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.
When I was a boy in middle school, perhaps 12 to 14 years old, I needed a new pair of boots for winter time. Well, it seemed that my father has an old pair of work boots that he never used. And so he gave them to me to wear during Winter.
These were “Engineer’s boots”, and are typical boots that you see bikers wear or the Terminator, dressed in biker garb, wear. I thought that they looked cool.
boots
Only one thing though.
They were steel toed, meaning that the front of them were steel. Great to protect your feet. But, terrible in the Winter.
My father knew that this was a problem, and told me so. But I refused to listen to him, and so I wore those things for maybe four or five years until I went and got myself a real genuine pair of hiking boots.
Hiking Boots
Never the less, it was a true and real miracle that I never got frost-bite while wearing them. My feet were constantly frozen each and every time I stepped outside in the frozen woods around my home.
Was I bad and wrong for wearing them? Yes I was.
Should my father thrown those boots away and got me a replacement pair without the steel toe up front? Yes he should of.
But time is the teacher, and what I know know is only through the prism of experience. What experiences have you had that would have avoided mistakes in your past? I’ll bet you have many.
Don’t you?
As a side note, when I lived in Boston, Massachusetts, I needed a good pair of Winter Boots. This of course, was decades after the boot adventure. So I went to a local store and got me a proper pair of New England Winter boots, and I’ll tell you, I was never happier.
Easy to put on and take off. Easy to clean and dry: the inserts came out and were washable. Comfortable, warm… always. And my feet were never cold, wet or frozen.
And NO, this is not a paid advertisement. Get them HERE.
Bean Winter Duck Bill Snow Boots
These were the shit! I’ll tell you what.
Today…
Generate you own music
Free application, and this makes actual music. Of course, I have been playing around with it.
[Verse]In Jamaica, sunny days Irie vibes, and feelin' irie ways (irie ways) But when me hungry, I know what's good Peanut-butter and jelly sandwich, that's what's understood (oh yeah)
[Chorus]Spread the peanut-butter, spread the jelly (ooh-yeah) Put 'em together, it's a reggae melody Spread the peanut-butter, spread the jelly (ooh-yeah) Dance along, feel the rhythm, it's so jellylicious (jellylicious)
[Verse]In the morning, when I rise I got a craving, I can't disguise I need some sweetness to start my day Spinnin' around, like a reggae DJ (yeah, yeah)
[Chorus]Peanut-butter and jelly, it's the perfect blend (ooh-yeah) Spread it on thick, let the flavors transcend With every bite, feelin' oh so fine (oh so fine) Groovin' with PB&J, it's a reggae rhyme (yeah, yeah)
Here’s two Country & Western songs about Peanut-butter pies…
[Verse]Sitting on the front porch, gettin' lost in the sun Got a jar of peanut butter, it's my kind of fun Mix it up with some sugar, creamy and sweet Spread it on a crust, can't be beat, can't be beat (ooh-yeah)
[Chorus]Peanut butter pies, oh they make me smile With every bite, it's like a little slice of sky Peanut butter pies, oh they're pure delight They keep me comin' back, every single night (ooh, ooh)
[Verse]Well, I was sittin' on my porch in the sunny afternoon When my mama brought me a treat, it was comin' to bloom She said, "Darlin', I made your favorite, just for you" I took a bite and knew I had to share the news
[Chorus]Peanut-butter pies, sweet as a southern sunrise Meltin' in your mouth, takin' you to paradise With each bite, my heart takes flight, oh my-oh my Peanut-butter pies, can't get enough, oh, I can't deny
AI is a major force, and will slam-dunk our society. Today…
Have you ever met your school bully as an adult?
I was terrorised as a child by the older kids in my neighbourhood. We were poor but I was quite popular with other kids my age. For some reason this made me a target with the popular older kids. They would take great pleasure in chasing me and if they caught me they would beat me to a pulp. It was the 80s and this kind of thing was just accepted.
Fast forward 10 years. I’ve done an apprenticeship as a scaffolder, put on a lot of weight. Bulked so much I’ve earned the name Tank at work. I bump into the ring leader of the older kids in a night club.
I get we were kids when the bullying happened and think that as he’s now grown up he’s probably grown up. As I pass him I smile and say “Alright, mate?” He replies with “Don’t fucking speak to me”. This stops me in my tracks. I look him dead in the eye. The club feels like it’s gone silent as I contemplate knocking his head clean off of his shoulders. I said to him:
“Listen Julian, we’re not 10 any more and this isn’t the estate, now, turn back around and walk out of here before you get hurt.”
He froze. There was a look of sheer confusion on his face. He turned on his heels and walked out the door without another word.
The simple answer: Me. On September 3, 2012, when I was 35, I had the first of 4 sudden cardiac arrests and clinically died. I was anoxic, or without breath for somewhere under 10 minutes. I was diagnosed with a heart condition called Brugada Syndrome, which is a gene mutation that largely goes undiagnosed because the first symptom is death. In that time, I suffered mild traumatic brain injury or tbi. Before that I was a lively, smart woman, mom, fluent Spanish speaker with a great job of 6 years. After I came home, I couldn’t recall that thing the kids played with in the backyard. I just pointed and cried. Their swingset. My doctors couldn’t agree on when, or if I should return to work. Subsequently I was terminated as was denied short term disability because their physicians didn’t agree with mine and my time off wasn’t covered. I had never been fired before, and it’s never gotten easier since. I’ve been fired 4 times. I have worked at Walmart, and as a receptionist at a small nursing home. My doctors told me to try Disability(SSDI). I tried and was denied, saying I was too young and able to be a mail sorter. I kid you not. I struggle. Then 5 ‘events’ with my ICD(internal defibrillators) and 2 unsuccessful cardiac ablations left me with anxiety, panic attacks and PTSD. I have lost so much of my memory, including most of my Spanish skills, my confidence, my ability to learn new things much less recall previous things. My short term memory is appalling and I reach for words often. 3 weeks ago I was let go from yet another job, despite telling them of my ADA status. At least I got excellent counseling which all but erased the mental anguish.
So yes, I miss the person who I was.
I can relate to this
Chicken and Vegetable Stew (Saucochi di Gallinja)
2024 02 18 09 50
Yield: 8 or 9 servings
Ingredients
1 (2 1/2 to 3 pound) broiler-fryer chicken, cut up
6 cups water
2 tablespoons instant beef bouillon
2 medium tomatoes, chopped
2 medium onions, chopped
2 medium potatoes, cut into 1/2 inch slices
2 medium sweet potatoes or yams, cut into 1/2 inch slices
3 ears sweet corn, cut into 3 pieces
1/4 pound winter squash, pared and cut into 1/2 inch pieces (1 cup)
1/2 cup fresh or frozen green peas
1 small hot chile pepper, stemmed, seeded and sliced
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
Chopped chives
Instructions
Heat chicken, water and bouillon to boiling in Dutch oven; reduce heat. Cover and simmer 30 minutes.
Skim off fat. Add remaining ingredients except chives. Heat to boiling; reduce heat. Cover and simmer until thickest pieces of chicken are done and vegetables are tender, about 20 minutes.
Garnish each serving with chives.
What China Just Did Changes The Entire Space Industry And America Is Terrified!
Once again as a racist you cannot see beyond wages. As a spremacist you miss the point all together about the education, the trainings , the willingness to learn, the feebleness, the ability to adapt and change, the characteristics of Chinese language that is superior in retaining knowledge and the unique discipline, and hard work of the Chinese workers and a whole host of the Confucian and Taoist edicts that groomed a Chinese worker from birth that so much affect the immense productivity and efficiency of Chinese workers.
So white Caucasians analyst are simply unaware of these characteristics and they think simply and blindly thinks that Chinese makes things cheaper because of wages and government support and taxes means absolutely nothing compared to a perfectly well trained and highly disciplined worker.
My first job as a Town Manager in the early 80’s was in a small town in Kentucky along the Mississippi River. Some interesting tid-bits….
The Chief of Police was driving me around my first week there. We were in a residential area and he stopped and opened his door. He got out his shotgun and shot a dog in the street. He got back in the car, called Public Works and told them to pick up the dead dog on Maple Street. When I asked him why he shot the dog he said it didn’t have a dog tag.
Town Hall was located in downtown. I’m working in my office on the second floor and when I hear a gun shot blast. I looked out the window and there’s a half dozen people waking down the middle of the street with shotguns. I called the police dispatcher and said there’s people with shotguns walking downtown and shooting, please let the Chief know. The dispatcher said “yeah, it’s pigeon day. All the duck hunters get together and shoot the pigeons. It’s a warm up to duck season which starts this weekend. I believe the Chief is with them.”
The local doctor died a few months before I got there. He had been the only doctor in town for 30+ years. He willed his medical office building to the Town. One of my jobs would be to modernize the office and find a new doctor. When I went in the office to see what needed to be done I noted he had two waiting rooms. I assumed that was “well” patients and “sick” patients. It wasn’t. It was blacks and whites.
The nearest TV stations was Memphis and Cape Girardeau, Missouri. They were too far away for ‘over the air’ reception so people in town didn’t own television sets. I called a cable company and had them built a cable system in town.
We operated the local utilities, which included water, sewer and natural gas. We had a separate building for the electric system. Two women worked inside the office and a crew of men did the outside electric work. One of the women went to Disney World on vacation. While she was gone the other woman had an emergency operation. This was the first time both had been gone at the same time in years. I called my wife and asked her to cover for them until one or the other got back. My wife was a CPA and home along (without TV) with our toddler son. She jumped at the chance to do something. She opened the office and before lunch she called and told me the woman were taking cash out of the cash drawer and covering the missing money with their own personal checks, which they never deposited. More than $3,000. I told her to deposit their checks. I hired an auditor to come investigate, had the locks on the doors changed, filed a police report and informed the Mayor & Council. I fired the women. The checks bounced. The Town Council told me to not press charges against the women. The women filed for unemployment, which I appealed and won.
There was a giant flood wall to keep the river from flooding downtown. We had a number of large pump stations to pump water over the dikes and flood wall. Beavers was the bane of the town. There was a “bounty” on beaver ears and there was a local guy who bought beaver fur.
The volunteer Fire Chief invited me to a monthly last Friday cookout which I accepted of course. As it turns out that was men only, no wives. Just as well, my wife would never had eaten the beaver stew.
I was the Town Manager for 365 days and took a job in Tennessee in a very interesting town.
The Ukraine War taught the Taiwanese a lesson. The so-called protection of Taiwan by the West is to make Taiwan the battlefield and let the Taiwanese suffer the consequences of the war. Taiwan is part of China at present International laws so China has sovereignty over Taiwan. China has an Anti-Seperation Law. if Taiwan pushes for independence, it will get into war. Now they understand the so-called Western protection for them is a trap. Their youths will die. Their seniors and children will become refugees that already saturated the developed countries so that they may have no place to escape the war.
The West will supply weapons to Taiwan to fight till the last Taiwanese, just as now Ukraine has to fight the last Ukrainians.
Ukraine War is evident. The US wants Taiwan to claim independence as soon as possible. So the US makes a big arms sale to Taiwan, giving them the false perception of “safe”. The US needs the Ukraine War to weaken Russia. The US wants to weaken China more than Russia. So the US wants Taiwan to provoke a proxy war for the US.
The US is a very smart businessman. If the US wages war on China, the US soldiers will die and the US has to commit many resources such as arsenals. Now it can let the Taiwanese replace the US soldiers in the war, and Taiwan even has to purchase the weapons, to fight the war for the US geopolitical objective. The US wants to fight a war against China without cost a penny and a single soldier. The US wants a war it can profit from while Taiwan bears all the costs, including lives and weapons. The US already profited from the perception of war because it made a big sale of weapons to Taiwan.
You see this face and you don’t really get awed by these warnings
Your first thought is STUPID MORON
This guy doesn’t have the ability to put that voice of steel that some US Leaders had in the past
It’s why everybody has openly mocked him, from MBS blatantly ignoring him for 24 hours to Jordan openly telling him to go f*** himself to Qatar to Iraq all snubbing him including our EAM Jaishankar
image 261
Someone like James Baker would be different
His voice would have that steel warning
You would think twice before acting against the man
Not Blinken
Not Biden
Not Austin
Not Sunak
Not Ursula
These are Circus Clowns and if they warn, you can laugh and ignore them safely
What comes to mind as I move through a dining experience?
When you arrive, you’re greeted by a doorman, who opens the car door, ladies first. If it’s raining, they escort you to the door under a large umbrella.
The door is opened for you, and the host(s) say hello immediately rather than looking down at a floor chart. Maybe greeting you by name.
There is either someplace to check your coat, or the host helps you off with yours and checks it for you. The host would return it to you when you’re ready to go.
The music is subtle, whatever kind it is.
Lighting is appropriate. There are fresh flowers and in the evenings, candlelight (with real candles). People look better in candlelight, and a lady feeling pretty creates another luxurious atmosphere.
If, God forbid, your table wasn’t ready you’re escorted to the bar for a cocktail. There are no buzzing pagers (nor inappropriate jokes about stuffing it down their pants), no name screaming when your table was finally ready. The host carries the drinks for you to your table. If more than two, the ladies’ drinks are carried. Checks are seamlessly transferred from the bar to the table. You TIP the bartender very subtly.
Chairs are pulled out for you, ladies first. When all are seated, then the menus are handed out.
Menus might be printed daily, but there is no stickiness, crumbs, or fingerprints on menus that are reused. No pictures on the menu, nor vendor logos. Probably no prices. They probably don’t offer wings.
There are utensils for each basic course. The waiter (and they’re waiters, not servers) replaces silverware with each course if the meal choices require a different utensil, usually with a mise en place. Proper underliners are used under soup or dessert bowls, ramekins come on a plate, too. (Ben Maurer) Crumbers are used. There are chargers.
No water spots on the silver or glassware. Or windows! (Leroy Binx) God forbid, no crumbs on the floor or seats.
Having someone walk you to the restroom rather than pointing across the room.
There isn’t a “no problem” to be heard.
There is no He or She when addressing someone about someone else. For example, not “She ordered the salmon” but rather “The lady ordered the salmon”. The word “food” is a 4-letter “f” word. (So is “free” and “fair”) It’s “your meal”, “your dinner”, etc. Not “your food”. One doesn’t eat, one dines. You’re not eating with us tonight, you’re dining with us tonight. (Sorry – I don’t know the answer to the pronoun issues people are having these days.)
Water glasses are never low, and you didn’t have to ask for water in the first place. Water is poured after you’re seated, without a drop being spilled on the tablecloth. Although, the waiter might still ask you if you prefer sparkling or still bottled water.
The meal looks beautiful, i.e. no broccoli stems pointing up. (People eat with their eyes) No finger prints on the plates. Protein (main course) is always served at 6:00 on the plate. Ladies first. Period. Meal delivery as well: “And the lady ordered the salmon” as the dish is placed in front of her, coming in from the left. Plates are not handed to the guests. Served from the left, removed from the right. Sometimes, every person is served at the very same time by a group of waiters. It’s called a “drop” (A group of waiters? A “gaggle”? Just kidding!)
Black or white napkins, which, if you get up are refolded neatly on your chair.
Every time a table is bussed, which is immediately, it looks like it’s never been seated before. Condiments (salt & pepper) full and clean, perfectly placed. Freshly ground pepper is always offered, along with grated cheese where appropriate. The latter either freshly grated into a bowl, served by spoon (rare) or by a little grinder that is silver, not plastic. No one says, “Say when”. Holding up your hand a little, palm down says it all.
No catsup or mustard bottles in sight. Ever. (Andre Serafin and Kristin A) Mustard, catsup, mayonnaise, and horseradish are served in ramekins or tiny bowls with small spoons. They probably don’t have steak sauce, although accommodating a guest is paramount, so these days it will probably come in a ramekin, too.
Edited 12/10/19 to add: I’ve often enjoyed and taken for granted the service of a Sommelier, whose job it is to create wine lists, pair wine, and make recommendations of wine on or off the written wine list. What I didn’t know, was the rigorous training and testing it takes to become a Sommelier! There are only a few over 200 in the world, so they are a Big Deal. That said, I’ve never known if the Sommelier just came to our table because we were looking at wine, or if their expertise needed to be requested. A glaring hole in my experience, I must say. Any thoughts or “subtle differences” to contribute?
A red wine glass for red, a white wine glass for white. Red wine is never oxidized. When a bottle of wine is served, it’s (Steven Michael) decanted or chilled appropriately. The restaurant doesn’t even ask, and they know what and when wine should be decanted. The wine tasting is handled with grace and silence, in the appropriate order. The cork should be placed next to the host (Liam MacDonald) so the host can make certain the cork is moist and there aren’t any telltale signs the wine has turned. If the table isn’t already set with glasses for that wine selection, the appropriate glasses are set once the wine is approved. (Rachel Bateman) The invisible waiter tops off the wine. The guest never touches the bottle.
The port doesn’t have pour spouts in them, nor does good scotch or whiskey. White Zinfandel isn’t a featured wine type. There’s a good chance there is no happy hour.
There are no dirty aprons nor shirts on the waiters. No shabby shoes. No crazy hair styles, piercings or tattoos. (Sorry all. That’s life.)
When its a mixed gender couple or table, males’ plates are never removed until the females are finished dining.
Dessert menus are handed out without asking, coffee, tea, espresso or an after dinner brandy or port is always offered.
There are no bus tubs, no stacks of dishes through the dining room, and empty plates are removed IMMEDIATELY directly to the kitchen. Oh. Plates are removed to the kitchen to be boxed. A guest is never, ever, handed a box with a cheery, “Here you go!” The package is always in a nice bag.
There is some controversy in the comments over leftovers. Since I am writing this, I’ll say my own feelings agree with Tim Chisell and Umair about waste, portion control and not being served troughs of food, so there really shouldn’t be leftovers. People do take food home (have you never seen a little tin foil swan?) so I added what a restaurant would not do: hand you a big box.
When you get your leftovers home, the contents look like a beautiful meal. After all, those are the very last impression of you as a waiter and the restaurant.
The check. Reminded to me by my mother. One signs on one’s account. If one must handle a form of payment, it’s normally a card, very subtly put into a check presenter. Not stuck out the top for all to view.
Believe it or not, it’s not just bread or rolls before a meal. It’s not valet parking, or sorbet between courses. Those would be obvious attempts, but if other items such as those which come to mind for me aren’t present, it’s nice, but maybe — not always — a wannabe. It could just be a nicer restaurant not trying to be more than a comfortable, more upscale place to dine. But high-end? Add in details such as these and it will elevate a restaurant.
So there are a lot more obvious indicators, but what really makes or breaks the difference is quality of the food, the service and presentation. Anticipation of the guest’s needs. Sauces, condiments, appropriate suggestions that might enhance the meal for some, but not for others — just to be sure. The appreciation of the guest.
Edited to add: I’ve received so much fun feedback to this answer, I thought I’d incorporate suggestions from commenters. Quora is acting funny (maybe) and not letting me see all the comments, but I’ll be adding them in. Thank you!
And, now I read that I, or this answer, is the highest read in the restaurant category. Interesting to me that something I began almost wistfully others have enjoyed. So thank you and thanks for participating!
If I could change one thing about American schooling — mostly at the high school and college level — I would make it mandatory to teach financial literacy. And I don’t mean basic stuff like how to write a check — that was what passed for “financial literacy” when I was in high school in the 1980s.
I mean we turn out college and high school graduates who have never learned about things like credit scores, how loans work, how taxes work, the value of retirement accounts, how the stock market really works, etc.
My two kids are ages 25 and 23, and anything they know on those subjects, they mostly learned from my wife and me. For the most part, we don’t teach kids how to stay out of financial trouble.
So we have full-grown adults walking into a car dealership, and the salesman steers the question to, “How much car payment can you afford?” The salesman is hoping that the customer is financially illiterate and doesn’t understand what a terrible question that is — for the customer. The salesman will hear that you can afford $600 per month and come back with, “Hmm, we can work with that.” The customer ends up leaving in their $40,000 car, pleased as punch that they can actually afford it, and they think the salesman did them a favor. Maybe down the road they figure out that they’re paying 12% interest on an 84 month car loan, and that they only got half of what their trade-in should have been worth.
Same thing happens on the mortgage front, by the way. Some loan officer runs a preapproval on a young couple and tells them they can afford a $300,000 house. I guarantee you that the couple zooms in on that price point. If they slowed down and asked, they might find out that they can qualify for a $225,000 house with a 15 year mortgage at a substantially lower interest rate, meaning that they build equity faster, pay less in interest, and should they choose to do so, own the house free and clear after 15 years, as opposed to still owing 15 more years of payments if they’d taken the 30 year mortgage. And all they had to do was ask, and reset their expectation to a slightly less expensive house.
So in summary, why are people struggling and over-spending? Because they’re financially illiterate, and we as a society don’t seem to think that’s a problem.
The only time it really happened was when I sprained my ankle.
I was working in retail management and we had inventory coming up on a Sunday.
Friday I sprained my ankle bad. But because of how US healthcare is, I tried to put off having it seen by a doctor because, ugh horrible health insurance and bills. But that Saturday, since I could barely walk, I saw a doctor. And after x-rays to confirm it wasn’t actually broken, given an air-cast boot and doctor’s note for my employer with work restrictions.
I was scheduled that Sunday for inventory plus 2 hours in the store prior to closing. I showed up, air-cast and all, to try to explain that I didn’t think I’d be able to work the inventory. I mean, seems obvious right? Air-cast, doctor’s note, work restrictions, etc.?
The other store management had zero issue with me not working the inventory, they understood I was actually injured and not faking it. They also knew how rarely I called in.
Not to my district manager. Who threatened me with termination. 4 years of work, almost never calling in sick, working every Helliday shit shift, and because I was only one of 5 members of management there that day who was actually injured, I could be fired.
So, malicious compliance it is.
My work restrictions were very detailed and explicit. No climbing, no squatting, no standing for more than 15 minutes at a time, must elevate my ankle every 30 minutes, must be allowed to sit for any tasks that don’t need to be done standing, etc. I also, per company policy, faxed (yes, that long ago) copies of my doctor’s note, etc. to the HR office with a follow-up email.
And I followed the work restrictions to the letter for the whole shift. Despite the fact they had external inventory counters, it still took longer than scheduled, which meant, by law, every member of the store management staff other than the district manager(salary position) had to be paid overtime, since it put us all over 40 hours for the week.
On Monday, the district manager got chewed out by HR and his boss, the area manager.
For having so much overtime (for 5 people, about 2 hours each), for ignoring my doctor’s note, for not excusing me from inventory, for erroneously threatening me with termination (my email mentioned I understood termination of my employment was a possibility due to my injury), and a few other things.
I received 2 days off with pay, apologies from the area manager, HR and the district manager (begrudgingly from him), and wasn’t written up.
And while the district manager bore a grudge against me for his ass chewing, he was also incredibly hesitant to pull any similar stunts against me. It took him about 8 months to do so, and when he did, I left the company, after explaining why to HR, the area and regional manager.
My quitting also left not one, but 2 stores short staffed as he had expected me to cover another store’s shifts after writing me up, denying me a transfer promotion, and rescinding pre-approved vacation time off.
His actions also led to another ass chewing by his superiors after I left. And two of the top performing employees to quit shortly after.
I’ve been to more suicides and sudden deaths than I can remember, but one has always stood out. It was a lady who had hanged herself. It wasn’t particularly gruesome, she was discovered very quickly, and she had obviously done her homework as it appeared to have been effective and quick. The reason it was so memorable was because of WHERE she did it…
As I say, she had done her homework, and had made a proper noose which she had firmly secured to the rafters in the attic of her home. She had stepped through the attic hatch, which had the effect of acting as a ‘gallows drop’. The hatch to the attic was situated at the top of a flight of stairs, so for us as the attending officers the only way to get to her was to walk up the (fairly narrow and dark) stairs to the top where she was effectively ‘standing’ over us, where we had to gently move her to one side in order to get onto the landing. The power to the dwelling was cut, so the only light available to us was via a bedroom window which was situated directly behind her with the door open, such that she was silhouetted to us, and seemingly looking down with glazed eyes.
I’ve been to deaths over the years which were far more gruesome, but there was something psychologically unnerving on a primeval level about having to climb your way up restricted access to a deceased person who is ‘stood’ in a dominant position over you.
Rationally, the apprehension was purely down to perception. Nonetheless, everyone there physically relaxed once we were able to cut her down and rest her on the ground.
One of my juniors in college was a very chirpy girl. She was an only child. A helpful and polite soul, she was liked by nearly all the students and faculty members.
Her home was situated across our college. We used to often drop by her place while heading back home.
One day, we reached college and were greeted with a heart-wrenching news. Our beloved junior had expired. She was lighting a stove while her parents were out. The stove burst and she met a tragic untimely end. No words can describe the sadness that permeated all our lives. It was difficult to accept that someone so dear was suddenly snatched away from us.
We went to her place to meet uncle and aunty and offer our condolences. They sat silently. Absolutely silent and lost. Their vacant eyes told a story that was gut-wrenching.
The couple had lost the joy of their lives. Their only offspring was gone. While she could never be brought back, our college girls tried to make an effort to mitigate the pain.
From the time she was put to rest, not a single day passed when uncle and aunty were left alone. Every day, some girls used to go over to their place and spend time with the couple. We had even decided on the schedule so as to ensure that we did not miss out on any day.
We used to talk to them, take them out sometimes, run errands for them, regale them with our antics in college and generally try to be there for them.
The process was slow. But eventually uncle and aunty were able to come to terms with their loss and move on with their lives. Their smiles and blessings said it all.
A majority of students came together to show the couple that they were not alone… that they had daughters, just not born in their family. This collective effort was one of the most humane, compassionate and loving gestures I’ve ever witnessed.
“NO WAY” Videos That Are Glitching The Entire Internet Out
Terrifying. This Changes EVERYTHING. MY REACTION to What They’re Planning.
The sound still haunts me. I still think of it, and it happened in 1987 and here we are in 2024 and the sound of that night will be with me until the Lord calls me home.
There I will probably meet the 18-year-old senior in high school who didn’t wear his seatbelt as the car rolled over end to end 11 times after exiting the roadway. He was a back seat passenger with no seatbelt and that resulted in his high-speed ejection thru the rear window. He laid in a field and his body appeared pristine, even though his skull was fractured which killed him instantly. I was the patrolman who responded to handle the accident scene.
The noise was his mother’s scream at 1:17AM in the morning as I stood on the porch after giving her the death notification.
It was primal, it was guttural, and it is forever.
It will never leave my mind or my soul. I will think of that kid forever.
Girls are more attached to their parents emotionally.
Girls who talk less are more romantic and loyal to any kind of relationships .
Girls who talks more are over friendly and confused in their relationships .
If a girl sends you first, good morning messages then more likely she likes you and want you to be her friend .
If a boy continuously calls in every two, three hours then the girl gets irritated. This is the main reason of break ups.
All girls don’t love flowers. Before giving flowers think twice .
Do not gift too early in your relationships. You will lose your dignity. Most of the girls find it awkward.
Girls like boys who visit their house confidently and pass some time with her family.
Girls prefer friendship before any serious relationships. Most girl friends become very good wives except for few.
Girls are experts in reading eyes and body gestures. A decent girl will never fall prey.
Some girls deliberately flirts with boys to get popularity in their friend circle. You can make out from their dressing sense. If you are also a flirty then enjoy.
Girls like the boys who likes to share the money during a date or in group party. They love gifting more than receiving .
Girls mostly respect the boys who help in studies and clearing the doubts. They remain genuine as friends all the time.
Girl can never go to restaurant or cinema hall alone with you if she is not in love with you. If you are flirting, take a note.
Girls like if you talk straight looking into the eyes. If you are really interested, you can try this. If you can talk straight looking into her for five minutes then you are in love .
Girls love to be praised in front of others not in one corner. This shows your lack of confidence. There is nothing wrong in praising in public.
Girls love to be pampered. This is the main reason they get cheated. They trust easily.
Girls like to be independent. They don’t like questioning and blaming always.
Girls don’t love easily and once they love they can go to any extent to own their love. Note this
If a girl easily accepts your expensive gifts then, think twice before dating her .
Girls can sustain unbearable pain emotionally as well as physically. Mother Earth 🙂
I compared Moscow to New York, and indeed, Moscow is nicer, which confirms Tucker Carlson’s claim
China’s trade with the rest of the world increased and improves substantially contrary to your intentional doubt casting. Fact is UK declined by 3.0% GDP Germany too had a negative growth and the uS has barely any real growth! Needless to say China’s trade with them deteriorated significantly in 2023!
Please stop fooling your own people. The problem is that the war which the U.S. and UK and NATO stupidly and barbarically goaded Russia into and highly provoked boomerang back at them hard and is now destroying the western economy. Stop fooling your people it is not hurting you. It is. And in a very big way.
My daughter was around the age of ten and I had given her a box of lolly pops that whistled. I had purchased them in a bulk buy but none of my children liked the flavour. So I sent my daughter to school to share them with the other students. Some time after lunch I got a call from the headmaster to come to the school, as she was in trouble and was being sent home as punishment. He did not go into details over the phone and I was left completely shocked as she was a straight A student and had never been in trouble before.
I arrive at the principal’s office and was seated next to my daughter when he pulled out a plastic bag full of coins and placed it on the desk. He went on to tell me that she had stood outside of the canteen line of students, during lunch hour spruiking “lolly pops for sale only fifty cents”. She had managed to sell every lolly pop I had sent her to school with. The canteen staff complained that they had a contract and that they had lost sales due to her lolly pop sales, so the principal had no other option but to confiscate the money and call me in to address the issue. My daughter sat next to me with tears streaming down her face.
After we discussed why she had that many lolly pops and what was said to her in the morning before she left for school, he realised that this was not something that her parents or any adult had encouraged her to do. He went on to say “ I cannot punish a child that shows entrepreneurial skills that someday could lead to great things”. He applauded her efforts and explained what a contract with the canteen owner meant and why she could not do this again. He handed over the bag of money to her and we happily left his office.
She gleamed all the way home. She not only had lots of cash but she had been given the afternoon off school. I thanked that principal for his honesty and for not punishing her unnecessarily.
Had a slow refrigerant leak in my WRX. I actually heard it hiss slightly at the compressor while topping it off once, so I knew where at least one leak was. Took it to the dealer for a timing belt and asked them to look at the AC. I picked up the car and they said they couldn’t find the leak where I showed them it was, but that I needed a new condenser, the AC tech could smell the refrigerant in the cabin of my car. $3200 to fix.
Said no thanks, I’ll keep topping it off.
Got into the car and it did have an odd odor, which I attributed to it sitting near the body shop. I was smelling lacquer thinner.
A few months later, I was in Advanced and the kid working the the counter had a same year STI, so we were BS’ing about what we liked and disliked about the cars and I mentioned the AC experience. He walked over to the AC isle and handed me a package of assorted green O-rings. He said he had the same issue and to try one of these where I heard the leak.
Next day, I popped the line off, replaced the O-ring, charged the system and once I got the pressure right, I was good to go. $4.95 plus $19.95 for a bottle of refrigerant.
Many of you will say that I should have evacuated the system and you’re right, but I didn’t have a vacuum pump. This was as much a test as anything. Still driving the car 8 years and easily 100k miles later and I haven’t touched the AC since that day. In fact, the compressor clutch is on it’s last legs, but at 282k miles, the entire car is feeling it’s age. Saved $3175, too.
New factory Subaru condenser: ~$280 online Amateur labor estimated: 4 hours (estimated $400 shop labor cost, no way they would take as long as me to replace) Other supplies: $30
They were looking at making ~$2500 profit and still not fix my problem. I am fighting the urge to name them, especially since I had a run in with their service manager the next (and final) time I was there. In for an airbag recall and he’s trying to replace my power steering pump for $600+.
Never be afraid to walk away and get another opinion if you can.
I had a friend of mine who had this happen. He did not take it sitting down. He was rather excitable.
The women who made the allegation was one of the most narcissistic people I had ever seen.
when HR went to him with the allegations of sexual harassment he, went ballistic on the HR PERSON. This is what I was told.
He said that he told the HR PERSON, the woman accusing him was a lesbian, shinny, ugly, had scabs all over her body, had a personality of a stone fence post. Nothing he would be interested in.
in a later meeting with the HR Person, he threatened to sue the company for false reporting. His theory was the office was so busy there was someone around the both of them all the time, there was no time for a possible sexual assault of the nature she was claiming to happen. and he will sue the person making the allegations also
He said his coworkers will back him up in this.
that was the last time I heard of that allegation.
Personally if I was this person being hassled by this woman I would drag her into the HR OFFICE,
say, “you have a reputation of doing this with other people. I have tried to avoid you for two years, and have lots of people to support my claims. I Want this settled right here and now. i will not live with hanging over my head.
I will fight back, this is my reputation and my livelihood you are messing with, and I have had enough.
I would say if you meet here head on in front of her and the HR PEOPLE THAT THIS WILL STOP.
if it doesn’t I suggest you contact a good lawyer.
just make sure you have not done what she is saying .
How has your appearance affected your life?
This is something I’ve pondered a lot since my early 20s, when it became obvious to everyone that my sister and I had gone down two totally different paths in life.
She was a high school dropout, mother at 16, drug addict who couldn’t hold a job and was either living with an abusive boyfriend or with our parents. She never really made it on her own. But she was nice. Always nice to everyone.
I was in advanced classes in high school, went to a university several states away, and was doing very well there. I’d also had a part-time job since I was 16, and a full-time job since I was 19.
I think our appearances had a lot to do with our different life paths. She was a gorgeous blonde bombshell in our small Southern hometown. Boys were constantly trying to date her/get her drunk/give her drugs.
I was the fat kid in school. No girlfriends. No parties. I didn’t mind working after school and on the weekends, because it’s not like I had anything better to do. Doing homework and studying isn’t hard when it doesn’t get in the way of your nonexistent social life.
Eventually, I lost a lot of weight in college (put it back on after getting married, now trying weight loss round two), gained enough confidence to ask out a woman I liked, and dated her for five years before marrying her. Now, in my late 30s, I have a happy marriage, three happy and healthy kids, a career I love, a house, a minivan, etc…
My sister got married two or three times, I honestly don’t know. She continued doing drugs and “shacking up” with abusive guys throughout her 20s and early 30s. She eventually died of a drug overdose at age 34.
That’s why a part of me pities the really beautiful young women… constant attention from guys when you’re trying to build your life can be a major distraction and help push you down a bad path in life.
So, how has my appearance affected my life? It kept me out of trouble and helped make me the very happy adult I am today.
Last time I flew in an airline -I won’t name,the flight attendant forgot to get me my meal. By the time the trolley reached me, the non-vegetarian meal rack was empty. I was told that they will get me the meal in 5 minutes, I told them even if it’s a vegetarian meal it’s fine. It wasn’t really an issue for me as I don’t like troubling them but they insisted that they have more fish packs and they will get me one.
My wait was for half an hour, with them avoiding me,avoiding my call and not even looking at me. They didn’t even get me water. I got pissed. I literally raised my voice the next time with an “Excuse me, are you deaf?” and the flight attendant was like, “yes,mam can I get you something?” and my soft reply was,”YES! Your complaint book and it should not take half an hour, I want it right now.”
That led to some prompt working and them apologizing for some 15 times in next 15 minutes, they offered me meals (which I refused) and goodies (I refused them as well) and as I didn’t accept their peace offering or apology, in the end, after our landing the ground staff met me and after another series of apologies they refunded a portion of my ticket with vouchers.
It’s not about the food,it’s about their non-caring attitude. I have paid for that seat and that meal with hard earned money. If one form of meal is not there, I understand it’s not their fault but if they refuse to get me any meal then I can get nasty as well.
So, asking for the complaint book work wonders, do it the next time they harass you.
PS I am not proud of what I did but it was needed.
I was administering the Anesthesia for a Neurosurgeon friend. He was removing a Cervical spinal cord tumor of a woman in her late 40’s. She was prone (on her stomach) on the table. He had just spent nearly 45 mins denuding the Cervical Lamina (flat bone on each vertebrae that protects the Spinal Cord by creating a bit of a Canal the bone was in intimate contact with the tumor. He is an excellent Surgeon and fun to watch work, no wasted motions. I had just turned my back to the field and doing a routine check of endotracheal tube placement to make sure it had not migrated (a routine thing to do especially in the prone position).
With the tumor now completely exposed, he asked for the Bard-Parker (scalpel), with my back still turned I quickly called out “Stop.” Everyone turned and looked at me. He asked my why… I looked at the tumor one more time and asked him if he would mind using a tuberculin syringe and aspirate the tumor. He said, all of the X-Ray reports had confirmed it was a solid mass tumor. But, because of our long history, he said he would humor me.
The nurse gave him the syringe. He pulled back on the plunger and blood returned. He asked the nurse to give him the closure suture on a needle driver and a pair of Adson’s forceps and said we are closing. Only he and I realized what had just happened. It was a very large Arterio-venous malformation with thicker than normal walls of the middle muscular coat (tunica media), and an external or connective tissue coat (tunica adventitia). Which had made the almost 2 inch AVF look solid on X-Ray. While closing he explained to the nurses that there would have been almost no way to have stopped the bleeding if he had made the incision and we may have very well have lost the patient.
I have no explanation as to why I told him to stop. It was just this internal feeling.
He sent the patient to a University Med. Center to have the defect repaired. They sent him a letter thanking him for his excellent job in dissecting away the Spinous Processes, the Lamina, and the surrounding tissue. They said this made their surgery so much easier and because of his excellent dissection the AVF walls had not been disturbed which they also felt would have caused her death from hemorrhage. He had done the hardest part of the surg. He also was on the Neurosurg teaching staff at the U.
Two hours in the gym
Puerto Rican Chicken and Rice Stew (Asopao)
This chicken and rice soup is Christmas for me. Not the Christmas meal by any means but the Christmas season. In Puerto Rico, this is the soup that was traditionally served at parrandas. And it continues to be a staple at parties and get togethers.
What is a parranda? You well may ask. The short answer is that a parranda is a party. It’s a Puerto Rican tradition that probably wouldn’t go over too well in most American suburban neighborhoods. It involves late night singing and ritualized kidnapping. And eating. And drinking.
A group of singers, parranderos, start the party late in the evening well after dinner. They assemble at the front door of a friend or neighbor’s house and make music until the family wakes up and lets them in. After some more singing, everyone gathers in the kitchen for refreshments. Usually chicken and rice soup.
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After they eat, the parranderos hustle the family off to the next house where the singing, eating, and kidnapping is repeated through the night. This PR holiday tradition is kind of like Christmas caroling, but not.
The beauty of the Puerto Rican chicken and rice soup is that it was easy to heat up when the parranderos arrived. And by adding more stock, it could be stretched to feed everyone. You can imagine that by the last house, there would be quite a crowd. These parties would break up by dawn, with all of the parranderos going back to their beds.
Guess what heats up nicely the next day when nobody feels like cooking? You’ve got it. Asopao de Pollo.
Yield: 6 to 8 servings; makes enough Adobo to season 3 to 4 pounds of meat
Ingredients
Chicken and Rice
3 pounds chicken, cut into pieces
1 recipe Adobo
9 cups water
2 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 ounces lean cured ham, diced
2 green bell peppers, seeded and chopped
1 onion, peeled and chopped
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
3 large tomatoes, chopped
12 pimiento-stuffed olives
1 chorizo (Spanish sausage), cut into 1/2 inch rounds
2 tablespoons capers
1 (4 ounce) can chopped pimientos, drained
3 cups long-grain rice
1 cup fresh or frozen peas, thawed
Additional chopped fresh cilantro (for garnish)
Adobo
4 whole black peppercorns
2 cloves garlic, peeled
2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons olive oil
2 teaspoons vinegar
1/4 teaspoon paprika
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How to Make Asopao de Pollo
The homemade Puerto Rican chicken and rice soup recipe I’m going to show you develops flavor by sautéing most of the ingredients in a large caldero or dutch oven.
After cutting up the chicken and seasoning thoroughly, go ahead and heat up the olive oil in your pot.
First you’ll brown the raw chicken pieces in batches and set them aside. Next sauté the sofrito, it will smell fantastic as it cooks. Scrape up those browned bits.
Now add the ham, diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, capers, pimentos, olives, boullion and rice. Stir all of that right into the sofrito before adding the chicken back. Make sure you pour in any juices the chicken might have accumulated while it was waiting. That’s the good stuff!
Finally, when all of the ingredients are in the pot, pour as much of the water as you can fit into the caldero. Add your salt and pepper and mix it all up thoroughly. Over the cooking time, you can add more water as the rice cooks and absorbs the liquids.
Bring the soup to a boil and then turn down the heat. Allow it to simmer for up to 30 minutes. Keep an eye on your pot, stirring frequently as the rice can burn to the bottom.
When the rice is tender and the chicken is cooked, it’s done. Now you’re ready to feed any late night parranderos that come to your door.
Guests that come at more reasonable hours will love this soup too!
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Instructions
Chicken and Rice
Rub the chicken pieces thoroughly with the adobo. Place the chicken pieces in a large pot and add the water and salt. Bring to a boil over high heat. Cover and reduce the heat to low. Simmer for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, heat the oil in a skillet. Add the ham, bell peppers, onion, and cilantro. Sauté over moderate heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Add the tomatoes, olives, chorizo, capers, and pimientos. Cook for an additional 5 minutes.
Add the vegetable mixture to the pot with the chicken and simmer for 15 minutes.
Add the rice and peas and simmer covered over very low heat for 15 to 25 minutes, until the stew reaches the desired consistency. It is traditionally served runny, almost like a soup.
Serve in soup bowls garnished with chopped cilantro.
Adobo
Combine all ingredients in a mortar and pestle and grind to a paste. Alternately, combine in an electric blender or food processor and process until smooth.
I know this question is a month old, but I just have to answer it. Unfortunately, the nastiest thing that happened at my school was done by me.
It was my freshman year. I desperately had a crush on my best friend, Rob. He had this dark, black, hair and deep hazel eyes that made me melt every time I caught him staring at me in Math. You know, teenage hormones and the like.
Our lockers were right next to each other; we were in the same homeroom. Sometime around October, being the ever awkward and weird kid I was, thought that the best way to show Rob I liked him was by teasing him.
I left the cafeteria one day with a nearly full milk carton in hand. I held onto it throughout my last class of the day and waited for Rob at my locker. Once he had gotten his things and we said our goodbyes, I pulled out the milk and placed the carton at the bottom of his locker (he carried a lock with him but never put it on), spout open and covered slightly by a hoodie he had left in there.
Hilarious I thought, he’ll come in on Monday and have to find a chunky carton of milk in his locker. Gross, yet harmless. I was so, so wrong.
Rob found the milk carton on Monday. What I had underestimated about him though, was his capacity to simply not care. He shrugged it off, took the hoodie out of his locker and placed the lock he had never used on it. Then he left it.
A month went by, and I could smell the milk every time I opened my locker next to his. After two months and the Christmas holiday and I forwent my locker, too, instead carrying my entire bag from class to class just so I didn’t have to open my locker.
By April, the entire hallway reeked of sour milk, so strongly that the students curved around the affected area when passing through. Everyone smelled it, no one could figure out where it came from or what it was. It was deadly; so much so that people whispered about what could possibly be making THAT smell. It was the mystery everyone talked about. You could feel the thickness of the stench in the air.
The last day of school came, and we were instructed to take the locks off of our lockers and clean them out at last period. Rob tried to make a getaway – grab his lock and run for the doors before someone asked him to open it and show it had been cleaned out, but he just wasn’t quick enough. “Open it”, our home room teacher demanded, as if he knew what that locker held inside it.
With shaking hands, Rob opened the metal door, and it was if you could see a green puff of foul odor release like a bomb from inside. “Close it!” Our teacher screamed, and Rob did, both of us gagging. The teacher ran for the safety of his classroom and we left.
The first day of sophomore year we came back to a clean hallway – no smell, bare lockers. Though, our former home room teacher never looked at Rob the same. As an adult, I feel TERRIBLE for the poor custodian who had to clean that putrid milk.
However, as I lay next to my husband in bed, I can’t help but be just a little bit nostalgic for that stupid prank. Fourteen years later and Rob and I have been together ever since; inseparable.
Asia’s Top Economist Reveals Shocking SECRET About China In 2024
Yes, my wife of 46 years died suddenly from heart failure. I got her to the hospital and was able to spend some time with her before she passed.
After she was gone, the medical staff insisted that I spend the night in the hospital due to my medical issues. I was given a mild sedative to help me relax. I fell asleep and at some point I woke and was unsure of where I was. When I realized what had happened, I was leaning against the safety rail on the hospital bed. I saw what appeared to be a room full of people below me, they were all in ‘shadow’ except for one woman in a white light dancing. My wife loved to dance and as I watched, the woman waved at me and everything vanished when the nurse came to check on me.
The second time was at her funeral service. It was freezing that day and I got to the service early to bring some mementos for the service. I, somehow, lost my phone and the facility was locked and no one was around. As I was starting to panic, I ‘heard’ my wife say “calm down.’
As I looked around I saw a perfect rose bloom in the garden area in front of my car. I couldn’t believe that a rose had bloomed in freezing conditions. Roses were her favorite flower, I went to pick the rose and found my phone on the ground. I immediately calmed down and told my wife “thank you.”
The Man Who Built UFOs For The CIA [Not Bob Lazar…]
Battery life continues to be one of the biggest complaints of laptop users, so understanding what you can do to help prolong the life is important. Technically speaking, keeping any relatively current laptop plugged in and charged at 100% for extended periods of time shouldn’t be a problem, but it’s best not to do so for a number of reasons.
This is a question that comes up a lot with laptop owners. And the answer is a quite simple “No.” For optimum battery use, and to get the most life out of your laptop battery, keeping it charged between 40% and 80% has been seen as optimum.
Most late-generation laptop batteries are either lithium-ion or lithium polymer, and as such, they are designed to be able to withstand many charge cycles. When you keep it charged at 100%, the charging circuit continuously checks the battery charging process and, so it stops charging once it is at its optimum point and goes into trickle mode, in which it only supplies what is necessary to prevent the charge level from failing.
Also to note: overcharging can lead to overheating, which can lead to catastrophic chemical reactions inside the battery.
Allowing your battery to completely discharge will take away from its originally-intended lifespan. You should ideally keep its battery between 40% and 60%. Don’t let the battery discharge completely to increase its life.
Here are some tips to extend your laptop battery life:
Avoid discharging your laptop completely after charging it.
Make sure that your laptop doesn’t get too hot and your cooling fan is working properly.
Overheating can reduce battery life, check the laptop’s cooling system is functioning correctly and use it on a flat surface to allow for proper airflow.
Customize your laptop’s power plan settings to favor battery life over performance when running on battery.
If you’re not using your laptop on battery power for an extended period, store it with the battery at around 50-80% charge to reduce long-term stress on the battery.
I suggest maintaining your laptop’s battery level within the range of 40% to 80% charge. By doing so, you can effectively double the number of recharge cycles, increasing them from 300-500 to a substantial 1,000-2,000, ultimately extending the overall lifespan of your laptop.
After I left Prison, I was released to the custody of my father. And unfortunately that included me living in the same house with that psycho witch; my step mother who despised me to no end. She actually loathed me.
Anyways…
I would, while in prison, write letters to my father. In one of those letters, I talked about the food that they served us. I told him that I was so tired of the non-stop beans that they served us. It was a mix of Global (human canned dog food), lima beans, pinto beans, black beans and okra.
Anyways, it wasn’t all the time, but often enough that it was a real problem.
Well, as soon as I was released to my father’s custody, his psycho wife made dinners for us all. The meals were ridiculous. Bean soup. Mashed beans. Pinto beans and rice. Bean casserole. Three bean salad. Bean sandwiches with sprouts… bean dessert.
…what was her problem?
Every day. Every morning. Every lunch. Every dinner.
Day after day. Week after week.
Later on, months later, I figured that she wanted to make my stay as uncomfortable as possible for me. And on Christmas eve she kicked me out and the truth became apparent.
Ah. One of the reasons why it sucked to be me.
Every now and then I remember this, and I shake my head. You know, some people are so crazy, so unstable, that they will always surprise you in how absolutely rude and shitty they can be.
I’ll never forget the bowl of beans with sugar and milk that she made for me one breakfast.
Have you ever bought a car that didn’t run and found that it was an easy fix?
We bought a Saturn at auction a number of years ago. I was desperate for a vehicle that was cheap. It seemed several things we owned were breaking at the same time.
We went to the car auction and looked around. We picked out several possibilities, looked them over and then we prepared to bid. They all went higher than I hoped. In came the Saturn on a tow truck we hadn’t looked at from the it doesn’t run section.
Bidding was introduced at $800. no one bid. They tried $700., $500., and finally someone bid $100. and it raised from there $200. and then $300. My husband turned around and looked at it. Not only did it have no battery but no battery cables. The paint was scratched up both sides. I heard $300. going once and my husband raised his hand. Auctioneer said $400. he soon said, $400. going once, twice, sold. I looked at my husband and said please tell me you didn’t just buy that car that doesn’t even run and we know nothing about. He said Yep.
So the paperwork was complete. We walked out back and looked at it. It had been previously stolen and the battery was removed, cigarette holes burned in a few places in the seats. The letters B i t c h were clearly scratched into the paint on the trunk. I joked it had my name on it.
The battery was still good on my old car. We drove home (approximately 3 miles) and got the battery and stopped on the way back and bought the connectors. Went back and installed the battery and drove it home. It ran great. My husband buffed the trunk lid the following day.
I drove it several years. It got hit once at an intersection. The man at faults insurance paid me $800. It was only a little cosmetic damage that I didn’t care about. I drove it a few more years, money improved and I sold it for $500. and bought another car. I was prepared to go lower but they were glad for $500.
I saw the Saturn a few years later. Still going strong. They said it once needed a part they installed themselves but otherwise dependable.
"People often think I'm joking when I say Global South with my mouth full.
Because we were once known around the planet as poor countries, then as third world countries, then as developing countries, then semi-developed countries.
And now we are developing countries...
No sir, we are now the economy of the Global South, we want to give ourselves a chance so that the Global South, which has part of what the world needs today, can occupy its place in the economy, in politics and in world culture.
Obviously, the BRICS are an exceptional opportunity.
We think it is possible to bring other African countries into the BRICS. We think it is possible for other African countries to participate in the G20, but we are just getting started.
We are just starting out and, at the G20, in Brazil, one of the things we want to discuss are the financial institutions that have existed since the UN was created, such as the IMF and the World Bank.
Whether these institutions will serve to help finance the development of poor countries or whether they will continue to exist to suffocate poor countries.
Africa, I don't have the precise number, but Africa has a debt of around 860 billion dollars. In other words, a debt that is practically unpayable by several countries.
Our suggestion is that the funds that lent this money—or the financial institutions—should take into account the need to transform part of this debt into a productive assets so that this money, instead of returning to the institutions that lent it, goes back by building railways, highways, hydroelectric plants, thermoelectric plants.
That is, something that means the development of the continent, that goes back to education, to a university, a research institute."
Excerpt from remarks by President of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva at a press conference during visit to Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, February 18, 2024.
Israel Quietly ‘Retaliates’ For Iran’s Retaliation Attack
The current exchange happened after Israel, in clear violation of international law, bombed the Iranian consulate in Damascus.
The aim and success of last night’s attack is yet unknown:
Israel carried out retaliatory strikes against Iran early Friday morning local time, reportedly targeting locations in the west of the country. Explosions were heard in the city of Isfahan, prompting commercial flights to divert from their routes.Senior US officials speaking to ABC, CBS and NPR confirmed the strikes.
…
Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported at around 5:30 a.m. local time (10:00 p.m. EST Thursday) that explosions were heard in Qahjaverestan, northeast of Isfahan.
A senior Iranian military official in Isfahan told the Islamic Republic News Agency that the explosions were caused by Iran’s air defenses that fired at a suspicious object east of Isfahan. Isfahan’s international airport is located just northeast of Qahjaverestan.
Two discarded first stages of Israeli ROCKS aero-ballistic missiles have been found in Iraq. ROCKS, a derivative of Sparrows ballistic target rocket, are air-launched, stand-off, air-to-ground missiles.
They may have hit something near Isfahan or they may have been taken down by Iranian air defense.
No Iranian or Israeli officials have commented the attack. The IAEA said that no Iranian nuclear facility has been hit.
As both sides are currently silent, and as there are no signs of further escalation, the strike will likely conclude the current exchange.
As a consequence of its strike in Damascus Israel has lost its escalation dominance. Iran managed to penetrate its external security screen just like Hamas had penetrated Israel’s internal security screen on October 7 2023 when it broke out of Gaza to collect hostages.
Those who moved to Israel because they thought that it could provide them with security should reevaluate their decision.
What are some possible reasons for Westerners to have negative views towards China/Chinese culture/people, despite not having personal experience or fluency in the language?
The Chinese are not arrogant or domineering in the world, nor do they bully others. They are also cautious when traveling. Why do Westerners still have negative views of the Chinese?
This negative view is not accidental, but inevitable.
Of course, there is no need for Chinese people to care about what Westerners think of China. After all, who doesn’t have a butthole?
1. The image trap under the hegemony of public opinion
Good impression or bad impression, how is it generated?
Obviously, this requires an input type of cognition, and then each person makes a judgment based on his or her own moral standards. If it is consistent, it will be a good impression, and if it is not consistent, it will be a bad impression.
Therefore, Westerners have mostly bad impressions of China, which has a lot to do with their “cognitive input.”
In fact, the West has been working tirelessly to discredit China for many years in terms of “cognitive input”, even starting hundreds of years ago.
The first is the deliberately created negative cultural symbol.
In fact, at the beginning, Westerners had a good impression of the Chinese.
According to the rumors brought back by various missionaries and sailors, China is an ancient, mysterious and civilized country.
China has a splendid culture and numerous scientific and technological inventions, and can also produce exquisite porcelain, silk, tea and other products.
On the contrary, Europe at that time was filled with corrupt churches, tyrannical nobles and autocratic monarchs. So at that time, Westerners admired China.
However, the Opium War broke all this.
In the Opium War, China suffered a complete defeat, which also allowed Western countries to completely recognize China’s reality.
Westerners are shocked to find that China is so weak, its officials are so ignorant, its people are so poor, and its technology is so backward!
In the hundreds of years since then, Westerners’ impressions of China have changed from one extreme to the other, thinking that China is an uncivilized and barbaric country.
Later, in order to beautify their aggression against the East, Western countries created the “Yellow Peril” theory.
The term “yellow peril” originated from the history of the Mongol Empire’s conquest of Eastern Europe. At that time, the Mongolian army burned, killed, looted, and destroyed civilization in Europe. Their barbaric behavior brought a huge psychological shadow to Europeans. Since China recognizes the Mongol Empire as one of the Chinese dynasties, it is naturally a barbaric and cruel country that will bring disaster to Europeans. This Yellow Peril theory directly gave birth to the biggest negative cultural symbol about China-Fu Manchu.
In the novel “The Mystery of Dr. Fu Manchu”, Fu Manchu is the leader of a Chinese evil organization. He has a bald head and long braids, a Qing Dynasty dress, thin eyebrows and long eyes, and a cunning face.
Fu Manchu’s biggest hobby was to kill white people. He “used insects, bacteria and venom to cause more casualties in a week than Hitler did in a year.”
The appearance of this image completely embodied the Western world’s fear of the mysterious East at that time.
Subsequently, with the addition of Hollywood screenwriters, Fu Manchu in the movie was even more terrifying than the one described in the book.
Indulging in murder and various tortures, these horrific plots have become the childhood shadow of generations of Europeans and Americans.
Subsequently, the Asian people represented by China, together with the evil-doing Fu Manchu, became a cunning, cunning, cruel existence that posed a serious existential threat to the white people.
This is how Western countries use cultural symbols to completely vilify the image of the Chinese people. As a result, when Westerners mention the Chinese, the first impression that comes to mind is the cunning and insidious Fu Manchu. How could they have a good impression?
The second is ideological incompatibility.
As we all know, China is a socialist country and believes in communism.
Communism advocates the elimination of private ownership of the means of production and calls on the proletariat of the world to use revolutionary violence to overthrow the rule of the bourgeoisie.
Capitalism is a social system based on private ownership of the means of production.
This determines that there is naturally the most intense ideological conflict and opposition between the two.
Since the birth of communism, Western countries have tried their best to vilify communism, causing people to feel disgusted with communism and have faith in and dependence on capitalism.
In this way, the authority of the government can be maintained, its political rule can be consolidated, and the capitalists can continue to legally exploit the proletarian masses.
Therefore, Western countries use all kinds of methods to discredit communism.
For example, Western countries took advantage of the public’s antipathy toward Hitler and deliberately confused Nazism (full name: National sozialismus) with socialism, combining historical inducements to arouse people’s antipathy and fear of communism.
For example, in 1948, high-level officials in the United States issued multiple documents one after another that clearly discredited the Soviet Union. Its ultimate goal was to rule the world by any means necessary and encourage its allies to vilify Soviet communism around the world.
Through the export of strong ideology, the United States teaches children to hate and fear communism from an early age.
So no matter what you say, no matter how much communist theory they read, they think it’s “brainwashing.”
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States shifted its target of vilification to China, which still adheres to the socialist path.
For example, the English abbreviation of the Communist Party of China is CPC (the Communist Party of China), which emphasizes the Communist Party of China. However, Western media have always called it the CCP (the Chinese Communist Party), emphasizing China’s communist attributes.
This is actually a discourse trap that deliberately leads the public to unconsciously associate CCP with the image of communism that has been vilified in the past few decades, creating a negative image.
The third is that the United States manipulates public opinion to smear China out of anti-China needs.
In fact, during the honeymoon period between China and the United States in the 1980s, the United States had a relatively friendly attitude toward China. Even Fu Manchu was banned at that time.
But with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the United States labeling China a new generation enemy, this organized smear campaign motivated by anti-China began again.
At the beginning, the US anti-China propaganda mainly focused on “human rights violations” and “Tibet issue”.
After China’s economic aggregate ranked second in the world in 2010, Western countries were worried that China would threaten them, so they began to create the “China threat theory”.
The “China threat theory” covers a very wide range and can be related to anything.
For example, they say that China’s development of normal national defense is to disrupt regional balance and create the threat of war.
For example, they say that China’s population is too large, which will bring a crisis to the world’s food supply and cause food shortages.
For example, they say that everyone in China has a family car, which will cause environmental pollution and bring ecological disasters.
For example, they say that the Chinese engage in hacker activities and accuse Huawei and ZTE equipment of “endangering national security.”
For example, they say that China’s Belt and Road Initiative has created a “debt trap” for relevant countries.
For example, they say that China’s Confucius Institute is a spy agency and a cultural invasion.
For example, they say that China’s police cooperation with other countries is setting up “foreign police stations” to threaten its own nationals.
Even when Chinese people eat meat, Western media say that the carbon dioxide brought by Chinese farming will cause global warming and threaten all mankind.
According to the Western media, everything the Chinese do is wrong and threatens all mankind.
The purpose of this kind of strange, varied and negative reports that exceed the imagination of the Chinese people is to use “deceptive information” and “false propaganda” to offset China’s positive influence in neighboring countries and even in the international arena.
Suppress China’s international image and create obstacles for China to go global.
After all, in the face of a China that has been smeared as “doing everything with conspiracy”, any country that wants to cooperate with China will have to do it in its heart.
How can people in Western countries have a good impression of China when they are immersed in this information cocoon of anti-China public opinion every day?
2. Conflict of interest
If the media’s exaggeration is an external cause, then the conflict of personal interests is the internal cause of the deterioration of foreign people’s impression of the Chinese.
The first is the hostile attitude brought about by industrial competition.
Although the Chinese ideal is a unified world, in the real world, there are indeed stratifications.
In this pyramid-shaped world, it can basically be divided into 6 levels.
The top one is naturally the United States, with a per capita GDP of over US$60,000.
Next are the moderately developed countries, with per capita GDP of about US$40,000, such as Germany, France, the UK and Japan.
Next are the junior developed countries, with per capita income of US$20,000-30,000, such as Greece, South Korea, Spain, etc.
Next are relatively developed developing countries, such as China, India, and Russia.
Then there are some developing countries that sell resources, such as Venezuela, Egypt, etc.
Finally, there are some small and poor countries that cannot even sell their resources.
The total global GDP in 2023 will be approximately US$93 trillion. Among them, the overall GDP of developing countries is US$36 trillion, and the total GDP of all developed countries is approximately US$57 trillion.
What about population? The total population of developed countries is only about 1.1 billion. Except for the United States, which has more than 300 million, and Japan, which has just over 100 million, none of them exceeds 100 million.
In other words, developed countries, which account for less than 18% of the world’s total population, control two-thirds of the world’s total wealth!
If you were reborn in a developed country, you would have enough food and clothing, and receive basic benefits even if you didn’t work. If you are reborn in a small, poor country at the bottom, having enough to eat is just a luxury. Is this fair?
It’s unfair, but this is the reality. Developed countries and developing countries are completely different from the same world in terms of people’s living standards.
So how did these two severely separated parallel worlds come into being? The reason is simple: industry.
If we look at developed countries, we will find that they always have at least one or two trump industries.
Even if some low-end industries are transferred out, high-profit high-end industries are still firmly in the hands of the United States and its allies.
In this system, the United States controls high technology, finance, military industry, aerospace, biopharmaceuticals, computers, agricultural machinery, etc.
The UK controls higher education and finance, France controls nuclear power and passenger aircraft, Germany controls precision machinery and chemical industry, Japan and South Korea control semiconductor raw material manufacturing and automobiles, etc. Basically, each is in charge of its own business.
What are the benefits of this system?
On the one hand, it can leverage the advantages of each country, reduce product costs, and ultimately serve the United States.
On the other hand, since the allies of the United States are smaller in size, giving them some industries can easily ensure prosperity at the national level, lead a good life, and no longer have incentives to develop advantageous industries that threaten the United States.
Why can Westerners work 4 hours a day, drink coffee for another 4 hours, go on vacation to the Mediterranean, sunbathe, and pick up girls, but you can’t? And they are still not satisfied with this and go on strike at every turn! Because their high-end industries support this kind of life.
Their country, relying on its technological and industrial advantages, can live a good life comfortably after seizing its ecological niche. As long as a developed country builds a plane, people in developing countries need to use their hard work and sweat to create 700 million shirts in exchange. Other developing countries can only be locked in agriculture, animal husbandry, mineral resources and low-end industries forever.
In terms of profits, low-end industries can never compare with high-end industries.
This system has been running stably for decades, and the United States and developed countries have been lying on the top of the pyramid, selling sand for the price of chips, and sucking the blood of developing countries for decades.
But they never expected that China would appear.
China is different from other countries in that it has too many people and low-end industries cannot give Chinese people a decent life.
Even if the United States provides some high-end industries to China, China will not be able to become a developed country like South Korea, which has a smaller population.
Therefore, what China is pursuing is the upgrading of the entire industry, using the rise of various industries to cover more Chinese people and allow everyone to live a better life.
No matter how many pearls you have in your industrial crown, we’ll find a way to get them.
Moreover, China has the most complete industrial chain in the world.
China graduates millions of science and engineering students every year. It has a huge domestic market, strategic support at the national level and the national sentiment of “Do those gentry certainly have blue blood?” engraved in the Chinese DNA.
This means that as long as the Chinese want to do something, there is a high probability that they can do it.
Therefore, when the Chinese are no longer satisfied with sewing buttons and knitting clothes, and start to upgrade their industries, the comfortable days of Western countries will come to an end.
China’s industrial upgrading also has a magical ability. No matter what high technology is conquered by China, it will immediately become a bargain.
Then when we return to foreign markets, we can immediately reduce the dimensionality of foreign manufacturers and attack them without even having to compete.
For example, Western countries used to sell dyes used in the textile industry for hundreds of thousands of dollars per ton. After we mastered the core technology, we directly sold it for 10,000 CNY per ton, killing most of our international peers.
There are also white goods. In the past, every Chinese household was proud to have a Toshiba TV. As a result, now that China’s white goods market is all over the world, Toshiba is about to go bankrupt.
The same goes for LCD panels. In the past, China could only rely on imported LCD panels to make color TVs, and most of the profits from a color TV would be taken away by foreign countries. Now after China’s breakthrough, it has directly captured 80% of the world’s LCD panel share, and the price is so low that LCD panels can be installed above toilet urinals.
Also, China broke through the shield machine, and Germany’s Waldrich Coburg Machine Tool Factory closed down.
China made a breakthrough in pen tip steel, and Japan’s Shimomura Seiko suffered a sharp decline in profits and was on the verge of bankruptcy.
China started making mobile phones, and Nokia and Motorola went bankrupt.
China’s practice of using low prices to completely overturn the market structure once a technological breakthrough is really unbearable to Westerners.
China has destroyed so many monopolized industries in the West, making life for Westerners less comfortable. How can you expect them to have a good impression of China?
Let’s take a look:
Why were Western countries not as anti-China in 2010 as they are now?
Has the anti-China voice in Western countries suddenly become louder since 2010?
Isn’t it because China has started industrial upgrading and its GDP has surpassed Japan’s?
The second is that the rise of China has changed the international order and caused an imbalance in the mentality of Westerners.
Western countries like to talk about a saying: rules-based international order.
What exactly is this “rules-based international order”? To put it bluntly, it is the international order established by the United States after World War II by taking advantage of its status as the biggest winner in World War II.
In this order, the United States can recruit a “team of allies” to arbitrarily interfere in other countries’ internal affairs and launch color revolutions to overthrow other countries’ governments at will.
In this order, the United States has bound the U.S. dollar with gold and oil successively, making the U.S. dollar the world currency, and the United States can harvest the world’s wealth through the U.S. dollar tide.
In this order, the United States and its allies maintain strong military strength and bully other countries wantonly.
They can use a test tube of white powder as an excuse to bomb Iraq at will, killing and injuring millions of people, and if other countries build a new warship, they will be slandered as a “threat to regional peace.”
Simply put, the biggest principle of this order is to always maintain American hegemony.
After this order is established, everyone in Western countries will be a beneficiary of this order.
They can treat immigrants from other countries with an arrogant attitude and leave all the dirty work to immigrants.
They can draw high profits from developing countries by entering into unfair contracts through the economic advantages maintained by their hegemony.
They can go to developing countries at will, show off their identity as a Westerner, and attract countless women to throw themselves into their arms, and then abandon them.
Even in the face of a terrorist attack, as long as you show your identity as “I am an American”, you will most likely enjoy priority evacuation and special protection.
Over the past few decades, they have taken this kind of treatment for granted, as if they were born with this kind of treatment.
But they didn’t expect that China would appear.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has repeatedly declared that there is only one international order, and that is the basic order of the United Nations.
Obviously, China is willing to integrate with international standards, but it is not willing to be subject to the basic order of the United States.
China seeks a fair and just international order from the perspective of everyone in the world, not an international order dominated by the United States.
In the international order advocated by the Chinese, every child in Gaza should live to adulthood.
In the international order advocated by the Chinese, underage girls in Thailand should not become the playthings of white people.
In the international order advocated by the Chinese, Africans should not starve while guarding their fertile land.
In the international order advocated by the Chinese, South American children should not face the only two options: drug trafficking and football.
This is China’s original intention of building a community with a shared future for mankind – hoping to seek the sharing of development rights, development opportunities and development results, so that the results of world construction and development can benefit people of all countries more and more equitably, and truly achieve win-win sharing.
But this has undoubtedly touched the cake of the people of developed countries. You have changed the world order, so how can they continue to lie at the top of the pyramid and dominate?
It’s like a rural person who enters the city and feels inferior when looking at the high-rise buildings in the city. When he meets the city people, he feels inferior to others. The city people feel that everything is taken for granted.
However, when a rural person who comes to the city becomes literate through self-study and feels that he and the city people are both human beings and there is no distinction between superiority and inferiority, and demands to be on an equal footing with the city people, do you think the city people can accept it?
Therefore, Western people naturally do not have a good impression of China, which has taken the lead in “undermining the international order.”
Third, the successful path of Chinese-style modernization has completely overturned the only successful path of the West for a long time.
For a long time, there has been only one successful path to human development, which is Western-style modernization.
This was the only correct path proven by practice, and it became a model for all countries to learn from.
To a certain extent, Western-style modernization has dominated the process of human modernization.
But strangely enough, there are many countries that follow the path of Westerners. Whether it is political system or economic system, they are basically planned according to the Western model.
But today, not many countries have really reached the level of modernization in the West. On the contrary, some countries are getting worse and worse, and even go bankrupt.
Why is this so?
To put it bluntly, the other side of the Western modernization process has been deliberately hidden.
Since the Age of Discovery, the West has embarked on global capital expansion and colonial activities.
Ship after ship of silver, ship after ship of black slaves, and ship after ship of opium helped the West quickly accumulate a large amount of wealth, and also planted the root of poverty and backwardness in other regions.
With capital, coupled with the technological monopoly created by the first-mover advantage and the trade hegemony brought by the advantages of international rules, Western countries can easily seize high profits and play a game of scissors.
Therefore, despite the hype about Western modernization, it actually only requires you to comply with the international order established by Western modernization and the unfair international wealth distribution behind this order.
But they never expected that China would stand up.
China knows very well that copying the Western development model will not achieve modernization at all, so China has developed Chinese-style modernization.
China chose to rely on its new national institutional advantages and scale advantages to change from a free flow of funds to a government-guided capital flow.
Through rural revitalization and urbanization, China’s advantages of huge population and large cumulative effect have been used to help rural areas get rid of poverty and promote common prosperity.
Facts have proved that China was successful, and it took several decades to go through the path of modernization that took Western countries hundreds of years.
Today, both its economy and military strength have reached the point where it has surpassed countless developed countries.
China has provided a model to all countries, a model that can still succeed without following the path of Westernization, which has strengthened the confidence of all countries in the world that are interested in developing their own modernization.
When other countries see China’s success, they will naturally pursue their own modernization instead of following suit under the deception of Western scholars.
But in this way, the modernization theory that Western countries have maintained for decades will go bankrupt.
To put it simply, the rise of China has completely destroyed Westerners’ institutional and theoretical confidence.
Therefore, we cannot expect Western people to have any favorable impression of China, a “heretic” that does not follow the Western path and is leading more countries to abandon the Western path.
Therefore, there is no need for Chinese people to consider what Westerners think! You can’t change them either!
As winners, do Chinese people need to consider the thoughts of losers?
Have you ever lost any respect for someone instantly?
I was in the ninth or tenth standard.
Our Maths teacher was excellent in teaching maths in logical way.
I had a great respect for her teaching excellence.
Since I loved Maths and scored good marks, students who had problem with maths would come to me in the short interval for clearing their doubts in some difficult problems.
Those students were day schoolers , while I was in boarding.
In short interval when I was explaining Maths, they would offer me some food to taste which they brought from their home.
One particular item jowar roti(it is called jonna rotti in Telugu) with smoked brinjal chutney(baigan ka bharta) was my favorite. So whenever any of those girls brought those items, they would invariably offer me.
One day when I was explaining some problems to the girls, the teacher saw us.
After some time I was called into the staff room.
I was scared. “Did I do any thing wrong by explaining maths to those girls?” I thought.
“It is a good thing you are clearing the doubts for those girls. I appreciate you. You are saving my time” she said.
My respect for her increased.
“But why do you eat from their (mentioning their caste) tiffin boxes? Stop eating from now onwards”
My entire respect for her came crashing down in a minute.
From then onward, I respected her as a good Math teacher but never considered as a mentor.
RV Life is FINISHED! | 7 HARSH REALITIES Why RVer’s QUIT
Southern Fried Catfish
Fried Catfish Recipe 8 scaled
Ingredients
6 small catfish
2 cups buttermilk
2 cups cornmeal
Salt
Ground pepper
Instructions
Shake cornmeal, salt and ground pepper in a paper bag.
Heat oil to 360 degrees F, halfway up the sides of a cast iron skillet.
Dip catfish into buttermilk, then into dry mixture in bag.
Fry for about 2 1/2 to 3 minutes on each side (5 minutes per every inch of thickness).
Serve with Hush Puppies.
What kind of people will not succeed in life?
I had a good friend, Matt, growing up through high school.
He was a bright kid, did well on tests and stuff. But his parents, who were wealthy, kept giving him everything.
He never had to work during the summers (which is common here in the States). Anytime he needed anything, they handed him wads of cash. Anytime he made a mistake they bailed him out, never held him accountable.
Over time he just lost all motivation.
It hurts me to write this, but – here we are 34 years old, and he still hasn’t finished a college degree and literally lives in his parents’ basement. So much wasted potential already.
Spoiling a kid is the worst thing a parent can do.
She’s absolutely full of shit
Have you ever bought something from a yard sale or second hand store only to discover it was worth significantly more? What was the item you purchased?
Years ago, my husband stopped by a yard sale looking for old canning jars (which he collects). When he was getting ready to pay for his new treasures, the man running the sale asked him if he wanted a bottle he had – it was only $5. So my husband bought it. He put it in the back seat of his truck and headed for home.
When he got home, he noticed the vivid green coloring to the bottle so he took some pictures of it and uploaded pictures of it to a collector’s group he belonged to. One person offered him $100, another $200. Finally, someone messaged my husband and asked him if he even knew what he had. Turns out it was an old Binninger’s whiskey bottle and the second one known to exist. They offered to pay for transport to their facility and take it around to some collectors’ shows, then auction it off so it could get some exposure. My husband paid for the shipping and agreed that they could auction it off.
That bottle sold for $6000. The auction house got 10%. So $6000 – $620 (600 to the auction house and $20 to buy and ship) = $5380.00. Not a bad traffic
What is the best random conversation you overheard?
This was actually half of three conversations that were all connected.
A few years ago I was on holiday in Pisa. One day we were travelling back to Pisa by train after a day out and we were sitting near a young Italian.
When he started speaking to someone on his mobile, I did pay attention at first but I then found that I was understanding what he was saying without trying. I decided to practise my aural comprehension and started listening.
He was asking someone to meet him at the station and I assumed that it was his sister, since many young Italians live at home.
Anyway he said something like:
”…… if you could come and meet me at the station … I need to buy a birthday present for Mamma…”
I could not hear what the other person said but I realised he had received a negative response because he said “OK” in a tone of resignation. I had a vague suspicion that asking for help to choose a present was just an excuse and his real concern was getting a lift home. He then said something like:
”I’ll see you at home then ….. or maybe you could come and pick me up at the station …… Ah, OK. I’ll see you at home then”
I noticed that when he asked about being picked up at the station he spoke with exaggerated casualness, obviously wanting to give the impression that he had only just thought of it although it was his real reason for phoning.
After his request had met with another refusal, he phoned someone else and suggested meeting at the station before going to a bar. This person also declined.
A few minutes later the young man’s mobile rang and I just knew that the second person wanted to arrange something for another night. When he answered his mobile, I could half sense and half hear the other person suggesting that they meet another time. The young man did not want to arrange anything and ended the call very quickly.
Personally, if I had been in the other person’s position, I would not have bothered with that young man again. He seemed really self-centred.
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Why do some foreigners think that the Chinese are living in disasters and that the government is against its people?
It is the nature of commercial media that it reports only shocking bad news. Good news is of no interest to anybody. Commercial media has one job: to delivery a large audience to advertisers. To maximize the audience it must minimize the daily shock value.
It ‘s not just foreigners, newspapers in Singapore, HK and Taiwan report China like it is a complete cycle of violence, corruption, and sex, because that is what sells newspapers and attracts audiences. My relatives in HK won’t visit because they are too frightened to come to Suzhou. Despite us being in the SIP which is virtually crime free.
Government media would like to correct the balance. But they also are under pressure to deliver audiences to justify their huge budgets, so they too become superficial and concentrate on human rights, labour regulation failures, and corruption.
China tries to bring in its own message via publications and CCTV, but this is seen as propaganda and so viewership is limited to overseas Chinese.
What was a loophole that you found and exploited the hell out of?
I’m torn whether or not the share this because this “loophole” still exists.
When I was an undergraduate, I noticed that publishers would send professors copies of their textbooks. Some unsolicited. Some upon request.
A light bulb went off. As a new semester approached, I would find a copy of the previous syllabus and get the ISBN number or I’d just go to the bookstore and copy it down. All I really needed was the publisher’s name, the title and the author. I would Google the publisher and look for a customer service number or a request for review copy number. Then, I’d call and say, “Hi, my name is Charlie and I’m calling for Dr. Jones. Do you have any review copies of this textbook that you can send me?” (I used Jones as a pseudonym here but the person whose name I used was real). And then when they confirm that they do, I’d ask if there were any ancillaries that would accompany the book.
They would send the book, solution set and test bank directly to me at the department office. After my first semester, I didn’t pay for a single book in college.
I would exercise caution doing this. I think this worked for me was because I provided free tutoring to students and every one of the faculty members in the department knew me.
What are the lessons people most often learn too late in life?
1. Money might not buy happiness but it does make sadness comfortable.
2. The fuller your phone battery is by the end of the day, the better your day was.
3. Having a small circle is cool until your two friends are busy.
4. World history unfolding seems so unreal until you experience it first and it becomes too real.
5. If an object is large enough, it becomes a location.
6. Never run for a bus or a relationship. Because when one leaves, another arrives.
7. May you attract someone speaks your language so you don’t have to translate your soul.
8. Some people don’t realize how hard you are riding for them, until you park.
9. Everyone wants you to go the extra mile, but seldom gives you the gas to do it.
10. Randomly hearing your favorite song is more satisfying than putting it on yourself.
According to the plan, it was supposed to carry back 2 kilograms, but the density of the lunar soil is based on public information in the United States. The U.S. public information is incorrect. The actual lunar soil density is smaller than that disclosed by the United States.
In this way, under the same volume, the mass decreases: 2 kg → 1.731 kg.
This scientific parameter must not be wrong! Get it wrong and the mission will fail. Fortunately, the Chinese do not trust the United States and have margins when designing.
2 possibilities: Deliberately publicizing wrong information to mislead others. The second is that the United States really doesn’t know what is wrong. Therefore, the United States keeps asking China for information and lunar soil. China ignored it!
I am not qualified to say that the US moon landing was fake, I can only have doubts.
Some Problem discussion :
1. The Soviet Union also used unmanned missions to land on the moon, obtained the lunar soil, and found water, while the United States said there was no water. The Soviet Union was not confident and could only believe that the lunar soil it obtained was contaminated. Now, no one from China has landed on the moon to obtain lunar soil, proving that the lunar soil contains water.
2. The ironclad proof of the American moon landing is the installation of a lunar surface laser corner reflector . The distance between the earth and the moon can be measured on the earth through the lunar corner reflector. However, the United States installed two corner reflectors manually, and the Soviet Union installed three corner reflectors with automatic machines for unmanned lunar landings. At the same time, the Soviet Union’s corner reflectors can also measure the distance between the earth and the moon. The effect is the same, how can it be “irrefutable proof”.
3. Zhang Benan , deputy chief engineer of China’s aerospace industry , publicly stated that according to the internal assessment of the US Apollo moon landing, the reliability rate was less than 50%. If China followed the American moon landing model, it would be impossible to succeed. Look, Chinese scientists always speak in direct manner. If the success rate of a project is less than 50%, can it be successful? However, there were 6 Apollo moon landings, 5 of which were successful. Science is not feudal superstition. We talk about projects based on facts. We do not take personal feelings and evaluate rationally!
4. When the United States landed on the moon and returned to the earth, it did not master the ” Qian Xuesen ballistic ” re-entry technology and returned to the earth at the second cosmic speed , which would have killed all the astronauts. However, the three astronauts are not dead, they are alive. what happened? The United States has not yet mastered this technology. In 2022, NASA made big claims early, claiming that Orion was the first manned spacecraft in history to use a jump return method (i.e., “floating”) to reenter the atmosphere. This is actually a ” semi-ballistic return ” and is not fully understood. But how did they return to Earth in 1969?!
5. China and the United States, no one has landed on the moon, and some people have landed on the moon. Comparison of lunar surface pictures:
main qimg 9f3133a555bfba4b50b4547c58bb3bce
China, lunar surface, lunar soil is dense and discolored. United States, on the lunar surface, the lunar soil is like a cement pile, loose and does not change color. (Picture below: Moon landing announced by the United States)
main qimg da27dfb27dc0d274dda5f095a428ba41
There is another picture, below: Ground simulation training taken by the United States (published by the United States), take a look
main qimg 4ae1eed93956631e2abf65cb90cd3e78
In the ground simulation, the astronauts were held by two wires behind them, and the scene was almost the same as if they were on the moon… If you go to the studio and the wire ropes are blurred, you would think that they are on the so-called moon….The picture below shows the lunar surface taken by China’s Chang’e 2 , which is believed to be the remnants of the American Apollo 11. However, it is a shadow with a resolution of 70 meters. It does not prove that “someone landed on the moon”. A lunar rover? American flag? where? Where are the footprints? No one has ever landed on the moon, so we can throw something down. It’s pitch black, what are you looking at? ?
main qimg 31564713a11c1dfe16ed8e2776cbed29
Even if no one lands on the moon, we can still create this huge pile of ruins with nothing visible. 2002 American TV show, the host who questioned the moon landing insisted that astronaut Aldrin swear to the camera with his hand on the Bible, declaring that he had truly left footprints on the moon. If he refused, it would prove that the moon landing was a hoax. Aldrin remained silent for a long time. But the host continued to ask, saying that if you don’t swear, “you are a coward, a liar, and a shameful thief.” Faced with such verbal provocation, an angry Aldrin punched the host, but he still refused to swear in the end. Later, Armstrong and other three other astronauts who landed on the moon also refused to swear when they encountered similar situations. That is to say, no one who landed on the moon has dared to swear according to the Bible that he landed on the moon. (There is a video, you can look for it) According to American law, pressing the Constitution and the Bible with your hands and swearing an oath are essentially testimonials, which are legally binding. Many people do not understand American law. The act of swearing on the Bible can be used as evidence recognized by the court. If you lie, it is ” perjury “; and perjury is one of the six major felonies and must be sentenced to more than one year in prison. There is no Execution outside prison and understanding outside court. Therefore, when Americans are forced to swear or testify, they can remain silent and refuse to answer. This is a form of self-protection and is recognized by law.
Conclusion :
1. We must use a “real scientific attitude” to talk about problems, instead of “because the United States is very powerful”. Everything it does is right and true. This is inappropriate. Discuss things objectively without any subjectivity; let alone use force to overwhelm others, “America is great, how dare you doubt it?” “Scientists from all over the world don’t doubt it, so who do you think you are?” “Whatever culture you have, you are worthy of doubting Apollo”…This is no longer interesting.
2. Not much to talk about, just two:
A. The United States has not yet mastered the “floating technology.” How did the people inside the lunar return module survive when it returned to the earth at the speed of the second universe? Entering the atmosphere at the speed of the second universe, the spacecraft can withstand at least 16G inside and outside, and the human body can withstand up to 10G. If it exceeds, you will die. How did these moon landings survive?
B. Just one. Of all the “moon-landers”, not one of them pressed the Bible and swore he would land on the moon. Why? When talking about things, convince people with reason.
Everyone is interested in the ground training of the American Apollo moon landing. Here are a few more pictures. These are all announced by NASA:
main qimg 38177cfc66c2d536c1f6d1042656d1e0
It is speculated that the Americans do not know what the real land on the moon is like. They relied on reasoning to simulate the lunar surface and thought it was similar to a cement pile. However, now China has landed on the moon, and found that the lunar surface is actually similar to the Gobi Desert. The picture below shows the first American moonwalkers. They firmly refused to swear by the Bible that they had landed on the moon. They either cursed, ignored, or remained silent. There were 12 people who landed on the moon, and no one swore an oath!
main qimg 76d19541d6cded34a9b542d57834c6f4
We Chinese, born in a secular society, keep a distance from religion or are indifferent to it. But Western society is different. Even after the religious reform, most Americans are Protestants, and they still have a strong respect for religion. Swearing on the Bible is a big deal to them. This is not an oath, it actually explains a lot.….
The latest video I saw was Aldrin talking to a little girl. He probably won’t live long enough to control it, so he told the truth. July 2018, an 8-year-old girl asked Aldrin: “Why hasn’t anyone gone to the moon in so long?”Aldrin accidentally said this: I don’t know, we haven’t been to the moon either!
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Author Note :
USA empire of lies, Barbarian who think himself noble.
Onion Crusted Catfish
onion crusted catfish
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
Catfish
8 U.S. Farm-Raised Catfish Fillets
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1 cup French fried onions, crushed
Pecan Sauce
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup chopped pecans
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon fresh parsley, chopped
Instructions
Catfish
Combine flour, salt, cayenne pepper and lemon zest in shallow bowl.
Dredge fillets in flour mixture and press in crushed fried onions, coating well.
Brown fillets over medium-high heat serving side down for 3 to 4 minutes.
Turn fillets and cook 3 to 4 more minutes or until done.
While fillets are cooking, make Pecan Sauce.
Place fillets on plate and serve with sauce.
Pecan Sauce
Melt butter in small saucepan until bubbly and slightly browned.
Add pecans and cook 1 minute to lightly toast.
Add lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce. Remove from heat; add parsley. Spoon over fish.
What accidentally rude things do Americans do while traveling even without realizing it?
Senator John McCain told this story. He was visiting an African nation and was in the office of that country’s president, along with a Congressional colleague. The colleague proceeded to talk to the African president loudly and slowly, using exaggerated gestures.
“MY country is VERY BIG. We have BIG MOUNTAINS. We have BIG CITIES. We have UNIVERSITIES. Do you know what UNIVERSITY means?”
The African president stared at him a moment and then replied, in a normal tone of voice, “I think so. I have a daughter at Vanderbilt.”
Edit, May 5, 2023: Eighty-two thousand views in a week suggests that this issue resonates with a great many people. I am also reminded of this incident of a few years ago:
EDITORIAL: Well, that was embarrassing… — Acknowledging our assumptions
There are many ways to strangle communication. We can misinterpret, not pay enough attention, pay too much attention (to ourselves!), and of course assume. It is much too easy to do. A recent case …
Finally, I am reminded of the employee orientation I attended at an internationally known non-profit institution that attracts employees from all over the world. The institution is located in Tennessee. A young couple with obvious British accents said they were from the UK, and the person in charge of the orientation, having no idea what the UK was, spent the entire day thinking they were from Ukraine.
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Have you ever worked with someone who deliberately tried to get you fired?
Yes. My BEST friend…who I hired to be an assistant manager…and he succeeded. Out of the blue one day, the COO of the company (a bit of a tyrant, but was ALWAYS cool with me) tried to get me to resign for “theft” of property that had been missing before I ever took the position as a manager. I flatly refused and even laughed at him, I hadn’t stolen anything and I knew I was the scapegoat for something. I was fired with no cause given, it certainly wasn’t for theft even though that was the claim. Months later he (best friend) then proceeded to go after my Dad (who worked at the same company) and my dad resigned (he was already job shopping because the company was beginning to have strange issues). Turns out he (my best friend) was a two faced POS (even his own family has now disowned him). He apparently knew that the COO of the company was having an affair…and he used that info to blackmail the COO into putting him into my position and then my father’s position. It lasted about a year until the company president found out about the affair and gave the COO a second chance to clean up his act (the COO’s wife worked for the president and was just a wonderful person). The COO couldn’t keep it in his pants and he got fired. The President took over the COO’s position and began to get information from recently fired employees about how they were fired without cause because the “big supervisor” (guess who) found “problems” that didn’t really exist. The big supervisor would have to come to the stores and do inventories, etc., and while he was doing that he was rewriting sales agreements and contracts so that HE was now getting the percentages of the sales vs the now fired managers. Well, all of that caught up to him…AND it was determined that HE was stealing and blaming it on employees. He had a nice racket going. He got fired and damn near got put in jail. I eventually heard that he had BIG BIG money problems, a serious drug issue and other things. His wife divorced him, his two kids won’t speak to him, his brother and sister won’t even mention his name…. He moved away, married a gal that had a “history” and became persona non grata around these parts.
This is a guy I knew all of my life, who I trusted with my life and would’ve died for. His family is one of the best and his father was as good a man as I’ve ever known. He threw all of it away for money and to try to dig himself out of a problem of his own making. It broke my heart because I’d never been betrayed like that before.
PROOF EVERYONE IS GOING BROKE!
If the Chinese government was forced to choose between Made in China 2025 and One Belt One Road for investment, which one should it invest in?
I believe that Made in China 2025 plays better to China’s traditional strengths, which are:
Production and manufacturing capacity;
Innovation and adaptation;
A growing domestic consumer market;
Fast to market speed;
Domestic consumers who are quicker to adapt than other markets.
It will also stimulate science innovation at a time when the US, EU and Japan are not investing as much.
Moreover, China needs to move up the value chain because the US has shown that it is an unreliable trading partner, which means that China needs to be strong in all the areas which the US is currently strong in, and replace the US as the world’s most innovative and reliable trading partner.
There is an opportunity here because the Trump administration and Republican Party have turned against science investment and education, which means that there is a good opportunity for China to attract science talent to work in China on next generation products and services.
In order to do this, China needs to open up immigration, not just to ethnic Chinese from overseas, but to all talented individuals with special skills who can contribute to Made in China 2025. It needs to become the immigration destination of choice for people from all over the world, replacing the US.
OBOR mainly benefits the large Chinese state-owned companies which are strong in transport development and infrastructure. However, the big question is when will these huge infrastructure projects be paid off?
If their domestic markets take a long time to develop, this means that these governments in central Asia will be saddled with high levels of debt to China, and creating animosity towards China among their own populations. (This has already happened in Malaysia, where the new Malaysian government has asked to re-negotiate the terms of Chinese infrastructure projects in Malaysia.)
For these reasons, I think that Made in China 2025 is the safer investment, and will help Chinese science and industry move up the value chain, replacing the US.
More common than you can believe
Beef Brisket
Beef Brisket
Ingredients
1 (5 or 6 pound) beef brisket
Onion, garlic and celery salt
1 tablespoon liquid smoke
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
1 envelope onion soup mix
1 small bottle barbecue sauce
Instructions
Marinate brisket in a mixture of the onion, garlic and celery salts and liquid smoke. Rub in well and poke holes in meat to help tenderize it. Marinate overnight or at least 3 hours.
