberry
The size of the nation does not change whether it is involved in wars or not. However, the quality of the life inside that nation is a function of the amount of money the government spends on it. China has been spending billions of dollars improving China, the infrastructure and the lives of it’s people. America has been squandering it in Yemen, Libya, and Afghanistan, to name of few places.
Diverse range of cultural stratification. (Video 6)
All nations are culturally stratified to one degree or the other. China is no exception. However, the rapid rate of growth over the last two decades has created a melting-pot of social classes, and they all mingle together.
America is stratified. There are the oligarchy that lives in their exclusive areas, and the “upper middle class” which are now almost entirely working for the government, and the rest of us. We are further segregated in where we live. There are the urban liberals, and the rural conservatives, and it is quite a rare thing to fall outside those two groupings.
In China there is a mish-mash of cultures, and social stratification. This can manifest in different ways depending where you are.
China is about getting a $1 haircut on the street…
Social stratification arises through all cultures. The best way to manage it is to provide services based on merit, and ability. The worst way is to provide services based on what group or “tribe” you are a member of, or what your gender is, or some other characteristic based on demographics. China provides services based on merit, and thus the society is homogenized. India and America provides services based on other concerns, and that leads to dangerous social stratification.
Playing with your dog. (Video 7)
Life is about living. have a good time and enjoy yourself. Why not? Eh?
And China is about going for a ride with your dog…
Every nation has people enjoying their time with their pets. This includes China. Where most of China enjoys playing with their beloved dogs. They don’t eat them (at least 99.95% doesn’t). One of the things that aides social stratification is the creation of an “us” vs. “them” mentality. One side demonizes another, and makes them seem inhuman, cruel and evil. Thus the reason for the last five decades of anti-Chinese propaganda originating out of the liberal media outlets in the United States.
Yes, China is many many things.
While America is willing to pour trillions of (taxpayer) dollars into third-world shit-holes all over the globe, China has a different plan. China invests the money for China. In China, it is “Make China First Today”.
In America, you have a percentage of the population that also see the value in this. They voted for Donald Trump, and they wear MAGA hats, which is pretty much an Americanized version of the Chinese slogan.
Here’s to all those people in America that believe that America should be great again, and stand for something.
Here’s to all those people in America that believe that America should be great again, and stand for something. Here’s to a nation that puts God before everything else, and accepts the premise and the promise that Rights are ordained by God, and NOT by man. Here’s to all the people who have fought for and died for this belief.
And…
Looking that the world as it is, first hand, both the good and the bad, gives you a better perspective on your own life. There are good and bad things about the USA, just like there are good and bad things about China.
Continued…
OK. At numerous videos for this part, let’s go and move on to the next part of this post which covers more videos and further commentary about China.
If you want to go to the start of this series of posts, then please click HERE.
Links about China
China and America Comparisons
The Chinese Business KTV Experience
This is the real deal. Forget about all that nonsense that you find in the British tabloids and an occasional write up in the American liberal press. This is the reality. Read or not.
Learning About China
Contemporaneous Chinese Music
This is a series of posts that discuss contemporaneous popular music in China. It is a wide ranging and broad spectrum of travel, and at that, all that I am able to provide is the flimsiest of overviews. However, this series of posts should serve as a great starting place for investigation and enjoyment.
Parks in China
The parks in China are very unique. They are enormous and tend to be very mountainous. Here we take a look at this most interesting of subjects.
Really Strange China
Here are some posts that discuss a number of things about China that might seem odd, or strange to Westerners. Some of the things are everyday events, while others are just representative of the differences in culture.
Articles & Links
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
You can start reading the articles sequentially by going HERE.
You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