Make a pouch of aluminum foil. Put meat in it and add salt and pepper to taste and Worcestershire sauce. Seal pouch well and bake at 275 degrees F for 4 to 6 hours.
Open pouch and put onion soup mix and small bottle of barbecue sauce over brisket. Seal pouch again and bake 1 hour longer.
Refrigerate for 1 hour before slicing across grain.
What was your favorite prison experience?
A few years ago, pre-COVID, I volunteered to teach inmates at Folsom Women’s Facility how to code.
In preparation for doing so, I was sent a list of do’s and dont’s (well, mostly don’ts, especially since any “do” can be converted to a “don’t” by negating it).
Some of the don’ts were fairly obvious–no physical contact with an inmate, no passing of messages to/from inmates, no discussion of their crime or sentence, etc.
Some were less obvious (to me, at least) but made sense once I read them…
Do not wear clothing that resembles the clothing that prisoners wear (so no jeans, no blue shirts, no orange, etc.)
Do not wear clothing that resembles what custodial staff wear (forest green pants, tan shirts, camouflage)
And there was “Do not under any circumstances run.”
I had (correctly) assumed I would be escorted to and from the classroom, so I couldn’t imagine running. “What’s this about?” I said to myself for a millisecond, then I read further. If a violent incident were to occur, typically the only people running are the perpetrators. Or the guards rushing to quell the incident. You don’t want to be mistaken for an inmate causing trouble, so don’t run.
All of a sudden, the blood drained from my face. “What am I getting myself into?”
Reading further, it said that incidents were rare, but they do happen. I composed myself.
Further down still, the verbiage was something like this–if an incident did occur, the guards’ primary objective was to prevent injury to the staff. I would be a volunteer visitor, and my safety could not be guaranteed. Hmm.
I signed the form. I wanted to help.
It was a bit of a drive–San Francisco to Folsom. Stayed overnight in an Airbnb, and was ready to go early the next morning. Short drive to the facility, enjoyed the scenery, etc.
Then I pull up the road that leads to the facility. As I approach and look for the parking area, I see guard towers, barbed wire, etc. “Holy shit, what did I get myself info?”
I panic for a few seconds, then compose myself. “This is going to be fun. Teaching is my happy place. These folks could use my help.”
I had always assumed that in retirement I would work at the Humane Society, or part-time at Home Depot or the like. But the moment I stepped in the classroom and introduced myself, I instantly knew what I was going to do when I retired.
I could make jokes about inmates being a captive audience, but the fact is–they were there to learn. Much more universally than my corporate clients, some of whom don’t really want to be there, or if they do, they aren’t allowed to focus because their boss keeps asking them to do things, even though they are in class.
I went back several times and enjoyed each and every moment with those students.
But the question asked about our favorite prison experience. It was a LinkedIn message I received a couple years later, from one of my former students:
“I hope you remember me from Folsom Women’s Facility. You did a Python workshop for us, I enjoyed it and was inspired by it. I am out now and working. Thank you for the knowledge and encouragement!”
That.
More of that, please.
Have you ever been pulled over by a police officer for an unusual reason?
The plant I work in is a 24/7 365 operation. I’m an industrial electronics technician/mechanic and this particular year I got the short straw. So late on the 24th of December Christmas eve and I’m on my way to work. Then this cop pulls in behind me, lights n such, and pulls me over. I couldn’t think of a single thing I had done wrong and was thinking, wtf, I’m gonna get a ticket on may way to work a night shift on Christmas eve, seriously???. I was clearly not feeling like this was going to be a good day.
Now I like putting my skills to work in my personal as well as professional life. My favorite thing is building projects, enter the pickup truck I was driving at the time. For note, this took place about 20yrs ago.
The cop comes up and immediately said, ‘you haven’t done anything wrong’. Which clearly left me very very confused. ‘Are those solar panels on your bed?’. Yes, yes they are. You see I had built an electric truck out of an old Chevy S10. The solar provided some free charging. The questions being flying and on the side of the road on Christmas eve I pop the hood and give an impromptu lesson on electric vehicles.
10min or so later excused myself, work awaited. Oddest stop I ever had.
As a car salesman, what was the biggest discount you ever gave on a car?
I worked for a Kia dealer in the late 90s. They had something called retro money. It was an incentive to the dealer. Every car you sold in a month got you xx dollars from the manufacturer. The more you sold the larger the incentive, and it was retro to all the cars you sold that month. So if the incentive went from 500 to 800 per car you would get the extra 300 on all cars sold for the month.
It is the last day of the month and we need to sell two cars to hit the next level. It would mean an extra 35k for the dealer. We sold the first one by 10am. Then it was a ghost town. No customers etc. I get a guy looking at a Kia Sportage. Not really interested, blah blah blah. It’s nearly closing time and this guy is the only customer. He is one of those that doesn’t buy the same day etc. I was ready to buy a car at this point. We offer him a deal, no, another deal, no. We gave him the rebate off of invoice as well as the holdback, the funny money. The final offer was a 4,000 loss from triple net cost. It was about 8k off of sticker price. This on a car that had a sticker price of about 18k. HE WANTS TO THINK ABOUT IT OVERNIGHT. I tell him this deal goes away. Honestly, if he didn’t buy it, I was going to. He did buy it.
Drizzle Drizzle; men have flipped the script but women DON’T GET IT
As a Starbucks barista, have you ever been terrified of the name someone wanted on their order?
I work at a fast food place, not Starbucks, but yeah, I’ve had my share of gross assholes who want me to call them shit like “big dick” or “daddy.” In the immediate aftermath of the 2016 elections, I had a Latine coworker who was told several times to put in “Trump,” and once, “Heil Hitler.” Thank g-d I wasn’t in the store that day. I think I would’ve had a heart attack.
The absolute worst I’ve personally taken was this douchebag who told me to put his name in as Hail Satan 666, and when I called his order by item instead of name, he told me he wouldn’t leave the store until I called it. I refused and told him we only called real names (not true, but a convenient excuse). He was snickering with his buddies and told me that was discrimination because that was definitely his real name, and did I have a problem with his real name? Goodness, I hope none of that merry band ever procreate.
On the flip side, I had a dude that same day who gave me his name, and when I apologized and said we could only use real names, he got the BIGGEST grin, pulled out his wallet….
…..and I put in his name, went to the back, and when my manager opened her mouth to tell me off I said “ohhh, no. I saw his driver’s license. His name is really Bruce Wayne, and we’re gonna call it.”
Can you write something that will shock me to the core?
In ancient Rome, the punishment for patricide (killing one’s father) was to be drowned in a sack along with a viper, a dog, a monkey and a rooster. The reason? I don’t even know.
Alice Stebbins Wells was the first ever policewoman who joined the LAPD in 1910. Because she was the first (and only) policewoman, she designed her own police uniform.
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3. Gorgias of Epirus, a Greek sophist, was born in his dead mother’s coffin while pallbearers were on their way to bury her. Who has an explanation for this?
4. In the 5th century, St. Simeon Stylites spent 37 years on a small platform on top of a tall pillar in Aleppo, Syria. He did it for ascetic reasons but sometimes I wonder how even spending 1 year on top of a skyscraper without coming down will be like.
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5. One of the most well-known gladiators of ancient Rome, Carpophorus, fought exclusively against beasts. You think Samson in the Bible was a beast? Carpophorus was a monster! Carpophorus famously defeated a bear, lion, and leopard in a single battle. That same day, he slaughtered a rhinoceros with a spear and set a record of killing 20 wild animals no other man will even venture to go near. Even Hercules didn’t do this!
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American Reacts to First Time You Realized America Really Messed You Up | Part 2 | TikTok
Have you ever had a job where you did nothing for years and nobody found out?
I do now.
It grew out of quiet quitting. Most other hospitals in town pay about 30–40% more for my job. So after making this known I cut back my work to about 60% and nobody noticed or cared so I cut back even further.
I do about 6 hours of work in a given week.
I show up, I train my classes 1–2 days a couple weeks a month then I go wander around clinics and bullshit with a few people to look like I’m busy. Then I go back to my desk and sit. Thanks to Covid office emptiness I keep headphones on so it looks like I’m listening to music. I’m listening to books on tape or watching YouTube videos. I keep something that looks like work on one of my monitors so I look busy but I pretty much just sit. Sometimes I work on additional certifications for when the ship sinks and I have to go work somewhere else.
I work from home on Fridays, which is to say I sign in to Teams and watch Netflix for 8 hours.
If I can keep this up for 13 years and this poorly run mess I work for doesn’t bankrupt itself, I retire with a full pension.
How did your marriage end?
I have been married twice.
My first marriage ended with my wife’s bloody body in my lap.
She took only about a minute to die.
We had been married, exactly 5 years, she died on our anniversary. She was pregnant, so I also lost the person who would have been my firstborn.
My second marriage ended when my wife died in hospital, from cancer, while I was asleep, at home, she took just days short of 2 years to die.
We had been married 46 years.
I’m still trying to work out which was the worst.
The strange thing about all this is that my first wife died on the 17th of August 1963, at 0130 hrs.
My second wife died on the 17th of August 2013, at 0115 hrs.
I decided to not remarry as I would be depressed every year as August approached.?
PS. My birthday is the 27th of August.
What did your boss say to you during a meeting that resulted in you immediately resigning?
I came into work one morning at around 9:30AM and so was admittedly late. This was in the early 70s so flexible working was not a thing. My boss called me into his office, and gave me right bollocking. I resigned on the spot basically telling him that if he didn’t like it he could stuff his job.
This does seem to be rather high-handed of me, but the context is that I had finished work at 4 AM, destruction testing and debugging a programme suite I had written over the previous 6 months. I had just worked continuously from Friday 10 PM until Monday 4 AM surviving on sandwiches and copious amounts of caffeine citrate tablets so by the time I arrived at 9:30 AM on Monday I was still pretty strung out and probably resembled the crazy doctor in the Cannonball run.
I was incensed to be carpetted without being asked for an explanation. Two days later I had a new job with a 50% salary increase.
Have you ever seen a mass exodus after a respected employee quit or got fired?
I worked a $8-an-hour part-time job on weekends because I needed the money. Like all low-wage jobs, it was hard work, stupid policies, supervisors with a take-it-or-leave it attitude. It was a high-turnover position; people were always quitting and they were always hiring. We were always understaffed.
We were without a manager. Our team lead had been pressed into service without title or pay raise while they recruited the position. For months. As an employee formerly in our position, he was sympathetic to our viewpoints, did the job well, and was popular with us front-line guys. He applied and interviewed for the position he was already spending 40 hours a week doing.
He didn’t get the job.
On the new manager’s first day, our disappointed and bitter team lead quit. Fully 80% of the team followed him out the door. Many of us told our team lead that the only reason we hadn’t already quit was that we hadn’t wanted to make his job as our unacknowledged manager harder.
That didn’t stop the fucker from disappearing instead of repaying the $500 I had loaned him.
For years, the race we all hear about is to lower and lower node sizes. China (SMIC) decided that competing on this was a fools errand.
They are currently flooding the market with 28nm (and above), also known as “mature processes”. This is the same strategy they took in solar panels and batteries. By some accounts, they’ll have a third of this market in a few years.
28 nm is a limit after which transistors had to be redesigned for heat dispersion, data transfer and electric interference, expensive for minimal speed increase. Some think that it is better to keep that design. but use gallium, photonics and other tech to make chips faster. There’s also this interesting cost curve where 14nm is the inflection point where it starts to become more expensive rapidly.
The running after Moore’s law of stuffing more primitive logic into smaller and smaller chips ends up with, for most applications, only marginal gains in useful functionality. Bigger, although still tiny, integrated circuits take up marginally larger space/volume and energy consumption and do the job within acptable response times for logical cycles.
In marketing terms this makes even more sense to raise the cumulative return on mature proven minimum defect production cycles. Going after smaller etching dimensions involves a far higher investment and as can be seen a smaller market.
The experience and tacit knowledge gained on the rising throughput in 28nm etch production is likely at some point to result in the systems teams involved coming up with better designs for smaller dimensioned products simply as a result of their accumlation of their know how (learning curve).
Why is this a problem:
They need 28nm for a ton of things. Lower node is more profitable, but higher node chips are critical for a bunch of things. Cars. IoT. Microcontrollers.
And most worrying: these higher node chips are important for the military. The US government, especially under Trump, tried to get the military to have a better sense of the provenance of chips. They have, for the most part, failed. Chips are bought by systems integrators and the systems integrators have little sense of their own supply chain.
Qualcomm etc aren’t lying per se, but you need to fulfil orders. Some of them are civilian and are military. Some get filled by SMIC chips others by global foundries.
What’s more important?
Their military production might be at risk of being cut off in the event of conflict. Intel’s foundry is targeting lower nodes. It won’t touch these lagging edge processes. Why should it? There’s no $$ in it.
The US private sector has shown great disinterest in solving this.
It was obvious some time ago that this would happen, and it’s the consequences of capitalist short term policies of the US administration. Anyone in tech knows military equipment does not use advanced node chips.
Whatever West does is too little & too late if West’s purpose is to kneecap China. China can make everything, materials, chemicals, and equipment for making 28nm chips & above. China has some workarounds for making 5nm chips too.
This gain in Chinese market share is not export driven, but from domestic consumption growth and divestment from US foundries. Too many people are short-sighted and think that China cannot properly manufacture advanced chips. Take a look at Huawei’s recently released PUEA70, which has a 7-nanometer chip and a camera module that surpasses Sony’s.
I think another point that the West hasn’t realized is that Chinese advance in semiconductor will quickly spill over to Vietnam too (China is already eating into South Korea & Taiwan’s lunch) and there won’t be anyway to diverge from China-Vietnam supply chain network and still able to compete on price (China already can mass produce for much cheaper than other East Asian developed economies). This spillover has already happened in solar industries.
Saving Private Ryan RIPPED Me to Shreds – First Time Watching
One of the best reactions.
This movie was a hard watch and a complete emotional rollercoaster. I cried and laughed (sometimes at inappropriate moments), but mostly sobbed. Okay... not just sobbed, I UGLY cried. Kinda embarassing, but it's out there now, don't judge me for my faces of despair! Lol. Trust me, I went to bed hugging my dog after filming!
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.”
3
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.
2
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.
1
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.
When I worked in Mebine, North Carolina (during our “van days”, “out in the wilderness”) I witnessed, first hand, all sorts of corruption that a powerful factory, and rich boss can get away with.
This was a factory that made “granola bars”. I worked in maintenance, and then as a line machine operator.
Using company funds he bought a “company car”. You know, to go on business trips. Except that it was an expensive custom Corvette sports car. LOL.
There was a 22 year old girl who was on the payroll as his open sex partner. She was one of those girls… you know the kind… attractive, blonde, voluptuous… attracted boys at 14 and was addicted to sex. She befriended me, and openly talked about her escapades with “the boss”. She would come in for a few hours each day to “help him in the office” and then leave.
They factory was running out of money and started to have financial problems. So we were ordered to take the huge (four story tall) storage tank and weld a fake partition at top. Then we gathered some of the molasses that it stored. We then burnt the molasses intentionally. Put it up at the top. The Boss then called the supplier and complained. They vendor came. Took a sample from the top, determined that it was burnt… and refunded the cost of the truck load to our boss.
The factory workers took up a collection to help us (me and the wife). The money was given to a girl to buy food for us, and we really appreciated the two bags of groceries… until we saw that all the items had “buy one get two free” stickers on everything. But the bags only contained one item. Someone clearly took one half of the food for themselves.
The factory made granola bars, with was nothing more than mixing peanut butter, nuts, honey, raisins, etc in a huge vat, forming them into ribbons, cutting the ribbons into pieces, and then wrapping them in foil. The thing was that almost all the ingredients were FREE from the United States government. Somehow the factory boss cut a deal where he got free “government food” that was intended for the poor, and made granola bars at a profit.
That being said, our “Christmas bonus” consisted of a USDA block of cheese. Promptly labeled “not for resale”.
As I get older, I see how everything in the United States was twisted, reformed, readjusted, and made so that only certain groups prospered, while others got poorer and poorer. How long can this continue?
It seems to me that the ONLY thing keeping Americans “on the plantation” are loads of drugs, social media pacification, and ignorance of the rest of the world.
The mother of an 11-year-old decided her daughter needed a whipping (She did). This is what happened that did NOT constitute a “whipping”.
Mom started out with an electrical cord pulled off a lamp. After numerous strikes, the cord got lost in the struggle. While holding the girl, mom punched her with her fists several times. Mom grabbed a wire coat hanger, straightened it and started whipping again. The end of the wire was wrapping around the girl’s body, puncturing her arms, legs, hips, sides. Then the coat hanger got pulled away in the struggle.
Mom grabbed a woman’s belt, about 1/4 inch wide and started in with it, cutting into the girl’s skin. After numerous strikes, that also got lost. The beating had moved through four rooms, into the baby’s room. Mom snatched a side slat out of the baby bed (about 1″ by 1″ by about three feet, and started using it. Somehow, the girl escaped the house, ran down the street, and was taken into a house by a neighbor who called the police. She was admitted to the hospital with cuts and bruises from her ankles to her head. She had a hematoma about the size of a baseball on her forehead that swelled her eye closed. She looked like she had gone 9 rounds with Mike Tyson.
Mom was convicted on Felony Child Abuse and served 5 years.
My professor, put the answer this way, the Romans ran out of people to rob. This was Rome at its maximum extent:
image 239
This takes a massive army to maintain and that requires money. I will say something unpopular, after conquest, a standing army is a financial drain. Soldiers produced nothing but cost you a great deal and you must feed them locally.
Thus the conquests must:
Be worth the value in permanent productivity and taxation
Better hope you have a weak neighbor with low organization and social cohesion. Otherwise, you will have a lengthy oozing wound that exhausts your army and financially wrecks you with continuous war
So, to the South, Romans would be expanding into the Sahara; what was the point of that?
Expand into Northern Britain was done several times; those were financially unsustainable. North of the wall, population density was too low to sustain legions.
Along the Rhine, the Romans had expanded into Germany, on many occasions. It was a place of forests and swamps and small villages. Along the coast was one giant coastal wetland. No profit in that place, the Romans tried for years but it was just not profitable. This permanent fort was found in Thuringia, Eastern Germany:
image 238
Why was it abandoned? Finances.
Further along, was the Danube frontier. After Dacia’s gold was exhausted, it was not worth keeping it. Indeed, that frontier was open to the horse people and Germans. There was nothing to gain there. So, the Romans retreated to the Danube and stayed there.
To the east, was Persia or Parthia or whatever you want to call them. Those boys were as civilized, organized and militaristic as the Romans. From Crassus onwards, there was war, back and forth, back and forth, expansions, contractions, expansions, contractions…that war continued into the Byzantine era. Some claim, it NEVER ended.
So, where am I going with this? At some point, empires are about money and profit. If a place is not making money, it does not make sense to keep it. The game has not changed. Look at it from the perspective of Tony Soprano:
I want to know why there’s zero growth in this family’s receipts. Where’s the money?! You’re supposed to be earners. That’s why you’ve got the top-tiered positions. So I want each one of you to go out to your people on the street, crack some heads, making some earnings.
Conquest for conquest sake was not the point. Making profit was the point. Rome had run out of profitable places to conquer in their vicinity.
One day, a year or so after my teenage daughter “broke up” with a boy whom we had gotten to know, (his mom had been diagnosed with cancer months before) I had a very strong feeling to contact him on Facebook and just ask how he had been doing.
He answered me immediately and said, my mom is dying. I told him that I knew she was sick, and that’s why I was checking on him. He said no… right now he is in the hospice room with her and her breathing has changed and he thought she was gone.
I asked him what he wanted to do, and he said he didn’t want to leave her. I told him it would be OK if he sat with her as long as he wanted, and when he was done he should go get the hospice staff and they would take care of her from there .
This was being done via Facebook messenger, and we sat quietly for about 5 to 10 minutes, when he said her hand was cold and he was ready to go. I told him let me know if there was anything I could do for him, and the next time I heard from him it was regarding the funeral.
On the day of the funeral my daughter and I were preparing to go and I stopped on the way to look for a card or something I could write on to share our condolences.
While standing in the card section I became frustrated I didn’t like anything that I saw, I decided a card didn’t feel right and I just wouldn’t do it… but on the way out I passed the candy section and felt a strong sense that I should buy some Skittles.
When arriving at the funeral and passing through the line with this young man and his brothers I gave him the skittles and said, “dude I brought you a rainbow”
The funeral service was lovely, his mother knew she was dying and planned most of it herself right down to the music. As the services ended they asked us all to enjoy her favorite song as we proceed out of the church.
My heart and my spirits were lifted immediately when the song started, it was “somewhere over the rainbow”
As I pass the boys again on the way out we all hugged and I made sure they knew that that message was from their mother, I didn’t even know her, but that message was from her!
At her exact moment of passing she somehow got into my psyche so I contacted her boy and virtually held his hand as she left. Then she made sure I brought him a message of hope, directly from her.
Except for the corrupt Bongbong Marcos government, no other country in Southeast Asia wants to be an enemy of China.
Except for the Philippines, no country in Southeast Asia is willing to become “Asian version Ukraine” used as cannon fodder by the United States.
In Russo-Ukrainian war the Americans politicians give ammunition, the rich ukrainian give the food and the poor ukrainian give their children… When the war is over the Americans politicians get back the leftover ammunition, the rich ukrainian grow more food and the poor ukrainian search for the graves of their children.
Using the lives of their own citizens as expendable goods to satisfy the ambition of American politicians to weaken China? — Southeast Asian people are not that stupid.
image 247
Even the Filipino people themselves are opposed to Bongbong Marcos colluding with the United States to provoke China on the South China Sea issue.
Do you really think they don’t know the Yanks’ sinister intentions of sowing discord and inciting discord?
Recently, there was even news that the former president of the Philippines protested against Bongbong Marcos for provoking China and promoting the independence of Philippine Mindanao.
image 248
Quora has netizens from Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Brunei and other countries along the South China Sea. You could do a broad social survey of them and quickly come to the same conclusion I did.
When my grandson Henry was about four we were very close, and he loved to hear me singing and playing guitar so when he was staying with us he’d ask me to sing for him. We’d sit in the lounge or conservatory and he’d be so silent and focussed – the best audience anyone could wish for!
One time I sang him the David Olney song “Women “Cross the River”
The last verse is :
The women ‘cross the river, they’re as gentle as the dew upon the ground
I love to hear them laughing when it rains and makes that perfect sound
Now a soldier with a gun, and a battle to be won
He might shoot you with a bullet – you’d never even know the reason why
But the women ‘cross the river, they could kill you with their eyes.
I finished with a graceful, slow arpeggio key chord, and he was staring at me, totally “in the song”.
Then, Henry sighed and said “what IS a perfect sound?” Four years old ! I was speechless.
One summer my kids and I were leaving the library and getting into our vehicle when a man got out of his truck that was parked beside us and asked if the kids would like a train set. I figured he had some little under the xmas tree set or something but he lifted a tarp in the back of his truck and showed us one one those huge sets!
He explained that he was on his way to leave it at a thrift shop but saw us and wondered if we would like it. It would save him the trip he said.
We said yes and he put it into the back of our truck.
It must have been worth a lot. I am sure he could have sold it to a collector instead. It took up most of the basement floor when we set it up. It was remote controlled and had little buildings and trees too. Lots of different sounds as well. It was older but in perfect condition.
We could never have afforded to buy anything like it.
I thanked him over and over and asked if there was anything we could do in return and he assured me no there wasn’t. Just knowing the kids would be enjoying it was enough. His kids loved it but his grandchildren were not interested in it.
My kids played with it for years. So did my husband and I.
We ended up donating it to a youth center a few years ago.
We normally did not drive a truck but that day due to temporarily being without a vehicle we had borrowed our in-laws truck otherwise we would have had no way to get it home.
Stay away from people who do back-bitching. If they can bad mouth someone in front of you, then how can you be sure they won’t do the same to you?
Never speak your heart out at work. Learn how to be diplomatic. That’s what everyone else is doing around you.
Office politics is for skill less people at work. Never involve yourself in it.
Never bargain your salary by showing other job offer letters to your current employer. Even if they increase your salary, you’ll be on their radar forever.
Efficiency is not equivalent to time. Stop staying late at work to prove yourself better.
No matter how close you are with your colleagues, never discuss personal matters at work.
You shouldn’t ask anyone’s salary, increment or anything personal.
Office romance is out of equation. It will make you miserable at work. Keep a thick line between work and personal life.
Work equally hard on your soft skills as they matter more than you think.
Czech Goulash
2024 02 21 06 25
Ingredients
1/4 cup shortening
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 pounds pork or beef, cubed
1 medium onion, chopped
1/4 teaspoon sweet or hot paprika
1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds (optional)
Salt and pepper, to taste
2 cups water
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Instructions
In a cast iron Dutch oven, sauté onion in shortening. Add garlic; sauté until translucent.
Add meat, onion, paprika, caraway seeds, salt and pepper. Brown well.
Add 1/2 cup of the water; simmer, covered, until meat is tender, about 1 hour.
Sprinkle flour over drippings in the pan; stir until brown.
My girlfriend and I went to the movies and she drove me home in her car. The route we took was very poorly lit and the lights on her dash were very dim, so it was very dark inside the car.
Along the way, I took out a packet of Dentyne gum (you know the kind whose pieces came in little blocks each with a small paper wrapping?)
I asked her if she’d like a piece and she said yes, so I tore the side of the package wrapping so she could grasp a piece without my having touched it. Then I got myself a piece and put the package back in my handbag.
About six days later, she picked me up to go for our weekend walk on the beach and as I got into the car she pointed down to the passenger floor and said huffily:
Before we leave, I’d appreciate it if you’d pick up the litter you left behind in my car last time and remember in future that my car is not your trashcan!
I looked down and saw that a piece of the paper gum wrapper on the floor. Apparently, in the dark, I’d thought I was putting the wrapper in my handbag along with the package, but the wrapper had landed on the floor instead.
I bent over and picked it up and said “I’m sorry. It was dark and I didn’t see that I’d dropped it on the floor.”
I should think so! she said in a repressive tone.
I got out of the car and went back into my apartment building and we never spoke again. I was angry and kind of disgusted that she let the offending piece of paper sit on the floor for six days just so she could scold me about it. I figured if it was so awful having this nasty piece of ‘trash’ in her car, why did she endure this horror for six whole days?
On Christmas Eve, somewhere in the mid-’80s, my mom dropped us off at her sister’s house. When my brother and I woke up on Christmas Day, we couldn’t believe our eyes.
Santa Claus had delivered the most epically packaged gifts I had ever gazed upon.
There were twirling ribbons and fluffy bows and shiny paper. It was just so beautiful. I was jealous and envious of my cousins.
They were always on the nice list.
Thirty years later, on December 26th of last year, I went to Kmart and Walmart. I went with fifty dollars and a plan.
image 243
I bought all the wrapping paper, bows, and ribbons that I could afford. I got 90–95 percent off of all that stuff.
image 242
I saved it for a whole year.
I’ve done this now every year for three years.
For Christmas, we can’t afford to buy the kids all new things. We buy a lot of second-hand clothing and school supplies for them.
But when it’s time to wrap those gifts, I spend night after night tirelessly tying ribbons and making bows.
image 241
I am in charge of ALL the wrapping. My girlfriend hates doing it, but I love it. It’s important to me and I do it for really inexpensive.
image 240
The kids have so much fun tearing all this stuff to pieces on Christmas morning and Jess and I have so much fun watching them do it.
This kind of stuff wouldn’t be important to me today if I didn’t look back.
I think looking back on our lives is very important, even if you’re looking back at a bad memory.
The good and the bad shape who we are in this moment.
Today I’m a gift wrapping machine and that’s a good thing.
That good thing was born out of a jealous and envious brat.
Not really a parking spot but revenge over a truck driver nonetheless… a truck driver was delivering a scissorlift and had to take it downstairs. Instead of driving the truck downstairs (parking is in the basement, and truck lifts bring the vehicles up and down), he insisted on his gears needed cooling down. And his truck had ‘broken down’ (think changing gears without the clutch). Naive as I was I believed him and let him brake down in the middle of the road for 30 minutes to make his delivery. As a result he held up half a dozen deliveries who couldnt get in or out until the truck moved. Miraculously his truck worked fine once the delivery was done.
Unfortunately I’m best friends with a guy who works for the tac, who does truck roadworthy inspections and has the power to take trucks off the road… a quiet word to him meant the trucking company had all of its trucks inspected, and given roadworthies as required. As for his own truck? As it’s already unroadworthy it was towed to the pound, and there it stays until a new transmission is replaced…
Yeah. I used to work with a miserable old (middle-age actually) hag who thought she was in charge in our dept. One day, I saw and heard our actual supervisor give her an order to do a particular job. As soon as the boss left, the “hag” brought it to me demanding I get it done ASAP, drop what I was doing etc. Well, I just let it sit there on my table. The boss came back, asked about the project and I hears the wannabe boss say “I gave it to him, don’t know what his problem is, he hasn’t touched it” The real boss looked at her an said, “ I told YOU to do it, NOT pass it on Go to my office and wait for me” She was fired……. so, in a way I got rid of a pain in everyone’s ass and literally did nothing to do it.
That’s how it works…
She took her ex to court to get full custody of a child that she abandoned with him, plus wanted alimony on top of it. It didn’t work out as she thought.
Dude, seeing the quiet satisfaction on Dad’s face brings me so much joy. He went into court that day just praying this judge would actually be responsible and not turn his life upsidedown. That’s beautiful.
It’s wonderful to see a father actually win in a system that never seems to help the father at all.
I was ten years old and had walked to the shopping mall to buy a loaf of bread for my mom. I had 42c in my pocket because that what a loaf of bread cost back then. When I got the mall I forgot why I was there and so I just started walking around randomly. I walked into a candy store that was advertizing a two for a penny sale. “gee I wish I had money,” I said to myself. “hey there are some coins in my pocket!” “wow – I’ve got 42 cents – that’s incredible. I can buy 84 candies!”
i then began to torture the shop assistant, “can I have two cola bottles, one sour gummy worm, two chocolate Brazil nuts, three milk bottles, one fizzy chew- no, make it two. Can I gave one of the fruit jellies, a yellow one please? And a red fruit gum – no that’s purple, I mean the other red …”
eventually I finished the grumpy shop assistant asked me for 42cents. I handed it over then …
”oh my god. I just remembered. It’s my moms money. I’m supposed to buy a loaf of bread with it. I’m really sorry, but I can’t buy the candy. can I have my money back please?”
”no way you foolish child …”
then I hear an old lady behind me say “ma’m please give him his money. I’d be happy to pay for his candy. ….” this kind lady made a huge impact on me and, 45 years later I still recall her kindness.
Yes. There was some busybody gossipmonger working at a local bank. When my father passed away and I was helping my mother deal with some of the financial things— such as taking his name off of their joint accounts— the teller started asking all sorts of personal questions that were none of her business. Asking if we planned to sell the place or move. We told her we didn’t know. It happened so suddenly and we were still reeling. We started getting phone calls and people showing up at our house asking when we were going to sell and how much we wanted for the place.
Apparently the loudmouth teller had started blabbing around town that we were going to sell and gave out our phone number (which was unlisted) and our home address. One of the people mentioned that “Shirley” had told them. I went back to the bank and asked to speak with her and asked her if she had told people we were planning to sell and if she gave our info to people. She said she was just trying to be helpful. I told her we were grieving and didn’t want people calling and nosing around our property and that what she did was a serious breach of privacy. I then asked to speak to the branch manager and told him what happened and how I did not want to do business with a bank with a teller who would give out my personal details to randos without my permission and that it was causing undue stress during an already stressful time. He didn’t fire her on the spot, but he send a letter to us later informing us that she’d been terminated.
We live out in the middle of nowhere to avoid people and our place is out of the way and hard to find. Having to deal with misinformed trespassers who were snooping around our yard because some blabbermouth lied to them and gave our info out would have been stressful enough under normal circumstances, but given we’d just lost my father suddenly & unexpectedly, it was doubly stressful.
It’s like watching a snake eat its own tail; predictable and entertaining.
It’s so sad. If I were in my 20’s in the USA, I’d leave as soon as I could.
At the age of 43, I found myself on the pavement with no money, no home, no job, and just the shirt on my back.
I walked into town and into a recruitment agency and took the only job they had which was badly paid, hard and unpleasant work. By being willing, I got a better job with them- still not a good job but paying better and slightly more pleasant.
At 45, I moved to Lincoln and got a better job with another agency on the back of my recent experience. By being both capable and willing, I got progressively better jobs until they offered to train me to be a trainer. I stayed as a trainer for the next ten years. My income was never as good as it had been in my youth but that was compensated by the international team I had the privilege to work with. I don’t think there was a single nationality I didn’t work with in that time. That was a very fulfilling period and the happiest time of my life.
Years ago when my daughter was maybe 7, she came home from school and I could tell something was bothering her. I told her to sit down at the kitchen table and tell me what was going on. She told me she couldn’t sit, and I asked why. She told me that a teacher had whipped her. I looked at her little bottom and there were welts. I don’t remember what caused the spanking, but leaving welts like that was totally uncalled for. I called the school, asked to speak with the teacher, and when she answered, I told her that I’d be happy to meet her outside so she could try hitting someone closer to her size. I was furious, and ready to have a go at her. She refused the offer, and I called the principal and told him what she’d done, and how she’d left welts on my child. The teacher was transferred. Hopefully, she never struck another child like that again.
For those who would have done things differently, whether by suing, filing a police report or demanding the teacher be fired, you missed the first two words of my post. Years ago. Years ago, teachers were allowed to whip/paddle students. Parents spanked their kids. If a parent would have demanded the teacher be fired, they would have been laughed at, and if the parents threatened to sue, I’m sure the school would have told them to go ahead and try. Before another commenter tells me what they would have done, research what was allowed years ago.
When I was 19, I worked behind the front desk of a 5-star hotel in a very affluent area of Florida. Rooms were normally between $700–1500 per night.
I checked in a guest from Washington D.C. who was very pleasant, and we had a great conversation. During our conversation, I mentioned that my family was primarily in the coastal areas of New York, and that they were all nervous about Hurricane Sandy (this is important).
3 days later, it was time for the guest to check out, but he had left his belongings in the room. The guest did not checkout until 7 PM, and logically, we had to charge him another night, since our housekeeping staff had gone home, and we would not be able to sell the room.
The guest lost it, screaming at our staff, slamming his fist on the counter, the whole show.
Then he spotted me.
With so much disdain, he snarled, “I hope that your family dies in that hurricane.” My manager immediately grabbed the back of my suit jacket, and pulled me into the back office, because he knew what was coming next. I still get angry thinking about that guest.
She was a brilliant Maths Teacher at Malappuram, Kerala, India. One day one of her student saw her at the railway begging for alms, but she couldn’t recognize her properly.
However when the student took a closer look, she recognized her class teacher. When the student asked her about her such a dire state, she told that after her retirement her family abandoned her and never came to know about her whereabouts so she started begging in front of the railway station.
The student broke down listening to her teacher’s story and took her home.
The student provided her Teacher with food & clothes and to secure her future contacted all those friends who were taught by their Maths teacher and took her to a better place to live her life peacefully.
So abandoned by her own family, the teacher was supported & taken care by her students whom she once taught.
This is I think the best example of Teacher-Student sacred & emotional bond and that HUMANITY is still alive.
OK I used to process payroll for a living. One day I got an envelope from the bank and inside was a notice that one of our checks had been flagged for fraud.
There was a copy of the check so I looked at it. Turns out this is one of our paychecks that was actually mailed out, rather than given out at work.
As usual, the check was made out like the following:
John Doe 1234 Any St Houston, Tx 77777
This allowed the name and address to show through a window on the envelope.
Someone had stolen the check from the guy’s mailbox. They took it and put it through a typewriter and added their own name followed by “ or” above the name on the check.
So it appeared as:
Steve Smith OR John Doe
Well… if the check had been made on a typewriter originally, that might have flown. But it was printed and the font looked nothing like a typewriter. So it was very obvious that the check had been tampered with.
What kind of idiot steals money by forging their own name on a check?
Of course, the check would never be honored by the bank, so I knew they hadn’t cashed it. Sure enough, it had been cashed at a liquor store. I called them up, and let them know they wouldn’t be getting paid for that check. They exploded on me. Told me they would be suing, etc. Sure you will…
I referred the whole thing to the police. Turns out the guy who stole the check and the guy at the liquor store who cashed the check were in cahoots. So I got two arrests for the price of one.
I was “written up” at one job by a senior manager. The comments included my failure to get a particular feature working on schedule. When I told him that I had not been assigned that task, and that my (direct) manager was doing it, the senior manager said I was just making excuses. Another complaint was that I had come in weekends to work on a feature that I thought would improve the project, instead of spending that unpaid overtime working on assigned tasks.
I was livid. I didn’t quit because I had just bought a house near the company. But I basically fell apart, and my work quality dropped dramatically.
The kicker was my re-review three months later. The same senior manager complimented me on toeing the line and doing exactly the tasks I’d been ordered to do. He rescinded the warning.
So I quit on the spot. *I* knew that my work had become substandard. It was even worse being complimented for bad work than being criticized for good work. There was no way I could have stayed at the company after that.
Moral: Don’t write up *anyone* without being really certain. Talk to them, talk to their co-workers. Find out what – if anything – is going on. Find out if they’re at fault, or if they’re being managed badly. If there’s an external issue, try to help the employee resolve it, or try to make allowances for it. But never do a writeup unless you plan to fire the person, and need to start the paper trail for that.
Trucker ELECTRICUTES SMUGGLERS with New Tool to Stop Smugglers inside
It happened some time ago when I was young and naive. I had just graduated from college and still had a modicum of that idealism and youthful exuberance that made me a particularly good mark. To be honest, I thought I knew more than I actually did and this blind spot allowed the incident to unfold.
A co-worker copied my signature and bank account information from some signed HR documents before sending them through inter-office mail and then used it to forge my name on some debit card purchases. I reported it as fraud to the bank and I was able to show that I did not actually buy the items.
About two months later, she was fired when she pulled the same trick on somebody else. The new mark had an account through the same bank that I had. A vigilant analyst noticed the same website and signature patterns from my case.
I bumped into her some months later while out in a night club with friends. She was drunk and with a friend. We joked and chatted as if nothing happened. I danced with both of them for a bit and then excused myself to leave.
As we parted ways with a hug, I told her in her ear, “I know that you stole my account information. I know that’s why you were fired.” She recoiled and turned away quickly with her friend — who was quite perplexed at her sudden change in demeanor.
Patience is the key. Crocodiles don’t go hunting. The prey comes to them.
Listening is the greatest life skill. Talking and not listening is the greatest folly.
If you don’t want other people to control your life avoid looking for a job no matter how high the pay.
Life has its irony. In school, people who succeed are those people who excel academically. In real life, people who succeed are those people who failed in school.
Don’t worry or stress yourself when you wake up each morning feeling like a failure or things are not working for you. That’s how life is designed. To feel bad when life is working for you.
The school of life is strange. People who actually succeed feel like they’re total failures. And in fact, they fail multiple times until they lose count.
Don’t hate anyone no matter how you feel about them. They have no idea that you hate them. You’re only hurting yourself.
In this life, your life is not sealed by fate. That’s the wrong way of looking at life. Your life is really like a blank cheque for you to fill with any number you decide.
We’re all born clean from debt. However, the lifestyles and paths we decide to choose puts us in all manner of debts that we will probably never recover from.
Be thankful for what you have, and don’t stress yourself about what you don’t have. Life won’t give you what you don’t have until you’re grateful for what you have.
Be the Rufus
Jack was about to fly home from New York to London when he met Violet at the gate and became her friend. Violet, an 88-year-old former nurse, was flying home after visiting her daughter, and she had never been able to afford an expensive first-class ticket. It was a dream of hers to do that someday. When it was time to board, Jack walked with Violet onto the plane, insisted that she take his first-class seat, and then went to the very back of the plane next to the restrooms, and sat in hers.
Stewardess Leah Amy found out about the switch and reported the story (these photos are hers), saying, “Jack never said a word or asked for anything. Of all the people I’ve met on hundreds of flights, including soccer players, supermodels, and movie stars, these two have been my favorite passengers.”
Baked Eggs on Toast (Jaja na Grzankach – Polish)
2024 02 21 06 24
Yield: 3 to 6 servings
Ingredients
6 slices white bread
Butter
3 tablespoons freshly-grated Parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon chopped fresh chives
6 eggs
Salt and freshly-ground pepper, to taste
Instructions
Toast the bread and butter it on both sides. Place on a baking sheet and, using the tips of your fingers, make a small depression in each piece of toast. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and chives. Carefully drop an egg onto each piece of toast and season with salt and pepper.
Bake in a preheated 400 degrees F oven for 5 to 10 minutes, until the eggs reach the desired degree of doneness.
Let me preface by saying this to add some context….
I have a rare immune system disorder called Common Variable Immunodeficiency, CVID for short. This means my body does not create antibodies and I have to get infusions every week to even have a chance of fighting infections. I essentially have no immune system so with that said, here goes:
a few years back (before they found the right medicine for my infusions) I was admitted to the hospital due to an infection of unknown nature. It was shutting my body down. My temp was 106 degrees farenheit. They decided to call in the emergency response team at 2 am and had me call my family. Things were getting worse and they were going to move me to ICU. While all of this was going on, a nurse on the team looked at me and said “you don’t look sick. You should be unconscious with everything going on with you”. One of the doctors on the team looked at him and said “This is a very critically ill patient. Although I’m not sure why she’s not presenting in worse condition, I am thankful that she is coherent enough to work with us so that we can understand how she feels… get your snarky ass out of this room. She doesn’t need that right now”.
Needless to say, he tucked his tail and ran. He did end up coming up to ICU and apologizing to me though. He said he didn’t mean it in a snarky way, he was just shocked that I wasn’t in worse shape. We sat and talked for awhile and he learned a thing or two about me and my rare condition.
You know there are a number of things that I miss from the “states that are particularly difficult to come by here in China. Not to bash China, but these things are rare, or completely heard of, outside of the mega-cities.
Milk Shakes. I had one at McDonald’s in Shenzhen back in 2013. Right before they stopped carrying it for lack of popularity.
Fresh sesame or onion bagels with cream cheese.
Cheese-It crackers.
Goldfish crackers… any flavor.
Crusty hard rolls.
A full turkey with stuffing.
Cold cuts (with the exception of prepackaged hams).
Grandmother “butter chips” pickles.
Pretzel sticks
Not that I am complaining. You see, there are tradeoffs. Sure, I might not have some of those processed snack foods, but there are so many food alternatives that are tastier, and better for me to eat here, that I am not bothered by it at all.
But still…
Having a butterscotch milk shake and ten tacos would be a nice treat every now and again.
It is common to see a row of tires placed next to military camp dormitories in Taiwan. What do you think is the purpose of placing tires next to military barracks dormitories?
2024 02 17 21 34
You won’t guess what the tires are for! Well let me tell you, they put these tires in to prevent Taiwanese soldiers from committing suicide.
Taiwanese soldiers are not only physically fragile, but also psychologically fragile. They are simply unable to face the bloody battlefield.
Because Taiwan’s military leaders are worried about accidents happening to soldiers during training, they are unable to explain to their families and public opinion. They can only keep lowering training standards and being accommodating, causing the physical condition of Taiwanese soldiers to get worse and worse, becoming outright “hothouse strawberries.”
Just imagine, if the PLA occupied Taiwan by force, when the sharp sirens sounded in the Taiwan military camp, how many Taiwanese soldiers who had hurriedly escaped would fall from the heights of their dormitories.
Before conducting ground operations, the PLA will definitely carry out targeted bombing of Taiwan’s airports, ports, and military camps to completely destroy the resistance of Taiwan’s navy and air force.
Multiple legions of the PLA landed on Taiwan Island, established headquarters, and began to enter the city. The so-called Taiwan Army’s special forces soldiers are probably still queuing up to receive their guns.
Basically all the generals of the People’s Liberation Army participated in the 1979 Sino-Vietnam conflict. On the Syrian battlefield, the PLA central theater and western theater dispatched multiple divisions to participate in actual combat training against “ISIS”. But in Taiwan, only General Xu Linong, who is over 100 years old, has participated in actual combat, and the new generation has never been on the battlefield.
This is the real Taiwanese military and will make you feel a sense of absurdity.
I did not witness it, but the crime was so pointless and stupid that I still cannot wrap my head around it.
A good friend of mine has been a police officer since leaving the military in the late 90’s. He has no shortage of stories of dumb things people do on bad days. This one sticks out to me as particularly pointless.
As a new recruit, he and his training officer responded to a low-priority call about a tractor-trailer idling in a residential area. It was a cold night and the driver was probably trying to heat the sleeping compartment. Maybe contrary to a noise or anti-pollution bylaw, but about as mundane as it comes.
They walk up. The supervisor raps on the cab door and yells to shut off the truck. No response. Bangs harder. Yells louder. Then from inside the truck a muffled answer: “F*** Off!”
Seriously?? They bang again, tell the guy to move his truck or shut it off. “F*** Off!”
They look at each other in disbelief. They weren’t there to arrest him. All he had to do was shut off the truck. Then start up again 5 minutes after they leave. Or just drive away. Instead, he’s swearing at 2 police officers.
The driver is shaking off the sleep and is getting more aggressive. The officers can’t walk away, but (probably) can’t force entry either. A standoff. A pointless standoff.
Then the driver throws the door open and jumps them. They try to restrain and subdue him. But this guy is strong. And mad.
The two officers should have been able to gain control quickly. My friend was not experienced yet, but he was big, well-trained, and had been an amateur kick-boxer before serving in the infantry. But he could not believe how brutal the fight was
It took everything out of them, but of course they get him down. Solid as he was, the truck driver could not win that fight. And now they could search the vehicle. Drugs. Well past the threshold for personal possession. Enough drugs that they are presumed to be for the purpose of distribution.
Drugs that never would have been found if he had just shut off the damn truck.
For the life of me, I do not know how that man’s brain operated. So easy to avoid trouble. So many reasons to avoid trouble. Instead he attacks two police officers and sends himself to jail for a long, long time.
** Edit **
Might be worth pointing out that my friend has never described any encounter as a “dumb thing” done on a bad day. Those were my words, not his. He has seen a lot of bad things, a lot of people at their very worst. But he does not trivialize anyone’s experience and feels it is his place to keep the peace, not to judge. In other words, a far better man than I could ever be.
Shrimp Arancine
Shrimp Arancine (Arancini) is a wonderful Sicilian street food.
2024 02 17 14 55
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
Shrimp Filling
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 shallot, minced
1/3 pound shelled shrimp, finely diced
Salt and pepper
1/3 cup cream
1/4 cup minced parsley
Rice
1 1/2 cups rice
2 teaspoons curry powder
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup freshly-grated Parmigiano cheese
2 eggs
Breading and Frying
2 eggs
Salt and pepper
Bread crumbs
All-purpose flour
Oil for frying
Instructions
Shrimp Filling
Melt butter and sauté the shallot until it begins to wilt. Stir in the shrimp, cook for a minute more, and stir in the cream. Season the mixture with salt and pepper, continue cooking it over a brisk flame until it has become fairly thick, and stir in the minced parsley. Then remove the pan from the fire and let the filling cool.
Rice
While you’re cooking the filling, bring a pot of lightly salted water to a boil.
Add the rice and the curry powder. Drain the rice when it’s still a little al dente and mix the butter and cheese into it while it’s still hot, then lightly beat the eggs and stir them in also.
Breading and Frying
When everything else is ready, lightly beat the eggs and season them with salt and pepper.
Heat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C).
Make the first arancine by taking two small handsful of rice and shaping them into hollow balls. Fill the hollows with shrimp filling, and mold the two halves together to obtain a smooth-sided rice ball about the size of a small orange (1.5 to 2 inches in diameter). Roll the arancine in flour, dredge it in the beaten egg, roll it well in the breadcrumbs, and fry it in deep hot oil. While it’s cooking begin with the next, and when it has become a golden brown, drain it on absorbent paper.
When you have finished frying the arancini, heat them through in the oven for five minutes, decorate them with orange leaves if desired, and serve them hot.
It’s the Christmas of 1916, and you are a 24-year-old sentry on his duty outside your platoon’s camp in Lithuania.
It’s in the middle of the night and it’s hard to keep your eyes open, it’s cold, miserable, and windy.
You are dreaming about how good it would be to be back home, sitting in front of a fireplace, eating that Bienenstich prepared by your wife.
But all of a sudden you hear a noise coming from the bushes, “What was that?”, you ask yourself when suddenly of your buddies screams, “Achtung!”
This wasn’t an isolated incident, it happened throughout the forests of Lithuania, modern-day Poland, and Belarus.
Wolves back then used to roam the vast expanses of Eastern Europe more freely than they do today, food was in plenty and life was good.
Then the war broke out and that wasn’t the case anymore, the hunting grounds of these wolves were disturbed as their prey was slaughtered for food by both the armies, or was killed during a battle.
The first of these attacks happened in Poland in 1915 when a bunch of wolves started to migrate towards urban areas due to a lack of food and started to attack cattle.
By late 1916, things got extreme as there was no more food left (even cattle), and as their hunger overpowered their fear of humans, they started to attack unsuspecting sentries in the middle of the night, feeding on dead and wounded soldiers in the middle of the battle and sometimes ambushing convoys.
Neither the Russians nor the Germans had the patience to deal with those canines and would turn on packs of wolves and boy would the wolves be coming in hot.
If the regular infantry stopped attacking each other, then that was a sign taken by everyone including snipers, mortarmen, artillery spotters, etc, who too would stop and start assisting the infantrymen in gunning down the incoming wolves by spotting them but the wolves would just keep on coming like one of those video games where the enemy seems to have infinite respawns.
In one incident, several hundreds of wolves (around 300) were killed with no humans dead and only a few wounded but still, this was not enough to dissuade the wolves who would continue these attacks well into 1918 after which they abruptly ceased, however, some places, mainly in Belarus would continue to have a problem with wolves up until early 1919 but these too would stop once their prey in that region was available again.
I was on a solo trip then. I booked a bike tour in Berlin and we were told that we’d be leaving in 10 minutes so if we wanted to go to the restroom we ought to do it now. I was falling in line with other tourmates to the only restroom in the shop and for some reason, a group of American teenagers took notice of a small bike displayed in the shop. One said, “Who would ride that?!” then she noticed me, and their group burst into laughter. I acted like I didn’t hear it and moved on.
For context, I look like a typical Asian, with a height an inch below 5 feet, a child-like face, and a petite build. At that time I was on a trip for a Polish conference and was spending a few days in Berlin to tour around. I was 30 years old then.
Indeed, the “adult” bike was too big for me and the tour guide fetched me a smaller one before we took off.
During the tour, I was asking a few history questions to the tour guide and after a while into the conversation (I talked to him during our free time), I caught a glimpse of the girl and her group’s faces.
She/They looked astonished that I was conversing with the guide in straight English. Which means, I understood every word of their little chatter back at the shop.
My gramps bought a “Dirty Harry” .44 magnum in the mid-70s. My Dad brought it over a couple of years ago to store in my gun safe. Shortly after, I took it to a local indoor range to try it out with a buddy of mine. How could we not?
We both got 40″x24″ paper targets and hung them at the max distance (50 feet+).
image 229
We held the .44 Magnum one-handed, just like Harry Callahan, and gave it a try.
image 14
We each shot 6 shots in fairly rapid succession, pausing only long enough to re-acquire the target. I hit the paper a grand total of one time. He hit the paper twice. Neither of us hit the actual target on the paper.
Granted our ‘test’ wasn’t controlled or really all that fair because we were just having fun with it. But we’re both pretty good shots and we both expected to hit the target a couple of times.
We both had perfectly good targets so we tried again with some of our more comfortably shooting pistols and we both did much better.
In comparison, my semi-custom 1911 in .45 ACP and my Ruger Vaqueros in .357 are both a LOT easier to shoot than that .44 Magnum. And, of course, my 9mm is even easier.
That said, for home defense my favorite pistol is still a shotgun.
The discard happens emotionally before physically.
Here’s how it plays out.
Their replies to you via text or voice are short, non engaging, kinda ‘fed up’ bored vibe to them and they will keep you on unread and take waaaaaay longer in replying back to you.
They stop asking anything or everything about you and what is going on in your life. They never ask about the doctor follow up appointment, or “how’s your day?” They have zero interest and if you do by chance have the opportunity in holding the ‘talking stick’ they are looking out the window as you communicate or switch the topic mid your sentence. You are simply not there and not important in their mind.
You will notice they are doing more single things – that invite, party, event.. they could only get one ticket too.. and its not their fault you are not on the guest list now is it?
Their interest changes in things they talk about doing – almost like it is someone else talking about these things – they will go on and on about a bike ride they will achieve, or a long hike at a place that is all of a sudden a new interest for them to visit. But you know it is coming straight from the mouth of someone else.
They will wait for you to blow your top on something said or done and they will use this as the exit door for silent treatments/ghosting or discards to be able to blame you for being nuts and then run off into the hills to play.
They will put you down more, scorn on your self improvement, thoughts or plans. Generally undermine and underpin any positive action or talk off by being dismissive or remind you that you are and will not be able to achieve any of what you talk off.
They will give nothing away. The breadcrumbs you once hung on to will become sparce, nada, nothing and you will feel inside that dreaded anxious panic feeling that you know something ain’t right and your egg shell walking will turn into marathon running across hot coals to try to please them.
You will doubt yourself more and more and more.
The discard is a process, even though it may seem like a brutal ending at first when you look back you can see the lead up clear as day. It might happen over days, months years and if you have been through the cycle a few times by now, you can set your grand fathers watch to it.
They are self serving creatures and highly predictable once you know the narc code. They are game set match and you realize they are more reliable than an egg timer.
Funny little fuckers aren’t they.
Chicken or Veal Scallopini
2024 02 17 08 31
Ingredients
1 pound chicken breasts or veal cutlets (cut thin)
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
2/3 cup Italian seasoned bread crumbs
1 teaspoon garlic powder
Salt and pepper
1/4 cup pure olive oil
Instructions
Pound chicken or veal gently between wax paper ( 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick for veal and 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick for chicken).
In a shallow bowl, combine Parmesan cheese, bread crumbs, and garlic powder. Pour 1/2 cup olive oil in another shallow bowl.
Dip each chicken or veal piece into olive oil and let excess drip. Press meat into bread crumb mixture, coating well and set aside until all meat is breaded.
In a heavy nonstick skillet, heat oil over medium heat and sauté until golden on both sides.
Drain on paper towels and serve with pasta and red sauce.
This was a dude I had dated for some months. First mistake I made was agreeing to start a relationship while trying to finish college. Needless to say I was too busy to pay attention to this guy’s immaturity and lack of personality. Soon after I graduated, the red flags became glaring; his disrespect was consistent and intentional. He refused to show up to my graduation, choosing instead to go hang out with his boys. After that incident I decided to remove myself from the relationship and observe things for a while before making the final decision to completely walk away.
It didn’t take long for him to help me make up my mind. A mutual friend got married so we attended (separately). At the reception I had gone to sit by myself in the hotel lobby when he and one of his friends joined me. They made small talk and whatnot while I did my best to be polite. Then a family passed by, they had a neuro-divergent child around 7 or 8 years old. You could tell from his mannerisms ; soon as he saw my green velvet dress, he wanted to stroke it to his mother’s horror and wouldn’t take no for an answer. I told mom it was okay. I let him touch my dress, gave him a smile and when he was ready, he left. Soon as mom and son left, my ex started laughing and saying, “Autism! Hahahaha”, “Autism!”, “Autism!Hahaha”.
Both his friend and I sat stone-faced, looking at him while he made fun of a child with a condition he had no control over. I was so shocked, my usual retorts, wisecracks and one-liners left me.
That was the day I decided I was not going back to that donkey 🫏. This was 2007. I’ve been married 13 years now, dude is pushing 50 and is still single and childless (and no he’s not single by choice.) I guess no one really cares to stay and do life with a gaping a$$h0le.
It shouldn’t have happened, and no one was blameless.
Mid 1970s, Los Angeles, California. Management decided to hire outside experts to help adjust management and staff attitudes to increase productivity and decrease staff turnovers.
The experts decided that promoting ‘We are a family’ would accomplish company goals. Everyone was expected to attend 2 interoffice workshops a month in which we were encouraged to be ‘like family’ with each other, to share, to become close. A company picnic, a games day and a mid-year party were scheduled (on weekends). Families were invited.
Betty, a longtime, close-to-retirement employee, shook her head and called it ‘nonsense.’
Gary, a top salesman, was friendly, always ready with a little joke and very well liked. He was a pudgy teddy bear, married with five children, living in a two-bedroom home. His wife was a sweetheart, a full-time mom and Gary’s biggest fan.
In the spirit of ‘family,’ Gary shared that his wife had had three miscarriages and had been warned that if she became pregnant again, her chances of living were 30%.
When Gary later proudly announced that his wife was pregnant again, the female staff became incensed, and for days, trouble brewed.
Rita, a tough, direct, three-times-married, 40-year-old who worked closest with Gary chose herself to represent his company ‘sisters’ to confront him.
Betty warned that this ‘family’ intervention would all go wrong. She, like an all-knowing grandmother, was so right.
Gary’s office was glass on three sides, with a wall and window at his back. Anyone could look in, and when Rita strode into his office, many of the female staff took full advantage and stood in groups nearby. Gary, of course, could see this, but had no idea what was going on.
Rita began berating a stunned, deeply reddening Gary. We couldn’t hear clearly, but their faces and gestures told an angry story.
After a bit, Gary ordered Rita out, and she left, slamming his office door so strongly that it was like an explosion, rattling the other glass offices. She disappeared, swearing, into the Ladies’ Room, with friends.
Gary sat for less than a minute, then stood and swept everything off of his desk in several moves. He did the same to files, pictures and mementos on the credenza behind him. He slammed an upper cabinet door over and over, pulled everything out and then tugged one of the cabinet doors off. He dumped his desk drawers on the floor and kicked over the chairs.
As his final act, he heaved a potted plant against his office’s front glass. It cracked but didn’t shatter.
In the spirit of family, Gary (like a favorite son) was told to take a week of vacation time to ‘feel better.’ Rita (treated as a black-sheep, troublemaker) was chastised and threatened with reprisals (no raises, promotions) until 60% of her ‘sisters’ quietly threatened a mass ‘sick out.’
We all received a memo which lengthily described professional office behavior, and the word ‘family’ was glaringly absent. The workshops were discontinued, and the experts never seen again.
Betty harumphed a “I told you so.”
Note: Gary came back and acted as though nothing had happened. Rita moved to another department, and they never spoke to each other again.
Gary’s wife had a near-fatal miscarriage a short time later and had a life-saving hysterectomy.
I’VE BEEN ROBBED. REASON PEOPLE ARE QUITTING YOUTUBE.
At the age of 57 the company I worked for announced they were closing our division. I knew because of my age I might have difficulties finding another job. I decided to keep a positive attitude.
I also started putting together a list of the things I had done at other organizations. Things like problems I had solved, cost reductions with suppliers and operational improvements. The type of things that I could bring to another organization. The other thing I did is I reached out to my professional contacts. Within two weeks I had a list of around 20 companies that were looking to fill a position in my field. I then sent out resumes making sure each was tailored to the needs of that company.
About a week later I had 9 interviews. From those 9 initial interviews I ended up with 4 job offers. From finding out in early February that I was out of a job, to starting a new job in early May. I went into the interviews with a good attitude, used my many years of experience as a positive and focused on what I could do for their organization.
Being out of work at 45 is not the end of the world, but rather a chance to write a new chapter in your life’s story.
There’s a very wealthy guy who lives not too far from me in St. Louis. I interviewed him once for my publication and we had several other meetings. He’s got to be worth a few hundred million, but I’ve never seen him dressed in anything but jeans and a flannel shirt, even on the rare occasions when he spoke on panels at local events.
He’s a very down-to-earth guy who made his initial money trading grain, then made even more money in real estate. He owned a mill and a river terminal at one point. His house is nice and probably worth more than a million, but it’s just a house—it’s by no means a McMansion or anything. I’ve never been in it but it’s on a private street just around the corner from the same supermarket where I shop.
He became briefly notorious in my hometown when the city put up a bunch of vacant buildings and lots for sale in the late 1990s. He bought up a bunch of them, turned around and sold them to developers, making something like a $10 million profit in 24 hours. There was an outcry in the papers and a phony “investigation” that didn’t amount to anything because the only thing it revealed was that the city was stupid and he was smart. The city should have been able to make those deals itself.
Like F. Scott Fitzgerald said, the very rich are different from you and me.
PEOPLE ARE DEAD BROKE! Credit Debt and Delinquencies EXPLODING!
What as a cop, is the assignment that would make you want to quit your job?
That’s an easy one. Internal Affairs! I did this job for six long years and wanted to quit almost every day. I will make my case:
You get to investigate people who you have worked side by side with for many years.
You have to be objective in your investigations which is not what fellow officers are expecting.
You get to sustain charges and recommend discipline to the chief. The chief then decides to hammer the officer with a more severe penalty, and you get to deliver the bad news as if it was your idea.
You must get in the middle of officers domestic disputes, going to their homes and interviewing their wives. Talk about being popular.
When an officer isn’t cutting it or screws up badly, you get to take their gun, ID, and shield. I have a couple of officers who never got over that moment.
You have officers who genuinely blame you for the discipline that they brought on themselves by doing dumb things.
You have officers investigating you on their off time trying to find something they can use as leverage or payback.
Everyone tiptoes around you and tries disingenuously to get and stay on your good side. Then they trash you as soon as you retire because you’re no longer a threat.
You get to take your fellow officers to court and testify against them.
You get to conduct confrontational interrogations with fellow officers.
You get accused by the public of covering up police corruption, while at the same time being accused of being a headhunter by your fellow officers.
Once you’re in Internal Affairs for more than a couple years, there is no path out except retirement.
An officer can do a lousy job at IA and never find any wrong-doing and remain popular. This to me is allowing and condoning police misconduct. However, if you conduct your investigations fairly and without blinders, you will be universally disliked.
If someone is trying to make you decide in a hurry, they are probably giving you a bad deal. Walk away.
If you want to make someone feel uncomfortable, look at their forehead when you’re talking to them.
Sometimes pretending that you are naive gets you more information.
If you want to avoid office politics, say good things about coworkers behind their backs.
Physical contact makes you more likely to say yes to a request.
When a group of people laugh, they tend to look at the person they like the most.
Nervousness and excitement have the same body reaction, so if you’re nervous for a speech, instead convince yourself you’re excited. Its proven to give better speeches, too.
Ask for something that seems small, but is related, to what you really want. Then, once they’ve agreed to the small thing, just work up with slightly larger requests until you’ve achieved the desired outcome.
BRAINWASHED College Student Gets SHUT DOWN By Michael Knowles
One frosty evening, as the clock struck 10, there came a mighty bang on my iron gate. Intrigued, I ventured forth to find a young lass standing there, fashionably dressed but sorely lacking in winter wear. Bald as a baby’s bottom with a black cloth wrapped around her noggin, she wore a look of utter befuddlement.
“Can I come in?” she implored. I ushered her onto the porch, where the whole family soon gathered, eager to unravel the mystery.
She spun a yarn about being a long-lost classmate of my nephew, whom she hadn’t seen since dinosaurs roamed the earth but somehow remembered his name.
Her tale took a wild turn as she divulged a family saga involving terrorism, sounding more like a B-movie plot than anything from the real world.
My nephew, blissfully oblivious in his far-off land, confirmed her identity as a former classmate from their days of yore, though he knew zilch about her current escapades. We were all left scratching our heads.
Sensing her screws might be a bit loose, I nixed the idea of summoning the cops and instead rang up the school, where I had a few favors to call in.
Like detectives on a sugar rush, they rifled through ancient files, unearthing her home address and digits.
Her father materialized at our doorstep, frantic from hours of searching. He spilled the beans about her battles with the blues and thanked us profusely for our help.
But the million-dollar question remained: How did she know my address and my nephew’s name?
Living in a cozy small town where everybody knows everybody else’s business, we later found out that the girl had always been a few crayons short of a full box, even back in her school days. Turns out, her story was more twisted than a pretzel in a cyclone.
Don’t smoke cigarettes, like ever. Don’t get caught up in drugs. Manage your blood pressure and cholesterol for the duration of your life. If you let that get out of control, it can damage your heart and arteries in ways that will catch up to you later.
Sure, there are people out there who just do whatever they flipping want and live to 100, but it’s far, far less common for them to live that long.
See a doctor on a regular basis. Stay active and on your feet and exercise regularly.
Another thing that’s rarely mentioned, maintain positive relationships with people. Human connections are critical for happiness and longevity. No man is an island.
Not me but an old friend. This was back in the pre-internet days and in more innocent times.
He created a company called something like “Big Dildos Ltd”.
He then had some mail order catalogues printed, the content of which was relatively discrete but adult-themed – sexy lingerie, battery operated “massage devices”, etc.
The catalogues were delivered to lots of addresses in mostly middle-classes neighbourhoods.
When he received an order, along with a cheque, he would bank the cheque and sit on the money for a few weeks – thereby earning interest on money received.
After a few weeks, he would send a letter to tell the customer he was out of stock for that item and not expecting any more stock, along with a cheque to refund the money.
But here is the real “loophole”. The cheque he sent to return the money had the company name clearly printed on it.
Turns out that many/ the majority of people who placed these orders were too embarrassed to deposit that cheque into their own accounts.
Because he was refunding the money and he always kept a few items listed in the catalogue in stock (at home and generally for personal use between him and his wife), he wasn’t doing anything illegal.
A genius plan that clearly wouldn’t work these days because people can order what they want from the internet, people are far less concerned about anyone knowing that they own such “personal” items and things would all be done by credit card or bank transfer.
When I taught at a private school in a wealthy suburb of Chicago, several of my middle school-aged students were the children of wealthy parents. They were (mostly) very nice, courteous, and studious students. The only thing that shocked me was how oblivious some of them were as to how wealthy and privileged they really were. Like:
The boy who liked to write about his weekend trips with his parents. There were trips around the country during normal weekends, and international trips during long weekends. His father was an executive at Boeing, and I guess traveling was free or cheap to them, so this kid saw more of the world by the time he was 12 than most people see in their entire lives.
The girl who sometimes mentioned that her “dad’s truck had his name on it.” What she failed to mention was that it wasn’t just one truck, but a fleet of delivery trucks for her father’s high-end deli meat business. She thought this was a normal thing… for your family’s name to be on trucks throughout the midwest.
The girl who would spend 3–4 hours after school most days training as a competitive swimmer. Her coach was a former Olympic medal winner. The student seemed really bored by the whole sport, but she ended up getting a full college scholarship and becoming the captain of her college swim team because of it.
The girl whose grandfather purchased brand new MacBooks and charging carts for the school, some 150 MacBooks, total. I was told that he was on the school board, and they were talking about tech for the school, and when the Mac sales rep came to speak with them, he did most of the talking, negotiated the price, and paid for it all himself. He made his fortune owning some sort of electronics retail business before he retired.
But these kids were all ages 11–14 when I taught them. They were always nice enough to me, but if they were snobby with their peers, I never saw it. I just remember, as a broke 30-year-old new teacher at the time, being continually shocked by how oblivious some of those students were as to how lucky they were.
Not so much weird as sad. I had one little girl in my class who had just joined us from another school where she had been having problems. When she came to us she was very withdrawn and shy. So I sat her next to, and encouraged a friendship with, another child, a little boy who was delightful but a little loud and very gregarious. The pair complemented each other beautifully and I kept a close eye on them. Within a week or so they were inseparable, it was a way of getting two birds with one stone, since my loud and sometimes a little too enthusiastic boy benefited from the calming influence of the girl, while she was included in all the games, etc, he was and they were soon BFFs.
However, the sad part was that one day, when we were having a quiet time after lunch (they were all very young and Special Needs, so usually about half the class would nap and the other half I’d read to) the little girl confided in me that she loved me, because I was nicer to her than her last teacher in her other school. I was intrigued and gently questioned her, without making a big deal of it, just having a quiet conversation. From what she told me, this other teacher was a horrible bully and had told her repeatedly that she was “a bad student”. I felt a lot of anger at this; this little girl was a lovely kid but it was clear she’d taken the other teacher’s words deeply to heart.
I spent the rest of that school year helping to bolster her self-confidence. This was a few years ago, she has since gone on to high school and I see her and her family now and then. She is still a lovely young girl and I’m glad I helped her in however small a way. Oh, and her BFF is now her boyfriend!
One evening in 1980 the doorbell rang, which seldom happened at our exurban home. I knew my brother was working on his car in the driveway, so this was strange.
I answered it to see a 60+ year old man, a woman of the same age peeking behind him, and my brother standing 10 feet back grinning like a fool.
“May I speak to Mr. Norman (last name)?” he said in a foreign accent, mispronouncing the last name. I called my dad to the door, and the man said, “Hello. I am your cousin Herbert from Germany.”
Dad was a little dumbfounded, and my brother giggling made him wonder if it was a prank. “I don’t think I have a cousin Herbert.”
The man pulled out his wallet and produced my dad’s confirmation portrait, taken when he was 13 years old. Forty-two years earlier. “Is this you?”
A long-lost cousin from the Old Country!
An instant friendship was forged that night. Herbert was grateful to hear that we pronounced our name as he did, he figured we’d Americanized it (hence the mispronunciation), but was glad to find we hadn’t.
We learned that after WWII, he and his mother received some kind of postwar donations from my great-aunts. “They saved our lives, we would have starved to death.” He still had the certificates from the donation program.
He was amazed my dad spoke excellent German with a ‘Pomeranian’ accent, knowing Dad had been born in the US, 35 years after the family arrived here in 1890. But my dad, surrounded by a family of immigrants, had spoken only German until he went to school. And when we had him try our homemade sauerkraut, he said, “It’s just like I remember my parents making!”
Ninety years after the family moved an ocean away, two old guys found themselves with so much in common it was like finding a brother, right on our doorstep.
Breaking! Outrage when no one stood for The Super Bowl! ”The Black National Anthem”
The US should leave the Chinese alone. The more the US tries to derail China the more hurts the Americans are going to get
The tariff for China products ended up pretty badly, most cost are paid by the American users themselves.
The US government hope to isolate China ended up them getting isolated now.
The US ban on semiconductors sale to China ended up the American semiconductor industry losing 16 billions every year.
The US ban on China’s participation in its space program ended well for the Chinese, they have their own space technology with as many countries participants. The latest news on this one is, the US coerced the European countries not to participate, which shows us that the US is not a democratic Republic.
The US ban on China’s trade , the embargos on technology ended up badly for the US because the Chinese has other trading partners, by and by America could be isolated into a corner.
I can go further but I would stop here.
In conclusion the US government is not smart.
Now , some questions for people:
What are we going to do about the terrorists attack on the Nordstrom pipeline; the foreign led insurgents in HK, Tibet , Syria and Xinjiang, the torture of Eurasian prisoners in Guantanamo, the torturing and the killing of civilians in Iraq , Afghanistan, the bombing of Iraq where no WMD was found, the killing of 7 nuclear scientists of a Sovereign State, the stealing of gold and oil from Iraq, and oil from Syria , etc?
CAN they? Absolutely! SHOULD they? Depends on the circumstances.
Last time I went to the ER was about 10 or so years ago. I had a high pulse rate, jaw hurt, dizziness, and pain radiating down my arm after an afternoon of shoveling snow. All signs of a heart attack.
They ran a bunch of tests that all came back normal. The doc walked in and flung a piece of paper at me. “You’re fine. While it may seem better safe than sorry, you’ve wasted everyone’s time tonight. Your blood tests, EKG, and everything else looks fine. The only thing that appears wrong is the Xray shows a slight issue in your neck. You’ve got a pinched nerve which is causing your arm pain. That obviously made you nervous, causing your heart rate to go up. You need to just go home, take a Xanax, and go to sleep. Next time, think before coming in. You’re not even 40 and worrying about a heart attack!” Then, he left to tell the nurse. We could hear him talking to her, “Send him home. There’s nothing we can do for him when we have others waiting with more important issues.”
I told my regular doc what happened. “Yeah, he’s like that. He’s great at what he does, but can’t seem to grasp the humanity side of things.”
There was also the time when an ER doc was rude and called out on it by my GI. I was newly diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and was having a flare. High fever, bleeding, everything. I had pooped so much there was nothing left when they wanted me to give a sample to see what the problem was. “You’re just constipated. We’ll give you something to help with that.” When I told him that I had UC, he said, “What do you know about it? You’re not showing any signs other than “a wittle tummy ache” (in a condescending tone).” My GI had walked in just as that was being said and told the ER doc, “He’s got UC. I’ll take over now.” ER doc said, “What would you know about it, intern?” My GI said, “I’ve been practicing for almost 30 years. Look my name up in the directory and you’ll see I’m head of gastroenterology here. I suggest you let me tend to my patient now.” ER doc scampered off somewhere and I never saw him again.
His father is quite old and therefore ,a little weak too. While eating, food occasionally fell on his shirt and pants. The other guests watched the old man with their faces contorted in disgust,but his son remained calm.After they both finished eating,the son quietly helped his father and took him to the toilet. Cleaned food scraps from his crampled face and attempted to wash food stains on his clothes, graciously combed his gray hair and finally put on his glasses.
As they left the restroom, a deep silence reigned in the restaurant. The son paid their bill but just before they leave, a man, also old, got up and ask the old man’s son , “Don’t you think you left something here?”
The young man replied “I did not
leave anything.”
Then the stranger said to him,”You left a lesson here for every son and a hope for every father.”
The whole restaurant was so quiet, you could hear a pin drop!
One of the greatest honours that exist ,is being able to take care of those who have taken care of us too.Our parents and all those elders who sacrificed their lives with all their time, money and effort for us, deserve our utmost respect .
You know that feeling when you’re going down a flight of stairs and you miss one?
That was the way I felt when I shook hands with another attendee at a martial arts workshop I went to many years ago- like I was suddenly falling and disoriented and scared. The second I took his hand, that feeling hit me, and I nearly felt sick.
This guy wasn’t exactly intimidating- he was actually kind of nerdy and awkward-looking. I couldn’t figure out why he made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, but I felt awful whenever he was nearby.
I was so uncomfortable that at the end of the workshop, I went to my biggest, strongest looking buddy and asked him if he’d walk me home. I felt stupid for being scared, so I didn’t tell him why- I just made up some excuse. He said he would, and I told him to meet me at the exit to the women’s locker room, at the back of the building.
When I left the locker room, I found the guy waiting for me- sort of poking his head around the corner of the building and staring at me. When I locked eyes with him, he stepped out of the shadows and into my path. He didn’t say a word- he just marched toward me, unblinking. At that exact moment, my buddy came around the other side of the building and shouted a hello. I looked over to him, and then back at the guy in front of me- who was now running away.
As my friend reached the place where I was standing, he looked over my shoulder and said, “Did that guy just SNARL at me?! What’s HIS problem?”
I told him that I thought I had just dodged a bullet and that drinks were on me.
Caught Wife Cheating, So I Drained Millions From Our Accounts, Got A New Identity & Left The Country
I am 14, I work in my father’s office in summers and recently a very talkative girl was hired. She was introduced to us and after a few hours I went out to a restaurant for lunch.
I sat down after ordering and saw the new girl come in. She noticed me after she found her own table, right across mine. We didn’t talk or greet each other. She got a call from whom I assume is her best friend. She was talking very loudly in English, about how the office was.
“They see everything I do! I can’t even pick my nose without them noticing!” she exclaimed.
And I was resisting laughing, thinking: “Ironic…”
And she talked about who she didn’t like in the office, things that offended her etc.
“The boss’s daughter is staring right at me, creepy girl…” She said.
And she waved at me.
Later that day she asked me what work I do in an office like this. I said that I did English translations. Her face went pale that moment.
A welding story
image 228
A customer asked me how much it cost to do this job….
I answered him: $ 1500
He said: So expensive for this job?
I asked: How much do you think it would cost you?
He answers me: $ 800 maximum… That’s a pretty simple job right? !”
– For $ 800 I invite you to do it yourself.
– But…. I don’t know how to.
– For $800 I’ll teach you how to. So besides saving you $700, you’ll get the knowledge for the next time you want
– It seemed right to him and he agreed.
– But to get started: you need tools: A welder, grinder, chop saw, drill press, welding hood, gloves etc…
– But I don’t have all these equipment and I can’t buy all of these for one job.
– Well then for another $300 more I’ll rent my stuff to you so you can do it.
– Okay, he says.
– Okay! Tuesday I’m waiting for you to start doing this work
– But I can’t on Tuesday I only have time today.
– I’m sorry, but I’m only available Tuesday to teach you and lend you my stuff. Other days are busy with other customers.
– Okay! That means I’m going to have to sacrifice my Tuesday, give up my tasks.
– I forgot. To do your job yourself, you also have to pay for the nonproductive factors.
– That is? What is this?”
– Bureaucratic, tax, vat, security, insurance, fuel etc.
– Oh no!… But to accomplish these tasks, I’m going to spend more money and waste a lot of time!
– Do you have them? You can do it to me before?”
– Okay!
– I’ll make you all the material you need. Truck loading is done Monday evening or Tuesday morning you’ll have to come by 6 loading the truck. Don’t forget to be on time to avoid traffic jams and be on time
– At 6??? Nope! Too early for me! I used to getting up later.
…
– You know, I’ve been thinking. Y ‘ all better get the job done. I’d rather pay you the $1500. If I had to, it wouldn’t be perfect and it would cost me a lot more.
When you pay for a job, especially handcrafted, you pay not only for the material used, but also:
– Knowledge
– Experience
– Study
– Tools
– Services
– Time to go
– punctuality
– Accountability
– Professionalism
– Accuracy
– Guaranteed
– Patents
– Sacrifices
– Safety and security
– Payment of tax obligations
No one can denigrate other people’s work by judging prices.
Only by knowing all the elements necessary for the production of a certain work can you estimate the actual cost.
Actual conversation at the local gas station convenience store:
Me with a coffee refill in my cup: “Just a refill.”
Clerk: “That will be $1.58.”
Me: “Your sign says $1.00 cups of coffee today.”
Clerk: “That’s not a cup; it’s a refill.”
Me: “But it’s a cup of coffee.”
Clerk: “No, it’s a refill because it’s not in our cup.”
Me: “So if I bring this back in your cup, it’s $1.00.”
Clerk: “Yes”
Me: No one else in line, so I step over to the coffee area and get one of their cups. At the counter, in front of her, I dump the coffee out of my cup and into theirs. “Okay, I have a cup of coffee.”
Clerk: “That will be $1.00.”
Is Gen Z Aging Rapidly ?
https://youtu.be/TYJH5gFRU5E
Why do people let themselves go when they get older?
Before I worked in medicine, I wondered the same thing. I didn’t mean it in an unkind way, but I wanted to know how to avoid this seemingly unavoidable dilemma of aging. What I found out from the hundreds of patients I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with, is that when life gives you lemons, very few can make lemonade. I generally hear the same things from patients. The two I hear the most, “Don’t get old!” and “These aren’t the golden years.” Anyway…
Off the top of my head, I’ll give you several reasons why people “seem” to let themselves go as they age. I realize there are exceptions to all my examples, but I’m giving you general anecdotal observations that you may not be aware of:
Accidents. Car accidents, motorcycle accidents, job accidents, violent crime (stabbing, punching, gunshots), falling down stairs, etc. Accidents that cause injury almost always leave residual long term pain. The lucky ones don’t have the chronic pain until they are older. If someone has a back injury, several things could have gone wrong. Herniated discs, scar tissue, arthritis, bone spurs, spinal stenosis… and that’s just the back injury. Chronic pain and immobility that stems from injuries can be debilitating later in life. I’ve seen very fit people slowly put on weight over a few years after an injury, because they just could not keep up their exercise regimen.
Less Energy. This seems like a cop out. I didn’t believe it until my own energy levels started declining after 37 yrs old. As you get older, intense activities tire you out far quicker and you need more sleep. It’s more than just mind over matter. So even a life time exerciser starts to slow down as she gets older. It’s nearly impossible to keep up the intensity. This leads me to food intake…
Eating style hasn’t changed with aging. So this is a big one that gets the aging into trouble. I think this one can be somewhat controlled if a person is mindful. Generally speaking, you don’t need to eat as much the older you get. The reasons are many, but one is that you’re not as active (maybe because of #1 and #2). Less energy + more pain + less activity = less calorie intake. At least it should equal less calorie intake. This takes me to…
An older body doesn’t take out the trash as efficiently. As a person gets older, their body just doesn’t handle unhealthy eating and hard living (cigarette smoking, excessive alcohol, etc) as efficiently. Ideally, people should clean up their diets once they hit middle age, but this time of life is incredibly hectic. Healthy living becomes ever more challenging…. it’s not really laziness, it’s exhaustion (see #2). Losing weight and/or staying in shape really is harder with age.
Illness and declining health. Cancer treatments, prolonged Prednisone usage, Congestive heart failure, medications for chronic pain like fibromyalgia (actually a lot of medications can cause unexplained weight gain), Lymphedema, Diabetes, thyroid conditions…. the list goes on. If you saw someone at the grocery store with one of these conditions and you didn’t know it, you would think they were “letting themselves go.”
Hormones. This is more for the women, but men can easily gain weight from declining hormone production too. Women really get a raw deal though. Menopause is not kind. For many women, weight gain is unavoidable. If the weight doesn’t get her in the beginning it might after the “change.” The change in hormone (estrogen mainly) levels changes how the female body uses or stores fat. It’s a common enough problem that scientists seem to be working tirelessly to figure out how to help women stop weight gain during and after menopause.
Other priorities. I do see some elderly women (rarely men) who are still overly obsessed with their weight (I think this is more the Baby Boomer generation). But more commonly, as one ages their priorities shift. Yeah, they may not like being overweight, but “getting in shape” or getting “lean and cut” just isn’t that big of a deal anymore, especially when they have to work so much harder to achieve those results.
Again, these are just some reasons for age related weight gain or not taking care of oneself, that I encounter on a daily basis while working with the middle aged and elderly population.
Since I love to exercise so much, I can’t imagine not continuing to do so into my elderly years. Yet I don’t know what life has in store for me. I haven’t lived with debilitating pain or lymphedema, so I try not to judge.
Braised Veal Shanks, Milan Style (Osso Buco)
2024 02 17 08 3c2
Ingredients
Veal
4 pounds veal or beef shanks
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium carrot, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 bay leaf
1 cup water
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 teaspoon instant beef bouillon
1/2 teaspoon dried basil leaves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
Gremolada (optional)
Gremolada
2 tablespoons snipped parsley
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
Instructions
Trim excess fat from veal shanks if necessary. Coat veal with flour. Cook veal in oil in Dutch oven over medium heat until brown on all sides, about 20 minutes. Drain fat.
Add remaining ingredients except Gremolada. Heat to boiling; reduce heat. Cover and simmer until veal is tender, 1 1/2 to 2 hours.
It happened in a case of mine a good while back. I was appointed to represent a white supremacist/neo-Nazi kind of guy on a perjury charge (under oath he denied remembering anything about a stabbing he had witnessed (white guy stabbed a black guy), an incident that he seemed to have remembered clearly an hour before he was called to testify, or so the evidence showed). It was a tough case, and he was a difficult client.
The trial lasted a week and, to no one’s surprise, he was found guilty (the only surprise was that it took four hours for the jury to reach a verdict). At sentencing, he predictably went off on a tear about white people being race traitors, and such.
The judge could have given him up to 30 months in prison but only gave him 18. At which point the client reinvigorated his rant, pointed at the judge and said “I know where you work and I will come find you when I get out.” He turned to the DA and pointed at her and said the same thing. At that point he was flailing his arms around, and the two large courtroom deputies (they used to be called “bailiffs”) hurried up to restrain him — I had the common sense to get out of their very large way — at which point, his honor said: “you know, I must be getting old. I see here in my written order that I was actually intending to impose 30 months, and I must have mistakenly been thinking about someone else when I spoke. . . So 30 months it is.” (or words to very much that same effect).
The client started to try to flail more vigorously; two additional very large deputies somehow materialized (they will do that) and the four of them hoisted him up and carried him feet first out of the courtroom, as he shouted loudly, with spittle, at the ceiling. The judge, afterwards, observed that he could only have given him 6 months additional for the contempt. He seemed satisfied.
(Disclaimer — this trial was about thirty-five years ago. With the passage of that much time the fine details of exactly what was said may vary from telling to telling.).
Epilogue: The client got out of prison and the only serious trouble he got into afterward was a DUII and, then, feloniously driving with a suspended operator’s license a couple times. And then he died. The prosecutor became a judge, and she’s now retired. The trial judge is long retired but still with us.
My first real job was as a morning biscuit maker at McDonald’s in the summer when I was 16 (over 20 years ago now). I recall a lot of corner-cutting when it came to the official food prep rules.
For example, once food was cooked, it went into a warming bin. Each bin had a timer on it, and once that timer went off, you were supposed to toss the food. We only used those timers if a health inspector showed up, or the “big boss” was there. Other than that, we just ignored the timers and kept everything in the warming bins until sold.
Also, you were only supposed to crack open eggs as needed, and keep them refrigerated otherwise. We often just cracked open several dozen into a large container, and kept that on the counter next to the grill for a few hours, dipping into it with a ladle as needed when someone wanted scrambled eggs. It saved time and hassle that way.
When we switched from breakfast to lunch, back when McDonald’s did that, the cooked but unsold breakfast food was supposed to be thrown away. Often, it would all be thrown into a different, clean garbage bag, and when someone took out the garbage, that bag would end up in that person’s back seat and the leftovers became their meals for a few days.
Most of my coworkers were also high schoolers. When one of our friends came through the drive thru, they’d order and pay for something small, and we’d hand them bags of food. I think the boss, who was a woman in her 20s, did this for her friends too.
Back in the mid-90’s, McDonald’s would sometimes do these 29-cent cheeseburger days as a promotion. It would have been fine, except they didn’t put limits on how many people could order, so we’d have multiple orders of 50+ cheeseburgers as people stocked up on them. We were in a lower-class small town, so people always stocked up on food when there was a good deal. We couldn’t possibly follow the rules and keep up with the orders when they came in that fast, so we broke a lot of rules, including cooking burger patties on the egg grill (a big no-no, apparently), and cooking hundreds of burgers ahead of time and just microwaving them before we served them.
Oh my goodness! Isn’t that the biggest dilemma??? Especially if your stomach growls…
When my daughter was about 4, we had some very close friends who used to invite us to dinner. They were the most generous and kind people you could ever meet.
However, everyone’s plate would get exactly the same portion. I sausage, 2 pieces of broccoli, 2 little carrot sticks and a small portion of mashed potato. The kids would get about half that.
The first time it happened, my daughter came and whispered to me that she was still hungry. I told her it was okay, we’ll probably have dessert. When no dessert arrived, and it was time to go, my daughter’s stomach rumbled as she got in the car and her little friend said quite loudly, “your tummy is talking, saying you want more food!”
I looked at my daughter, dreading what the answer might be, but she just looked at everyone and said, “it’s actually saying thank you for dinner.”
Everyone laughed and in that moment I could never have been prouder of my little girl and her display of tact and good manners.
We got take away on the way home and every other time after visiting these people, as the same meal was served each time over a number of years. They were just not big eaters.
For my daughter and I, It became a beautiful ritual to have take away afterwords, and we always looked forward to going to their place for dinner.
To answer your question – eat before or eat after visiting, but always be appreciative that someone took the time to think of you and invite you over. Say thank you and leave it at that!
She has grown up still tactful, well mannered and ALWAYS hungry!
When I was young my sister and I were playing in the back yard and our neighbor was out on his screen porch and was playing with himself. I had no idea what he was doing and wasn’t freaked out just curious. I asked my mother about it and she said, “don’t worry about it son, it isn’t important.” And, she was right, shortly after I rarely saw him ever again. When he saw me or my sister he would literally turn around and walk away. I never thought about it again.
My mother died about 50 years later and my uncle who often lived with us (WW2 vet with a drinking problem) got very ill about 10 years later. We talked and he told me what he was leaving to me (not much – but I loved the man and would never say that to him) and one of the items was a revolver. He told me, “I used to loan this to your mom when your dad was on the road (he was a truck driver). This is the gun she pistol whipped your neighbor with.”
“What”, I said.
“Oh, you didn’t know? She borrowed this pistol and went to your neighbor’s house and beat him with it. She told him that if she saw him looking at or near her kids she was going to kill him next time.”
“Seriously?”, I said
“Like a heart attack. I took the bullets out so she wouldn’t kill him”, he laughed, “she didn’t know that till later and chewed me out.”
“Why didn’t she tell dad?”
“She said somebody had to take care of the kids if she went to jail.”
The US is not “competing” with China because it doesn’t have the capability and confidence to compete.
Instead, the US is trying to “kneecap” China in Tonya Harding style. It’s using tactics like:
propaganda warfare — telling lies about genocide, concentration camps, oppression, etc.
political interference — using the CIA to foment color revolution in Hong Kong and Xinjiang
commercial obstruction — banning Huawei, SMIC, WeChat, etc.
military intimidation — operating two supercarrier strike groups off the coast of China; arming Taiwan and Japan; inviting British and German warships into SCS; Quad pact; AUKUS pact and giving nuclear subs to Australia
personal legal intimidation — arresting Meng Wanzhou on trumped-up charges in the same way Alstom executive Frederic Pierucci was arrested in 2013
The US is behaving like a dinosaur in its final death throes as its world is coming to an end.
Veal Rolls, Roman Style (Saltimbocca alla Romana)
2024 02 17 14 52
Ingredients
1 1/2 pounds boneless veal round steak, 1/2 inch thick
1/4 teaspoon dried sage leaves, crushed
1/4 teaspoon pepper
6 thin slices prosciutto or fully cooked smoked or boiled ham
2 tablespoons butter or margarine
1 tablespoon olive or vegetable oil
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 cup Marsala or other dry white wine
3/4 cup water
1/4 teaspoon salt (optional)
Instructions
Trim excess fat from veal; pound veal until 1/8 inch thick. Sprinkle one side of veal with sage and pepper; cut into 6 pieces, 4 or 5 inches square.
Place ham slice on seasoned side of each piece veal. Roll up; secure with wooden picks.
Heat butter and oil in 10-inch skillet until hot. Cook veal rolls over high heat until brown, 5 to 10 minutes. Remove from heat.
Place rolls in single layer in ungreased 10 x 6-inch baking dish.
Stir flour into drippings in skillet; stir in wine, water and salt, if desired. Heat to boiling; pour over rolls.
Cover and bake at 325 degrees F until tender, 35 minutes.
Oh boy….this was fun. Several years ago, when my son was just shy of 2 YO, he was considered a lap child by an unnamed airline, even though we had bought him a ticket as he was too big to be on a lap for 6 hrs. As such, we could not do the online check in, since they needed to verify he was a lap child….repeat…..he had a full fare ticket. Show up at the airport and check in, but not seats together…..you selected seats during the online check in. So ticket agent say to go to gate agent, gate agent says to check with stewardess, and stewardess says she cant help and we need to sit in our assigned seats. CLASSIC pass the buck.
Now that dear reader was a poor choice of words. You see my 2 YO was assigned a single middle seat about 15 rows away from the other three of us. So I showed up at the seat, and motioned to the gentleman in the aisle that I had the middle seat. He got up and I strapped my son in and give him his DVD player and snacks. I looked at the other passengers near my child and said “ I am in in seat 32 C if he needs anything” and proceeded to go to the back of the plane.
Funny story. We were all seated together very quickly after that. Amazing how following the rules works!!
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
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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
VZ44DSXCPMI6NCDRCTR22M2M74
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 was living in Erie, I went shopping with my roommates. We went grocery shopping, which was something we did about once a month.
One of my ‘mates was this big burly man named Mark. He was a silly guy. Drank Pepsi cola like no one else alive. Perhaps twelve bottles a day. It was his way of coping as he distanced himself away from his drug abusing past.
A coping mechanism. I get it.
Well, as I checked out and had the groceries, Mark was no-where to be found.
We looked and looked, until he finally came out one hour later.
He strolled up to the car.
We asked “where the fuck were you?”
And he said “I don’t want to talk about it”.
But, later on he did.
It turned out that he was drinking a Pepsi in the store, and instead of taking the empty bottle to the checkout counter, he placed it on a shelf. And it was caught on the CC television video system, and the store detective nabbed him.
As he was on parole, this could have gone very badly for him. But… life is strange. It turned out that the store detective was a classmate of his, and after the mandatory beat-down, they warmed up and kicked-back and shared memories and stories.
Life is sometimes like that.
I am sure that Mark has since thought long and hard about this kind of “store grazing” behavior. I like to think that he is a better person for it. Ah I hope.
As I review my life, I am constantly amazed at how many times coincidences seem to intertwine the threads of our lives together.
Not quite a garage sale. A good friend, “ George” was a coin collecter, who noticed a small ad in the local News paper. “ selling late husbands coin collection – make an offer.” With nothing else to do that day he called and went to see the lady. He started to poke through and told her he need a bit of time, but he found 3 coins he wanted, for himself. He said to the lady I will buy these three right now, on the condition that if anyone else calls you tell them the “ entire collection is sold “ she said but you are only buying 3 coins what about the rest, what do I do. He said “ I will sell them for you, please give me a chance” She reluctlently agreed. He paid $300 cash each for the coins he picked out. He saw that the lady was not to well off and had lost her husband. He sat down and selected 10 coins, wrote down what they were and description, and said he would sell them for her. He was in touch with her every day, and about 10 days later, he went to see her and told her he was able to get a decent price for 3 of the coins he left with. he handed her $8000.00. and confirmed he would sell all of the coins that she had. She said as she was going through her late husbands things she had found other coins. She really had no interest in the coins and said they had taken up so much of her husbands time away from her. George told her that her husband loved her more then she knew. In about one year, he had sold off the entire collection of coins for just over $450,000.00 A few of the gold coins he told her to keep for herself.
My wife loves a deal. If they offered a free toaster with an Aston Martin, I might be driving my dream car.
So we were on vacation in Athens and she pulled off a haggling master stroke – a bag, a dress, and a speedo (hey, it was Europe) and got them to knock a few hundred euro off the price. All she said was, “is this the best price you can do?”
And this was at Dolce & Gabbana!
So, while on a business trip in Venice, I decided to pick two things up for my wife:
A dress and a deal.
At Prada!
I found the perfect dress. Something she definitely wouldn’t buy herself, but would look great on her. It was pricey, but I had my ace in my sleeve. My all-purpose Euro retail haggling pass.
The saleswoman approached me. I explained that I wanted the dress. She was pleased with my selection.
And then I did it.
I whipped out my haggling secret weapon, with Blue Steel swagger, and an expectant attitude.
“Is this the best price you can do?”
She paused and just stared at me.
I’m thinking, haha… didn’t see that one coming did you?
She keeps staring. She wrinkles her brow, like she’s computing the speech in her head.
Now I’m getting worried.
Then, she has a moment of clarity.
“Oh, are you trying to negotiate?”
She’s says it like I’m some 9 year old kid who just asked his 24 year old babysitter to be his girlfriend.
Me: (trying to stay cool) “Well… um, yeah…. You know. If there is any room for…..”
Her: (interrupting but sincere) “We don’t negotiate at Prada.”
Ordered 4 new bras from an online shop, ended up receiving 32 new bras, none of which were the color I had ordered.
The receipt in the box was tallied for 8 bras with a note that they’d been running a promo the day I ordered that they were buy 1 get 1 free. I don’t even want to fathom how 8 turned into 32, but when I called the company to get a return label the gal informed me that the bra sale had actually been buy 1 get 2 free, which should have only been 12 bras, not 32, and who the heck gives away 2 forty dollar bras?
Got transferred to a different representative and was informed that the bras I was trying to return where non-returnable since they’d actually been discontinued and were now “on clearance” neither of them had addressed the issue that the bras I received were the wrong color (right size at least)
I was transferred yet again (gotta love “that’s not my job” employment opportunities) where I was quickly informed that they would send out the bras in the right color.
Fast forward a few days and I received 12 of the right size, right color bras. They had honored the buy 1 get 2 free sale apparently. I also received 8 additional bras in colors I hadn’t even known were available in my size as a “consolation prize” for my troubles.
So, 52 bras for the price of 4 at forty dollars each. I haven’t had to special order bras in years…
I’ve worked in software engineering for 20 years. I come from a no-name college in India, and my grades weren’t stellar. SO, getting into top tier companies was hard for me. Over 20 years, I’ve worked my way up, and I’m in Amazon now. On the way, I have worked in all kinds of companies: startups, mid sized companies, large multi nationals; and in all kinds of industries: consumer goods, healthcare, finance, education
First of all, Companies are tiered in terms of the skill levels of their engineers. They pretend not to be. Everyone claims that they hire the smartest engineers. WHat they mean is that they hire the smartest engineers that they can get. There is a definite differrence in Engineers working in FAANG companies (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google), I’ve seen all kinds of engineers
Here’s the kicker. The biggest difference isn’t in the quality of the code that they write. FAANG engineers, on the whole, write as buggy code as engineers in decent companies.
The biggest differentiator is Communication. When I was in mid-tier companies, I was constantly finding myself explaining and re-explaining things in great detail. In fact, I would say that at most companies at mid-tier level, your success as an engineer depends on being able to drive people in the right direction by communicating to them.
There are 3 kind of people in tech. There are a) arguers:- people who will fight every point of view that isn’t their own, b) receivers: people who will try their best to understand what you are saying c) analyzers: people who start thinking critically while you are talking to them. Arguers are toxic. Receivers are good but slow. Analyzers are good and fast. In mid tier companies, you are more likely to find Arguers and Receivers, whereas in top-tier companies, you are more likely to find Receivers and Analyzers.
To be a successful tech company, you need to get in as many Analyzers as you can. Because these are the people who generate ideas. These are the people you give 2 and 2 and they figure out how to make 8. Not only that, with ANalyzers, you have to spend less time getting the team on the same page. Less miscommunication = Less rework = shorter turnaround = lower time to market = win.
Just to be clear, I’m not saying communication is bad. Communication is good. You need to make sure everyone understands what needs to be done. Communication is essential. All I’m saying is that in top tier companies, communication is lot more efficient. It’s like getting onto a highway. You are just going faster.
Not me, but my ex-wife, and I didn’t witness it. She told me about it several years after the fact.
My ex and I are both blind. As in without sight. One of the things you have to understand about blind people is probably something obvious. To wit, we don’t drive. We can’t. Has never happened and ain’t gunna ever happen; no, not ever. Another thing you have to understand about blind people is that sometimes sighted people will ask the stupidest questions or do the dumbest things. Usually this happens when we’re just walking along, minding our own business. One day this happened to her.
I can’t remember what she was doing at the time, but she was walking along, doing whatever errand she had to do, when this group of women happened to come upon her. One of them was obviously drunk.
“So,” said the drunk woman, “you’re blind, right?”
“Yes,” she said.
“So, um, like, how do you drive?”
My ex, who walks with a cane because she’s obviously blind, said:
“Well, I have two canes. When I drive, I keep one cane out the right window, and another out my left window. That way when I bump into something, I know when and how to turn.”
“Really?” said this other woman. “That’s amazing!” And she went on and on for some time about what an amazing feat this was,, while the other people she was with were laughing and calling her an idiot, which she so obviously was.
Probably convincing others that this is a good look. It isn’t — your lips look like a baboon’s anus swelling to indicate it’s ready for mating. I’ve never in my whole life met a single person, male or female, who appreciates this aesthetic. And yet I keep seeing it, with increasing frequency.
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This weird bimbo-style… the heavy makeup… the facial fillers… and those God-awful inflated lips. Shudder. It’s horrific. So painful on the eyes that it makes one question the existence of the God who supposedly made our species in His image. The fake lashes don’t help, either… I mean why bother changing yourself in a way that isn’t genuine? I get going to the gym, working out or getting a tan, all those yield tangible results. But why alter yourself in ways that a single shower or missed injection could erase?
The weirdest thing people have ever done is invent this made-of-plastic bimbo aesthetic and promote it on social media as something to aspire to… it’s giving women in their twenties the appearance of elderly Hollywood stars in denial of their age. Turns the “girl next door” into whatever-the-hell-happened-to-Madonna. It’s an absolute travesty.
Originally Answered: Who was the most ignorant person you have ever met in America?
This happened many years ago, but it is what came to mind when I read this question…
I was teaching class, and we were discussing the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Students were discussing their various thoughts on the situation.
One student stated, very loudly, “You know what really bothers me? All those people who are shouting and holding up signs…why aren’t they speaking English?”
I explained that it is unreasonable to expect people in a foreign country to protest in another country’s language. She didn’t understand what I meant, and the class was trying to explain to her that Arabic is the language of the people who were protesting.
After a while, I stopped everyone and asked her where she thought “those people” lived. She said, “I don’t know…near Arizona?”
That is when I realized that she thought the the Middle East was next to the American Midwest! I showed her where it is on the map, and she said, “Oh! Things make so much more sense, now!”
The most intrepid drug seeker I have ever seen was Mr. C.
He walked in a very hunched-over posture, leaning on a walker, to elicit sympathy.
We would not even say his name, as that might bring the bad luck of the ER calling to admit him…AGAIN.
If one of my colleagues were to talk about him he would say, “Mr.” and then crook over his index finger.
We all knew who he meant.
This guy was the biggest pathological liar in the universe.
Every time I’d get a call from the ER his story was different.
He was a missionary, a teacher, a policeman, you name it.
His favorite was to tell people he was a former PA or MD.
ER calls….
“I’ve got a 68-year-old former doctor down here. He looks so decrepit that I think he needs nursing home placement.”
Right away, I knew who it was.
He went from hospital to hospital to hospital. I don’t think he had permanent address. Why would he?
“Uh,…I know who it is. He’s not a doctor. He’s a drug seeker.”
“No, Maureen, he’s such a nice guy. You must be thinking of someone else. I think he IS a doc.”
“Go ask him what a CBC is (complete blood count, a common lab test). I’ll hold.”
Off he goes.
“For Pete’s sake, he doesn’t know.”
“Ah…yup. Don’t give him any narcs.”
“OK. But he still needs admission because he has been having recurrent temperatures and can hardly walk.”
“Did you document a temperature?”
“No, he is afebrile.”
”Labs and imaging normal?”
“Yeah.”
“Wanna see him take up his bed and trot, upright, right out of there?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell him that Dr. Boehm will be admitting him. I’ll be happy to evaluate and treat any of his complaints. I won’t be giving any narcotics, however.”
Off he goes.
“Uh, he got up and left AMA.”
“Did he ask for a cab voucher?”
“Yeah.”
“He wants us to pay for his transportation to the next ER.”
Sometimes, I would come in and he had been admitted overnight by some unsuspecting doctor.
His nurse called me.
“Mr. C is very lethargic. He’s becoming hypoxic”.
“How can that be? He’s not getting any controlled substances.”
Well, he sure was.
He had called down to the OR and interrupted a surgery. He told them that he was one of our orthopedic surgeons. He demanded that a message be given to the Ortho PA.
“Why does Mr. C have uncontrolled pain? I want him on a Dilaudid PCA NOW!”
I walk in. Mr. C, not only has a Dilaudid drip running, in one of his groggy little hands he had a bottle of Percocet that he had brought from home. In the other hand, the button to deliver a hefty bolus of Dilaudid to himself.
He was “out” with a mouthful of half-chewed Percocet, the drip just dripping away with a hefty basal dose.
He could have killed himself.
Never have I relished the delivery of Narcan like I did that day.
One little squirt and he was wide awake and pissed that his nice “double” high was ruined.
After that we had to do a complete search of him and his stuff, with security, so he didn’t get away with it again.
I often wonder what happened to Mr. C after the new system was available to track and prevent his overuse of narcotics.
He couldn’t go to five doctors in a month and get narcs from all of them. He couldn’t go ER to ER.
When I was 15 I used to babysit these 2 super lovely Chinese kids every friday and saturday night. It was only ever for 4 hours, 8pm to midnight. The family owned the local fish and chip shop, that also sold Chinese food. Now I never got fed while babysitting, but the parents would pay me my time AND bring me chinese food to eat when I got home. Always asked me what I wanted when I went to the house. The were an awesome family.
Another time my GP asked if I would babysit his kids on new years eve, and stay over night. My mum agreed and he would pay me £50 for it. I got told to eat and drink whatever I wanted, watch whatever I wanted on the tv, and the room they let me sleep in also had a tv. Easiest babysitting job ever! The kids were in bed before I got there at 9pm, I was told to check on them at 10, 11 and midnight which I did. They never woke up, I got to eat junk food all night, and got paid for doing it. I was actually happier about the junk food and tv than the money. At home I wasnt allowed food between meals, junk food was never allowed, and forget about watching anything other than my mums choice of program on the tv.
I was in the military (USAF) and until you reach a certain rank, you are assigned a roommate in your dorm room. I was stationed in Germany in a unit that traveled extensively 300+ days per year. Commonly we would travel 6 months, come back for a week or even a weekend, and then be back on the road. I was assigned a roommate whom I met… He was the typical “computer geek”. Greasy hair, showered infrequently, was a slob, almost never left the room when he was not on the road, and played a lot of the “Oregon Trail” computer game.
Mind you both of us were in the same unit that traveled a lot, but we were on different teams, so we traveled to different places at different times. One time after being gone 6 months in England, I came back to station, and opened the door to my room, only to be gagged by the smell. I set my luggage down in the hall and went to the communal bathroom, wet some paper towels, and covered my nose and mouth area. Then went back into my room to locate and remove the source of the smell.
At first glance everything seemed in order, but the smell was overpowering… I walked over to his side of the room and it got even worse. His bed was raised up on blocks that gave him a couple feet of storage underneath it, and I saw a shirt sleeve sticking out from under the bed. When I lifted up the bedspread, it reeked to high heaven, but all I could see was his dirty clothes. They were stuffed under his bed to the point that it took up all the room in under the bed! I couldn’t imagine that this horrific gagging smell was just his dirty clothes (although they did stink terribly), so I started reaching under there and pulling clothes out a handful at a time…. When I had pulled out about half the clothes, I found the source of the pugnant aroma.
At some point when he was stuffing all his dirty clothes under there, he apparently forgot that he had also put a half a pitcher of OJ under there as well. When he pushed more clothes under there, the pitcher of OJ got pushed back into the middle of the pile of clothes. I had been gone 6 months and come to find out he left the week after I did! That OJ sat in that pitcher in the middle of his stinky clothes for basically 6 months, rotting! It was a solid black and green mass all around the outside with Orange pulp in the middle, and OMG did it stink. I was gagging and running to the outside trash can holding the pitcher behind me to get rid of it once and for all! Once it was gone, I went back to the room. I stuffed all of his dirty clothes into big black garbage bags, zip tied them, and put them back under his bed.
When he got back the following week I was already gone again, but I left a note for him and told him what had happened and what I had had to do! I also told him if I ever come back to something like that again, that I would be turning it in and reporting him to the First Seargent! It neverhappened again. (THANK GOD!!!))
strong independent woman instantly REGRETS their lifestyle
When I was a toddler my father had an affair. The woman started calling our house and tormenting my mother in order to break up the marriage. My mother wasn’t emotionally stable. After a certain time each evening, she knew that her friends and family wouldn’t be calling so late, and when the phone rang my mother would cry, wail and scream. I remember answering the phone myself in an attempt to stop my mother’s over-the-top reaction and at some point learned to leave the phone off the hook but my mother didn’t leave it that way for long. On some level, she liked the drama I guess. This went on for months. I’d have been 3 or 4 when this was happening. It was very traumatic for me because I had no idea what was going on until much later. In my pre-school mind, the threat on the phone had to be very dire and worthy of my drama momma’s reaction. I was absolutely terrified. I’d wake up many nights to answer the phone and cry “please don’t hurt us” into the phone, but she didn’t stop until the divorce was done.
30 years later, my father dies, leaves that woman a penniless widow, which was the result of gross financial mismanagement because he’d had money and didn’t support those of us in his first family (a man could get away with that back then). The one thing she has is a lawsuit for his death. It’s a good case. The payout is potentially large but that’ll take years in court and may never payout as the company responsible will probably go bankrupt. The defendant has offered settlement and would payout quickly but the only requirement is that all of his heirs agree to accept the settlement and agree not to sue separately at a later date.
But I don’t need money and I’ll never sign. I’ve been getting certified letters for years asking for my signature. They’ve threatened to have me arrested (which was clearly a ruse) for refusing, offered me cash to sign, on one occasion her grandson connected with me on social media explaining that she needed a new roof and could I please sign off on the settlement and I ended up blocking his whole family. Last year I got a letter that the county was going to auction her house for non-payment of taxes. She is probably living with one of her kids and collecting social security so not quite homeless but I still feel like I’ve gotten a little revenge.
Many years ago I lived in an inner suburb of Sydney, in a terrace house.
The next door neighbour was an alcoholic bricklayer. Call him Don.
Don had decided to do some extensions, or renovations, and had three pallets of bricks dropped off in front of his place. They partially blocked the footpath and leaned outwards, dangerously overhanging the road.
One of the.pallets was in front of our house. Effectively our parking was blocked and the footpath was hard to negotiate.
The first Saturday they were there I knocked on his door, (interrupting a fight with his wife as he had accidentally lost her car the previous night, as far as I could work out he had parked it near a brothel and could not find it when he staggered out) and offered to help him shift the bricks around the back. He declined and said he would get to them during the week.
A few weeks went by. I offered again to help shift them, and got told to f off. I explained they were dangerous and inconvenient. Got the door slammed in my face.
I complained to the local council, and I suppose they sent him a letter, but the bricks remained.
By this time the bricks had been there about four months. The pallets were deteriorating and the stacks leaning. It was getting more dangerous by the day. It was only a matter of time before they collapsed on a car, a person or the busy road.
I wrote up a couple of large signs “ free bricks, help yourself” and put them on the pile about 6:am on a Saturday morning.
By the time Don surfaced around 11, there was probably half a pallet or so left… which he moved to his back yard.
Without a doubt. Any unfair action by the EU Will be met by an action that U.S. fairer but with a much bigger consequences to EU. Let that be a solemn promise.
Europe will have to suffer a total collapse of the automobile market if it dare to try any shit. Don’t forget that many European cars companies are surviving only due to the Chinese market and consumer. And the reason it still can compete is only due to its production efficiency and capacity of its plants in China!
Years back, I sat in a sombre home where a young man in his 30s died untimely in an accident.
I, along with my family, went there to pay respects.
Sitting on the sofa I was nudged between two middle aged women who were discussing the next course of events.
“I heard Sheela is going to go to her maternal house to stay! How would Usha bear this? First she lost her son and now with the daughter-in-law gone she will lose her grandchildren too.”
“That’s true! I had the same reaction when I heard about it. We must put some sense in Usha and stop her from letting Sheela go.”
When Usha aunty came towards us, these two woman grabbed her and made her sit with them, squeezing me.
They then narrated their opinion on the grieving mother and stopped her from taking a ‘foolish’ decision and going against a tradition where the widow usually stays with the in-laws.
After listening to their valuable advice Usha aunty spoke.
“True, I lost my son. But Sheela has lost her husband too. A person she vowed to spend her old age together. A person who was a loving parent to their children. Sending them away to her parents place will surely make me sad and lonely but it would be a much needed change for Sheela. At this time, she needs her parents the most. If she stays here, this house would remind her of him everyday. At her parents place, she would slowly come back to her usual self soon. I lost my son. I don’t want to lose my daughter because of some tradition.”
The two women were speechless, so was I. I hadn’t thought of it in that way either. Usha aunty left and consoled her daughter-in-law who sat in a corner with a pale and teary face.
That day it was just a conversation I unknowingly was a part of. But today, I think what Usha aunty did was so right.
Thinking about someone else in the event of your child dying, needs immense amount of courage and determination.
Sheela di did recover soon and moved back to her loving mother-in-law’s house and now cares for them as their daughter.
Man went to McDonald’s — which was a treat — for his family’s dinner, and on the way back, was broad-sided in the driver’s door. He’s dead in the driver’s seat and his family’s dinner is all over the front of the car. When he didn’t come back, his 10-year-old son went looking for him on his bicycle and came up on the accident scene. The child climbed into the wrecked car and was hugging his dead father. We weren’t going to stop him, and the fire department stayed longer than they normally would have in case there was any unexpected fire.
Another officer took the child home in his police car and informed the wife of what had happened. Prime example of one of those evenings when a cop skips dinner because he has no appetite.
The driver that hit him was a teenager who had just stolen a tank of gas from the local AM/PM Mini Market, and was being chased by the idiot store manager in his own car. We arrested them both, though that did not make the outcome any better.
The only decent thing that came out of it is that the owner of a local McDonald’s franchise read about it, came in the station and we helped him arrange to pay for an elaborate funeral. The owner insisted we not talk about it publicly; he didn’t want his kind act to look like a PR move. That is class.
J.K. Rowling had just got a divorce, was on government aid, and could barely afford to feed her baby in 1994, just three years before the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone, was published. When she was shopping it out, she was so poor she couldn’t afford a computer or even the cost of photocopying the 90,000-word novel, so she manually typed out each version to send to publishers. It was rejected dozens of times until finally Bloomsbury, a small London publisher, gave it a second chance after the CEO’s eight year-old daughter fell in love with it.
Positivity, confidence, and persistence are key in life, so NEVER GIVE UP on yourself.
This Thing Is About To POP: Putin, Biden and The Trainwreck
This was one that I witnessed, but wasn’t a part of.
I was working in the hardware section of a department store, right beside the sports department.
Straightening up/stocking the shelves just near the boundary between the departments, I saw a fellow salesperson talking to a customer with his small son. The child was bored and started to wander around, touching everything he could reach.
After a couple of minutes, the other salesperson saw the child start to try to climb a display of weightlifting equipment. He quickly excused himself and rushed over to the child, not touching him but gently suggesting that the boy not climb on anything and particularly not on the heavy weights.
The father turned around and seeing what was happening was incensed.
“How dare you tell my son what he can and cannot do! Who do you think you are?”
“I was just trying to keep him safe.” said the salesperson. “The weights are heavy and he could hurt himself.”
“Oh really? You have no business disciplining my son. I want to see the manager to complain.” said the father.
By this time, the child, seeing that he was again being ignored, went back to the weight rack and started to climb again.
The father fumed on at the unlucky salesperson.
And just at that moment, the rack of weights, unbalanced by the child fell over on top of him, a couple of weights pinning him to the floor.
He started crying.
The father started ranting about suing the store.
I later heard that he lost because the salesperson had tried to stop the child from climbing and had been forbidden from doing so by the father.
I got a performance review that ripped me up, down and sideways, and was totally unjustified. I refused to sign it and requested a second meeting later that afternoon. I attended that one armed with statistics showing how I had reduced the work ticket backlog on our software library from over 800 to just 2.
Now, a little technical explanation. This was pre-Windows. We had a software library written in Microsoft Pro Basic. Everything worked for the most part when I took it over, except it was slow. I fixed the outstanding bugs, then went looking for the cause of the slowdown and I found it: type declarations.
There were none. If a variable name ended with a $, it was a string. Otherwise, it was a number. But there are all kinds of numbers, and the default was double-precision floating point. Microsoft made a big deal about how indexes and array subscripts should be integers and pointed out that it was a speed deal. I went through, explicitly defined all variables and made sure that anything used as a loop index or array subscript was declared as either a short or long integer. Massive increase in speed. Calculations that used to take 20–30 minutes now ran in a minute or less.
Now, back to the meeting. I pointed all the improvements out to him, including comments from customers praising the improvements. He looked at everything and had the gall to say that my review was not going to be changed. I walked back to my office, made a couple of phone calls and had a job, paying more, starting the following Monday. I then edited the library and took out every one of the integer or long type declarations, recompiled the new version and saved everything into the distribution folders. I cleaned out all my work directories so that what I had done was not readily available, then walked by his office, tossed my keys on his desk, said I quit and walked out.
I had applied for a promotion that I was overqualified for. Had a great track record of mentoring new employees, working above and beyond, coming up with great ideas. I had been in the position for 7 years and with the company for 11.
My manager and supervisor told me that I wasn’t “ready” for this promotion (a 6% raise) and that I could try again next January. I told them “there would not be a next January”
Fast forward a few months, I was already applying for jobs and went on a few interviews. My manager and supervisor called me into a meeting to let me know one of the males on the team who have been at the organization and position for 2.5 years was getting the promotion (it was a promotion multiple people could get). When they asked me if I had any questions I said “No – his promotion doesn’t age t my career”
1 month later when I was putting in my 2 weeks notice for a company giving me a 30% raise my manager and supervisor asked me what they could do to retain me…I say nothing.
Left the job May 2021 and it was the best decision ever. Never knew I could get such a big pay bump for NOT being loyal to a company.
And if you are going to do it, this is the way. Not by shooting somebody or anything else.
My dad was a small builder. A few houses a year. He enjoyed it and it made him good money in retirement. He was building one of the only spec houses (not already sold when he started) he ever built.
One night, when the house was almost done, the furnace and airhandler disappeared from the garage. No signs of breaking and entering.
Now it takes a couple of hours to remove all of this w/o damaging anything. So my dad quickly guessed that his HVAC contractor (one he had never used before) had made a copy of the key my dad had given him. Let himself in, opened the garage door. Backed his truck in. Closed the door. And got to work.
He told the police this. They talked to the contractor who denied everything and suggested my dad had done it to collect on the builder’s insurance. This made my dad MAD! The HVAC guy however didn’t know the police told my dad he said this.
So my dad had the same guy put a new furnace and airhandler in the house. Yep, same guy.
What the guy didn’t know is that before hand my dad had a security system installed. Hidden motion detectors only, no contacts on the windows and doors to be spotted. And no audible alarm. Silent only. He registered his cell phone with the security company.
Sure enough, a few nights later he gets a call in the middle of the night from the security company. He tells them to call 911 and jumps in his truck. By the way, he lived only about 90 seconds down the road.
He pulls up and can see light around the garage door. He pulled quietly into the driveway at an angle, all the way up to the door, completely blocking it. And quietly waited for the police to arrive, which they did a few minutes later.
The guy heard him talking to the police in the driveway and put the garage door up. My dad couldn’t stop laughing at the expression on the guy’s face when he saw my dad standing there with four deputies!
And the best part? My dad hadn’t yet paid the contractor for his work. And he never did.
This actually happened to me years ago. It was a Friday evening. An entire group including me were in a meeting. We had a code thoroughly tested and ready for production. This Manager went and made changes without consent and broke the code but they still wants to keep the implementation date which was ten days away.
Now the ten days included two weekends. I’m sitting in the room. They totally ignored the fact that I was the one responsible for testing the changes. Nobody asked me what my plans were for the weekends and proceeded to agree upon meeting the date. I stayed mute. Now at that time my husband was in the army and and deployed to Bosnia, so they thought I had no life. They talked and laughed and when the meeting was over, I spoke.
“Who is coming in tomorrow because I need a ride”. They all said they were not. That’s when I dropped the bomb. I said, “Neither am I”. Everybody sat down, I got up, saluted them and walked out.
I had just finished a year of substitute teaching and had few. if any, prospects for a full-time job come that Fall. So when I saw that ad in the paper, my eyes lit up.
This company was wanting to hire teachers for a summer job. Was it evaluating textbooks? Maybe we would be tasked with creating exciting curriculum or conducting research into how children learn. Maybe a private school wanted to hire a number of tutors for their summer programs? The ad didn’t get specific.
I fired off a resume and waited to hear back. I didn’t wait long before being contacted with a time and place for the interview. When I arrived, I saw a room full of people dressed in typical teacher fashion-Dockers, Polo shirt, etc. I must be in the right place! But why are they doing a group interview? A bit later, a man walks in dressed more professionally. He asks us to tae a seat. He then gives a presentation into what sort of summer work they had for all of us education professionals.
STEAK KNIVES!!! He was wanting to “hire us to be door-to-door salesmen for his company’s line of cutlery. For a low investment of only (the cost of 2 sets) we could have unlimited earning potential. He must have seen the disgusted look on my face and figured I was going to let the more naive know exactly what the deal was, for I was the first to be invited into the office for a second interview.
It showed clearly that it does not care for its people but it protect profiteering and too big to fail companies. Such actions never ends well. The day will come when the U.S. citizens rebel and raised up against them. And these companies will continue to be unproductive and inefficient to the point of becoming irrelevant.
Pease remember the US has been dictating free trade and freedom of choice to Americans and the world for the longest time! What happened?
This tasty and easy Italian Sausage Soup Recipe is loaded with onions, carrots, celery, zucchini, and a healthy helping of Italian Seasoning in chicken broth with tomatoes, cannellini beans, and elbow noodles. It is the perfect pick-me-up for cold, wet weather, coughs, ailments, or just because your soul needs a little warmth. This Italian Soup Recipe is one of our favorites.
2024 02 13 08 12
Ingredients
2 pounds mild or hot Italian sausage
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 large onions, chopped
1 (28 ounce) can diced tomatoes
6 (14 ounce) cans beef broth
1 1/2 cups red wine (optional)
1/2 teaspoon basil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
2 teaspoons hot pepper sauce
3 tablespoons parsley
1 medium green bell pepper, chopped
2 medium zucchini, sliced
3 cups pasta shells, cooked
Instructions
In a large pot, cook sausage for about 15 minutes.
Pierce with fork to release fat; drain well.
Cut into bite-size pieces.
Add remaining ingredients except zucchini and pasta.
Cook for 30 to 45 minutes, then add zucchini and cook until tender.
Add pasta shells just to heat through.
Recipe notes and helpful tips
If you have a nearby meat market, call and ask if they make their own Italian Sausage. It is well worth the added expense and trip to the market.
For aesthetic purposes, peel the carrots. It brings out that beautiful bright orange color.
You can sub any medium to small pasta in this soup, including penne, rotini, shells, farfalle, ditalini, or radiatori.
Fresh thyme is always delicious, and I usually have it on hand. However, you can substitute fresh chopped parsley or a little dried marjoram or thyme.
Store leftovers in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 4 days. Heat on the stovetop over low heat or in the microwave at reduced power.
Freeze in an airtight container or heavy-duty freezer bag for up to 3 months.
One summer as a college student (many years ago) I worked at a now defunct “family” restaurant called The Ground Round. One room was a bar, and the other room was for families and they were famous for showing old silent movies in the family room and giving out free peanuts and popcorn (that usually ended up all over the floor).
Unfortunately, they were also famous for their “Penny-a-Pound” Thursdays where children under 12 who accompanied an adult would be weighed on a big scale at the front of the restaurant and could then order anything off the children’s menu (including unlimited free drinks) and be changed a penny for each pound they weighed. So, yeah, a kid could order a hot dog or a hamburger or a bowl of mac&cheese and get an orange soda (with 3 refills) for $0.40.
Most of this time this worked out OK and people enjoyed the deal responsibly. A family of four would come in, say, both parents would order full meals, and the little ones would get to basically eat for free. However, there were quite a number of occasions when people would completely abuse the deal. We’re talking situations where a single adult would come in with 5 or 6 children (obviously not all their own kids due to them all being the same age), the adult would order something cheap like a bowl of soup, and then the kids would proceed to make my life a living hell by constantly ordering drink refills every single time I walked past them on my way to take care of my other tables.
That wasn’t the worst part, though. No, the worst part was when it came time to pay the bill and the cost would end up being something like $9.27. And the person paying the bill would leave a $10 bill and say “keep the change.”
ALL the waiters dreaded having to work the main room on Thursdays, but since I was the newest employee there I ended up having to do it every week.
Dave was bragging to his boss one day, “You know, I know everyone there is to know. Just name someone, anyone, and I know them.”
Tired of his boasting, his boss called his bluff, “OK, Dave, how about Tom Cruise?”
“No drama’s boss, Tom and I are old friends, and I can prove it.”
So Dave and his boss fly out to Hollywood and knock on Tom Cruise’s door and Tom Cruise shouts, “Dave! What’s happenin?!? Great to see you! Come on in for a beer!”
Although impressed, Dave’s boss is still sceptical. After they leave Cruise’s house, he tells Dave that he thinks him knowing Cruise was just lucky.
“No, no, just name anyone else,” Dave says.
“President Bush,” his boss quickly retorts.
“Yup,” Dave says, “Old buddies, let’s fly out to Washington.”
And off they go.
At the White House, Bush spots Dave on the tour and motions him and his boss over, saying, “Dave, what a surprise, I was just on my way to a meeting, but you and your friend come on in and let’s have a cup of coffee first and catch up.”
Well, the boss is very shaken by now but still not totally convinced. After they leave the White House grounds he expresses his doubts to Dave, who again implores him to name anyone else.
“The pope,” his boss replies.
“Sure!” says Dave. “My folks are from Poland, and I’ve known the Pope a long time.”
So off they fly to Rome. Dave and his boss are assembled with the masses in Vatican Square when Dave says, “This will never work. I can’t catch the Pope’s eye among all these people. Tell you what, I know all the guards so let me just go upstairs and I’ll come out on the balcony with the Pope.”
And he disappears into the crowd headed toward the Vatican. Sure enough, half an hour later Dave emerges with the Pope on the balcony but by the time Dave returns, he finds that his boss has had a heart attack and is surrounded by paramedics. Working his way to his boss’ side, Dave asks him, “What happened?”
His boss looks up and says, “I was doing fine until you and the Pope came out on the balcony and the man next to me said, “Who the fuck is that on the balcony with Dave?
My uncle was a functional alcoholic. He had an advanced degree and was extremely accomplished in his career. He never did the kinds of things that would result in legal problems, he didn’t drink and drive, didn’t get in fights, or commit crimes. He and his husband were wealthy. They had a house with a swimming pool in a HCOL area. He was well-loved by everyone in the family but no one was able to get him to stop drinking or seek help for it. By and large, no one really wanted to argue with him about it either because it was pointless.
My uncle died during the pandemic and it wasn’t due to COVID. He drank everyday starting early in the morning and continuing through the night. He had done this for as long as I can remember. He cared about his appearance but completely neglected his health and refused to see doctors probably because they would tell him what he didn’t want to hear -alcohol was killing him.
Heavy drinking doesn’t only affect the liver — although that would be bad enough in itself — it also messes up the functioning of multiple other organs and body systems including, but not limited to, the heart, brain, kidneys, digestive system, and the nervous system. In my uncle’s case, he developed a cardiac problem and died suddenly. For many other alcoholics, dying is a slow, painful decline that involves a lot of suffering drawn out over many years.
Even if a person manages to avoid major illness, alcoholism, whether functional or not, does not make for a happy, fulfilled life. By nature, alcoholism requires that people prioritize alcohol over and above everything else in their lives, including all the meaningful things like important relationships, personal values, activities that bring joy, and personal accomplishments.
A person who drinks their way through life is never really present in their life and thus misses out on fully experiencing life itself. It may be feel pleasant to temporarily numb or black out distressing emotions but this comes at the cost of numbing positive emotions too. It comes at the cost of losing intimacy in your relationships, or just losing relationships altogether. It comes at a cost of not being able to remember your life or make good decisions.
Alcoholism and addiction in general, whether functional or not, is sad. It’s sad to see people searching for life satisfaction in the one place it will never be found.
Have you heard that “African babies cry less”? It is true, but the why of it is more interesting. They cry less because they are attended to. They are carried by their mothers, they co-sleep. They are always with their mother, who nurses the baby as soon as it starts to fuss. Doesn’t matter if it’s for comfort, for hunger or thirst. The baby never gets to the point where it *has to* cry.
Crying is the only way a baby has to communicate…..sort of. They also wiggle, and fuss and make weird faces and reach toward something, and when none of the rest of it works, THEN they cry. So it might be better to say that crying is the LAST way babies communicate. Even so, they can’t tell you they had a bad dream, or their stomach is upset, or there’s a string wrapped around their toe and it feels weird, or they have an itch but no fine motor skills to scratch with. We have to learn to decode baby language other than crying, before it gets to that. And we don’t.
You can’t spoil a baby. Moreover, when did giving someone attention get such a bad rep? Why is it bad to give a baby attention? What defines ‘too much’ attention, and why should we ration it? Is there a limited amount available? What idiot made this up?
By giving a baby the attention it needs when it needs it, and not when you feel like giving it, or when some book says you should give it, you teach the baby that you are always there for it. You aren’t teaching them to be clingy, you are teaching them that no matter what they do, what new things they explore, you will be there. It gives them confidence to try and do new things, knowing this.
But let a baby go untended until he gets to the point of crying, and then wait some more? What good does that do? The baby is not going to become less hungry or thirsty or scared or wet. Baby isn’t going to decide, oh, I guess I wasn’t actually hungry after all, I guess I’ll stop now. It will cause a lot of stress hormones to be released in the baby’s brain. A baby who cries until he stops has given up on you. He’s learned that you are NOT going to be there for him, and his needs might not be met. That, in his desperation, he reached out to you and you turned away.
Soon enough, he or she will be telling you not to hold their hand at school, or kiss them goodbye in front of their friends. The time when they need and depend on you is only a small part of their lives, and yours, so you should enjoy it while you can.
It’s really hard to fire someone in the government, but if they are an intern, it’s pretty easy.
We had three people start at the same time as interns. The two women were fantastic, interested in learning the job, hard working, never called out, etc. but “Charles”, not so much. I had just been promoted to supervisor. A week after he started, he stuck his head in my office and offered to help me with my supervisory duties. He didn’t know how to do the work yet, but he was going to help me supervise. Got it.
A couple days later, he walks into my office, plops down in a chair and says “I don’t know how you work with some of these fucking bitches. Those dumb cunts deserve to be fired”. Now I’m not a prude, but I also behave and speak in a professional manner. I had done nothing to make Charles think my office was some “safe zone”, where he could denigrate other employees, or use that kind of language.
He would sleep at his desk, call out, leave early, not what you would expect from any professional, let alone an intern trying to make their mark.
A lot of our job entailed technical writing. He wasn’t much of a writer to begin with, and often sent supposedly final versions of documents on the the next department with track changes and edits still in them. I had to fix a lot of his supposedly finished work. .
The crown jewel was him loudly proclaiming that life would be great in two months as he would no longer be an intern, so it would be near impossible to fire him. He was fired the next day.
I had to let an employee go when I owned a security guard company. He’d been involved in a fatal shooting — he killed a man who’d fired at him — before I bought the business and he shot and killed a drunk who attacked him after I took over.
After the second shooting my insurance carrier gave me an ultimatum: Fire the employee or lose my insurance. I promised them that I would not allow him to carry a weapon and that I would assign him to my office as Operations Manager but they would not budge. I had to choose between him and insurance coverage but without insurance I was out of business.
I called everyone I knew in the business trying to find him another job. They all knew about the shootings so they weren’t interested. So I began reaching out to my clients. My guy was ex-military and very smart and I hoped that one of them might be interested in him.
It turned out that a car dealer I was providing patrol coverage to was thinking about taking his security in-house so he agreed to talk with my employee.
Long story short, I lost a $1,000 a month patrol contract but the guard was hired by the car dealer. I haven’t spoken with my ex-employee in years but the last time I did he was head of security for the dealer, in charge of 4 different car lots. Like I said, he is very smart.
I’m from Russia. Below are a few things I almost always have to explain or discuss with visitors from Russia.
1. Why individual houses are so large? We always get into discussion that house is not just a shelter, but also a manifestation of one’s financial achievements.
2. Philanthropy. There is no culture of philanthropy in Russia and many view American philanthropy either as a waste of money or as some intricate plot to get some additional benefits.
3. People don’t walk places. They go everywhere by a car.
4. There is almost no public transportation except in a few large cities. People actually have to have cars to get places. Cars are necessity, not luxury.
5. Majority of high and middle schools have sport facilities of very high, almost professional quality.
6. Many schools have orchestras, bands, theaters of a very high, almost professional quality. Free.
7. Every state has a lot of autonomy.
8. President’s salary is comparable with the one of a plastic surgeon.
9. President doesn’t automatically become the richest person in the country.
10. Majority of things in the US aren’t controlled or regulated by the government.
11. Children are expected to leave home when they are 18.
12. Students prefer and are expected to live in a dorm and not with parents.
13. When relatives visit they often stay in the hotel.
14. Many children, even in well to do families, work in fast food, car washes and do a lot of other things to get money and it is not an embarrassment.
15. Parents have their babies sleeping in separate rooms almost from the day of their birth.
16. Russians find 11-15 are particularly absurd, offensive, and egotistical.
17. Many Russians believe that American system of primary and secondary education is very inefficient. As a mother, I have to explain that it is very diverse and essentially even in the poorest districts there are tons of resources available for children who are willing to use them. There are also an opportunity for kids to take advanced and extra advanced classes providing they are willing and able to do the work. And this differentiation is available as early as elementary school.
18. How well elderly live, even those on SSI and Medicaid. How many services are available to them.
19. How open Americans are about their shortcomings and always ready for self criticism.
20. Millions of people don’t have medical insurance.
21. Some hospitals look like five-star hotels.
22. Budgets of some hospitals are equal to h/c budgets of small countries.
23. Doctors tell their patients everything.
24. Return policies and free refill.
25. Idea of a liberal art education. In Russia, after high school graduation, a student should decide on vocation: engineer, doctor, teacher, lawyer, accountant, etc. It seems inconceivable to attend a university and then to graduate without a solid specialty. I often have to explain that not knowing what one wants to do after high school is an acceptable norm in US. A student can still acquire marketable skills, expand his or horizons, get a job after graduation, and, what is even more surprising, obtain an advance degree in a totally different field later. Yes, accountant can attend a medschool and become a doctor and musician can go for aa master degree in computer science.
Long ago when the no bra and see through crazes overlapped for a while (late 70s I believe) I had a young lady walk into my 1st Period class with no bra and a see through blouse. I took roll while the students started a mini lesson on the board. Then I started to write a note I intended to give to her to go to the office for a ruling/talking to by a female counselor. I had just started when the young lady called to me “Mister, tell them to stop staring at me!” I looked up and of course every boy in class (11th grade) was staring, standing to see over other students etc. Before I could say anything another girl loudly proclaimed “If you don’t want them looking, why did you dress like that?” Another girl handed the young lady a sweater jacket to put on. Then the young lady came up and whispered “May I have a bathroom pass?”
I gave it to her and put my note aside to see what happened. 10–15 minutes later she came back wearing an over sized PE uniform t-shirt over her clothes, handed the sweater back to the girl it belonged to, looked at me and then at the one who had spoken up and in a very soft voice said “I guess I didn’t think. It won’t happen again.” It didn’t.
On October 25, 2009, I was working like I always did and my supervisor came up and asked if I wanted an early out. I didn’t usually take early outs because I was a single mom and my supervisors knew it. I shocked him because I agreed to leave early. I said it’d be nice to have some extra time with my kids. I went to the babysitter’s house and her brother told me that she took my kids to her grandparents farm and he’d let her know to bring them straight home when they got back. I left there and at a stop sign and ambulance went flying past me and I had such a strong urge to follow it but I talked myself out of it. I went home and was pulling stuff out of the fridge when my phone rang. It was the sitter’s cousin asking me where my kids were and I told her they were with Nikki and then she told me that Nikki was in a head on accident and they may have to life fight her. She swore my kids weren’t with Nikki and I knew they had to be. After that Nikki’s boyfriend called me and told me that Nikki and my kids were in a head on accident and I must have let out a really loud scream because my neighbors heard me in their house. I called my parents as I rushed out the door and I asked them to keep me calm until I found my kids because they were in a head on accident. I didn’t even notice my neighbor standing in the yard. Apparently they heard about the wreck on the scanner and then heard me scream so they’d came out to drive me wherever I needed but I didn’t hear him talk to me. I was too focused. I had no idea where to go so I decided to go straight out the direction that I saw the ambulance go earlier. I came up to an accident and I tried to get past all of the cars and a police officer stopped me and said I couldn’t go any further. I told him it was my kids without knowing 100% at the time but just by my gut feeling. He called ahead to another officer and he said they were okay but my son’s face was cut a little bit from the airbag and his glasses. They allowed me to drive up to the ambulance but I still wasn’t allowed to see my kids. I followed them to the hospital. From the look of the truck, I knew the police officer was wrong. It took over 2 hours to be able to see my kids from the first call. I only got to see them when once the arrived at the hospital. My son’s face wasn’t just cut a little it was several cuts and two black eyes. My son ended up with permanent brain damage that was diagnosed later on. He didn’t want to walk and we just thought it was because he was scared so we carried him home. He’d just crawl on the floor and not walk. When we took him to his so called specialist, he told me I needed to institutional him because he’d never be able to learn again because he no longer had a short term memory and part of his long term memory was gone. I fired him and worked to teach my son how to walk, use the bathroom, and worked with him on his schooling. I’d enrolled in college just to help him learn. I needed to know how the brain worked to teach him and him retain things. He did learn it and more after I was told he never would. He also had whiplash extremely bad. Our attorney found it in the x-rays but the hospital never mentioned it. My daughter had to be potty trained again and she had severe whiplash along with a severe concussion. For the police to tell me they were fine I knew they weren’t. especially after seeing the truck. II wish my intuition was wrong that day. I’m fortunate that I didn’t lose my kids but we still lost my son as we knew him. When my older kids saw the actual changes in him they broke down crying. Fortunately it wasn’t all at the same time. As for the child the told me to institutionalize because he’d never learn again and could never live alone, He proved them all wrong. He’s got an amazing job, lives on his own, drives himself to work, and is having a babe in a couple weeks. He thanks me all the time for not giving up on him. He and his sister are best friends because she stood up for him when he couldn’t. I hope I never ever get the urge to follow an ambulance again. That’s not something I’d normally do so that day I had gut feeling and I was right. BTW, the engine was pushed all the way to sit in the back seat where my daughter was sitting. Her seatbelt wouldn’t work so she wasn’t fastened in thank God. If my kids would of say any other way I probably would of lost one if not both. Good was looking out for my kids that day. I’ll never ever forget that day.
Tuscan-Style Ribollita
2024 02 13 08 10
Ingredients
6 slices (1/2-inch thick) day-old crusty French bread
3 cloves garlic
Black pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon chicken broth
1 onion, diced
3 carrots, chopped
3 celery stalks, chopped
1 zucchini, sliced
1 yellow squash, sliced
1/2 sweet red pepper, diced
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
4 cups torn escarole or dark cabbage
1 (16 ounce) can kidney beans
1 (14 1/2 ounce) can plum tomatoes, drained, juices reserved
1 cup chicken broth
3 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
Oregano leaves (garnish)
Instructions
Grease a baking sheet. Put the bread on the sheet and bake at 350 degrees F until golden brown, about 15 minutes.
Remove from the oven.
Cut 1 garlic clove in half and rub on each side of the toast slices. Sprinkle with black pepper and set aside.
Heat the oil and broth mixture in a 4-quart pot. Add the onions and sauté until tender, about 10 minutes.
Mince the remaining garlic. Add the garlic, carrots and celery to the pot. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes.
Add the zucchini, squash, sweet peppers and oregano; cook for 5 minutes.
Add the escarole, beans and tomatoes; cook until the escarole wilts, about 2 minutes.
Add black pepper. Pour the vegetable mixture into a 3-quart casserole and top with the toast.
In a large measuring cup, combine the reserved tomato juice and the broth; pour over the toast. Sprinkle with Parmesan.
Bake at 375 degrees F until the cheese has melted, about 30 minutes.
One night as I proceeded through an intersection when the light turned green I heard a car accelerate and saw it nearly t bone me. I made the stop and saw it was a local shithead kid I knew well as having a major chip on his shoulder. He blamed his faulty brakes to which I replied I’d have to impound his car for a safety inspection. At this point he changes his story and tries to reach down and roll the floor mat under his brake pedal to blame for the incident. I issued him summonses for unsafe speed, running a light a failure to yield with the warning to keep it on the straight and narrow. A short time later I received a call for a 911 hangup at his address. The door opened and a middle aged male walks out. I ask him if he was the homeowner and if everything is OK. He addresses me by name and says he’s a corrections officer and asks why his son was not given a courtesy and gives me a rehash of his sons version of events. I ask him if he called 911 over this event and he said yes he was trying to lodge a complaint against me. I replied that his son is a liar and that’s not what 911 is for. He went on grumbling about courtesy and I shot back neither you nor your kid know the meaning of the word. After that incident the kid was noticeably quieter during the numerous encounters we had with him and his delinquent crowd.
Yep, had a woman who did the same job as me on alternate days and was jealous as I was asked to do the important stuff so to speak on my shifts and not her, the boss, female would confide in me and not her as she was a straight out the door on the dot person and would never cover in an emergency etc. She started to file fake complaints on night reports …he didn’t do this etc but of course we had CCTV. She would send watsapp messages to me complaining and then the best one…my wife is Asian…one night she sent a message insulting my wife and Asian women calling them Ting Tongs and Asian brides.
What she failed to realise is that the CEO despite having an English surname through marriage was Asian. I simply replied… our Thai CEO will enjoy reading that
Years ago I was driving home from a night out in Memphis, TN. It was roughly 3 AM, and I was driving about 60 to 65 mph along Walnut Grove Rd through Shelby Farms. The speed limit stepped up from 40 mph to 55 mph pretty close to that spot, and I don’t recall which side I was on. As it turned out, it didn’t matter. I saw the reflection of my headlights on his patrol car and started to pull over before his blue lights came on. Once stopped, I rolled down my window and had my license and registration ready for him when he walked up to talk to me. He looked at them, at me, and at the officer decal on my windshield and said I could go. Greatly surprised, I asked him why, and I would never have predicted his response. “You pulled over so fast and in such a short distance that I don’t even have to go around [a mile or so down the road to a break in the median] and come back to my spot [where he had set his speed trap].” I was not intoxicated, and I was far from the fastest car to travel that road. But at that particular time I was the only driver around, so I got his attention. The whole thing was a bit surreal, but I was grateful for the outcome. I thanked him and went home to get some sleep.
I called for what I said was, I guess, a welfare check. I saw a young girl, probably mid-teens, walking on the rural road near where we live. I didn’t think much about it, even though there are few people who walk on that road, and very few homes. Later, as I returned home, I found her walking up the even more rural road leading up the mountain to where we live. I stopped and asked if she needed a ride. To my surprise, she said yes (her a young girl, me an old man). I asked her where she was going, and she said to visit someone. We passed my house, and she said to stop at a neighbor’s house. I asked who she was seeing, since I knew our neighbors, and she just said, “Someone.” I let her out and went home. I had to leave a while later and found her walking back down at the bottom of the mountain on the road near where I first saw her. I had also noticed that she had taken off her jacket and dropped it on the road. At that point I called the police and said that I was worried about her. I described her and told the 911 operator where she was. A short time after that a police car passed me going in that direction. I did not see the girl later when I returned home. I don’t know what happened, but she seemed troubled in some way, and was definitely acting odd. I hope the police gave her a ride home, or helped her with whatever her problem was, but I have no idea.
Ladies, this is the worst expression you could tell a man. Don’t tell him all men are the same because no one told you to try them all.
Men do not like to be told what to do and how to do it all the time.
When you ask stupid questions like “Do I look fat to you?” “Do you still love your ex?” “When I grow old, will you still love me?” “Do you think that woman is more beautiful than me?”
We all hate it when you bring up old things every time we fight.
Talking to your Friends about Anything and Everything
Men don’t like it when you talk about your exes, especially if you do it a lot or bring up details.
Even if you are just friends, men hate to be friend-zoned.
I was the IT manager at one of the Maryland Job Corp centers. I was in the process of upgrading government cast off computer equipment from 486s to Pentium Ones, if that tells u how long ago.
Being a nonsmoker, I never take breaks. Ever. I was coming across campus carrying 4 CPUs. I walk really fast so it alway looked like I was running to other staff. They’d joke about me working so hard, so fast. I stopped outside the admin building to catch up with the HR assistant. I was changing her computer next. In front of probably 10 of these smokers, my boss, the director of Finance and Administration took a puff and asked, “Christine, isn’t there someplace you should be?”
Dead, shocked silence.
The 60 hours I’d put in the week before, being forced to sign something that I was volunteering so wasn’t paid OT, and this comment flashed thru my mind.
I took a breath, bit back my inner voice’s come backs, smiled and set the computers down on the sidewalk.
I said, “There sure is.”. Smiled, walked inside, got my keys and kept walking.
When my older son was 7 (he’s about to be 28), the school nurse called because my son had an accident on the playground and sustained a large bump/knot to the center of his forehead. They said he was fine, but that I should probably take him to the doctor just to be sure. The nurse kept… almost giggling?… and when I asked what happened, she reiterated that he was okay, but that he would best be able to explain when I got there.
i should probably mention that he was already a big nerd, an advanced reader who used words many adults didn’t even use and wasn’t athletic AT ALL. He didn’t like to sweat or get dirty and was always afraid of injuring himself. Needless to say, all the way to the school I was perplexed at what MY KID could’ve possibly been doing so carelessly or vigorously on that playground to have injured himself.
When I got there he was embarrassed and mad af at himself but also laughing and I will never forget what he said. “My arch nemesis challenged me to a duel and I won. And it felt so good I couldn’t hold it in. I did a victory lap, but was stupid and did it with my eyes closed and ran into the tether ball pole. Mom, I gloated too hard.”
Months after buying a security guard company, from my former employer. one of my guards was involved in a fatal shooting at a nightclub. A drunk wielding a tire iron ran at him and the guard shot him once, through the heart, from about six feet away.
Houston Police investigated and eventually the guard was no-billed, meaning a grand jury declined to indict my guy, but that didn’t stop the drunk’s family from filing a wrongful death suit against the club and my company. My liability insurer wound up settling my part of the suit for $30,000 but after doing so they blindsided me by insisting that I fire the guard.
A couple of years earlier, while working for the man I bought the company from, he was involved in another fatal shooting at an apartment complex. In that case, a man shot at him from across a courtyard and his return fire struck the man in the head, killing him instantly. No lawsuit was filed in that case but my insurer still believed that two fatal shootings in such a short time indicated that the guard was too much of a liablility, so I was told to fire him or they’d cancel my coverage. I proposed giving him a job in my office so he wouldn’t be working a post, but the insurance company wouldn’t budge. I had 25 other fulltime employees to consider so I had to let the man go.
But I knew that a car dealer I provided security for was considering taking their security in-house, meaning they’d hire guards directly who’d work for the dealership. I talked with the owner and told him that my (former) guard would be a great choice to run his security team and, after checking the guy out, he agreed. I wound up selling my company and leaving Houston 10 years after I fired the guard but we’d stayed in touch over the years so I had a chance to visit with him before I left. He’d left the car dealership and was assistant security director for Occidental Petroleum. He said my firing him was the best thing that ever happened to him.
I use an iPad mounted facing down and connected to a projector as a document projector. The mount is flexible, so I can aim the iPad at the class, if I want to. If I suspect that students are cheating when I’m not looking, I just set the iPad to record a video or time-lapse, then quietly flex the mount, so the iPad is pointed at the students.
Then I walk around the room, making sure to turn my back on the students I suspect are cheating.
Then, I come back to the iPad and stop the video.
Finally, at the end of the quiz or test, I turn on the projector and show the students the beginning of the video I made. I pause it just a few seconds in, so they can think about the fact that I caught them on camera, and I ask the students to be honest with themselves and me. If they were cheating, let me know, before I see it in the video. It’s the right thing to do.
Most of them confess right then and there. Some of them don’t. We have to watch the video together and I have to point to the moment when they’re cheating.
If they know they cheated, but don’t confess, I show their parents the video.
Nazis had a pretty weird thing about blonde, blue eyed babies.
During Hitler’s rise to power, he initiated a program to raise the percentage of Aryan children. This was called a Lebensborn
program.
They basically made every available child to be in peak physical condition and made to match the Aryan race standards.
This included treatments such as: a very strict diet, early indoctrination with Nazi ideologies and even the usage of ultraviolet rays for hair color (in case a baby wasn’t blonde enough)
image 175
Most children came from German impregnated moms but after WWII started , the Nazis encouraged SS soldiers to ‘’get to know’’ the beautiful girls of Europe. They captured not only the best countries, but also the most Aryan girls 😉
If those ladies got pregnant, and their children were deemed as desirable, they were sent to a Lebensborn house where their kids would get a treatment like the one written above. The main ‘’factory’’ (besides Germany) was Norway, with 12.000 kids born during WWII.
When there were not enough moms available, the SS would simply kidnap children that fit their Aryan standards, as Himmler himself said
‘’It is our duty to take [the children] with us to remove them from their environment … either we win over any good blood that we can use for ourselves and give it a place in our people or we destroy this blood’’
The USSR, Estonia, Latvia, Norway and Yugoslavia were serious targets. Poland reportedly lost as many as 100.000 children during the whole war.
image 174
(abducted Polish children in a special labour camp)
After WWII, most children could not be found and linked back with their families because their program files were destroyed to hide war crimes. Hence, an exact number of Germanized children is impossible to tell.
Frid Lyngstad of ABBA is a known survivor of this terrible initiative. Her German father who was an officer in the German army, befriended her Norwegian mother to supply the SS with enough moms. After the war, she and her mom migrated to Sweden.
image 173
(The one with dark hair)
At least something good came out of this whole mess.
I worked for a very large, blue, trash company for about 7 years. After the first year I was running routes so efficiently that there were no improvements left to make so they pulled me from those routes and made me a swing driver. I started running everyone’s routes faster by an average of 3 hours per day, other swing drivers would take 60 hours to run the same routes it was taking me 36 to run and pick up what they missed. I did this for a long time and after several talks with management to make the pay more fair they told me that there was nothing they could do. We were paid hourly and thats it. I told them I was going to find another job then. They freaked out and I told them I wasn’t leaving just yet but as soon as I found something else I was leaving. Fast forward 3 years and I walk into my managers office to tell him I am quitting. He couldn’t believe it because it was out of nowhere in his eyes. I walked away from a fun fast paced job making $20 per hour getting anywhere from 33–56 hours per week depenfing on which routes i would run or who they would let me help. I am now working a job where I only work 6 months out of the year, easy work and make $120k and only requires 8 hours of overtime every other week. Now fast forward another 4 years and I run into the new manager and supervisor. We talk for a minute and the supervisor tells the new manager I used to work for them. He offers me my job back. Before I could even speak the supervisor tells him they can’t afford me to come back. I wished them a good day and walked away. So to answer your question, probably not fired but definitely passed up for promotions. That’s what they did to me.
Because of her eyes that were getting angrier at me by the day. Because of her eyes that were getting hungrier by the day, but not for me. Because of the divide that had started to appear, and there was nothing I could do about it.
It started with a crack (that I didn’t notice at first).
And when I did notice more cracks, only hours later — on that very same day — I realized that she already was in a very different place, and that she might be cheating. Her cell phone behavior had become erratic. Her reactions on my every sentence aggressive. Just like that.
She must have been hiding it, but now the cracks started to appear.
Hours later, in one of the longest nights of my adult life — and still on that very same day — she blatantly stated in the darkness of our cold bedroom that her love for me had faded. (“It was not like before anymore.”)
And day after day, week after week, the space between us became bigger, and the cracks grew into an abyss of anger and distrust.
At one point, the divide became too big, and she was standing at the other side — not even waving. She was just looking at me with empty eyes, as if she was not seeing me anymore. (And I think she really didn’t.) I would see that same empty look on her more than fifteen years in the future — in the awkward silence only separated people know — when she was in the final days of late stage breast cancer.
Much further away on the other side of the divide now, and about to disappear.
The problem is that back in the day, we were already married.
And there was nothing to call off except our every shared memory. As if life had become a text, written on a chalk blackboard.
A friend of mine was having a medieval themed wedding. She had this gorgeous green gown and planned this elaborate hairstyle with flowers braided in. She asked her best friend to be maid of honour, and I got to be bridesmaid.
Get to the big day, and maid of honor is a no show. No phone call, text or email either. So I get upgraded and asked to help with my friends hair. I know NOTHING about elaborate hairstyles, there was no way I could do the style she wanted. So we ended up settling on a simple braided style with green ribbons and flowers threaded in. My friend was pissed. Not with me, but with her now ex-friend. Rest of the day went without a hitch and was gorgeous. My friend thanked me for helping at the last minute.
She never did get an explanation from that other girl, and refused to ever see her again.
I’ve quit without notice twice in my life. The first time was when I was passed over for promotion at Walmart but was offered a 25¢ an hour raise, instead, in recognition of the good work I was doing for the store. 25¢ an hour came out to $520 a year while the promotion would have resulted in a pay increase of around $12,000 annually. I told the store manager to shove the raise and walked out.
Several years later I was working in IT for a clothing manufacturer but I wanted to leave because I was, once again, denied a promotion. I soon learned that my boss and her toadie were holding me back by giving tepid references when companies I’d interviewed with called, so when I finally was offered a job I accepted immediately and told them I’d start the following Monday.
Before leaving work on Friday I drafted a companywide email telling my boss, and her toadie, and the business owner exactly how I felt about them, and I delayed delivery until Monday morning, so it would be the first thing everyone, including the three stooges saw. My boss actually called me on Monday morning, around 5 AM, before the email was delivered and asked me to come in early because she was having trouble with a printer. I told her I’d be right in and then rolled over and went back to sleep. She never called me again.
China is one of the most emblematic and visible practitioners of Progressive-Conservatism, which may seem an odd description given that Communism is described by the West as ultra-radical.
However, when integrated into the context of Chinese history and its longstanding social-philosophy, it’s actually normative as the past is honored while wading into the future with confidence based on past successes.
When looked at seriously, China’s policies seek to establish Balance and Harmony globally.
Containing China makes no sense. Working with China makes a great deal of sense. And the latter path is far easier than that of confrontation.
A look at the Big Picture shows nations confronting China declining while those cooperating rising.
A while ago my mother’s kid sister (my aunt) was on the dating market, and she was dating various men. After a period of time, she had to choose between two men. Apparently, it was a tough decision.
Ralph. He was a blue-collar carpenter. He was from a traditional Catholic family, and was a “salt of the earth” kind of guy. I really liked him alot. He was honest, a straight-shooter. He was just a all around “good guy”. But he wasn’t wealthy. He was just solidly middle class, with about 11 children.
Sonny. He was a dentist, who branched out and bought up factories and businesses. Turned them around. And then sold them for a profit. He had a daughter, and a large ranch with horses, and a great spread of land.
Well, my aunt decided on Sonny.
Ralph was devastated. I (and my wife at the time) liked him a lot. I haven’t seen him since. He used to help my mother fix and repair stuff at her house. He just did it because he had the talent and the ability. He built her a storage room in the basement and a huge porch in the back.
A few years ago, Sonny and my aunt were having troubles. Apparently he was “too controlling” . Ah. I hate to hear that.
I am of the opinion that if she would have chosen Ralph, she would have been much happier. Maybe not wealthier, but certainly… happier. Sigh.
It’s all about picking your battles with teens. My oldest is 18 now and has been accepted into a very good college, so we’re pretty much “done” raising her. Now it’s mainly just raising money for her.
But, between the ages of 13–18, there were quite a few times where she did something she knew we didn’t want her to do, or she lied to us, and we let her think we didn’t know. We knew, we just picked our battles, and those didn’t seem like battles worth fighting. Basically, if it was something that put her or her future in danger, we came down on her for it. If it was something that just annoyed us or was rude, we let it slide, sometimes.
For example, we grounded her when her grades started slipping because she was spending too much time with her boyfriend. She was mad, but it worked. Within a week, her grades were back up and she was un-grounded. We also have a rule in the house about not hoarding dirty dishes in the bedrooms, but sometimes I’ll look in her room and see literally 20 dirty dishes. Is it worth making a fuss over, even though she’s being disrespectful and breaking a rule? Nah. I just ask her to bring me the dishes from her room the next time I’m loading the dishwasher. No need to pick a fight.
Our parenting mantra for her was pretty much: “Make sure she doesn’t screw up her future by getting pregnant, doing drugs, or failing school, but otherwise, don’t needlessly rock the boat.”
It all worked out. Assuming she doesn’t go completely insane over the next five months, she’ll be fine.
Chicken Soup with Tortellini (Pollo in Brodo con Tortellini)
Tortellini Soup
There is nothing, nothing, as comforting as walking into the house after a long day to the wafting aroma of chicken tortellini soup.
Today’s Creamy Chicken Tortellini Soup is a healthified version of a heavier cream-based soup.
I haven’t removed the essential elements that make it special such as tender chicken, hearty cheese tortellini, and even a little cream. I’ve just reduced certain ingredients, so you can feel good about serving this Creamy Chicken Tortellini Soup to your family.
And maybe even having seconds.
2024 02 13 07 38
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients
1 (3 to 4 pound) broiler-fryer chicken, cut up
6 cups water
1 stalk celery (with leaves, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 medium carrot, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 medium onion, cut into fourths
2 sprigs parsley
1 bay leaf
2 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
1 package commercial fresh tortellini or 20 homemade tortellini
2 cups water
Minced parsley
Grated Parmesan cheese
Ingredients You Will Need
DeLallo Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Large Sweet Onion – peeled and chopped
Red Bell Pepper – seeded and chopped
Carrots – sliced
Minced Garlic Cloves
Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast – or bonleess chicken thighs
Chicken Broth – low sodium chicken broth
DeLallo Three-Cheese Tortellini Pasta
Heavy Cream
Packed Frozen Spinach – or fresh baby spinach leaves
Fresh Chopped Parsley
Dried Thyme Leaves – or fresh thyme leaves
Crushed Red Pepper
Salt and Pepper
2024 02 13 07 40
Instructions
Heat chicken, 6 cups water, celery, carrot, onion, 2 sprigs parsley, bay leaf, salt and peppercorns to boiling in Dutch oven; reduce heat. Cover and simmer until thickest pieces of chicken are done, about 45 minutes.
Remove chicken from broth; strain broth.
Refrigerate chicken and broth separately until cool.
Remove chicken from bones and skin. Cut chicken into bite-size pieces; add to broth. Cover and refrigerate.
Prepare tortellini. If using commercial tortellini, do not precook.
Skim fat from broth. Heat broth and 2 cups water to boiling. Add tortellini. Heat to boiling; reduce heat. Cover and simmer until tortellini are tender, about 30 minutes.
Sprinkle each serving with minced parsley.
Serve with Parmesan cheese.
2024 02 13 07 39
How To Make Chicken Tortellini Soup
This Creamy Chicken Tortellini Soup is quick and easy to make, yet offers so much wow-factor, your family will ask for it again and again!
Saute. Place a large sauce pot over medium heat. Add the olive oil and chopped onions. Saute for 3 minutes to soften. Then add the chopped bell pepper, carrots, and garlic. Saute another 3 minutes.
Simmer. Add whole raw chicken breasts, chicken broth, dried thyme, crushed red pepper, salt, and ground black pepper to the pot. Bring to a boil. Lower the heat a little and simmer for 15 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through. Remove the chicken and place on a cutting board.
Cook Pasta. Turn the heat back to medium. With the broth still simmering, stir in the DeLallo Three Cheese Tortellini. Stir well so it doesn’t stick together. Then chop or shred the chicken and place it back in the soup.
Cream and Season. Once the tortellini is cooked through, about 10-14 minutes, turn off the heat. Stir in heavy cream, spinach, and parsley. Add a little more cream if desired. Taste, then salt and pepper as needed.
My Mum was 79 when a lady who grew up in the same small town as she made contact and started chatting with her. My Mum said, “I don’t know who this person is, but she seems to know me.” Eventually, this lady said to my mum that she was her half-sister. They organised a DNA test and there was shown to be “a high probability” that they were half-sisters. AncestryDNA has shown that I am related to my Mum’s new half-sister. So after 79 years, her whole ancestry has changed.
The story ended up being that my Mum’s father was unable to have children whilst her mother really wanted one, so the father of this other lady was allowed to produce a child with my Nan, that child being my mother. Apparently, the other family was aware of what had happened but kept it under wraps until my Mum was 79 years old when her half-sister decided to talk to Mum and see if she was a nice person. Having decided she was, she opened up to her regarding the situation.
On 2024/1/8, China praised the commander & crew of Nanchang destroyer.
Nanchang (南昌号) is 10000 tons with the most up-to-date equipment. It started service in 2020. It has sailed to Guam a few times. The latest one was Dec 2023 to accompany the fleet of Liaoning aircraft carrier (辽宁航母).
On 2024/1/8, Chinese CCTV released a video which showed 2 US warships, probably EP-18E, nose-diving towards Nanchang. To intercept Nanchang’s electromagnetic field.
Nanchang left Liaoning fleet & went, alone, closer to US aircraft carrier fleet. It activated its Fire Control Radar & opened the lid of 7 of its many missiles. To counter-intercept the electromagnetic field & to warn USA that the US aircraft carrier fleet has been targeted & can be attacked by Nanchang.
The standoff of Nanchang-US warplanes & warships lasted for 20 days. At the end, US fleet left. … China won the electromagnetic “war” & Nanchang crew was thus praised.
Several years ago, I was in court in North Carolina. At the time, cases were called alphabetically, by last name.
One gentleman, let’s call him Ben Jones (not his name but I can’t remember what it was) was called to face charges for some petty crime or another. The judge hadn’t even heard any evidence when Mr. Jones started cursing the judge, the DA, the bailiff, the clerk and everybody else. When the judge gave him a month in County for contempt, he cursed more. This went on until he ended up with about 6 months in county.
When he was finally removed from the courtroom, Chris Jones (again, not the real name) was called up. He immediately asked for a continuance. When the judge asked why, he said that Mr. Curser was his brother and he didn’t want his behavior to affect his case. Even the judge laughed a little and told the guy not to worry, he could keep an open mind.
The judge smiled at the guy upon his not guilty plea, found him not guilty and told him to tell his brother that he’s a reasonable judge.
It is very hard for people who live in western democracies and are used to a multi-party political system to understand that defining the Party as being either left or right is not applicable in the Chinese context.
I would just say that the Party is strongly pro-development and pro-growth, and is focused on improving the lives of ordinary Chinese and making China into one of, if not the greatest economic power in the world, with a special emphasis on manufacturing and hi-tech. It has been very practical and pragmatic, sometimes adopting socialist policies and sometimes adopting free-market policies. As far as the Party leadership is concerned, it is most important that it works for ordinary Chinese, and does not threaten the leadership role of the Party in Chinese society.
The greatest threats to the Party leadership are internal corruption by Chinese officials; this is why Xi has waged his never-ending war on corruption. He sees corruption as a potential cancer in the system, which undermines the peoples’ faith in the system and Party. In China’s past, corruption has almost always been a major contributor to the fall of Chinese imperial dynasties. The other great threat comes from capitalism going wild, and Chinese worshipping the super-rich as their role models. If this were to happen, materialism would run wild, and Chinese would become superficial materialist people like many South Koreans, who worship billionaires and successful actors and entertainers.
To sum up, modern China is very complex, and describing the Party as leftist or rightist is completely inadequate to describe its real nature.
I was hitchhiking a ride one day, about ten years after being bullied. A truck passed, slowed down and backed up to where I was.
“Hey Brad! It’s me” I heard from just below the passenger side door, from the person leaning out of view to open it. All the fear of my past washed over me because I recognized that voice. It was the voice of the doom that followed my every move, my tormentor from junior high through the end of high school.
He looked at me through the open door of his truck with a side of him I had never seen before. “It’s ok man. I’m not trying to trick you or anything” he said.
Various scenarios played in my head, none of which made sense for an adult man to think, so I got in the truck. I needed the ride.
“Thanks for stopping” I said.
“I did more to talk to you than give you a ride. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, but there you were, and now I have the chance.”
The chance at what? I thought. Oh sweet Jesus! Is this guy a serial killer by now? Did all the hate he pummeled my frail body with finally build up to a point that he was now insane? What other reason could there be?
I considered jumping out, but that would certainly kill me. All I could do was wait for his next move.
“I swear I’ve thought about you since I last saw you” he said. “What I did to you was so very wrong. I’m so sorry. I can’t tell you why I did it.”
His voice trailed off into a sob. His shoulders lurched forward in heaves of grief. He had to pull over to maintain control of the vehicle.
We sat in awkward silence on the side of the road.
I held his confession in high regard. It was the first time I saw him as a human being. The fear I felt was displaced by compassion for a person that suffered from the enlightenment of adulthood. I knew then what I needed to do.
“I forgive you, Trickle” (his nickname .) It was akin to evoking the name of Satan himself.
“I don’t go by that name anymore!” he protested angrily.
“What should I call you now? What is your name?” I said, hoping that he knew.
“It’s Paul, just Paul” he said in a soft voice.
“Pleased to meet you, Paul” I said reaching out my hand to shake his.
With that the demon that was “Trickle” was exorcised from both of our lives. All the suffering we endured was cleansed.
We talked for hours and stayed in the truck for the duration. I never saw him again.
I think of him now. I hope that he received my forgiveness, and that his life for the last 30 years since we met that day was free of guilt.
Paul, if you’re reading this I want you to know that I did and still do, forgive you.
Not me but a friend. He is pretty high up in the Cyber Security world and has his own business. He was hired by a company to help them harden their network. So he went in and did his due diligence to understand everything that they had, what their vulnerabilities were, etc. After he had done the due dligence, he designed and wrote up a system that he felt would meet their needs. It is very important to understand that when he does this work, he is specific about what hardware and software that they will need to use. He has it in his contracts with his clients that they must follow his design to the letter or his company will walk away, the client will still be required to pay in full all work done to that point + a portion of the remaining contract, and his company will be released from any and all liability.
He goes into the meeting with his client C Suite. Goes through his presentation and presents his numbers. Immediately, the CFO pulls up a document for a completely different system (different hardware, software, etc) that he feels would be just as adequate and significantly cheaper. My friend explains why he has designed the system and hardware needs to best meet their requirements that they gave him and how that system that the CFO was referring to would not meet their requirements. CFO immediately argues back that they should use this cheaper system and demands that he and his company implement it per the contract. My friend immediately stands up, gathers his documentation, designs, presentations, hardware list and everything from everyone in the meeting and tells the CEO that they have just violated their contract with him and they they have 30 days to pay his company out and that he and his company will not be working for them at any time now or in the future and walks out.
About ten years ago, I was on a one-stop flight from Vietnam to Los Angeles. Hanoi – Incheon – LAX.
We were transiting at Incheon airport. We had to do a re-security screening after landing from Hanoi. So, we got in line. An officer was walking back and forth in front of the lines, with a water bottle in his hand above his head, speaking loudly in English, “No water. No fruits.”, to let people know to get rid of all those things from our bags before getting checked.
Suddenly, a middle-aged woman in front of me, walked toward the officer, took the water bottle off of his hand, opened it, drank some water from it, closed the bottle, and gave the bottle back to the officer with her biggest smile. She nodded her head with the officer like she wanted to thank him for offering the water. The officer was surprised and then laughed, but the woman didn’t understand English, I guessed, she kept smiling and got to the screening area.
The screening area had five small tables in a row, each table had an officer. You just had to walk to the table and open your handbag for the officer to take a look, and you were done, pretty quick and simple. One by one. After finished checking a person, the officer raised their hand, “Next!”, so the next person could walk up.
That woman was finished checking, she was walking out when the officer at the next table raised his hand, “Next!”. Suddenly the woman also raised her hand and gave the officer a high-five and the same big smile. Then she walked away.
I still smile every time I remember that trip and that cheerful woman.
One night, while driving home form the Ozzfest, an officer on DUI patrol stopped me for suspicion of DUI (he claimed I was swerving) He made me do the FST bare foot and I passed. He the takes out the breathalyzer and I blew a .008 (I saw the reading as he quickly turned away) and the cop stepped into me, looked me in the EYE and said; “HERE!, IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, the legal limit it .07” I knew he was messing with me so, I just shut up and said; “Oh? I didn’t know”. From there on, I said nothing. He arrested me for suspicion of DUI. I know the limit is .08 but I don’t fight with cops on the side of the road. When I was released, I walked to the tow yard and picked up my truck. When you get stopped for DUI they take your driver’s license (send it to DMV) and give you a number to call with in 10 days.
The next morning I called the DMV. The DMV gave back my license over the phone cause the was no evidence filed. Knowing there was no evidence, I put myself on the court calender so, I could get a copy of my police report. In order to get the police report myself, (without a lawyer), I had to agree to defend myself so, I agreed to defend myself.
The judge calls my name, he pauses… because, he sees that I am defending myself. He says; “Charles are you going to defend yourself?” I reply, “YES SIR!” The judge then says; “DO YOU KNOW WHAT BEN FRANKLIN said about people who defend themselves?” I replied; “YES, YOU DON’T NEED TO HIRE A LAWYER TO GET A POLICE REPORT”. The judge didn’t like my answer but he gave the report reluctantly. The judge gave me my report and I went down the street to have lunch and read the report.
I read through the report and to my amazement, the officer told the truth, that I blew a .008 and the limit was .08. after read the report, I went back to court and found a DA. I tried to get him into the court room so, my case could be dismissed. The DA declined to help me so, I had to return for a hearing.
To make a long story short, trust me its longer….I defended myself the whole way through but it took a dozen appearances (over a year of court dates) before I finally got my case dismissed. KNOW YOUR RIGHTS AND READ THE POLICE REPORT BEFORE YOU AGREE TO ANYTHING.
I saw neither of the following, but I sure heard about them from the offenders themselves.
I teach in Thailand and have trained teachers in not only methodology but also cultural considerations.
‘Sam’ had been a kindergarten teacher in the U.S. and had often patted kids’ heads when they did well or playfully tugged gently on their hair.
Why he thought that would be ok with adults, I will never understand. Mortified, he came to me, admitting that the students had explained that their heads were considered blessed and asked him to stop touching them. He had apologized profusely.
‘Dan,’ on the other hand, was stubborn in the belief that he owed no one an apology. A class represenative had asked a Thai Academic Office staff member to tell ‘Mr. Dan’ to stop putting his feet up on the teacher’s desk and on empty student chairs.
When she explained to ‘Dan’ that feet are considered ‘dirty’ as the lowest point of the body and should not be placed on furniture that others use nor pointed aggressively at others, ‘Dan’ scoffed and walked away.
The Assistant Academic Director then got involved, and ‘Dan’ grudgingly apologized to his class who accepted it but because of his tone, saw him as disrespectful of Thai culture.
‘Mr. Dan’ complained about the ‘ridiculous’ custom to anyone who would listen. Most (including me) reminded him that he is a guest here and should abide by Thai ways.
Note: If paper currency goes skittering, do NOT put your foot on it because it can be considered lese majeste since money carries the image of the king. A fine or even jail time may be involved.
Woman Adopted 11-yr-old Cat. What She Did Next Shocked The Shelter Staff!
It was part of an initiative that I began 10 years back, my goal to slowly acquire skills to fix things myself so that I wasn’t constantly having to hire people to fix things.
I was under my car laying on my back sorta like this.
image 162
I don’t remember precisely the problem with the car. But I do remember it was night time and I had a small flashlight.
I didn’t have the equipment to lift the truck up properly, so I’d just slowly and carefully wiggled my way under there.
It was a tight squeeze. Very tight.
I felt like Bishop in that insanely claustrophobic scene from Aliens where he crawls through a mile-long, shoulder-tight tunnel.
image 163
As I’m on my back, my flashlight is shining up into the engine and I’m quickly realizing that I’m in over my head, (you may as well be teaching a monkey to do brain surgery at this point).
Then – shit got real.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
I heard growling.
With my god damn legs hanging out from under this car, I heard the deep guttural growling of a large dog within 10 feet of me, clearly growling directly at me.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
I began squirming out as the dog continued growling from the same spot.
Then I emerged.
I looked right.
And the growling stopped.
It was a familiar large, yellow lab, who started wagging his tail as he recognized me:
It was my neighbor’s dog.
And my neighbor was standing right behind his dog, with his hand firmly gripped on the dog’s leash.
When I was 17, I worked for a cellphone store. One of my coworkers was helping this lady who was going through a tough time. Her husband passed away, and she had five small kids. He was their sole provider. She told us he cared for everything so she could focus on their home and kids. She needed a phone and didn’t have access to the funds her husband had left her because her mother-in-law was trying to take it from her. So my coworkers told her she could purchase the cheapest phone, and it would be suitable for a couple of months and work for what she needed it for. But we were instructed to tell the client they could only get the phone with the highest phone plan. If we sold it with the lowest phone plan, it would kill our numbers. My coworker saw this lady was struggling and did this for her. The next day when our boss asked why it had been done. He was furious and fired her for it. I quit a couple of days later.
I’m a teacher. I always insisted on having the crappy classroom at the end of corridor one, one of the five ground level corridors.
Why? I wanted to keep the students away from the office. If they were late, I wanted them to slip into my class without reporting to the authorities. I wanted easy and immediate access to the outside for any students experiencing acute anxiety or if they were about to burst into tears. If that happened, they were guaranteed some privacy.
I could also see who was at the Happy Tree across the street (a key pot smoking location).
My classroom was a long way from the office and most administrators were too lazy to come by. If they dropped by, there was a reason, which was fine with me.
But there was another reason I wanted to be at the end of corridor one.
The intruder alert procedures insisted that we gather on the floor in our classrooms, remain silent after closing the drapes or blinds and covering the window on the door and locking it.
Like fish in a drained barrel.
So that was the official Plan A.
My plan was Plan B.
If there was an intruder alert, I needed to determine the direction it came from. Then I wanted all my students to run across the street to the Happy Tree, as a group, on through the park, across the next street, and through the intersection to the mall. They were to be silent and fast. I would be behind them.
It never happened.
We have so much support and school-to-work programming for mentally ill and angry young men that I don’t think it will ever happen, but if I was wrong and it did happen, I wanted my students out of harm’s way.
They couldn’t be out of harm’s way if they were cowering in the corner of a classroom.
The US military is the biggest military power in the world. There’s no arguing against that. They have some of the best troops, the best tech, and probably the best logistics. Heck, strike “probably”, they fight wars on other continents.
What they often don’t have is a clear idea of what they want to achieve, and that’s down to the people who send them out. The US politicians rarely have a clear vision of their war objectives, and when they have one, it’s often laughably unrealistic.
image 164
George W. Bush planning the invasion of Iraq
For instance, the idea behind the adventures in both Afghanistan and Iraq was to install a democracy. That’s not a military objective, that’s a political objective, and the military is patently useless at that sort of thing. And it was a hopeless task to begin with; yes, there was a lot of opposition to Hussein, but they all just wanted a different crazed dictator. Vietnam became a total mess because, again, they sought a political outcome, and asked the military to achieve it, and then messed up the political side totally.
It’s all a bit like if Elon Musk wants new and better recruits for SpaceX, so he hires Lionel Messi and Novak Djokovic. Yes, they’re world class, but they’re not world class at what he’s trying to do.
I was driving through a long painful construction zone, we were reduced from three lanes to 1, for no apparent reason, we would suddenly come to a stop, with a flagman stopping us, then start up again. The speed was reduced from 110 kmph 68 mph to 50 kmph 30 mph.. We had been crawling along, or stopped for 16 km, 10 miles.
I was the person in front, when the flagman stopped, so there were no cars in front of me, for a couple of kilometers. When the flagman motioned for me to proceed I was leading the pack. After a couple of km I could see the “End of construction “ sign. For some reason there was a concrete barricade slanted across the shoulder. I started speeding up, I was maybe 50 feet from the barricade, that was also the end of construction, and I had sped up to maybe 80 kmph, out of nowhere, a guy passes me on the shoulder. He had to have seen the barricade, but he was accelerating, I’m guessing he was doing 200 kmph 124 mph when he flew by me, he had to instantly change into my lane, I slammed on the brakes, and he almost made it through, his bumper clipped the barricade and went flying through the air, and skidded across three lanes to disappear into the median. I swear he missed hitting me by less than a foot.
I was the only one who could see the end of construction, and 110 kmph sign, so I was the only one who had been speeding up, and there was a huge gap behind me that would have been easy to pull into, and once we passed the barricade, we were back to 3 lanes again, and I was the only car ahead of him.
I honestly had no idea that someone was doing 200 in a 50 kmph zone transitioning to 110, on the shoulder. It was single lane traffic, I wasn’t even checking my mirrors.
To save maybe 30 seconds, he lost his bumper. I have no idea how much more damage he did because he kept going at well over the speed limit.
This was a long time ago about 1985–86. My son was in I think 3–4 grade. He and a group of about 4 boys hung out together in the playground at recess. One day the 5 of them were hanging out at the swings. They were like sitting on them and talking but not really swinging in them. The story gets a bit long here.
Another boy came up and asked them for one of the swings since they weren’t really using them. Now one of the boys being a smarty pants said something like “ give me a quarter and I’ll let you have the swing”. To his surprise the boy gave him the quarter.
I think you see where this went. So everyday at recess the 5 boys would run out to the swings and charge a quarter for the other kids to ride the swings. This went on for about 2 weeks until someone at the school finally found out.
So I get a call from the school to come in. Come to find out they had called the police and had the school psychologist and a police detective “talk” to the boys. The detective actually threatened the boys that they could go to jail and psychologist wasn’t much nicer.
Now don’t get me wrong I was not condoning the behavior but in the end I don’t think what they did was actually wrong it just wasn’t very nice. The school on the other hand label these boys as the horrible thugs and the police even said that they were guilty of extortion. The psychologist was going on about deviant behavior and how traumatic an experience it was for the kids that paid for the swings.
I went in to the school but I did not take my son with me they asked me why and I said because I didn’t think they would want him to hear what I was about to say which was the following:
can understand your concern and my husband and I will deal with the behavior, however here are my issues.
The school intimated to me I should have noticed my son coming home with all this money and I was a poor parent. It was a quarter so no I wouldn’t notice he had a quarter on him at the end of the day. We’re not talking $10 a ride here, we had a change dish on top of the TV that he and his sister would take out money for lunches or milk/snacks at school so I wouldn’t really think it strange that he had an “extra” quarter at the end of the day.
*Where was the adult supervision on the playground that this behavior went on for 2 weeks before one of the others kids on the playground complained?
*Whereas I agree what they did wasn’t very nice it was in no way a criminal act or extortion. The boys did not threaten the other kids like gimme your money or I’ll beat you up or if you tattle you’ll be sorry. They simply were selling rides on the swings.
*You had absolutely no right to have my son ( who is probably about 8 years old) interrogated or questioned by either the police and psychologist without my permission.
*In the end the boys made about $2 total each because all of the boys said sometimes the kids only had a dime or a nickel to pay.
Again I agree it wasn’t a nice thing to do but illegal or immoral I don’t think so. I explained this to my son and I don’t know about the other boys but I did make my son apologize to the kids he could remember and he gave them their money back ( at least most of them that he recalled) it came out of his allowance.
The one thing I did tell the school was that if the roles were reversed and my son was told he had to pay a quarter to ride the swings. The first thing he would have done was when he got home he would have said something to either his dad or I.
My first question to him would have been “Did you give it to them?” If he had said yes I probably would’ve said something like “ Don’t do that again if they are asking you for money for the swing go tell a teacher. You don’t pay to ride the swing “ I would have then followed up with school it would not have gone on for 2 weeks!
I can’t believe that my son and his friends were the first ones to ever try something like this. But in my mind I can see these 5 boys with a little light bulb moment 💡 ! I asked that boy for a quarter to ride the swing and he gave it to me!!! There was nothing criminal or psychotic in their behavior just a bunch of boys being dumb.
My son did not grow up to become a social deviant or a gang member or thug. He is married with 3 kids and 3 grand children. I look at this episode as just one if those childhood stories that we tell at family gatherings.
One of the first jobs I had was at a distribution center for AH Robins Pharmaceuticals. I was assigned to work with another guy to fill and pack the small orders that shipped via UPS. I was 22 and had just been hired while my coworker was 29 and had been with the company for about 6 months. We were the youngest guys, by far, in the warehouse. Everyone else had been with Robins for 15+ years and all but one were 50 years old, or older. The other guy was 38.
Being young(er), we decided to make a game out of completing the orders by seeing who could pick and pack them faster. As a result, we’d finish the orders by lunch each day. Since we had half a day left and nothing to do, at first we were told to stock the small order shelves and then clean the area around the packing table. But we finished that so quickly the warehouse manager had one of us start helping the other workers pull truck orders.
That was when the older workers pulled us aside and told us that we needed to slow down because we were making them look bad. We just laughed at them. But then the warehouse manager called us into his office and told us to slow down and take our time, or he’d have to let us go.
We were puzzled by this and we finally worked up the courage to talk to the DC Ops Manager, and he explained that the warehouse was staffed with long-time employees who were set in their ways, and we needed to go along to get along. So we began stretching our orders out to last the entire day so our coworkers and boss would be happy, but the job no longer fun from that point on.
The 24.7 military activity around Taiwan is a visible electric fence, a constant tripwire reminder that Taiwan is ringfenced, and the Taiwanese military is not doing anything about its ever-shrinking area of responsibility. It’s the classic boiling frog, with time scales measured in years.
A blockade is an ON-DEMAND military option today, based on demonstrated readiness, enabled by real-time multi-sensor intelligence and deployed assets.
The real battlefront lies further away, as far south as the Philippines, as far east as Guam, and as far north as the Japanese home islands.
In other words, the battlefront is as far south as America, as far east as America, and as far north as America.
Let me repeat, because it is important.
THE BATTLEFRONT IS AS FAR SOUTH AS AMERICA, AS FAR EAST AS AMERICA, AND AS FAR NORTH AS AMERICA.
That is the current strike capability of the combined Chinese military.
The island of Taiwan, paradoxically speaking, is no longer central to the question of Taiwan.
I always provide a clear estimate of every job I look at. I had a woman that had been referred to me by her sister but had been warned about her too. She had money but didn’t like spending it. She wanted a simple wheelchair ramp installed in her garage for her ailing husband. I noticed her 4500 sqft house needed a lot of work including a new roof. I offered to build the ramp for only $500, which was about $50 over cost of lumber. It was going to be a simple ramp with plywood covered with Astroturf or berber carpet. I figured it might open the door to other work on the house. I’d make my money back later. She looked at my estimate and passed it back to me. Then told me she knew somebody that can build it cheaper. I thanked her for her time and started walking to my truck. She asked me where I was going. I told her that by her comment that she was going to have the cheaper guy build it. She wanted me to lower my price. I said that was impossible as I was making zero on the ramp. The lumber alone was $450. After gas, I was breaking even. Again, I thanked her for her time and started walking back to my truck. She said she thought it would be closer to $300. I replied that It should have been at least $1500 and I was doing her a favor as I knew her sister and could see the house needed other repairs. She asked if I could do it for $300. I actually laughed and told her to hire the guy she knew that could to it cheaper. I’m done playing her games. I knew she was bluffing and there was no other cheaper guy. I wished her good luck and said my final goodbye. I later thanked her sister for warning me beforehand.
When I was a teenage & young adults (late 70’s to Mid-80’s) the shopping mall was at its peak. A large number of stores in a climate controlled environment where you only had to park once.
For me a visit to the mall was a visit to …
The arcade (to play Space Invaders & Asteroids)
One or two book stores (using both Walden Book and B Dalton)
The music store
Sears, to check out both electronics & tools
Radio Shack
The food court.
Now, both radio Shack & Sears were in decline by the mid to late 90’s anyway.
But console games spelled the death of arcades. When feed money into a game when you could play them at home as many times as you wanted?
Book, music and electronics are all found on amazon. And music, for the most part, now as downloads.
In many malls, there were also novelty stores like Spenser’s, and even hobby/arts & crafts focused stores. There seems to be an overall decline for some time, at least before the “maker movement” had a resurgence. But again, online shopping has seriously cut into that market.
I commended on an older answer, that most malls are filled with clothing stores, which is death via boredom for a typical guy.
I really don’t see malls coming back, at least not in their past “glory days” format.
When I began school, we lived 3 doors down from the kindergarten school.
On the first day of school, I walked to school. My mom stood on the front porch and watched me walk all the way, and I waved to her when I got there.
I was very excited and could not wait for the day to proceed – I was a big girl, and was finally in school!
At that time, most schools still tried to force left-handed children to write with their right hand. I am left-handed.
My teacher walked behind me as I sat at a table with several other students. We were coloring pictures. She saw that I was using my left-hand. She smacked the back of my hand with her ruler. It was wood and had a metal strip on it. I jumped and dropped the crayon. She yelled at me that I was to use my right hand, it was not acceptable to use my left hand.
My kindergarten class was a half-day class. For the next 3 1/2 hours, every time I picked up anything with my left hand, she instantly slapped my hand with the ruler.
By the time I left to walk home, the back of my hand was bruised, and I had several cuts on my fingers from the metal band on her ruler.
I was no longer thrilled with the prospect of going to school.
I went home and told mom I was not going back.
When my father came home from work, mom told him what happened. He called me over to him and looked at my hand.
He picked up the phone and called his boss. He told him that he would be late to work the next day.
The next morning, my dad walked with me to the school.
It was a small school that was used only for kindergarten. There were 6 classes.
We walked in the front door of the school and my dad yelled for my teacher and the principal.
They both came running to see what the commotion was.
My father was very loud with the principal about the fact that my hand was bruised and cut.
He then turned to my teacher and told her very clearly that I was left-handed and that I would remain left-handed.
He then told her that if I came home from school with one more mark on me from her trying to force me to write with my right hand that he would return to the school and make sure that she had two marks for every mark she put on me.
He then looked at me and said, “Joyce, you write with your left hand.”
He then walked me into my classroom, helped me hang up my sweater, and walked me to my chair.
He patted me and told me he’d see me at dinner. He then gave my teacher a scowl and left.
It is now not a big thing to be left-handed. That was not always the case. It was the first time I realized that I was not like everyone else. Dad showed me it was OK to be different.
When my younger sister and I were about 14 and 16, we went shopping at a department store together. We separated briefly, she went to the washroom while I looked through albums in the music department. When she was about 15 minutes late at our prearranged meeting spot, I went to the adjacent car park to see if she’d returned to our car by mistake. The garage was enclosed, dark and mostly deserted and I heard footsteps rapidly heading away from me as I approached our car, a low slung mustang. My sister suddenly popped out from under the car and threw herself into my arms, sobbing and shaking. A creep had lurked outside the ladies’ washroom and followed her all around until she panicked and ran to the garage to hide. I was furious and 16 year-old me drove around that parkade to try to find that creep predator. I had some half formed plan of running him over. We returned home, and decided not to say anything to our parents because we didn’t want to lose our car privileges and the ability to shop on our own. Now that I understand just how bad that could have turned out, and realize that predator was a danger to other young girls, I realize that I should have told my parents, so that they would have contacted the police. Instead, we decided to stay together when shopping downtown, and practiced alternative ways to shake off a creep. My sister made a decision that day that could have cost her life. My parents were never told.
I was travelling by bus to a place. And was sitting alone on the seat meant for two people, window side. The scenery was beautiful and I was lost looking outside the window, enjoying beauty of nature.
The bus stopped and a lady boarded the bus. She looked like she was aged above 60. Now, there were two seats empty in the entire bus. One was besides me and other one behind me. Same as me, a man was sitting in window seat behind me, alone. He too looked like he was enjoying the beauty of nature seemed happy with the window seat.
Now the lady stood besides me, thought for a while and asked me to sit with the man sitting behind me. I was like, why? Can’t you sit besides me or that man? Are we going to eat you? Why are you killing our enjoyment? She was adamant and started creating a scene.
I had to get up and sit besides that man. He felt my reaction and offered me window seat but, I thanked him and choose to be on the aisle seat.
What an unnecessary sacrifice! You need to kneel befor fake feminism, THAT SUCKS ABOUT BEING A MAN.
My wife nearly died about 22 years ago. She had cysts on her fallopian tubes. On one side it was big enough that it caused the tube to twist, which torqued the ovary on that side. It basically folded over. This prevented proper blood flow to the organ, so it died inside of her.
I had an entry-level corporate job with good health coverage. The kind where you have to tell hospital staff to check again and see that no, I don’t actually have to pay for xrays, blood tests, yadda yadda, I have the GOOD coverage. Even so, after the emergency hysterectomy I was hit with a bill that was many, many thousands of dollars. I tried to negotiate a payment plan but there was no way I could pay enough monthly for them to agree to it, so they garnished my wages. A lot. Faced with losing my car (and therefore my ability to get to work) and having to choose between groceries/prescriptions and rent/utilities, I had to declare bankruptcy. It took me a decade or so to pay it off, and that’s after they wiped out a lot of my debt and consolidated the rest. Fucked my credit to boot.
And that healthcare that people on here love to tout as the best in the world? Without my intervention, they would have killed my wife. The morning the surgery was scheduled for, no one showed up to take her from her room to the OR. I tracked down a nurse and was told that because my wife has a fever, she needs to go home and take tylenol or something and come back when the fever goes down. While she has a dead organ killing her from the inside. I screamed that the fever wouldn’t go down until she was dead, and made a big enough scene that they finally consulted a couple more docs until one said “well yeah, we’ve got to operate now, wtf are you waiting for?!?!”
When my sons were younger, their Dad and I began teaching them both how to tidy up. This began with the usual dirty clothes in the laundry basket and toys being put away, taking dishes through to the kitchen etc. Pretty standard stuff. As they got older, we taught them how to do their own laundry, wash dishes and hoover. In the beginning, it was all a novel experience for them and they were eager to help mummy and daddy – especially when it came to us teaching them to bake or cook simple meals.
Fast forward to when my eldest started secondary school.
Naturally, the novelty had long since worn off and it was such a big deal if I dared ask them to do something around the house *gasp* (How dare I?) One day, my eldest had been asked to tidy up the mess he had left in the kitchen – it wasn’t much, just a butter knife and toast crumbs on the side and a dirty plate and glass. He huffed and looked at me.
“You know something, Mum? I don’t think I should have to do this…”
“Why not? You made the mess…”
“Well, I’ve been speaking to Nev* and he says he doesn’t have to do this sort of thing…”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, he says his mum does it all while he’s at school and his dad’s at work. So why should I have to do it?”
I knew I had to choose my words carefully here, he was all but saying it was a mum’s job to do everything around the house. I could see his dad open his mouth and I held up my hand to stop him.
“Son, does Nev’s mum work?”
“No, she stays at home.”
“Ok, do I work?”
“Yes…”
“Does your dad work?”
“Yes, but…”
“And who is the first person home each day?”
“Well, me I suppose, but…”
“So do you think it’s fair that after dropping you and your brother at school in a morning, commuting to work, sitting in an office for eight hours then commuting back, picking up your brother from the after school club and come home to find you’ve made a mess in the kitchen from making a snack, do you think it’s fair that I should have to tidy your mess?”
“But Nev’s mum…”
“Son, do you think it’s fair?”
“Well, no, but…Nev thinks it’s mean…”
“Oh does he now. I’ll tell you what, let’s go ask him shall we?”
Son wasn’t happy when I took him round to Nev’s. We spoke with Nev’s mum who was less than impressed by what both boys had said, but what was funnier was when she turned to Nev and said: “I don’t give you jobs to do then do I? I guess I’ll have to find you something else to occupy your time if you think that, won’t I?”
Needless to say, both boys were not happy that we had called their bluff.
Fast forward another few years, both sons can do their own laundry, cook excellent meals and tidy up etc. Son’s girlfriend was really impressed when he cooked her a meal and she asked me how come he was such a good cook. I just laughed and said, “I was mean.”
Stress. I know recluses. They actually enjoy my company, I know when to leave. One of them worked hard and burned out, he found he was less and less productive. Working longer hours and getting less done.
He started working from home, he quit going to crowded bars, if there were more than 3 people in a group, he was out of there. He couldn’t take the anxiety.
He became more productive again.
Another person had a concussion that lead to post concussion syndrome. They were a social butterfly, and suddenly they couldn’t be in a room with more than 6 people. They couldn’t handle sirens, helicopters, barking dogs, squealing kids, or crowds. If they came to the end of a grocery aisle and there was someone waiting to cross, they would be frozen with anxiety, not able to make a decision.
People that can’t handle crowds become hermits.
President Obama said he was suffering from decision overload, so he had someone make all of his small decisions so he had the resources to handle the big ones.
Someone laid out what clothes he should wear, scheduled all of his appointments, chose his meals, etc.
The older I get the more I am susceptible to stress, so I can relate to them, and hope that I am not just like them in 10 years.
I was a middle school teacher(1984). The night before school started my 18 month old son started having seizures. My husband and I spent the whole night at the hospital with him. The doctors did a spinal tap and my son lost feeling in his legs. The doctor said that it could be temporary, or it could be permanent. I still showed up at school the next morning and I told my principal that my husband was staying with my son for the week and that I would need the following week off. The principal told me, you need to decide whether you want to be a mother or a teacher because you can’t be both. I resigned on the spot and went home. My son did regain full sensation in his legs a couple of weeks later There was no way I was going back to that school.
In my experience, there is only one sign I always look for to discern a covert narcissist.
The other red flags will pick up narcissists, but they pick up the overts or malignants.
But there is one thing, yes one thing, that is simultaneously so subtle that it makes coverts fly under the radar, and also the one thing which is what makes a covert narcissist a covert narcissist. In other words, this one thing makes coverts different from all the other types of narcissists. It is their signature.
It’s switching off.
Coverts switch off. They practice
avoidance
ghosting
withholding
neglect
silence
pretend not paying attention
pretend not hearing you
pretend misunderstanding you
pretend there is something wrong with you when you talk about something serious and dear to you (e.g. reframes you as bitter and unable to let go when you share insights on narcissism etc. -> covertly tearing you down by twisting your perspective; this is a form of switching off because they refuse to lower themselves to empathize with your perspective so as to understand it, they switch off listening and understanding)
pretend superiority (e.g. I forgave my narcissist, therefore I’m superior to you, you wouldn’t talk so much about your narcissist if only you would forgive them, you should forgive, for your own sake, never let the narcissist change you, I choose love, I choose forgiveness, I choose not to hate, no one is evil, everyone deserves compassion, we are all the same, there is humanity in everyone, etc. -> blowing their own trumpet; this is a form of switching off because they refuse to lower themselves to empathize with your perspective so as to understand it, they switch off listening and understanding)
acting stupid to create situations (e.g. to persistently cause miscommunication and misunderstanding, to ignore you and create opportunities to withhold, to get away with having done harmful things, to deliberately frustrate and antagonize you by doing the opposite of what they are supposed to do, deliberately act bored or switched off while you are giving instructions and then doing the opposite of something simple you asked for e.g. don’t buy eggs -> buys two cartons of eggs and then proudly boasts that you asked for them)
you take a walk with them, you stop by to admire a flower (or you fell down and sprained something), they pretend not to notice and keep walking on without you, and you either look up from the flower to find yourself all alone, or you lie there watching their back recede into the horizon
they cut in line right in front of you just as you open your mouth to give your order, preventing it, pretend to be oblivious, and happily make their order instead, you stare at their side profile (what the hell! can you believe this girl?)
they do something they know they shouldn’t do (e.g. litter, trespass, jaywalk, steal your food or your seat, or chat on the phone loudly in the cinema, leave their car in the middle of the road blocking everyone, walk in the middle of the meant road for cars) and then pretend to be helpless, oblivious, or ignorant when you have an issue with them
not pick up the phone
they pick up your phone call, they are told to pass a message to you, they take the message and never pass it on to you
you are napping, the phone rings, the covert narcissist is right next to the phone, they let the phone keep ringing, it wakes you up, you run across the house to groggily pick up the phone while the covert narcissist was right next to it all along (at other times the phone manages to ring out) (this happens consistently)
the receptionist who cuts everyone off midsentence to transfer them, and keeps doing it the whole day, every day
they never reply your email (even though they are not busy)
they never return your call (phone message)
you greet them, they look down but make sure they never acknowledge you (they don’t stare at you because that’s malignant, but they make sure they do not reply) (some will look down and give a Mona Lisa smile, like they are slightly embarrassed at their own rude behavior)
you sit across them at the party, they look away from you in disgust, avoiding eye contact and refusing to talk to you, a guest passes by, the covert narcissist suddenly beams a smile at you and says ‘hey, remember that time when … ?’, the guest passes on by, the covert narcissist terminates mid-sentence and goes back to snubbing you, until the next guest comes by
walk out on you midsentence
keep on talking as if to you after you’ve left the room, still holding the conversation but without you
covert narcissists are experts at urging everyone to get along, forgive everyone, hate no one, and then mysteriously degrading you through silence and withholding over nothing (they have weird concepts of what getting along means)
mysterious sour moods (they are a form of switching off, the switching off of love or joy, sour moods in the absence of concrete causes are a form of withholding, and especially negatively affects susceptible empaths nearby)
convenient unavailability or inaccessibility
disappear
run away from fights they started with their covert antagonisms and microaggressions
coverts are experts at telling you they don’t want a fight with you after they’ve finally button pushed you to the limit and caused you to start sorting things out with them
snub
ignore
always have nothing to say in response to what you just said (covertly deflating you and degrading you by refusing to reflect back to you sanity and gravitas; it’s as if their attitude is always ‘you just said something stupid, I’m not going to honor that with a response’ to everything you enthusiastically share or say)
or they will always give a lackluster or subtly negative devaluation or degradation response to your happy, exciting, inspiring experience
not be courteous when courtesy is appropriate and expected (hyper-courteous at other times as if they were on an audition) (courtesy is a weapon to be deployed in the most inappropriate ways)
always being the unavailable shoulder for you to cry on only when you have dramas in life (only unavailable when you need them, this is not a fairweather friend, it’s weaponized withholding)
after you tell them your sob story, they make sure they never say a word to console you (e.g. ok, bye!)
you call, the covert narcissist picks up the phone, you want the covert narcissist to pass a message to someone else, just as you start telling your message, the covert narcissist pretends you’ve finished and says ‘ok bye!’ and starts hanging up, forcing you to scream for them to wait and not hang up on you.
making promises just so they can abuse through failing to come through (duper’s delight e.g. ‘you’re a fool to believe my promises or to trust me’)
making sure they don’t inform you when they go on extended vacations, so that you will call them on the phone, still expecting to make a date for lunch, but there’s no one home to pickup, should you call the police and report missing persons?
making sure they cancel plans on you at the last minute, while making sure you never get wind of it any earlier, to create the greatest last minute upset (this is worst when there’s plane tickets involved)
frustratingly not give any response or acknowledgement whatsoever when it is appropriate to the situation – the mannikin routine (this is always deliberate, make no mistake, it just appears like an accident each time for maximum plausible deniability)
the impossible to please parent, spouse, child, boss, sibling, friend
Coverts practice weaponized switching off. They are like a demonstration prototype that always refuses to work at the convention in front of the investors, or the cartoon frog that only sings when there’s no audience, and switches back to ‘ribbid’ when an audience gathers to listen. Or a mannikin that comes to life when the lights are off, dances, holds parties, then freezes back into position when lights come on, or Toy Story.
This is a peculiar form of passive aggressive crazymaking particular to covert narcissists.
Learning to recognize weaponized switching off will allow you to spot covert narcissists early.
Most people are trained to dismiss and overlook weaponized switching off because it is very highly plausibly deniable, but secondly, because they did not suspect the nature of covert narcissists. This causes them to impute more decency in the covert narcissist than they posses.
When being the recipient of weaponized switching off, something will feel odd to your gut. That’s because your gut senses that the covert narcissist is missing cues. This missing cues is deliberate. Missing cues is something the covert narcissist cannot help doing because their nature is antagonism and hatred, and refusing to behave appropriately by honoring the subtle cues of interaction is how they rebel and live out their intrinsic hatred (don’t mistakenly do this to people in the Asperger spectrum, or those who are depressed, or those suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome, or Alzheimers or dementia, or who lack sleep).
(The cause of missing cues is zero affective empathy. Zero affective empathy causes the covert to both overcompensate with lurvebombing at times, and weaponized switch off at other times. This is because zero affective empathy causes their emotional reaction to everything to be inappropriate, screwy, and ‘off’. Hence their emotional response to everything is always inappropriate. This can be easily detected once you know to look for it. Fakeness, all fake people are coverts.)
It’s hard to explain, and easy to dismiss. But you will feel erased to various degrees in their presence.
The point of switching off is to refuse to acknowledge your personhood (to deny you the glory you deserve through simple things like paying attention or replying earnestly – by the way paying attention and earnest replies are acts of love). They are not switching off to conserve battery. They are switching off to micro-antagonize you. It’s covert button pushing. This is how they toy with your emotional wellbeing. It is meant to produce in you shame, embarrassment, frustration, anger and insecurity. They like to throw you emotionally off balance. This is how they make themselves feel better, at your expense. As you get to know them better and better, they will switch from micro-antagonisms to bigger and bigger antagonisms, and it tends to happen along the lines of withholding, denial, avoidance. Malicious suppression.
What they actually switched off was their humanity. The game is to attack your humanity through switching off their own humanity. A humane person does not seek to feel better through causing hurt feelings. Cruelty is inhumane. Covert narcissists have emotional cruelty built into them. It’s a lot like what they talked about regarding Auschwitz.
Funnily, covert narcissists hate it when you switch off on them. Just try it and see, fail to answer or acknowledge them, pretend you weren’t listening and give no response to them, and see how they react.
My theory is that they react so poorly to their own medicine because they know that whenever anyone does that, it is a deliberate, antagonistic move, because they are well aware that they wanted to ruin things whenever they themselves did it.
11 If a son asks for [a]bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish?
12 Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?
“Ah, hello, Miss. I am Mr. McMichaels. I’ve come to talk to you about your child’s behavior!”
“Right,”
“Right now, as we speak, your daughter is on the floor crying.”
“…”
“Yes. And she won’t stop.”
“My… 6-year-old daughter… Is crying. Right now. And you decided to call me about it.”
“Well, yes, because I asked her what could I do to stop her from crying and she said to call you.”
“Ah,”
“So how is your day?”
“Has my daughter stopped crying yet?”
“Mmm, NO! She won’t stop crying untill you talk to me for a bit more!”
*in unconvinced tone* “Uh-huh”
“So, let’s ignore the topic of your daughter for a moment. What are you doing tonight?”
“Tell my daughter to shut up and be a man. Goodbye, Mr.McMichaels.”
“WHAT ABOUT SIX?!”
“Oh. At 6 I will be going on a date with my lovely husband for our 20th anniversary! Never contact me again, Sir.”
My sister comes home and explains she did not cry that day, nor did she have Mr. McMichaels as her teacher.
The teacher tried, and failed, to plan a date with my mother.
SHAME ON HIM!
EDIT: EEeEe, I’m sorry, guys, I didn’t make this clear enough! This is from the POV of my Mother, not me! I’m sorry for the confusion lmao <3
Also, thank you guys for the love and upvotes! Ik my Mama should’ve said something to the Principal but she was in tears about how funny it was. My Mum isn’t what you would call ‘A responsible adult’ She just laughs at things like this. But, I swear, if something more were to happen she would have told someone I assure you that.
Not my boss, but a true story. A few years ago I was in a pizza shop waiting to pick up my takeaway pizza. A store manager at the counter publicly tore verbal strips off a young trainee who had apparently made an error in her work. I was appalled at the way he humiliated the poor little thing in front of onlookers. At the time one of my children had begun part-time work during the school holidays to earn some money and this young lady only looked about her age. I’m a teacher and maternal, and while all the other customers looked uncomfortable but weren’t going to say anything, I decided to let fly. I mean, what could he do to me? I wasn’t his employee.
I stepped up to the counter and took on the manager. I told him that what she had done was totally understandable given her age and level of experience. I then said that how he handled it was NOT and that I was going to report him to the company for foul language and abuse of a minor. I had his name from his badge and I had the receipt showing time and date of my purchase and that he really needed to go to counselling and get help.
He turned on me, screaming abuse and making a fuss, and actually came out from behind the counter to tower over me, attempting physical intimidation seeing as yelling at me was not having the desired effect. I got out my mobile phone and recorded him, and another customer at the store called the police and reported him. I also made good on my threat, got in touch with the company with details and was assured that they would investigate the matter. I think the fact that the police had been involved swayed them.
Anyway, long story short, about a year after the incident I returned to the shop (they did make good pizza!) and the young trainee came up and thanked me for my help. The former manager had gone to counselling but it then came out that he had been groping other female workers and they were emboldened by the fact that I had taken a stand and spoke up about him. He lost his job and I have no idea where he is now. But I hope nobody else has had to suffer from his misogynistic rants.
Learning Chinese and got to visit China in 2008 (and then in 2010 and 2013)
Before 2008, I attended a college in the US and my view on China was roughly the same as the Western MSM (Communists, human rights abuses, people have no freedom etc.) However, having visited China 3 times and witnessing the development gradually changed my views on China.
I remembered my first day when I landed in Beijing and I wanted to test my Chinese, so I asked a taxi driver whether his life is okay in China. He replied, “还可以“， which means “it’s okay” without sounding worried or oppressed at all.
That surprised me a lot. Weren’t the people of China oppressed? Why was his tone so relaxed?
And during that Olympics year, I witnessed the boom of subway in Beijing. When I first got there, there were just 3 operational lines (Line 1, 2, and 13), but just a couple months later, 3 or so more lines became operational. My life in Beijing was better than expected. I thought I was going to feel oppressed in China, but apart from censorship of certain contents (notably contents on Dalai Lama and Falungong), I was free to enjoy jianbing every morning and free to explore the city (it helped that Beijing subway back then only cost RMB2, or just a little more than a quarter dollar). Moreover, me having Chinese heritage can blend in very well in China and I enjoyed same kind of usual city life in a similar fashion to that of Bangkok. And I ended that year by taking the Z-train from Beijing to visit the Yangtze River Delta area. Their sleeping cabins were far better than the Thai ones (and I China was poorer than Thailand in per capita income back then)
Fast forward to 2010, my view on China became more neutral. Having spent months in Beijing 2 years prior, I thought living in China isn’t so bad. I didn’t whine the same MSM rhetorics anymore but I still couldn’t find positive things to talk about China. That year, what amazed me were their infrastructure. I took the bullet sleeper train from Shanghai to Beijing, and it was the first time I ever saw a bullet sleeper train! By this time, I was convinced that the Chinese transportation infrastructure was miles ahead of Thailand.
2013 was a really pivotal year for me. In that year, I decided to tour China alone by myself from Datong to Xi’an, then to Lanzhou and Dunhuang, then back to Xi’an and Beijing before taking the train to North Korea. By being able to speak the language and being able to blend in with Chinese people, whenever I travelled around any city with Europeans or Americans, there were always Chinese people asked me whether I can ask those white people to have pictures taken with those Chinese locals. Also, one day on the train from Xi’an to Lanzhou, I met a young Chinese college student in her berth opposite to mine. She saw me looking very Chinese, yet reading a guidebook about China in English. Once, she asked me in Chinese to move something out of the way and I did it for her, then the conversation began. She was so surprised to know that I’m not Chinese but a Thai, and then moved on to talk about her Thai idols. I was also surprised that a lot of Chinese people know the politics of my country quite well.
Having all those experiences in 2013, I concluded that Chinese people are so curious and they asked me a lot of questions after knowing I’m a foreigner. They are hunger for experiences and perspectives. But most importantly, they are people who simply want to work hard and enjoy a good life, as we all are in any part of the World. Politics are of very least concern for them. The way Chinese people come to you may seem rude, but I interpreted those moves as sincere curiosity.
Then my view on China gradually became more positive, as seeing people across China hunger for knowledge and better life made me realize massive potential of this millennia-old civilization that my ancestry also belongs. And since I mentioned “sincere curiosity”, Chinese people are also very friendly (it helped though that I can speak the language). I’m sure that even if you are whites from Europe or America, if you start a conversation in Chinese, you will easily make friends in China.
Having been to China for 3 successive times also fascinated me that each time I was there, I saw massive amount of development unfolded right before my eyes. Then I started to wonder why I thought China was such an evil place pre-2008. Looking at the people and infrastructure, they surely have come very far on the World stage. And nothing matters more than current generation of Chinese people are living decent lives. To me, I think whoever was running China did the job well enough to ensure steady prospects for her citizens.
Now, I would like to have my fourth visit and see their entrepreneurial spirits in places like Shenzhen, Hangzhou, and Beijing with my own eyes and be blown away just like all three visits prior.
Tuscan Onion Soup with Shaved Parmesan
Onion soup is a hearty dinner.
If French onion soup is on a menu John or I are sure to order it. We really love it! Onions, cooked slowly with beef stock and then topped with bread and cheese! What is there not to like? Then, one evening we were invited to a friend’s house for dinner, and they served Italian onion soup. It was different from the French version, but it was delicious, and I had to have the recipe.
Where did Italian onion soup come from?
I did a little research on this fantastic dish and learned that it is known as Carabaccia. It originated in Tuscany going back at least to the 15th century. Carabaccia was made with red onions which are native to Tuscany. It had a sweet and sour flavor and used almonds as a thickener. A piece of bread would be placed in the bottom of the bowl and the soup would be poured over it and then topped with cheese. Sound familiar?
Apparently, Catherine d’ Medici brought the recipe to France with her from Tuscany when she married King Henry II. It is said that this was one of Leonardo DaVinci’s favorite dishes. Over the years changes were made to the original recipe. Some modern takes on this soup include the addition of a poached egg and the omission of the almonds as a thickener.
3 bowls onion soup with parmesan
Ingredients
3 pounds white onions (3 or 4 large)
4 medium leeks
4 ounces pancetta, in 1 piece
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
6 cups chicken stock
3 to 4 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
3/4 to 1 cup fruity red wine, such as Merlot or Beaujolais
Salt and pepper, to taste
6 slices rustic country style bread
2 garlic cloves, peeled, halved
3 ounces Wisconsin parmesan cheese, in 1 chunk
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped
Ingredients
My version is a little different and closer to some of the more modern takes on the recipe. It does not have the sweet and sour flavor that was typical of Carabaccia and I omitted the almonds altogether.
Red onions are still the main ingredient. I also use a nice rich red wine and some tomato sauce to compliment the flavor of the onions. I also like the addition of beef stock, where the original recipe might have used a vegetable stock. Garlic and thyme, also add to the robust flavors of this soup.
Tips for making Italian Onion Soup
The onions are the star ingredient in this recipe, so they need to be cooked carefully to get the best flavor out of them. The onions, garlic and sugar should be added to a pan with hot oil and cooked down until they are soft and caramelized. To do this you will need to set the heat on your stove low and allow the onions to cook slowly so that they do not burn. You will need to be patient; it may take 20 minutes or more for the onions to soften.
When you add the wine bring the soup to a boil and then lower the heat a bit and let it cook until the wine is reduced by half. This will heighten the flavor of the wine.
It is best to whisk the tomato sauce and the flour together before you add it to the soup. Make sure that you do not have any lumps of flour in the sauce before you add it.
Once all the remaining ingredients have been added, let the soup cook on low heat for 1 hour. The slow cooking process creates a rich robust soup that is worth the wait!
italian onion soup with parmesan
Instructions
Peel the onions and cut in half lengthwise. Thinly slice crosswise.
Trim the leeks and cut in half lengthwise. Slice crosswise in 1/4 inch slices, using 3 inches of pale green. Place the leeks in cold water, and rinse to remove the dirt. Drain. Reserve the onions and leeks.
Unroll the pancetta and dice into 1/4-inch pieces.
Heat the olive oil in a large soup pot over medium-high heat. Add the pancetta and cook until some of the fat has been rendered, about 5 minutes.
Add the onions and leeks. Sauté for 20 minutes or until tender, stirring occasionally.
Add the stock, and simmer 30 minutes.
Stir the vinegar, wine, salt, and pepper into the soup. Cook until thoroughly heated.
Toast the bread slices, and rub with the peeled garlic clove halves.
Spoon the soup into soup bowls. Float the bread croutons in the soup. Pare 4 or 5 shavings of the cheese on top of each serving.
Garnish with the chopped parsley, and serve immediately.
I once had a young lady in 12th grade come to me at the end of class, just before lunch, and tell me her Uncle, who lived with them, was molesting her. I instantly reported it to the Admin and the Campus Police. The Campus officer burst out cussing. It seems that two+ years before the same Uncle had gone to prison for molesting the same girl. He was a good manipulator and had convinced the prison shrinks he was reformed and as a first timer got released early on parole. And the terminally stupid parents let him move right back in with them – he was the Mother’s “Baby Brother” and had always been spoiled etc. The girl and her little brother were taken out of the home and sent to live with another Aunt and Uncle, I seem to remember one of them was a peace officer. The molester was sentenced to a long term with “no parole” and her parents were put on probation for child endangerment. She didn’t even come to check out, the Admin did all her papers to send her to another high school for her. But one of them passed on her “Thank You” to me. It seems I was the 4th teacher she told and the only one who did anything. The rumor was the other three were demoted to probationary teacher and put on notice as well as having a prosecutor warn them that he could charge them with a felony for failure to report the suspected abuse and just might still do it if they failed to report anything again, even if it was just a rumor they heard from the students.
No not at all. First GDP itself is a highly flawed form of economic measurement. GDP per capital. Is therefore by same extension is highly flawed.
Let’s just look at one item if GDP. Healthcare. The U.S. with a mere 330 million population has GDP that consists of 6 trillion dollars Healthcare and pharmaceutical items while China that has 4 times the U.S. population if 1.4 billion people has a GDP that consist of only 1 trillion dollars in the same category!
So why is that? China offers universal healthcare coverage compared to the U.S. billing every penny to the healthcare industry and hence the difference. The irony is China today as a life expectancy of 78 years old versus 76 years old for the U.S.
So either the U.S. overstated its GDP by 24 times that of China or China understand its GDP by the same ratio! Hence American’s look rich but they are not and Chinese look poor but they are actually a lot richer.
We haven’t even factored in real purchasing power parity. A dollar can buy a Big Mac in the U.S. but the same dollar can exchange for roughly 7 RMB and that can buy you 3 Big Mac in Beijing. So once you factored in that and you factored in the 0.1% in the U.S. owns almost everything and 99.99% Americans are a mere average Chinese but less capable to think for themselves!
I’m from the US, but unlike most US citizens I’ve traveled extensively. Even so, the five best examples of “American ignorance” I’ve witnesses all occurred within the US.
1) The car that makes its own gas. I was on a flight, sitting in first class, and next to me was a college student (from Quinnipiac College). I was reading a car magazine, and she very excitedly told me that she had just gotten a new car, and what she loved about it the most was that the car made its own gas. This was before the era of electric cars, so that couldn’t have been what she meant. I asked her how her car ‘made its own gas’. She said she didn’t know how, but it was so great that it did. I asked her who told her that it makes its own gas. She explained that was the strange part; the dealer didn’t even mention that! She went on to explain that she drove the car off the dealer’s parking lot, and the gauge said the car had enough gas to go 381 miles. She got on the expressway and drove 15 miles to her parents house, and when she got there the gauge said that the car had enough gas to to go 409 miles! So she’d never have to buy gas again because when she drove 15 miles it made 27 miles worth of gas!!
2) I want a room with an ocean view! I was checking into a hotel in Orlando, FL. Ahead of me in line was a couple from Minnesota, demanding that the desk agent give them a room with an ocean view. The desk agent patiently explained that Orlando is 60 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, so there were no rooms in the hotel that had a view of the ocean since it was an hour’s drive away. The man raised his voice and exclaimed “Don’t you go lying to me; I looked at the map and Orlando is only a half inch from the ocean!”
3) How the f**k am I supposed to know what zip code I’m in? I was at a gas station in Tucson AZ. I no longer live there, but I used to. I was filling up the tank, and a guy at the pump next to me was swearing up a storm and hitting the pump. He came over to me and angrily asked “Do you know what f**king zip code we are in?” and I told him I wasn’t sure, but I thought it was 85719. He went back to his car and moments later was was screaming and kicking the pump again. Then I realized that he thought the pump was asking him to enter the zip code for the gas station, instead of the billing zip code for his credit card!
4) Only an hour from Boston and an hour from NYC! I was at a high school graduation party for my nephew, and I met his girlfriend for the first time. I asked her where she was going to college in the fall, and she told me she was going to Quinnipiac College. I asked her why she chose that school, and she told me that it was in the most amazing location, only an hour’s drive to Boston and an hour’s drive to NYC. I asked her how that could be, since it takes 3h30m with no traffic to get from Boston to NYC, so there isn’t anywhere can be an hour’s drive to Boston and an hour’s drive to NYC. She said “that’s what’s so special about the location!” <Note – I have nothing against Quinnipiac College, it is pure coincidence that two of these stories involve their students>
5) The impact of video games on violent behavior. I’ve been involved in college admissions for both Harvard and MIT. I don’t think I ever laughed so hard as when I read the opening sentence of an applicant’s essay: “The impact of video games on violent behavior has been a controversial topic for centuries.”
And just to show that ignorance isn’t limited to Americans, here’s one involving a Brit;
I’ve been on eBay since before you were born. One of my hobbies is restoring and refurbishing old cameras. I pick up ratty old cameras at random antique stores, goodwill, garage sales, and, of course on eBay, and clean and repair them. On eBay I often find great deals when someone misspells a camera name, so it doesn’t come up in a standard search (i.e. Rollleiflex or Cannon or Lieca) so I search for misspelled versions, and often end up as the only bidder. Once I came across a listing with a whopper of an error. The photo was of a very rare and expensive camera, the Olympus OM-3, with a title and description of a very common and inexpensive camera, the Olympus OM-30. At the time, the OM-30’s sold for $10 – $15, but the OM-3 is very rare, and never sells for less than about $600, sometimes as much as $1800. I felt bad; that was too much of a differential to let the seller leave all that money on the table. So I emailed the seller and asked if the item for sale was the camera in the photo or the camera in the description, and let the seller know that the camera in the photo was worth quite a bit, and if that was what was for sale, s/he might want to adjust the item title so that the auction got the attention it deserved.
The response I got:
“Of course it’s what’s in the picture! How else would I get the picture, you daft cow! Who are you, the eBay police? I’ve been on eBay since before you were born and I don’t need you telling me how to run my business! Bugger off”
So I bought it for $10.27, as the only bidder! I ended up selling it a few weeks later for $1200.
This “sitrep” was compiled and written at the tail end of March, 2024. It contains active elements of the global Geo-Political situation focusing on the “primary core participants” as defined by the United States Department of State. I will intentionally leave out details on the “minor” participants, that while important, is not necessary in this overview.
The world is undergoing a massive shift in global [1] Leadership, [2] Finance, [3] Society, [4] Culture, [5] Military influences, [6] Technology, and [7] Planetary Management.
What was once the realm of the “rules based order” led by the United States (the United States makes the rules that others follow), and obeyed “in lockstep” by it’s captive proxy nations, has been eclipsed by a multi-polar world, led by the Russian / China leadership alliance.
The overriding plan
The United States, embroiled into Thucydides Trap (whether you don’t want to believe it or not, it is painfully clear and obvious that the United States “Leadership” is completely ensnared in this situation.) has worked out a long-duration plan to maintain and regain its hegemony.
The key to this is the suppression, followed by the break up of Russia, followed by a pivot to China.
The Timetable for initiation of hostilities
The Break up of Russia into an easily digestible entity was planned to occur in 2022. The war to start the collapse of Russia, however, got off to a bad start, and Russia has been thwarting all of the NATO efforts to manage that collapse.
However, the time-table has not changed. And as of this date a major push to destroy Russia once and for all is planned to occur in Spring / Summer 2024 this year. Leading participants to this fiasco; the United States, the UK, Germany, and France… with participative elements out of NATO to include Finland, Poland, and Sweden are expecting a NATO win by Fall of 2024.
A “buffer” period, or up to two years is planned to coincide with the planned destruction of China. This is planned for the tail end of 2026 and the Summer of 2027.
The Major Participants
For RUSSIA, the nations of NATO will attack on the chosen battlefields of Ukraine. Eventually weakening Russia to a point where “death blows” can be administered by aircraft and missile attacks.
The NATO troops are expected to consist of large quantities of Germans, Polish, Romanian, and French forces for the main thrust. With Northern contingent consisting of Swedish and Finnish forces that will deploy and assault from the North.
For CHINA, A “island chain” of American proxy nations have formed a QUAD of aggressor nations that is designed to instigate the precipitate motions that will force the Chinese entry into the upcoming Global catastrophe.
The primary antagonizing nation is earmarked as the Philippines, with major support from QUAD nations South Korea, Japan, (and to a lesser extent) taking a backseat, the resupply center of Australia.
It is expected that simultaneous “hot spots” will erupt that will trigger Chinese participation. Perhaps Taiwan declaring independence, with the Untied States, and proxy “toadies” nodding vigorously in agreement. Followed, or led, by disruptive assaults by the Philippines in the South China Sea.
The Timetable for war duration – Russia
What is going on right now in Ukraine is not a war. It is a military action, but not a full fledged war. Yet.
But once the full NATO assault begins in the Spring of 2024, a total war event scenario will begin. The United States, and NATO plans for a quick assault, and a rapid ending of the war.
Reports as ludicrous as the collapse of Russia by mid-November 2024 is being bantered about by the collective idiots in Brussels. Smarter heads prevail, and they anticipate a delay that could last until 2026 depending on a number of unknown factors.
But the plan is one of total victory by NATO over Russia and a “color revolution” internal to Russia that would dispose President Putin and replace him with a pro-American stooge.
Maybe an actor like Zelensky (Ukraine), a ideological imbecile like Javier Milei, (Argentina), a “stooge in debt” like Ferdinand “Bongbong” Romualdez Marcos Jr.( The Philippines), or an easy to control puppet like Yoon Suk Yeol (South Korea).
My understanding is that the replacement Russian “president” and his cabinet has already been selected, and the principals have already been contacted.
The Timetable for war duration – China
The ideal timeline for the “pivot to Asia” is once Russian territory is secure, and a proxy government is in charge. Due to the events of the last two years, this date has been pushed back from 2025 to 2027. But owing to the timer / stopwatch on the abilities of the West, the expiration date for action against China occurs in 2028. So the window for action is narrow, and there is an urgency to accelerate things aggressively.
While there will be a continuation of provocations in both the South China Sea, and in Taiwan, actual “False Flag” justification, and assaults against China is unlikely to occur before 2026. Thus, the window of 2026 to 2027 will be a VERY dangerous time, provided of course, if the West (The United States) is successful in taking over Russia through military victory.
Assumptions
The Pentagon along with a significant number of interested parties have made some baseline assumptions regarding both Russia and China. These assumptions color the battle and strategic policies that will govern this upcoming period of time.
Russia is “a paper tiger” and will not use nuclear weapons.
Russia is not as strong or militarily capable as it seems.
Russia, in regards to Ukraine, has been lucky so far.
The entire world is already against Russia, and the United States is leading the world against a renegade nation.
As far as China is concerned…
China is also a “paper tiger” and will not use nuclear weapons.
China has some basic technology, but it’s military is raw recruit, conscripts, with basic understandings and operates in crude military tactics.
China’s navy is expected to be “light weight”, and nothing to take too seriously.
China will fold once the oceans around China is controlled by the QUAD forces.
End Game
It is absolutely and positively understood that neither China, or Russia would dare attack the United States. As neither nations have the logistical ability to invade or assault America, the survival of the United States is understood as certainty.
So with both Russia and China devastated by massive conventional wars, and the United States left pristine and intact, the United States will rise from the ashes of a global war stronger, and better than ever before. Though looting the resources of both China and Russia, the Untied States can be rejuvenated, and the entire globe will listen to the undisputed leader of the planet; The United States.
Final Comments and thoughts
I personally believe that all the assumptions are wrong. That the timetable is off base, and a kilter, and the “leadership” of the West needs to stop taking so many drugs. We do not know what the future holds, but if this plan proceeds… one thing is certain, those planners in the West will not be happy when things go “tits up”.
Forgotten Chicken
Forgotten Chicken is a great fast and easy recipe! I have made this with chicken tenders, and it’s great. This is also known as “No Peek Chicken.”
forgotten chicken
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups white rice, uncooked
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 can cream of celery soup
1 soup can water
Chicken breasts or thighs
1 envelope dry onion soup mix
Instructions
Mix rice, soups and water.
Pour into a greased 9 x 13 inch baking dish.
Lay chicken on top of rice mixture.
Sprinkle chicken evenly with onion soup mix.
Cover tightly and bake for 1 1/2 hours at 350 degrees F.
Shaming
I’ve been at my job for two years and have never called in sick. However, I’ve been vomiting and really unwell so want to call in sick tomorrow but my boss won’t allow it, saying it’s because we are short-staffed – is this allowed?
My boss refused to let me call in sick because I was throwing up. She said that would leave night staff short staffed. I said “no problem”.
I went to work as required. Within 5 minutes of arriving, I was using the wastebasket at the desk to throw up in. Boss insisted I would be fine and refused to let me leave
10 minutes later I was still throwing up. Finally the house supervisor came thru the station and saw me sick as can be. She asked why I was even there. I explained my boss refused to accept my call in.
Supervisor called boss to the nursing station. Supervisor reamed boss a new one and asked her “why would you have a nurse report to work in the ICU when she can’t even leave the trash can”. “Do you even understand ICU patients are in rough enough shape without a nurse throwing up on them”
Boss had to work my shift with calling someone in early for day shift.
No one questioned me calling off the next night too.
What are some daily things that we are unaware of?
Here are some common things we are usually unaware of the purpose of:
Stickers on fruit: The stickers mark the country and producer of the fruit, but it’s the numbers that are the important aspect. If there are 4 digits and the first number is 4, then it means the fruit is sprayed with pesticides. If there are 5 digits and the first number is 9, then the fruit has grown organically, and if there are 5 digits with the first number being 8, then the fruit has been genetically modified.
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Doughnut hole: In the past, it was difficult to get the edges and the middle of the pie equally baked. So they came up with the ingenious idea of using this shape to ensure equal baking on all sides.
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The original reason for sunglasses: today it’s obviously to protect us from the sun’s rays. But the original purpose was to protect Arctic people from the dazzling rays of snow. And in 12th century China, they became particularly widespread among judges in order to hide their true feelings from witnesses.
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Margins on paper: the original purpose was not for extra notes on the side. In the past mice and rats often gnawed on the paper, so in order for them not eat away the information, people started to leave spaces on the sides.
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Holes in padlocks: People usually buy a new lock when their old one doesn’t work due to rain. However, the purpose of the hole is to put in oil – once done, the lock should be able to open with no difficulty.
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Gran Torino , Clint Eastwood – Favourite scene
If you’ve worked in law enforcement, how often have you come across criminals like the Vince Vega character played by John Travolta in “Pulp Fiction,” who actually have intellectual interests outside of their life of crime?
Vince wasn’t an intellectual heavyweight. He was a deeply flawed asshat with an outsized ego and limited self restraint.
Remember the scene with The Wolf? The Wolf was there to save Vince’s idiotic neck, and yet our boy just couldn’t stand that someone else walked in and smoothly took control. When returning home with the wife of his boss, Vince was clearly working his way up to making a pass at Mia in spite of trying to talk himself out of it. If Mia hadn’t OD’d Vince would’ve discovered that his disposal wouldn’t even merit a pine box.
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Obviously my experience isn’t from the perspective of “law enforcement”, but from being locked up with, then living and working with other felons.
Those living a “life of crime” are different from you and your neighbors only because one aspect of their life is something illegal that they got caught doing. That doesn’t mean that they live and breathe crime 24/7.
These people are fully formed and complex individuals, just like you. In many cases, you would find that the “life of crime” really boils down to just one dumb act, not a daily ritual.
The only exception to this would be the addicts I’ve met, particularly the meth users. They might start off as “unique snowflakes” but something about that drug leeches personality from them like bathwater leeches the salts from your skin. Given enough time they become shriveled husks of former humans — having more in common with one another than with anyone else.
Playing around with text-to-picture
Default masterpiece best quality coloring book line art The Ha 3
The Sopranos – Getting everything ready for the Executive game
How does China’s emphasis on manufacturing prompt concerns about overcapacity?
This is what western economists say about the Chinese economy.
But the Chinese government and its economists don’t think that way because they look at potential market size first. In China, the leading importers and processors of minerals and raw materials are state-owned companies whose annual profits are capped at 3–5 percent annually. This means that raw material costs are lower. Chinese manufacturers are increasingly using robotics and automation so that manufacturing costs are lower. Then the Chinese yuan is kept lower against leading currencies to encourage exports.
Put it all together, and it looks to Europeans and Americans like China has impossibly low costs and is making it impossible for other competitors to compete. The problem is that China is different from Europe and the U.S. and its economy is designed to encourage manufacturing and exports.
The Chinese goal is to capture as much market as possible, and then to push costs down further through cost and efficiency improvements. This is different from western companies which start with lower prices to grab market share, but then gradually raise prices through predatory pricing.
How do Japanese see the US in 2024?
Some truths
Investing in a woman you’re not married to is a waste of energy and money.
If you find someone smarter than you, work with them, don’t compete.
Life is all about being intentional and proactive in our choices . The cure for a man’s depression ?? Focus on your purpose and stay busy.
The person who carefully designs their daily routine goes further than the person that negotiates with themselves everyday.
Stop complaining at every slight inconvenience. Do what has to be done . Be happy regardless.
Have you ever seen someone call the cops and it backfired on them?
My now ex wife wanted me out of the house and her life after I caught her red handed having an affair.
My relief called in sick so I had to pull a double shift, I got home and went right to bed, only to be woke up by her whaling away on me with a shoe. I picked her up and carried her out into the living room and gently tossed her on the couch, locked the bedroom door and went back to sleep.
It wasn’t long and there was a knock on the door, it was a couple cops, she had called them to report I was abusing her. They said I would have to accompany them to the station, then I looked up at them, there whole attitude shifted.
They handcuffed her and put her in the back of the squad car, one of the cops told me I should clean myself up, apparently she’d nailed me with a shoe and I had blood running down my face.
I went to sleep, she went to jail, couldn’t have worked out any better.
How many cars have you owned and what were your favourites?
My first car was an old beater VW Karman Ghia . It was a tank, with the engine over the rear wheels it would go through snow, that bigger vehicles couldn’t handle. It was low to the ground, one day the neighbors pigs got out, and they had a huge boar, that blocked the road. He came over and leaned against my side window, and completely blocked the view.
It didn’t have a gas gauge, instead it had a reserve fuel tank, and when you ran out, you switched over, and drove to the nearest gas station.
It wouldn’t go the highway speed limit, maybe 63 mph with the pedal to the metal.
My second car was 1974 Plymouth Duster with imitation alligator skin roof, and a sun roof. It was an OK car.
My next car was a 1976 Chrysler Cordoba with real Corinthian leather seats ( best spoken in a Ricardo Montalaban accent) it had a high performance 400 cubic inch V8 with a 4 Bbl. Jet black with every option known to mankind. Sun roof, air conditioning, power everything. Pure white on white interior, to contrast to the black paint. I have a lot of fond memories of this car.
My next car was a 1969 buick skylark convertible. My plan had been to restore it, and always have a good car to drive. I spent thousands on it, and couldn’t keep up with repairs.
My next car was a 4 wheel drive AMC Eagle. It had air suspension, so it hugged the road, but if you went off road you pushed a button and the sur shocks filled and raised the car, to get more clearance. Best fishing vehicle I ever had.
The I had a 1989 Dodge D100 that was a rebadged Mitsubishi. It had a 4 cylinder that couldn’t get out of its own way, But it was solid steel, I was rear ended and it cost $200 to paint my bumper, but the brand new Previa that hit me was totalled. I wasT boned in an intersection and I I didn’t get a scratch, but it was $5000 to fix the other vehicle. It was a 4×4 with a half inch steel skid plate under the entire vehicle. It never had a problem until my power steering hose, and brake line started leaking. I couldn’t get parts, so I got rid of it.
I bought a 1997 Cadillac Catera , awesome looking car, and the day the warranty ran out, it started costing me money. Thousands.
I bought a 1999 Jaguar XKR convertible, with one year left on the warranty. It was the best looking car I owned, I had people hop out of their vehicle at a traffic light and ride with me until the next light. It was a great car.
I bought a 2004 Nissan frontier 4×4, which I drove in the winter, and the Jag in the summer. The Nissan was just OK, nothing special.
I replaced the Nissan with another 2013 Nissan frontier 4×4, which was significantly better than the first Nissan, but still not a memorable vehicle.
I got rid of the jag in 2021.
Hassayampa Casserole
This casserole is an original and was named after the Hassayampa River that flows in Wickenburg, Arizona.
casserole recipe 9
Ingredients
1 large onion, chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
3 teaspoons chili powder
3 teaspoons cumin
1 (8 ounce) can enchilada sauce
1 pound fresh tomatoes, diced
10 ounces frozen corn, thawed
1 cup sliced black olives
3 large green chiles, chopped
1 pound shrimp or imitation crabmeat
12 ounces Monterey Jack cheese, shredded
12 corn tortillas
Instructions
Sauté onion in oil and add cinnamon, chili powder and cumin.
Stir in enchilada sauce and diced tomatoes. Set aside 1 cup sauce.
Add to remaining sauce the corn, olives, green chiles, shrimp or crabmeat and 1 cup cheese.
In a 3 quart shallow casserole dish, cover bottom with some of the tortillas.
Spread 1/3 of shrimp/crabmeat mixture over tortillas; repeat with 2 more layers.
Top with remaining tortillas, sauce and cheese.
Bake at 325 degrees F for 40 minutes.
The Sopranos – Albert Barese
What is a historical fact that would sadden most people if they found out?
As a kid I was fascinated by the figure of Che Guevara, who looked cool, died relatively young and fought for a better world.
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Later in life, I read his biography by Jean Cormier, a French journalist/movie director who was a close friend of Che.
It tells the story of his childhood, his medical studies, his trip through South America on a motorbike, how he joined Fidel Castro’s revolution and how they disembarked in Cuba to start a guerrilla war against the Batista regime.
Both had their own regiment in the Sierra Maestra mountains, from where they would launch attacks against government forces. In Che’s regiment there was a little puppy that everybody loved, the mascot of the camp.
One day, Che and a group of soldiers left the camp to ambush a government caravan. But the little puppy had followed them and started barking. They had to shut the dog up or else they would be discovered by the government soldiers. So Che and his men formed a circle around the puppy while one of them strangled it.
I couldn’t put this image out of my mind of these heavily armed guerrilleros standing in a circle to strangle a puppy. They say innocence is the first casualty in any war.
Best Sopranos Scene – “We’re with the Vipers” -All Right Now
I received my ancestry DNA results and I am 0% Italian, however my maternal grandmother is 100% Italian. How is this possible?
Has your grandmother actually had her DNA tested and analyzed?
What I have found in 25 plus years of doing genealogy, and even MORE so since DNA testing came along……people get very invested in family stories and myths. They can build their whole sense of self around them. Then DNA and family history research comes along and blows big holes in their set ideas. Things aren’t what they seem.
There were some doozies told in my family. Some by accident – sort of multigenerational “broken telephones” where things had grains of truth but went sideways in the retelling. Some were deliberate, because it made for a better story. Tales of glory beat tales of misery. Some were told to hide things family members were ashamed of (we had more than our share of those).
DNA can also yank the rug from under you since who you think is your ancestor isn’t always. I have a 78-year-old friend who always believed her father was an Italian fellow who her mother sued for child support in the early 1940’s. Turns out she’s 50% Ashkenazi Jewish without a hint of Italian – and she’s found her biological father’s family, all of whom are at a loss to tell her what the heck happened (to say they were shocked would be an understatement, lol).
Your grandmother may have been born in Italy and raised speaking Italian, but her family could have been ethnically from elsewhere. Nationality should not be confused with ethnicity.
Japan is Changing, and it’s SCARY.
What is one moment in your life you thought could only happen in a movie?
So I have been dating this guy from eight years now. He is my family friend. My first crush,then my first love, my first boyfriend and my first everything. Me and his sister are best friends.
Even though our families knew each other for so long, my family never knew that we were dating, because we Never used to talk infront of them.We(me and him) always used to discuss about how we should convince my parents, how we should ask them and blah blah. I used to get very nervous thinking about my parents reaction. But I was confident that I will convince them and I always knew that he was the one that I want to spend my entire life with.
So one day i went out and came to home , and saw all my family sitting together and discussing seriously, they became silent after seeing me , and my brother asked me to sit beside him and asked me that, they are thinking to get me married. My heart was stumped, millions of thoughts rushed in my head and i was so shocked that i I couldn’t think of one word to say, then he mentioned about the guy that they were considering for me.
Well to my surprise he was none other than my love, the one who makes me feel butterflies even after 8years of togetherness, who just makes me happy by his mere presence. I was so happy that I wanted to jump and dance around. But I couldn’t I simply blushed and said “YES” to my parents. They still didn’t know that we are in love.
We are going to get married soon, preparations are started, IAM on the cloud nine since then. We are going to tell them about us on our wedding day.
I always thought things like this happens only in films and fairy tales. May be every love story is a fairy tale.
Real truth
Do Western countries want South Asia and Southeast Asia to have continuous conflicts? If yes, then what will be the policies of these nations?
They do dont they?
They don’t tend to leave any country alone do they?
They always make decisions based on the people of every country in the world
They must always decide who is free and who isn’t
Any Government that toes their line is ‘Good’ and any Government that doesn’t is ‘Had
They decide human rights violations
If Israel bombs and kills 32,000 Civilians and starves an entire population to death for a single terrorist incident – that’s KOSHER
If Russia invades Ukraine to come to the assistance of 2 Million to 3 Million people who live in Donbass and have been shelled regularly and lost 14,000 lives over 8 years, chronicled in the UN – that’s horrible and thats interfering in the sovereignty of a nation
If Russia arrests 439 people for Social Media posts that’s a huge civil rights violation
If UK arrests 3237 people for Social Media Posts including 900 people just for posting the N word – that’s perfectly acceptable
They have combined killed and liquidated through their decisions – almost 30 Million people in the last 300 years belonging to different countries including :-
Inquisitions
Literally NUKING a nation
Holocaust of 6 Million Jews
Starving a million Indians without a shred of remorse
Enslaving 3.5 Million people and treating them like Cattle and breeding them like Cattle and Dogs
Colonizing and cold bloodedly robbing, slaughtering and displacing 2 Million or more Native Americans , Maoris, Aborigines and stealing their land brazenly
Stealing Texas openly from Mexico and now hunting down the same mexicans as Illegals
Invaded a Nation, killed a known 93,000 people of that nation and displaced and impoverished an estimated 330,000 people literally lying that they had nuclear weapons
Bombed and killed and stole the Oilfields of a Nation merely because their Leader didn’t toe the American line (Syria)
Funded Color Revolutions, Coup de Ats and Uprisings against legitimate Governments by their Agencies
These aren’t conspiracy theories are they?
Every one of these incidents have been firmly listed and verified and is now regarded as history
Yet they always seem to turn the tables
Saddam was a Villian though they invaded Iraq for no reason and destroyed him
Yet Zelensky is a Hero
Gadaffi was a Villian
Mao was a Villian
Putin is a villian
Xi is a Villian
Yet not one of these people have conducted a war of aggression in their lives before 2022
Why?
That’s the key question
I believe the answer lies in an Ideology that is deeply ingrained into their blood for centuries
We are the Good Guys
We are the Angels to help these Backward People develop themselves and save them from themselves and their cruel leaders
Sometimes even if people die, we have to look at the long term and be harsh
Like Gates who openly supports an organization that wants 870 Million People dead because they eat up precious food
Now these Nations, it depends on the people of these nations
China and Russia and Iran and a few other nations have obviously woken up and now see these people for what they are
Putins 87% win is an indication
That people braved a rumoured terror attack and shelling and bombing and yet voted in larger numbers is the best middle finger possible
Niger is another example
The Middle East is slowly realizing things aren’t so rosy now
Others are TOO SCARED
India for instance is too frightened of the West because India is too weak to resist sanctions plus India cannot trust China Iran and Russia fully
Not when 40% of it’s exports are destined for US and EU and most of these export orders are non crucial and can be seriously affected
Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia are also too frightened of the West. They gave been dependent too long on the West and they don’t want to leave their comfort zone.
Some are TOO SUBSERVIENT
Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Philippines are simply too enmeshed into the Western system to come out of it
However luckily the hypocrisy of the West is slowly coming out piece by piece
That too despite the fact that they control the media in every way possible.
The formal, official groundwork is now laid for actual Civil War inside the United States.
The Governor of Texas has declared, in writing, that the federal government has “broken the compact” with the states.
He announced he has invoked the “Invasion” clause of the Constitution and says Texas has a right to self defense which it will enforce with the Texas National Guard.
Here is Governor Gregg Abbott’s Declaration:
Texas Governor Throws Constitutional Gauntlet
I have already told my wife that if this comes down to Civil War, I want us to sell BOTH houses, (NJ & PA) and move immediately to Texas.
I’m from India. I’ve been to 10 states all on the East Coast.
People don’t believe that you can literally just drink water out of the tap in the bathroom. There is a reason why the glasses are kept in the Bathrooms of all American hotels & motels.
Nobody believes that their pharmacies and retail outlets are big way way way bigger than you could imagine. CVS & Walgreens, which are both essentially pharmacies are probably even larger than small malls in India. Also, they just don’t keep medicines, they keep EVERYTHING.
People don’t have any clue about the extent of diversity in America. I used to feel proud about being from a diverse nation. Then, I went to America. You see people from every race, races you probably didn’t even know existed, every religion, every gender and every form and somehow, they all just blend together.
People don’t believe that America is a beautiful nation. Many Indians think of it as a culture-less nation. They often ask me whether there is anything to see in America. They have this image that it’s a nation with big buildings and wide roads. No. You cannot be more wrong. There is so much to see and so much to do other than big buildings.
In Washington DC, all the Smithsonian Museums are free! It is very very hard to believe and also very very hard to resist going to all of them.
Everybody isn’t fat. There are a lot of people who care about their health and fitness. I have seen people walking and running on busy streets of big cities.
The thing that pinches the most, you have to pay for trollies at Airports. Also, you need to pay for luggage in flights which pinches because when you convert it into your native currency, it is very very expensive.
If you think the portion size in American is big, think again. It isn’t big, it’s HUGE. Cookies, candies, chocolates, bags of chips etc are enough to feed a lot of people.
image 176
(For example- this is a pizza we cluelessly ordered in Chicago. This was around twice the size of a large pizza in India.)
9. If you come from a tropical country like me, American Summer is NOTHING like summer. It is usually comparatively cold, even in June & July.
10. Again, if you are from India, there are no motorbikes on the roads. Absolutely none. It’s very very weird because in India, it’s very common to see bikers riding motorbikes as if they own the road.
11. Majority of families in America have lunch around 11 am or 12 pm. This isn’t the case in my country because Lunch gets postponed to 2 pm or 3 pm.
12. Contrary to popular culture, the life of a regular American Teenager is nothing like what you see in movies and tv shows. Their life doesn’t revolve around parties, drinking and sex, they are probably only a tad bit less stressed than us.
13. I don’t drink coke but my friend pointed out that if you buy a cup of coke, you can get infinite refills.
14. Vegetarian or Vegan options are very very limited. If you are willing to survive on fries, then you’ll love it.
15. Almost everybody uses GPS. The fear of getting lost is negligible.
16. This is a funny one. In cold Northern States, when it snows and gets ridiculously chilly, people go to big stores like Walmart & Costco to walk. You can imagine how large these stores really are.
17. People are extremely patriotic. They have the American national flags everywhere like outside hotels, spas, homes, schools etc. We don’t enjoy flexibility when it comes to national flags in India.
image 175
(I took this picture from somebody’s backyard.)
18. It’s very common for people in stores or in museums or in public places to chat with you. This is very pleasant. People aren’t cold and reserved.
19. Flying by airplane is cheaper than taking a train. It’s the other way round in India.
20. This is weird, correct me if I am wrong, almost everybody has an iPhone. It may be the latest one or an older one but everybody has an iPhone. Even our Taxi driver had an iPhone.
21. People are also very obvious about the political party they support. I saw people wearing Clinton T shirts, Bernie Sanders jackets, Donald Trump hats etc. I haven’t seen such craze anywhere else though.
22. Houses don’t have ceiling fans. This is hard to believe because life without a fan is impossible in India. All of them have centralised heating/cooling.
23. Houses aren’t made of concrete and bricks like in India, they are made of wood. My parents jokingly said that these houses aren’t “majboot” (“strong” in English) enough.
24. There is McDonald’s everywhere. Even in the middle of nowhere, there will be a lone McDonald’s joint. I am not kidding.
25. They don’t home deliver McDonald’s in America. They do it in India though. India -1 USA- 0.
26. People LOVE coffee. Obviously not more than Indians’ love for masala chai.
All in all, it’s an amazing place to visit.
(Please correct me if I am incorrect with some facts)
Especially the team with Raimondo as the core has formulated one stupid restriction policy after another.
image 30
Initially, Nvidia could provide chips with 100-point performance, leading the market and stealing away almost all Chinese customers. Thinking this was too good for China, they issued a ban banning American companies from exporting chips with a score of more than 80 points.
Nvidia chose to develop a 79-point chip to meet US regulations and they could continue to do business with the Chinese.
Nvidia’s business is still good, because even a chip with 79 point is still very good. The Chinese can make up for the performance gap by increasing the number.
Raimondo’s team is dissatisfied with Nvidia’s approach and believes that they are “stepping on the border and harming U.S. interests.”
So they updated their policy and demanded that “U.S. companies be prohibited from exporting chips worth more than 40 point .”
Nvidia had no choice, they developed a 39-point chip to sell to its Chinese customers.
However, this time all the Chinese customers left.
image 29
Because Nvidia’s competitor Huawei can provide chips with a score of 70 points. There are no sanctions, no limits, and the price is quite cheap.
Since those 79 point are not acceptable, why do these Chinese customers continue to play within the rules of the United States? A 40 point chip means nothing to them.
They gave orders to Huawei one after another.
Huawei has received billions of dollars in orders, and there will be more and more in the future.
They will transfer these gains to the R&D department to develop and produce 75-point, 80-point, and 85-point chips, and gradually catch up with Nvidia in the future.
The professional advice of Nvidia’s boss was completely ignored, and the whole world laughed at the stupidity of American politicians.
This is interesting. You will damn agree with me after reading this.
Some years ago, one of my friends came to me asking for money.
I gave him (donated him) some money. After some days, he came again and asked for the same. Again I donated some.
After some days, he came to me and didn’t talk about money. He told me a sad story “How he lost all his money that I had given him”.
This time I provided him some work because I was busy with other projects. I let him handle one of my clients because he was as qualified as me.
He made some money because I gave him whole project fee.
He was happy.
Again, after some days, he came.
Again he asked for a project.
I told him “I have no projects right now to give him.”
Then he requested and I provided him another project.
But this time:
Out of anger, he misbehaved the client. Because of him I lost a client.
I asked him to leave the project so I can fix the design as well as relation with the clients.
Out of anger, he again deleted one of my databases. And acted like he didn’t do anything.
Then I kicked him out of my house. I had a real fight with him.
He went to our close friends and told them “How I refused to provide him money. How I made him worked like a donkey. And how I had a fight with him. And he also acted like he is the poorest guy in the world ruining my relations everywhere.”
Today, I read one Hector’s answers. So, I remembered it.
LESSON 1:
You can’t help people who never want to help themselves.
LESSON 2:
People will always blame you for their failure after you help them. Because they think, your help is useless. They never think about their failure to execute your help.
LESSON 3:
“Don’t help anyone for free. Let them pay the price for it so they can understand how important your time, relation and emotion are”.
Election 2024 – Preliminary Assessment
At this point the U.S. presidential election of 2024 seems almost decided.
Today it looks likely that Donald Trump will again become president.
Trump has won the New Hampshire primary and the only other Republican candidate still in the race is the neo-conservative candidate Nicki Halley:
Donald Trump marched closer to the Republican nomination with a sweep of the first two contests, defeating former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley on Tuesday as voters turned out in projected record numbers in New Hampshire’s primary.
Trump’s lead here was decisive enough for the Associated Press to project his win shortly after polls closed. With nearly 75 percent of the vote tallied, Trump led Haley by about 11 percentage points. … Trump’s victory dealt another blow to critics in his party who saw the New Hampshire race as perhaps the last best chance to stop or slow him.
Halley is kept in the race by some billionaire donations, including from those who tend to donate to Democrats, in an effort to somehow still damage Trump:
Despite her shrinking path to halting Trump’s march to the Republican nomination, Haley’s showing in New Hampshire hinged on independents, who are permitted to vote in this state’s Republican primary. … New Hampshire voters in the Republican primary split about evenly between people who were registered as Republicans and those registered as independent or undeclared, with a tiny share saying they were not registered to vote before Election Day, according to early exit polls. Independents and undeclared registered voters supported Haley by about a 2-to-1 margin, while registered Republicans supported Trump by about 3 to 1.
The hope of the Halley supporters is that other open primaries may still give her a lead. Democrats turned Independents could flood such elections and make her look like a winner:
Haley’s campaign manager, Betsy Ankney, released a memo as voting began Tuesday vowing to fight on through Super Tuesday in March, despite pre-primary polls showing Trump with a widening lead here and less favorable contests ahead for Haley. The memo argued that outperforming with independents could buoy her after South Carolina. Michigan has an open primary, and 11 of the 16 Super Tuesday states also allow non-Republicans to vote to some extent.
New Hampshire has already shown that this concept does not work as well as presumed.
President Joe Biden does not have to fear any primary challengers. His party is stuck with him. This despite some awful polling data that should have pushed the Democrats to retire Joe Biden.
Only 38.9% of voters approve of Biden and his policies while 55.7 % disapprove them.
Trump numbers are better. 43.1 % have a favorable opinion of him while 51.8% find him unfavorable.
There is little chance for Biden to turn this around. There is nothing in the policy queue that could be seen as a win for him. On domestic issues he is limited by a Republican majority in the House. Problem areas are the perceived state of the economy as well his failure to stop mass immigration. He is also losing in the foreign policy frame. His war in Ukraine is near total failure and the U.S. position in the Middle East is about to explode.
Trump still has dozens of open (kangaroo) court cases against him. But it is doubtful that any court will truly dare to put the leading presidential candidate into jail. In the end a conservative Supreme Court, and enraged Republican voters, would anyway find a way to get Trump out of the mess.
On foreign policy issues Trump has a rather dubious record. But I agree with Stephen Walt who finds that there are only few differences between Trump’s and Biden’s foreign policies. It is the deep state which is anyway formulating as well as executing them.
But is still more likely that Trump will find a way out of the mess in Ukraine than Biden. Trump is also way less a Zionist than Biden. His opinion about Netanyahoo and settlers is generally low.
My opinion on Trump is unchanged. He is just a run of the mill U.S. president. His biggest fault is his inability to select good people and to keep control over what they are doing. Previous Trump selections like McMaster, Bolton or Pompeo were all too radical and treacherous. They should never have been chosen. For someone who once had a reality show about selecting apprentices that is an astonishingly bad record.
To be clear, I’m not saying that this election will have zero effect on U.S. foreign policy. Trump may try to take the United States out of NATO, for example, although such a move would undoubtedly face enormous resistance from the foreign and defense policy establishment. He may focus primarily on his domestic agenda—and his lingering legal troubles—which would further reduce his already-limited interest in foreign affairs and tend to reinforce the existing status quo. Trump was a poor judge of foreign-policy talent during his first term (and provoked unprecedented rates of staff turnover), and that tendency may hamstring U.S. policy implementation and lead foreign governments to hedge even more. There would be subtle differences between Biden 2 and Trump 2, but I’d bet against a radical transformation.
My concern with U.S. foreign policy is the huge damage it is causing all over the world. I see Trump as the better candidate to minimize that. He has avoided wars as far as the deep state allowed him to do so.
One can not say that of Biden.
Posted by b on January 24, 2024 at 12:32 UTC | Permalink
Years ago I was a Radio Shack manager. One of my employees was a young German immigrant – she was married to a soldier that was stationed nearby. Her name is Stefanie.
Stefanie was a very smart young lady; however there was a learning curve for a while with the specifics of connecting certain pieces of electronic equipment together – using adapters etc to get from one type to another. She never gave up and was eventually very successful.
One evening I was assisting a regular with something at the counter. Another customer came in and asked Stefanie for assistance with some connectors/adapters. After several minutes Stefanie’s customer suddenly yells, “You stupid nazi bitch!”
I immediately excuse myself and tell her customer that we’re done here for tonight and he needs to leave. He’s welcome back another day but tonight he needs to leave the premises. He starts getting loud towards me. I walk away from him and back behind the counter. He comes over and continues yelling, swearing etc.
Remember my customer? He’s watching and listening. He casually pulls his wallet from his pocket and places it on the counter open showing a badge. The irate man looks at the badge and says “So, you’re a game warden, what are you going to do?” My customer then says “Take a closer look, I’m a federal game warden and a sworn peace officer.” “You were asked to leave and if you don’t I will arrest you for trespassing which means hours of paperwork for me and I hate paperwork.” “If I arrest you I will be in court to testify. You have 30 seconds to leave.”
Irate man left. Problem solved. Game warden asked if Stefanie could ring him up as she was paid commission. He spent a fair amount of money that evening.
Illustrator Fernanda Suarez Shows How Disney Princesses Would Look Like If They Lived Today
In recent years, we’ve seen quite a few reimagined ‘modern’ versions of the Disney princesses we grew up loving and admiring. This latest interpretation by Chilean digital artist Fernanda Suarez, however, might be the fairest of them all.
Starting with Snow White back in July, Suarez has gone on to illustrate 7 classic princesses in hip, present-day fashion. These sketched-up smoke shows look like they follow Luxy Hair tutorials on YouTube and shop for clothes at Forever 21. They probably post selfies with their ‘princes’ on Instagram and all agree that NAKED2 is the best eyeshadow palette. Oh yeah, they probably also campaign non-stop on social media for the equal rights of dwarfs, marine wildlife, and big cat conservation.
What do you think about your experience in prison?
What do you think that are the aftermaths of having been in prison?
I really didn’t notice at first. After 29 years in prison I was just happy to be out. I didn’t think I had PTSD. But soon certain sounds ,smells and places would cause me to have like flash backs. Fortunately, I don’t have dreams that some ex cons have said they have.
I went to prison as a 17 year old Missouri farm boy. I was sent to the worst prison in the state at the time. I was only there 5 years before being transferred. But it changed me dramatically. It was there that I learned not to show true feelings. I masked being scared, I did not dare cry . If someone was lying bleeding it was none of my business unless it was someone I hung around with. I came to believe that no one made it out of that place alive. I had a life sentence and with that thought I only wanted to survive as long as I could. No one though was going to disrespect me or try anything . I had life and didn’t think I would survive anyway. But I did.
I was eventually transferred. All the other prisons ,although violent seemed tame in comparison. But I though I now had at least a chance. I tried to better myself in any way possible to prepare myself for possible release. I did this until I eventually did get out
I was ready for the world . I think I am doing good, but much of prison remains with me . Like I said the flash backs, not liking crowds to the point of being paranoid. I love people and will go out of my way to help someone. But I get nervous and on edge in crowds. In restaurants I sit with my back to the wall and have to see everyone. Know where they are at. My family and friends will not walk up behind me without announcing that they are there. This is not fair to them . My neighbor/boss and my wife told me one day” you go out of your way to help others, but no one can help you if you don’t let them” I told them I didn’t need help. They explained that while I have support and people that are there for me that I needed to let them in . In my mind I was letting them in . I loved them and still love them . I would do anything for them. But apparently I do not open up to them when they are concerned about me.
No matter how much or how little time you have prison will change you. This also applies to C/ Os. They see the same shit the prisoners see. I encourage all of you who have done time or worked in a prison to try to be more open to those who you are close to. It will help a lotb
As a teacher, have you ever bumped up the grade of a student due to unusual circumstances?
Here’s the one I remember. A girl in my earth science class was there every day, took notes, asked questions, was obviously interested. First midterm. She is way below everyone else. Second midterm, same. Final, ditto. I decided I was not going to flunk her so I closed my eyes and gave her a C. Which meant I had to bump up a bunch of other people, too.
She was in ROTC and I had just joined the Reserves, so we had something to chat about. She told me she was going active after college. I asked what branch. “Intelligence.”
This is me biting my tongue until it nearly bled.
She went into imagery analysis. She made far more effective use of my class than the people who made easy A’s and forgot it all. She did a tour at DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency. I know people who would KILL for a tour at DIA. They ASKED specifically for her. She took a buyout as a major after the Gulf War and that’s the last I heard of her.
Bar none, by light years, best judgment call I ever made.
Do you want more?
I have more articles like this one in my Art Index here…
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One of the things about my mother was the ashtray in her car.
Yeah. I know. I know.
Many of you youngsters have no idea what an “ashtray” is, what it does, and why it is important. Let alone what one was doing in a car.
ashtray
Well, let me tell you. It is a receptacle to hold the ashes of a cigarette in. You see, when you smoke a cigarette, the end burns. Turns to ash and dissolves. If you don’t flick the ashes away they fall over everything. So you’ve got to deposit them in a tray to get them out of the way.
Anyways, I once went to clean out her can and pulled out the ashtray. And it it was about $30 worth of change (mostly quarters) and a ton-load of ashes and one or two bubblegum wrappers. Man, oh man. They made those things DEEP! Lordy! I had no idea.
30369 gettyimages 1017146822
I understand that you can still order cars with this feature, but they are no longer as common, and certainly not standard like they used to be.
Happened to me with my ex MIL. She started in on me about the mess my kitchen was in the day after I got back from a 2500 miles business trip I had been on. My ex left dirty dishes everywhere, dried food on them, spanking clean dishwasher, and laundry piled by the back door. As soon as she started, I was furious. First she wasn’t to be in my home but he let her in, second, he said nothing about the mess being his, and finally, I was exhausted and had 3 days of paperwork ahead of me. I looked at him, he looked away while she was yelling at me. I basically told her to can it, her son had created the mess while I was out making money and that I had paperwork to do to make sure I finished the job of the trip. Since she created a spoiled brat who wouldn’t clean up, she had dispensation to be in my kitchen while she did the dishes. She turned to him to back her up and the coward that he is, he told me it was my job and I said, nope, I quit, hire a maid if you won’t do it. She left and we had a blowout fight (led to divorce in a couple of month).
Three days later after getting my paperwork complete and I was scheduling my next trip away, the kitchen was still a mess. I actually packed up every dish, glass, pan, silverware, etc. that was mine and refused to cook or clean anything. I was really totally fed up. I did purchase paper plates and cups and plastic eating utensils and left him with a pretty much bare fridge. He ate at his mom’s while I was gone or at a restaurant but I had a clean kitchen.
Stand up for yourself. Tell them that if they can’t behave with decency, there is the door and until they learn some respect and manners when it comes to you, they are not welcome in your home. If you are in theirs, tell them goodbye and that you won’t be returning. Hubby can visit when he likes but you won’t be back. And by the way, you are no longer welcome in my home either.
I was prosecuting a committal hearing against a defendant for an allegation that he sexually assaulted his younger step daughter. The victim was a ‘not so polite’ 13 year old. My first question to her was, “Please tell the court your name.” Reply, “You already know that.” It was a struggle just to set up the identity of the victim. I just knew it was going to be difficult to adduce the evidence necessary for the matter to be committed to the District Court for trial from this young victim so I then asked a very broad open question and I was going to build my case from there. “Can you just remember what happed to you at your 12th birthday party?” Reply, “Get Fucked.” That was later followed by, “Can you now tell the court what your step gather did?” Reply, “Get Fucked. You know.” By then I wanted to palm face but pressed on.
Such answers are a body blow for a prosecutor as two rules apply, 1. I can not ask leading questions and 2. I can’t normally cross examine my own witness. From there on the defence lawyer started to frequently object to my ‘leading’ and ‘cross examining’ questions.
Eventually, I was able to (unconvincingly) put the barest evidence necessary to the court. When the victim was cross examined she gave numerous answers that were very detrimental to the prosecution’s case.
I then called evidence of ‘complaint’ from the victim’s older sister. She gave evidence that shortly after her sister’s 12th birthday party that the victim told her about her step father sexually assaulting her. She gave very credible and convincing evidence. She was then cross examined and was ‘not shaken’ in her evidence re the sexual assault.
There is an old saying in court that you should never ask a question when you don’t know the answer. The following supports that view.
The questioning of the older sister swung around to the credibility of the victim, her younger sister. And the defence was on a roll. “You know that your sister tells, don’ t you?” ‘Yes.’ “And she has often told you lies hasn’t she?” ‘Yes.’
I considered, having heard the victim’s evidence, that these question were reasonable and the the replies were very predictable. My case was almost totally destroyed at this stage and no court would ever committed with this standard of evidence.
It was then time for the defence lawyer to sit down but he was on fire with favourable answers now flowing freely from my witness. Then came, and my ears immediately pricked up, “You don’t believe you sister is telling the truth about your step father do you?” I was looking at the face of the defence lawyer as he was asking that question and I could almost read his mind that he was starting to regrett asking this question but it was out of his mouth before he could retract it. I thought, that’s an interesting question, I wonder how my witness will answer this question?
Then came the immediate reply, with gushing tears, screams and finger pointing to the defendant, ‘I know she is telling the truth, dad also did it to me on my 12th birthday.’
Horror was in the face of the lawyer. That was one question too many. He had nowhere to hide and it was high drama in the court room.
The female social worker who was comforting the victim then ran across the courtroom and started attacking the defendant with her handbag shouting ‘You Bastard, You Bloody Bastard.’
And the reaction of the defendant? He was wimping like a mongrel dog during the attack and not trying to defend himself to any degree. If anyone ever ‘acted guilty’ then this defendant was acting as absolutely guilty.
The first time the older sister had ever told any person about her being sexually assaulted by her step father was just then in the witness box.
The mother then rushed up to the witness box to console her older daughter and the police were trying to protect the defendant from the social worker.
Me, I just sat back in my chair with a smug smile and thought … well such thoughts were not complementary to the defence lawyer who was trying to now object to his own question as the witness was crying out to her mother, ‘Mum, Dad did it to me all the time till he started fucking her.”
It was too much for the Magistrate who stood up and adjourned the case till ‘order was restored’.
It was utter joyous pandemonium for this prosecutor.
I had two, the lawyer and his client who needed to palm face!
And yes, the defendant was committed that day for the offence and he was later charged with sexually assaulting his older step daughter.
Such high drama is exceptionally rare to see in a courtroom but that day still lives with me some 20 years later.
Greek Souvlaki with Tzaziki
Souvlaki are kabobs, usually made with beef, lamb or chicken and sometimes shrimp.
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Yield: 6 servings; about 3 cups
Ingredients
Souvlaki
2 pounds lamb shoulder or 2 pounds sirloin tip, cut into 1 1/2 inch chunks
2 cups dry red wine
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon dried oregano
2 teaspoons lemon rind, long strips
1/4 cup olive oil
Sweet peppers and cherry tomatoes as needed
Tzaziki
2 cups plain yogurt
1/2 English cucumber, peeled and grated
2 garlic cloves, minced
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
Instructions
Begin preparing the tzaziki a few hours before serving. The flavors need time to blend.
Marinate the meat overnight to absorb the wine and garlic.
Souvlaki: Place the meat in a large bowl. Pour in the wine and sprinkle minced garlic and oregano. Imbed the lemon strips among the cubes of meat and drizzle with olive oil. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate 12 hours or overnight. Shake or stir the mixture several times during the marinating period.
About 30 minutes before serving, drain off and discard the marinade. Thread the chunks of meat onto long skewers, brushing with a little olive oil.
Over medium coals, barbecue the souvlaki until it’s done the way you like it.
Serve on a bed of rice and pass the tzaziki to spoon on top.
Tzaziki: Line a colander or sieve with cheesecloth (or gauze) and set it over a bowl. Pour in the yogurt and allow it to drip for an hour or so.
After the yogurt has drained, combine it, in a small bowl, with the cucumber and the garlic. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate until just before serving.
While the meat is barbecuing, drizzle the olive oil over the surface of the Tzaziki and, without stirring, sprinkle on the salt. It needs no mixing as your guests will do that when they dollop it onto their souvlaki.
When I was working as a police officer I had a call of a shoplifting with a minor, a girl of 14. At that age I was required to take her home to find an adult to release her to as she was considered “arrested on paper.”
When we got to her house she got out of the cruiser rather quickly and ran inside the home and brought out another teenager with her. I told the teen I needed to release her to an adult and as I started to go to the front door she blocked my way which seemed very odd.
I pressed on asking “is there an adult inside?” She responded that there was but that she would go in and get her. I stood about 6 feet from the open door and inhaled an odor from inside that I can only describe as truly putrid from inside that house.
I immediately began to suspect that the inside of the home was a “filth situation” and I walked around to the back to see if I was correct by looking in the windows, but almost all had closed curtains and it was dark inside the windows that I could see into.
The girl then exited the back door which again produced a rush of air that was truly disgusting. Again I attempted to gain entrance to the house but the girl stood in my way. Since I didn’t have a warrant to search the house and I couldn’t prove that it was a dangerous situation to justify a warrantless entry, I then released the girl to an adult relative who also eventually came out of the home,
Afterwards I wrote an information report to Child Protective Services relaying my suspicions that the inside of the house was filthy and a potential danger to those living inside.
A few months later I received a letter from one of the CPS investigators who had received my report. She wrote to tell me that she thought I’d want to know that they investigated the home and that it had been the worst case of child neglect and filth they had ever seen!
She said there was urine and feces everywhere from both humans and animals. She said that she was amazed that I had been able to make a determination that the house was a problem having never entered and by only using my sense of smell.
In 15 years I had been in a lot of dirty to filthy homes and somehow my sense of smell let me know that this home needed a look inside. The investigator said everyone (7 children in all) had been removed from the home, as there were no adults living there,the utilities had been shut off and the oldest child was trying desperately to keep the family together.
I felt sad that the family was split up but I knew how dangerous continuing to live in that house was going to be. This was one of the saddest cases I worked on and has always remained in my thoughts.
The best example of someone leaving their job was a former associate that I worked with. She had been through hell and back with the company. The boss had harassed her for years, causing her emotional and physical pain. She was overworked without getting much praise for it. She was blamed for every little thing. All this being said, she was no push over. She routinely stood up for herself, even putting her boss in his place several times. In all honesty, he was beyond incompetent. So there was no shortage of ways to put him in his place.
She was on the brink of quitting. What pushed her over the edge was a phone call she received while on her day off. The boss would start to berate her and blame her for the disarray the store was in. He called her lazy and good for nothing. This was the straw that broke the camels back. She walked into his office the next day and quit. She warned him that if his behavior continued, he would lose all his good workers; which he proceeded to lose. This turned out to be true because the following month, he lost two of his managers.
Fast forward to the present, the store is in worst shape and bleeding people constantly.
One of my kid’s friends who came over after a bday party to play said something to me I’ll never forget.
He was around 8. When offered snacks he declined.
When offered to play toys he declined.
He wanted to go on my patio to “ watch the sky”. When I joined him he was staring intently up. He pointed to the sky and said “ You should watch out. Watch out for the triangles. They come sometimes. They look at you and you can talk to them but it’s not like we talk. “
I asked him to elaborate. Who comes? What do they look like? How do they come to you?
“ No. Not just me. Lots of people see them. And animals too. Some are nice. Some are mean. You should watch out because you might see a mean one. They come in triangles. Big triangles. With lights. I can’t see them. But if you don’t run and listen they talk. The mean ones say they own us. The nice ones say they’ll protect us. The nice ones come in circles. So watch out for triangles. “ He said all this very matter -of -fact and seemed afraid but confident in his words. He claimed to have seen one just the other day
He then went inside and I don’t remember much after that. When his mom picked him up I asked her about what he said. She looked embarrassed and said something like oh don’t mind him and his wild imagination. This was late 90s and we were temporarily in Northern Canada in a rural area for work. We left shortly after. I still to this day watch the sky a little differently.
*Edit to Clarify
Forgot to mention when I asked the kid how many times this happened he said only a couple.
This was not a normal part of our planet for background. This was a vast frozen tundra with small communities accessible by dogsled and helicopter. Near the Arctic Circle. I don’t believe him per se but also don’t disbelieve entirely. I hope it’s not true.
“Can you hug me too?”Seeing owner embrace another companion,the rescued stray cat longs to be loved
I passed out engineering in 2007. I did not get any campus placements even after scoring first class with all papers cleared in first attempt.
So I moved to Bangalore in search of job by end of 2007, and joined a course for Java. I have 50 K money with me, this is the money I got as part of my mothers share. All my aim at that time was to get into a job, before I exhaust this 50K rupes.
I paid 10 K to java institute and spent 2 months there. The training was so poor and contrary to what they promised, no companies came for campus recruitment. Every month I need to pay 2500 rupees rent in PG, and cost of food is around 100 per day. The total cost per month would be around 5500 Rs.
After 2 months, I was left with 30 K. Again I spent one more month, the balance amount came to 25K.
I couldn’t get a job in software, and my real passion is VLSI since I am commimg from ECE stream. I attended around 30 placememts both inside and outside the campus, but not a single one I am able to crack.
I went to home with 25 K money. I told my parents about my VLSI dream. But my poor parents couldn’t afford it. The fees was 50K for 6 months course, and rent + food cost 30 K till course completion.
So I need another 55K for my dream course.I have to sell the golden chain of my mother as well a gold chain my grandma given to me before her death. We sold those gold chains and arranged money for my course. I was able to make some 45 K by selling those.
So I went to Bangalore back with 70 K rupees and paid 25 K as first installment of the course. Now really I need to cut short my expense, otherwise I will run out of money. So I moved to friends house, where I pay around 2000 Rs for rent. That way I can save 500 rs per month.
My bus fare was 10 rupees one side that time, so I walk past 2 stops so that I can save 2 rupees per day. Then I will have dosa from road side shops in the morning, so that I can skip lunch. I only ate breakfast and dinner. Lunch I used to have water, and then opted for tiger biscuit.
On Saturdays and sundays, I will sleep the whole days and have one time food. This saves money. I will study the whole night on weekends. Weekends are holidays for the institute.
On monthly basis my bank balance started diminishing, and I have to save each one rupee coin I have. Now I started walking 8 kms to office and then return in the evening by bus. That way I reduced bus fare from 20 rs to 8 rs. Earlier I saved 4 rupees by walking past 2 stops, so I can go for 8 + 8.
To manage money, I brought all my B.Tech text books from native and sold it in Bangalore. I managed to bring some 20 Kg books by train. O got another 2500 Rs for that.
By 5 th month, I am left with 4 K, and don’t know what to do. I tried myself and got placed in a small company that is willing to pay me 3000 Rs per month. The company is working in the field of VLSI. I happily joined the company.
The work hours are from 9 AM and can extend up to night 10 or 11. Sometimes night shifts. Though weekend are officially OFF, but they make us work on Saturdays mandatory. But I am so happy that they give 100 Rs food reimbursement on Saturdays and 100 Rs from snacks for night shift. I made use of this opportunity happily by testing my stamina and deteriorating my physical health.
By 20 th, my purse will be left empty, and I need to survive for next 10 days. So I keep 100 rs in my wallet for bus fare for the next 10 days. I am lucky that they distribute snacks at 6 PM daily. So I will have only snacks from 20 the to 26 th, and tons of machine tea. Tiger biscuits for lunch and dinner.
I get sodexo coupons worth 350 Rs on 26 or 27th of the month. So I use sodexo coupons from 26th to 30th the for food expense.
By 1 st, I get 3000/rs stipend, in which Rs 2000 will be given as rent, and Rs 1000 would be iny purse. I need to manage food for 1000 Rs for next 20 days from 1st to 20th and bus fare as well.
Me and my mom have 2 separate accounts in SBI. Since we don’t have money to maintain AQB, I use this 3000 Rs and swing between both of these accounts to maintain a 1000 Rs AQB in bank savings account. Cumulative amount in account shall be 90K for a quarter. I manage it somehow to maintain bank account.
This went for few months and one day
I was not even left with 10 rupees for bus fare. Then I made a call to my parents and asked them for some 400 rupees, telling them that my sandals got broken and I need money. I can’t say my real situation to my parents because they will feel bad that they were not able to support me.
My weight got reduced from 80 to 65 Kg in one year gap, and every time I say my parents its due to job stress. I hide the fact that I starve of limit my food intake to save money.
All my friends were placed in tops MNCs in Bangalotr., earning some 18 to 20 K per month.
I don’t know I should say it here, there are couple of times, I searched the left overs of the food, which my friend brought as parcel. It happend 2 to 3 times.
By this one year time frame, everybody branded me as a failure and only my parents given me the fire to pursue further.
By end of 2009, I got 10 k per month, and my weight suddenly spiked from 63 Kg to 75 Kg in 2 months. Everybody got surprised, I told them I started eating junk food, that’s why. Succcesfully hidfen the fact again.
After 2011, I changed 2 companies and now its my 3 rd company. Now I get in hand around 1.8 lakhs per month and other benfits.
Persistence and hardwork never goes waste.
############
Edit:
I am really overwhelmed with happiness after seeing the comments, as I never thought my story would be an inspiration to others.
I will clear some of the questions being raised in the comments:
Anonymous – Though I don’t like to go anonymous, but I have to because I have mentioned my take home salary. If I link my linkedin or Facebook profile, it would become a clear violation of company policies as I disclosed my salary in public forum. Second reason is that my friends and other know people are there in quora and online world. I am sure that some of my close friends will feel bad that I did not go to them for help in times of need.
Regarding my salary, its after 10 years of work experience, I am getting the mentioned amount. May be luck also matters, that few of my colleagues resigned from the organisation, and management looked at me to lead the team. In that way, I got few extra lakhs every year. Not my hardwork alone.
3. Somebody pointed about Government job, I somehow managed to arrange Rs 500 for applying BSNL JTO 2008 examination. After a great difficulty only I was able to arrange that money for application itself.
4. Shiv Shankar Panda – Appreciate your comment. You said said the fact to the point.
5. Happy to see that Shailesh sharma , Neha Yadav, and Bhaumik Raja that my story inspire the juniors.
Thanks for all the comments.
“Even the darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer”.
I landed a factory job in Michigan between my freshman and sophomore years of college at MSU. I was making $10/hr, which was great money at the time, considering minimum was $2/hr, and you could almost survive as a single guy on a minimum-wage job.
I was coming up on the end my 90-day probation when the general foreman dropped by my mill and asked me if I was going back to college, or did I want a full-time job. You know the phrase “young dumb and full of c.” I told him I wanted the job. He told me it was mine as of the next week.
The next day, the plant manager (big suit) never seen in my part — dirty part — of the plant, was in my foreman’s office when I started my shift. A little while later, I saw my grandfather walk in, and they all talked for a bit. After a while, my grandfather got up, pointed to me, shook the GM’s hand, then left.
A few minutes later, I was called to the office, and the GM said, “Sorry, Rich, we like the way you work, but Joe said I need to fire you. He said to tell you that he knows you are mad now, but you are going back to school, and he will get you canned from any job you take until you do.”
I really wasn’t mad, but I was more than a little bit frightened. My 5′6″, 120# grandfather, who had never worked anything other than plant labor (a different plant and a different company) his entire life (except for WWI army and WWII navy), called a high-and-mighty suit, and got him to go to the dirtiest part of the plant just to fire me and make me go back to college.
2023 Review: How China is Catching Up with the US in Key Tech Domains?
If my boss behaves inappropriately, particularly toward me, the last thing I’m concerned about it being respectful toward him/her. While working in IT at a community college, I had a boss who attempted to embarrass a coworker and I in front of an office full of staff, students, and school visitors. He announced, loudly, that we were doing our job wrong — we were rerouting a netwok cable — and asked if he had to do it himself. The thing is, he came as we were finishing the job up and were in the process of installing the wall port at the new location. That didn’t stop me from laying my tools on a desk and telling him to go ahead and finish up, since he could do it better, while my coworker and I went to lunch. Then we walked out of the office.
My coworker was so angry and embarrassed that he never returned; he sent the douche an email the next day saying he wouldn’t be back. The douche tried to write me up for insubordination — the douche was angry and embarrassed because I’d told him to finish the job and then walked away in front of a crowd of people — but his boss had heard about what he’d done and told him to leave me alone. The douche could dish it out, but he couldn’t take it, apparently.
The douche and I had a mutual dislike for one another from my first day at the school. In fact, he tried to have my job offer revoked when he was named to replace the former IT Director on an interim basis, but his boss wouldn’t let him do that, either. It pissed me off that my coworker was collateral damage in our feud — even though my coworker told me later that he’d planned to leave before the next semester — and I went out of my way to make life miserable for the douche my last two years at that job. It wasn’t difficult because he was not well-liked — even his boss would insult him in front of the techs he was supposed to be managing.
When I turned in my resignation he asked why I was leaving and I told him I could no longer work for someone I didn’t like or respect. In retrospect, I should have been ruder.
1. Pay attention to who you’re with when you feel your best.
2. How you are treated is more important than how much you like someone. Read it again.
3. You can leave a toxic relationship but if you don’t heal what attracted you to them, you will meet them again. The same demon, just in a different person.
4. If you get that gut feeling that something isn’t right about a person or situation, trust it.
5. Being alone is the beginning of something better with someone better.
6. You break your own heart by making somebody more important than you are to them. Never play yourself like that.
7.A boy will say: You deserve better.
but
A man will say: I will make myself better to deserve you.
Choose wisely.
8. You can feel when someone ain’t being real with you, energy never lies.
9. Sit with it.
Instead of drinking it away, smoking it away, sleeping it away, eating it away, f*cking it away, running from it.
Sit with it.
Healing happens by feeling.
10. Feeling safe in someone’s energy is a different type of intimacy. That feeling of peace and protection is really underrated.
11. Imagine a man who doesn’t stop pursuing you, even after he has you.
12. A good relationship is when two people accept each other’s past, support each other’s present, and love each other enough to encourage each other’s future. So don’t rush love. Find a partner who encourages you to grow, who won’t cling to you, who will let you go out into the world, and trust that you will come back. This is what true love is all about.
If you like my answer, drop it an upvote. Check out my profile for more relationships tips – Amy Swift
[Updates]
Don’t maintain relationships for the sake of it.
Age: 18–25, the age where you meet a lot of temporary people
Reports Claimed China’s Missiles Tech Could Wipe Out US Bases in Minutes
In today’s world of global power hungry giants, China emerges as a formidable force with an arsenal of thousands of missiles, capable of reshaping the dynamics of conflict. The alarming prospect of China having the ability to swiftly incapacitate U.S. bases in a war sparks intense discussions about the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific and settles one discussion of the whole debate, China has lurked in the shadows long enough and now it’s time is here.
As a young, newly qualified police Constable I was on mobile patrol with a more experienced officer. We stopped a car because one brake light was not functioning. But the driver was enraged. He didn’t think his transgression was worth stopping him. He had an urgent appointment to meet, and he communicated this very angrily, loudly and with lots of swear words. In a normal case it would be “Yes officer, why have you stopped me?” “Your brake lights are not working properly sir.” “Oh, thanks, can I carry on?” “Yes sir, if you are careful and don’t brake suddenly. Get them fixed asap.”
In this case my colleague could see I was getting angry at all the abuse. He pulled me aside and whispered in my ear “The ruder he gets, the politer you get. But don’t forget there are a lot of other things you could check. He’ll either calm down or he’ll assault you and then we’d have a good case.”
So I became excruciatingly polite. But… “So sorry to delay you sir, but I just have to measure the depth of tread of your tyres, including the spare. And make sure your screen wash bottle has sufficient water. Would you demonstrate that your wipers are working please?” “Yes, I’m really sorry about the delay, and my colleague will probably want to see all your documents.”
In this case his road rage melted away, and when he apologised for his attitude, we let him go.
Years later I became a senior officer in charge of a large traffic police formation. I told them all the story.
My teen years were tough because my father and I didn’t get along at all. When I was younger my little sisters would look for trouble for fun. When they were caught they’d lie to my parents and say I dared them. They’d smirk while I was beaten – not spanked. When I got married at 22 I began to understand my father as a man. On Oct. 30, 1979 I was saying goodbye to him. He was leaving PA to take a job as a quality control inspector at a nuclear power plant that was being built in Oregon. I suddenly grabbed him into a tight hug and begged him not to go. He’d already signed a contract and all arrangements had been made. I said “If you go I’ll never see you again.”. His reply was “ The next time you see me I won’t be able to see you. The pay is too good to pass up and I’ve never been to the west coast.” He had a heart attack and died on April 5, 1980, one week before he was to go home. The nuclear power plant never opened. It was 40 miles from Mt. St. Helens. When the volcano erupted it caused an earthquake which cracked the foundation of the plant. Thank goodness it wasn’t in operation yet. (Dad and I both had precognition. We often knew things were going to happen before they happened. I prayed for God to take away that ability as no one ever took my warnings seriously and I couldn’t save anyone from accidents or injuries. I’d talked to Dad the day before his death. He told me he had a strong feeling he’d never see home again. I knew that back in Oct. and we were both right.
Went out to a bar with some friends for a birthday party for my ex girlfriend. She really messed me up when she left me, like really bad, but I was trying to be nice since she invited me so I figured I’d go out and be there for a drink or two.
So, a mutual friend who had been broken up with a few days before and was there, so as I made the rounds I talked to her and tried to do whatever I could to let her know it would be ok. I’m no therapist, but I did my best ya know? I knew what a bad breakup felt like, as I was also going through one, so I tried to help.
Anyways, after I left the table I overheard her talking to my ex at the bar about me trying to give her advice and she said, “Well nobody has ever loved him so what does he know about any of this?” And they started laughing. Don’t think they know I heard, but I grabbed my coat immediately and took a long walk home.
I don’t need people like that in my life, haven’t willingly seen either of them since.
Enlisted in the military during Vietnam because there was no college money. Not drafted. Got out and got undergraduate and graduate degrees. Made absolutely sure I got the degrees in a field that paid off. Got a job at a company that had cut out retirement plans the previous year — so much for that myth. Did not have lifetime guaranteed employment complete with a gold watch. Worked for six companies over my career. Got married and had kids. First house was small enough to afford, 1300 square feet. It had a 17% mortgage. That’s seventeen, not seven. Paid every cent of the kids’ college educations, and they all have high-paying jobs. Told the kids to always save twenty-percent. They didn’t. They moved to Latteville and immediately rented McMansions in wealthier areas they couldn’t afford, even with their high salaries. They live hand-to-mouth, but make sure they have swimming pools and eBikes with custom paint jobs rendered by highly-regarded eBike artists. They occasionally hit me up for money. I retired 12 years before the average guy, so there’s that. I have more dough than I know what to do with, no one gave me a cent, and I’m not taking a beating from a real-estate agent to help you satisfy whatever selfish desires you may harbour. I like the house I’m in. It’s quite hard to understand why anyone would want to allocate living quarters in America the same way they did (still do) in the ex-Soviet Union. If so, you would qualify for 90 square feet. Anyway, just stay off my lawn.
Hi there. One of my biggest losing it moments occurred many years ago. I was still married to my now ex. We walked around the block to visit family for tea and a swim.
After dinner we all had quite a few drinks and I wanted to get the kids home. So we all said our goodbyes and proceeded to walk home. We were happily chatting on our walk, when my nephew, who wanted to stay at our place, said something smart assed to me in a joking way.
My ex whacked him up the back of his head, for disrespecting me. I wasn’t disrespected by anyone and we were all just mucking around having a laugh.
I absolutely lost my shit on him. My ex not my nephew. I grabbed him by the front of his shirt, punching him in the face as I rode him down to the ground. I then sat on top of him punching him over and over for hitting our nephew.
Next minute, flashing blue lights and a tall cop is telling me to stop and get off him.
I stood up and my ex just sat there, hands on his head, saying it’s ok because he deserved it.
They let us go home and my kids have never forgotten how pissed off their little muma can get if needed.
Happily divorced now. Kids all have kids. And he’s not in the picture much anymore.
In the late 70s I went to Phoenix for the first time and was staying with a friend who lived there, I bought a cheap car that was a long ways away from my friends house and was following him back to his place. He took a left, the light turned yellow. I had no clue where I was and I didn’t want to lose him. The cop that pulled me over said the light was red. He looked at my New York State license and said hey, you’re from a little town about 25 miles from my little home town. I’m thinking wow, we’re practically neighbors, he won’t give me a ticket. He saw my name and asked any relation to a Vince Dano? Holy shit, no ticket THAT’S MY UNCLE! That little prick he said as he wrote me a ticket. I asked him why my uncle was a prick? He called my uncle an asshole and said he used to be his little league coach. I guess he got benched. About 6 months later I’m in Florida with a job installing lawn sprinklers. I went to my apartment for a minute with the old work truck, left it running and ran inside, heard a crash ran back out and the truck was across the street in a guy’s yard. It had crashed though his fence and wiped out some lawn sprinklers. The old guy came out and I’m apologizing saying don’t worry, I’ll fix everything. As I’m working he asked me where I was from, I told him a little town in nys and he said he’s from a little town about 25 miles away from there. He told me his name I told him mine. He asked if I was related to Vince Dano? I was kind of hesitant thinking what did my little prick uncle do to piss this guy off and now he was going to call the cops. But I said yeah, he’s my uncle. Oh my God! the man said he’s my best friend, we used to coach little league together
Star Trek: TOS Enterprise Bridge Background Ambience *8 Hours* w/ quiet conversations, calming
Most aren’t. Most are saying one or more of these things:
The charges are politically motivated. (Doesn’t mean that they are true. Crimes go uncharged on a regular basis.) The charges aren’t meant to ruin his reputation or lead to convictions, but to tie up his time during the general election.
He is being charged for things that everyone in his position does. Not his position as president, but the charges against him for his business dealings, some of which were before his presidency. I remember hearing a real estate developer defending Trump’s supposed fudging of some real estate numbers to get more favorable terms as “standard operating procedure in the real estate business.”
The charges against him don’t make any difference, because no one ever voted for him for his squeaky-clean record.
I’m not a Trump supporter, but I see the logic in that last one. One saying I heard during every election, when the mud starts flying, is “Jesus isn’t on the ballot.” Every real contender for higher offices in the U.S. has a lot of skeletons in their closet. Many people don’t vote for who they want; they vote against who they don’t want.
Support for Trump is based largely on the fact that he’s not a Democrat. Support for Biden is based largely on the fact that he’s not Trump.
That’s why I’m convinced that any Republican candidate other than Trump can easily walk into the presidency if running against Biden. When three of the four pillars holding up Biden’s platform are simply “he’s not Trump,” his entire platform falls when Trump isn’t the other real contender.
A mere 30% voted for some form of independence but some kind of union with China!
70% prefers a one country 2 system with China but higher autonomy without independence! That is the result as much as you prefer to twist it. And of course all western media twist it as an independent minded candidate wins!
Win? He get a president title but it is weak minority that the 2 main party rule in the next 4 years. He cannot decide on shit let alone do shit for the west! The election result is a simply a pure disaster for Tsai Ing Wen and it ought to be recognised as such.
For China it is a decent result. And for Taiwanese people it hurts them! For western trouble makers. They twist and spin it as Taiwan wants independence! 30% result? 70% wants China. It knows it needs China!
Open letter to Chinese American high school students
Chinese Americans should look beyond the Ivy League farce and consider instead getting a real university education in China
The jig should have been up when the Varsity Blues scandal broke. Oh was it delicious. Hollywood actresses, hedge fund managers, winery owners, real estate developers and other assorted muckety-mucks sneaking their low-watt spawn into elite colleges. The fraud was so absurd you couldn’t make it up.
Rich people Photoshopping their kids playing sports, paying for medical “stupid” certifications to get “special” proctoring, hiring a Harvard grad SAT ringer able to deliver any score you want. Stanford, Yale, Cornell, Georgetown and we are not going to make USC jokes because the school has gotten a lot better in recent years.
And that Chinese girl who paid US$6.5 million to get into Stanford. Did you see her hour-long “I got into Stanford” video on YouTube? Oh the burns in the comments. If you could only read Chinese. Epic!
Of course, the joke is really on us. Because four years later, elite American universities – with additional malfeasance in the interim – continue to command the same prestige, elicit the same anxiety and demand the same obeisance.
The college counseling business is as hot as ever. Some are reportedly charging over a million dollars for white-glove service starting in the 7th grade, with a perfect record of admissions into HYPSM (if you have to ask, you can’t afford it).
And Asian Americans. Did you really think you scored a win when the Supreme Court scrapped affirmative action last year? The universities saw it coming a mile away and became test-optional well before the gavel came down. Underrepresented applicants are polishing their essays on how they’ve thrived in unsafe spaces while you are stuck with the surname Zhang.
So what can you do? You’ve already maxed out the SATs, signed up for every AP class, play the oboe, do bogus charity work and took up a ridiculous sport like fencing. At this point, it’s just one giant crap shoot.
Will the admissions officer like your essay on teaching inner-city kids at math camp (but they really taught you)? Does Yale need another oboist? Will your history teacher write a flashy enough recommendation?
And even if you do get into HYPSM (or its sorry near peers), you will be surrounded by a sea of people who maxed out on the SATs, took every AP class, play an instrument, did bogus charity work and took up a ridiculous sport like water polo. If it is true that you learn the most from your peers, then HYPSM will likely prove less educational than high school.
If you are lucky and go to a regular high school, at least you are exposed to regular people with regular aspirations and regular opinions – deplorable as they may be. In HYPSM, you will join the tiresome Westoid elite with their anxious entitlement and risible pretensions. It’s a nauseating mélange of sanctimony, condescension, virtue signaling, victim larping and look-at-me posturing.
The only people you might learn something from are the international students who mostly keep to themselves after discovering how loud, deranged and solipsistic their American classmates are.
You will discover that student cliques mostly keep to themselves – international students with international students, blacks with blacks, Asian Americans with Asian Americans, frat boys with frat boys, sorority girls with sorority girls (okay, frat boys and sorority girls do mix).
You will while away four years, slowly socialized into Westoid elitism with its arcane rules of self-censorship and approved aspirations, until your life path is narrowed down to finance, consulting or tech. This is made tolerable by drunken debauchery and meaningless hookups (that’s what the kids tell me anyways) that passes for a social life.
All of this is to deliver an indoctrinated end product to Wall Street and Silicon Valley which has accomplished the miracle of hijacking both progressivism and capitalism while impoverishing the rest of America. Evidently, there are progressive non-solutions to every problem which coincidentally increase FAANG share prices.
Somewhere in the back of your mind, you know it’s all a giant farce. The system broke down decades ago. Really, what are the chances you go to a “regular” high school and expect the meritocracy to pick you from the haystack? No, your parents scrimped and saved, fought tooth and nail, to buy that house in Tenafly, New Jersey or Mountain View, California.
College admissions was your religion since birth. Sunday afternoon is for test prep classes (Saturday mornings are for Chinese school; we will get back to that). And when the time comes, your anxiety-ridden parents will fork over a pretty penny for a college counselor, if not white glove S-Class level.
If you think this isn’t farcical enough, the racket has now gone international. Longtime China resident and insightful Twitter commentator Arnaud Bertrand relays a familiar story. His ultra-wealthy Chinese friend has decided to move his family to California largely to buy his children into the American elite.
The friend plans to purchase a house in the best California school district and hire top tutors for his children, confident that it will pave the way to prestigious American universities and elite status in Western society.
Mr Bertrand explains, “Why isn’t this possible in China? Because China has invested considerable efforts – and continues to do so – to ensure that wealth couldn’t ‘game’ the education system.”
China’s schools are not funded by local property taxes. The government did away with guaranteeing school placement based on property ownership. Private schools exist but enrollment is by lottery. And famously, China, in one fell swoop, scrapped the entire for-profit tutoring industry.
Of course, explains Mr Bertrand, none of these measure are perfect. An underground tutoring industry continues to operate. The ultra-wealthy can hire household “help” with PhDs. But his wealthy friend likely reached the correct conclusion – his money has a better chance of buying his children into America’s elite than China’s.
Some of Mr Bertrand’s observations deserve to be quoted in full:
This all raises the bigger question of the reproduction of elites. In the long run, which society is more sustainable and fares better: one that does little to avoid the reproduction of elites like the US (which – contrary to the “American dream” narrative – is one of the high-income economies with the lowest rates of relative upward mobility) or one that actively fights it to enforce, to the extent possible, a meritocracy?
What my friend’s story illustrates is actually even more than this: in the US you don’t even only have a reproduction of local elites but you also have elites from other countries who come to the US because it’s easier to reproduce there!
This may all be grim reading for the anxious Chinese American high school junior. But fear not! Han Feizi does not come bearing bad news but rather with an offering of devastating logic.
Remember Saturday morning Chinese school? Where you go to socialize and misbehave? Well strap yourself down and get back up to 1,500 characters!
An arbitrage opportunity of historic proportions has opened up. Forget about HYPSM. There is nothing for you to learn there. It was already done and dusted 20 years ago. The sheeple just haven’t realized it.
Remember this acronym: TPSFZUN. That’s Tsinghua, Peking, Shanghai Jiao Tong, Fudan, Zhejiang, USTC and Nanjing. Yeah, it’s a mouthful, but it’s not like HYPSM was so obvious. And we are not talking study abroad. We are talking the full four-year degree shebang!
Vaclav Havel famously said that China’s development “has happened so quickly, we have not yet had time to be astonished.” This applies to higher education as well.
In 2004, Tsinghua was ranked 62 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. In 2024, Tsinghua ranked 12th in the world and 1st in Asia (with arch-nemesis Peking University at 14th). Both ranked higher than the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth and Brown.
Seven of the top 10 research universities in the Nature Index are now in China – University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS), Nanjing University, Tsinghua University, Peking University, Zhejiang University and Fudan University.
One of the metrics weighing down the rankings of Chinese universities is their lack of international students. And that’s where you come in! This arbitrage is just asking to be exploited. As an overseas applicant, you get the full DEI treatment. You are the underrepresented minority, the diversity admit, the token international student!
Don’t get me wrong, they don’t take just anybody. You still have to be a top student with a near 4.0 GPA and SATs over 1400. The biggest hurdle will probably be Mandarin proficiency which, depending on the school, you need either HSK4 or HSK5 to matriculate.
All things considered, however, it’s a buyer’s market allowing you to short-circuit both the soul-crushing hell of the gaokao and the humiliating dog and pony show of applying to HYPSM.
Let’s first get one jaw-dropper out of the way. It is an important consideration for many families, especially if yours stretched themselves sending you to private school. Four years of tuition as an international student at Tsinghua will set mom and dad back about $17,000 (room and board are extra). You are free to do your own calculations for HYPSM.
This is, of course, about much more than arbitraging school rankings and acceptance rates (and cheaper tuition). What you are actually getting by choosing this road is a real education. Let me explain. There are important directionality and timing elements involved.
There is a lot of truth to the cliché that modern China is a closed society with an open mind while America is an open society with a closed mind. It is relatively straightforward for a Chinese national to study in the US given the open minds of China’s youth and America’s open society. The reverse is problematic. Chinese society is far more insular and the minds of American youths are generally closed to outside input.
The Chinese American, however, is a different animal and has a window of opportunity. The width of this window depends on how seriously you took Saturday morning Chinese school. Some of you are actively discussing Genshin Impact on Weibo and can sail through HSK7. Others have more work to do.
But for most of you, there is a solid enough base to build on. The best strategy may be to stretch college out to five years with the first year in language immersion (five years of undergraduate tuition is $21,000).
To be sure, this road is not for the faint of heart. You will not be comfortably surrounded by cookie-cutter versions of yourself who maxed out on the SATs, took every AP class, play an instrument, did bogus charity work and took up a ridiculous sport like diving.
You will be surrounded by gaokao mutants whose intellect can be so blazing it’s like staring at the sun (thankfully, there are slackers as well). You might be constantly fighting a language deficiency. And through it all, you have the additional burden of going through the many stages of culture shock.
On the positive side, the liberal arts education at elite Chinese universities may surprise you. The resentment warriors in American academia are laying siege to the Western canon, poisoning every facet of the liberal arts education.
While politics has always encroached on academia in China, the boundaries are far better defined. Chinese universities may, in fact, be a healthier environment to study the Western canon given the immolating culture wars currently being waged on American campuses (see here). Nobody at Fudan cares if Hegel is dead, white or male.
On a side note, this letter is addressed to Chinese Americans (and the diaspora in general) to knock some sense into them. It also applies, with certain caveats, to non-ethnic Chinese. It can be done, has been done and should be done more.
Anecdotally, non-ethnic Chinese Westerners who have successfully taken this road are eccentrics. These oddballs have gotten a far superior education than HYPSM could possibly provide because they would have had to shake off Western solipsism and open their minds.
All of this, in the end, represents an opportunity for a real education – to be outside your comfort zone, to be stretched, to interact with the unfamiliar. You have a short window in your youth to gain lifelong access to the closed society that is China. It cannot be done after undergrad anymore.
Decades ago, when China was short on talent, carpet-bagging Ivy League Chinese Americans flocked to Beijing and Shanghai. Nowadays, one can run a couple hundred meters down Chang’an Avenue with arms outstretched and knock over a dozen Chinese nationals with HYPSM degrees.
Don’t worry, you will never lose access to the West. That is guaranteed by your native command of English. For many of you, especially if a decent amount of Chinese was spoken at home, you have the opportunity in your university years to claim full native command of Mandarin. If you want it, it is yours for the taking. If you don’t claim it now, it will be lost in time.
I sense skepticism and hesitation. Of course, this is normal. This is not a well-worn path. There are no how-to manuals or consulting companies guiding students on this road. The street lamps have not been installed and you even wonder if this road comes to an abrupt end just outside your view.
If you are worried about future placement chances at Goldman Sachs, you should probably forget the whole enterprise. With decades of experience in investment banks, Han Feizi can say that he was always looking for the unicorn, the luminous being, the perfectly bilingual and bicultural animal.
At some point, you have to have Confucian faith that learning is its own reward. Planning for the future is a fool’s errand. To take the road less traveled, next to having children, is the ultimate expression of hope. We leave you with perhaps Lu Xun’s most famous quote:
“Hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not to exist. It is just like the roads made across the earth. For actually there were no roads to begin with, but when many people pass one way a road is made.”
COMMENTS
Brilliant! I’d also encourage the same audience to consider other English-track degrees at universities in Japan, Singapore, and Hong Kong, and to a lesser extent Malaysia, Germany, and Korea. Also thanks for summarizing the entry requirements and tuition in China. Note that not all of the TPSFZUN have a full slate of majors for international students studying exclusively in English. But especially those seeking STEM careers that will hold outsized weight back in the United States, one can tap into the unique Chinese economic leadership in engineering, AI and data mining, and environmental mechanics. A quick browse of English-taught curriculum at Tsinghua is impressive:
https://www.tsinghua.edu.cn/en/pdf/ut2022.pdf
Great essay! As they say “its funny because its true!” Really a brilliant idea
NASA Confirms the Discovery of the Tenth Planet! It Is Larger than Pluto!
A little over two years ago I filed a small claims suit against a guy I made the mistake or renting a room to. He asked to have the hearing rescheduled, then rescheduled again. He asked for a third time and they said no. He was unprepared. He was asked about some documents and said he had seen them, then moments later denied ever having seen them. It didn’t go well for him. The judge issued a judgment in my favor. He stormed out, saying he was going to file an appeal.
He had three weeks to do so. He didn’t. I suspect that is because he would have been required to put up the amount of the judgment as a bond. Since he rents rooms he can pack up and move easily, and before the three week appeal period was up he’d moved again.
It took a couple of months to find him again. I sent a demand letter and got no response. I sent post judgment interrogatories (questions to try to determine what, if any assets, he had). He didn’t respond. I repeated that a couple of times. No response.
I filed for a motion to compel. The judge issued that in October. He had to respond, and the judge added a $500 penalty. He didn’t respond.
We currently have another hearing scheduled for early February for Contempt of Court. I’m not optimistic.
The legal system is set-up to protect the deadbeats of the world. I called a legal aid service but they said they couldn’t advise me because of a conflict of interest — he had contacted them for help sometime in all this. A lawyer I paid for advice said the court could issue a bench warrant and have him held for up to six months and issue another $500 fine but I don’t believe this Judge will do so.
After all this got started I learned that the guy had two small claims cases he lost in California before coming to Texas. One was for $15k and involved rent he owed to a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy. He’d rented a room from this officer. The officer got deployed and the deadbeat was supposed to pay his rent payments to the bank and never did. It wasn’t until the officer started getting contacted about insufficient funds for his mortgage payments he knew something was wrong. In the other case, he’d told someone he met at a gym that he was a licensed stock broker. He eventually persuaded the person to give him $25k to invest with promise of $300k in a matter of a few months. Then he gave the victim the run around. The victim found out he wasn’t a licensed broker (required in California) and demanded his money back. He then ghosted the victim and moved. The victim filed suit and was awarded $30k with interest. He left the state.
We don’t have debtor prisons and the judge in this case isn’t likely to put him in jail over a pretty modest sum (about $1,600 now).
She thought I was an extra that would eventually fade away. My wife and I have been lucky in love and lucky to stay that way. We were married thirty years when my mother in law passed.
This long happy marriage was a thorn in her heel.
One of the last Christmas’s consisted of nice envelopes from the bank with Ben Franklin’s reassuring face smiling through the old time holly and Christmas bells. There was a bit of a problem. One Benjamin was missing, but there was a present that looked like half of a basket ball that had enough tape on it to secure a team.
It had my name on it.
I carefully removed the paper so she could use it again. When the present was revealed, it was not a basket ball in need of a pump. It was a three piece set of plastic mixing bowls with blue ducks waddling around them in an unending line.
My wife was furious.
The next Christmas there was a Ben Franklin with my name on it.
Greek Sesame Bread
Greek Sesame Bread
Ingredients
1/2 cup lukewarm water
2 tablespoons olive oil
5 tablespoons lukewarm milk
1 envelope active dry yeast
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
2 tablespoons milk
2 tablespoons sesame seeds
Instructions
Combine the water, oil, milk, and yeast in a mixing bowl and stir to dissolve the yeast. Add 1 cup of the flour and the salt and beat with an electric mixer for 2 minutes. Add the remaining flour and beat to form a stiff dough. Knead the dough on a floured surface until smooth and elastic. Place in a lightly greased bowl, cover with a dish towel, and allow to rise in a warm place until doubled in volume.
Punch the dough down and form into a round loaf on a lightly-floured baking sheet.
Beat the egg with the milk and brush the dough with the mixture. Sprinkle with sesame seeds, and cut a deep cross in the top of the loaf with a very sharp knife or razor blade. Cover and allow to rise until double in volume.
Place a cake pan with 1 inch of water in it on the bottom shelf of the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Bake the loaf for 15 minutes, then reduce the heat to 350 degrees F and bake an additional 15 minutes, until golden brown. Test for doneness by thumping the bottom of the loaf – it should produce a hollow sound.
I can tell you that having been an EMT, I have seen a lot of rough stuff with home break ins. Of those where the occupant did not make it out, They were all unarmed. Some tried to fight back, some didn’t. But the absolute worst cases were those where the intruder felt they had absolute control of the situation.
Of those where the occupant made it out and successfully fought off an intruder, by the time the police arrived (with us not far behind) The occupant was STILL ready to fight and kill.
with a home intruder, you are not shooing off a rodent. You are fighting off natures apex predator, humans. One thing that can get you killed faster than anything is hesitation in your purpose.
If there is someone in your house that is not supposed to be there, You can not confront them with the hopes of tying them up scooby-doo style and waiting for the cops. There is three things one can do; Kill, hide, or run.
I say “kill” and not “fight” because “fight” confuses the purpose. Your purpose when they are in the house, is to KILL. Thinking ANYTHING ELSE, can make your body do weird things, like NOT STRIKE in the place it needs to in order to kill. It is already hard enough to put a sharp object though a breast bone, Even worse if you are half-hearted about it.
It takes far less to slash a throat, stab the gut, kidney etc. Or just start stabbing quickly and repeatedly and randomly. You won’t do that if you have confused your purpose.
I want you to know, though, that this is one of the most brutal you will ever engage in and will likely cause permanent mental scars as what will result is a **LOT** of blood. This will also likely cause a divorce as it will quite possibly cause your significant other to fear the living hell out of you. No matter what you did, stab them, beat them You will have used your hands to have killed another human.
With a gun, there is a degree of separation that somehow allows humans to think there is a “not as bad” level to it. You don’t have to REALLY commit to killing, just let the bullet do it for you.
In the end, all of your options are calculated risks.
EDIT: After re-reading this, I find that My recommendation for using a knife in place of a firearm (if you just *have* to) is not clear. But you need to realize that a knife is more brutal and traumatizing to the user on average than a firearm. Obviously, this is subjective to the individual, and my only “Data” on this is the calls I have responded to over about a decade as an EMT.
A lady in front of me, at the queue to cash, decided she was cleverer than me and all the fine people employed at PriceSmart.
To shop at PriceSmart you have to be a member. You do this by purchasing a membership subscription card which allows you a year of membership. For the average Joe it’s a tad costly ($265 TT) but the savings you get shopping at PriceSmart, more than makes up for it.
I’m a very economical shopper and I tend to purchase only the bare necessities and would treat myself to something nice only once in a blue moon. This lady in front of me had a cart piled with groceries and also several treats ranging from frozen salmon burgers, Lindt, Toblerone and Mars chocolates, smoked almonds and ribs. Clearly she was not a poor lady.
When we neared the cashier she suddenly turned around to stare me in the eyes. This is the conversation that followed.
Lady: You don’t mind if I use your card right?
Me: For what?
Lady: To cash.
Me: You don’t have a card?
Lady: No. Can’t afford it.
I then stared at her pile of groceries tethering at the edge of her trolley. Her bottle of Grey Goose Vodka was almost $300TT but she ‘couldn’t afford’ a $200TT (at that time) membership.
Me: It’s only $200 for the membership and it takes just a minute.
I saw her face suddenly transform into a look of complete irritation. It was as if I was asking her for the favour.
Lady: I don’t have the money right now. I just told you. People need to help each other.
Me: Well I can’t lend you my card.
Lady: Why?
Me: Because I don’t know you.
Lady: You need to know me to help me?
At that point I remained silent. I didn’t want to call her out for attempting to use random strangers for her financial convenience. I didn’t want to argue that I spent my hard earned money on this membership and she ought to make that sacrifice also rather than gorge on her four rotisserie chickens as it was not my place to say.
Instead she went to the man in front of her, giving him a sad story of how she just lost her card and this stuff is for her mother. The guy took the bait and lent her his card. She then stared at me as if to say, ‘Got anything to say now?’
Clearly this wasn’t the first time she did this and it definitely wasn’t going to be the last.
Some people may not see the big deal of what happened there but to me she is trash: a selfish and cheap opportunist. She is a leech on PriceSmart (who generates a profit from membership fees) and on the good people around her who make the necessary sacrifices for the greater good.
Edit 24.11.21Whoa. 5K upvotes. I always thought venting anger never got people anywhere. Was wise enough to avoid that lady’s scheme. Was not so wise as a teenager when I fell for a bootlegger’s silly scam. Click hereto read all about it.
No matter how bad is your life now, how disgusting your life might be, how ugly you may look and how badly life is f*cking you, never ever lose hope.
Have the positive attitude towards life and get surrounded by the positive personalities.
Never ever lose hope!
Couple of months back I met my 2 engineering friends after 2 years from engineering days. We are all living in 3 different cities as of now, somehow we managed our busy schedules and we met finally.
Sharath and Sagar, my engineering close friends. Sharath is the one who introduced me to alcohol in engineering days.
Sharath, a son of highly influential politician son. He need not to worry about money in life. He is preparing to crack “Sub Inspector” post and he is taking coaching in Hyderabad now.
Sagar, a son of a farmer. He is working in apprenticeship program for an year in a manufacturing company in Chennai for a stipend of rupees 5,000 per month. He has 2 sisters and he needs to marry them off. His father is in debt. He is from lower middle class family.
Me?
I’m too from a lower middle class.
We were sitting in the outer ring road at 10 pm that night, talking random things. Then, Sharath got a call from his girlfriend, so he went aside to talk to her in private. So, me and Sagar were having a conversation in the absence of Sharath.
Me: Sharath need not worry about life and he need not to struggle in his life to make money, because his parents are already making huge money and property for him. You (pointing to Sagar) and me should work our ass off to get settled and to become rich in life.
Sagar: Sharath’s parents didn’t give him the opportunity for him to become rich. Look how lucky me and you are, because our parents gave us the opportunity to become rich. Shouldn’t we take this as a fire in our belly?
Sagar is getting a stipend of rupees of 5,000 per month from a manufacturing company in Chennai. He is still struggling to find a job. He failed in 14 interviews so far. He has 2 sisters and he needs to bear the expenses of their marriage. His father is a farmer and is in debt.
Despite having such obstacles in life, Sagar’s confidence and attitude towards life is simply appreciable.
People can be crude. People can be rude. And certain people can be childish assholes. We all know this.
When I was unemployed, I managed to find work as a french fry flipper at a fast food restaurant. And so I endured this low pay, thankless job.
But… as a man, you do what you need to do.
Anyways there was this cashier that had a fun time making my life Hell. You see, every time someone places an order of French fries, she was to yell it out. But for fun, and being a real asshole, she called for fries at every order, and I, dutifully doing my job, would make them.
The situation arose that only two fries (boxes) were ordered, but I had made 64 boxes.
Got me in trouble, and I got my pay docked because of that.
Oh yeah…
I wizened up over that, and and other stories ensued. But the point that I am making here is that if you have a co-worker doing this kind of shit, can you image what they would do later on when they are better experienced and more capable.
I spent over 30 years as head of the HR function at two very successful biopharma companies and as a co-founder of a SaaS company.
After I’d had enough experience to form an opinion, I went on a campaign to get a consensus from the SVP of administration and the CEO of the S&P 500 company where I spent most of my career: we accept all resignations.
Some of the reasons:
Countering a departing employee is news that gets around and becomes assimilated into the culture. Far better to pay at your intended percentile range in the market (25th-50th? 50th-75th?) and let people leave. It avoids creating an incentive for people to resign as a form of manufactured crisis where the company is known to cave.
Managers need to know how to replace a person quickly and effectively or to redistribute and redesign the work pattern to reduce the criticality of that person. They shouldn’t allow operations to become too dependent on a single, critical employee without knowing what to do if that employee resigns.
People at work sometimes act like the “Meister” system of guildsmen of the Middle Ages, who literally covered their workbenches at night with cabinetry designed to conceal how they did things. Even the great Mercedes-Benz suffered from this problem. They didn’t know it or face it until they got massive competition from good-enough luxo cars from Japan in the ’90s. In response, M-B had to understand its operations in a different way. They discovered that 60% (!) of cars on their assembly lines went backward for reworks. It was costing them a ton. All a meister at the end of the line had to do was say “send it back and repaint the hood.” Didn’t have to explain why. That was evidence that M-B didn’t really understand or own its standards and criteria. Some mis-motivated employees had created fiefdoms where secrets were power.
You’re a new boss. This all may be just an organizational theory to you. Explain to your boss that you don’t think it’s good for the company or the operations to allow this person to be treated as indispensable. Ask for your manager’s participation in the response. Then, accept the resignation. You may respond with a part-for-part replacement or you may reorganize the work at that person’s workstation. It may be some combination.
Whatever it is, by the time you solve the problem you will understand that job a hell of a lot better than you ever did before. You won’t be as paralyzed when the next person decides to resign. And, you’ll probably be motivated to understand and better document your work processes.
It benefits some 0.01% of America and hurt 99.99% of Americans. But unfortunately the 0.01% owns America!
They choose the candidates for you 99.99% of Americans to pick! Heads they win, tails they don’t lose! When you have a good President like Kennedy the 0.01% Will assassinate him!
How can spending more on military than the next 20 nations be good for the U.S.? How can you sell this to the 1 million homeless in the U.S. or the 35% of Americans who will die of illness because the cannot afford health insurance?
China DESTROY Europe BRANDY And WINE In Retaliation Sanction
For me I was getting to know a woman who treated me incredibly, she was beautiful, a great listener who would ask me lots of questions. She was sexy and great around other people and all my friends loved her. The problem was she had no other friends. She would talk about a friend here and there but I never met any of this people and she was never doing anything social outside our relationship. Basically every decision (what movie we went to, what restaurant we eat at came down to what I decide. It concerned me of course but she was naturally submissive and the dating world was so awful that it was easy to just ignore it. BTW she was one of the smartest person I had ever met.
We moved in with each other and slowly things started to unravel. Took a couple years for me to figure out she suffered from something that I knew nothing about. She suffered from Borderline Personality Disorder. It was a nightmare getting out of it.
Ironically, phones are no longer for talking for me. That’s the last thing I want to do on them.
It’s amazing that so many people (cough*women*cough) can talk for hours and hours on the phone.
I try to call my parents once a week at least. We talk for 10-20 minutes typically. That’s about the extent of my calling.
I had a girlfriend who literally talked for 2-3 hours on the phone every single day.
And unfortunately, if her roster of friends were unavailable, I’d be the recipient of those hours of talkage.
I’d sit at my computer on auto-pilot, “Uho….oh wow….that’s crazy.”, as she told me this long story about the bad customer service experience she had that was basically her fault to begin with.
I’d install a new solid state drive in my computer as she debated out loud with herself about the proper wedding present for wedding #400 that year.
I remember lying on my bed, putting the phone on speaker mode and setting it on my chest.
I’d stare at the ceiling and wonder weird things, like if there was another duplicate galaxy out there, with a sun, an earth, a moon, and a Sean lying on a bed at that exact same moment, with a girlfriend telling him a longwinded story about how a girl named Becky said “Hi” in this really rude way the day before.
Luckily the Middle East Conflict has caused a major change in plans for the West for at least another year
The Plan was to bleed out Russia, weaken Russia & focus on Taiwan by 2024 May or June and push China into an aggressive action
Instead Russia is now stronger than ever and Putin isn’t going anywhere so Ukraine has been abandoned and will be fully abandoned in the next few months after a last aid package of maybe $ 30 Billion being approved after a lot of arm twisting
Yet the Middle East will be a considerable strain for the US whose production is by no means what it used to be
It would be a weakened US who would be facing China
Now Taiwanese aren’t Ukranians
No way will they choose to die stupidly
No way will they sacrifice their own lives
Same with the Japanese
So Taiwan WILL EXPECT the UNITED STATES TO DIRECTLY FIGHT CHINA. It means US Troops and US Body bags
That will be WORLD WAR III and both have NUKES
image 138
Hard to believe Trump or the Pentagon would prefer a World War with China
Trump wants to return US to it’s former greatness
A Possible Nuclear war would be the worst outcome for such a vision
If Trump can be assured that US will remain Number 1 for his term and possibly a decade or so after , if US can reduce its debt, China supports the US in restructuring Debt and reduce the deficit
HE MAY ACTUALLY ALLOW CHINA TO INVADE TAIWAN OR OPENLY DECLARE THAT IF TAIWAN DOESN’T RESPECT STATUS QUO, THEN US WONT INTERFERE IF CHINA RETALIATES
Do everything you want to do. Don’t take the little things for granted. Life is short…
I was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy at age 15.
Since I have done everything I wanted to do.
I’ve traveled the country, and I even rode my last roller coaster ride about 12 years ago.
Now, I am incredibly weak. I cannot talk very well, my voice is hoarse, raspy, and down to a whisper. I have to take breaths in between every three or so words.
I can’t walk more than a few steps.I have a wheelchair now.
I’m constantly tired by noon.
Even eating is a challenge. A simple slice of pizza takes about 30–45 mins to eat.
I’ve been cheated out of a normal life, and it hurts.
Live your life to the fullest. It’s the little things in life that make it so much better…don’t take it for granted
I am now 31 and have, at most, 1 more year left to live.
Written by my brother
Chicken Paprikash
chicken paprikash 1 11
Ingredients
Chicken
2 whole fryer chickens, cut up
1 medium onion, diced
Sweet Hungarian paprika
Vegetable oil
8 to 12 ounces sour cream
2 cans chicken broth
Spaetzle (Sinkers)
3 to 4 cups all-purpose flour
6 to 8 eggs
Pinch of salt
Water, if necessary
Instructions
Chicken: Sauté onion in about 1/3 cup vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add 1/3 cup of paprika, being careful not to let it burn.
Place chicken in skillet to fry, dusting one side again with paprika. Brown about 6 to 8 minutes, turning occasionally. Take chicken out and place in roasting pan.
Add chicken broth until it covers chicken. Cover the pan and bake at 375 degrees F for about 2 hours or until the chicken is tender.
Remove chicken from roaster. Cover and set aside. Put roaster on top of stove and bring remaining contents to a slow boil.
Gravy: Mix sour cream into some of the hot broth from roaster, whisking until smooth. Add back into roaster with boiling broth.
Pre-mix flour, water and salt. Whisk until smooth. Gravy should have a nice salmon color. Add more paprika if desired.
Spaetzle: Mix ingredients in a bowl. Dust hands and mix with flour. Knead into a ball. Flatten to about 1/8 inch thick.
Boil chicken broth in a pot. Keeping a spoon wet, section off pieces of spaetzle dough. Cook in the broth for about 3 to 6 minutes.
Place chicken and spaetzle on a plate and cover with gravy.
When I lived in what was considered a bad neighborhood in Salem MA (I didn’t think it was that bad, but it was cheap for Massachusetts) four boys moved upstairs from us the week after we got there.
Long story short, they were meth dealers (but not manufacturers, thank God!), and every weekend they threw open parties to get more business.
Idiots.
This lasted about six weeks before the Salem Police took them in, and we never saw them again. Hey, paperwork takes time. 😉 To be honest, it probably was quicker because all three were on probation.
Idiots.
So about a month after they went to jail (one went to custody of his mom), we got a ring on the bell. It was a large, muscular, threatening looking middle aged dude. He asked me what I knew about the boys, and I told him they’d gone to jail a month ago, and the place was looking for new tenants.
He narrowed his eyes. “You wouldn’t lie to me? People aren’t happy if they lie to me.”
I assured him I wasn’t lying, and their arrests had been in the newspaper, and were public record.
So he leans in, towering over me, and says, “You tell those punks they owe me $35K, and if they don’t cough it up, doesn’t matter where they are hiding. You got that?”
Looking up, I smiled and told him I didn’t expect or hope to see them again, but if by chance I did, I’d tell them.
I saw him get into his shiny black SUV, noted the plate, and went back inside.
Called the police desk and told them the story and the plate.
“Oh, can you get that for me?” he asked, tilting his head towards me and pointing to the cup on his dresser.
I nodded politely, and stood up to get it for him. As I made my way to his dresser, I noticed the piles of clothes he had lying around on the floor, crumpled and dirty. I don’t care about that I tried to convince myself as I handed him the cup of tea and sat back down.
This was our first date and we had begun to talk about life and our more personal beliefs. And when I say “we”, I actually mean him. For the next three hours, I had a total of about two minutes to share anything about myself.
I asked a lot of questions, sure, but every time I offered any input, I would be cut off immediately by another long-winded 18 minute story about his life. Again, and again.
And after about two hours, I decided to get up to go to the bathroom to compose myself and think about an exit strategy. So I got up and entered the bathroom in his apartment only to find… nothing.
Nothing.
Not a single bar of soap, not a toothbrush, not a towel. And worse.. not even toilet paper.
It was as if I had walked into a showing for a new apartment. I tried to look frantically in the drawers for something, but I found nada.
I was beyond shocked, especially because he had gone to the bathroom earlier for more than just a quick look in the mirror.
So if the two hours of lecturing from him was not enough, the bathroom was the signifying factor for me that I had to leave.
This is pretty much how he spends 23 hours every day. And he is for the most part untrainable. He is both incredibly lazy and incredibly stubborn and is not motivated by anything. Not praise, not treats, nothing.
One day last week, we were going for our daily walk. We usually walk around 1–1/2 to 2–1/2 miles every day, depending on the weather. We had only gotten a block from the house when two pitbulls that I had never seen before came charging at us. The fist one to get to us immediately tried to bite Ivan but just got a mouthful of hair.
I took a step back and made sure Ivan had enough slack in his leash so that he could do whatever it was he needed to do to defend both himself and I. I don’t think it took Ivan 5 seconds to send both of those pitbulls running for the hills. The noises he made sounded as if a demon had been unleashed.
And then we continued on our walk. And once we got home, he resumed his usual position, curled up on the couch.
Great Pyrenees dogs have been bred to be guardians. No training required. It’s just in his blood.
Spring of 2012, I was 56, and I had completed my bloodwork in preparation for my annual physical. My GP called me and said, I need you to redo your bloodwork. I went to see the vampires again and gave another sample. Two days later during my physical, the GP tells me, “Your platelet count is really high, 1.6million per microliter”. (Normal is 150k to 450k) “l want you to go see this blood specialist”. The previous year, my platelet count was normal.
Ten days later I am sitting with the Blood Swami who tells me, “Dave, you are a walking potential blood clot just waiting to have a stroke or heart attack. You have a condition known as essential thrombocytosis and I am prescribing hydroxyurea to treat it. This is a pretty strong chemotherapy drug, and there is a risk that you could develop leukemia in 20 years. If you do nothing, you could throw a blood clot causing a stroke or heart attack at any time. I am also going to order a bone marrow biopsy from your hip to rule out cancer, which can cause platelet production to spike.”
Post bone marrow biopsy, which by the way, was excruciating, it turned out I had a genetic mutation which resulted in runaway platelet production. 11 and a half years later I am still on the drug, my blood guy and see each other quarterly, and although there has been some yo-yoing of my platelet count, we are keeping the count pretty much under control, and knock wood, no signs of leukemia.
Side note: when I was diagnosed, my mom told me she had developed essential thrombocytosis a year earlier, and her doctor did not order a bone marrow biopsy. Two months after my diagnosis, she was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and was dead in 3 months. I have always wondered if she had had a bone marrow biopsy when she was diagnosed, would they have caught the lung cancer when it was more treatable.
The commonest complaint with which people consult a cardiologist is chest pain. People believe, and rightly so, that chest pain is the classical hallmark that the heart may be in trouble. But fortunately, most chest pains are not cardiac.
–
The following ones makes us yawn.
‘Pain Right at this point.’
‘Pinprick type pain.’
‘Pain shifts here and there.’
‘Pain lasts for few seconds.
‘Feels like an electric shock’
‘Pains as I touch here’
All these have a low likelihood of being cardiac pain.
I examine them, ask for an ECG etc etc – all routine.
And most often they turn out to be normal.
–
The following gives us nightmares.
The phone rings.
‘Can I talk to the doctor?’
‘Yes please’
‘Doctor, I have some kind of discomfort of my lower jaw, I had a ECG done and it was normal. Just wanted to…..’
‘Tell me that again. Jaw pain? I need you to come down to the hospital ASAP’
–
ECG of someone who had a littlejaw pain.
Here is his ECG
image 19
ECG (the last 3 leads) shows runs of VT (very fast heart rate). Precursor of a cardiac arrest.
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Coronary Angiogram
image 18
Critical narrowing of a heart artery (Left Anterior Descending Artery)
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A pain, ache or discomfort of the lower Jaw, or a discomfort radiating (spreading) from chest, neck to the lower jaw is highly likely of cardiac origin.
A chest pain can happen because of muscle pain, cartilage inflammation, and many such minor stuff but a jaw pain, though a lesser known and an uncommon manifestation of cardiac disease, if present, strongly indicates that the heart may be in trouble.
–
5-Minute-Teach
If you have a aching pain or unexplained discomfort of your lower jaw, go to your cardiologist and not to your dentist.
I was working in a Bangalore in one US based company.
I had team of 2 which I was leading and was working on Automation and I was the one who started this work.
Work was going fine and things were happening on deadlines. I had direct manager , no lead in team.
One fine day my account VP called me .
Account VP: your attitude is not good ( fyi I used to come office early in morning by 9am and complete work by 4:30–5pm and then leave) about why I am leaving so early when all other people stay late ( other people used to come by 12:30–1 PM and leave by 9PM) ,
Me: my work is going fine and my manager doesn’t have any issue with deadline and work( that time my manager was in USA)
A VP : you need to improve this , can’t work like this.
Me : what you want more time or better efficiency?
A VP : do your work but you need to stay .
Me: sorry , I can’t do that as I am coming early when no one is in office and completing mine work and team is also doing same.( Team people used to stay till 6:30–7PM for no reason).
Next day I was called by my HR director , when I reached there I saw VP sitting with him.
HR director: I was told that you are behaving properly and not working properly.
Me : work wise you can ask my manager and even I do direct presentation to India head and people in US.
HR D.: U need to stay also ,that’s how everyone work here.
Me: I am not everyone and I won’t work like that. When required I do stay but can’t do it daily for no reason.
HR d- this is not way you can work here.
Me: then I don’t want to work here, you guys don’t understand the problem. By sitting till late doesn’t mean you are working more. And I can’t stay without reason.
HR D: your behaviour is not good , Not good way to talk, Better you leave.
Me: ok. I will send a mail and I am leaving. Can’t work in this kind of environment.
Later in same month I got another job with very good hike 80% and again 17% in next 4months during appraisal.
FYI,
I completed 2 projects in 7months and after I left , responsibility was given to senior developer and few months later when I asked my team mates , they told me that there is no progress and they are almost still stuck where you left . One person left one month after I left and one was working there.
Oh, you wouldn’t believe what happened with my neighbor last summer. So, there I was, enjoying a quiet Saturday afternoon in my backyard, tending to my roses — you know, the usual weekend relaxation. Out of nowhere, I hear this loud, screeching sound. I look up, and there’s my neighbor, Dave, flying a drone right over my fence!
At first, I thought, “Okay, maybe he’s just testing it out.” But no, this drone starts hovering over my yard, and I swear it’s like it’s spying on me. I’m waving my arms, trying to shoo it away like a pesky fly. And then, the unthinkable happens — this drone swoops down and knocks over my prized garden gnome, shattering it into a million pieces. That gnome was a gift from my late aunt, and I treasured it.
I marched right over to Dave’s house, ready to give him a piece of my mind. But here’s the kicker: he opens the door with this innocent look and says, “Oh, did my drone accidentally wander into your yard? It must’ve gone off course. Sorry about that.” I mean, the nerve of some people! It took every ounce of patience I had not to escalate things.
So, lesson learned — always keep an eye on the sky when Dave’s around. You never know when a rogue drone might invade your privacy. It’s funny now, but at the time, it was like something out of a sitcom!
Having lived for three years in Germany, the one thing that really struck me about Germany’s advantage over the US is Germans’ deep feeling of personal liberty. Americans believe we have personal freedom, but we really don’t compare to Germans.
Germans have a very generous social safety net that Americans do not have. In Germany a person can quit his job to start a business of his own without fear of losing his health insurance. This relieves a lot of the stress and risk for someone who wants to pursue a lifelong dream to have their own business. The government will even partially subsidize the business for the first year to help him get it started effectively rather than having to scrape together dimes and nickles and fail due to a lack of support. This makes it entirely possible for someone to start something they really want to do.
Education is fully subsidized at all levels. If a German wants to be a doctor, they go for it. An engineer, they go for it. An artist, a musician or a teacher, they go for it. The education is available to become anything they want to be, regardless of their ability to pay. Germans have freedom to pursue their dreams where Americans are enslaved by debt or cannot afford to go to school at all.
A person who loses his job in Germany may receive 60% of his salary for up to a year while he searches for a new job. This prevents him from being forced immediately into a lower-wage job as Americans frequently are when their personal savings runs out.
Free healthcare, of course. Germans don’t have to worry about whether they can afford their medications or medical treatments. Sickness doesn’t drain a person’s bank account.
The elderly are taken care of. Those who have retired will receive a pension sufficient to allow them to live the rest of their lives with dignity. The government provides substantially for elderly people who need to be in a nursing home or in a hospice, relieving families of the crushing financial burden Americans face as their parents grow old.
My experience brought me to the conclusion that Americans have as much freedom as they have money. People who have little money become risk averse and are not free to pursue their dreams—especially when they work pay check to pay check and are one car repair away from bankruptcy. If they have college debt, Americans live like slaves for many years. The German system, on the other hand, allows people to live free, to try things, to fail perhaps, and keep right on going until they succeed. The quality of life is therefore higher and people are free to do what they want with their lives.
Hanging by your fingernails over the edge of a cliff is not freedom.
Argentina is not joining BRICS? Where is its right wing President leading its people to?
Argentina went hard butt-fuck with the United States, and this has “sort of” messed up the global realignment.
Yes. Leanne. A rather entitled millennial who thought the sun shone from somewhere it didn’t. She told her manager to F-off.
She was put into a tech assistant role, supporting George, a category manager who had been working for the company for close to 50 years. He retired when he hit 50 years of service – he was 72 at the time. After retirement, he stuck around part-time for a few years as a consultant too – he was that knowledgeable, and important to the business.
Anyway, what George didn’t know wasn’t worth knowing. He could tell you the names of staff going back to the early 70s. He could also tell you when something was made obsolete, and what replaced it. He was a walking archive of catalog information going back to before I was born. If you couldn’t find an answer, George was the one who would know it. He was extremely well respected. He had 2 assistants working under him, doing daily tasks like tenders and quotes, warranty checks, stock orders, and general technical assistance for distributors and customers.
Jovic was a fellow in his mid-30s when I met him. He was George’s protégé, and he had already learned a lot from George – having worked under him for nearly a decade. His only career plan was to step into George’s role when he retired. He did (and still does) a cracking job.
Leanne was employed a year or so before I came along. She was lazy, and slow to reply to requests for help. Customers complained to both Jovic and George about her. Jovic was growing tired of having to carry Leanne’s shortcomings and begged George to do something.
George worked out she would be better doing analytic tasks like price increases, manufacturing updates, large pricing tenders, and stock monitoring – so she wouldn’t have to talk to customers anywhere near as much. She was taking a week to do a tender than George could do in a few hours. Admittedly, George could look at a partial part number, or a description, and instantly know the correct number. This took Leanne a lot of time to search. But she was also partial to online shopping and would spend hours browsing fashion sites. She would also call her friends and spend hours going through fashion websites, deciding what to buy. This was the main reason she was so slack.
George had gone to HR several times about her lack of competence in the role, her time wasting, excessive personal calls etc, etc. She was given numerous verbal warnings and a couple of written ones. She was on thin ice. One afternoon George was frustrated that a deadline was coming up, and she hadn’t started a tender that she’d had for over 2 weeks. He walked up behind her desk to see she was browsing a fashion site, and yapping away on a personal call. He interrupted her and asked her to focus on the tender. Her response “Fx off George.”
George had never been short with anyone before. So his next outburst was a huge shock to us all. He bellowed (loud enough for whoever was on the other end of her phone to hear it) “That’s it, we’re going up to HR right now. You had your last chance, and you blew it.”
Her response, which was heard right across 60+ people in an open plan office – people who had suddenly become silent after hearing George’s outburst, was “You can’t sack me you crusty old cxxx. I quit first.”
Because of that retaliation, and the language used, HR refused to give her a reference as she was marched from the building.
George was the most patient guy, but Leanne pushed him way too far. We were all glad to see the back of her.
Jovic has since become “George 2.0” – although his knowledge isn’t as impressive as George’s, he still has some 25 years to get there.
I pressed the button for floor number thirteen. The only other occupants of the lift were two cute girls, who were talking to each other in a highly fake American accent.
At the fifth floor, the lift stopped, the door opened, and I was surprised to see an African man standing in front of us. True that Delhi is a favorite destination of international tourists, but people of African origin are still a rare sight.
The lift was again on its way.
I turned my attention back to the girls. Suddenly, one of them started signaling the other, making big round eyes, first pointing towards her, and then towards the African guy. For an instant, the second girl seemed confused, but then she realized what her friend was trying to point to and both of them burst with silent giggles. I felt really bad for the African guy, who seemed strangely calm. He didn’t seem to mind at all. Emboldened by this, the two girls began talking loudly, but this time, they strategically switched to Hindi.
“Kitna bhadda lag raha hai ye kalua!” (He’s so ugly, this Blackie!)
“Haan, sahi kaha. Baal dekh iske, jaise ghungrali ghas ugi ho sir pe.” (Yep, you’re right. Look at his hair. Looks like his head is covered with curly grass.)
At this, both of them again started guffawing with tears in their eyes.
“Itni badsurat shakal kisi ki kese ho sakti hai!” (How can somebody have such an ugly face!)
I was really embarrassed. Was this my incredible India?
The lift stopped. The African guy adjusted his backpack and proceeded to step out. Then suddenly, he turned around, and in impeccable Hindi, said –
“Badsurat dil hone se to badsurat shakal hona achha hai!” (It’s better to have an ugly face than an ugly heart!)
And then, he was gone.
The expression of utter shame and embarrassment on the girls’ faces, turned red with rage and humiliation, is something I still cherish to this day.
Not sure if it ended the lieutenant’s career or not, but if it didn’t it was definitely a CLM (Career Limiting Manuver)
Friend of mine was engaged to an enlisted guy in the army. Dude had his paperwork, and was a couple of weeks from being a civilian. He was scheduled to do some final training for newbies *in a week*, but didn’t have any real duties until then. Gal’s Mom dies somewhat unexpectedly. They set up the funeral for Saturday, she calls (still crying) tells guy, wants him there. Guy’s LT is standing right there, so guy asks LT for a weekend pass to go to funeral. LT says something (loudly, knowing gal is on phone) to the tune of ‘No, you aren’t leaving the base so you can go with your c*** to a funeral’
Short version: Gal’s dad gets pissed. Calls local Senator – who just happened to be the chairman of the Armed Forces budget committee. They go to the Senator’s office, start explaining what happened, and the Senator stops her: “So, your guy doesn’t have any duty for a week, you are on the phone grieving, and the LT called you a what?”
*2 hours later*, LT is helping dude pack his bags…..
The son of our friend Mario has tried to take his own life on the weekend. Together with his family and parents, he had a nice quiet dinner where he had too much to drink, and this made him so drowsy that he ended up fast asleep in the spare room of his parents’ place.
image 136
When Robin woke up, he was extremely erratic (“What am I still doing here ?”) and ran to the garden, where a noose was tied to a tree, ready to be used.
It took his parents and sister more than two minutes to cut the cord, but he was still alive. His wife wasn’t there to help him, by the way, although she was on the premises “minding her own business.” After a while — essentially after he caught his breath and was able to talk again — he became so dangerously aggressive that he was involuntary committed to a psychiatric ward.
It was the third time in as many months that Robin tried ending his life, and it was the third time that an act of pure coincidence “saved” him. The first time it was sleeping pills (but he vomited and was found), the second time he drove his car into a log carrier, which he miraculously survived (although his car was totally wrecked).
Robin has a three-year-old son. And he also has a wife.
And she has told him five months ago that she wants to work on herself, and put their marriage on hold (“and maybe the kid was a mistake”).
It shattered his every dream of becoming the best dad in the world and a good husband, and the forth time around may well be the last. In matters of the heart, the mind often fails to survive and Robin is drowning in a shockwave that is totally beyond his control now.
For his wife, it’s a mere ripple.
SOURCES: paintings by Stephen Early and Nicola Samori.
Money. I got money for free. Thanks American Express.
I worked for a professional service firm early in my career and standard practice was a corporate credit card (American Express) which I could use for work expenses like travel, food, accomodation and limited rewards for my team members within certain limits. Sometimes I’d shout Friday drinks on the firm as a reward.
image 116
I’d submit my bill for payment every month; my boss would always authorise and all was good.
Then after a few years I resigned as I got a better offer from another firm.
I handed back my corporate credit card and did the usual handover of everything belonging to the firm before I left – security pass, phone, laptop etc.
Several months later I received a corporate credit card bill saying my account was not closed. So I contacted American Express explained that I had left and they should seek payment and sort out any outstanding amounts from my previous employer as I could no longer process any payment.
This process repeated itself for about a year. I would either email or phone explaining the situation or else ignore the bill.
Eventually I’d had enough and resigned myself to visiting American Express pay the bill myself, and settle this thing once and for all.
So apparently, I don’t know the difference between a credit and a debit balance, and it was American Express who owed me money and could not close the account.
When I got there and identified myself they gave me the cash over paid on the credit card, then closed the account.
The terms and conditions of the card made me responsible even after I resigned for card payments (and overpayments).
Free money.
The Kitten Held Out His Paw Every Time Someone Passed Him At the Shelter
The long answer is this: If I smash a beer bottle over your head I will be charged with assault and probably various other things. If you invite me to smash a beer bottle over your head and refuse to press charges, I will be charged with nothing.
By voluntarily stopping, I’m inviting you to smash me with a beer bottle and I won’t press charges. But if you try to stop me against my will, you’ve just smashed me with one without my consent and the story gets radically different.
People stand in those receipt lines because of sheep mentality. These businesses know this and take full advantage of it. People are generally idiots that will do what they see other people doing – so if there is a line that terminates in the parking lot, where customers on their way out want to be, they will typically join that line. Show a receipt? Does it mean I get to my car eventually? No problem!
A receipt is a proof of purchase. Barring some evidence or suspicion of shoplifting, the business has absolutely no legal authority to detain you – they simply hope you don’t know that and are, in fact, an idiot.
Back in about 2003 I was buying a shit ton of PC builds from a store called Fry’s (Think Costco of electronics) in Burbank, California. I needed to fill an office of twenty or so terminals and would make thrice weekly runs to Fry’s ending in shopping carts full of things. There was at least a twenty minute line to check out. Then another twenty minute line while some dipshit checked every item at the door. I eventually decided to detour and was stopped, multiple times….
In each case, it escalated to a manager and in each case, I was apologized to and “let go”…and when I say “let go” I mean that I voluntarily left after staying voluntarily. I never showed my receipt because the bluff was called.
No matter what anyone says, unless you are part of a membership based retail chain with implicit contractual conditions, there is no way any retail establishment can force you to show a receipt upon exit of premises unless said receipt is to be used for in-store reimbursement. At all. Ever. In any store.
So walking without stopping at the hall monitors exit is more or less a test and they’re hoping you’ll blow it and submit to some bassackwards receipt check that serves no real loss prevention purpose.
I do stop for adorable old people though – because that’s like their last thing that means anything. I’ll easily wait 2 minutes while some octogenarian verifies I actually purchased only shampoo, diapers and a fifty inch TV.
I regularly have to trample all over student’s dreams and crush their ambitions utterly. I hate doing it more than anything else, but it’s my job.
For some reason people believe it’s fine to lie to kids with intellectual disabilities. They think it’s okay to tell them massive untruths because it makes them smile for a moment. And immediate, short-term happiness is all a lot of people consider when interacting with kids with intellectual disabilities.
I’ve been working in special needs education and I’ve lost count of the number of girls I have taught who honestly believe they have what it takes to be a great singer. They’re convinced that they’re just as good as anyone they see on TV or hear on the radio because that’s what people tell them. They belt out a tune and friends and relatives gush and talk about what a great voice they’ve got and how they’re better than Taylor Swift etc. And the kids believe them, because everyone says it and they have an intellectual disability so they believe what people tell them.
I’ve personally seen it happen. I’ve watched girls sing in school concerts and hit roughly half the notes they were aiming for and exhibit no sense of rhythm but generate the sort of praise that Pavarotti used to get from sycophants. People tell the student that they’ll be a great singer one day which they know is a complete and total lie.
My role as a teacher is to try and get them into employment. I try and find work experience, work placements, further education and job opportunities so they can leave school with a career path. Which means I have to ask them what they want to do for a living and they look at me with conviction and say they want to be a singer. Despite the fact that their ability is well below average, they dream of being a pop star because everyone tells them that they’re going to be the next great singer. And then I come along and talk seriously about maybe getting a job stacking shelves in a supermarket. I tell them that getting a high-school certificate is essential and they need to focus on their school work and start thinking of realistic career paths. I don’t actually tell them outright that their singing is terrible, but my job is to be the voice of reason and realism among the chorus of liars who tell them they’ll be a great singer. And I watch their dreams slowly die.
It’s not just singers. I’ve helped crush the dreams of actors, stand up comedians and sports stars. I’ve always encouraged them to follow their love as a hobby and keep at it but if they ask me (and most do) if they have what it takes to accomplish their dream then I’d be doing them a horrible disservice if I wasn’t honest.
I’ve written this story before but I can’t find it.
I’m a pilot, not a flight attendant.
One day, I was traveling from a trip to my home base. I really wanted to be home but all the passenger seats were full and the cockpit jumpseat was full too. In those days, it was allowable for me to travel on the flight attendant jumpseat but it didn’t happen often. So I asked the flight attendants and they were good with it.
So I thought I’d be a nice guy and offer to help out. Unfortunately, they took me up on the offer.
I spent the first 30 minutes of the flight making drinks in the first class galley. Then they sent me to the aft galley where I swear I loaded 300 sodas on carts in a 737. When that was done, I started heating the meals and setting up each tray for the coach meal service. Those little foil dishes were super hot and I had to pull them out with an oven mitt and then remove the foil and put the meal on the tray and make sure the other items were in the right place. Then I put them into the carts as the flight attendants rolled them out for service. Then the trash started coming in and I pulled out the plastic bags from the carts and put in new ones and pulled out the carriers with the old trays and stowed them. After that was finally done, it was time for another beverage service! I had to clean out the beverage cart and put in fresh cans of soda, lots more glasses and ice. Then another trash pickup with dirty cups.
It was finally time for a break but…no, the moment I sat down on a jumpseat, people started trooping past for the lavatories. Many wanted something like another can of soda or some kind of snack or just wanted to chat or complain or ask which gate we’d use or about their connection or seat assignment or some other unanswerable thing. I said “I don’t know” a lot and most of the people were not in the mood to understand. It was exhausting.
Finally, they sent me back to the first class galley and she asked me to serve the cockpit which was kind of fun since they don’t often get service from a uniformed captain. They could tell I was wrung out. I went back to my galley and cleaned up the surfaces and put stuff where I was told to put it and make sure all those little doors were closed with the latches turned. She collected and service items and I stowed them where I thought they ought to go.
I was elated when the airplane started descending and even happier when they turned on the fasten seatbelt sign. A ten minute break!
We taxied to the gate and I was the first one off.
I had no idea how continuously hard the work was in the cabin. Those poor people never get a moment’s rest. They’re always “on” and have to somehow try to be courteous to everyone. I’m not a particularly outgoing person and it sapped my energy. It is far, FAR easier to be a pilot than a flight attendant.
Edit 1: I forgot to note that this was the flight attendant’s third leg and they were doing one more that evening. How do they have that kind of endurance?
I got a lot of new respect for the profession and I wish more pilots would do a “flight attendant appreciation flight”.
1.Women as the safest place for him to go on the planet
Your arms, eyes, and lap, those have to be a refuge for him. If you become the safest place on the planet for his heart’s secret needs; he will never leave.
2. Women who make them feel like they matter
Appreciate him when he goes out of his way to buy a gift or provide you with much-needed emotional support. Tell him that he made a difference in your life.
3. Women who accept them for who they are
If you can encourage him to be his authentic self, it makes you extremely approachable and lovable. When he feels safe and comfortable, he’ll open up to you.
4. Women who push them and inspire them
A woman who excels in her pursuits, whether it is career, fitness goals, social milestones, or anything that truly fits his description of excelling at life, can be extremely attractive to men.
5. Women who are secure in the relationship
Men are attracted to strong and confident women, period. Confidence is one of the most attractive traits a woman can have. If you are secure and confident, he will feel the same, and this will lead him to open up more about himself and be able to show his vulnerable side.
6. Women who share their sexual chemistry
Physical intimacy is important in adult relationships. Men want their women to be open with them about sex and confident in their sexual encounters with them.
If you can radiate this confidence and openness to him, he will not only be attracted to you in the short-term, but also see you as a viable long-term romantic partner.
7. Women who are open to the idea of love
If a woman is resistant to being loved, a man will quickly lose interest. He won’t be able to open up or show love if he is continually being shut down. You need to be open to the idea of love and communicate your intentions and emotions.
8. Women who don’t fight their femininity
Men love to be with a woman who is authentic and confident in expressing her feminine side. Men are task-oriented and love it when their efforts are validated and valued, especially if it’s a physical task. So if you feel like he’s taking charge or trying to help you, it’s okay to lean back and let him do it occasionally.
9. Women who don’t play mind games
For instance, not answering calls or texts promptly is part of the mind games that can be counter-productive. This may lead to him acting nonchalant as well and not committing himself fully to the relationship.
Men like women who are honest and open with them about the things that really matter.
My first 18 months in the USMC, I got to basically turn my brain off, because I was a PVT. Everything of any importance, or which required intelligence, was handled by NCOs and commissioned officers, not by some just-out-of-high-school junior-enlisted punk.
I was a Baby Grunt who just did what my higher-ups told me. Once I reached E-4 and above, though, I was entrusted with tasks that required more attention, thinking and care. I got smarter, and more careful.
Still, I could always rely on my company commander to take care of me, I never really worried about where my next meal would come from, or anything like that. Things worked out for me, pretty much, or at least I stayed alive and out-of-trouble.
I never got lost, or got demoted or thrown in the brig. I kept my nose clean and did my job decently, because no-one who was under my command died. That’s good enough for me, that I made sure I got all of my soldiers home alive, and except for one person, home in one piece.
Lots of things can go wrong at any moment, and everything is determined by luck and chance. You can die anytime. But at least they’ll take care of your family. And the chances of you dying get pretty low if you don’t take risks you don’t need to.
In my case of being wounded, that was no-one’s fault, except the Iraqi who placed it there. If I died, I would’ve done so knowing that I’d done my country and my men a good service.
Just do what everybody else is doing (most of the time, there are some cases where you should go your own way, especially if you’re surrounded by inexperienced, or just plain dumb, people) and things will turn out okay. Don’t worry, the Corps has things handled for you.
You might get your deployment extended, or sent out on back-to-back missions, but that’s not the worst thing that can happen to you. There’s a bigger picture.
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Russian soldiers taking a break during the battle of grozny
My wife Sonia was 21 when we met. I wasn’t much older but had seen more of the world, whereas she came from a small town in Upstate New York and had never been on an airplane. I decided to surprise her with a trip to the Bahamas. When we embarked on our flight, Sonia wore a woven beach hat and beautiful sun dress. She was wide-eyed and adorable (still is). A true Audrey Hepburn. As we approached the screening area of the airport, Sonia said, “What is that?” She pointed to the large x-ray box for scanning carry-on luggage. Without missing a beat, I said, “Oh, if this is your first time flying, they screen you in the box.” I thought she would laugh. Instead, she started to climb onto the conveyer belt. I had to pull her back and then explain to the startled TSA agent (this was pre-9/11) that my girlfriend had never flown before. Sonia was suitably red-faced (and even more adorable). She proceeded to slug me (much deserved).
We’ve flown together many times since. I always make a show of trying to hold her back from climbing into the box.
I used to wait tables at a Denny’s in Lawrence MA. One instance, I was off the clock and having coffee with a couple of friends when 3 teens literally ran out the door. Found out that they had run out on the bill so we gave chase and got their plate number. Called the cops, filed a report, and about an hour later a very angry father showed up with the 3 boys in tow. His son had borrowed his car. The officer on duty (we had a detail officer during rush periods on the weekends) was aware of the incident and told them to pay the bill. Then he “strongly suggested” that the boys leave a generous tip for the waitress. They had the money, they just didn’t want to pay. After all was said and done, and the father had torn his son and son’s friends new ones, the officer arrested the 3 boys for theft. They were charged, given a deferred prosecution agreement, and sentenced to perform community service. Once they completed it, their records would be wiped clean. I believe two of them completed the DPA, the third ended up failing it and going to jail for a little while. Seemed fitting.
Yes due to my second layer boss simply didn’t have a common sense.
I have this habit while I was working in a client facing side where I occasionally check my work calendar on weekend in case any of my clients do schedule a meeting last minute.
While I was checking, I got this weird meeting invite on the next Tuesday with my boss, my boss’s boss and the HR team (1st red flag).
I figure there might be 2 options either I’m canned or maybe they’re gonna move me another team. I tried to contact them and ask what’s happening but well the HR and my second layer boss doesn’t have the balls to answer me and just ignore me till our meeting (2nd red flag).
My boss did respond though, through our call I found out that he did not know anything (or did he?) Well anyway I trust him, he’s a good man after all.
Well long story short, here I am writing this experience and my second layer boss got canned too 3 months after that.
Preview The MASSIVE 1/35 Akagi Flightdeck and Bridge W/ 1/35 Kate Torpedo Bomber
30 years ago, my SIL was worried about her 2 year old son. His tummy hurt and he wouldn’t eat much. Their doctor said it was a mild stomach flu, he’ll get over it in a few days, soft foods for a while.
When he started wheezing and coughing at night, the doctor said, “It’s just a little cold, he’ll get over it in a few days”, gave her a ventolin puffer (inhaler) and a spacing chamber, but no instructions.
Asthma runs in that family, because my son was also diagnosed with asthma, as had their shared grandmother. My son’s asthma specialist trained me how to administer the meds, so I taught my SIL.
My nephew’s legs were bruising from the inside of his legs, it seemed, because he was now too weak to move much. The day care called my SIL because he had a fever and they couldn’t wake him! She took him to Urgent Care, which sent them to the Emergency hospital.
The paediatrician diagnosed him with late stage leukemia and admitted him immediately!!
The Hospital staff reviewed what they could find of his records from the family doctor. The staff called their lawyers and the Medical Board before informing my SIL that her “doctor” was not trained or certified as any kind of medical practioner at all!
She declined to join the class action suit against him, or to file suit as an individual.
He survived, and is now a lawyer and owns an apiary.
The day the divorce was being finalized I went to the courthouse.
My about to be ex didn’t bother to appear though his lawyer did.
Judge reads over the paperwork, asks me a few questions. Announces he is finding in my favor in any disputed issues because if the ex cared about the outcome he should have appeared. BANG.
Divorce is final, see the clerk for copies of decree.
Ex’s lawyer turns to me and asks if he can buy me lunch.
Judge: WHAT?
Lawyer: Lunch. My treat. Least I can do.
Courtroom is full of muffled laughter.
Judge: Explain yourself, counselor.
Lawyer: Your honor, this lady and I have been the route together. My client-
Judge: This lady’s former husband. That client?
Lawyer: Your honor, my client is a squirrel. He messed this lady about for no damn reason, kept asking for changes, kept demanding she sign off on things then failing to sign the paperwork himself, that kind of thing. He regularly failed to pay the agreed support. For that matter, he hasn’t been all that great at paying me, either. I’ve spent more time on the phone with this lady than I have with my client.
Judge: Okay. Anything else?
Lawyer: Your honor, my client is a squirrel and as of ten minutes ago he’s not my client anymore and he’s not her husband anymore. I feel like this lady and I have been through a lot together and before we go our separate ways I thought it might be nice to sit, eat a nice lunch and not talk about the squirrel at all.
Judge: Out of my courtroom. Now. (Looks at me) Make him buy you the biggest steak on the menu.
I rented a u-Haul truck. It was a clapped out broken piece of garbage that was noisy, didn’t steer right and the passenger door would pop open whenever I hit a big bump. But that’s not the issue.
I rented it on Friday and needed to return it on Sunday before 9am so not to be charged an extra day. So Sunday I got up early and was there by 8am. The place was closed! And the lot was full of people either trying to return trucks or pick them up for the day. Apparently the opening guy was a no show!
I stood around with all these folks about a half hour. Then I wrote a note dated and time marked 8:30am. I wrapped it around the keys and put it in the night slot. I felt bad for the folks waiting for trucks who had to move that day!
I get the bill by email the next day. I’m being charged an extra day, them stating the truck was logged in at 12:30pm! I call the office and explain myself. The numpty explains that the time stamp was 12:30 so the charge was correct! I retort that they were closed during business hours! He responds that yes that is true, and there was chaos and the manager had to come in, and he didn’t get to logging the truck in right away, so the charge was right! I gave up, and hung up.
I called corporate and got a reasonable human on the line. He understood right away. Situation instantly rectified!
Well, it was somewhat entertaining. I had reserved a car at EWR (Newark Airport). I used to live in NJ, and i knew very well that I wanted a SMALL CAR because that’s what you want in the part of NJ I was headed for.
So I get there, I walk up to the counter, give the guy my res number. He puts on a big smile, “would you like to upgrade to a sports car”. No “Woudl you like to upgrade to a full-sized sedan?” No “How about a Prius?” No Ok then. (do the usual dance about CDW, yadda yadda) He hands me keys. I look at the ring. It says “Ford Explorer”. Yeah. That’s what it said! So I asked, can I have a compact like I asked for, please? “No, we’re out, but you could upgrade to a sports car!” Does that cost more? “Well, it’s $110 a day.” (the compact was 39/day plus fees) So, how much is this Ford Exploder? <guy winces> “Well it’s to fulfill your reservation so it’s the same price as the compact.”
Yeah, so I was moving about NJ in the Iowa Class of Automobiles. I think I got about 11–12 MPG.
When Susan Kuhnhausen walked into her house, she immediately knew someone was in her home.
It wasn’t just a sixth sense. Things had been moved. Curtains were now open, moving as if they’d recently been touched. Things on her table had been moved. She lived alone and she knew where everything belonged.
She walked through the house uneasily looking down hallways. In the kitchen. Moving quietly.
She walked past her bathroom. She turned into her bedroom.
Standing there was a bearded man, holding a hammer. He charged her and swung his hammer, hitting her on the side of the head. She fell down. He got on top of her and kept hitting her.
They then began wrestling.
Susan was a larger woman, who was particularly strong and worked as a nurse in the ER, trained on how to subdue wild patients.
After being hit several times, she managed to get her assassin pinned to the ground in a sleeper hold.
She began choking him. When she released him his throat had been crushed — he later died (after Susan called an ambulance for him).
The assassin had been sent by her husband.
Their marriage had fallen apart and he wanted her dead. He’d paid the assassin $50,000 to kill her. (Source: A Hit Man Came to Kill Susan Kuhnhausen. She Survived. He Didn’t. Slovic, Beth.)
She was later treated for injuries and made a full recovery. Her husband was then sent to jail for the remainder of his life (he died in prison).
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Her would-be assassin’s last words, during their fight, were “you are strong.”
I opened a Christmas gift from a female kindergarten student. She really wanted me to open it in front of her. It was a teal negligee. I was speechless. She was very excited to give it to me and I said it was beautiful.
I put it back in the gift bag and said that it was so pretty I wanted Mrs. L (my good friend) to see it. I told the student to just leave it on her desk because Mrs. L is very busy and to come right back to class.
My friend was in mild hysterics over this gift and she proceeded to quietly pass it around the school. Another teacher who had taught the older siblings came to me and said mom works in a factory and probably made the negligee herself. That’s why there were no tags.
I kept it for years and wrote a lovely thank you note, of course.
I have a bold and, perhaps, strange proposition for you: I want you to start naming inanimate objects in your life. Not all of them. Just five to ten will do. You can name them anything you’d like. Why? Because it will enrich your life, teach you to appreciate these objects, and promote fun and creativity. It can even defuse arguments.
For example, my partner Laura and I are constantly at odds over the thermostat. She generally wants the house so hot that the paint peels off the walls. And in her defense, I prefer an arctic winter. As a compromise, I bought her a few warm blankets, wool socks, and a sweater.
There is one brown blanket, which we originally named, “Big Brown”, but have now named it, “The Nuclear Option.” No heat escapes and if you dare sleep in it, you risk overheating. Sometimes, when we are discussing the temperature, I will say, “Want me to get the nuclear option for you?” She will look at me in horror, as if to beg, “N-n-no…please don’t.” It generally lightens the mood.
People generally buy and own too much stuff, but that doesn’t mean we can’t name our chosen objects. Naming something changes our relationship with it, altering how our brain encodes the information. The object gains meaning and becomes more memorable. For example, small children are more likely to notice and remember features of stuffed animals if a name is attached to it. Whereas they become far more disinterested in the absence of names.
Naming objects also gives a sense of psychological comfort and control. Your garage machinery no longer feels like machinery, but instead, happy, willing employees, your allies in oiled arms. Names can also enhance the intended purpose of an object.
For example, my dad was a Navy SEAL, and in training, there are these big logs they carried and did sit-ups with, grunting and enduring torturous exercise. But if trainees did something egregiously wrong, they had to carry an extra large log that is twice the weight of an already heavy log. They call it “Old Misery.” No SEAL forgets Old Misery, and its name is part of its menace.
Per Dr. Soonkwan Wan, Marketing professor at Michigan Tech University, “You may drive exactly the same car I drive. But my car is my car. It’s part of me and part of my history, so that makes it different. In this way, you kind of decommodify this commodity.”
A few examples
One trick is to think of singular objects in your life. There’s no sense in naming an apple, in a pile of many apples. Think of those things that stand out.
During my childhood Floridian summers, we occasionally got rain downfalls that felt like a biblical apocalypse to some, but were grounds for incredible childhood fun. I had a big clunky red bike that was remarkably good at riding through high waters due to its big wheels. Every other bike immediately got stuck and fell over. So, I nicknamed this one wave runner:
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(Sister. Me in the middle. Johnny. Wave runner on the right. You might notice Johnny running for the car in the background. He’s rushing to tell the car not to try. We spent the day helping these cars get out of this street turned pond.)
Naming objects creates a bond with it, despite it not having any real feelings or thoughts. We are tricking the mind to care, and this is good because it elevates our sense of belongingness. I can promise you — as silly as this entire exercised seems — when you start naming things, watch as you suddenly start valuing these objects more.
My grandfather was eternally cheap after a bleak childhood during the great depression. He grew up in abject poverty, with a single mother and seven siblings. He took that frugalness far into life with him. Despite having plenty of money, he still drove this hideous Ford fiesta, with cracked and peeled off paint. It barely ran, and made us nervous on steep bridges because we weren’t sure if it was going to make it up the slope.
My mother pressured him to at least paint it and later regretted that. We came out one day — to see he’d taken cheap silver spray paint and made it look like the tin foil man. It was utterly embarrassing to ride in. But in good fun, and despite it topping out at 55 mph, we decided to name it the “Silver Bullet”. It took the whip off of the experience.
You might notice that my examples are throwbacks from many decades ago. Naming of these objects imprints them in your mind. You’ll tend to remember stories about them and have a stronger narrative of your life story (which is often anchored in these objects).
My friend James was given a plant 20 years prior at his Uncle Walter’s funeral (he died young and unexpectedly). They’d been very close. James named the plant Walt, and it is still living in his kitchen. When he sees it each morning, he says, “Hi Walt.”
Another friend named his Roomba, Hank, and talks to it every morning while it does zig-zagging routes through his house. I was visiting and was quite surprised by how authentic he sounded talking to it. He had a mock argument with his Roomba, just as Tom Hanks did with his volleyball Wilson — which had me rolling.
There are few rules to this exercise. Sometimes, naming breaks up the mundane. Other times, it’s a needed coping mechanism.
My aforementioned Grandfather was a World War 2 pilot, and named his bomber plane Blitz Buggy. Not only was naming planes tradition, but also a means of attaching value and trust in a machine that is deeply important. Its health was tied to your very own.
The big idea here is to have fun and find meaning. Naming objects will give you a sense of solidarity and trust with everyday things. It elevates that objects status to a character in your life.
Have the courage to be a little quirky and name five to ten objects over the next month. Think of the things you use most frequently, or of the things that aren’t like the rest. I think you’ll be surprised by how fun this exercise actually is. You’ll feel a bit of youthful vigor and creativity, and sometimes, some well needed sincerity.
I’d also love to hear from anyone who has already done this, and if there is a story behind these names.
She forced me into a position I didn’t want to take. To do something I didn’t want to do
I was working for small company, a husband and wife operation. They bought overruns from manufacturers and repacked them into pre packs of assorted sizes and colors. It was all clothing. I and five others called up companies and sold the pre-packed clothes into off price retailers.
The receptionist had worked with them for years. One day I saw some people come in to the showroom and pick out some clothing for their small store. I’ll call the girl Mary although not her name. They gave Mary $100 bill and she went to get change. She opened the petty cash, took out the change but as I walked out of the office I dropped my pen. As I’ve bent over to pick it up I saw Mary put the $100 bill in her pocket. So I started keeping an eye on her.
A week later I saw her take 8 pair of Levi’s home for her son to try on. She only brought back 2 and paid for two. So she came out with four pair of free Levi’s.
At this point I had to go to the owners and tell them. It broke their hearts and cost her her job. I remember the boss lady crying because they thought so much of her they had put her in their will as they had no children.
I felt so bad that she put me in that position. But I had loyalty to my bosses.
Almost 20 years ago I worked for a large chain craft and fabrics store who’s name rhymes with Sew Fan’s. It was a great place for a creative person with no money concerns to work, but corporate also didn’t seem to care two farts in A windstorm about the employees and were regularly instituting years long freezes on wage increases and cutting hours to under 22 per week to avoid having to pay any benefits. If I were ever to go back to working there it would only be to bring in the union. Those workers sure needed it. My first Christmas season there I was working the closing shift and saw a box that had originally had probably about 48 snack packs of cookies and crackers. It was down to maybe a dozen packs of crackers, as the day shift had pretty much decimated it. That was our annual Christmas bonus. One foot by one foot box of inexpensive snacks to share between both shifts. At least they let us do gift exchanges.
The next place I worked for had a prime rib feast, $25 gift cards and a turkey. It was pretty nice!
I was in my classroom after my class had left for the day. They had made a bit of a mess, so after I’d tidied the place, I got out the vacuum and began to run it around the room. I wanted it to look fresh for the new teacher’s aid who I was going to interview that afternoon.
A young man came in, looked at me, but didn’t say a word, didn’t introduce himself, just sat down at my desk!
I asked him, “Can I help you?”
He made an impatient gesture with his hand. “Just clean up and get out. I’ve got an interview with the Head Teacher at 4.”
I shrugged and got on with it. After about five minutes the room was clean and I put away the vacuum. As I was coming back to the room, the young man came out looking annoyed and said, “Look, pass on the message to the Head Teacher that he’s late for our interview, so I’m leaving.”
I glanced at my watch, said, “I’m so sorry, but you did imply that you didn’t mind waiting, as I was cleaning up. It’s now 4.05.”
He stared at me. “What’s it got to do with you?”
I held out my hand to shake his. “I’m the Head Teacher. Do you want to go back now for the interview?”
He stared, then went several shades of red and left. Needless to say, if he’d stayed for the interview he would have had to be truly exceptional for me to overlook his silly gender bias that I was “supposed” to be a male, and his assumption that a Head Teacher can’t clean up as well as a professional cleaner. And just for the record, our cleaner is male.
Chicken Kiev
The chicken is pounded thin, rolled with a filling of seasoned butter, breaded and then either deep-fried or baked.
2024 01 09 20 17
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients
4 large whole chicken breasts, split, skinned, de-boned
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
1 teaspoon thyme or marjoram
All-purpose flour
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup fine bread crumbs
Salt
Instructions
Pound breasts thin between plastic bags, keeping the smooth side of breast down.
Mix next 4 ingredients. Shape into 8 elongated oval pieces and freeze.
Wrap chicken completely around butter and dip each chicken piece into flour.
Next dip into eggs and finally coat with bread crumbs.
Fry in hot oil (375 degrees F) for 10 to 12 minutes or bake at 350 degrees F for 45 minutes.
Drain on paper towels. Salt after cooking. Chicken will keep in a 200 degrees F oven if placed, uncovered, on a metal tray.
This may belong to the blond joke section, but here goes –
A blonde is flying down the road in her little sports car, convertible top down, music blaring, signing away, going way over the speed limit.
Before long, she sees the flying cherries of a cop in her rear view mirror, so she pulls off to the side of the road. The cop walks up to her door and leans in and says “Do you know you were going at least 40 over the limit back there? I need to see your license please”.
The blond starts rummaging through her wallet, and before long she is obviously flustered, and turns to the cop and says “I’m sorry, what is it I’m looking for? Can you tell me what it looks like?”
The cop takes a deep sigh and says “Umm, your license?? it’s about the size of a credit card and has your picture on it???”.
So the blond rummages again and finds a little compact mirror in her wallet. She looks closely at it and sure enough sees her picture, so she hands it to the cop.
The cop, who it turns out is also blond, takes a long hard look at it, then hands it back to her and says “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were a cop, you can go.”
Don’t call someone more than twice continuously. If they don’t pick up your call that means they have something more important to attend to.
Return money that you have borrowed even before the other person remembers lending it to you. It shows your integrity and character. Same goes with umbrellas, pens and lunch boxes.
Never order the expensive dish on the menu when someone is treating you for lunch/dinner. If possible ask them to order their choice of food for you.
Don’t ask awkward questions like ‘Oh so you aren’t married yet?’ Or Why didn’t you buy a house?’ For god’s sake it isn’t your problem.
Always open the door for the person coming behind you. Doesn’t matter if it is a guy or a girl. You don’t grow small by treating someone well in public.
If you take a taxi with a friend, and he/she pays now, you pay next time.
Respect different political opinions.
Never interrupt people talking.
If you tease someone, and they don’t seem to enjoy it, stop it and never do it again.
Say “thank you” when someone is helping you.
Praise publicly. Criticize privately.
There’s almost never a reason to comment on someone’s weight. Just say, “You look fantastic.” If they want to talk about losing weight, they will.
When someone shows you a photo on their phone, don’t swipe left or right. You never know what’s next.
If a colleague tells you they have a doctors appointment, don’t ask what it’s for, just say hope you’re ok. If they want to talk about it they will and you don’t put them in the uncomfortable position of having to tell you their personal illness.
Treat the cleaner with the same respect as the CEO. Nobody is impressed at how rudely you can treat someone below you but people will notice if you treat them with respect.
If a person is speaking directly to you, staring at your phone is rude.
Never give advice until you’re asked
When meeting someone after a long time, unless they want to talk about it, don’t ask them their age and salary.
Mind your own business unless anything involves you directly — just stay out of it.
Take off your sunglasses if you are talking to anyone in the street. It is a sign of respect and more eye contact is as important as your speech.
So during college, I was visiting a small town, with my crappy car.
Of course, that means I broke down making a grocery run, and this old gentleman with worn out denim coveralls said he would call me a tow truck and have my car towed to the dealership.
Then I broke down because there was no way I had money for a tow let alone repairs. The old guy sat with me and calmed me down. He said the dealership was known to be reputable and would help me out of my jam.
Long story, but a couple days later I picked up my car and I went to pick up the car, having made arrangements to make payments.
They said there was no bill as Mr.Smith (not real name) had paid it. Then I realized the dealership was Smith Ford.
I Then went to get my car. Well they had totally detailed my car and even I could tell that I had new tires. I found a note on front seat saying pay it forward when I could.
They had done over 2,000 in repairs to a 500 dollar car. I can’t even list everything they did. But new tires all around, new brakes, oil change, filled gas tank, just to start.
Edit: Many people have asked if I have paid it forward. My wife and I have indeed done so, in many different forms over the years. We have been blessed, and consciously pay it back when we can.
My camping experiences have uniformly been terrible. No matter what year it is, who I am with, or what my age is… it doesn’t matter what season, time of the year or whatever… it always rained.
Rain
And that meant, yeah you guessed it, sleeping in the rain, wet, cold, freezing with no real sleep and eventually waking up to a cold gloomy grey morning before everyone else does.
Sigh.
Never the less, I have romanticized the idea of camping. I imagine how great it would be to merge my “keg parties” and late-night bonfires with the idea of sleeping comfortably nearby.
kegger
My bother has become adept at it and loves to hike in the Colorado mountains with his wife and huskies. Which, by the way, they love all the snow.
camping in colorado
It’s could out, I know (if you are in the Northern climes), but if you are in Australia, it just might be perfect camping weather. I just cannot imagine it gets snowy, just temperate at night. But, honestly, I’d be afraid to sleep there in the brush. The snakes (I hear) are quite deadly, as are the spiders… the toads… the beatles… the ants… and you are apt to run into a wild herd of wallabies. Yikes!
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I’ve seen the you-tube videos… frightening!
Snakes, critters with strange names, and frogs that re inside out and just don’t die. Burrrrr!
But if you are the brave sort, as most Aussies are, going out into the brush is just as normal as downing a pint. A natural part of the ebb and flow of life.
Ah. One day. One day.
camping in the outback
Sounds great… if you have a local to keep you out of trouble, but I have to tell you all what…
You won’t be able to get me to drink beer out of a stinky old shoe. No way!
Let me help you guys unpacked how Trump fxxked up Apple. Yes he fxxked up Apple one of the world’s most admirable company.
Step one. Trump and later Biden thought that they can fxxked up Huawei and China. They both didn’t. Expect China and Huawei to survive! Let alone excel. Well they don’t know mathematics for a start. A billion and a half Chinese including me a Chinese origin turn around and patriotically chose Huawei over Apple! And poor Apple got fxxked up! For no reason but just bad politics by their racist government!
One they and their contract manufacturer Foxconn switch just 5% of their manufacturing to India and they both got fxxked up badly. The failure if Apple Phone 15 made in India is so high it lost all trust on their customers. Now Foxconn wants our right away! But India says not so fast. And Apple brand name is already thoroughly fxxked! In Asia the Apple users insist it has to be MADE IN CHINA!
But that is a smaller problem. Now let me introduce you guys a great lesson that doing shit don’t pay! China and Huawei took a mere 3 short years to do what the U.S. thought China has to take at least 30 years! And it actually made a phone better, faster, cheaper than iPhone! Plus a billion people on earth wanting to show displeasure at US and Trump and Biden shit! In January 2024 they decide to teach the west a lesson! Try imagining a perfect storm!
That is what the US is facing. It’s own products are fxxked up, its shit is not working yet it spends billions if not trillions to coerce and bribing nations and companies to do shit! That is the real USA today!
And let me help you. You ain’t seen nothing yet! Decoupling or de-risking from China is the last thing you ought to do!
Nope, the underlying problem reminds the same. US strategists feel they must retain US hegemony and its rules based world order in order to thrive. And Russia/China refuses to accept those rules not supported by the UN Charter.
2023 was a year, US officials feels they must moderate their confrontation with China due to negative headwinds from a losing fight in Ukraine war, a uniting global South dedollarising fast and near record inflation from years of Tbill printing. They fear Chinese aggressive selling of Tbills will worsen the US inflation and Tbill printing situation only. Nothing has changed.
China on the other hand has fears that an over intense US China confrontation can worsen global demand and that can complicate the delicate balance they have in sustaining the Chinese economy without HUGE STIMULUS. China is still preparing to retake Taiwan, and there are still key steps needed including doubling nuke deterrence, training PLA personnel with so many new toys, supplies and economy in case of sanctions. Plenty to do in next few years. So, China is also receptive to moderating tension while work continues.
So, this is a tactical pause only, the strategic picture has not changed at all. USA is hoping to unite West to win, and Russia/China is hoping to unite the global South to push a new world order. And to dedollarise under BRICS+ (BRICS Pay) to burst the US Tbill bubble. THAT IS STILL THE GLOBAL BIG PICTURE, THIS IS A FIGHT FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER.
I invited a very close friend with her sons to come for Christmas dinner. I was a single mom, and so was she. I invited a few other single parents too. Christmas can be a challenge for singles.
I was cooking up a storm all day. I made a lot — she had 2 sons who were big kids and big eaters. She had promised to come this time. The year before she had canceled the day before. My “friend” called an hour before dinner to tell me that she had gotten “a better offer” and wasn’t coming to dinner. (In case you’re wondering, I’m an excellent cook.) I couldn’t believe she was so rude. Plus, she waited so late — I ended up with way too much food left over.
You won’t believe this, but when the next holiday came, she hinted that she wanted to be invited. This happened for years after, but I never, ever invited her for a holiday meal again.
Don’t know how clever it was, but a client of mine had been picked up because he was in a minor accident and had an open container of beer with him. When the cops were taking him to the station, they asked him whether he wanted a breath test or a blood test (Colorado law gave the accused the choice, after which no change was allowed). He opted for a blood test, but explained that he was Russian and had ‘fat skin’ (his term); they’d need a doctor to draw the blood. He was told ‘Paramedics are what we have and paramedics are what you get.’
He sat there patiently while the paramedics stuck him about seven times, never able to draw blood. Finally losing patience, the cop with him told him he was getting a breath test, and my client refused to participate.
Under implied consent, they charged him with DUI and called him an ambulance (he’d suffered minor injuries in the crash. Nothing to make the delay over the testing any issue). The paramedic in the ambulance set an IV with no problems (of course, nobody tried to get blood then) and took him to the hospital.
When we got into court, I got the cop on the stand to agree to the main points, i.e. that the accused had opted for a blood test, he’d been patient while repeated attempts were made to draw blood and that the police then demanded the breath test, which he refused. No problem; the cop admitted each point. I then turned to the judge and said (approximately; it’s been twenty-five years or more), “Your honor, the law prevents the accused from changing his mind after he’s made his choice. If he can’t change his mind, the police can’t do it for him.” Then I shut up.
The judge thought about that for all of about a minute before dismissing the case.
My eldest daughter went into IT in my footsteps. I was so very proud of her when she got a chance to join a start-up that ended up being wildly successful. One of the founders was a bit of an arrogant little prick. One Sunday my daughter was over for dinner and we were talking shop. I asked how it was going, and she said fine except for little prick. She volunteered that the crew had found out he had two panic points. He was deathly afraid of both little people (dwarves/midgets) and scared shitless of clowns. I duly noted both. April 1 was coming fast so good old dad got busy and found…drumroll please….a midget clown stripper. Sent her into the business during lunch on April 1. Daughter said little prick screamed like a girl and ran out of the building. Didn’t return for two days. Everyone said it was the best practical joke they’d ever seen.
Originally Answered: What is the furthest you’ve seen somebody reach to be offended at something?
A few months ago I was in my local Home Hardware picking up tools – a pack of blades, some feeler gauges, etc. Sometimes I forget to put my tools back into the toolbox and they tend to…go for a walk.
While I was there, I noticed a woman and a girl in her late teens staring bemusedly at the long racks of tools. The woman had a list in her hands, and was dubiously looking at the endless choices.
Not at all hard to see what was happening; I’ve seen it dozens of times. Once, a long time ago, the woman was the friend that had taken me in after I had left my mother.
When a young person joins a technical Trade, he/she is expected to arrive at training with the required tools for the job. Parents will often gift the tools to their kids – since a basic entry-level tool collection costs easily $200* it’s a good way for parents to support their kids.
(*That swells – fast. My current toolbox is worth – at an estimate – about six to seven thousand dollars. I have two or three instruments that are worth twice that each; though in those cases the Company reimbursed me for those purchases.)
Quality tools cost – but cheap tools cost far more in the long run.)
I knew what was going on, so I drifted close as the women were looking at the hammers. “This one looks nice?” the woman was saying.
I introduced myself, and offered my help. I learned that I was right – the lady’s daughter had been hired by a factory and was following the millwright trade.
Excellent! Millwright is a superb trade; solid machinery and repair skills. The ability to understand and repair anything mechanical is a valuable ability. I cannot recommend the Millwright trade highly enough.
Every trade needs bright new apprentices and every apprentice should have generous parents willing to help.
I looked at the cheap rubber-handled claw-hammer the woman was looking at and shook my head. It looked like this:
image 480
These are fine for home use. But not what the lass needed. I pointed out the problems with the rubber grip: with regular use it raises blisters. It’s not well balanced; it’s not heavy enough to be truly efficient.
While I’m no millwright I AM a Journeyman Pressman and I repair, maintain and adjust my printing presses to a high degree of competence and know what the list meant when it said “hammer”. I show the lady this instead:
image 479
Simple, solid, reliable. It will never slip, it will never bind, it will never raise blisters. When holding it at the balance point this hammer will do an excellent job and be an extension of the young woman’s hand. (Using a hammer takes skill.) When covered in oil, in grease and filthy, this hammer will ALWAYS do exactly what you want. THIS is the hammer the lass needs – and the one that the lady hadn’t been looking at because the coloured rubber handles of the others looked better.
EDIT: A Journeyman carpenter commented that I was wrong in this particular point: using a rubber-handled does not raise blisters if it’s used correctly. Thanks for the correction; I’m glad to learn something new.
Down the list: Allen keys.
The lady looked at a set of chromed Allen keys. They looked great – and were expensive as Hell. I guided her away from them, and pointed to cheaper, solid ball-end keys instead.
image 478
(These look great.)
image 477
(THESE work!)
By this time, one of the red-shirted salespeople had joined us. She was in her late 40’s, blonde, and had the easy confidence of someone who really knew their trade. It doesn’t take much for one Journeyman to recognize another. (As a side note, Home Hardware hires a LOT of Journeyman-status salespeople. The red-shirted people selling tools and lumber often REALLY know what the hell they’re talking about.)
I smiled and bowed out – this was the Journeyman’s job.
The next item on the list was a wrench set. Wrenches are the stock in trade of any machine operator and it’s best to get a good set.
The red-shirted Millwright (I learned her status later when chatting) offered a pack I was uncertain of. I shrugged, offered my opinion and pointed out the one I would suggest.
At that point the daughter – who the tools were for – turned around and angrily told me to butt out. The woman would help them, thanks.
The mother agreed, and told me to shut up. She was DONE with ‘mansplaining’ and told me that I was just helping them to bolster my fragile male Ego. They would do VERY well without me.
The look that went across my face could best be described as a ‘very thin smile’.
At which point the red-shirted woman rounded on the lass and asked her if she wanted a career in the Trades. The teenager shrugged.
At which point the Millwright pointed out if the girl ever hoped to earn her Red Seals, she would have to learn that when a Journeyman speaks, apprentices shut the hell up and listen.
The girl was shocked into silence and I compared notes with my fellow Journeyman. I pointed out the value of the other set of wrenches. The woman agreed, but pointed out a few issues I hadn’t realized – I quickly agreed the set she suggested were the best. (I’ve since bought a set of those wrenches. They’re AMAZING and if it wasn’t for that Millwright, I’d never have realized it.)
I tried to help – and because I was a ‘guy’ I was ‘mansplaining’ – when the female Journeyman showed up.
It didn’t bother me at all – I’ve seen so many Apprentices fall by the wayside that one more failure doesn’t affect me in the slightest. I just thought it was neat that this girl just entering the Trade got a wake-up call:
The Trades don’t give one CRAP about your gender. They only care about your skill, and you are only EVER as good as your last work.
This project is led by retired US Air Force Colonel Raymond Powell, in collaboration with counterparts from the Philippine Coast Guard and some officials from the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs. They plan, strategize, and execute this project, engaging in confrontations, provocations, and standoffs with the China Coast Guard.
According to Project Myoushu’s claim, it “seeks to develop more effective tools to shine a light into the gray zone of China’s maritime coercion strategy.” Powell occasionally releases satellite images and trajectory maps of Chinese fishing vessels and government ships. All of this is done intentionally to create a tense situation in the South China Sea region, particularly in disputed areas between the Philippines and China, such as Huangyan Island or Ren’ai Reef.
image 45
It is a good thing that China uses large ships and vessels. The numerical and scale advantage of the Chinese Coast Guard actually helps to avoid more serious confrontations, as fleet conflicts would be more imminent if both sides were evenly matched in size.
image 476
However, regardless of the circumstances, Western media always portray China as a bully. This is the true purpose of this project and the goal set by the US – they use the so-called “confidence in transparency of reporting” to create propaganda against China. They claim it is transparent because Western media bring cameras, media personnel, etc., to document the process and report it to Filipino audiences and the world. It is understandable that this signifies something – the US wants to undermine China’s reputation.
The Philippines had a highly productive and friendly relationship with China, such as collaborative projects in the BRI, which greatly enhanced the economic advantage of the Philippines. However, President Marcos clearly has his own ideas about the arrangements from the US. He has never explained to the Filipino people why he has shifted back towards the US. In the South China Sea issue, Marcos’ policies are filled with hostility and aggression.
In fact, the Filipino people are not concerned about the South China Sea dispute. A survey report released by Pulse Asia
[2] in September 2023 showed that only 7% of Filipinos are concerned about the South China Sea dispute, while 93% of the population is primarily concerned about controlling inflation, employment, reducing poverty, and fighting corruption.
image 475
The US has exerted mass pressure, demanding that the Philippines continue to “contain” China. If this continues, Marcos’ policies will only become further detached from the demands of the people. It appears that Marcos is going to have a tough time in the upcoming new year.
Never compare your sex life with porn videos. Because porn videos are totally fake.
Never be sad for losing someone. No one lasts for long period of time. Even, you are gonna lose your beauty, money and health with age.
Never underestimate failure.Only a failure gives you the proper perspective of success.
Never “Trust” easily on anyone. Because trust is the most expensive thing and so don’t trust blindly. Even, your friends get jealous when they see your progress.
Never share your password of social media accounts, email, Internet Banking, and ATM pin\CVV number with anyone. Never!
Never get involved in sexual activities till you are not serious in your relationship.
Never believe on that girl\boy who have lots of relationship in their past. They can easily manipulated you by crying their bad past.( Exception is everywhere)
Never try to hurt your parents. They have lots of expectations from you.
In any situation, Never think about ending your life. Even plants regrow leaves after one leaf shed.
I walked into a bank one morning in Florida to find it totally empty of any customers and only one teller behind the counter and another lady at her desk opposite. As I approached the teller, she scolded me for not first stopping behind the yellow line on the floor before walking the 3 steps to her counter. She was not busy at all. “Sir!!! Go back and stand BEHIND the yellow line!!” Me; “Ok, but I saw you are not busy”. I went back while she watched me. As soon as I was standing still behind the line, she nodded and immediately said; “Ok, NOW you can approach”. I asked her politely if there was any reason for having a customer stop behind the line in an empty bank. Her; “Because the sign says so!!!” she scolded. “And I say so!!!” The only other bank employee looked at her and rolled her eyes. Just then, a phone (Land line) rang and the teller picked it up still snarling at me. She was quite an unpleasant lady to the caller too. Just then, she starts to walk away at a brisk pace, forgetting the phone was not a cordless and the cord stretched as far as it would go and then phone sling shotted out of her hands and flew across the room and skidded to a stop on the floor. She looked at me right away to see if I saw what happened and I could not hide my grin which just set her off all the more. She turned red and it was clear she was not having a good day. I almost felt sympathetic.
Just a minor example of Karma, but it was pretty funny.
Whenever you are starting a new job, always let them know that you have 4 alive grandparents. Then you have 4 pre-made excuses for whenever you don’t want to come into work.
When you’re shopping online and need to reach a threshold for free delivery, simply add a gift card to your order. The next time you make a purchase, you can use the card and repeat the process.
When dining alone at a restaurant, bring a notebook. Write in it occasionally. The staff might think you’re a food critic, and they’ll likely try their best to impress you, maybe even treating you to some free food.
If someone ever calls you fat, tell them you used to be 75 lbs heavier. It will make them feel guilty for saying it to you, while also making you look accomplished for losing weight.
Use airplane mode to hang up on people. They will see “call failed” instead of “call ended”.
When you’re looking for a job, post a fake ad for a very similar position on the internet so you could check out the resumes of your competition.
Don’t show your Tinder profile or Instagram to your date. Show your profile on some niche platform like luxyor Mensa to go from being average to standing out.
If your girl ever gets mad at you and won’t speak, just tighten up all the jars in the house. Eventually she’ll have to talk to you to get your help opening up one of the jars.
If your coworker ever calls in sick for work, you can do the same 1-3 days later. Your boss will think you have the same thing and it’s “going around the office”. Your boss may even do the same shortly after you. It’s called the “fake flu”.
lf you want people to stop letting dogs sh*t on your lawn. Instead of a sign saying “no dogs allowed”, put up one saying “Lawn recently treated with toxic pesticides”.
Nobody would let their dog anywhere near your lawn ever again.
If you’re in a taxi and you think the driver is purposely driving slow to get the meter up. Just cough or sneeze to make yourself seem sick and watch the driver speed up to prevent catching something from you.
If you want to slack off at work, slack off but act annoyed or frustrated around your boss. This will give the impression that you’re working hard and the job is getting you heated.
Experiences
Mia’s Asian Chicken Salad
Asian Chicken Salad
Ingredients
Thai Dressing
1 cup soy sauce
1 cup rice vinegar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup sesame oil
2 teaspoons ginger
2 teaspoons garlic
4 green onions, minced
1 bunch cilantro, minced
1 teaspoon chili paste
Salad
Napa cabbage
Carrot peel
Green onions
Cooked rice noodles
Thai dressing
Instructions
Marinate chicken breast with Thai dressing for 4 hours, then cook on grill.
Serve grilled chicken on top of salad with dressing drizzled over.
My son was denied membership in the National Honor Society as a junior in high school. He fit every qualification for membership, but two of his many teachers just didn’t like him. It was pretty obvious that he had been “blackballed”.
I went online and checked out the rules at the national level for bestowing membership. They clearly stated that “blackballing” was illegal. They also stated that the records of the votes by the teachers must be maintained for a certain amount of time after the vote for membership. So, I went to the school and asked for the vote tally. They refused to give it to me. I filed a freedom of information suit against the school.
A few days later, I got a call from an attorney at the state capital. He was representing the school, and he asked for my lawyer’s name and contact info. When I told him I was representing myself, he started in on me. He told me that I was sure to lose the suit and that I would then have to pay all of the schools costs, which would include his bill, and it would come to thousands of dollars. He told me I had better just withdraw the suit. I said no, and we hung up.
The case was scheduled for an appearance before the judge. The attorney called me again about 3 days before the scheduled appearance. He went after me again on what it was going to cost me when I lost the suit. I again told him that I was not dropping the suit.
We went to the courthouse when the appearance came up, and we both arrived at about the same time. He went ahead of me into the courthouse and introduced himself to the judge. I went in just after him and looked up at the judge and said, “Hi, Jim.” The Judge looked at me and said, “Hi, Eric.” The look on the lawyer’s face was priceless.
The judge listened to each of us and told us that the school was required to provide me with the information I was seeking, and would be responsible for paying all of my legal fees. He then asked me what my fees were. I told him that it was such a trivial case that I didn’t incur any costs, I just wanted to see the information.
Oddly enough, I never did get to see the vote results. Seems the school was so confident in victory that they had thrown the results in the trash some time earlier. Instead of pursuing it, I let them know that they needed to read the NHS rules and follow them more closely in the future. My son was inducted his senior year.
Years ago I operated a full service gas station. There was a young lady who’d come in and have freon added to her AC. Back then freon cost just under $1 a pound. She’d come in and I added 3 or 4 pounds of freon. I’d charge my labor equal to what the material parts installed on the car. So 4 pounds of freon = $4. Meaning the total cost for my work was $8. It only took a few minutes to do.
After a few days she’d show back up to get another recharge. On the third visit I asked her “ Why don’t you let me find the leak and fix it so I can charge the unit properly and you won’t need to do this anymore. “ She refused and told me just to charge/add the freon.
It wouldn’t have cost her anymore than $50. If it was a hose or fitting leaking even less. If it was a pin leak in the high pressure coil? I could get one out of a salvage yard.
If it was a pin leak in the low pressure coil? I could fix it with epoxy. Then evacuate the system and add new freon it’d be like new.
Edit: I thank everyone for their responses.
But for the ding-dongs who are saying things like I should lose my license or charging a leaking system is illegal…. THIS WAS IN THE 70s.
There WERE NO license. There were NO laws preventing the sales or use of freon. PLUS…. back then… car AC units were designed to leak. That way the people who looked at their car dealer as the ONLY place to have the car repaired ends up giving more business to the dealerships.
I say to those people…. “ Sorry to burst your bubble… But there was life BEFORE 1985.”
I was never a professional mechanic, but this one was fun. A friend of mine was looking for a “small but fun” car back in 1993. We happened across a 1977 Datsun 280Z that was priced at $650. It needed paint, but had zero rust, which is hard to find on an old Z. The seller told us that it ran fine, and that it had a low-mileage Japanese import engine and transmission in it. We went to test drive it, and it missed horribly. I couldn’t get it over 45mph.
The seller wouldn’t budge on the price, but he said he’d take $50 off to have a diagnostic run at a local shop. He told us to take it home overnight. I insisted on stopping to get a set of plugs at AutoZone. Back then, Nippondensos were 88 cents apiece. When we got to the house, my friend gapped the plugs while I removed and installed them. I expected to see either a plug that was totally fouled with carbon, or one with zero gap. Instead, I noticed the order on the numbered factory wires:
1,3,2,4,5,6! What’s wrong with this picture?
Surely not, I thought. It just couldn’t be that easy.
I put the wires, in the correct order, on the new plugs. 5 minutes later, we were flying down the road at 120 mph, laughing our asses off. The engine ran smooth as silk. Needless to say, my friend bought it.
Some time later, I ran into the previous owner, who asked if we ever got it running right. I told him we had, but that it was very expensive and labor intensive. He said he knew it would be a difficult problem, because he and his brother had tried for two years and couldn’t figure it out.
Sometimes all it takes is a new set of eyes.
China is both cool and interesting
NASA’s Webb Captures an Ethereal View of NGC 346 (MIRI)
Yes. I went shopping for a particular Barbie for my niece’s birthday. I couldn’t see it on the shelves, but when I spoke to a member of staff she very kindly went out the back and managed to find one for me. I was just thanking her when a little girl ran up, squealing “Mummy, that’s the Barbie!” The employee said she was sorry, but I had the last one and there wouldn’t be more for a few days. The mother asked me if she could have it, to which I said no as my niece had been looking forward to it. The child went into demon mode, screaming “Mummy!” at the top of her voice and the woman asked again, saying her daughter is getting really upset. I again said no and tried to walk away. She then followed me, saying loud enough for customers to hear that I’d made her daughter cry. . That was it for me. Even though her child’s wailing had settled into a whimper by this point, no-one wants to be publicly accused of that. It was obvious that this woman was used to getting what she wanted and her daughter had learned from her mother’s example. She knew making noise would get her what she wanted, and couldn’t understand it not working in a shop when it clearly worked at home. I told the woman that (a) no child was entitled to get everything they wanted, (b) she should be aiming to raise a child with good manners, not a misplaced sense of entitlement, and (c) if she wasn’t careful, her only success would be in raising a child as bratty as herself. . I didn’t shout or swear, but I was very clear and she was so shocked that someone had stood up to her that she went the other way and started begging me for it. I told her that she had been very rude and wasn’t getting the doll from me, so if she wanted to go back to screeching and being abusive she was welcome to. Several people were watching by now, and they openly laughed when I told them what had happened. What made her finally shut up? Another customer telling her that she sounded like she needed a doll herself and should be quiet otherwise she’d end up on Facebook looking like a fool.
Not my case but a 17-18 year old boy accused and found guilty of sexually assaulting a girl he’d come across in the street late one night as she was making her way home after a big night out and yes, she was drunk, not that it makes a difference.
He dragged her into a nearby park and was in the process of trying to remove her clothes while she tried to resist him when a police patrol turned and caught him in the act. He had been spotted forcing her into the park on a CCTV camera and the operator had called it in and reported it.
Evidence is gathered, court case goes ahead and our lucky lad (please recognize the sarcasm) is found guilty and facing a minimum of XX years in jail. Judge thanks jury then sets aside the verdict/suspends the sentence and puts him on a good behaviour and some very minimal mount of community service.
Why, you might ask?
The judge said “as the boy was attending the ‘high-brow upper-class very expensive private school’ and had a promising future ahead of him, having a custodial sentence on his record would not be good for him, the court on this occasion could be lenient.”
The interesting thing about the boy with “a promising future ahead of him” was that he already had a shady past, three prior charges for things like assault, public lewdness and another sexual assault charge.
I spent 29 Christmases in prison. During this time I saw it change over the years on what they gave the incarcerated
The first few years I was in prison were like this. A huge holiday meal that took up two trays. One tray consisted of ham, turkey dressing, rolls, mashed potatoes with gravy and usually a serving of something else that was different every year it seemed. The second tray was a slice of pumpkin pie (or sweet potato pie), cool whip, a small container of ice cream and a soda
You were also given a bag of various nuts and another bag of candy. You were given a few Christmas cards to send out and $5.00 on your account. They stopped putting the $5.00 on everyone’s account after my 3rd year in prison.
The two christmas bags eventually changed to one. It consisted of shampoo, ramen soups, candy bars etc and was and to my knowledge still comes from Joyce Meyers Ministry
Over the years the size of the Christmas meal got smaller. But like the Thanksgiving meal they are still the best meals served in prison.
For many people in prison this is a hard time. Some stay in their cell all day and will not even go eat the Christmas dinner. They say things like “if I can’t enjoy Christmas in prison I don’t want to eat the Christmas dinner” I had a little different outlook. While I was a little down because I wasn’t with my family, I wasn’t going to go to that extreme. I put myself in prison and I know my family would want me to try to enjoy the meal. And I did, all the while thinking those who don’t eat the Christmas meal could give it to someone else
The one thing I did refuse was Christmas visits. Now I would let them come up before or after Christmas,but I wanted my family to spend Christmas at home , not visiting me in prison. They agreed to this under one condition. I had to call them. It is hard getting on the phones at Christmas. These days it is easier because they have tablets. The call was probably the hardest, because I could hear the sadness in my mom’s voice. One Christmas it was all I could do to hold back the tears. They had me on speaker and I said that I wished I could have sent them more for Christmas than a card. My mom said “ I think I speak for everyone when I say that just hearing your voice is the greatest gift you could give us” The others agreed and I about lost it Wow, I am sorry . I did not mean to get that personal, but maybe it will give you an idea of how Christmas is for the incarcerated. At least when I was in prison
Not really a bully, but a relevant story, nonetheless.
Years ago my family took a self defense class together. Our daughter, Katie, was a petite 15 year old high school student at the time and worked part time at a frozen yogurt shop. She arrived a couple of minutes late one day and her large male co-worker asked her why she was late. She explained that she got out of self defense class a few minutes late. He scoffed and said, “That stuff wouldn’t do you any good if someone my size came at you!” She replied, “Maybe, maybe not.” Then he said, “If someone did this there isn’t anything you could do”, and leaned toward her grabbing and twisting her shirt at the neckline. Less than a second later she was standing over him looking down at him. He was not hurt, but was lying on the floor on his back, looking up at her, with the most surprised look on his face! It was absolutely awesome! Three cheers for our self defense instructor who had taught us that day how to handle that event!!!
A Latina and her daughter (preteen) were at the milk aisle speaking Spanish to each other. As I grab some milk, I hear this older lady (50+) say, ”SPEAK ENGLISH, this is America!”
I was a little perturbed by this and began to stare at her in embarrassment. The young girl, in a calm and delicate way, dropped some history bomb on this older lady. She said , “America doesn’t have a national language because this land was founded by the Dutch, French, the English, and, most certainly, the Spaniards. And next time old lady, go read a book and learn, that’s what I did.”
I laughed so hard her mother smirked. It was obnoxious for the older lady to interrupt a mother and daughter shopping at the grocery. I wish I had recorded the interaction.
This country is built by people from all walks of life. In times like these, we have to remember this land was built for you and me 🙂
I was on Temporary Duty (TDY) for training at a USAF tech school and while there I was appointed Barracks Chief for the TDY enlisted barracks. Now NCOs were exempt from details but lower ranking airmen were not. And as Barracks Chief I was also exempt.
We took our classes in a huge three story tall building with no windows. Because everything inside was highly classified; so only people with clearances could enter the building. This meant that on Saturdays there was a large detail to wax and buff all the hallways. It took about 4–5 hours for a 50+ man detail to do this job.
There were at least 500–600 lower ranking airmen who were at the school full time for entry level training in the field. We were all graduates of that program. When I had attended the school this duty got rotated among the entry level trainees, I’d done it a couple times in my schooling.
The First Sergeant of the Training Squadron had decided that this detail should be done by visiting TDY airmen who obviously had clearances and access already approved.
The problem was that while the detail required 50 people we typically had about 30 Airmen on TDY at any time (most TDY courses were 6–10 weeks to teach now experienced graduates added systems). So he would round up other trainees from among those in entry level training, to fill out the roster.
The problem of course is that it meant that the visiting airmen had the worst, nastiest, longest detail possible every single Saturday they were at the base. You couldn’t even go out clubbing on Friday because the detail started at 0700.
When I approached the First Sergeant about the problem on behalf of one of my guys the First Shirt explained this was completely fair because the detail was ROTATING — as soon as we had more than 50 guys in residence the extra guys would be excused based on how many times they had done the detail. Never mind that in ten years they had never had more than 45 or so TDY personnel at any moment — if they ever had 51 then one lucky guy would get one Saturday off…
I tried pointing out the obvious — that you cannot rotate a 50 man detail among 30 men and that in reality no one would EVER be excused from the detail but it simply did not register. I don’t know why.
(We made a visit to the base Inspector General and registered a complaint — it is not appropriate to require a small group to bear the brunt of the longest and dirtiest detail every single weekend. No one objected to doing a detail; even this detail would be OK once in a great while, it comes with the territory… The IG upheld the complaint and they changed the detail.)
We had en employee retire. Not exactly “legend”, eh?
“Frank” was a thirty-year employee, a good worker, and not seen by Managment as a “troublemaker” or problem employee. One Monday, during a staff meeting, Frank just exploded. He launched into an obscenity-laced tirade against his boss,and his bosses boss! He used every dirty word you can’t use on TV, and the most blunt, vulgar criticism of the company, managment and some staff.
Frank’s boss, and his bosses boss just sat there, speechless, as Frank went on for almost five minutes. Finally, Franks boss said “Frank, we’ve heard enough from you. One more word and you’re fired!”
Frank replied that “You can’t fire me, I RETIRE!” The then stormed out of the conference room, flipped his desk over, and began handing out $20 bills to the “people he liked” in the office, about 20% of the staff.
Managment called security, and they escorted Frank out. As he was passing the Receptionist, he turned to her and said “Coming in every day and seeing your (blank) was the best thing about working in this (blank).”
Everyone I know has talked about quitting / retiring in a “blaze of glory” from at least one job. He actually did it!
Everyone who witnessed this still talks about it at office parties. It’s been years!
Footnote: six months after he left, Frank asked for a reference, as he wanted a part-time job. That didn’t go so well.
37 yr old single father with nearly 8 years in recovery.
I spent nearly 3.75 years incarcerated during my addict years at my rock bottom.
Bottom bunks are the most valuable, often paid for, bullied from, fought for or earned thru a medical “bottom bunk pass” if you have a disability limiting you to the bottom bunks only.
Medical passes in jail are like gold, the officers have to abide by them, inmates without them hate them.
I had a bottom bunk pass for 2/3’s of the time I spent in jail, a 2nd mattress pass, etc after breaking my back in 2011. I spent well over a year on a top bunk.
Why are bottom bunks the ones normally wanted the most? I’ll give you a few reasons from my experience’s.
The lights.
a. In jail the lighting is very obnoxious and bright, you only get a few hours of lights out (Usually from 11 PM – 4/5 AM but it’s never totally dark due to safety bulbs in each florescent light.
Being on the bottom bunk you can avoid the bright light in your eyes which is a horrible way to wake up at 4 AM. You can also have more privacy by hanging a towel, sheet or clothing item which bring me to my 2nd reason.
b. Privacy.
By hanging a towel/sheet you can basically eliminate nearly all the light in your bunk, not have 3 dudes watch you sleep, or do whatever criminal thing you would want to get away with out of the view of the cameras or simply have a get away from the other 16 dudes you share your unit with.
2. Ease of Access.
a. Let’s face it, jumping down on to a cold concrete floor 8–10 times a day for standing head counts isn’t easy on the knees or your ankles. Climbing back up is a wicked pain on the knees and lower back.
b. You also better hope you get along with your bunkie because you step on his things, his blanket/mat, etc and you’re going to have problem. I would’ve if it happened more than once after explaining the inmate rules, you make it clear very quickly to a new bunkie how the system works.
You don’t have many rights left in jail so your cleanliness is one of the only things they can’t take away from you.
New inmates learn very quickly that those on bottom bunks have the seniority in that unit which comes along with more respect from new inmates.
There’s a few more reasons I can think of honestly but I don’t want to make this too long.
Bottom bunks are earned by seniority, bottom bunk passes, and/or muscles.
One graveyard shift, I was driving west on Sunset Blvd around Fairfax. I always drove with my window down. I heard a small, brief, horn-honk and a car pulled up alongside. “Officer, pull over, I need to talk to you!” We slowed ourselves, stopping the car, and gave our location.
The driver, later ID’ed as, “Nick”, exited his car, as did my trainee and I. As he approached me, he suddenly reached deep into his right front pants pocket. My left hand already had my flashlight illuminating him, while my right hand went to my gun, unsnapping it and beginning to rock it toward drawing down on him. Suddenly his hand emerged containing nothing more than a glass tube. He threw the glass tube, the type used for the smoking of rock cocaine, onto the hood of my police car. Nick looked at me and said, “I need you to arrest me and put me in jail. I am addicted to rock. I can’t stop, please help me!”
I was still in the single digits of years of sobriety. I told him I’d do what I could. Nick was going through withdrawals only, he was not under the influence at the time.
I arrested Nick for violation of 23152(c) CA Vehicle Code – Addict Driving. It was the only time in my 30 years that I used that section to arrest anyone. You need not be under the influence of anything, your life just needs to be horribly upset by your addiction. I gave Nick his Miranda Warnings, which he waived, and asked him about his daily life and use of rock cocaine. A picture of a life destroyed by drugs emerged. He signed his statement, gratefully, and happily went to jail. Weeks later, I got an on-call subpoena for his case, but was told he’d copped out. The courts sentenced him to treatment.
Months maybe a year, later, I was off-duty and at the L.A. Convention Center attending a talk by Father Joe Martin, a Roman Catholic priest who was very active in recovery work. I was in line to get a soda, when there was a tap on my shoulder. I turned to see NICK!, who gave me a hug and told me he’d been clean and sober since his arrest. Nick said that I had helped save his life.
This is almost the largest territorial (territorial sea) sovereignty change in the world since the end of World War II. Such information has not received any attention in the Western mainstream media.
The reason given by the Americans is: According to the “United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea”, they began mapping the submarine continental shelves in these two areas in 2003 and discovered their geographical connection with Alaska. So in December 2023, they cited the “United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea” The Articles of the Convention “ ECS” lay out claims to this maritime area and put them on the map.
What is embarrassing is that the United States is not a party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea at all. This means that the United States wants to occupy 1 million square kilometers of high seas based on a treaty that it has not signed.
There are huge amounts of flammable ice, oil, natural gas and mineral resources under this sea area.
The questioner asked: Why did no country object?
Of course, the only one who objects is Russia, because they are the only neighbor in this sea area.
Given the relationship between the United States and Russia, I don’t think Russia’s opposition will play any role.
Eventually, the map of the United States will most likely expand by 1 million square kilometers.
No country will care, or in other words, they will all quietly shut up.
Note to readers: This is a repost of an article I wrote and was published on June 18, 2022 – 18 months ago. That was long before I started a Substack account. Some of you may already have read it. When it was published on “the saker” blog, the Russo-Ukraine war was still young but an obvious civilizational conflict was underway. This article was an attempt at describing some of the forces driving the conflict, including economic ones.
The article went viral and got republished all over the place in many languages – including on Zerohedge. I have no idea how many views it got in total but it was hundreds of thousands, possibly millions. I suspect it was one of the most read articles on geopolitical/economic issues in 2022.
The geopolitical conflict is far from over and the scenarios outlined in the article are probably not going to be realized for some time (if at all – let’s hope!), but I’m curious to hear what you readers think of the current situation in the world and where we might be heading – either with this article as a framework or in general. It’s also healthy to revisit one’s thinking in the past and evaluate it.
Be warned that the article contains some doom-porn, but according to global web traffic results humans like nothing more than porn!
This is however not the main reason I’m posting this old article here on Substack. The reason is a book that was just published which addresses in detail one of the main points of the article; the enormous global debt and how it may be resolved.
The book is called “The Great Taking” and is authored by David Rogers Webb. I haven’t read it yet but I plan to. I heard it is quite interesting and you might want to take a look if you are looking for something to read between Christmas and New Year’s.
World War 3 for dummies
By Gaius Baltar
Some knowledgeable people, apparently including the Pope, are beginning to suspect that there may be more going on in the world than just the war in the Ukraine. They say that World War 3 has already started and things will get worse from now on. This can be difficult to determine while we are participating in the unfolding events and do not have the benefit of the historical perspective. It is doubtful that people back in 1939 realized that they were looking at the start of a major worldwide conflict, although some may have suspected.
The current global situation is in many ways like a giant jigsaw puzzle where the general public only sees a tiny part of the complete picture. Most don’t even realize that there may be more pieces and don’t even ask these simple questions: Why is all this happening and why is it happening now?
Things are more complicated that most people realize. What they see is the evil wizard Vladimir Saruman Putin invading innocent Ukraine with his orc army – for absolutely no reason. This is a simplistic view to say the least because nothing happens without a reason. Let’s put things in perspective and see what is really going on – and why the world is going crazy before our eyes. Let’s see what World War 3 is all about.
The pressure cooker
The West (which we can define here as the US and the EU) has been maintaining pressure on the entire world for decades. This does not only apply to countries outside the West, but also to Western countries which strayed from the diktats of the West’s rulers. This pressure has been discussed widely and attributed to all kinds of motives, including neocolonialism, forced financial hegemony and so forth. What is interesting, particularly during the last 20 years, is which countries have been pressured and what they do not have in common.
Among the pressured countries we find Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Libya, Syria, Serbia, Thailand and Iran to mention a few. There have also been recent additions, including India and Hungary. In order to understand why they have been pressured, we need to find out what they have in common. That’s not easy since they are extremely different in most ways. There are democracies and non-democracies, conservative and communist governments, Christian, Muslim and Buddhist countries and so on. Still, many of them are very clearly allied. One must ask why conservative and religious countries such as Russia or Iran would ally themselves with Godless communists in Cuba and Venezuela.
What all these countries have in common is their desire to run their own affairs; to be independent countries. This is unforgiveable in the eyes of the West and must be tackled by any means necessary, including economic sanctions, color revolutions and outright military aggression.
The West and its NATO military arm had surrounded Russia with hostile countries and military bases, armed and manipulated Ukraine to be used as a hammer against it and employed sanctions and threats. The same thing was and is happening in Asia where China is being surrounded by all means available. The same applies to all the Independents mentioned above to some extent. In the past 10 years or so the pressure has increased massively on the Independents and it reached almost fever pitch in the year before the Russian invasion of the Ukraine.
During the year before the Ukraine war, the US sent its diplomats around the world to tune up the pressure. They were like a travelling circus or a rock band on a tour, but instead of entertainment they delivered threats: buy this from us and do what we tell you or there will be consequences. The urgency was absolute and palpable, but then came the Ukraine war and the pressure went up to 11. During the first month of the war, the entire West’s diplomatic corps was fully engaged in threats against the ‘rest of the world’ to engineer the isolation of Russia. This didn’t work, which resulted in panic in political and diplomatic circles in the US and Europe.
All this pressure through the years, and all the fear and panic when it didn’t work, are clearly related to the events in the Ukraine. They are a part of the same ‘syndrome’ and have the same cause.
The debt dimension
There have been many explanations for what is going on and the most common is the fight between two possible futures; a multipolar world where there are several power centers in the world, and a unipolar world where the West governs the world. This is correct as far as it goes, but there is another reason which explains why this is happening now and all the urgency and panic in the West.
Recently the New Zealand tech guru Kim Dotcom tweeted a thread about the debt situation in the US. According to him all debt and unfunded liabilities of the US exceed the total value of the entire country, including the land. This situation is not unique to the US. Most countries in the West have debt which can only be paid back by selling the entire country and everything it contains. On top of that, most non-western countries are buried in dollar-denominated debt and are practically owned by the same financiers who own the West.
During the last few decades the economy of the US and Europe has been falsified on a level which is difficult to believe. We in the West have been living far beyond our means and our currencies have been massively overvalued. We have been able to do this through two mechanisms:
1. The first one is the reserve status of the dollar and the semi-reserve status of the euro which have enabled the West to export digital money and receive goods in return. This has created the enormous financial power for the West and enabled it to function as a parasite on the world economy. We have been getting a lot of goods for free, to put it mildly.
2. The second falsification mechanism is the increase in debt to a level where we have essentially pawned everything we own, including our houses and lands, to keep up our living standard. We own nothing now when the debt has been subtracted. The debt has long since become unserviceable – far beyond our ability to pay interests on – which explains why the interest rates in the West are in the neighborhood of zero. Any increase would make the debt unserviceable and we would all go formally bankrupt in a day.
On top of all this, the falsification has created artificially strong currencies in the West which has boosted their purchasing power for goods priced in non-western currencies. These mechanisms have also enabled the West to run bloated and dysfunctional service economies where inefficiencies are beyond belief. We have giant groups of people in our economies that not only create no value, but destroy value systematically. What maintains the West’s standard of living now is a small minority of productive people, constant debt increase, and parasitism on the rest of the world.
The people who own all this debt actually own everything we think we own. We in the West own nothing at this point – we only think we do. But who are our real owners? We know more or less who they are because they meet every year at the World Economic Forum in Davos along with the western political elites who they also happen to own.
It is clear that our owners have been getting increasingly worried, and their worries have been increasing in sync with the increased pressure applied by the West on the rest of the world, particularly the Independents. During the last Davos meeting, the mood was bleak and panicked at the same time, much like the panic among the western political elites when the isolation of Russia failed.
What is about to happen
The panic of our owners and their politicians is understandable because we have come to the end of the line. We can no longer keep up our living standard by debt increase and parasitism. The debt is reaching beyond what we own as collateral and our currencies are about to become worthless. We will no longer be able to get free stuff from the rest of the world, or pay back our debt – let alone pay interest on it. The entire West is about to go bankrupt and our standard of living is about to go down by a massive percentage. This is what has our owners panicked and they see only two scenarios:
1. In the first scenario most countries in the West, and everything and everyone within them, declare bankruptcy and erase the debt by diktat – which sovereign states are able to do. This will also erase the wealth and political power of our owners.
2. In the second scenario our owners take over the collateral during the bankruptcy. The collateral is us and everything we own.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out which scenario was chosen. The plan for the second scenario is ready and being implemented as we speak. It is called ‘The Great Reset’ and was constructed by the people behind the World Economic Forum. This plan is not a secret and can be examined to a certain degree on the WEF website.
The Great Reset is a mechanism for the seizing of all debt collateral which includes your assets, the assets of your city or municipality, the assets of your state and most corporate assets not already held by our owners.
This asset seizure mechanism has several components, but the most important are the following four:
1. Abolishment of sovereignty: A sovereign (independent) country is a dangerous country because it can choose to default on its debt. The decrease in sovereignty has been a priority for our owners and various schemes have been attempted such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the Trans Pacific Partnership. The most successful scheme is undoubtedly the European Union itself.
2. The down-tuning of the economy: The western economy (and indeed the global economy) must be tuned down by a very significant percentage. This down-tuning is necessary because the western economy is massively falsified now and must be taken down to its real level – which may be as low as half of what it is now – or more. The slow takedown has also the purpose of avoiding a sudden crash which would cause massive social unrest which would be a threat to our owners. A controlled takedown is therefore preferable to an uncontrolled crash. This controlled takedown is already happening and has been going on for quite some time. Many examples can be mentioned of this takedown, including the EU and US energy policy which is designed to sabotage the western economy, and the obvious attempts at demand destruction during and after the epidemic, including the fairly bizarre logistical problems which suddenly came out of nowhere.
3. Asset harvesting (you will own nothing and be ‘happy’): All assets that can be considered to be collateral to our private and collective/public debt will be taken over. This is a clearly stated aim of the Great Reset but it is less clear how this would be carried out. Total control of western governments (and indeed all governments) would seem to be necessary for this. That precondition is closer than one might think because most western governments seem to be beholden to Davos at this point. The process will be sold as necessary social restructuring because of an economic crisis and global warming and will result in massive decrease in living standards for regular people, although not the elites.
4. Oppression: A great many people will not like this and an uprising is a likely response, even if the takedown is done gradually. To prevent this from happening, a social control mechanism is being implemented which will erase personal freedom, the freedom of speech, and privacy. It will also create absolute dependence of the individual on the state. This must be done before the economic takedown can be completed or there will be a revolution. This mechanism is already being implemented enthusiastically in the West as anybody with eyes and ears can see.
Russia, China and other Independents
How do Russia and China, and the war in Ukraine, factor into all of this? Why all the pressure from the West throughout the years and why all this panic now? Part of the reason for the pressure on the Independents, particularly Russia and China, is simply that they have resisted western hegemony. That is enough for getting on the West’s naughty list. But why the increased pressure in recent years?
The reason is that Russia and China cannot be subjugated through bankruptcy and their assets harvested. They do not have much debt in western currencies which means that the people who own the West through debt do not currently own Russia and China (like they own the West and the indebted ‘third world’) and cannot acquire them through debt. The only way to acquire them is through regime change. Their governments must be weakened by any means, including economic sanctions and military means if necessary -thus the use of Ukraine as a battering ram for Russia and Taiwan for China.
Subjugating Russia and China is an existential issue for our Davos owners because when they take the western economy down, everything else must go down too. If the western economy is taken down and a large economic block doesn’t participate in the downfall, it will be a disaster for the West. The new block will gain massive economic power, and possibly unipolar hegemony of sorts, while the West descends into a feudal Dark Age and irrelevance. Therefore the entire world must go down for the Great Reset to work. Russia and China must be subjugated by any means, as well as India and other stubborn nations.
This is what has fueled the situation we now find ourselves in and will fuel the continuation of World War 3. The western owner-elites are going to war to keep their wealth and power. Everyone who resists must be subjugated so they can follow the West into the planned Great Reset Dark Age.
The reason for the current panic among western elites is that the Ukraine project isn’t going as planned. Instead of Russia being bled on the battlefield, it is Ukraine and the West that bleed. Instead of the Russian economy crashing resulting in Putin’s replacement by a Davos-compatible leader, it is the West’s economy that is crashing. Instead of Russia being isolated, it is the West that is being increasingly isolated. Nothing is working, and to top it all off, Europe has given the Russians the means and motive to destroy the European economy by partly shutting down its industry. Without Russian resources there is no European industry, and without industry there are no taxes for paying for unemployment benefits, pensions, all the refugees and pretty much everything else which holds European societies together. The Russians now have the ability to engineer and uncontrolled crash in Europe which is not what Davos planned. An uncontrolled crash might see Davos heads roll, literally, and that is causing fear and panic in elite circles. The only solution for them is to move on with World War 3 and hope for the best.
What to do
The Great Reset of the world economy is the direct cause for World War 3 – assuming that is what is going on. What can be done about this? From inside the West, little can be done. The only way is to somehow remove Davos from the equation, but that is most likely not going to happen for two reasons: The first one is that the Davos great resetters are too entwined in the western economy and politics. Davos is like an octopus with its arms and suckers inside every country’s elite circles, media and government. They are too entrenched to be easily removed. The second reason is that the western population is too brainwashed and ignorant. The level of their brainwashing is such that a large part of them actually want to become poor – although they use the word ‘green’ for ‘poor’ because it sounds better. There are, however, some indications that there may be divisions within western elites. Some of them, particularly within the US, may be resisting the primarily Europe-designed Great Reset – but whether this opposition is real or effective remains to be seen.
However, outside the West, there are certain measures which can be taken and must be taken. Some of those measures are drastic and some of them are being done as we speak. Among the measures are the following:
1. The Independents, led by Russia, China and India, must create a block to isolate themselves from the radioactive West. This isolation must not only be economic, but also political and social. Their economic systems must be divorced from the West and made autonomous. Their cultures and history must be defended against western influences and revisionism. This process appears to be underway.
2. The Independents must immediately ban all western sponsored institutions and NGOs in their countries, regardless of whether they are sponsored by western states or individuals. Furthermore, they must ban all media receiving western sponsorship and strip every school and university of western sponsorship and influences.
3. They must leave all international institutions up to and possibly including the United Nations, because all international bodies are controlled by the West. They must then replace them with new institutions within their block.
4. They must, at some point, declare the dollar and the euro currencies non grata. That means that they should declare default on all debts denominated in these currencies, but not other debts. This will most likely come at a later stage, but is inevitable.
This will create a situation where the West will descend into darkness without pulling others down with it – if we manage to escape the nuclear fire.
Cool things in China
Yeah. I keep forgetting that the rest of the world doesn’t do this…
Originally Answered: What was something that someone did that made you think they were really smart?
When my son was really young (about 3) we were at a summer bbq in a friend’s garden with a few other friends and their kids.
The kids were a range of ages, up to about 8 or 9, with my son being the youngest. One of the kids was playing with a ping pong ball which he’d accidentally dropped into a narrow hole in the grass about 8″ deep (where a fence post had recently been removed from) and became upset that he wasn’t able to get the ball back out.
A few of the other kids were trying to help, by squeezing their short fingers into the hole to retrieve the ball (unsuccessfully) while others attempted using sticks to wedge it out to no avail. All the while, my son was closely watching the other older kids in their endeavours.
When my son asked me to take him to the kitchen for a glass of water, I assumed he was just thirsty. But he took the glass of water undrunk and walked back out to the garden. He then went up to where the other kids were gathered, still trying to retrieve the stuck ball and proceeded to pour the whole glass of water into the hole. . The ping pong ball then floated up to the top of the hole, where one of kids grabbed it and a couple of them cheered.
My son didn’t say anything but I was watching on the sidelines, absolutely taken aback at the ingenuity of it – displaying lateral thinking when he wasn’t much more than a toddler.
As a scientist myself, I was delighted to realise my young son had apparently discovered Archimedes principle all by himself!
He’s almost 8 now and is definitely still passionate about science, maths and nature.
NASA’s Webb Snaps Supersonic Outflow of Young Star
I had my condo for sale for a year, at the end it was done to 60percent of comparables, and I didn’t have an offer.
I took it off the market removed the wall paper, and painted the entire house, put in new cheap carpet, with a thick plush underlay. I got laminate flooring on sale. I tore out my old carpet and hauled it to the dump. I bought clearance blinds to replace the old faded drapes.
I had bought the condo during a low in the market in 1986, for $42,000 , I had tried to sell it in 2000 , for 100,000 and dropped it to $59,900 and never had one offer. There were no condos on the market for less. I had a 3 bedroom, and 1 bedrooms were going for more.
I spent 6 months renovating, and put it back on the market for $110,000 and sold it for asking price the same day.
I spent $4000 on painting, flooring, and blinds.
The place had wall paper when I bought it, and I hated it, but was too cheap to replace it. But to make a sale, I painted. It had linoleum and I replaced it with laminate, The drapes with blinds ( which were popular in 2000) . Then I scrubbed it spotless.
My realtor told me that I was foolish to spend $4000 on cosmetics, because people would want to pick their own stuff. But I think doubling the value in 6 months, shows that cheap cosmetic changes paid off.
I don’t guarantee that your house needs the same things as my house did 23 years ago
Webb Celebrates First Year of Science With Close-up on Birth of Sun-like Stars
16 2
Attempted ‘color revolution’ in Serbia: What we know so far
Opposition activists forced their way into Belgrade city hall after claiming a municipal election was rigged.
23DEC23
Opposition forces in Serbia breached Belgrade’s city hall amid mass protests on Sunday. They claim the recent municipal election in the capital, won by the ruling party, was rigged. Senior national officials have described the protests as an attempted “color revolution,” and said they had been forewarned by Russia.
Mayorship
Belgrade is home to roughly a quarter of the Balkan nation’s population of over 6.6 million. The office of its mayor is viewed as one of the most important in Serbia.
Members of the city council, who vote the mayor in, were elected on December 17 – the same day as a national election and several municipal votes were held.
The ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) of President Aleksandar Vucic won the most seats in the Belgrade City Assembly. The opposition Serbia Against Violence (SPN) alliance claims the outcome was achieved through voter fraud.
Early violence
In the week that followed the elections, the opposition staged several rallies in Belgrade, some of them marred by violence.
During a demonstration in front of the Republican Election Commission last Monday, leading Serbian statistician Milorad Kovacevic and several of his associates were reportedly attacked by activists. Police seized several knives and bats from protesters, local media said.
Election officials react
The Election Commission denounced the violence and claimed the rally was an attempt to disrupt its activities. The head of the commission, Vladimir Dimitrijevic, expressed hope that it was an isolated incident and that any future attempts to challenge the election result would remain legal.
The body investigated opposition claims that ‘phantom voters’ had been allowed to cast ballots in Belgrade, but reported on Sunday that it had found no evidence that the election had been “stolen.”
Sunday riot
On Sunday evening, hundreds of pro-opposition demonstrators gathered in the center of Belgrade after being rallied by the SPN. Opposition leader Marinika Tepic, who declared a hunger strike last Monday and claims to be living on IV infusions, was barred from entering the Election Commission building. Meanwhile, an improvised stage was erected near the presidential residence, with speakers and performers whipping up the crowd.
Later in the evening, some activists stormed city hall, claiming they were seeking “to liberate the institutions.” The police intervened and drove them out.
Aleksandar Sapic, head of the temporary city administration, shared images of the damage caused by the rioters in the historic building, calling it “irreparable.” He declared that Serbia must be protected from the use of violence for political gain. He used the term “Maidanization,” referring to the 2014 armed coup in Kiev, which set the stage for the current hostilities between Russia and Ukraine.
‘Color revolution’
President Vucic denounced the riot, calling it an attempted “color revolution” and claiming that a foreign nation had warned his government about the threat beforehand. Prime Minister Ana Brnabiс thanked the Russian special services for providing intelligence to Belgrade.
The term ‘color revolution’ is often applied to the mass uprisings by ostensibly pro-democratic political forces in the 1990s and 2000s, including in Yugoslavia in 2000. Russia and some other nations perceive the wave as masterminded by the West to further its geopolitical goals, and executed through NGOs, media outlets, and parties funded by the US and its allies.
The Vucic government has been presented with a dilemma amid the current confrontation between Russia and the West. It is seeking EU membership for Serbia, which would require the realignment of Belgrade’s foreign policy with that of Brussels. However, Vucic has rejected Western calls to cut ties with Russia and join the US-led sanctions campaign against Moscow.
Responding to the turmoil in Belgrade, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed it was an “obvious attempt by the collective West to destabilize the situation in the country through ‘maidan coups’,” according to RIA Novosti.
Webb Reveals Intricate Details in the Remains of a Dying Star (MIRI image)
My ex-husband & I had been married for a few years before I opened up to him about the sexual abuse I endured as a teenager, at the hands of my father. Naturally, he was upset and wanted to know why I’d waited so long to tell him about it. I informed him that while it was an awful point in my life, I had long ago dealt with the pain & made peace with myself about i, that it was something I didn’t think much of anymore, but that I had always intended to tell him when I felt the time was right. He seemed sat with my response, and we went on business as usual.
Fast forward 3 1/2 years later… we had a brutal argument one day about his habit of not coming home til the wee hours of the morning. His shift at work would end around 4pm each day, & while I understood the need or desire to have the occasional few beers with the guys after a hard day, it was happening far too often & he was being inconsiderate by staying out so late while I was left alone to care for our children (mind you, I also worked every day, as well.) Apparently, that enraged him and out of nowhere, with this extremely cold glare in his eyes, very calmly stated, “I bet you enjoyed what your father did to you…” I was crushed! The debilitating emotions I’d felt so long ago came rushing back to me, and I suddenly felt as if what I’d experienced in my childhood had just happened. I was violated all over again.
He did eventually apologize for what he’d said, but I was never able to look at him the same way. Three years later, we divorced.
The Crab Nebula Seen in New Light by NASA’s Webb (NIRCam and MIRI)
Somalia is not a real country. Somalia is a geographical expression which exists only on maps and in the minds of believers.
This is what Somalia looks like in imagination with its imaginary capital of Mogadishu.
image 483
And this is what Somalia looks like in real life.
image 46
The red part what the UN-recognized Somalian government in Mogadishu (sorta) controls. When people talk about the “country of Somalia”, they’re unintentionally referring only to the red areas. That being said, the map is a little misleading. Even in the red area, the government lacks control over many local communities, especially in the northeastern area of Puntland. And the internal borders change on a day-to-day basis.
The yellow area is called Somaliland. It functions as an independent country. The government in Mogadishu has no control over Somaliland.
The gray areas are controlled by tribal communities and terrorist organizations. The government in Mogadishu has no control over the gray areas.
This is partly why Somalia is a developing country. The official government has control over less than half the country. This means that there are no nation-wide social services. No national education system; people are often unable to receive a non-religious education. No unified foreign policy. No well-maintained national infrastructure. And the people of Somalia are kinda too distracted by violence and political instability to invest in their futures. Large parts of the country are controlled by terrorists organizations.
Despite the above, Somalia does have a stable informal economy, based upon (mostly subsistence) agriculture. But no country every became wealthy by growing plants.
NASA’s Webb Findings Support Long-Proposed Process of Planet Formation
I heard this story from my neighbour, and it happened to them about a month ago.
So my neighbour (27 male) was going on a road trip with his father (about 55 or so) and they had to pull over on the side of the road, only about a half mile or so from the city limits. The traffic was pretty bad, and obviously the person behind them didn’t appreciate having to wait for them to pull over through two lanes of traffic, and followed them off the road. My neighbour hadn’t noticed the man following them, until he got out of his car (a work ute for a construction company) and pulled out a metal pole from the back of his ute. He came up and smashed the back windshield of the car, swore at the father (who was driving) and began walking back to his car pretty slowly.
Before he could start his car again, my neighbour and his father had walked up to the other man’s car and pulled out their badges.
Both of them are cops, the father is the police captain of the station. My neighbour said the man smelt like heroin, so they checked the car and found a bunch of drugs and equipment for druggos.
He then told the man that he would have a lot of paperwork to fill out.
I love that story. Be careful who you mess with.
NASA’s Webb Identifies Tiniest Free-Floating Brown Dwarf (NIRCam Image)
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Not to play
Nearby Planetary System Seen in Breathtaking Detail, Fomalhaut Dusty Debris Disk (MIRI Image)
I was 17, hitchhiking my way to the South of France after leaving home for good. I was waiting at a spot on the Route Nationale 7 in the northern part of Lyon. Not a very good place if you wanted to go south, but it was the best I had been able to do.
An open Mehari with a long haired young man at the wheel passed. Thy guy grinned, honked and then shrugged in the universal gesture of: “Sorry, can’t help you, mate.”
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Citroen Mehari, based on the 2CV, image credit: radicalmag
About half an hour later a police car stopped next to me. To my surprise it was the guy from the Mehari. Hair tied in a neat bun underneath his kepi, his bright and colorful clothing replaced by a sombre French police uniform.
He asked me where I was going. In abysmally bad French I explained that my destination was Toulon.
He told me to enter the car. My heart sunk as I thought my short lived adventure was already over and I would be returned home to my mother in Germany.
Well, from what little I understood he told me he needed to go a certain route, which he did. After about an hour’s worth of driving through all sorts of strange neighborhoods he dropped me off south of Lyon at the RN7, an ideal spot to get to where I was going. He wished me luck, waved once and sped off.
BTW, my French is much better these days
NASA’s Webb Scores Another Ringed World With New Image of Uranus
My first instinct is to say “going into debt for a worthless degree.” At age 18, I took on almost $120k in debt for a B.A. in Communications from DePaul University in Chicago… a private, out-of-state university for me. After spending six years doing jobs that didn’t even require a degree, I had to go back for my Master’s in Teaching (also from DePaul) in order to get a career I wanted: teaching. Now, at age 40, I’m still paying for classes I took when I was 18… some $400 per month. That’s down from the $650 per month I paid right out of college, mainly because my father died and some of the loans were in his name only. I will be paying my student loans until I’m 52, assuming I don’t pay them off early.
But, then again, I met my wife in college, and she and the children she gave me are the best parts of my life. So maybe I don’t regret going into debt for college. Maybe it was worth it, after all.
My second instinct is to say “moving far from home for college.” When I was 18, I was so eager to spread my wings that I moved four states away for college. I went from living with my parents, to visiting them just once per year… then once every two years. There were so many times that I could have been there for my parents, but I was too far away. I gave up the chance to have a close adult relationship with them, before I realized what I was giving up. I hurt them and, as the years go by, the more I realize that I hurt myself, too.
But, then again, I met my wife in college, and she and the children she gave me are the best parts of my life. So maybe I don’t regret moving so far away for college. Maybe it was worth it, after all.
So my biggest regret is, I guess, not taking better care of myself when I was younger… particularly in my mid-20s, when adult responsibilities of a career, marriage, and children came along. The first thing to go, once my plate got full, was time at the gym. Then I started stress eating rather than stress working out. I worked hard in my early 20s to get in shape… lost 130 pounds in the process… and I squandered it all by the time I was 30. Now it’s starting to catch up to me. I’m sitting here, writing this now, when I would rather be riding my bike. It’s a nice day outside, but my left knee is in pain and stiff. According to the doctor, I have “more arthritis than they’d expect for a man my age,” but “that can happen when you carry a lot of weight around your whole life.”
If I could do it all over again, I’d go back to about age 15 and change only one thing: I’d only drink water (no soda, no coffee with cream and sugar), and maybe even go vegetarian, just for the reduced calories. Fast-forward 25 years, and I’m a much healthier 40-year-old man, still happily married and still with awesome children.
NASA’s Webb Reveals Intricate Networks of Gas and Dust in Nearby Galaxies
I lived in an apartment building. The upstairs neighbor seemed to think he was back in the dorm: parties all night, every night… people tromping around… music blasting with the bass turned all the way UP.
I tried a white-noise app. I got earplugs. I tried playing music next to the bed. My work was suffering.
Then I addressed him directly: I would go upstairs and politely ask him to please be a little quieter. No dice. I moved through the let-my-frustration-show stage… the angry stage… the I’ll-call-the-authorities stage…
When I couldn’t take the experiment in sleep deprivation any longer, I contacted our local city council to find out my options. Turns out there are regulations having to do with “health”: exceptionally loud noise is on a list of “stressors.”
They sent him a warning letter, saying if there were more complaints they might go so far as to serve eviction.
The following weekend a man turned up at my door. He was well-dressed, polite – older gent. He said he was Upstairs Neighbor’s father and could he talk to me?
Well, hey, I like to think I’m a reasonable person. “Sure, c’mon in…”
He pulled out the letter the Health Department had sent the UN and started waving it about, accusing me of intolerance, trying to cause problems for his son, on and on. He told me I should move out – “Nothing wrong with people having company and enjoying music. I’ve been in his apartment and the music is never loud.” As if the kid would give the old man full blast and prove I had cause for complaint.
I was taken aback, as much as anything because it never occurred to me a 30-year-old would have to send “Daddums” to confront a neighbor. Father wanted me to withdraw the complaint. I refused. He ranted some more, then got up to leave, crabbing the whole way about “How do you have the nerve” and so on. I saw him to the door, and as he stepped into the hallway he turned and said bitterly, “I am so disappointed.” “I understand, sir. If I had children who behaved as your son has, I’d be disappointed too.”
He was at a loss for words. It was so gratifying. 😉
NASA’s Webb Telescope Captures Rarely Seen Prelude to Supernova (NIRCam and MIRI Image)
When I was 18, I placed second in the state finals of the 50 freestyle — and wish I’d just gotten last. At that stage of my life, everything was about swimming. I obsessed over it and hoped to go to the Olympic trials some day.
The worst part, I lost by .03 seconds. It was a sickening moment as my biggest goal of the year slipped between my fingers. I grew up with competition dripping from every corner of my home. Both of my parents were competitive swimmers and my identity was all tangled up in the sport.
It feels weird now, looking back and realizing this was still a moment for celebration and appreciation. Second in the state was nothing to hang my head over. But I’d fallen victim to zero sum thinking that is so common with competition — and often quite toxic.
The curse of second place is even scrutinized by academics. In a study led by economist, Dr. Adrian Kalwji, researchers studied the life expectancy of 978 US Olympic medalists from 1904 to 1936. On average, gold medalists lived to 73. Bronze medalists lived to 75 and silver medalists lived to 70. The study speculates that dissatisfactory outcomes for silver medalists have lasting effects on their life, both in socioeconomic status and psychological contentment. Their insights aren’t merely for sports, but extend to human thinking on competitive systems. Why is second place so fraught with disappointment?
When I won silver, there was a feeling of squandered opportunity. I was so close I could smell it. I walked into the showers after my race on the verge of tears, and thought through the small mistakes I made and questioned everything. Could I have reacted quicker off the block? Could I have timed my turn better? Was my training wrong?
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Second place hits hard because we use “relative standing” when analyzing outcomes. A silver can easily make you feel like the first loser. In a study of social comparisons by Dr. Abraham Buunk, his team found these comparisons make us feel better or worse, depending on which direction we focus on. Moreover, it is less the outcome that determines our feeling, and more how we choose to interpret it.
We anchor our self-perception to the nearest reference points which creates a framing problem. For example, in one study, participants said they’d rather live in a world where the average salary was $25,000 and they earned $50,000, than one where they earned $100,000 and the global average was $200,000. It is strikingly easy to look up, rather than down.
Which brings to mind one of my grandfather’s funnier moments demonstrating this concept. As young children, my sister and I would stand at attention in front of him after doing a task. He would sit in his recliner as we recited what we’d accomplished like we were military cadets. In this case, it was related to a cleaning chore.
We stood at attention and, as a reward, grandpa pulled out a five dollar bill and handed it to me in full view of my 4-year-old sister and said, “Here you go!” Then, he reached into his wallet and handed my sister a one dollar bill. She looked down at it, grimaced in anger — then crumpled it up and chucked it at the wall. He immediately started laughing and then gave her five dollars. It highlighted the constant comparative thinking, which is why managing our expectations is so important.
After losing my 50 free, I went on to swim in college the subsequent year. I placed 3rd in the 100 free at the Atlantic 10 Championship and was thrilled. I’d barely qualified for finals and was in the outside lane. That bronze medal is my most prized accomplishment in sports and much of it is because of how unexpected it was. It felt like a gift.
Technically, I’d still lost the race. Why couldn’t I be happy about every defeat as I was with this one?
Why you should embrace 2nd place
When we are upset about an outcome not matching expectations, we often warp reality and use counterfactual thinking. Famed social economist, Daniel Kahneman, did an exercise where participants were told of two people, Mr. Crane and Mr. Thomas, who were rushing to catch their flight and were 30 minutes late because of their driver. Mr. Crane missed his flight by 30 minutes and Mr. Thomas missed his by five. Nearly every participant said Mr. Thomas was surely more upset than Mr. Crane. Why? Because he was so close to catching his flight.
In reality, the discrepancy didn’t matter. You either catch your flight or you don’t. The outcome has already occurred and there is no benefit to resenting one’s self over it.
Dr. Sergio Pellis studied how rats play fight during development. Often, a large rat will jump on a smaller one and have an immediate advantage and be poised to win. But around 30% of the time, the initiating rat will allow the other to win. The act of getting second place is fundamental to their bonding, contentment and development. If the larger rat dominated every time, he’d lose his training partner, peer, and they’d both miss out on learning. Without realizing it, they celebrate their silver metals.
Competitiveness that’s focused on improving a skill rather than dominating others is proven to increase satisfaction and competency. It is healthier and more logical, because losing is an inevitable consequence of competition. In my case, losing that swim race in high school lit a fire under me, and allowed me to perform well in college. I swam far better times and appreciated the consequence of small improvements to my stroke. I never forgot that .03 second gap. Heck, I’m here writing about it 22 years later.
Lastly, I urge you to stay gracious in victory or defeat. How you conduct yourself impacts your own psyche and how people perceive you. An amazing thing happened after losing my race. The guy who beat me, Eric, was so cool about the whole situation. The next night, we competed in another finals. Just before, we were standing in line for the walkout where they play music to hype up our race. I was standing by him and casually turned and said, “Good race last night. Congrats. It was close.”
He smiled, patted me on the back and said, “Hey, it was all luck. Good race.” And I so appreciated his humility in that moment. He could have been arrogant as many good swimmers are, and said, “Yeah, I could have swam a half second faster if I tried more.” But instead, he paid homage to his competitor.
Remember that the bitterness of losing is a comparison problem. Being outperformed can be a way to bond with others and appreciate how far you’ve come. It can be motivation to study your performance and your victor’s. Beware of making counterfactual comparisons, and building in a bunch of assumptions about why things happened the way they did.
Perhaps on that night, I swam faster than I ordinarily would have. Maybe my opponent had a slower night than usual. There was no use blaming myself. It was an honor to compete and feel alive.
Losing does not put you on a moral low ground. Appreciate the coveted fire of motivation that competition gives you. Give thanks for the competency it instills. It is as my coach often reminded me, “You are in a one person race with yourself.” Focus on progress, not domination. A setback has transformative power, if you allow it.
NASA’s Chandra, Webb Combine for Arresting Views (Pillars of Creation)
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Female friends?
Oh I am so glad that I do not live in the West.
I think that I am going to try to reincarnate as a cat.
Banbury Tarts
Banbury Tarts
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter
1 cup sugar
2 egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 cups flour
Seedless jelly or jam (preferably currant or raspberry)
Instructions
Heat the oven to 375 degrees F.
In the bowl of a stand mixer, or in a large bowl using an electric mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, 3 to 5 minutes.
Beat in the egg yolks, then the vanilla extract.
Slowly beat in the flour until combined and smooth to form the dough (the dough will be a bit stiff at the end, and you may need to add the last cup of flour by hand).
Form the dough into small balls and make a depression in the middle with your thumb.
Spoon a teaspoon or so of jelly in the depression.
Space the cookies about 2 inches apart on a baking sheet and bake until lightly browned, about 15 minutes.
We’re not fat because we’re lazy. We work harder than thin people do. Strap a 50-pound sack of flour on your back and keep it on all day, every day. You’ll then be working as hard as a fat person.
We’re not fat because we have no self-control. We control our diet far more than naturally thin people do. We resist things that thin people don’t think twice about.
You bitch that you can’t find clothes you like. We would love to have the opportunity to bitch that we can’t find clothes we like. Our problem is finding clothes at all. The fashion industry hates us because we don’t represent the image they want for their garments. We have to take whatever fits, whether we like it or not.
Weight is set by a complex collection of factors including genetics, hormones, metabolism, lifestyle, and even intestinal flora. Of these, lifestyle is the only one we have any control over. It’s not a sign of moral turpitude.
Airplanes are misery for us. Airlines brag about their legroom and let you upgrade to seats with greater distance between them. They never talk about hip and shoulder room and offer no options to improve that except upgrading to business class, which costs thousands.
Even some GPs (primary care physicians) have contempt for us and let it show. [2]
Doctors have a tendency to blame medical problems on weight rather than diagnosing as carefully as they would with a thin person. [3]
We are a prime target for scammers. The only people scammed with phony products more than we are are men with anxiety about their penises.
We are ashamed much of our lives. Ashamed to be seen to be out of breath, ashamed not to fit in a crowded elevator, ashamed to bump into people in crowds, ashamed when a nurse weighs us, ashamed to meet people who knew us before we were fat. Why have I never been to a high school reunion? Shame.
I once employed a guy that was dubious at best. He was always talking flat out. In his words he would say “Yeah that’s the dexies mate” when I would ask him to slow down. This is when I was in my mid 20’s and Google wasn’t a thing yet. Yahoo and Alta Vista were, however I had bigger things to fry let alone checking out what “dexies” meant.
Anyway, one day we’re in the car together. This isn’t my favourite thing to do with this particular employee however, he was the only one not waist deep into a job working on the pinball machines, arcade video games and jukes boxes we would repair and sell. We were close to my house and I thought I would drop in and grab something before going back to work. Forgetting who was with me I got out of the car and walked inside. The guy followed, that’s okay. I didn’t give it a second thought until he said this:
“Nice house, lots of nice cool stuff here (as he was looking at the big (for it’s time) 68 cm Sony CRT TV, Slim line Sony DVD player, and stainless and glass custom built cabinet.” He was scanning the house, when I remembered he had told me once he had spent some time in jail. I remember holding my breathe for a second and thinking “Shit… what have I done here? Is this guy taking inventory of my house?”
Then he said this:
“I see you have an alarm box out the front and your key pad is near the telephone which is near the sliding (glass) door. Don’t do that.”
I looked at him a bit puzzled. He had cased my house in less than 5 seconds. When he told me how a criminal would think. He said this:
“Look you have a bowling green style front lawn and a good looking house, like some of the other houses on this street, it’s nice. So, people are going to look… like a nice looking car. Then if your house peaks someones interest, they will case the house when you’re not home, or maybe while you are mowing the front lawn because, you can’t hear them, and you’re intently watching the lawn mower to make sure you don’t run over sprinklers. The guy would see you have an alarm box out the front and be looking for where the phone is through your nice big glass sliding door window.”
Then the guy took me out the front and told me exactly what “his people” did when we were looking at the alarm box.
He pointed up the alarm box and said: “We buy / steal a can of “Space Invader” (This is a can of expanding foam. Ironic I was in the arcade game industry and this guy is telling me how people break into houses using a product called “Space Invader”) from the hardware store. You take the bottom of the can and you smash the blue light. No alarm is going off yet. You then shove the tube of the Space Invader can into vents on the side of the alarm box and fill the box until the Space Invader oozes out of the box. Then you go to where the phone is.
This is the product called “Space Invader”
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It works like this. Spray it in… and in seconds it will expand after spraying and dry.
This is what Wikipedia says:
“Spray foam is a chemical product created by two materials, isocyanate and polyol resin, which react when mixed with each other and expand up to 30-60 times its liquid volume after it is sprayed in place.”
They would spray it into one of these:
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They would spray the stuff into the vents on the side. The one I had was made of metal back then. This is also the light they would smash off with the base of the Space Invader can.
He continued:
“You get to the window / door that is closest to the phone. By this time the Space Invader will be close to dried. Wait a few minutes. (which I remember he said “When you first start doing “breaks” (short for “break and enters”) those few minutes with your heart racing can feel like hours. All you can hear is your heart racing in your chest) Then smash the window, there is no “quietly”… just do it fast. Get in and take the phone off the hook. This will stop the alarm system from calling the alarm company. The alarm will be going off out the front however, it will be muted, no one will be able to hear it, the light is gone, the cops aren’t coming. Take your time, don’t rush, or you‘ll miss the good stuff. Move quickly, but don’t run. Take what you need / want and leave”
In about 30 seconds he had summed up the “How to break into a house and get away with it” question I had never asked myself.
And then he said this.. “Oh but you have a big dog, you’ll be okay” as my dog Zanni rounded the corner to see we were inside the house and he was outside checking out who was inside.
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This is Zanni. (He doesn’t normally wear a tie, however he had his best suit on as he was waiting for his date to come over before they went out on the town that evening.)
This was the best thing a criminal ever told me. The phone was moved, the alarm box was put way higher and in an awkward place to get to, let alone “install” and we did the rest of my neighbours houses as well.
Good to know how others think. I don’t have an alarm now. I have CCTV and a dog.
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This is Mr Leo. He has taken over from Miss Jen, who took over from Zanni. All have put in more than 20 years of service.
There was this boy in my class at school in 7th grade. He was short for his age. He kept to himself and never really mixed with anyone. He always ate his lunch alone on a bench seat which was on the edge of the playground just staring into space. It was like he was in his own little world and nothing mattered to him. I never saw him smile in all the time i knew him.
He would get called all kinds of names that really hurt him deep down. But he never retaliated or showed how much it hurt him, which seemed to infuriate his tormentors.
They were relentless. Mean. One day he stepped in front of a car outside of school and stopped in the middle of the road as if waiting for it to hit him. The driver screeched to a halt only inches away from his body. He was frozen and only moved when the driver asked if he was OK. He hung his head and walked away slowly.
Nobody chose him for team sports during PE and when he was the last one left everyone called him a loser and laughed at him. He hung his head and went to the far corner of the gym and sat down hiding his face in his hands.
They tormented him in the change rooms and started calling him a ‘homo, faggot and perv’. It wasn’t long before it had got around the whole school that this boy was a ‘homo’ and so everyone started calling him those terrible names.
He had fruit thrown at him from behind so that he never knew who it was. It hit him in the back of his head knocking him down to the ground. With tears in his eyes he tried to stand up but they came at him again and knocked his books out of his hands making him go down again. People laughed at him. He got up, grabbed his books, and ran outside and kept running till he couldn’t run any longer. He ended up walking for 10 miles just following a road not knowing were he was going. But he didn’t care if he died that day.
Still he didn’t retaliate. Or tell anyone. Or complain. The next week he wasn’t at school. Someone started a rumor that he committed suicide. Everyone laughed. Nobody called to see if he was all right. Nobody missed him. Nobody cared.
What they didn’t know was that his stepdad had hurt him so badly and that he was in hospital for three days. Too sick to attend school. He never told anyone about what happened when he returned to school. When everyone saw that he was still alive, they were disappointed. And told him to go kill himself. “Do it properly this time”.
He was still not well from what his stepfather did to him. When they pushed him into the lockers at school or tried to jam his head in the door, he let out a yelp. But the pain was not from what they did to him.
One day after PE he was acting very strange. He stood facing everyone with his head hanging low. As if his whole world was about to come crashing down. He was trembling. There was an unusual silence in the room that scared him. It was then that everyone saw his body. Covered in black and blue welts across his back, legs and arms. He had tears falling from his eyes and was clearly ashamed of his body.
The shower stung like a 1000 bees.
They didn’t touch his clothes or call him names or hit him; this time they left him alone.
That boy is me.
I never told anybody what had happened to me. I knew that if I snitched on my stepdad it would be 100 times worse. I was 12 and as far as I knew, nobody would help me even if I asked. I was too afraid of what he would do to me. I woke up every day hoping things would change. I didn’t hold grudges and never have. It helped me get through some depressing periods while i was at school.
I just wanted a normal life and to be happy.
I can’t say that I have found that dream and I probably never will. But at least I am in no danger now and I deal with the consequences of my childhood as it surfaces and as an adult I can put it in its proper place.
Because you, a normal people, who lacks bilingual ability and critical thinking, can’t distinguish truth from the sea of infomation in which propaganda hides.
If I say the “criticism” and “democracy” are just camouflages for America’s real intention to overthrow legitimate government, and 2019 riot is actually a West backed color revolution in the coat of “pro-democracy protest”, you must think I’m brainwashed.
However, I’m not. Simply because I’m bilingual. The organziers and main activists confessed they are funded and instructed by CIA and NED, also including MI6, and some other NGOs, but your media didn’t report this. And apparently you don’t read Chinese so you don’t know this.
This, in the academic field of Media and Communications, is called GATEKEEPING.
The news agencies had the right to decide which piece of news is to be reported. And the final news outlet is a result of FRAMING the narrative via news stories.
Narratives in news refer to news stories framed and presented to us about what’s happening in this world, and one major function of narrative is to shape our views on this world. And these views consist our attitude toward someone/something.
Like in this question, you think CCP is evil, evil is a attitude, which can be shaped by narrative, and narrative is the product of a series of news outlets.
As a passive receiver, you can’t ask news agencies feeding you whatever you want to know, but whatever they want you to know.
So, where to find the truth?
First, be bilingual, or at least knowing where to find the opposite voice. There are always English information from the other side, but you need to find it yourself.
Second, be of critical thinking. Some information is misleading, sometimes they even hide or delete something from the internet. When there’s only one side’s voice, it’s dangerous. Like Russia-Ukraine war, when Russia’s voice is muted, what you receive is the selected information.
Third, be open-minded to different voices. When I told you you’re brainwashed on HK matters, don’t argue back or leave, try to compare the differences and seek more information to verify yours or mine opinion.
Beef and Onion Stew (Stifado)
A traditional Greek Beef and Onion Stew makes a comforting cold-weather meal.
2024 01 11 12 10
Ingredients
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 (2 pound) boneless beef chuck, tip or round, cut into 1-inch cubes
1/2 cup dry red wine
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon coarsely-ground pepper
1 bay leaf
1 stick cinnamon
1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce
1 1/2 pounds pearl onions, peeled
Crumbled feta cheese
Instructions
Cook and stir chopped onion and garlic in oil in Dutch oven over medium heat until onion is tender; remove with slotted spoon.
Cook beef in remaining oil, stirring frequently, until all liquid is evaporated and beef is brown on all sides, about 25 minutes; drain fat.
Return onion and garlic to Dutch oven. Stir in remaining ingredients except onions and cheese. Heat to boiling; reduce heat. Cover and simmer for 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Add white onions. Cover and simmer until beef and white onions are tender, about 30 minutes.
Remove bay leaf and cinnamon. Garnish with feta cheese, if desired.
I drove out into the middle of a forest on a mountain. Accompanied only by a man that I barely knew. Without telling anyone where I was going. To a place with no cell phone service.
I was 18. He was 25 and attractive. I had known ‘of’ him (he worked at my company, in a different department), but I didn’t really actually know him. We both ended up at a party one night and, after chatting, we exchanged numbers.
He asked if he could take me hiking, and I said sure!
On Saturday, I packed up and he drove us for 2 hours into the wilderness of Mt. Baker. Halfway up, I realized… shit! I hadn’t told anyone where I was going (which you ALWAYS do if you’re going to be in the wilderness).
And my cell phone was out of service now.
And… who really was this guy next to me?!
I started to panic, as my anxiety fueled brain came up with bizarre ideas of what could happen.
“He could totes murder me and leave my body in the middle of the woods. This place is 119,989 acres… nobody would ever find me. And nobody knew I went with him for the day. If I were a murderer this would be, like, my dream come true.”
Luckily, I played it cool and halfway up the mountain blurted “Yo, don’t murder me bro!”
So smooth.
It turned out fine. He and I still go hiking together. But, in all fairness, it was one of the dumbest/ most naive things I’ve done.
Always tell people if you’re going into the wilderness. Don’t go off alone, out of cell phone service, with a man you barely know.
I was in Chattanooga working at a franchise restaurant as a waiter after the mortgage crash some years ago.
We advertised specials on the weekdays and it would draw in a crowd that was less affluent. That’s fine, I get that people like to eat out and I provided them with the same outstanding service (I was always #1 or #2 in tips).
We had this one lady that would come in every few weeks, eat her food, and then complain to have it comped. There was nothing wrong with the food, etc. Of course I wouldn’t get tipped, either. The folks she would eat with were invariably embarrassed, but did nothing.
After enjoying this (not!) several times she came in again. They sat in my section. I notified the manager we had a comp. coming.
I took their drink and appetizer orders and, when I returned, I asked if they were ready to order their meal. When it was her turn I had to say it…
“And what free meal will you be ordering this evening?”
The table was silent. The manager on duty looked at me like I’d lost my mind but was smiling. In fact I think the whole restaurant got quiet as the end of my employment drew near.
“What do you mean by that?” she asked, loudly and indignantly.
It was so quiet you could hear the dishwasher run in the back.
“Well,” I said most matter of factly, “in my times serving you you’ve always complained and gotten your food and drinks for free when in reality there’s absolutely nothing wrong. I don’t get it. You’re not homeless, you’re well-dressed, showered, and obviously didn’t walk here (or anywhere, I’d guess), so you must like going out and eating for free. It’s happened here and probably going to happen again tonight. I thought I’d just clear the air a bit.”
Yes, if I had to do it over again I’d have rhymed off what she had ordered and not paid for, LOL.
She wasn’t happy, as you may imagine, and got rather loud in that very quiet establishment.
Good news is I don’t think she came back.
Bad news was neither did I.
The Enduring Stellar Lifecycle in 30 Doradus (Composite: Infrared + X-ray)
“If I don’t call my mom right now, she’ll call the cops.”
Some background:
My mother devised a system of codewords and numbers that if used in certain ways meant different things. My older brothers would sometimes party with their friends in some not-so-great areas, so there were things that could be texted or said over the phone that saved them from bad situations. Maybe a rival gang showed up, the cops showed up, or there were unknown drugs on the scene (hey, we’ve all smoked a little weed).
The words were: breakfast sausages, kitty litter, tampons/pads/period (any could be used), ice cream, garbage, recycling
The numbers were 1–10.
”Breakfast sausages at 10?” Meant “Something is happening here and I feel unsafe”.
My mom would question “Does that work” for “do you need me to come get you”. Yes meant she came, No meant she alerted the cops who would usually just drive by.
So, how did this help me?
I was at a party where a guy was very insistent on getting me alone, and much bigger than I was. Upon getting me into a bedroom alone, he proceeded to push me down on the bed, and get on top of me. Over the noise of the party, screaming wasn’t working so I struggled, kicking and wiggling. When he grabbed my hair and yanked me up, I caught an old school alarm clock familiar red numbers and then started “freaking out”.
”Oh my god it’s so late I’m going to be f****in killed!” He stopped for a second, confused, and I said “I need to call my mom right now or she’ll call the cops! I was supposed to be home an hour ago!”
Immediately he was off of me and my phone was in my hand. No one wants cops at a party. My exchange with my mom went a little something like this:
”Hey mom, super sorry that it’s so late. I hope I didn’t worry you I lost track of time.”
”I thought you were going to stay with Theresa tonight after your party?”
”Oh crap yeah mom I’ll switch out the kitty litter tomorrow by 9. I’ll make sure I’m dropped off early so it’s done before the garbage is collected. Can you grab me some tampons at the store tomorrow?” (My would-be assailant is looking rather uncomfortable)
”I’ll throw on a robe and be there in 5. Be ready for me to scream.”
My mom proceeded to yell some rather nonsensical things at me over the phone, as I’d requested with “tampons”. “Garbage” was that whoever I was concerned about was near me, potentially being able to hear the phone conversation or read texts. “Kitty litter” meant I needed to leave ASAP, “9” meaning without cops.
My would-be assaillant was very uncomfortable and I left the room without a word, my mom yelling on the phone, and an overly exaggerated wince on my face. I reconnected with my friend and told her what happened, she walked me out with her boyfriend and ended up telling me that same guy had told her he thought we’d “really connected” and wanted my info.
In the end, I lied. But I would’ve been raped if I hadn’t.
It’s a system I’m glad to pass on to my daughter!
Reefer Madness 1936 | Full Movie | Louis Gasnier | Cult Classic | Dorothy Short | Kenneth Craig
It was a flared top hat and it was the coolest thing. It fit me perfectly. I mean it. It was a genuine antique… beaver fur. Awesome. Black, and awesome. Maybe something like this. Only black, not a faded black. And not so high. Maybe about 80% of that height.
It was AWESOME!
il 1588xN.2744445535 ij3s
It fit me well.
I was at a bargain basement store in Attleboro, Massachusetts and found it at the far end of a rack of brick a brack.
2024 01 26 20 59
I really don’t know what happened to that hat, but I sure miss it.
I used to wear it all the time, and man oh, man did I get a lot of thumbs up and smiles as I walked on the sidewalks of Boston.
Apple is not really the issue. The U.S. government and politicians are the trouble maker that caused Apple’s demise. And your media is the one that caused your U.S. businesses to suffer.
Apple is a smart company under Steve Jobs. It has a great strategy. They made good products and they made smart decision to make their products in China. That derived benefit from the best of both western and eastern world. They made a killing in China’s humongous market China and the Chinese people help make a good product that sell at a price affordable yet Apple still made boat loads of money.
All is well until the U.S. politicians thought
foolishly it could contain and control China through decoupling, de-risking, friends shoring and instead it is the U.S. companies that is slowly decoupling from the world! Never mind China! China is Apples biggest market even including the U.S. market!
If you take US out, China itself is a bigger market then the next 10 biggest market combined. So when the U.S. start the trade war and make Apple friend shoring its product quality is hit hard and trust by its customers suffer. Next by its knee capping action on Huawei they retaliated. And today Huawei are bringing out products that beat Apple in specifications and features yet it is cheaper.
The unfair actions that the U.S. did on China, turn off Chinese world wide. Most choose Huawei to hit back at the U.S. The rest is history. Everything the U.S. throw at China, China will reciprocate fairly and appropriately. I hope the U.S. will learned a lesson. But it is full of itself. So the U.S. will choose implosion. If you are smart hold your government responsible.
Stop asking about Chinese government, Chinese are the fairest nation. They were happy to share its market and enjoy win win. But since the U.S. choose win lose, let’s see who loses!
My father was the foreman in a shop that sold tombstones, mausoleums, vaults, and the like. One day during tobacco-selling season, when farmers were flush with cash, a couple came by the shop to buy a family monument. My father showed them various stones on display. They selected a very fine granite monument. He looked up the price. They paid him in cash. That night, when he got home, he told my mother that he and I needed to make a trip, so we wouldn’t be having dinner. We drove the company truck many miles up into the mountains, into a county where strangers were definitely not welcome — it was moonshine territory. We stopped at various grocery stores, asking directions, to find the family that had bought the monument. At one store, he bought some saltine crackers, pork and beans, and some Vienna sausage. That was our dinner. When we finally found the family, he said, “I made a mistake. I looked at the wrong monument in the catalog. I overcharged you.” He handed them a stack of bills. As I recall (some 60-odd years later), $60. On the way home, I asked him why he had spent upwards of three hours driving around looking for those people. After all, I said, they didn’t know they’d been overcharged. Although he had superb grammar, he phrased his answer in an odd way: He said, “Son, a man has to do what’s right.” To this day I remember, and try to follow, his advice: “Do what’s right.”
Donald Trump wins the US Election and secures a second term. Joe Biden loses and will be stepping down in January 2025.
Trump is angry and unhinged, out for revenge after his loss in 2020 and the many betrayals he suffered.
In office he begins to become authoritarian and anti Trump protests turn violent. They clash with Trumps supporters. Eventually the country begins to pull itself apart and Trump brings in military help to secure peace. Factions of the military refuse to use force on US civilians. Others taking orders from pro Trump generals are willing to. The US enters a civil war where the pro Trump supporters are backed by elements of the military loyal to Trump. Other elements back the pro democracy anti Trump civilians.
The other way it could happen, with similar results is Trump loses in November 2024. He calls the election rigged like in 2020. Only this time he manages to get some states to declare him winner even though he lost there. Suddenly the election itself feels pointless. Democracy had collapsed as Trump could be claiming the white house through a corrupt electoral college and supreme Court. Biden sticks to the white house but the public are split. Half believe the Trump lies and the other half are loyal to Biden the genuine winner. Clashes again erupt and civil war breaks out as things escalate.
Now in either case, US allies will be terrified and scrambling amongst themselves to see what can be done. The EU is even worried about the upcoming US election. The USA is no longer seen as stable democracy and guaranteed partner.
The US entering a civil war tanks the global economy. Overnight the US economic system fails. Wall Street goes into self destruct mode.
The US Dollar collapses.
Companies in the US start to fail. Companies with a big presence overseas like Apple, Coca Cola, Ford, Pfizer, Google etc would all enter self preservation mode. They’d begin to move all crucial operations to their outposts and regional headquarters in Europe, South America, Japan etc. The USA no longer a stable market to operate in. They’d be hoping this is temporary but it will depend on the wars outcome.
The collapse of the US economy and the massive depression the world enters after this, sees huge unemployment across the world and increasing anger at the US from the public in Europe, Japan and Canada etc.
As people in US allied nations begin to feel extreme economic fallout, think the great depression of 1929 to 1934, but worse maybe, social unrest spreads globally.
In parts Africa and less developed parts of the world, aid is cut off. Food and economic assistance donated from rich countries stops. Famines could break out in the most fragile places in the world as the rich nations try to deal with their own issues.
The Euro will emerge as the new reserve currency of the world. Its already secondary reserve.
But the crisis will see economies on Europe and everywhere fragile for years. Massive unemployment and protests. Peoole struggling to stay afloat. People who were middle class suddenly working class. The working class now some falling into total poverty. Even millionaires would see their fortunes massively shrink.
Banks would fail. There’s no way to protect them all. That’s going to eat into people’s savings globally. Currencies like bitcoin and other crypto will become increasingly popular as the Euro and Yen, the two remaining “semi stable” currencies won’t be trusted fully.
The US would expect aid from its allies. But aid would be limited. Its highly unlikely the EU, UK, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Mexico etc will risk going full on war mode to support who they see as the true government of the USA as the US is a nuclear armed state and there would be extreme worry that hostile movies against the non democratic government could lead to attacks on allies by the illegitimate government who will be in control of some regions of the nation and thus some of the military.
Ultimately, the world would sit back and hold its breath waiting to see what happens with deep fear. But it will be accepted the era of the US as global Superpower is over.
So we come to the next issue. Amongst the economic chaos on social unrest, a power vacuum exists. Who’s in charge now the US is too busy fighting itself? The EU and UK would step up fast as the new centre of the developed and democratic world with their allies in Australia and Japan etc backing them. Europe would be forced to act as the light of democracy and freedom.
China and Russia won’t be having any of that. With the US distracted and Europe weakened, they will go on power hungry mode. Russia would see a weak Europe with no US to back it. Whilst Russia is also weakened, the government will be less worried about its people than Europe. Russia will make big moves to grab land. Its probable they’d use their military and even their weapons of mass destruction no longer fearing a US response, to annex former soviet nations like Kazakhstan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Belarus etc. They may even try grab EU territory in the Baltics but I doubt they’d try take all 3 EU nations as they know a weak EU is still a nuclear armed entity.
China would do the same. Its going to take advantage of the situation to grab Taiwan, a bunch of small Japanese islands of tactical importance. Probably will make moves into other parts of South East Asia too.
Chaos would reign for years. New Empires and regional wars emerging. Increased isolation too as nations work on self preservation and improving their own standing in the world.
A decade on, the world will have recovered at least partially. The world economy will have adapted to a world where the US no longer exists as one single country or economy or as one country with a much smaller economy.
The western world would unite together to try make up for the loss of the USA as it fears an emboldened Russia and China more than ever.
I’d imagine the EU, UK, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada etc would all try form a new version of NATO, one thats global and more armed than before probably. A military and economic alliance to prevent China in particular establishing itself as undisputed world power.
Russia would see its global importance grow again. With Europe fearing it will take more lands in far Eastern Europe or Asia. China would be the largest single economy and the largest military in the world. But the United democratic western nations will be banded together to rival it.
The world would enter a cold war. The western nations vs China which will probably ally with Russia.
The US will emerge as either authoritarian or democratic. Time would tell. Perhaps even as 2 or 3 smaller nations with differing poltical systems. But it would remain a nuclear armed nation/nations so chances are both sides of this new cold war would try get this new version of the USA to back them. But it will be economically weak for a while to come.
Countries in South America would grow more important also. Brazil and Mexico would become regional powers in the Western Hemisphere.
Overall you’d end up with a radically changed global economic system. A weaker US in whatever form it takes. A multi polar world with 3 or 4 superpowers trying to gain the upperhand leading to a new cold war. Instead of communism vs capitalism this one will be democracy vs authoritarianism.
Years ago, my soon to be ex husband and I were in the last and final attempt of trying to come to a guardianship agreement over our 3 small children before it went to supreme court. (a place I DID NOT want to go).
So there in the room, was the judge, his secretary, my ex and I.
Almost every question the judge asked my ex was answered with a lie. I never said anything, but the tears wouldn’t stop welling in my eyes. All I could think was, “why can’t this man for once, just set his anger and stupid pride aside, and just agree to the wishes of what our children want?”
The judge finally looked at me and said, “What are your desires for how this should be settled?”
My response: “I just want what’s best for our kids. I believe it should be up to them if they want to visit him or not… I don’t believe they should be forced.”
Judge: “You are very quiet and I detect no animosity from you, I want to ask you why there has been a communication breakdown between you and your husband.”
Me: “Because when I try to talk to him, he just yells.”
“THAT IS A LIE !!!” My ex yells at the TOP of his lungs..
The judge ruled “Visitation to be granted as per the children’s wishes.”
Marriage IS NOT An Option In THE WEST Get Your Passport
I had a nice truck stolen in 85. Needed brakes in the worst way. The transmission was slipping a little. It got stolen Christmas Eve. On Valentine’s Day the wife and I went out to eat for dinner. As we waited for the valet on the way out my truck pulls up. I told my wife to wait for our car as I got in my truck.
A woman had gotten in on the passenger side as I slid in on the drivers side. I was already calling the police. The woman became quite flustered. I told the police where I was and that I was driving to them. We got there in a minute. I had shushed the woman many times.
We get to the station, I tell the police woman what was going on. She asked who the woman was. I told her the woman was my witness that I had not shot the man who had stolen my truck. I also told her that the woman was probably these thieves wife or girlfriend. She asked the woman what the man’s name was who had stolen the truck. The woman said that her boyfriend and his brother had stolen the truck. The police woman then did a quick search for drugs in the truck, wrote a quick report, gave me an amended case number, and let me go about my way. While she was doing that one of the other officers put my ignition switch back into the column.
The girlfriend wasn’t charged with anything. Enough evidence was found in the truck to convict the boyfriend and the brother of the lady. There were no drugs found in the car. However under the seat or several nice pistols and a short shotgun. I had the police check them for theft and was allowed to keep all of them. The funny thing is was that the brakes have been fixed and the transmission had been serviced. I put another 200,000 miles on that truck over the next 10 years.
Andrew Tate Explains Why Men Should NEVER Get Married
I was an “executive-level” individual contributor at a Fortune 50 company, working in the IT field. My job required me to be accessible 24 hours a day, and to have conference calls with extended team members spread all over the world on a regular basis. Many days, I would be on a conference call at 4 AM with someone on the far side of the globe, spend a full day at work, and then be on yet another international call at 9 PM. This was an almost-daily occurrence. I was required to be on all these calls, and could not possibly take them all in my office, so my manager (and our VP) went through a laborious “exception” process to get the company to reimburse me for my cell phone usage, so I could make those calls from wherever I was at the time. My cell phone bill at the time averaged about $100 a month.
This went very well for 2–3 years, and then a new CFO arrived. She saw my expense sheet, and called me to determine why I was charging the company for my personal cell phone. I explained the rationale, and the exception process used to obtain approval through our VP. She did not like this at all, and said so in our conversation. So about a month later, a new T&E policy addendum came out: Effective immediately, company reimbursement for cell phones was to be prorated based on the percentage of the expense that was business-related (versus personal). A spreadsheet was provided, and anyone seeking reimbursement for business use of their personal cell phone was now required to complete and submit the spreadsheet with each month’s reimbursement form.
Completing this spreadsheet required us to go through the monthly phone bill, enter the total number of calls and total minutes for those calls. We then had to transcribe the data for each and every business call, documenting who was called (or who called you) and the business reason for the call. The spreadsheet then totalled up the number of minutes for each business call, divided that by the total minutes used that month. That ratio was used to determine the “business-to-personal” ratio, which determined our percentage of reimbursement. When I talked to the CFO about this form, she actually admitted that her purpose in creating it was to make the process so odious that employees would prefer to bypass reimbursement, rather than spending the time and effort to seek reimbursement.
That just didn’t sit right with me, so as a matter of principle, I would dutifully complete the form each month, spending the 2–3 hours required to transcribe the data from paper to spreadsheet to document that my cell phone usage was 98% business. Every month. Without fail. The average “savings” to the company for the 2–3 hours I spent completing the reimbursement form was under $2. Up to that point in time, there were only 15–16 people who were approved for cell phone reimbursement. All of us stood our ground, based on principle, and continued to file for reimbursement.
The average company savings from this new policy: Well under $50 per month – world wide. Of course, those 15–16 people collectively lost about one week of productivity in time wasted completing the new forms. The CFO, of course, saw it as a “2% reduction in cell phone expenses” and loudly proclaimed the program a cost-reduction success. But not so fast…
The first “unintended consequence” of the new policy was a wave of increased cell phone expense reimbursement, as EVERY SINGLE EMPLOYEE who had a cell phone began submitting for reimbursement of their prorated business use. Apparently, thousands of employees had been using their cell phones for business use for years with no avenue for reimbursement… But the new T&E policy had purposely dropped the “exception approval” requirement in an effort to “regain control over expenses…”
At first, the CFO was shocked and chagrined at the huge increase in cell phone expense, but a company survey (coincidentally conducted shortly after the new policy took effect) showed this new policy was a major morale booster, since it allowed workers to have better “work / life balance” than before. Once the survey results were in, the CFO claimed that had been her “secondary” motivation for the new policy, and declared “victory” yet again.
The funny thing is that her bragging about the success of this “morale boosting initiative” was to create even more awareness of the reimbursement program, which in turn led to the second unintended consequence: Very quickly, the employees began using their cell phones almost exclusively, rather than the “land lines” installed at their desks. These were intelligent people, and they quickly realized that having more business calls meant larger reimbursements, so they began using their cell phones as much as possible to drive up the business use percentage… It became common for an employee to use their cell phone to call a co-worker’s cell phone – even when both were sitting at their desks right next to their office phone. Doing so meant that their “Business-to-Personal” ratio was higher, and they would receive larger reimbursements at the end of the month.
There were nearly 10,000 white-collar workers affected by this policy, and almost all of them had a cell phone by this time. Anyone who did not have a cell phone soon obtained one, because the company was basically paying for it, and they didn’t want to be the only “non-cool” person on their team… Over a six-month period after the new policy went into effect, corporate reimbursement for personal cell phone use increased from around $1,500 per month (pre-CFO) to well over $1 million/month.
Add to that the productivity hit from those same 10,000 employees spending 2–3 hours each month completing the stupid spreadsheet (on company time, of course) instead of doing their real jobs. With a stated corporate average salary of $107,000 per year for those white-collar employees, that new T&E policy cost the company at least $1.3 million a year in reduced productivity.
So because the CFO didn’t like the fact that a few key employees were “getting over” on the system, and with a claimed justification of potentially saving the company $18,000/year, a new policy was implemented that directly cost the company at least $12 million/year, and negatively impacted productivity to the tune of another $1.3 million/year.
10 (17 x 12-inch) single phyllo dough sheets, thawed
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine, melted
Instructions
Cook spinach according to directions; drain well, pressing out excess liquid. In saucepan, cook onion and garlic in 3 tablespoons butter or margarine until tender. Stir in flour, tarragon and pepper. Add milk all at once. Cook and stir until mixture is thickened. Stir half of mixture into eggs; return egg mixture into remaining sauce. Add cheeses and spinach; set aside.
Unroll phyllo dough; cover with dampened towel. Remove 1 sheet of dough; brush lightly with some of the 1/2 cup melted butter. Fold the sheet in thirds lengthwise; brush top with butter. Place one end of the folded sheet in center of a 12- or 14-inch pizza pan, extending it over the side of the pan. Repeat buttering of remaining phyllo dough, arranging strips spoke fashion evenly around pan. (The ends of sheets will overlap in center and be approximately 3 inches apart at outer ends.) Spread spinach mixture in an 8-inch circle in center of pastry. Starting with the last sheet of dough placed in pan, lift end of leaf up and bring toward center of filling. Holding end with both hands, twist ends several times; coil and tuck end under to from a rosette. Lay rosette over filling, leaving a 3-inch circle in center (center should be visible). Repeat with remaining in reverse order they were placed. Drizzle remaining butter over all.
Bake at 375 degrees F for 35 to 40 minutes or until golden.
Samsung lost Chinese market share because they were shitty cunts.. In 2016 when the Samsung Note 7 burst into flames? Samsung offered refunds/replacements to EVERYBODY excluding China.
They made a video apology in English to Americans and also other languages to other users.
But sent a 200 word message to Chinese users eventually offering replacements.
Chinese people thought why should we buy stuff from a company that clearly hates us?
So Chinese people decided to buy other options and Samsung’s market in China collapsed never to recover again especially as non Samsung products (washing machines, televisions, cameras, vacuum cleaners etc) were available often for less money.
So likely Apple will not face the market collapse Samsung did but they’re losing market share because they’re not really adding anything new.
Apple are essentially doing this
image 177
This is from the Simpsons where Malibu Stacy gets a new hat and makes fans of the doll ignore the other doll completely.
Okay, so they want us to believe that the U.S. economy grew at a very brisk pace during the fourth quarter of 2023 even though mass layoffs are happening all over America, sales of previously owned homes are at the lowest level in 28 years, homelessness is rising at the fastest pace ever recorded, and survey after survey is showing that most Americans are just barely scraping by from month to month. Needless to say, something does not add up. The American people are deeply frustrated with how the economy is performing, but the government keeps giving us numbers that indicate that everything is just great. On Thursday, we were told that the U.S. economy grew at a 3.3 percent annualized rate during the fourth quarter of 2023…
The economy grew at a much more rapid pace than expected while inflation eased in the final three months of 2023, as the U.S. easily skirted a recession that many forecasters had thought was inevitable, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.
Gross domestic product, a measure of all the goods and services produced, increased at a 3.3% annualized rate in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to data adjusted seasonally and for inflation.
That compared with the Wall Street consensus estimate for a gain of 2% in the final three months of the year.
If that number actually reflected reality, it would be very good news.
But how is it possible that layoffs were up 98 percent in 2023 while the U.S. economy was supposedly “growing” all year long?
To me, it appears that something fishy is going on.
And that is precisely what we see when we take a deeper look at the numbers. According to Zero Hedge, “GDP-boosting gimmicks” are being employed to make things look better than they actually are…
Turning to the all important consumption, we can’t help but smile when noticing that the BEA is again resorting to such favorite GDP-boosting gimmicks of the old Obama administration as spending on healthcare and… RVs! The two contributed to roughly half the growth in consumer spending in the fourth quarter.
Other numbers that don’t come from the Biden administration tell a much different story.
For example, the Chicago Fed’s National Activity Index was negative in December, and it has been negative for 8 of the past 12 months…
Against expectations of a small rise from 0.03 to 0.06, The Chicago Fed’s National Activity Index (which draws on 85 economic indicators) tumbled to -0.15 in December. 2023 ends with 8 of the 12 months in negative territory…
So how in the world can the economy be “growing” if national economic activity was in negative territory for two-thirds of last year?
It doesn’t make any sense at all.
And if the outlook for the future is positive, why are so many mass layoffs happening?
Business Insider had already conducted one round of mass layoffs, but they just decided that another round has become necessary…
In the latest wave of layoffs to hit the digital media biz, Business Insider said it will cut 8% of its staff in a restructuring aimed at positioning the company for growth.
Business Insider CEO Barbara Peng announced the job cuts in a memo to staffers Thursday. “We have already begun to refocus teams and invest in areas that drive outsize value for our core audience. Unfortunately, this also means we need to scale back in some areas of our organization,” she wrote.
Back when it first started, Business Insider was actually quite good.
But those days are long gone.
Microsoft is another big name that is putting large numbers of workers on the chopping block…
Microsoft will lay off 1,900 employees at Activision Blizzard and Xbox, the latest tech company to announce cuts so far in 2024.
The layoffs represent about an 8% cut of its video gaming staff of 22,000 workers and come months after Microsoft acquired Activision in a blockbuster deal. The $69 billion transaction in October represented one of the largest tech deals in history as Microsoft took over the studios behind bestselling games like Call of Duty, Diablo and Overwatch for its Xbox console.
IBM also said it will also cut a percentage of positions in the low single digits in 2024.
The planned job cuts follow similar announcements in January by major tech companies, including Alphabet’s Google and Amazon.com.
Chief financial officer James Kavanaugh said IBM will likely spend the same amount on restructuring as it did in 2023 – US$400 million – when it reduced its workforce by about 3,900 jobs.
Day after day, I share examples of very large companies that are conducting mass layoffs.
Why would they be doing this if tremendous prosperity is ahead of us?
It wouldn’t make any sense at all.
Of course the truth is that an economic downturn has already begun and it is going to get even deeper in 2024.
Those on the bottom of the economic food chain are being hit the hardest. Earlier today, I was saddened to read about homeless people in California that are being evicted from caves that they had dug into the banks of a river…
Rough sleepers in California were found living inside furnished caves dug into the banks of a river 20 feet below street level.
The groups were removed from the eight caves – along the Tuolumne River in Modesto – over the weekend, and they were emptied of belongings, furniture and 7,600 lbs of rubbish, filling two trucks and a trailer.
Some of the caves were decorated with murals, had broken floor tiles and one even had a makeshift fireplace with a chimney.
There are countless others just like them all over the country.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that homelessness was rising at the fastest pace ever recorded in 2023.
But don’t worry about any of that.
According to Joe Biden and his minions, the U.S. economy is growing steadily and everything is just great.
You believe them, don’t you?
Men Caused One Of The Largest Bridal Companies To Go Bankrupt… It’s OVER!
Yeah, for some reason I terribly overslept and was three hours late to work.
I felt quite bad about the whole thing. This was before mobile emails were a thing and I called in saying that I would be late. So, I walked into the office around 12 PM hoping to avoid colleagues seeing me that late. The first people I saw were the CEO and a bunch of other senior guys, all gathered around my cubicle.
“Ok, this is my last day in this job,” I thought.
However, the CEO looked at me, relieved, and said “Good morning. Good to see you were late.” Quite an unusual greeting.
Only then did I realize what had happened. The hinges holding a huge office air conditioner above my cubicle had failed, and it had gone down right into my seat. The monitor was smashed in two parts, there was a huge bend in the tower case, and the indestructible Cherry keyboard had a few keys missing and a dent in the middle of the metal pad.
The air conditioner had fallen at around 11 am, and I came to the office at 12 pm.
I worked at a company that had a very public but unofficial policy of firing people if they started talking to recruiters or interviewing and they found out. They were a nice company, employee loan, good benefits, even a private pension plan.
I had already been recruited (using my personal email, of course) to take a job out of state. The company I was going to was moving me, paying off my employee loan, signing bonus, the whole red carpet thing.
I asked my boss at this nice company when she would have time to meet privately, she said 11, I usually got to work about 6, and arrived to find an email from a recruiter I’d never heard of before at my corporate address with a low ball job offer. I just laughed and deleted it.
About 9am, my boss, my boss’s boss and the head of HR came in carrying boxes. My boss said “it’s not working out, we’re letting you go.”. I played dumb, go where… she tried a few more “soft phrases” so I said after 3 years and 5 days, it’s suddenly not working out? you’re going to have to use the “F” word. The HR lady sensed something was up, but didn’t have time to stop my boss. My boss said, “we’re firing you, we don’t have to explain why.”
I said thank you and while she stood there looking puzzled, I said “I don’t know who that recruiter was, but by firing me instead of letting me quit, I get one month of severance for each year I worked here, plus all my vacation, plus your policy is to give me two weeks vacation to “go on” immediately, so I have 4.75 months of pay, plus, since I worked for more than 3 years, I vest into the pension program at that level. Really I owe whoever sent that email….
At that point my boss turned to HR lady and said wait, what? Hr lady waved her to silence and Said, you’d have to pay off your employee loan in full within three days…
I said, right. Picked up a cashier’s check off my desk and handed it to her. (It was to the penny) my boss’s boss finally spoke up and said wait, you already had a job? I said I’ve told you before, this policy is dumb. If I was a recruiter and I wanted to place one of your people, I’d send them an offer, wait, call them up and talk about a new job, now that they are unemployed. I’ll probably get a call this afternoon. (I did) Anyway, because you fired me. I get the money! I had in a CD to pay off the loan (I called it a lock pick for golden handcuffs) that check is from my new employer, 4 months 5 weeks of pay, and a sign on bonus (1 month), along with a moving bonus. I just put 6 months of pay in the bank, thanks guys, best firing ever!
Then a swept the stuff off my desk into one box, pointed to the stacks of stuff with post-its for other employees, showed all my drawers were empty and asked to be escorted to my car. My boss was still trying to figure out what happened while HR escorted me out, then I followed her to the main building, signed my exit paperwork, she took my badge and I was home by 10 to start packing.
It was awesome!
The Problem Ain’t The Cost Of Money – It’s The Cost Of Stuff!
New Year’s Eve, 1999 – a special time for Jo and me. We took our motor home to Key West, Florida. We celebrated the magic moment, the turn of a century, in front of (famous Ernest Hemingway hangout) Sloppy Joe’s Bar.
As the conch shell slid down the pipe, people yelled, “10-9-8-7″…until the clock struck midnight. Happy New Year! I kissed my bride and we headed back to the bus (hoping Y2k didn’t fry our computer).
The intimacy of a motor home provides a great opportunity for lots of conversation. 2000 was a personal milestone, I turned 60. Jo and I spent a lot of time reflecting; wondering what the future would bring.
I predicted we would recall the last decade as “The good old days.” Little did I know how right that would turn out to be.
What was so good about them?
Interest rates stabilized from the double-digit Volcker years. After a short 1990 recession, business was booming, moving quickly into the internet era.
While Clinton pushed through the largest tax increase in history, House Speaker Gingrich kept his campaign promise, holding the line on government spending; creating the last budget surplus we will likely ever see.
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On January 1, 1990, the Fed funds rate was 8.25%, dropping to a low of 3% in 1992 and hovering in the mid-5% range for most of the decade.
With Volcker bringing inflation under control, interest rates stabilized and mortgages were affordable. CD and bond interest rates were above inflation.
Interest rates were not an impediment or incentive to doing business.
I was managing the money for both sets of parents. We invested in safe, secure investments. Their interest income, coupled with social security allowed them to live comfortably, without worry. Times were good.
What the heck happened?
A year later, 9/11 occurred, followed by huge government deficits, spending hundreds of billions for the never-ending “War on Terror.”
While Clinton took credit for boom times and balancing the budget, the effects of certain policy decisions were not yet evident.
Clinton prided himself on increasing homeownership for the poor and minorities. Banks were required to make loans to buyers with poor credit history – or they risked losing their charters. The banks complied, while screaming to the government they would fail if the process continued. Instead of tightening loan standards, government agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac were authorized to buy these risky loans from banks.
Banks no longer worried about the creditworthiness of the borrower. They added outlandish origination fees to the mortgage, while passing the default risk to the government (US taxpayer). Billions flowed into the housing sector.
Clinton pushed the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, allowing banks to merge with brokerage firms. In a few short years, five banks controlled almost half the nation’s wealth.
These new casino banks jumped in, writing thousands of risky mortgages to all comers, many in excess of the value of the underlying property. They packaged these high-risk loans into fee-based products and peddled them to unsuspecting investors.
The movie The Big Short details how the rating agencies gave these mortgage packages improper ratings, creating an illusion of creditworthiness and safety.
The casino banks got bigger and gambled with trillions in derivatives.
“Derivatives are financial contracts, set between two or more parties, that derive their value from an underlying asset, group of assets, or benchmark. A derivative can trade on an exchange or over-the-counter. Prices for derivatives derive from fluctuations in the underlying asset.”
The repeal of Glass-Steagall’s created this monster. Famed (Big Short) investor Michael Burry warned Wall Street about the toxic loans, predicting a real estate crash. No one listened, they mocked him. The crash came, the casino banks (deemed, “too big to fail”) were bailed out with trillions of taxpayer dollars. The Fed flooded the banking system with credit and dropped interest rates to historic lows, well below the true inflation rate.
Their in-house trading (gambling with our money) continues. If they lose, taxpayers will cover their losses.
“Three Wall Street Mega Banks Hold $157.3 Trillion in Derivatives – That’s $56.7 Trillion More than the Entire World’s GDP Last Year”
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Consumers, industry and governments binged on “free money;” borrowing and spending like there was no tomorrow! Experts warned inflation would follow; most were surprised it took so long.
After reaching double digits, heading toward Zimbabwe-type inflation, the Federal Reserve finally had little choice but to raise rates – not wanting citizens to storm the palace.
The current Federal Funds rate is 5.5%. Many cheap loans are now coming due and must be paid off or rolled over at a much higher rate.
Prices have exploded!
The Wall Street Journal recently reported the average monthly mortgage payment has soared to $3,322 from $1,787 since 2021. Why?
Interest rates were kept artificially low, mortgage rates have risen since the Fed brought interest rates back to pre-2008 normal.
“Homeownership has become a pipe dream for more Americans, even those who could afford to buy just a few years ago.
Many would-be buyers were already feeling stretched thin by home prices that shot quickly higher in the pandemic, but at least mortgage rates were low. Now that they are high, many people are just giving up.
…. Typically, high mortgage rates slow down home sales, and home prices should soften as a result. Not this time. Home sales are certainly falling, but prices are still rising—there just aren’t enough homes to go around. The national median existing-home price rose to about $392,000 in October, the highest ever for that month in data that goes back to 1999.
…. Buyers get a lot less home for their dollar. Before the Fed started raising rates, a person with a monthly housing budget of $2,000 could have bought a home valued at more than $400,000. Today, that same buyer would need to find a home valued at $295,000 or less.”
“Everyday Americans understand inflation perfectly. …. Inflation is one of the biggest concerns of those who live in the real world.
…. Here’s the reality and here’s the political narrative: Reality is that prices have been going up at the fastest rate in 40 years and they are still going up.
Inflation (on an annualized basis) was 9.1% in June 2022, 4.9% in April 2023, 3.7% in September 2023 and 3.1% in November 2023.
It’s true that the rate of inflation is coming down, but prices are still going up. They’re going up at a slower rate but they’re still going up.
…. The average price of a pound of ground beef in the U.S. was $5.11 in September 2023. In October 2023 the price of a pound of ground beef was $5.23. That’s a 2.3% increase on a month-over-month basis, which annualizes to over 25%.
That’s the kind of inflation that real Americans confront every day.
…. It is possible to use propaganda to lie to the American people; it can work in the short run. But inflation is not one of those areas where propaganda works. The American people know what things cost, they know prices are going up, and no amount of lies can change that.”
“Inflation is eroding workers’ gains. Three in 5 workers (60 percent) say their incomes haven’t kept pace with inflation over the past 12 months, up from 55 percent last year. For those who did receive a pay bump of some form, more than half (53 percent) said their incomes haven’t kept pace with inflation, up slightly from 50 percent last year.”
“Inflation makes the extension of socialism possible by providing the financial chaos in which it flourishes.”— Henry Hazlitt
Mark Hamrick, Bankrate Senior Economic Analyst adds:
“While inflation has come down, broadly speaking, prices have not. There is a…virtual sticker shock that continues to weigh on the minds and pocketbooks of consumers.”
“For the average working man, almost everything went up in price – except the real value of his major asset: his time. So, he had to spend more time to get the basics in life. Before the money switcheroo, he had to labor for about 4 years to buy a house, for example. Today, it will cost him more than 8 years of labor.”
The casino banks are screaming, profits are down, the Fed has to pivot and drop interest rates. Baloney! When Volcker pivoted, interest rates were double-digits and he pivoted back down to “normal.” Today’s rates are at historical “normal” – what worked for decades.
Lending cheap money to high credit risks (government included) creates the illusion of prosperity while creating terrible, inevitable inflationary consequences.
The cost of money ain’t the problem, it is the cost of stuff.
Leave rates alone, don’t make things worse. Volcker got us through a recession – things will work out once the excess debt is out of the system.
As always, politicians scream, “vote for me, I’ll fix the problem!” Ain’t gonna happen, no matter who wins the election. Without massive spending cuts and sanity in Washington, nothing will change. It’s no wonder many of us are holding on to our gold wishing for, “the good old days.”
17 Minutes Of Modern Women Having MELTDOWN Over Passport Bros
I didn’t see either of these personally, but I heard about them.
Number one: A US soldier on an exercise at Canadian Forces Base Gagetown – crew member on a tank – found a training anti-tank mine during a break in the exercise. These things are explosives; they are designed to go off when a tank runs over them. They won’t damage the tank, but they do pack a punch; they’re designed to be heard, and felt, by the crew inside a tank that is running. They are magnetically activated, meaning that they have to come into contact with a metal surface before they can explode. His buddies knew that; he didn’t, apparently.
They were sitting around in the middle of a tank training ground for a while, and he got bored. He started trying to get the mine to “go off”. Apparently, he started by picking it up and throwing it at the ground. Bupkis. Then he started hitting it with a rock. Same non-result.
Eventually, getting frustrated, he picked it up and threw it at the side of the tank. As his startled buddies dove for cover, the thing blew up in his face, causing critical injuries. He was rushed to the Base Hospital, where doctors managed to save his life, but IIRC he ended up a quadruple amputee. Since the military deemed it a “self-inflicted injury”, he was offered a choice – court-martial, or immediate discharge with loss of all benefits.
His excuse was apparently that he “didn’t think it was that powerful”. Because he’d only ever heard them from inside a running tank, he thought it would be like a firecracker or something.
Number two: A pilot in the Canadian Air Force was given command of a Lockheed Hercules transport aircraft – the youngest pilot ever to be given such a command. On his first flight as PIC, he was to fly from Trenton, a major air force base near Lake Ontario, to USAFB Thule, a large US Air Force base in Greenland, and then on to Canadian Forces Station Alert, a remote facility in the very high Canadian arctic, 500 miles from the North Pole. Alert has no maintenance facilities – just a runway made of packed snow and a weather station. USAFB Thule, otoh, has a full maintenance facility with a large, heated hangar.
Just after takeoff from Thule, he had multiple bird strikes – more than a dozen birds impacted the airframe, IIRC. He could have declared an emergency and returned to land at the well-equipped airport below him; instead, after a cursory in-flight check, he decided that the aircraft was still flyable and continued on to his destination on Ellesmere Island.
After he landed, the ground crew inspected the Herc and quickly realized that it was no longer safe to fly. The Canadian air force had to fly up another Herc, with a full maintenance crew, who then had to spend two days working on the plane, outdoors in sub-zero temperatures, to bring it to a point where it could be safely flown back to Thule, where the same maintenance crew that would have worked on it if he’d landed there in the first place did a complete overhaul – inside a heated, well-lit hangar.
Not surprisingly, Captain Hotshot became the youngest pilot in the Canadian Air Force to be stripped of his position of aircraft commander.
Most Americans Are Literally Living On The Edge Of Disaster
There is a tremendous disconnect between the economic numbers that the government is giving us and what most Americans are personally experiencing on a daily basis. The government says that inflation is low, but the cost of living just continues to spiral out of control. The government says that unemployment is low, but Challenger, Gray & Christmas says that the number of layoffs in the U.S. was up 98 percent last year. The government says that the economic outlook for 2024 is positive, but companies all over America are acting as if extremely hard times are ahead. So who are we supposed to believe?
Personally, I trust numbers that come from private sources far more than numbers that come from government sources.
For example, a survey that was just conducted by Bankrate discovered that 56 percent of all U.S. adults do not have enough money to handle an unexpected expense of $1,000…
A majority of Americans say a $1,000 emergency expense would be too great of a hit to their savings and that they could not afford it, according to new data released Wednesday.
Bankrate’s latest survey results found 56% of U.S. adults lack the emergency funds to handle a $1,000 unexpected expense and one-third (35%) said they would have to borrow the money somehow to pay for it.
More than half the country is literally living on the edge of financial disaster.
That is crazy.
Another survey has found that much of the nation barely keeps any money in their bank accounts…
Nearly half of Americans have $500 or less in their savings accounts, an amount that leaves them vulnerable to unexpected expenses, according to a GOBankingRates survey of 1,063 U.S. adults conducted in November 2023.
About 29% of respondents have between $501 and $5,000 in their savings accounts, while the remaining 21% of Americans have $5,001 or more.
Few hold much cash in their checking accounts as well. Of those surveyed, 60% report having $500 or less in their checking accounts, while only about 12% have $2,001 or more.
Most Americans would be financially wiped out by just one major accident or emergency.
The vast majority of us are just barely scraping by from month to month, and the rapidly rising cost of living is making that increasingly difficult to do.
One woman recently found a Taco Bell receipt from 12 years ago, and she discovered that prices are now approximately three times higher than they were back then…
A TikTok video by a user who found an old Taco Bell receipt has gone viral – as Americans realize prices are now almost three times higher.
The old receipt showed that – 12 years ago – Americans could buy TWO of the chain’s beefy five-layer burritos for $2.59 including taxes.
Today, those same burritos cost about $3.69 for just ONE. That doesn’t include tax, which can vary across the US. So too can the base price.
The government continues to insist that inflation is “low”, but everyone knows that is a big fat lie.
Insurance rates have been spiking at a particularly alarming rate. One man in Las Vegas was horrified when his auto insurance bill shot up by 72 percent in just eight months even though he had no accidents and no tickets…
They say ‘What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas’ – but the eye-watering auto insurance bill city resident Simon Edwards recently received is just one example of the staggering rises in premiums consumers are facing all across the US.
The 2012 Mazda 5 owner was shocked to find his monthly bill from Geico had rocketed up from $130 last April to $223 now – a rise of 72 percent in just eight months.
‘I’ve been in no accidents, no tickets, been with Geico for many years,’ a perplexed Edwards told the Wall Street Journal.
Another man recently posted a video on TikTok in which he ranted about how the cost of literally everything is absolutely soaring…
Four years ago my rent was $1,200 a month at a luxury apartment complex”
“It is NOW $2,100, not even including utilities”
“3 years ago my electric bill was averaging $45 now it’s averaging $125…”
“I went to the grocery store yesterday and got 3 bags of chips, some ground turkey and some vegetables and it was $67 DOLLARS?!”
U.S. consumers are being squeezed like never before, and as a result debt levels have been rising to unprecedented levels.
For example, unpaid residential utility debt in the U.S. rose to a new all-time record of 20.3 billion dollars last year…
Bloomberg cites a new report from the National Energy Assistance Directors Association that reveals US household utility debt hit a record as an alarming number of Americans can no longer afford heating and cooling their homes.
NEADA said one out of every six ratepayers is behind on energy bills, adding residential utility debt hit a new record last year of $20.3 billion.
Please don’t let anyone tell you that the U.S. economy is in good shape.
Most Americans are really hurting in this economic environment, and conditions continue to get even worse.
As I discussed yesterday, large companies all over America are feverishly laying off workers. In fact, earlier today we learned that even eBay is now laying people off…
Online retailer eBay Inc. will cut about 1,000 jobs, or an estimated 9% of its full-time workforce, saying its number of employees and costs have exceeded how much the business is growing in a slowing economy. It marks the latest layoffs in the tech industry.
CEO Jamie Iannone said in a message to employees on Tuesday that the company also will reduce how many “contracts we have within our alternate workforce over the coming months.”
The worse economic conditions become, the more crime we are going to see.
At this point, looting has already become a way of life in some areas of the country.
In Washington D.C., a CVS store is permanently shutting down because dozens of teens would literally loot the store multiple times per day…
A Washington D.C. CVS store is shutting its doors after being repeatedly ransacked by thieves, the chain has confirmed.
The pharmacy, located in the Columbia Heights neighborhood, went viral last October when videos emerged of it totally stripped of all its products after being targeted by a teen gang.
Staff claim more than 45 schoolkids would go into the store and steal chips and drinks in the morning, after their classes and late at night. It will close on February 29, according to WTTG-TV.
If this is what is happening now, what will we see once economic conditions get extremely bad in this country?
After reading these comments, I would like to share a story with you. My ex-husband is disabled. He suffers from traumatic brain injury and struggles daily. He has seizures, he passes out, he has very little memory, diabetes from cancer removal, and takes several medications daily among other challenges. He needs someone to assist him with daily activities. He lived with his parents. His mother passed away and about a year later, his father sold the house and most of everything that was in it. The house sold in 10 days and they were given 2 weeks to vacate. His father had living arrangements planned for himself before the house sold. He told my ex that he had 2 weeks to vacate, left some moving boxes at the house and took off. I went over and helped pack and move things into storage and my ex became homeless on the final moving day. His father said he didn’t have the money to help him and he changed his phone number. The first month, my ex would call me telling me things that would happen and honestly, I didn’t believe him. How could being homeless be that damn hard? He would find what he thought was a safe place to sleep, in an area that we both are very familiar with and know a lot of people. People that we have personally helped. Well, when you become homeless, you learn who your friends are. Everyone scattered. People that we opened our home to when they needed a helping hand were no longer around. I was the only one he had left. The first month of him being homeless was a nightmare. When the sun goes down, bad things happen when you fall asleep. Because of the medication my ex takes, he will fall into a deep sleep and not much wakes him up until he’s ready to wake up. He had his belongings stolen 4 times in a month. He would wake up and his stuff would be gone. He went through about 8 cell phones, numerous phone chargers, all stolen. His wallet was stolen right from the start so he had no ID. Without ID he couldn’t get assistance or even a hotel room. DMV wanted ridiculous paperwork to replace his ID plus $800 for an incident from years past. It took weeks, but we got it straightened out and his ID was replaced. Two days later, he fell asleep and his wallet stolen again. Once again, no ID. We were continuously replacing his bags for carrying things and replacing his things. His medication was stolen. He had to go 3 weeks without it because they don’t just replace stolen medication. He was missing his very important doctor appointments because he couldn’t keep track of things. He woke up in the hospital twice, not sure how he got there, or why he was there. He voluntarily went to the hospital one night because he was dizzy, his blood sugar was high and he was fading in and out of reality. The hospital asked him how much drugs he took. He remembers hearing them say he’s ODing. They did a drug test that came back clean. The security guard at the hospital took him by the arm and pushed him out the front door telling him not to come back. He went back in to ask where he was because he didn’t know, also because he didn’t have his shoes. Security pushed him out the front door told him don’t fucking come back through the door. My daughter is a nurse at that hospital. When I asked her why they treated him that way she said homeless people come in there continuously pretending to be sick just for a place to sleep. They kick them out all the time. Meanwhile, my ex was laying on the sidewalk on the side of the hospital. Another homeless man gave him some water and walked him to another hospital down the street. They said he probably would not have made it through the night. He spent 3 days there then back out on the street with no medication.
A fact that most aren’t aware of, when you’re homeless, you have to keep moving. My ex stays clean. By clean I mean his physical appearance. He doesn’t look homeless other than the bags he carries. At first he was able to slip into a casino, (we live in Las Vegas) to charge his cell phone. Even though he doesn’t look homeless, it doesn’t take long before you become a familiar face in the area and they don’t want you around. They are very quick to call the police. Who in turn trespass you from the property, or haul you in. So you have to keep moving. Where you’re moving to? Who knows, just keep moving. That results in raw feet, worn out shoes and using energy that you just can’t afford to waste.
Summertime in Vegas is brutal. It reaches 120° and when your outside, there’s no relief anywhere. The heat also causes my ex to pass out. He can’t be in the heat for too long. The only relief is going inside a store and pretending to shop. Like I said, you become a familiar face after a while and all eyes are on you. In order for him to go inside out of the heat he would have to purchase something. Believe it or not, this can become expensive. When you can’t cook and your only means for a meal is to purchase from fast food or wherever, it gets expensive. So most of his income goes to replacing things that were stolen, getting what he needs to survive on the streets, and food. A couple times, when his wallet was stolen, his money card was in his wallet. He had to steal food from the store to eat. Sometimes he can get shelter for a night if the hotels have a special and he has an ID. But money goes fast when you’re out there.
How do I know all this? I spent 4 days out there with him. He came to my house every few days to shower, wash his clothes and eat a hot meal, but my situation didn’t allow him to stay with me. I helped him as much as I could. When he came over one day, telling me all the bad luck he was having, I decided to go with him and see what’s going on. I truly thought he was getting mixed up with the wrong people and creating his problems. What I experienced while I was out there was absolutely terrible. People were so mean. We didn’t beg or ask for anything. We just kept moving, with no destination. The looks, the comments, the behavior of one human to another made me look at the world in a different way, and it’s not good. I actually came out of that experience being ashamed of the human race. I’m embarrassed for us. I’m not proud of my community and I honestly feel more compassion for our homeless community. Imagine this. You have to go to the bathroom and it could take you all day to find a public restroom to use. Because they don’t let homeless people use the bathroom. Whether you purchase something or not. Imagine it’s so hot outside, like 120°, and you barely make it into a sandwich shop and ask them for a cup of water because you’re passing out from the heat. They tell you “no, get outta here” and you pass out in the parking lot. Instead of calling an ambulance, they leave you laying there on a blacktop that is hot enough to fry an egg. People passing by don’t want to get involved so they turn their head. They couldn’t spare a cup of tap water to help another person that was obviously having a medical episode. We walked by a lady one day and she actually stopped, looked at me and said “ you’re a disgrace. You should walk in the alley and not out here.” As much as I wanted to teach her a lesson, I wasn’t going to jail, so we kept walking. From a distance she yelled “you’re dirting up the streets!” I was appalled by the dirty, disgusting looks that people gave. Just by assuming our situation, because remember, I wasn’t actually homeless.
This is also what I learned. Being homeless is very lonely. You can’t befriend other homeless people because those are the ones that take your stuff. There’s nobody to talk too. My ex started talking to himself, out loud. He would randomly say things as if he was talking to someone. Sometimes it’s not money they need. Sometimes it’s not food. There are many ways you can help homeless people. One of the most important, at least it was for me, is to acknowledge them. Don’t walk by like they aren’t there. Smile and say hi. Treat them like they matter. Sometimes that’s all they need to get them through the next few hours. It does give them some inner strength to keep pushing forward. If you pass by and say “how ya doing?” Stop for a second and listen to the answer. You don’t have to spend all day with them. A little 2 sentence conversation holds a lot of weight. They have nobody to talk to and it’s lonely. One of the best conversations I have ever had was with a homeless man. He became a good friend and we spent a lot of time together. He was very intelligent and fascinating. I could have missed out on that and it would have been my loss. Sometimes homeless people just want someone to say hi and treat them like they are people. They are all out there for different reasons. Some beyond their control.
MUST WATCH! Feminism and the Disposable Male | This blew my mind
I’m from Russia and I’ve been to the US three times in my teenage years for several months each time. I’ve always ate intuitively, I guess. I never restricted myself or counted calories. Both at home and in the US. I’m not prone to binge eating or eating a lot of junk food, I like fruits and vegetables more than sweets and most of the time if I buy junk food it just ends up on a shelf until someone else eats it. And my weight does not really fluctuate at all. I think I have the same physique and weight since I was 14.
So when I came to the USA, I ate the same way as I always do. Actually I ate even more vegetables, fruit and berries because there were very convenient packages at Costco. I just munched on broccoli for several months there I think haha. But! Despite me not really changing anything in what I eat (or eating even more fresh produce) I gained several kilos each time I was in the US and lost them back quickly after returning.
This is me right before my last trip in 2019:
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This is me on the last day:
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I think you can clearly see that my cheeks grew a lot and my face is more round haha.
I also noticed that food (especially fresh produce) looks much prettier in the US than here. Strawberries were huge and shiny, we only get those here in the off season in expensive stores and not many people actually buy it. We mostly buy seasonal fruits. Berries are mostly for summertime while in winter we buy pomegranates, clementines and oranges. Bread in the US stays “fresh” and soft for several months, while here we buy bread several times a week because it’s freshly baked and goes stale quickly. A lot of food in the US is preprepared (shredded cheese etc which we don’t really have in Russia. If you want shredded cheese you do it yourself haha. And it’s also really hard to find the same cheeses. The colors are not even close). I think there are so much more additives to the food in the US to make it more pleasant looking even though it makes the food much less healthy.
The U.S. grew by 2.4% but its Inflation rate is 3.4% hence once again the American standard of real living shrank by -1.0% in 2023.
Let’s compare that with China that grew by 5.2% but its inflation is 0.2% in 2023. Hence the Chinese population enjoy a positive 5.0% net real growth!
But if you read the western media it is as though it is China that needs to get worried! And what is worst is their brain dead mentality believes in the shit that U.S. media threw out daily.
China is 6% better off than the U.S. in 2023! And you ain’t seen nothing yet! If you Americans and U.S. lackeys out there grow som brain cells, grow very very worried about the U.S. that has not grow its real standard of living since the day of Beetles and Marilyn Monroe 64 full years ago! Your grand parents have better lives than you!
Each person’s place of birth, family background, and level of education are different, so it is difficult to give a definitive answer.
However, some general situations can be mentioned.
The most impoverished areas in China are still concentrated in rural areas in the central and western parts of the country.
Due to China’s unique household registration and land systems, the country has the highest rate of home ownership in the world.
As a result, homelessness is virtually non-existent.
Even the poorest peasants own their land and homes.
Internet, tap water, electricity, and roads have been extended to all rural areas of China.
There are no villages without roads and electricity,Internet, although there may be exceptions.
A photo widely circulated on the Internet shows a village in Zhaojue County, Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province. Located at altitudes ranging from 628 to 2300 meters, with a relative altitude difference of 1672 meters, the village has a population of 1758 people.
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Faced with difficulties in road construction, the government proposed to relocate them to a flat area, offering free housing and policy-based housing subsidies.
However, the villagers strongly resisted, as the benefits offered by the government did not meet their expectations.
The impasse lasted until 2016, when Chinese vloggers discovered the situation and uploaded the videos online.
This sparked outrage among the public, who couldn’t believe that such poverty existed in China.
They condemned the government’s incompetence.
Feeling the pressure, the Zhaojue county government responded positively, compromising with the villagers by improving welfare standards before finally relocating them from the cliffs.
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In terms of medical insurance, China’s system is divided into urban and rural components.
Taking myself as an example, although I own a house in the city, my household registration remains in the rural area because I am reluctant to give up my ancestral home and land.
As a result, I have two health insurance policies – a rural one that costs about $50 a year, and an urban one that costs considerably more and is deducted monthly from my salary at a rate proportional to my income.
While this may seem like a loss, the higher deductions result in a higher retirement pension.
According to China’s administrative divisions, villages are the lowest level.
In theory, rural health insurance is not compulsory.
In reality, however, coverage is tied to the performance of government officials.
Government officials often resort to extremist claims that if you don’t buy $50 worth of health insurance, you’ll lose hundreds or even thousands of dollars in agricultural subsidies.
In fact, government officials do not have the ability orrights to cancel agricultural subsidies to farmers.
This is because the money is transferred directly from the central government’s coffers to the farmers’ bank cards.
Township government officials cannot interfere with central decision-making and the banking system.
Only a verbal threat.
Therefore, although the process of selling health insurance to farmers is sometimes not very gentle, the results are still good, and health insurance basically covers everyone.
Some people even have more than one medical insurance.
Reimbursement rates for medical expenses vary – 90% in township hospitals, 80% at the county level, 70% at the city level, and a basic 60% in provincial capital hospitals.
For serious illnesses, individuals often have to seek treatment in large cities such as Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou, where reimbursement rates are even lower, especially for imported and expensive drugs.
The only good thing is that China’s medical system does not have complicated appointments and does not require excessive waiting.
Finally, there is the pressure of marriage.
If a young man who grew up in the countryside has parents with a low retirement income and his own income is not high, it will be difficult for him to find a wife, especially if the woman’s income is above average.
Unless he is exceptionally handsome or has a degree from one of China’s top universities, the challenges increase.
This contributes to the gradual decline of China’s population.
On some Chinese video platforms, many single men promote Indian marriage ideals, but Chinese women often mock them, questioning their confidence despite their seeming ordinariness.
ps1:
Many people lack a clear understanding of China’s land system and social structure.
On Quora, many comments seem unreasonably contentious.
I don’t know whether this is due to arrogance and prejudice or deliberate misinformation.
Although my English is limited, I’ll do my best to explain.
In rural areas, land is collectively owned by village-level administrative units, similar to rural cooperatives.
As long as your household registration is in the village, your land is permanent, with no time limits or land taxes.
Your children can inherit it without paying inheritance taxes.
The only drawback is that farmland cannot be bought or sold.
tradable land is residential land, but it’s limited to mutual transfers between village members.
Urban land is owned by the government.
If you buy villas, apartments, factories, or commercial land in the city, the legal term of use is either 40 or 70 years.
However, these are essentially “fiction” legal concepts to avoid conflict with the concept of state ownership of land.
If there were a real problem with time limits, China wouldn’t have a real estate industry, and people wouldn’t be stupid enough to buy houses.
Many multinational corporations, including McDonald’s, KFC, Metro, and Costco, own substantial amounts of land and property in China.
You can question the character of capitalists, but you can’t question their intelligence.
For ordinary residents, you can own property for life without paying a single cent in taxes.
If taxes were imposed, many people would become homeless.
That’s why many wealthy Chinese own many properties, because there are almost no holding costs.
ps2:
The inclusiveness of the Chinese government is beyond the imagination of many people who only believe what the Western media says.
Again, with a population of 1.4 billion and less than 4% having a bachelor’s degree, this means that there are many individuals among us who are not robots and can be easily angered.
If the government does not meet their demands, impulsive actions may occur.
The government is not stupid; it will not easily provoke the people.
On June 10, 2022, in the early morning, a girl was harassed and beaten by several men in a barbecue restaurant in Tangshan while she was having a late-night snack.
This incident sparked anger and panic throughout society, something that should not have happened in the eyes of the Chinese.
It was widely believed to be the incompetence of the Tangshan city police.
In reality, the Chinese can be perfectionists.
They won’t tolerate any instances of social violence, especially against innocent women.
Hebei Province reacted quickly and made adjustments to the entire public security system in Tangshan.
Many leaders in the police department were fired, and some even went to jail.
image 184
As for the men who assaulted the woman, the court handed down the harshest punishment, and they eventually repented in prison.
CCTV, China’s largest official television station, also conducted a special interview with the criminal.
image 183
ps3:
As for “Indian marriage ideals,” perhaps my expression is not very accurate.
This is a Chinese man who is worried about finding a mate.
image 182image 181
This is the woman they met in reality.
image 180
This is their fantasy woman, using Indian women as a reference.
image 179image 178
Many people may have seen too many Indian movies and think that Indian women are always gentle and kind.
The most important thing is that the men do not have to give any bride price to the women.
Well, that is India’s most successful cultural export to China.
Near the beginning of covid, I received a speeding ticket for going quite a bit over the speed limit. In fact, it was so much over the limit that when I received the citation in the mail, it indicated that I had to go to court in person. I couldn’t just pay a fine. I showed up on the indicated court date, but the courthouse was closed due to covid. I eventually received a notice in the mail indicating a new court date, but when I showed up it was still closed for covid (needless to say it was frustrating). A few months after that, I received a notice giving me a date to attend court virtually over zoom.
When I logged in, I noticed that there were about 50 other people also logged in. So I made myself comfortable and waited. The defendents with a lawyer present were called first. Every lawyer would say good morning to the judge and then, in some cryptic legalese I can’t remember, asked the judge to review the relevant dates for the case. The case would list them out in order and then give the running total number of days and then dismiss the case because it has been over a year. This happened at least 4 or 5 times.
After all the lawyers had finished, the judge started calling the rest of us. Person after person went up, was reprimanded by the judge, and given a fine. Eventually my name was called and so I repeated exactly what I had heard the lawyers say. The judge stared at me for about 45 seconds. Then he read the dates and dismissed my case. I thanked him and he told me that I better start slowing down when I drive because if he sees me again, he’ll remember me.
I’d like to think that everyone after me was smart enough to realize they also could have their cases dismissed. I was curious, but not that curious, so I took my win and logged off zoom.
I do think it’s ridiculous that men in China are expected to have a successful and lucrative career, a house, and a car, as well as pay a large bride price to the girl’s family. Those are pretty tall orders. No wonder so many men in China are unmarried. But most women in China have their own careers (and don’t want to leave them to be housewives) and choose to continue working after marriage or decide to not marry at all.
Some of them do have Princess Syndrome and expect men to meet their materialistic demands. I do not understand the lust for luxury bags and clothes and the like. Why? To fit into society? To ascend to a Phoenix nest? To look good on Instagram or the Chinese equivalent? All of it is fleeting, unimportant, shallow and it won’t last. None of that matters.
But those women in China are not the majority. In 1.4 billion people there are bound to be materialistic gold diggers, but not everyone is. And people like that can be found in every society, not just China. Many women in China are hard working and dedicated to their careers. The ones who do stay home to raise children are dedicated to their families. I don’t see a stay-at-home wife or mother as a woman who is materialistic because her husband is the provider of their family.
I would say you’ve taken a stereotype and painted all Chinese women with a broad brush. Instead look at women as individuals capable of being their own person. You may meet some materialistic women but it’s more likely you will meet kind, hardworking women devoted to their families. Of the Chinese women in my acquaintance I can say none of them fit the materialistic stereotype.
Tell them…
Greek Homestyle Chicken
This is a common meal in Greece and it smells delicious while it is cooking.
greek chicken 1100px 3
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
Juice of 2 lemons
4 or 5 potatoes, peeled and sliced french-fry style
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 to 1 cup water
One head garlic, the cloves peeled but whole
Oregano, salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
Place chicken in a shallow baking tray. Arrange potatoes around chicken pieces. Scatter whole peeled cloves of garlic around chicken and potatoes.
Mix together lemon juice and olive oil, and pour evenly over chicken and potatoes. Add water until potatoes are just about covered. Add salt, pepper to taste. Cover chicken and potatoes with generous amounts of oregano.
Bake at 350 degrees F, until tops of chicken are reddish brown.
Turn chicken, stir potatoes, and sprinkle on more oregano. If potatoes aren’t at least half-covered with liquid, add water.
Return to oven for about 15 to 20 minutes. Chicken is done when both sides a lightly browned and potatoes are soft when touched with a fork.
Pretty cool really. At 74, I can look back on a life full of adventure and fun. Some hard work too. A lot of things you can’t do anymore (playground equipment now deemed too dangerous for kids), places that aren’t there anymore (amusement parks like Pacific Ocean Park in Santa Monica and the Pike in Long Beach). As kids, we walked to school, typically a mile each way- today moms chauffeur their kids to school, adding to morning and afternoon traffic jams. When I was a kid, we were allowed more freedom and had more responsibility.
As a teenager, friends and I would take spring breaks to the Colorado River, cruise up and down the river in my fishing boat, stop on the other bank of the river for a party at night, bats flying overhead on the river. Or Palm Springs, where parties were held out in the desert, and had fun visiting the Indian reservation and desert oasis. Travel to Mexico, and watch a real Mexican fiesta in a small town plaza. Ride motorcycles all over the place on camping trips. Learn to fly an airplane, and fly one to Catalina island with my girlfriend at the time, my buddy flying his own airplane in formation with me. Renting a 4 seat Cessna 172 from John Wayne airport, fuel included, was only $11 per hour! Dinner at Don the Beachcomber, 94th Aero Squadron, Proud Bird, Bobby McGees etc., places that don’t exist anymore.
My working life was mostly fun- working got easier as I moved up to jobs I liked. For the last 20 years I had a job designing traffic camera installations for the City, something I really liked doing.
I find that there are new things that challenge me in retirement. I discovered 3D design and 3D printing, and Arduino programming. I have created a lot of unique projects, and like showcasing them on Instructables. Plus, lots of bicycle riding and walking in our mild Southern California climate.
Why Marriage Is NOT WORTH Pursuing In Western Society
I heard this story from a fellow cab driver (back when I was driving cabs).
He was doing the night shift when he got a call to a specific address. The job details specified a non-LPG vehicle (ie, one without an extra tank in the boot) because they were moving from one place to another and needed to put the last of the luggage in there.
So while he was on the way there, he called the cops.
He showed up at the address, popped the boot, and helped the passengers load some gear in there; a sound system, sundry electronics and so forth. Then he closed the boot.
They’re anxious to get moving, but he took his time. Just as he was getting in, the cops showed up. The passengers tried to play it cool, but the driver pointed at them and said, “They just robbed this place.”
The cops grabbed one, but the other two made a run through the yard and went over the back fence. One came back straight away, but the other had trouble climbing back over, mainly because he had an Alsatian hanging off his leg.
Once the cops had all three in custody, he popped the boot again and showed them the stolen goods.
One of the passengers started swearing, then asked, “How did you know we were robbing the place?”
The driver looked him in the eye. “Because that’s my sound system. I live there.”
Time is running out. Lately, I have been hearing from so many people that believe that 2024 will be the year when our society goes over the edge. Our financial system is teetering on the brink of disaster, crime is absolutely exploding all over the country, homelessness is rising at the fastest pace ever recorded, food banks are facing unprecedented demand for their services, and I believe that 2024 will be the most chaotic election year in the entire history of our nation. And of course all of this is happening in the context of a global environment in which war, pestilences, economic problems, famine and natural disasters are all on the rise. A “perfect storm” is raging all around us, and millions upon millions of Americans have become deeply concerned about what our immediate future will look like.
So where will you be when things finally hit the fan?
During the past several years, we have seen a mass exodus of conservatives from blue states. For example, Fox News is reporting that 65 percent of those that have recently moved to the state of Idaho are Republicans, and only 12 percent are Democrats…
Data published by the Idaho Secretary of State’s office shows that out of the nearly 119,000 people who recently moved to the state, 65% registered as Republicans, compared to just 12% registering as Democrats.
The data, which was reviewed by Fox News Digital, show that out of the roughly 20,000 Americans who moved from Washington state to Idaho, 62% registered as Republicans, compared to 12% as Democrats, 24% as unaffiliated and 2% as “other.” The percentage of registered Republicans originally from Washington who recently moved to Idaho is actually higher than the state’s overall percentage of registered Republicans, which sits at about 58%.
Out of the nearly 40,000 people who left California for Idaho, a whopping 75% registered as Republicans, the data reviewed by Fox News Digital show. Only 10% of the California pool registered as Democrats, 14% as unaffiliated and 2% as “other.”
Wow.
Real estate agents in Idaho are urging potential clients to “escape liberal hell” and to get to the state “before the coming collapse”…
The Seattle Times noted that real estate ads advise residents in states such as Washington to “escape liberal hell” and move to Idaho.
“Time is not on your side, flee the city NOW before the coming collapse!” another ad for a house listing in Idaho states, the outlet reported.
Perhaps you are thinking that you should move to Idaho too.
Unfortunately, for many Americans it is already too late, because property values in some areas of the state have more than tripled.
Of course property values have also skyrocketed in desirable areas in many other red states as well.
Meanwhile, mortgage rates have also soared, and as a result home payments have risen to absolutely absurd levels during the Biden administration…
WSJ analysis of the housing market:
Average monthly new home payment when Biden took office: $1,787
Average monthly new home payment today: $3,322
You can still try to relocate.
But it will cost you much more than it would have a few years ago.
Renting is also an option, but we have just been through a period of time when rental prices have also jumped substantially…
After suffering through a three-year period when rents jumped by 30% or more in many U.S. cities, renters are now starting to enjoy small breaks like this.
Ultimately, if you were planning to relocate, you should have already done it by now.
But the good news is that conditions are still at least somewhat relatively stable as we approach the end of 2023.
So if you want to get out of Dodge, you can still do it.
In fact, for many of you this may be your last chance.
But don’t wait too long, because the clock is ticking.
At this point, most Americans can feel that something has gone horribly wrong. The warning signs are all around us, and conditions are getting worse with each passing day.
Even Warren Buffett can sense that a really big shift is coming. During the first three quarters of this year he sold off a whopping “$28.7 billion of stock”…
Warren Buffett’s firm Berkshire Hathaway sold $28.7 billion of stock in the first three quarters of 2023 in a move that some economists have interpreted as ringing alarm bells for the American economy.
According to the company’s earnings, the Nebraska-based firm of the legendary investor and billionaire, known as the Oracle of Omaha, sold a net $10.4 billion of stock in the first quarter of the year. In the second quarter, it sold close to $13 billion of shares and bought less than $5 billion. In the third quarter, it sold about $5.3 billion worth of stocks.
As Buffett is considered one of the greatest investors of all time, as well as one of America’s richest men, his moves are closely observed and analyzed.
He didn’t make so much money by being stupid.
Buffett may not fully understand all of the specifics, but he realizes that something is up.
As our society crumbles, most of the population is not going to be able to handle it.
For the third consecutive year, many psychologists across the country say they are seeing patients struggle with worsening symptoms, many of them needing longer treatment times.
Those are among the findings of an annual survey by the American Psychological Association, released this week. The APA first launched this survey in 2020 to gauge the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on practicing psychologists.
A majority of psychologists reported that more people are seeking mental health care this year, adding to already long waitlists. Over half (56%) said they had no openings for new patients. Among those who keep waitlists, average wait times were three months or longer and nearly 40% said that their waitlist had grown in the past year.
Doing stand up comedy. I do it as an amateur for fun.
What I thought it was before I did it: You walk up, tell jokes for 10 minutes, then collect your free beer or $20.
What it actually is: You write 30 pages of jokes then meet with two other writers, who are also writing jokes (but different from yours). You’re all brutally honest with each other. You cut and trim. Some things don’t work. They point out logical inconsistencies. You end up with two pages.
Back to the drawing board. Repeat this process. Eventually you have 5 pages that will get you through a ten minute set. But, uh oh, one of your topical jokes appears in the media. More than one person can think of the same joke. “I had this joke first,” you think. But that doesn’t matter. You replace.
You rehearse and rehearse and rehearse so you don’t forget. You decide on a persona. You make sure your jokes match that persona. The persona needs to be enough of you to be honest or the audience won’t like it, but it should be an exaggerated version of you.
Then, you sit in a shabby green room in a bar that’s probably not in the best part of town. You get a knot in your stomach. You listen to the comedians who go before you.
You can always tell the comedians in a comedy club. They’re the ones who say “that’s a good joke” instead of laughing.
Finally, it’s your turn. You have two or three jokes to win the audience over. If they don’t like you from the start, it’s almost impossible to get them back.
Wait, what’s that? People are actually laughing! This is amazing. Why are they laughing at these lame jokes that I’ve told myself more than 100 times before performing them?
The Management came with high hopes of building a gigantic supply chain to rival Chinas by 2026
And went home with their TAIL BETWEEN THEIR LEGS and determined never to even look at India on a Map again
They were used to Chinese workers who were ready to slog 9+2 hours a day for 6 days a week and deliver 63 Units a day at peak productivity
They came because they were promised the world
First, the workers cried about wages
They agreed initially and then cried. That’s because the Agent was collecting 20% a month from their wages directly. So out of ₹14000/-, the workers saw a cut of ₹ 3000/- into the pocket of the Agent
Wistron raised the wages to ₹17000/- to keep them happy
Next, they did a surprising amount of overtime
The Average worker in China billed 12 hours a week for overtime
Here the Average worker was billing 30 hours a week overtime
Yet Productivity was less than half of China
Soon they found, everyone was deliberately working slow during normal hours to justify overtime
Workers due to be paid ₹17000/- a month plus maybe ₹6000/- for overtime at most were now paid ₹ 15,000/- for overtime and ₹32,000 a month
YET PRODUCTIVITY WAS 27
Wistron ordered that the Overtime pay be held back until a proper investigation was made
Workers felt outraged
They didn’t seem to care that their productivity was low
They seemed to think they were slogging hard and demanded money from the evil capitalist
So they attacked the plant, broke a lot of equipment AND THE COPS/AUTHORITIES SEEMED TO HOLD WISTRON GUILTY OF CHEATING
Wistron literally crawled before the Chinese on their knees to take them back but China gave a grin and said “Sorry. We have our own OEMs”
This is one Story of Indian HARD WORK
Same story in every single case
Lazy Indian makes promises he can’t keep. Demands money anyway. Accuses foreigner of Racism and Imperialism when he withholds payment
Files cheating case against his reps in India, forcing them to flee
Always the same story
Yes Sir!!!! We can definitely deliver by 31st December
Then slowly the excuses
Sir,many of my workers fell Ill due to the Pandemic
Sir, Machine broke down
Sir, Workers are asking for some wages. Can you release 10% more payment
Then when the Client gets angry, the belligerence
Sir, we have worked so hard. We haven’t gone home for weeks because of you. Please pay the balance
You are a racist. I will file cheating case against your manager in India and against your office.
The Poor Manager and staff in India get caught and are forced to pay hush money to the cops and end up becoming pawns
Eventually the Client disgusted cuts his losses and closes the office and says “Gutter Country”
My Client had an email from a Belgian importer literally saying
Thanks for your Interest however WE DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH INDIANS
Others have similar lines
We don’t do business with Indians unless the entire payment can be made on COD basis
(COD = Cash on Delivery)
Foreign entities would love to come to India but India is so dirty, so corrupt and so abase without proper ethics or work culture that they don’t want to take a chance.
They would pay higher prices and go to Vietnam or Mexico or of course China if China would still have them. China is now focusing on their own brands and is not ready to entertain foreign brands too much.
In the IT Industry, things were once different but now slowly that Industry is heading the same way
Luckily the Dollar Rupee continuous depreciation helps because a $ 100 raise a day per asset today is ₹60,000/- a week in India
Enough to grovel, sit and stay
Hire 4 Unemployed Assets for ₹30 K a month and quote an extra $ 100 a week and pocket ₹ 120K a month
India is seriously a very bad place for hard work and ethics
Neither for smart work
There are exceptions of course
You have good hard workers with ethics in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad in IT and Software and other key areas yet the new generation are becoming worse and worse .
My Son Was A Disrespectful Jerk Until I Switched Tactics, Treated Him Like A Man…And He Became One
I have said this many times before. But I want to underline some things today.
When I was a senior in High School, I proudly wore a choker collar, puffy sleeved polyester printed shirts with a wide collar, and elephant bell-bottom jeans. Oh, and I also wore earth shoes, and rock-star boots. I was so fashionable!
That was me in purple
I also drove a orange “goat” GTO.
d64e71566d097b96b830a8d8f0ea97e5
And that was my life then.
Today, I am really different, as is my life.
Life changes. You will change.
ADVICE…
Embrace your moments. Savor your experiences. Remember that they will wane over time. So please treasure them.
When I was a teenager I was bullied by a local group of kids, all of them a few years older than me. Two of them were particularly vile. I am changing the names. One was Patrick and the other was Gavin. Patrick was a horrible weasel who basically incited the others to beat the crap out of me, and rarely got his own hands dirty. Gavin was a sociopath who rarely showed any emotion whatsoever. One particular time me and friends were playing near a train track (as kids did in the 90s), and I heard Patrick’s voice saying “Hey Gavin there he is he wants to fight you.” Sure enough along walks Gavin and grabs me and says “I hear you want to fight me….” I assured him this wasn’t the case, but he proceeded to knock the shit out of me. And I don’t just mean a few punches in the ribs. He pummelled my face multiple times. I am pretty sure I had concussion. Anyway, halfway through the beating I hear the unmistakeable sound of a train coming. Gavin hears it too. “Come on, we’re both going to die.” and he begins dragging me onto the tracks. And he was correct, in that we both would have been killed. He clearly didn’t care. The only thing that saved me was that I was able to grab hold of a length of builder’s wire that was half buried in the ground, and must have been attached to a lump of buried concrete because miraculously it held firm. Gavin was straining with every ounce of his strength to drag me and him into the path of the train. I vividly remember the train zooming past and I looked at Gavin, his teeth bared in anger as he tried to dislodge me. I remember giggling because Gavin was closer to the train than me. If my t shirt had torn, or if the wire had come loose, then Gavin would surely have fallen under the train first. Gavin eventually tired of beating me after the train was gone and I stumbled home, sore, ashamed and shaken. My face was so badly battered that when I told my father that I had fallen off some scaffolding while playing at a building site, he believed me. Both my eyes were so badly bloodshot that my eyeball went red. I had black eyes and bruises all across my face and neck and ribs. The bullying wasn’t a once off, but that was one of the worst instances of it for me.
Polish Cinnamon Cake
Polish Cinnamon Cake
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.
We lived in Base Housing, kids all over the place, filling the sandbox, fighting, arguing, being nice, being nasty. My four-year-old was a little redhead like his mommy and, like his mommy, often in trouble. Or, if not in trouble, causing it.
One day, another mommy, who was often irate because someone had wronged her little golden-curled darling who had the demeanor of an angel and the personality of a wasp, came to me with her howling little guy. His tears looked genuine. So did her anger.
“Your child needs to be controlled,” she said, “he bit Tony. Look!” She dragged Tony’s plump little arm out to show me four perfect tooth marks.
I said, “Are you sure it was Brian?”
She snarled, “Of course I’m sure. I saw him do it. He sank his teeth right into Tony’s arm.”
I said, “Bri, did you bite Tony?” He shook his head.
Mama Bear, filled with righteous fury, shrieked that he was a liar and my husband would be hearing from the CO if we didn’t teach our child civilized manners.
I just said, “Brian, smile at the lady.” Because he was an obliging child who genuinely liked people, he willing smiled at the lady—with his three front teeth, two on the bottom, one on the top, gleaming in the sunshine. His left top incisor had been knocked out when he was acting the fool in the bathtub about six months before. She didn’t even apologize to him, just stomped off, dragging poor, injured little Tony behind her like a pull toy.
Well, you shouldn’t be. At least not yet. Let me tell you the whole truth first. Because once I do that, you aren’t going to be just shocked. You would be horrified, outraged, possibly traumatized for life.
I’ve been working in the tech world for quite a while now, and the wealth of “insider secrets” that I’ve accumulated along the way would be sufficient to fill a book in itself. But nothing comes close to this one single revelation, that I can positively say, has destroyed my faith in humanity. Once you finish this answer, you are not going to be the same person anymore, that much I can promise.
Let me ask you a very simple question –
How do you think the login process works?
Let’s say you want to open your Facebook.
You go to the login page.
You enter your username.
You then enter your password, which appears in all asterisks to prevent any unwanted ‘shoulder-surfing’. That’s crude. But effective too. And necessary. You see, the First Law of Passwords (okay, I just made up that phrase) states that there should be only one entity in the entire universe that should have access to your password – your brain. If a second copy of your password exists somewhere – say, on a piece of paper where you casually wrote it down thinking it’ll help you remember later, or in the password box where you just entered it, or engraved on a rock on planet Jupiter; somebody might be able to access it (theoretically speaking) and your security would be completely compromised. So, only one copy. Ever. Remember that.
Now, you press the Submit button.
But Abhimanyu, wait a minute! After I just pressed the Submit button, I got logged in. This means that some system on the other side must have verified that what I entered was indeed my password. But then, this system must have access to my correct password too! Otherwise, what will it compare my input with? Facebook must keep a second copy of my password somewhere!!!
The host website needs a copy of the password!
You are right. That’s a problem indeed. You might think that this is kind of okay since this second copy would exist with Facebook, which is the website that hosts your account in the first place. They would keep it safe, wouldn’t they?
But think about it.
Facebook, as an organization, is made up of humans just like you and me. What if some employee at Facebook has access to this code and could see your password? What if this was your bank account instead. What if Facebook was hacked and the hacker could see this code that has your password in it. Imagine the havoc this person might cause.
So a second copy is never okay, even if it exists on the parent website itself!
But then how would the website log you in? If it does not know your correct password, what will it compare your input to? How will it verify that you’re you?
That’s precisely the problem our engineering godfathers faced when they set out to design the entire system of passwords. And these guys were smart! They come up with an ingenious idea that would beautifully solve the problem.
The idea of Hash Functions.
The concept is extremely simple. A hash function is just a mathematical function. You input any word into it and it generates an output that looks like complete garbage.
But the devil, as they say, lies in the details –
The same word would always give rise to the same garbage.
Two different words would (almost) always lead to two completely different garbages.
There’s no way to look at the garbage and tell what the original word was. And just to be clear, this is not for the lack of trying. No. This is a fundamental mathematically restriction on the nature of hash functions. They are not invertible. They work one-way only. There’s no way to reverse engineer the garbage and get a peek at the word that produced it. Not even when you know the exact hash function.
Fun fact – This garbage is called the ‘hash’ of the input word.
Here’s how Hashes are used in login systems –
When you first create your account, you choose a password. This password is never stored by the website as it is. Rather, the website first hashes your password and then stores this hash in its database.
Now, when you try to log in the next time, the input you enter in your password box is first hashed, and then sent to the website. If your entered password is the correct one, this incoming hash would be the same as the hash the website had earlier stored in its database. That’s because the same word always gives the same hash (Rule 1 above). On the other hand, if you entered something different, the incoming hash would be different from the one that the website has got stored in its database next to your name (Rule 2 above).
The website compares the two, and if they match, bingo! You are logged in.
Now even if someone hacked into Facebook and copied the entire database, all they would see are these garbage hashes stored next to the usernames. They wouldn’t be able to deduce the original password from these hashes (Rule 3 above).
What if they tried to copy your hash from the database, open Facebook login page in their browser, and then enter the copied hash in the password field as it is (along with your username in the username field)?
Since Facebook’s login flow always hashes the incoming input, it would hash this hash too, and that would produce something completely different. On matching that with what is stored in the database, a big fat fuck-you would be returned.
So even when the hacker has got the entire user table, he still can’t do any damage!
Beautiful concept, isn’t it?
Except that it’s a complete pain in the ass for companies to implement and manage.
For starters, you have to integrate the hashing mechanism in your login flow which leads to considerable overhead. Actually, with modern libraries and frameworks, this part is no longer that big of a deal. The real pain lies in providing technical support to the customers.
Let’s say you are Flipkart.
A customer calls in to complain that he is unable to add a certain item to his cart.
The customer’s issue is escalated to the development team, where you, the poor developer, just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and lo and behold! The issue gets assigned to you.
All you know is that there’s a certain customer with this particular customer id and he’s unable to add an item to his cart.
That’s it.
That’s all you know.
Remember, the user can see the issue happening on his device in real time, but you can’t. You don’t have access to his account.
So, you send a request to the server team to access the error logs from the server, all the while praying to God that you find something useful in those logs – something that will nudge you in the right direction. But you have to be extremely lucky to find something helpful. More often than not, the issue would turn out to be a ghost issue that occurred because the user was doing something stupid, and you would spend an entire night on a wild goose-chase.
If you do manage to learn something helpful from the logs, you would then have to create a test account and try to replicate the issue there, which is just the beginning of the long and tedious process we call bug-hunting.
Either way, it’s going to be a long night.
But what if, let’s say, you did have access to user’s password? (Imagine a red devil sitting on your shoulder whispering this entire paragraph in your ear). You could simply log into his account and check if it’s a ghost issue. You’d be done in like five minutes. Even if it turns out to be a legitimate issue, you can trigger it again from the user’s account itself, and get a much quicker lead on the location of the bug!
The convenience is just too much to ignore!
You begin to get lusty.
Your mouth begins to drool.
And you give in.
Most of the companies in the IT industry that are customer-facing, store your passwords in their database in clear text. Without hashing!
Most of the clients that I’ve worked with as a penetration-tester, most of the companies I’ve done projects for, most of the websites I’ve hacked – all were storing passwords in stark naked clear-text. Plain as the day. Sitting right there for any employee or hacker to see.
I have seen database tables – with rows upon rows of clear text passwords – hundreds of thousands of them – all visible to the naked eye – ripe, juicy, ready to be exploited – their owners completely unaware, utterly naive, sleeping peacefully in their beds without a care in the world.
Now in all fairness, I must admit here that I’m sure none of the top-tier websites are doing this stupidity. Google isn’t doing it. Facebook isn’t doing it. Flipkart isn’t doing it. Your bank, definitely not.
But tier-two and three websites? They are. Startups? You bet your ass they are.
But that’s not all –
Most people, in an act of supreme foolishness, set the same password for all their accounts.
Because let’s face it, they’re the same. Aren’t they?
All I have to do is hack this le random website, which is going to be a piece of cake. Sites like these are not big on security. As soon as I get into their database, I’ll have access to thousands of email id and password pairs, most of which will work verbatim on Gmail.
If you’re extremely unlucky, they’ll work on Paytm too.
And if with some cruel and twisted idea of fun in mind, your fate decided to truly fuck you over, they would work on your Bank’s website too !
Not me but my father in law. In 1957 he got out of the Army and first thing he did was buy a new Plymouth Fury. Not being a car guy he just picked the first one on the lot and drove it home. He had moved back in with his parents and his dad still had a curfue for him. One night he was going to be late so he opened it up to get home faster. He soon saw flashing lights in his rear view mirror but soon lost them and made it home in time. A few minutes after he got home a police car pulled up in the yard. Small town and the cop had recognized his car. Instead of getting arrested the cop told him to be at the start of Nine Mile Road at 9:00 the next night. This road had a long straight part through a swamp with no side roads. So he shows up and county police have set up a drag race. They had stopped traffic at both ends of the straight and the cop with the fastest cruiser lined up beside him. They had new Plymouth Furys with the police engine option. They take off and are neck and neck until the police car tops out and my father in law’s car keeps pulling away. He was fully stopped and out of his car at the other end before the cop car got there.
The cop comes up and ask him what modifications he has made to the car. He tells them he hasn’t even opened the hood since he bought it. They then open the hood and instead of the standard 301 Plymouth engine it had a 392 Chrysler Hemi.
One day my Mom asked me where to go to replace a broken window on her car. When I asked what happened to the window, she said someone threw a brick through it. She was driving through an area with a lot of gangs and saw 2 guys chasing 1 guy. She didn’t like the odds, so pulled her car onto the sidewalk between the guy being chased and the guys doing the chasing. That gave the guy being chased enough of a lead that he got away. The guys who were chasing him weren’t happy about being stopped. They threw anything they could grab at Mom’s car, and a brick went through a window as she drove off. And that’s how Mom got a broken window on her car.
My Dad was also a badass, but in different ways. He was a veteran, but never told us about his military service until he was dying of cancer. He couldn’t see or hear anymore, but he could talk. He told us “funny stories” that were just plain crazy.
Elleigh was a mouthy Little darling from ages 4-10. She just said anything that came to her mind, and sometimes, those things were hilarious. Elleigh once said:
“What’s up boys, take me out to dinner.”
I’m “unstopaddle.”
“You’re old!”
“Daddy looks like Mr. Clean.”
“Me: What’s your dad’s name? (Elleigh: Tyrell)”
*Doing her hair* “Oh, but I’ll look like a jerry.”
“Why was I in your tummy and Leo was in your gyna?” (She was delivered by a c-section, Leo was natural).
“Thong Thong Thong up your heiny.”
“I just had to itch my butt.”
“Ok boss!”
Me: Alright, let’s call… (Elleigh: Punk!)”
“Mommy, you don’t run, you gallop.”
“You did not do sports today because I was with you all day. Ooo, it’s just a joke.”
“I’m constipation” (we were doing affirmations).
“Stop annoying me. Excuse me, you’re not supposed to be talking to me, you’re a stranger.”
Me: You’re going to school. (Elleigh: Yeah, why?) Me: Because that’s what you do every morning. (Elleigh: Are you going to the gym every morning?”
“This dang deer.”
“This is not her real hair, her just put extensions in it. long extensions.”
Me: What’s your favorite kind of food? (Elleigh: Fruit). Me: What kind of fruit? (Elleigh: Fruit loops).
When she was really little, she would call a computer a “cubidiger.”
She would say “feel good” as “fuck you” (really threw people off sometimes).
I don’t know why I have so many footages of her saying these kinds of things.
I had been there three years. Since I disliked the job and had strange vibes for the last 3 months, when I was told I shrugged and said “If that’s the way you feel.” They wanted me to sign a release. I was 61–1/2, Social Security at reduced benefits wouldn’t start until I was 63. I said I wanted my attorney to look at it before I signed, picked up the paper and walked to my office where I packed up my stuff. I kept nothing personal there except safety shoes for walking on the manufacturing floor (I got laughed at a lot because nobody wore safety shoes even though they’re required at most manufacturing facilities), my prescription safety glasses , a sweater, my favorite (and personally purchased) mechanical pencils and left.
My attorney said to sign the release after he crossed out two clauses noting the employment statues they were violating, and faxed it to them. I got a nice settlement and was able to collect unemployment for the 18 months until my 63rd birthday. This was in 2008/2009 when we had up to 100 weeks of unemployment due to recession.
Before anybody calls me a piker for collecting all that UI, I was offered two positions during that time. Each would have required a 100 mile round trip commute daily and only paid about 75% of what I had been making. The Unemployment Service said I was not under an obligation to accept either.
I used to own a small tavern. We had a guy who started hanging out there quite regularly. Nice guy, played darts with the other regulars, bought rounds in order , but didn’t talk much about himself or his past. But it’s a bar, so no one cares. We’ll call him Danny.
He was in early one night around 7pm. My staff is all away on lunch, partner wouldn’t be back til 10pm. I’m all alone. Usually not a big deal. This night, a couple of college jocks got way out of hand and started tearing the place up – breaking cue sticks and tossing around empty kegs. It’s just Danny, me and the college boys. I’m trying to de-escalate and get them to leave. Then, one of the big guys starts pushing me and throwing punches. I’m screwed. That is, until Danny steps in and beats the shit out of two guys much bigger than himself. I was completely shocked! We toss the guys out and he tells me not to call the police. He leaves shortly afterwards.
Next time I see Danny, I want to pick up his tab and chat. He asks me not to tell anyone or talk about it. I figure he’s ex-military and a private guy. He becomes pretty scarce. We’re looking for him, but he doesn’t come around anymore.
About a year later, we see his pic in the paper. He’s on trial for a pair of mob related murders. Turns out he might be responsible for more than a couple of these. I’m very glad he liked me.
There was a time while I was in college that I could only afford to spend about $3 per day on food. Needless to say it wasn’t an easy time.
One day, I spent part of my daily ration on a granola bar. As I walked out of the grocery store, a homeless woman asked me if I had any spare change. I told her I didn’t have any money to spare so instead split my granola bar with her and sat down to have a chat. She continued to ask people for change as we talked. After observing the responses, I asked her: “Would you rather people ignore your question, or say ‘no’ as meanly and rudely as they possibly could?”
She responded without hesitation: “I’d rather have the mean ‘no.’ At least they’re treating me like I’m a person, more than a piece of trash lying on the street.”
I’ll never forget that. I wouldn’t have been able to rationalize it myself, but it makes perfect sense. Her name was Anne.
When I was a much younger airline copilot, I flew with this Syrian captain. He was a Muslim and had flown F-4s for the U.S. Navy. He was a nice guy but kind of kept to himself mostly. I would always ask about the religion and how it was living in Syria and he gradually warmed up to me.
image 35
One day I was complaining about a relationship with a woman and he turned to me and said:
“Randy, I am going to give you two words that will ensure that you will have a long and prosperous marriage. It will end your problems in this relationship and any in the future. It is very old Islamic advice that has stood for centuries, long before the great advances in mathematics. It is among the oldest of all Middle Eastern knowledge”
“If you follow these two words. You will increase your happiness by a factor of 1000. Your wife will adore you and you will live in peace and harmony until you finally die and she mourns your death forever.”
“These two words? Obey and Relax”
“Randy, simply follow these two words in all of your interactions. Obey her demands and then simply relax. The West has not yet discovered this fundamental truth. If you just obey and relax, you will always be happy.”
Edit 1:
This guy was funny.
One day we were talking about his home life and he said: “Randy, Allah came to me before I was born and he told me I was a very bad man. He said I must be punished so he gave me a choice. I could live for ten-thousand years in hell or I could marry this woman. Like a fool, I marry woman!
I guess he didn’t follow his own advice. I heard he finally divorced. Even with this outcome, I still try to follow his advice and it works pretty well.
My wife and I moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to a small town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas three years ago. For anyone wondering, our new town is Grass Valley, pop. 13,000.
Coming from the dining heaven that is the San Francisco area, we set out to find some special occasion restaurants nearby. We were not disappointed.
Our favorite go-to fancy place is called Lola’s, in neighboring Nevada City. It’s comparatively pricy—$250 is the typical check, including tip, for the two of us. It’s located in the Gold Rush-era National Hotel.
We went recently for an anniversary. It was a Wednesday evening and the restaurant was not particularly busy, although there was some kind of event beginning to happen in the attached lounge.
We waited for an unusually long time, but we had no place to be, and we enjoy each other’s company. The server finally came to our table, apologizing, and took our drink order. After about ten minutes, she came by and told us our drinks would be out any minute.
We got our appetizers and waited a long time again for the entrees. The server apologized again and said our drinks would be on the house. We had not complained or looked dissatisfied, but it was a nice gesture on the restaurant’s part. We ordered a second round of cocktails.
The activity in the lounge explained the delays: they had a combination burlesque show and lottery going on. Everyone was having a boisterous good time. Evidently, they swamped the bar and the kitchen.
When our entrees arrived after another unusually long wait, the server apologized again and told us our entire meal and drinks were being comped because of the slow service. We were flabbergasted but happy to have a $200 meal comped. This was all the restaurant’s initiative; we did not complain or even look dissatisfied.
We ordered desserts, one of the many things this restaurant does extremely well. The total bill came to $26.00 for the desserts. The total bill would have been $250.
We tipped 20% of the whole amount. Our server was attentive and even embarrassed at the long delay. We would have been perfectly happy even if we’d paid the whole bill.
That’s the first time I’ve ever had an entire satisfactory meal comped. But it was a good illustration of this restaurant’s commitment to excellence in food quality and service.
Here are 12 tricks I learned from the book ‘12 rules for life an antidote to chaos’, written by psychologist Jodan B Peterson. These life rules really help me a lot:
1: Stand Up Straight With Your Shoulders Back
If you present yourself as defeated, then people will react to you as if you are losing. If you start to straighten up, then people will look at and treat you differently.
So, attend carefully to your posture. Quit drooping and hunching around. Speak your mind. Put your desires forward, as if you had a right to them — at least the same right as others. Walk tall and gaze forthrightly ahead. Dare to be dangerous. Encourage the serotonin to flow plentifully through the neural pathways desperate for its calming influence.
2: Treat Yourself Like Someone You Are Responsible for Helping
We deserve some respect. You deserve some respect. You are important to other people, as much as to yourself. You have some vital role to play in the unfolding destiny of the world. You are, therefore, morally obliged to take care of yourself. You should take care of, help and be good to yourself the same way you would take care of, help and be good to someone you loved and valued.
3: Make Friends with People Who Want the Best For You
This is similar to the idea that you become the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
Don’t think that it is easier to surround yourself with good healthy people than with bad unhealthy people. It’s not. A good, healthy person is an ideal. It requires strength and daring to stand up near such a person. Have some humility. Have some courage. Use your judgment, and protect yourself from too-uncritical compassion and pity.
4: Compare Yourself to Who You Were Yesterday, Not Who Someone Else is Today
We only see what we aim at. The rest of the world (and that’s most of it) is hidden. If we start aiming at something different — something like I want my life to be better” — our minds will start presenting us with new information, derived from the previously hidden world, to aid us in that pursuit.
Then we can put that information to use and move, and act, and observe, and improve. And, after doing so, after improving, we might pursue something different, or higher — something like, I want whatever might be better than just my life being better.” And then we enter a more elevated and more complete reality.
“What could I do, that I would do, to make Life a little better?”
The content is too long, so I put the rest rules here
JEFFREY SACHS HONEST INTERVIEW ABOUT NATO ARROGANCE ON RUSSIA, SUPERPOWER WAR IN UKRAINE, CHINA RISE
I was selling cars and my friends mother said I should have a job that pays a salary and commission and not just straight commission. She suggested a software company and the one she worked at had a position available. I had no background in software or computers at all but I sent in a CV and called the Sales Manager and left a message. Then I would keep calling all day seeing if he would pick up the phone. Around 12 additional times.
On the 3rd he picked up and said NOBODY has ever called him so much in his entire life. I asked if he looked at my CV and he said yes, but there was no experience in computers and software. He even asked some basic questions which I failed miserably.
He finally said that I was obviously persistent and if I read some books about computing I could probably get a job in this industry. I asked which books and he suggested two. I told him I would read both, memorize them and call him back in 2 weeks where he could quiz me about anything. He was incredulous and said ya sure.
Well I bought those books that day and in 2 weeks had them memorized, with yellow highlighter throughout both of them. I could tell you what chapter something was in and the next point the author made. That’s how well I learned them.
2 weeks to the day I called and he picked up on the first 2 rings. I was very nervous and told him I had those books down cold and he could quiz me about anything.
He said to come in on Monday at 9 am. I said how long would the quiz take and he said, “There isn’t a quiz. You start your new job on Monday at 9 am”
I am happy to say I stayed in the computer software industry for 20 years.
I was on a plane once, flying across the US. The guy next to me (in the middle seat) just kept talking nonstop. Eventually the person in the window seat said something back to him. This set the guy off, he told him everything he knew about Australia, what a great country it was, how much he liked Australians. Then he asked what part of Australia the guy was from. He replied that he was from Wales.
Middle seat guy said he loved New South Wales. The Sydney opera house was his favorite piece of architecture in the world.
Window seat guy, replies, No, I am Welsh, from the British Isles.
Middle seat guy, just wouldn’t let it go. He wanted to know why someone from the UK spoke with an Australian accent. Eventually window seat guy lost his patience, and pointedly pulled out a book and started to read.
So, I would say you don’t ask someone from Wales, why they speak with an Australian accent.
I was recently divorced and working for a company that had just opened a branch in Germany. My boss told me four interns were coming from Germany. “You’re a supervisor,” he said. “This is a very big deal, so make sure they are comfortable and happy here.”
But there was a problem. We had three shifts, and I was on the second shift—by which time my boss was long gone for the day, so he couldn’t introduce me in person. When I got to work I found only a list of four first names and the desks they were sitting at. And then when I got to that part of the office, there were only three guys.
I went over and talked to them for a bit, tried to make them feel welcome, made sure they had everything they needed. I was hoping one of them would mention the fourth fellow, but nobody did. I figured he’d be sitting somewhere else, so I excused myself and went to look around.
Then I heard a guy speaking German. Bingo, I thought. I sneaked a look at the name on his desk: Arnold, same first name as the missing fourth fellow, and a German last name. This was him! He turned out to be much nicer than the other three and we had quite a good talk. His English was excellent.
In the following weeks I saw Arnold often and talked to him for a little while each time. The other three were polite, but distant. So when a fax came in written in German, I knew which one to take it to for translation.
When I handed him the fax, he looked at it for a long time. “I’m sorry,” he said. “My German isn’t really good enough to read this.”
And so it turned out that this Arnold wasn’t the fourth German at all—that particular Arnold, the intern my boss was so concerned about, had been out getting a sandwich the afternoon I came to meet them. Then he’d gone home to Germany a week or two later for some unrelated reason.
The Arnold I’d made friends with was an American with a German father—who had taught him just enough to get by in conversation. They’d spent plenty of time in Germany—so when I’d asked him questions about what it was like there, he knew all the answers. And living with his dad had given Arnold just a trace of German accent in his English.
That was 20 years ago. Arnold and I are still having good talks daily—in spite of being married.
In the Army I served, simply asking that question would disqualify you from service.
They don’t want gun nuts. They want you to have the weapon issued, nothing else; unauthorised weapons on military grounds is a lengthy prison sentence, if you survive. The guards are armed, you know, and authorised to fire when they identify a threat. An unauthorised firearm is a threat.
They want you to fire your weapon when ordered to do so, and only when ordered to do so. Unless given that order, you don’t even have access to your weapon.
A pen knife, possibly. Extra supplies – food, yes. Nothing else. Protective gear – buster, you dress in the uniform issued, nothing else is allowed to be visible (so you’re allowed your own underwear). Ammunition – see above re. “identify a threat”.
The military take weapons seriously. It’s dangerous stuff, and they don’t want them fired except under strictly controlled circumstances.
And during my year in the Army, I did, in fact, not even once see an armed officer. Unless you count the Captain’s ceremonial sabre, which he dismissed, along with his entire parade uniform, as a “bloody spectacle”.
I have a friend that makes $200,000,000 annually. He lives in a $3,000,000 house that he probably paid $1,200,000 for. He drives a five year old Toyota. (He owns and runs a fund…was voted the best in the world at his profession not too long ago)
I have a friend that lives in a $4,000,000 condo downtown. He flies in his $17,000,000 jet and drives a $2,000 old pickup truck to his $60,000,000 ranch. (He sold his business to a bank/insurance company for huge money and has grown his wealth rapidly since the sale)
I know of another extremely wealthy family that when we took our kids to get treats after an event, their kids would ask for toppings on their ice cream. The mom kindly told her children, “no, we don’t spurge like that”. I thought, “what?” You own the entire mall that we are eating ice cream in. (He owns malls and resorts globally)
I don’t know of any that live like they are poor, they just live well within their means. They have different financial priorities than many people.
I hope you like really hot, spicy food. Pack up some tasty leftover meat, veggies and rice or potatoes in a take- out tub – then add a full quarter cup of Tabasco, Psycho Bitch or Dave’s Killer hot sauce to it. People usually have a pretty good idea of who is stealing their lunches so, when the suspect heads for the lunchroom, follow them, hang around nearby and wait for the fun to begin. (Hot sauce is food, so you can’t be accused of trying to poison your co-worker.)
I was being tried on a driving charge (i.e.. “recklessly causing an accident”).
Where I live, people being tried for “minor” offences will be assigned a common courtroom (i.e., Courtroom 335 12PM July 5, 1923).
I was in my courtroom waiting for my trial to begin when I was approached by an officer and asked to leave the courtroom.
In the hallway, I was told to go to another courtroom (no explanation).
The other courtroom was practically empty. A judge sat on the bench, one suit was standing behind the crown’s desk and one suit was standing behind the defense’s desk. Court reporters were present.
I was urged to stand at the defense’s desk and, at that point, I accepted the suit standing at the defense’s desk as my legal representative.
When I got to the desk, there was a short conversation between the judge and the suits. It took about a minute (maybe less).
And then I was told that I was “Free to go”.
And everybody just left the courtroom.
PS: The “accident” was, I think, a fraud. By the time I got to trial, nobody cared (and not even the police showed up to swear evidence … nobody in that courtroom was involved, in any way, with the case).
I was “constructively dismissed” by a new owner. I was offering my opinion as a good manager should and was told “shut up, sit down and do what I say; or leave”. To everyone else’s dismay, I left; I was off the property less than an hour later.
About two weeks later, I received a call from the controller desparately asking me for the admin passwords for the company’s mainframe (I was the one and only “unofficial” IT administrator for about three years) as it had crashed. I told him I couldn’t help him as my current employment contract prohibits me from directly assisting them (within 1/2 hour of driving off the lot and calling my wife to tell her I had left, I had already received calls from three competitors offering me a job. I had accepted an offer with their biggest rival); but that he could try contacting my current employer to “purchase” my services (there was no such condition, but I reported the contact to my current employer who was ecstatically happy to play along). They did, and was charged $5,000 for my single visit of less than an hour; to type in the master password and let them change it (1/2 of that fee was paid to me as a bonus).
I later found out that my former employer also had to pay over $20,000 in OT to recover the system, as there was no current tape backup. At the time, I was also the only one that was responsible for managing the daily tape backups; specifically inserting a new tape cartridge every morning. There were two daytime receptionists that I had trained to cover for me on my days off and when I went on vacation, but the full-time one was let go only a few days prior to me leaving, and the part-time one had quit in protest of being asked to work 7 days a week until a new full-time one was hired and trained. They had to manually re-enter two weeks of parts invoices and service work orders, while at the same time work off manual invoices and work orders until the system was caught up.
That owner didn’t last long; three years after I left, the franchise agreement was yanked by the manufacturer and the dealership closed permanently.
Because talking to a stranger is actually easier than you think it is.
Commit to the five seconds rule – my personal ace in the hole. I approached 100 women in 40 days with this trick. All it involves is that you make a decision on the first five seconds of seeing the stranger whether you are approaching or not. At first, I kept saying no, not yet, next time and then one day I just said fuck it! I’m doing this and I did. Don’t ask me how it turned out.
Use the universal opener and stop thinking – yes our mind is the great storyteller and a perfectionist one at that. If you give yourself too much time to think, you will end up not approaching the stranger so do what I did. Use the universal opener. It’s something called Hello. I think you’ve heard about it.
Avoid the alpha male trap – I know some people will tell you dress up, look cool, beef up and hold a wine glass standing by the corner, that advice is the worse shit in the world. It’s what I call the alpha male trap, feeling so confident in yourself that you don’t wanna talk with anyone and you expect them to feel your vibe and gravitate towards you. Avoid practicing this, calm down! Relax and smile when you are out there.
Open up! – still on the same point. Avoid closing up your body language by holding something in front of you such as your phone or glass bottle. Make sure in social settings, your body is open and you appear calm and relaxed. Please don’t ever approach anyone with the wrong body language. Research shows we process body language faster than sounds(as little as 0.2sec).
Smile like a lotto winner – one crazy genius called Ralph Waldo Emerson made the great statement that “the whole world loves a lover”, damn but he was right. The key to people’s heart is positivity if you are not aware. You just have to know that most people are not comfortable with meeting new people. So you have to put their minds to rest that you’re harmless and you want nothing but a good nice conversation. Smiling and exuding positivity does this perfectly.
Ask for the name and use it – I read this in Dale Carnegie’s book, How to Win Friends & Influence People, and it has never failed me. When you meet a stranger, make sure you get the name and use it repeatedly in the first conversation.
Watch comedy shows – apart from the added benefit of this improving your overall life happiness exponentially, this will add a funny tint to your conversations. People love humor you know.
Observe the rules – the thing about social situations is that there are no universal rules anywhere. How you should behave depends on where you are – you have to behave differently in a church compared to a networking party. The Super trick is to take some time to observe how people are acting around you, are if they are being upbeat or cool headed. Don’t bring noise into a cool environment or calm into a sizzling energetic room. Observe the rules and play by them. Then you win!
Go radical truth on them – out of those 100 women I approached, the ones who became my closest friends were those I went total truth on. Here’s what I mean; I approach them and said hello, then told them I’m a shy guy on a mission to approach 100 girls to build his confidence and that she is my number 41. This perks them up and they usually laugh, then they look at my face, see that I am serious and then we have a wonderful conversation and I always get their numbers. Crazy, right?
Guess – a lot of strangers are really not cool with you offloading a truckload of questions on them. They close up quickly and excuse themselves and that’s why I use guessing at times. I read about it in a blog post that I can’t really remember. It goes like this – during the conversation, instead of asking “where are you from”, observe them and say something like “you look like a new yorker”. Or instead of “what do you do”, say “something tells me you’re a fun person” or “something tells me you stay indoors a lot”. You get the Gist already.
Prepare to be human – I still approach women and get rejected, I still try to make friends on the bus, parties, church, etc, and get rubbed on. You just have to be ready for being a human, not everyone is going to like you or want to talk to you. Accept this and when the time comes that someone rejects you, remember that it’s normal and go find someone else to talk to.
Several years ago, I was on the ladder working on the roof of my shed. Off in the distance there were some people shooting. This is common here as I live in the South (of America). Most people around are fairly safe with their practice shooting. While on the ladder, I heard what sounded like a hummingbird fly by. I looked around for him/her and couldn’t find it. I heard another and another. It dawned on me that these were not hummingbirds, but bullets. I got off the ladder, and yelled as loud as I could that they were shooting towards my house. A few more shots and I went inside and called the sheriff department to go by and tell them they were shooting at my house. I waited a couple hours and heard the shots again. I got in the truck, drove around to the property behind mine and pulled up. The guy and some friends were out shooting targets. I introduced myself and we talked a bit about guns. Then I pointed out that behind their fence was my house about 500 yrs through the woods. I had been up on a ladder and several of their rounds had come near me. They were horrified. I told them to point toward the sand plant since it was closed on the weekend or build a berm to shoot into. they apologized and changed where they were shooting.
I’m Jewish and was marrying a Roman Catholic woman. My parents were vehemently against it, but they also demanded that it be a civil ceremony. My bride wanted the church wedding.
I told her if she wanted the church wedding, that’s what we’ll do. I was not really practicing Jewish traditions, I wasn’t going to synagogue, I routinely worked on Saturdays if my job called for it, and didn’t keep kosher. In fact, since leaving my parents’ home at age 20, I had eaten a cheeseburger for the first time in my life, and had a milk shake along with it!
My parents tried to pressure me to pressure her to at least make it a civil ceremony. I had never even discussed it with her. I told them I would ask, but if she said she wanted the church wedding, then that was the way it would be. They told me they were severing all communication with me. I told them that was okay. They were north of 60 and 70, and living across the ocean, so I replied that I would have to get used to not having them around eventually and I might as well start.
I never backed down, and never regretted it. It set the tone for our future dealings. They knew I was immune to any bullying or any pressure they could bring to bear. If they wanted me to do something, they were going to have to be reasonable and try to convince me with valid argument and not arbitrary stubbornness.
My husband is more approachable than they are, more down to earth.
We married in our 40’s after failed marriages, so we had a civil wedding with my step kids as our witnesses. They were excited to have me in their family, and I was happy to be their stepmom.
He rarely spoke of the rest of his family and I didn’t meet them until after we were married.
I moved to his hometown which was an hour away and where the family lives.
I was a wreck when Christmas rolled around. The few encounters I had with these people were not welcoming. In fact, they completely ignored me.
I went shopping with my husband to buy gifts for everyone, and the spirit of Christmas eased my fears.
When we arrived I felt the chill. I spoke directly to several people and they didn’t acknowledge me in any way.
So, with my Christmas spirit extinguished, I reluctantly sat by the Christmas tree to open gifts.
After the presents were all passed out, I sat and tried to not act surprised by not having anything to open.
In reality, I was totally embarrassed and fighting back the tears.
My family always bought a few extra gifts in case someone unexpectedly joined us.
I wasn’t expecting much, but I never dreamed they would be so rude.
“Eat the frog”. Write down 1 task that you must absolutely perform in order for the day to be a success, and do it first when you get to work.
Send 1 call/text/email to an old friend or colleague that you haven’t spoken with in a while. Over one year, that adds up to 365 reignited relationships (or 61 relationships reignited six times apiece).
End the day with fewer emails in your inbox than you started with. Repeat until you get to inbox zero.
Give away / donate one item in your household every single day. Repeat until you have an uncluttered, restful home.
Answer one question on Quora per day. Work on your writing ability while contributing to the organization of the world’s knowledge.
Walk to and from work, if possible. Exercise! Sunshine!
Eat at least one fruit or vegetable each day. Sure, you should probably eat a half-dozen servings of each. But things can get really screwed up when you are eating zero fruits and veggies. Start small and be consistent.
Express gratitude. My days go so much smoother when I remind myself: “dude, you could just as easily have been born in a Sudanese refugee camp. You’re one lucky mo-fo.”
Spend at least 20 minutes reading something that is completely unrelated to your career (or “personal development”). Creative thinking requires varied inputs. If you have monofocus (e.g. only read about startups all day), you’re severely limiting the amount of interesting ideas you can come up with.
Get uncomfortable at least 1x per day (ideally 3x or 5x). By “get uncomfortable” I mean “summon the courage to do something that makes you anxious”. Speak up during the work conference call. Say hi to the pretty girl or fella standing next to you in line. Run 4 miles instead of 3. Et cetera. Remember: “Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.” – George Addair
Polenta with Cheese (Mamaliga — Rumania)
how to cook polenta 3
Ingredients
1 cup yellow cornmeal
3/4 cup water
3 1/4 cups boiling water
2 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon butter or margarine
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/3 cup shredded Swiss or Kashkaval cheese
Instructions
Mix cornmeal and 3/4 cup water in 2-quart saucepan. Stir in 3 1/4 cups water and the salt. Cook, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens and boils; reduce heat. Cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, 10 minutes.
Remove from heat; stir until smooth. Spread 1/3 of the mixture in greased 1 1/2-quart casserole. Dot with 1/3 of the butter; sprinkle with 1/3 of the Parmesan cheese. Repeat twice. Sprinkle with Swiss cheese. Bake uncovered at 350 degrees F until hot and bubbly, 15 to 20 minutes.
Fried Cornmeal Mush
Omit butter and the grated Parmesan and Swiss cheeses. After cooking 10 minutes, spread in greased 9 x 5-inch loaf pan. Cover and refrigerate until firm, at least 12 hours. Invert pan to unmold; cut into 1/2-inch slices.
Heat 2 tablespoons butter in skillet until melted. Coat slices with flour; cook uncovered in butter over low heat until brown, about 5 minutes on each side. Serve with molasses, jam, maple syrup or sour cream if desired.
When I was growing up, I referred to my Maternal Grandfather as “Uncle”. Mind you, this was in a Irish Catholic household, and unless you were the first husband, and the father of the mother, you became “uncle”. Not grandfather.
So…
My grandfather on my mother’s side was “uncle”, not “grandfather”, because as I surmise today (as a much older man) he was not my mother’s father.
Ok.
They, like my father’s family had separate bedrooms for the man and the woman. My grandmother had her bedroom, and my “uncle” had his own bedroom. This was actually quite common in my family, as the men-folk from both families all started to snore when they turned 40 or so.
LOL
The poor women would never get any sleep unless that arrangement occurred. Yeah. It was never really explained that way to me. It’s just that you figure out these things over time as you age. Otherwise, it’s just a “family affair”, and something that you are supposed to “understand” and absorb like osmosis.
Jeeze!
That was not the only room that the women and the men folk didn’t share. Oh no. They also did not share the bathroom.
The men’s bathroom, for the people on both sides of my family was in the basement. This also included my father. Who had a little cubby hole under the basement stairs. As well as all my uncles. Later on, when I was much older, and my father was in his 70’s this arrangement continued with his new wife. She had her own bedroom, and bathroom, and so did my father. And his bathroom was in the basement… yet again.
…
Anyways, one day we (as kids, I was perhaps 14 at the time) were visiting my maternal grandmother, and she and my brother was in “uncle” Frank’s bedroom. And going through his credenza. And she was all Hell bent on giving away some of “uncle” Frank’s old items that he never wore.
And he just stood there. Really kinda emotional.
He had a leather jacket, “bomber “highwayman”style with a logo on the back that dated to the 1940’s and my grandmother was giving it to my younger brother Daniel. It fit him perfectly.
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But, it was painful to watch because my “uncle” Frank did not want to part with that jacket. It’s not that he ever wore it, but it held some important memories and emotions to him, but my grandmother seemed oblivious to his emotional state.
I didn’t understand.
Two years later… he died. I was working in the mines, and it was mentioned as an off-hand remark at the dinner table one weekend. “Oh, by the way… Uncle Frank died”…followed by “please pass the peas”, and “How’s your cheerleader project going…” (said to my sister).
…
Odd. Really odd.
I have never been able to go though the emotional disconnect with “uncle” Frank and my grandmother, as all my uncles and aunties. When I checked on ancestry dot com, he is officially listed as my maternal grandfather… so what is up with that? Eh?
It only seems to point to another man being my mother’s father. But I’ll never know the truth.
An “official” father, but referred to as an “uncle”. Hum… Was a different “father” involved?
Anyways… here’s to Frank.
You were certainly unappreciated, and not as well respected (I believe) that you deserve. Perhaps it’s an Irish-American thing, but this little post will allow you to live on somewhat… in the minds of thousands of strangers.
…
As far as the leather jacket was concerned, yeah… my brother loved it and wore it all the time in his high school years and into his college years. It was a “truckers leather jacket” (highwayman) and fit him well.
highwayman leather jacket 1940s
And Frank. When you reincarnate… please never allow yourself to be P-whipped by anyone. It’s not becoming. Your clothes are YOURS. No one else’s.
I think I may have answered a similar question before but the best response I’ve heard was from my wife. She was a senior manager in Children’s Social Services in the UK. She was involved in a very unfortunate case about a social worker with Schizophrenia which came before the Family Court. Due to the social worker’s condition it was felt that her child needed to be taken into care for their protection. In challenging this, the social worker’s barrister quoted from a manual providing guidance to social workers. My wife challenged his defence saying that he was taking the particular section out of context and what was really intended was something quite different.
The barrister then challenged her in the sort of language beloved of smart-arsed lawyers ‘Oh, you are blessed with this wonderous gift denied to us mere mortals that you can look at the written page and and read the mind of the author when they wrote it’.
My wife then replied……
‘If you look at the author’s name on the front page of that document, you will see that I did indeed produce that guidance. ‘
The judge was covering his mouth with his hand to hide his snigger.
Deactivated or deleted all my social media – this removes the temptation to look.
Deleted their phone number and any trace of them that I could – photos and any other memorabilia I had.
Went on a long holiday on my own somewhere warm by the sea, sparsely populated and that I’d never been to before.
When I got home, I came out of my very early retirement (at 50) to throw myself back into my work in law and business so that I could direct all of my energy & emotion & passion into something positive that ended up making me quite a bit of money. I was so busy that I didn’t have the time to feel sorry for myself or miss her.
I got fit. I was never obese and had been quite fit & athletic up to my 40’s which was a hold over for my military service, but I was middle aged and starting to feel it. I worked out 5 times a week like a mad ba$tard, walked 3–4 miles every day, dropped 42lbs and looked 10 years younger. I’d never felt better, more energy, less aches and pains and my libido went through the roof 😁
Two years and six months later my life was completely different and I didn’t care about the Narc anymore.
I will admit that despite all of this I do still miss her sometimes… for maybe about ten seconds – or at least I miss the illusion and dream of who she led me to believe she was. But in focusing on myself I was able re-establish my own identity again which then reinforced the fact that it wasn’t my fault. That I wasn’t to blame for what happened.
Because some people are just wrong in the head and can be quite toxic & poisonous to the people they latch onto.
The moral of this story is that when you leave the narcissist, you have to focus on YOU! Fuck them, try and forget about them as best you can and work on yourself. It doesn’t matter what you do or where you are, but if you concentrate on levelling up and doing whatever you can to better and improve yourself, you will eventually heal and no longer give a $hit about the Narc.
And your life will be better too!
I promise.
Bread and Butter Pudding
Bread and Butter Pudding
Ingredients
Butter for greasing
5 slices white bread, crusts removed, thinly spread with butter
1/2 cup raisins
2 pieces lemon rind
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
3 medium eggs (at room temperature)
2 cups milk
1 tablespoon brown sugar
8 ounces heavy cream, lightly whipped
Instructions
Thoroughly grease a 6-cup round ovenproof soufflé dish.
Lay a slice of buttered bread, butter side up, in the base of the dish, sprinkle on a few of the raisins, and repeat until bread and raisins are used up, reserving enough raisins to sprinkle on the top.
Slide the 2 pieces of lemon rind down into the dish on opposite sides from each other.
Place the granulated sugar in a mixing bowl, break in the eggs, and beat for 1 minute with a balloon whisk or electric hand mixer.
Add milk and mix well. Pour over the bread and push the bread down so that it gets soaked, then sprinkle the brown sugar on top.
Heat the oven to 425 degrees F and after 5 minutes of preheating, place the pudding in oven.
Bake for 30 minutes until the dessert has risen well and the top is crusty and golden brown.
Serve immediately with whipped cream.
Secret Door Reveals Killer’s Darkest Secrets | Documentary
The world—American or otherwise—should bear this in mind.
Chinese ports handled 300m containers last year.
To put the number in context, American ports struggle with 50–60m, with the 10% increase during covid provoking loud creaks of protest from the antiquated system, resulting in transpacific shipping rates going up by an order of magnitude, or >10x.
China is the truly the world’s factory. It imports plenty, and exports plenty.
A naval blockade of China equals a naval blockade of the world, tradewise.
What happens to the >1t in annual revenue that American MNCs generate from within the mainland? Note this is not visible from bilateral trade figures.
What happens to Wall Street?
Good luck with that foolhardy scenario, which will lead to material collapse of civil society everywhere, because China is indispensable to the global supply chain.
Cheese and Onions
Serve with potatoes.
Cheese and Onions
Ingredients
7 or 8 large onions, peeled and sliced
1 cup water
14 ounces extra sharp Cheddar cheese, shredded
Instructions
Put half of onions in a microwave proof dish and add water.
Microwave about 15 minutes, drain and put into a glass casserole dish.
Put half of cheese on top of onions. Repeat with remaining onions, adding them to dish when cooked in microwave and adding remaining cheese.
Bake at 350 degrees F for about 30 minutes or until cheese is browned to your taste.
I was eight months pregnant, and I was huge. I was at the grocery store and I had just gotten in line and was putting the items on the conveyor belt when a very strong contraction hit, you know, the stop you in your tracks kind. While I was standing there trying to catch my breath and wait for the pain to pass, the customer behind me, who was apparently in a hurry, told me to “move my fat a@&^$” on so she could go. The cashier, who knew me figured out what was happening, had already reached out to her supervisor and was closing down the line so she could help me, when the customer said really loudly, “That fat cow just peed on the floor”, ( my water hadn’t broken, but it had started leaking). Hilarious chaos ensues, I’m hunched over the counter being yelled at by the customer, the cashier and my friend are both yelling at her, and the supervisor is trying to herd the yelling customer and the others, who are trying to see what’s going on, to another line to get them checked out. The last thing I remembered was being called a “fat cow”, everything else receded into the background. What I remembered of that incident was what the cashier and my friend told me when they visited me in the hospital. The cashier later told me my friend ripped that woman a new one while the paramedics were putting me into the ambulance.
This happened to me. A woman wearing a hijab was in my seat. I politely said “excuse me but I think this is my seat.” The man next to her, by the window, very sternly said “no, this is my wife and she will stay here.” He was middle eastern. I say this not because I’m racist but because I realized there was a culture concern here. I showed him my ticket, but he very rudely proclaimed that his wife was not moving. The poor wife never spoke, but kept her eyes down the whole time.
The flight attendant came over to see what was going on. The husband was very rude to her as well and said his wife would not move. After some more conversation, in which the man wouldn’t budge, the flight attendant looked at me with a bit of desperation in her eyes. I knew that if things escalated, the man and his wife would be removed from the plane and we’d all be delayed. She asked me if I would consider changing seats with the woman, whose assigned seat was a couple of rows back.
I looked at the rude man and said, “No, I don’t mind. All he had to do was ask me.”
Part of me wishes I had made a thing out it, because his rudeness should not have won, but ultimately I didn’t want the plane to be delayed. The person I felt sorry for was the embarrassed, subservient wife.
Fear
Rare Ferrari Daytona Found After 40 Years In Japanese Barn
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Many thought this car didn’t even exist.
Ferrari had, in fact, only ever commissioned one street version of its Daytona with a full aluminum body. Completed in 1969, the car was exported to a Japanese dealership in 1971 and then featured in the January 1972 issue of Car Graphic, a Japanese motoring magazine.
After passing hands several times, it ended up in the barn of its last owner, Makoto Takai, some time around 1980.
The car is in “barn find” condition and is being put up for sale unrestored. The odometer displays just over 22,000 miles. RM Sotheby’s expects the car to fetch up to 1.7 million euros ($2 million), according to the auction catalog.
It’s jury selection for a medical malpractice case. It’s tedious, and the judge appears to be asleep. Lawyers have questioned a dozen potential jurors already. “Do you know anyone on the witness list?” “Have you ever been harmed by a medical practitioner?” “Has anyone you know been harmed by a medical practitioner?”…he’s reading the questions off a clipboard and making notes from time to time.
They get to one juror and before questions even begin he’s giving lawyerman the eye, like “Tread carefully, sir.” Lawyer doesn’t seem to notice.
“Do you know anyone on the witness list?” “Yes.” Eye. “Who do you know?” “The doctors listed as expert witnesses for the prosecution.” Eye. “All the doctors listed as expert witnesses?” “Yes.” Eye “How do you know them?” Juror sighs. “Through my…profession.”
He’s clearly trying not to provide extra info, but lawyer plows on. I’m already smirking. I don’t know what’s coming, but I sense a train wreck. The lawyer looks at the juror expectantly. The juror finally says, “I’m an investigator.”
“Of what?” “Insurance fraud.” Oh snap.
“CHAMBERS NOW,” says the judge. Oh hell, I guess he wasn’t asleep after all.
They ended up dismissing the whole jury pool—we’d been hopelessly tainted. The judge was pissed. I just thought it was hilarious.
One day,a bus driver went to the bus garage, started his bus and drove off along the route.
No problem for the first few stops,afew people got on , a few got off and things went generally well.
image 492
Google image
At the next stop, however,a big hulk of a guy got on. Six feet height, built like a wrestler,arms hanging down to the ground. He glared at the driver and said, “ Big John doesn’t have to pay!
image 491
Google image
The driver was five feet three,thin, and basically meek.
Naturally,he didn’t argue with Big John,but he wasn’t happy about it.
The next day the same thing happened. Big John got on again,made a show of refusing to pay, and sat down.
And the next day, and the one after that..
This went over the driver,who started losing sleep over the way Big John was taking advantage of him.
Finally he could stand it no longer.
He signed up for body building course,karate,judo and all that stuff.
By the end of the summer,he had become quite strong and the big thing is that he felt really good about himself.
So on the next Monday, when Big John once again got on the bus and said, “Big John doesn’t pay!” The driver stood up,glared back at the passenger and screamed, “And why not?”
With a surprised look on his face,Big John replied, “ Big John has a bus pass.”
Like the story above, most often in life, without realising the basics of the problems,we work hard finding solutions at the cost of time, effort , money and relationships. But in reality the problems are not that big. This is an ugly truth of life.
I had a patient with Shy Drager Syndrome. Nothing at all wrong with her mind, but she had very limited use of her body. She was a very nice person who used to drive a school bus. She was in her mid 40s. She was incontinent of bowels and bladder.
There was a CNA (certified nursing assistant) on my hall who was kind of tough. She had a harsh demeanor and some patients and other employees were a bit afraid of her. I wasn’t.
One day I heard a commotion down the hall. I went down there to find my patient crying and the CNA speaking to her in a very loud and rude voice. She had had a bowel movement in her briefs and had tried to make herself more comfortable because she hadn’t been checked by said CNA and I’m sure it was cold and lumpy and uncomfortable.
The CNA was loudly berating her for everyone to hear. She was saying. “You’re disgusting, Margaret! You are so nasty! Do you think I want to deal with this mess that you made”??? Oh hell no. I was livid. I called another CNA to please tend to the patient while I had a talk with the bully CNA.
She didn’t want to hear what I had to say and gave me attitude so I told her to gather her belongings and clock out. I told her that she was no longer employed by us. I advised her to find a line of work where she wouldn’t have the opportunity to terrorize helpless human beings who depended on others for care. She gave me the side eye but left with no issues.
News travels fast and soon the whole facility knew that I had just fired her. They advised me to have someone walk with me to my car that night. They feared retribution. I was called Monday by the administrator to discuss the situation. He was in agreement with me. Problem solved.
When I was 16 I was driving to a friend’s house for the first time with only an address (pre-GPS – pre-cell phone). It was the dead of night and I was having trouble reading the numbers on the houses so I got out of my car, left it running to read the numbers on a house. I read it and realized I wasn’t close so I ran back to my car only to discover that I had apparently hit the door lock on my way out. I stared in horror at my locked car, running, with lights on, in the middle of the road. Finally I went to the house I had looked at and explained the situation. My window was cracked so I asked if I could borrow a coat hanger to try to lift the door lock. I was 16, the man was a full adult and taking pity on me he not only got a hanger but came out to the street to try to unlock my car for me – which was so huge for me as a teenager! As he is is working on it the street lights up. We both look up and a HUGE craft is sailing over us trailing PURPLE fire! I was speechless. We both were. After it passed, the man turned to me and said ‘I’m so glad you’re here… no one would ever believe this….’. He succeeded in unlocking my door and I told everyone this crazy story about a space ship that flew RIGHT OVER ME.
A couple of days later the local paper had a story about it. Apparently it was a satellite burning up during re-entry. Nevertheless it is the most astounding thing I have ever seen with my own eyes.
Probably a long shot that the man who helped me that night will see this but OMG you saved my life that night. 30 years later I still feel immense gratitude, I’m sure 16 year old me did not express that adequately and I’m glad that someone else saw this with me!
Scientists Think There Could Be LIFE on Europa and It’s Even Weirder Than We Thought!
So I went to market yesterday with my mom to buy some vegetables for home. I always purchase vegetables from a specific vendor, as he gives me fresh vegetables in lower price than the market and his respectful behavior towards me. A person came out from a BMW car with his small daughter to buy vegetables. I asked mom to look at his car and said that it costs around 80 lakhs. He was in hurry and asked the vendor to pack 1 kg of tomatoes and cabage with some other vegetables. And then he asked to sum the bill. The vendor said ₹135 . He gave him a 100rs note and started leaving towards his car.
image 49
Then the vendor yelled – Bhaiya ji aur 35 rupay.
Brother you need to give me more 35 rupees.
He – Aree ho jayega rakho tum.
Keep it. It is sufficient.
Vendor- Nahi bhaiya, nhi hoga. Mera khareedi bhi nahi hai utna.
No Brother. Even my purchase is not that much.
He – Tu na kisi aur ko thug na.
You, deceive someone else okay.
Vendor – Nahi, bhaiya meine aapko bahut kam rate lagaya hai. Aapko itne kam mein koi nehi dega.
Nope brother, I have gave you these in less price possible. Nobody is gonna sell you vegetables at this price.
He – Aree hojayega tum rakho na.
Come on ! Keep it na
Vendor – Bhaiya agar aapko nahi lena hai toh aap rakhdo, parr mein itna kaam mein nahi de sakta.
Brother, if you don’t wanna take it then let it be, leave these vegetables. I can’t give you in this cheap price.
After that the person threw all the vegetables in front of the vendor and said ‘rakhle apna Sabji, sadh jayega magar koi nahi lene wala ‘.
‘Keep your vegetables, nobody is gonna take this and it will be rotten’
Me – Aree aapne aise kyu feka Sajiyo ko, usne jab aapko diya tha toh ache se diya na
Why did you throw these vegetable ?! When he sold you the vegetables, he gave you with respect right.
He – Bhai tu apne kaam se kaam rakh.
Bro, you mind your business.
Me – Aap unke boss nahi ho jo aap unse aise vyabhar karoge. Aapko nahi lena tha toh ache se bhi lauta sakte the.
You can’t behave with him like that as you are not his boss. If you wouldn’t want to take vegetables, you could’ve given it back with respect.
He – Yeh kya tera Mama lagta hai ? Tu kyu uska wakil ban rah hai.
Is he your uncle ? Why you are being his advocate!
Me – Han yeh mere mama lagte hai, aur mein banunga uska wakil. Tumhe kuch problem hai
Yes he is my uncle and I will be his advocate. Have any problem?
To divert the argument between us my mom yelled at me to keep quite and said , ‘Bhai Saab aapko toh sabji lena nahi hai, parr hume late hora hai. hume sabji kharidne dijiye’
‘ Brother, you don’t need vegetables, do you ? We are being late so please let us shopping for home.
That person threw daggers at me and finally went away.
Like what’s the benifit to maintain a BMW car when you don’t have money to buy vegetables.
So coming back to the question
What instantly makes a person less attractive?
Abusive behaviour of a person towards the people who stands on the road side whole day to provide us service and feed his family. Towards those people who considered as lower class according to our so called society. Showing your rude behaviour to others won’t make you look either rich or cool. It certainly makes one less attractive no matter how much rich he/she is or how great he/she looks.
Spreading kindness is not that expensive. But the love that we get in return is priceless.
5 Times TikTokers Messed With The Wrong Cartels
Watch this.
Now read this…
From a follower…
This is legit; Gordon Duff claimed years ago that the Mexican cartels (heavily involved with Mossad) own the entire legislatures of many southern states. NM and Az are 100% cartel.
Connecticut and New Hampshire are also fully controlled.
Flabbergasting, right?
2 of the richest, "whitest" states and yet cartel controlled.
As I knew years ago: the US isn't even a country anymore, just competing, very dangerous factions vying for control. The US military (Navy and Army deadly rivals) is still the top faction for now holding it all together.
Intel agencies half compromised. Irish/catholic and Mormon mafias fight for control FBI and CIA.
But for how much longer?
The "jews" are just minor players despite what everyone seems to think. But definitely the money guys.
Interesting times.
And this shows up on Hal Turner.
As the Domain said: by 2024 the US won't be in a position to make war on anybody.
Looks like something is definitely happening at the border, regardless.
https://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/en/news-page/news-nation/flash-u-s-border-being-over-run-by-cartel-trucks-in-arizona
Cheddar Cheese Soup
Cheddar cheese originally came from the English town of Cheddar, where it was made as early as the sixteenth century.
2023 12 27 19 57
Ingredients
1 small onion, chopped
1 medium stalk celery, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons butter or margarine
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
1 (10 3/4 ounce) can condensed chicken broth
1 cup milk
2 cups (8 ounces) shredded Cheddar cheese
Paprika
Instructions
Cover and simmer onion and celery in butter in 2-quart saucepan until onion is tender, about 5 minutes.
Stir in flour, pepper and mustard. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly until smooth and bubbly; remove from heat.
Add chicken broth and milk. Heat to boiling over medium heat, stirring constantly. Boil and stir 1 minute.
Reduce heat to low. Stir in cheese; heat over low heat, stirring occasionally, just until cheese is melted. Do not boil the soup after the cheese has been added, as the soup may separate.
Sprinkle soup with paprika.
The TERRIFYING Last Minutes of Lynyrd Skynyrd
I was in university when this happened, and we were all big fans. We were shaken to the core! Fact.
I grew up (in my elementary school and high school years) in a small town in Western Pennsylvania. And in this small town, was a fair and relatively calm life that in many ways resembles Mayberry RFD… A “small town America”.
We had a “cigar store Indian” at the local Hardware Store.
We had kids riding bicycles and had newspaper routes.
We had PTA clubs, Boy Scouts, and Girl Scouts. And Friday football games.
And we also had a small family store with a large “Pickle Barrel”. This was a wooden barrel that was perhaps one yard high, and filled with pickles and vinegar. And if you wanted a pickle, you would just reach in, and give a nickel to the old man at the cash register.
I believe that these things disappeared during the 1980’s. But the death knell occurred under the “food safety standards” of the Clinton administration.
Anyways… I well remember the days when my father would place 25 cents (a quarter) on the counter, and would buy all of us some nice delicious pickles. These weren’t small either. They were HUGE!
And I do miss those days where I would hold a pickle in my hands and munch away happily. Sigh… a long forgotten time.
Yes. The bride felt “pressured” into the marriage. Traditionally, the bride or her parents hire me. It’s quite rare for the groom or his parents to hire me, but it happens infrequently.
Leading up to the wedding (it was a destination wedding), there were several hints that the bride wasn’t interested in choosing a dress, the flowers or any of the aspects in the planning process. I found this odd and one day about a week prior to the wedding, asked why? The bride felt inadequate. Everything was decided for her. She felt uncomfortable speaking her mind or making a decision. Her fear that the marriage would be a “follow the leader” lifestyle was the reason for this.
After saying “I don’t,” I took her from the altar to the dressing room to give her a moment while stunned guests and family members sat open mouthed.
We needed time to decide if this was “what she really wanted” without the audience. I should add that I’m also a Premarital Counselor with Two Together In Texas, so I’m familiar with awkward situations.
The bride told me, “If the rest of my life will be spent saying yes, I prefer to say no now. My family loves him. He’s successful and a good catch. However, his parents make most of his decisions. He works for his father and I may never measure up to his mother.”
I decided to bring the groom and both sets of parents into the dressing room. This bride needed to voice her concerns and find a resolution or peace. She had waited two years to speak up and it was two years too long.
The end result was they worked it out. They found a middle ground to move forward, and the marriage went on. I flew to California to baptize their baby and the family is doing well. They are happy and well adjusted.
The mother in law now allows the bride to do things her way and the mother no longer pushes her daughter to do what she thinks is best. The mother viewed this wedding as the one “she never had.” The mother in law wanted everything perfect. The bride wanted happiness and the groom simply wanted to please his mother, her mother and finally, the bride. The bride or groom should come first. They are the life partner. They are the person who will stand beside you through thick and thin, and they deserve a voice in decisions and especially the planning process.
The bride wanted a mariachi band at the reception. Both sets of parents were against this idea and found it to be “tacky.” I found a short notice mariachi band and the bride was absolutely thrilled.
Quite frankly, if a marriage isn’t going to work out, I prefer for someone to say “I don’t” and discuss with them their reasons to before announcing a cancellation of the wedding to the guests or finding out if a resolution can be found.
My reasons for addressing an issue on wedding day are that divorces are emotionally devastating. What began with joy ends with sorrow.
Couples should discuss things that bother them long before committing to planning a wedding, although it’s easy to get “caught up in the planning.”
Couples should feel comfortable communicating their feelings and open to discussing issues that are disturbing before planning a life together. I believe in Premarital Counseling because it offers couples an opportunity to discuss their future together.
Weddings aren’t all about the parents. They are all about the couple, regardless of who is writing the check.
This Is What Women Will NEVER Understand About Men’s Dating STRUGGLES!
If you’re not familiar with Christmas, among other things, it’s usually the biggest gift-giving day of the year, at least for us Americans. Also the celebration of the birth of our Savior and all that jazz…
Anyway, this is how gift-giving works between my wife and me—a veteran married couple. This is also how it works between most veteran married couples I know:
We just tell each other what, exactly, complete with pictures and Amazon links if necessary, we want our spouse to get us for Christmas.
Sometimes, we even buy it on their credit cards, since we share finances anyway.
Sometimes, we even buy it ourselves, wrap it, put it under the tree, and tell our spouse that we “took care of it.”
There have been times when my wife opened her Christmas present from me, and I was just as surprised as my children were when we saw it. I got you a new pair of running shoes. Nice.
In the past, I attempted to deviate from my wife’s official Christmas list. You know, to surprise her. I was trying to be romantic.
It rarely went over well, particularly if I attempted to get her clothes or perfume.
Just stick to the list, married guys. Perhaps it’s not as romantic, but it’s still the best option. If you want to deviate from the list, make sure you get everything on the list, too.
This year, my wife requested something that I had to purchase in a showroom and have delivered at a later date to the house. I facetimed with my wife while I was in the store, to make sure I was getting the exact one that she wanted. It’s being delivered on a day when she works from home. She’ll have to be there to receive it. And they say romance is dead…
Licking blocks of ice during the heat wave, NYC, (1912)
I was called to the 6th floor of a 6 floor tenement building for a “seriously unwell child”. A woman was waiting downstairs, and she said “I’m going out, but I think my son is dead. He’s had a cold for a week.” And she left.
I had the jump kit (a first aid kit) and my partner had the oxygen and suction- I went up the 12 set of stairs two at a time (oh, to be young and foolish again…) so I got there before he did. A man was there with 4 kids who all looked very scrubby but also very alive. He said “He’s on the sofa”. And then, they went back to eating.
The little boy was 4 or 5. He was so hot to the touch, and although he had a pulse, he wasn’t breathing. He was wearing red flannel cookie monster pajamas… I will never forget them.
I grabbed him in my arms, started mouth to mouth, and headed back down the stairs. The father actually said “Hey! Shut the door!”
I was busy. I met my partner halfway down. He took one look at the kid and said “Oh Fuck, we gotta get him out of here…”
I jumped in the back, but we were only 5 minutes from the hospital so I just kept him in my arms and did rescue breathing. I didn’t want to delay … my partner was there in less than 3 minutes. His heart was still pumping.
I brought the lad in, the staff took over. We were getting the truck ready when the doctor came out and said “which of you tech’d him?” I told him I did. (Tech-ing means you’re the one with the patient)
He said “You’re going to need a lice treatment.” I sighed.
He said “We can do it inside”. Now that was weird… but when I got inside, he said “I needed to talk to you privately… he died of bacterial meningitis. Did you do mouth to mouth?” Of course I had, he was a little kid. Bacterial Meningitis is spread through saliva and nasal secretions. I was (potentially) screwed.
So, they did blood work and I had to take evil antibiotics that turned everything yellow (INH and Rifampin) for a year. I was there for at the hospital for hours before I got sent home with a month off work to make sure I didn’t have bacterial meningitis too.
Now, I’ve driven way too fast, driven on roads that weren’t safe to walk on never mind drive, worked on cars while traffic buzzed past, turned over an ambulance (wasn’t my fault, honest), gone into burning buildings, gotten blood and lots of other “body stuff” on unprotected skin, walked into domestic violence situations, gone into freezing water to get some one else out, extricated people from a car on the edge of a ravine, been to a plane crash, extricated people from a burning car, talked people down who were holding guns to their own head- but all those times, I could see the risk in front of me. Had I taken the time to look at the kid’s rash, I might have seen the risk but his condition and the complete apathy of his parents drove me to not see the risk- and not assessing for the risk in what you’re doing is the single most dangerous thing anyone can do.
They were 5 minutes from the hospital, and no one cared enough to bring the kid there. Did I tell social services about the apathy of the parents? You can be sure I pursued the matter like a slightly yellow hell hound.
Well I was the uniform manager for a marching band and what we did worked fairly well. We kept an assortment of sizes on hand and when we got a new member, we had them try on those in stock uniforms until we found their best fit. Then we would place the order to replace the one they were issued from stock. There is a lot of variation in cuts of shirts, and one company’s medium might be another company’s large. If someone comes in who looks like a large and says “oh I’m a medium,” say “Here is one try it on; be aware these tend to run small so you may need to move up a size from what you usually wear.” The employee gets to save face, and you don’t have to be rude and say “Oh I can tell by looking at you a medium will never fit.” If I were ordering a large number of shirts, I would first order a selection of sizes for people to try on. Then launder those sample shirts and put them away to issue later to new employees as they come in. If these are something more fitted than a T-shirt or polo shirt and this were going to be a large order, it might be good to have a representative from the uniform or shirt shop to measure people and order one that best fit them.
An Ojibwe Native American spearfishing, Minnesota, (1908)
A few years ago our city decided to try to alleviate the homeless problem.
They bought a large two story motel that had become a bit rundown located along a major freeway.
They spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars fixing it up and remodeling every room into small studio apartments.
Then they let homeless people to live in the apartments.
We would drive by the apartments periodically and every time it looked more rundown.
This went on for a couple of years until one day it was burned to the ground. A news story said one of the homeless people decided to build a fire in one of the apartments. I guess he just like the look of a campfire.
Eventually, the building was demolished and the city sold the land at a significant loss.
Giving a house to every homeless person is not financially feasible. No government entity can afford that.
And, even if it was, it would not solve the homeless problem.
The only way to fix the homeless problem is to help a homeless person, who wants help, become stable and productive so they can eventually afford their own home.
Homelessness isn’t solved in mass. It’s solved one homeless person at a time.
Generalissimus Jiang Jieshi (蔣介石), also known with the Wade-Giles Romanization Chiang Kai-Shek.
image 53
Born 31 October 1887, he was a professional soldier and one of the most genuinely talented soldiers China has ever produced. His tragedy was to live in one of the most tragic eras of China ever, to encounter superior enemies, and having an army full of rotten and corrupt subordinates. He fought a hopeless war of which he had no hopes of winning, yet he did it with utmost courage.
The death of Sun Yat-Sen (Sun Yixian) in 1925 had left China in a power vacuum and interregnum, and the land collapsed into anarchy known as Era of Warlords. China became a Warlordistan. The control of the country was divided among former military cliques of the Beiyang Army and other regional factions from 1916 to 1928.
Chiang raised the National Chinese Army, allied with the Communists led by Mao Zedong, and crushed the warlords, unifying the country. And alas, the Communists proved an unreliable ally – and the Empire beyond the sea, even more unreliable. Japan attacked China in 1931 after the Mukden incident.
The Japanese army was superior in technology, fighting spirit (dao), discipline and logistics. The Guomindang army of Chiang suffered from poor equipment, corruption, lack of patriotism and poor logistics – it was an “army of lions led by jackasses”, but its commander was the alpha lion.
Way too little has been written about the China-Japan war 1931–1941 and China’s part in the World War Two. But China has been one of the main theatres – and one of the main sufferers – in the war, and the Japanese praised the Chinese soldiers, insisting them be second only to the Australians in their will to fight.
Meanwhile Mao Zedong conspired to overthrow Guomindang (or Kuomintang, if you prefer the Wade-Giles Romanization), and after the liberation of China, the civil war re-emerged. The Guomindang army was tired, consumed and exhausted, while Stalin eagerly supported the Communists, finally overcoming the Guomindang 1949. Chiang and the Nationalist refugees fled to Taiwan.
The Communist Chinese propaganda has done all it could to stample Chiang as an unpatriotic American stooge and a traitor, while the Guomindang in Taiwan set up a Western-style state under Christian and Confucian principles.
But nobody could deny Chiang was a true Chinese patriot. His last will was that his body be buried in his hometown Fenghua.
Loyal Husband Finds Out Wife Participates In “Events” While He’s Away Working (She’s Toast!)
When I got into IT I got in the habit of showing up early to prepare for my day. I spent a lot of time traveling to various facilities as a computer support tech so I’d come in to check email and make sure there wasn’t something I needed to do in the office before loading up and hitting the road.
Many of my younger coworkers would clock in on the hour but our business manager, who didn’t clock in, had a bad habit of showing up 15 minutes late each day. (She also had a tendency to leave 5 or10 minutes early, but that’s another story for another time.) One week the IT Director and our boss, the Deputy IT Director, were both out of town so the business manager decided that she could show up whenever she felt like it.
She was at least a half hour late on Monday through Thursday, including 45 minutes late on Wednesday, so when she showed up at 8:15 on Friday morning I exclaimed, “Gee, Linda, this is the earliest you’ve been late all week!”. Everyone got a laugh out of it but Linda, apparently, didn’t think it was funny because she called my boss at the seminar that she was attending to complain.
The next thing I know my boss is calling me and asking what I said to set Linda off. So I told her what had been going on all week. She told me that Linda was offended by my comment and asked if I’d be willing to apologize, and I just laughed and laughed and laughed. Then I said, “No.”
If Linda had told me to eff off, or kiss her butt, or just about anything else I would have taken it in stride but her calling the boss, when she was in the wrong, pissed me off. I’d asked your coworker if he/she signs your paycheck and when they answer in the negative, tell them when you come in is none of their business. But I can understand where they’re coming from, especially if you have a problem getting to work on time.
Jewish women and children arriving at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, Poland, (1944)
This is going to be fun. But let me tell you, its more like what I thought she was like and how she actually is…
When we first met through parents, she looked like a shy girl next door. She was smiling and feeling awkward a lot. After we got married and a little more comfortable, she walks around house naked, has 0 level of shyness.
I thought I was getting cold feet. She was being forced. Turned out she had insisted to her parents that she wanted to get married, like literally told them in a complete sentence, ‘Dad, I want to get married. I don’t have any boyfriend right now. Search a groom for me.’ I’m not even exaggerating, her parents tell this story all the time.
I thought she didn’t like talking. WRONG. She NEVER shuts up. If she does, I’ll wake up. Lol, I’ve started to enjoy it.
She’s frigid. WRONG. Once comfortable, she’s a freak.
She’s so slow and, unhappy person. Wrong. She is hyperactive and becomes happy just about at nothing.
She doesn’t like me. Big time wrong. Turned out, she has liked me since day 1. She loves me.
She’ll probably never fight or argue. Wrong. Loveeess to argue, though I don’t like to admit it much, she’s usually right about things. And people too.
Is probably passive aggressive. Wrong. Tells me when things bother her, almost immediately.
Is dumb. Wrong. She’s really smart.
She does not feel much. Wrong. All of her emotions are intense.
Is very serious. Wrong. Very very wrong. Can’t go on a day without lame jokes. Lame jokes are lifeline to her. She knows they are lame but loves it.
As for the changes, she hasn’t changed much. Can motherhood be included? Anyways, it suits her well.
She’s staying at her parents place with our boy. I miss her. Its been just a day though. I guess, I’ll call now.
Unusual Abandoned Cat Came Into Shelter And Amazed People With Its Size
My Mom…
My Mom once told me that she walked into a room where a couple of friends were discussing her, they didn’t know she was there. She shook her head, smiled and walked away. 🕊
My Mom also told me that she had a friend who talked bad about her, she never knew that Mom found out, Mom never mentioned it. She smiled and walked away from this friendship. 🕊
She told me she had family who chose to shift her out of their life because she stood up for herself for a change. And because she stopped crossing oceans for them when they would not even help her cross a bridge. She smiled, shook her head and walked away. 🕊
So I asked her how she could just walk away from people that betrayed her while pretending to be her friends or family? 🕊
She answered that every time she came to a crossroad like that, she had to decide who will be going forward on her journey with her. This showed her who she cannot take along with her. 🕊
So she explained to me that you should never get mad at a person who betrays you, even in the name of friendship or family. Just gracefully bow out and enjoy your journey with all the new people God puts in their place. 🕊
10 years ago I was an IT consultant, traveling every week. I would also always book a Marriott hotel if one was close to the customer, all paid for on my American Express card.
Marriott awards you points for your stays with them. Once I had at least 100, 000 points I’d call them and request gift certificates. 100, 000 points would give you $1,000 worth of gift certs to pay for your hotel.
Back then, at the end of your stay, someone would come around in the middle of the night and slide the invoice for your stay that week. That invoice would show they charged my AmEx card for whatever the cost was.
Now that invoice was completely processed then. While it says it charged my card, they actually didn’t really do that until the afternoon after you checked out.
So what I would do is I’d go to the front desk with my invoice and my gift certs and tell the clerk that I would rather pay for my stay with the certs rather than my card. Then they’d issue me a new invoice showing I paid in certs. However I still had the original invoice. That would be the invoice I’d submit in my expenses. So every couple of months I’d be reimbursed $1000 so I could pay my cc bill, but since I actually paid in certs that 1000 bucks was essentially free money I’d drop into my savings. I and every one else I knew did it all the time, it was really an awesome little loophole
Beef Steak and Kidney Pie
steak ale prop
Ingredients
Filling
3/4 pound calf kidney or beef liver
Salted water
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 pounds beef steak, cut into bite-size pieces
4 tablespoons butter
4 shallots, finely chopped
1 cup beef bouillon
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon chopped fresh parsley
Pinch of ground cloves
Pinch of marjoram, crushed
1/2 pound fresh mushrooms, sliced and sautéed
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
Pastry Topping
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon shortening
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 to 3 tablespoons cold water
Instructions
Filling: Clean and split kidney; remove fat and large tubes. Soak in salted water 1 hour.
Dry and cut into 1/4-inch slices. Mix flour, salt and pepper; roll kidney and beef pieces in flour mixture.
Melt butter in heavy pot and sauté shallots. When shallots have taken on a little color, add beef and kidney; brown lightly, turning.
Add bouillon, bay leaf, parsley, cloves and marjoram. Stir; cover and simmer 1 to 1 1/4 hours, or until meat is tender.
Add mushrooms and Worcestershire sauce. If liquid is too thin, thicken with smooth paste of flour and cold water.
Grease a deep 10-inch baking dish. Place pie funnel in center. Add meat mixture and allow to cool in refrigerator.
Meanwhile, prepare Pastry Topping. Place pastry over meat, sealing pastry edges to edge of dish. Make vents in pastry to allow steam to escape.
Bake at 450 degrees F for 8 to 10 minutes; lower heat to 375 degrees F and continue baking 15 minutes, or until crust is golden.
Pastry Topping: Cut shortening into flour and salt until particles are size of small peas.
Sprinkle in water, 1 tablespoon at a time, tossing with fork until all flour is moistened and pastry almost cleans sides of bowl, adding 1 to 2 teaspoons water if necessary.
Gather pastry into a ball; shape into flattened round on lightly floured cloth-covered board. Roll out to fit top of casserole.
My best friend had a defective heart. I don’t know the exact term for that, but her heart was on the right side of her chest among several other defects. She couldn’t walk farther than 200m, and her finger tips would always turn black.
When she was born, the doctor gave her a life expectancy of 2 years. She surpassed that. Her parents took her to all the best hospitals in the country. Another estimation: 10 years old. She surpassed that too. She completed high school, she got into college. And she always was a cheerful girl to be with. (Sometimes, her mother kicked my ass out of the house because when we hung out, we laughed too much. Laughing would consume oxygen from her heart and her brain so she would suffer from headaches afterward).
One day, when she was at the university, her heart collapsed. Her doctor demanded her to drop college because it was too much for her. She came back to our hometown, and became an at-home teacher for the kids, and still was a cheerful girl.
After that another year, her heart collapsed once again. She was hospitalized. Her doctor informed her parents that there was nothing more they could do. Her family should consider to unplug the machines and bring her home.
Her mother called me. She said “We are bring [my friend’s name] home”. I rushed into the hospital. Her mother was on one side of her bed holding her left hand, I was on the other side holding her right hand when they unplugged her.
That moment, her mother collapsed to the ground and screamed: “I’ve lost her! From now on, I don’t have anyone to take care of anymore!”
At that moment, I know that just being born normally to be able to live a normal life is extremely lucky. Also, having someone you love by your side, even that means you have to take care of them all the time is also lucky.
Well, not the above but the other way around. In 2014 we were looking to buy a replacement for my wife’s car, and were at the Skoda garage checking out a very-nearly-new Fabia. It had been the showroom’s demonstrator model for a few months, had just a couple of hundred miles on it, but the salespeople had been showing that vehicle to people day in, day out.
We looked in the boot. My wife’s a bee-keeper and a “must have” for her was to be able to get a bee-hive in the back. To do that meant taking the rear parcels shelf off, which I did myself to see how easy it was to do and to replace, since this would be a common action. Putting it back, I noticed you could put it back either in the “conventional” position, or in a half-way house lower position. “Hey, “ I said. “That’s a nifty feature – allows you to put larger items on the parcel shelf but still have it hiding stuff underneath.” At that the salesperson looked in, looked at the shelf, the boot, then went over to his colleague and said “Come over here. We’ve found a brand-new feature!”
We bought the car, still got it now. Don’t think we’ve ever used the parcel shelf in “half-way” position.
My father had been terminally ill for a decade. He was a perfectionist in everything in his life and no detail was ever missed. He was also very stubborn. If there were ever odds almost insurmountable, he always prevailed. This was part of why he’d been terminal for so very long.
One day before, my father agreed that it was time to bring hospice in and make final arrangements. My parents had two other daughters, I was the only one who lived in the same town. Because of my location, he wanted me to be at those meetings.
I was working in the executive offices for a local bank. The woman I reported to was exacting in everything and expected perfection to be performed with minimal preparation and no clarifications. She wanted a mind reader who loved emergencies and placed her on a pedestal.
After that phone call, I was shaken up. It wasn’t unexpected, but you are never really prepared for the situation when you are facing it.
“Something has come up. It’s a delicate family matter,” I said.
“That’s just not convenient,” she said. “Even if it’s life or death, it’s not convenient. I have a series of reports that are due today.” This was news to me. “And I’m expecting that you will be here long after hours.”
“It actually is life or death,” I said. I was about to elaborate when she cut me off.
“Is it your life or death?”
“Honestly, no.”
“Then it’s not convenient.”
“I’m afraid that poor planning on your part really isn’t my problem.”
“Excuse me?” she asked.
“No excuse for you and your lack of planning. I’m quitting as of,” I looked at my watch, “about two minutes from now. Just long enough to get my purse and log off the computer.”
“You can’t do that,” she said.
“Can and did.”
I grabbed my purse and left the building.
I replaced the job with a much nicer one in about two days.
My father passed less than two weeks from my exit. The new job, and I only worked it for two days when he died, not only let me have the time off to complete his arrangements and his funeral, sent flowers. One week later, HR from the bank called, offered me a raise and an apology. “I’m sorry. That’s just not convenient.”
I once attended a court case to support a friend. Her sister was accused by a nasty neighbour of breaking into the nasty neighbour’s home, stealing items, and trying to assault her (on more than one occasion).
My friend and her sister were both black women. It was no secret that the neighbour was this old racist woman who routinely called the police on the sister and her boyfriend when they were minding their own business. When the woman invited her sister (my friend), and her kids to come to visit and swim in their pool, also to use the tennis courts and fitness room that was shared by the condo complex. The boyfriend was also black.
When called to testify the nasty neighbour gave detailed dates about the break in and mentioned her “fox fur coat, some diamond jewellery and several hams and frozen meat”, being taken from her home. She swore that she came home to see the women and her boyfriend running out the back door at night with the merchandise in a leather suitcase.
When the lawyer for the woman questioned the woman and her boyfriend, who each took turns on the stand, it was proven that the neighbour lied by showing that:
My friend’s sister, who worked as a passenger flight attendant, was working on a flight that was on its way to Singapore during the very night and time when she was supposed to have broken into the neighbour’s home. (It’s hard to break into a home when you’re two hours into a 12 hour flight that is 39,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean.)
She and her boyfriend were also vegetarians who never ate meat nor wore nor owned leather and fur since they both believed that “meat is murder”, and to wear animal furs and leather was “cruel and inhumane”.
The boyfriend was also on his way to Singapore flying from India the afternoon before, to meet up with his girlfriend after a business trip for three day vacation, before they’d fly back to Canada. He proposed marriage while they visited Singapore (she said “yes” and did marry him). So they were in Singapore the day before “the break in” at the neighbour’s home and they didn’t return until three days later.
The lawyer for my friend’s sister and her boyfriend also presented pictures of the very “stolen” items in question taken by the police when they were recovered from pawn shops and a consignment store. The items were pawned by a young white man, a known drug addict with a lengthy arrest record who happened to be the neighbour’s nephew whom the neighbour gave money to on a regular basis (not helping him at all).
Before the judge dismissed all charges he ordered the neighbour to be taken into custody for “fraud, perjury, aiding and abetting a criminal” and a few other charges.
In the end the neighbour lost her house and all her savings when my friend’s sister and her boyfriend sued the neighbour for slander and defamation of character. They won a large sum in court and the neighbour ended up spending four years in prison for additional charges which included drug possession on top of what she was already convicted of.
I guess nasty racist people get what’s coming to them after all.
College students pile into a Volkswagen Beetle, (c. 1965)
For those that do it full time, very tough. They have to stand up in front of the crowd and make them laugh. Do you realize what it takes to do that? Then there is the travelling and eating crap food and nerves. For those starting out it is not easy at all. For those on top, well, they have to keep coming up with acts to stay on top. As I did both, a standup comedian and professional drummer in a band, playing in a band was far easier. Below is a little of my stand up act.
I was a part time stand up comedian for awhile along with being a professional drummer. I auditioned for a few shows in local comedy clubs. They must have liked me, I got jobs. I was usually the start off guy, first one out. I had my own shtick. The guy who showed up at the wrong event.
I’d walk out then somberly say, “ I realize this is a sad time for most of you, but Mary, bless her soul loved humour.” Then I’d look behind me and kind of look around confused, then I’d turn to the audience. “Um, Mary’s passing surprised many, especially Mary. I think she’d like some humour at her funeral. She often said that “to laugh at something heartily means that you think it’s funny,” and I heartily agree. I always thought Mary was a deep thinker and that proves it right?
“She was 81, poor Mary. Actually, a woman’s life expectancy is 80, so hey, good for her. Now a man’s life expectancy is 76. If I make it to 76, I’m going to have a sex change. Right? I’ll beat those odds. So I hope to add a bit of humour to Mary’s funeral, wherever she is,” and I look around again for Mary.
Suddenly a sharp whistle from the stage side. I’d stop and walk over with my mic.
“This is not a funeral home. This is a comedy club,” the stage manager would tell me so the audience would hear.
“What? This isn’t Roses Funeral Parlour?” I would say surprised. The crowd would start laughing.
“Do you see Mary anywhere?” he’d ask.
“Actually no,” I would say looking around. “How much do you pay here?”
“$250.” he’d tell me.
A few seconds of silence then I’d say, “Sure, what the hell, Mary won’t miss me,” then I’d walk back center stage where people would be giggling.
“Okay, who here had a good shit today?” Well the crowd would laugh. Somebody always raised a hand, I’d try to pick a girl.
“You did, great, good for you. I won’t ask you details okay?” The girl would laugh.
“So do you know there are many types of shits? There’s the peanut butter shit; that’s the one where you can use up to three rolls of toilet paper, the upside down volcano shit, the totally air shit which isn’t even really a shit though it felt like it was going to be one,,” the shart which is a shit that felt like air but wasn’t, the bombing raid shit and the ghost shit.” Then I’d stop and go back to the girl.
“Okay, I was just wondering what came out that made it such a good shit? We all want to know don’t we folks?” I’d say looking around and people would start applauding. Of course the girl would laugh and hide her face in her hands. “Okay forget it. Tell me privately later. People, I’m going to tell you what the best shit of all is. It’s the Ghost Shit!”
“This is the one when you have to go so bad and there’s no restroom around. It’s turtling so bad it’s stretching your underwear. Suddenly, by some miracle, you find a restroom. You fly in there and sit on the toilet after near ripping your pants off. And ….. it starts.”
“Like the RMS Titanic, this thing is moving out with no effort and it seems like it’s going forever. You are wondering how this thing is going to go down that little toilet hole. It’s embarrassing if you are at someone’s house and you come out of the bathroom and ask, “Hey, have you got a plunger? A good one? One with a lot of suction?” You always get a strange look when you ask that don’t you?
Anyway, so the Titanic has left the dock and you are feeling suddenly very hollow inside, and relieved. You grab some toilet paper and wipe. Nothing! Not a speck of shit on your ass. Puzzled, you stand up and look at the toilet. It’s looking back at you innocent as hell. THERE IS NOTHING IN THE TOILET! What the hell? You look around; nope, not on the floor! It’s nowhere but you felt it by God! That ladies and gentlemen is the Ghost Shit, or maybe I should have called it the Houdini Shit.
Crude yes but it got me back to the comedy clubs. People loved me talking about shit because they all go through it every day.
I used to be hired to give speeches at weddings. Just before the actual person would rise to give a toast to the bride, I would jump up and interrupt him.
“Thank you, thank you. Ah, the lovely bride. Leona, you’re looking great.” That was never the brides name. I’d make one up and the people would laugh. I did the same skit to friends of my sisters who were getting married.
“So, a toast to the bride huh? I’m supposed to come up with some funny stories about her, and some heart warming ones.” Silence from me for a few seconds as the people would snicker. “I have nothing,” I would say, “but I do have a few, should we say naughty stories of Leona. And I promise I will say nothing of that disease you had a few months ago,” I’d say looking at her and pretend I was zippering my mouth.
That would be the cue for someone to say, “That’s not Leona, that’s Shirley!”
I would look up surprised, then look around.
“This isn’t the Wright Patterson wedding?” I would ask. Yes, I know, that’s an air base. I’d be told no it isn’t.
“Jesus,” I would say, “Um, were you going to say something?” I’d say to the guy who originally was going to give the toast to the bride, and I’d run out.
I had fun doing them and I had a few different ones so I’d change them around. I wrote my own material. You can tell? That’s good.
When I started to get quite busy in my pro drumming career I left the comedian stage. I missed the laughs. But I’d do them at get togethers at friends houses and parties.
Being a comedian is a nerve wracking but fun gig. Loved the laughs.
Cab stand in Madison Square Park, New York, (ca 1900)
When I was doing my graduation, I stayed in a hostel, which provided lunch and dinner but no breakfast. You had two options for breakfast: Go out to a restaurant nearby and have a hot breakfast or eat what most of the students ate – mashed banana and flattened rice (it is called poha or chura in India). I chose the second option since the first option was too costly. The food in the hostel was neither good in quality nor enough in quantity. So most of the times, I was famished.
I used to pity myself till I had a discussion about hunger with one of my classmates. He was worse off than me. His father was dead and his mother used to serve tea and water in a government office in a desolate tribal village. In short, he had enough money to have just one meal a day. I asked him what he did when he felt hungry. He said he would drink water.
This classmate of mine was a good student but did not have a clue about what to do after his graduation. In those days, IT was booming in India and I convinced him to do get a Masters degree in Computer Applications (MCA). He got into one of the best Universities of India.
I did not meet him when we were doing our Post Graduation since I was at a different University. I met him a year after both of us had started our careers. He came to meet me. He was working for the largest software company of India and was on his way to his first foreign assignment. I felt very happy at how he had been able to turn around his fortune. He had started from a village which did not have electricity and his relatives and friends had not even seen life outside their village.
I am not in touch with him. But I searched the net and I found this photo. He is happily settled with his family in the USA.
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So how do you deal with being too poor? Work hard and have patience. Things will turn around.
Unemployed men outside Al Capone’s soup kitchen in Chicago during the Great Depression, (1931)
Is earth round? Does waves rush to the shores?, Do the sun rise in the east?
Let me see, the US has a doctrine, it’s call Monroe Doctrine. It says no power big and small cannot come near North America and when USSR wanted to arm Cuba nuclear missile, the U.S. threaten to start a nuclear war! And duly blockade and sanction Cuba for 62 years straight! Is that hegemonic?
The U.S. has invaded 68 nations and counting since its nation is formed after doing genocide on its inhabitants and rightful owner the native Indians. Is that hegemonic?
It has cause millions upon millions of deaths due to regime change, coup orchestration by the U.S. it send out millions of CIA and NED officials around the world to destabilise nations so that they can set up puppet and sham governments to act on U.S. behalf and for US interest! Are these actions hegemonic.
Are all these actions that in total caused up to 100 million deaths, hegemonic? Or according to your media it is doing Mother Teresa role!
In my second year of university, I was summoned to a police station without knowing why. My father drove me and had to wait outside the office while I was being questioned.
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The reason why I was summoned was quite a surprise.
Together with a good friend and a girl I was seeing at the time, I had smoked some weed and drank a couple of beers, and much later that night my friend had been robbed by a couple of low-lifes. So he called the police and explained his predicament.
The problem was: (1) my friend was drunk at the time; (2) round about that time my friend was starting to show the first signs of the paranoid schizophrenia that would later ruin his life.
So my friend told the police a story that did not make sense, and after a couple of questions, the story had gotten even worse: he claimed that before he was robbed, he had taken hard drugs together with the girl and me, and that the girl was actually a drug dealer. But he had forgotten the girl’s name.
Not mine, of course.
So instead of focusing on the robbery, the police men focused on the “hard drugs” and the “drug dealer.” And I was the one who would tell them the girl’s name. Which I didn’t.
After a lot of repeated questions and repeated threats — in which they refused to acknowledge the mental condition of my friend — they called in my dad, and explained to him that I blatantly refused to give them the girl’s name. To which my father said:
“This is ABSOLUTELY the right thing to do, and I am VERY proud of him. I would do the EXACT same thing.”
The police men did not know what to say, and not much later I was released after paying a ridiculous fine. When we left the office, they kept staring at my dad, a grey-bearded man with fierce eyes and thundering charisma.
Lightning had struck.
And the hammer had spoken.
SOURCES: the first drawing is taken from the book Nordiska Gudar by Johan Egerkrans; the second image us my own.
World War II propaganda posters in Port Washington, New York, (1942)
Focus on giving key people you work with what they want. At the end of the day, all people want to hear is “i’m going to fix your problems”.
Trust your intuition. People will try and fill your day with shit that doesn’t matter, do what YOU know does matter.
Make some friends, even if just to keep your sanity.
Don’t participate in shit talking. If a co-worker decides you are their confidant, just nod along with them—but never engage directly in the shit talking. You’ll save your own reputation and as a bonus you won’t feel shitty about yourself.
Say NO more. people respect people that can say no and don’t rollover for everything. Saying YES to everything just leaves you running on an endless treadmill.
Under-promise, over-deliver. always.
Make every effort not to give concrete deadlines, because you won’t be able to meet them anyway. Your credibility will falter. Unfortunately you’ll probably have to give them at some point.
Don’t try and be the best. Instead, make friends with people in a position of power and be at least competent.
Learn empathy. In reality, people don’t really care what gets done if you make them feel important and like they are achieving things. People just want to be heard, man.
A lot of these suck to admit….but it’s the way things are. Whether that’s because of some bullshit implicit social contracts or just the way we’re wired….its what corporate life is really like.
I had what seemed like the ideal bachelor life. Oh, and terror of getting trapped in marriage.
I mean, I was living the dream in college.
Living in a fraternity house with my buds.
Cute girls constantly around.
Parties every weekend.
More alcohol than common sense.
My parents paid for my college expenses. I worked every summer to make money for my personal expenses. So when school started I could focus on it and having fun.
Like I said I was living the dream.
But a weird thing happened. As I faced graduation the fun had worn thin.
I was tired of being hurt in relationships and hurting others.
I hoped there was more to life than one continual party.
I longed to share life at a deeper level with someone.
And I knew I needed to stop drinking so damn much.
Shortly before graduation two things happened that changed my life.
I went through a spiritual experience that transformed me.
And I met the most beautiful girl I’d ever know. Unfortunately, she had zero interest in getting to know me.
We eventually started dating. My persistence won out. And a year later married.
I look back over my life and think of all the blessings of marriage I’d have missed as a bachelor.
Someone to love and who loves me. Even sometimes when I’m, shall we say, less than lovable.
Sharing life together. The good, the bad and the ugly. And most of all the beautiful.
Raising our children that filled our lives with occasional frustration and even more love.
Conquering life together. Strengths making up for weaknesses. And glad she didn’t keep score.
Caring for each other in sickness and enjoying each other in health.
Laughing, crying, rejoicing and celebrating.
And at night, when I drift off to sleep, holding her hand and feeling a contentment I simply never could have imagined.
So for some, singleness works.
For me I can’t imagine having missed marrying my wife. And for her? I think she feels the same. At least on most days.
You’ll find a depth of life in marriage you cannot experience outside of it.
My house has a two person jacuzzi tub with mirrors on three walls around it. When I was looking at the house there was a four post canopy bed with a mirror inside the canopy. Needless to say, the previous owner had his thing.
When I was moving in I found in the basement a bar with cuffs on either end hanging from the ceiling and two eye bolts in a board on the floor that would have made this a perfect place to tie someone up spread eagle. I strongly suspect that is what it was used for.
I have a room that used to be a bar (previous owner took the bar itself with him despite it being a built in). It has a dropped ceiling and the lights are above with clear panels to let the light thru. I was moving ceiling tiles to change a bulb and got hit in the face by what I’m guessing was a home made sex swing that was bolted to the rafters above.
I’ve been in this house 3 years and I still occasionally find a secret panel in a wall. It seems anywhere there was an extra bit of space he put a removable panel to make a hidden storage space.
And despite all that, the single most surprising thing I found in this house is the light switch in the bathroom that has power going to it but doesn’t seem to actually switch anything in the house! What do you do about a mysterious switch?
We also found a stack of acrylic paintings in the basement, all very amateurish. Subjects ranged from creepy little girls to 70’s psychedelic nude ladies. Realtor told the owners to pick them up, or they would end up in the trash. They showed up a year later asking for them
Bonus, junk removal guy loved the 70’s nudes, asked to keep them.
It has nothing to do with “authoritarian government” it has everything to do with China not playing by U.S. “rules” that requires China to be submissive and subservient to the U.S. if you are observant you will noticed that the nations that the U.S. and the west have been giving negative press are all nations that refused to be submissive and subservient to the west.
The west merely represent 13% of the world? In fact the west is controlled by the the U.S. which represents 4% of the world. Should the 96% or the 87% of the rest of the world kowtow and let the west walk all over them? And dictate what they do? Who they make friends with? What they buy, how much they ought to pay? What religion they believe or what cloths to wear or what food they eat?
Let me give you an American answer! Over our dead body! It ain’t gonna happen!
The Global South is drifting away as we speak. No nations will buys your shit anymore. We decide our own fate. China certainly won’t. But so is 175 out of the 195 nations on earth. The faster you westerners get this, the better it is for you. Stop thinking about decoupling or de-risking China, the world is decoupling and de-risking from the U.S. and the west!
Your media and your government can lie and fabricate all you want but the bus has left the station. Authoritarian or CCP or communist or dictator are all excuses not reason for hating China and Chinese. These are narratives for the simple mind. It is demonising because it can’t get its way. Like a toddler throwing tantrum, that is what it is. Frankly if you are a westerner, your government is trying to hoodwink you! Not U.S. because we are not fools. We know lies when we see it.
Sidewheeler Tashmoo leaving wharf in Detroit, (ca 1901)
When I was younger, I was the Assisstant Manager of a Pizza Hut. I was moved to this particular store with the expectation that the Store Manager who was there had set me up to become the next Store Manager. When he resigned I was passed over for a 23 year old nobody with no experience or work ethic. He worked 25 hours a week and had me do most of his duties on top of my own. He would often show up in the middle of dinner rush with his posse, ask how things were, I would tell him it was terrible and we needed help, he’d see that we did, and say things like “Sounds good” and walk out.
Week after week people in my Store were getting overworked and burned out. I constantly hounded my Area Manager to let me hire people, often being turned down. He woul even turn down temporarily allowing neighboring stores to send their workers to my Store to keep up with demand. So week after week we would have at least 1 person quit.
Even when I was allowed to hire ONE person, that person would freak out on day one because of the workload pushed upon all of us. They would typically last 1 day, maybe a week, before quitting.
One day we were told we were having a store meeting with the Area Manager so I typed up my resignation letter preemptively and attended. We were told how terrible our customer service scores were (mostly hold time issues or delivery time issues because we couldn’t keep enough people to staff the whole store, so delivery drivers were cutting and boxing pizzas, answering phones and taking orders, THEN delivering them) and how we needed to shape up. I spoke up and said we desperately needed more employees and I was waved off again. So I finished my shift that night, put my resignation letter in the fax machine with my end of day paperwork, locked the door, and dropped my security key and door keys in the mail slot. The next day I was inundated with phone calls from the Store Manager and Area Manager, which I ignored for a few hours. Then I picked up, the Area Manager begged me to come back and said he’d do anything if I came back.
“A raise?”
“Sure, whatever you need.”
“4 more employees?”
“No, you know you’re not getting that.”
*hangup*
I never talked to them again.
Titanic sinks on April 15, 1912. Newspaper boy Ned Parfett sells copies of the evening paper bearing news of the disaster.
As a car mechanic, what is the craziest discovery you have found on an automobile?
I’m not the mechanic, but I know of one crazy discovery. My father purchased a brand new GMC Suburban in the 1980s and gave me his old pickup truck so I would have a vehicle while attending college. He occasionally heard a strange knocking noise while driving that Suburban, but neither he nor the dealer could ever figure out what was causing it. Since he didn’t hear that noise very often, and the vehicle ran great, he just kept driving it and eventually simply ignored that occasional knocking noise. The transmission needed to be rebuilt when it was 9 years old, so he took the Suburban to a shop that pulled the transmission and rebuilt it. While reinstalling it, the mechanic spotted a small hand-held air impact wrench hanging from a bent welding rod between the engine and firewall. He called my father, who then went back to the shop and took photos of the impact wrench and welding rod before and after they were removed. The wrench had “Property of GM” engraved on it.
Since it appeared the impact wrench had been hung there while on the assembly line, my father took the photos, impact wrench, and bent welding rod to the dealer who had sold it. The dealer wanted to send everything to GM, but my father would only agree to let him send copies of the photos. A GM lawyer called him the following week and offered to pay $500 for the return the impact wrench and welding rod, provide and release all prints and negatives he had taken of them to GM, and for his wife and him to sign a non-disclosure agreement concerning any and all possible “manufacturing flaws” involving that Suburban. My father made a counter offer of $5000. The lawyer said the most he was authorized to offer would be a $3000 manufacturer’s credit towards the purchase of a new GM vehicle. My father countered again by asking for both the $500 and $3000 credit towards a new GM vehicle. The lawyer agreed and then arraigned to have the dealer handle the exchange and witness my parents signing a non-disclosure agreement. My parents then negotiated with the dealer to buy a new car for my mother, and then applied that $500 check and the $3000 manufacturer’s credit towards the purchase of it.
After that impact wrench was removed, my father never heard that knocking noise again. Since I knew about this “manufacturing flaw” before they signed that non-disclosure agreement, I’m not bound by it. But my surviving parent could be subject to significant financial penalties for discussing this story, so I am posting this anonymously to prevent any possible repercussions. However I seriously doubt GM would want to have people going through records more than three decades old just to determine who my parents are.
I’ve told this story elsewhere but it fits here as well.
In a prior life I worked for a major multi-national and the division I worked in was managed by somebody based in Europe (let’s call him George). But he had direct reports in a number of cities around the world including New York. So during one of his visits to New York he speaks to Fred and tells him that things just aren’t working out so he should find another job. Nothing out of the ordinary and not adversarial in any way.
So about a year later George is in New York and sees Fred sitting in his office wearing jeans and track shoes, feet up on his desk reading a newspaper. So he says “Fred, why are you still here? Didn’t I tell you to find another job?” And Fred’s response was classic “Yes but my contract requires one year’s written notice and I’ve never received anything.”
To make a long story short, George was off to HR and after a discussion with legal Fred got a year’s salary plus the cash value of all the benefits he would have rec’d during the year. Given how senior Fred was I’m sure that check would have been at least $400 K (and more likely quite a bit north of that).
So way back in 1984 I worked a summer in Yellowstone national park. During training I learned a lot about dangers in the park. For example, bison kill many more people than grizzly bears. That being said at least one person a year is kill in the park by a grizzly bear.
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But I digress.
The dumbest question that a tourist asked me was a question that they warned me I would be asked and I laughed like it was a joke. They seriously said no you will get asking this and please don’t embarrass the tourists who ask it.
So a couple days into the Job I am standing there and this nice looking middle aged American woman who seemed she had all her senses came up to me and looked me straight in the face and asked,
“Where do they put the animals at night”?
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I was gobsmacked!
This woman actually thought that all the animals were gathered up at night and put in cages. Just like I was warned, someone asked me the question I thought I would never hear.
And no, she most certainly wasn’t the last tourist to ask me that!
My two week notice was a long time coming. I was sick of working in finance, at that company, and for that boss. I slept terribly the night before, having fevered dreams of a squandered future. But I knew I needed some upheaval. I was forging a sad, bitter storyline that would haunt me forever.
As I embarked on my new journey as a writer, I unpacked my new life, and all the stories from that dark chapter, all the moments of pain and frustration, came with me. As with many of you, these scenes replay more vividly on my lesser days. It’s as the incomparable Frederick Nietzsche wrote, “When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.”
Old embarrassments — losing my temper with someone 20 years ago, making ill advised comments, and moments of rejection — come bubbling up for no reason. Why could I see these scenes so easily and with 8K clarity while the amazing moments hid in the shadows?
Per Dr. Daniel L. Schacter, we remember the past so vividly because it’s a means of envisioning the future. We use it as a modeling tool, a form of mental time travel, where our mind anchors moments in time. The word “anchor” is key — because many of these images and stories become crystallized and of cognitive convenience.
For example, you might experience something I do when reading books: anytime there is a scene with a bar, I can’t help but see the same bar in my mind — to the point of it being annoying. If there’s some type of battle scene, I always see an old field I played in as a kid. This is the mind anchoring and why it’s so easy to recall the same negative moments over and over.
Per research by psychologist, Dr. Linda Levine, we tend to interpret past events through an emotional filter of the present. The same facts on paper suddenly look different. Negative moods — such as being tired, annoyed, or frustrated — evoke specific and detailed bad memories that often hit harder. Good moods — such as being well rested, jovial, excited, or in good humor — tend to evoke broader and more general memories. Unfortunately, negative memories are much more powerful and easily evoked.
We tend to apply a filter of our self-concept — who we’d like to be, and what our “ideal self” is and how we’d hoped to be perceived. Which is why our subconscious searches for contradictions to this ideal self.
For example, I’m generally a pleasant and nice person. Which is perhaps why my mind dredges up instances of me being unpleasant. I hate thinking of those times because when I do, I feel like I’m standing right there in that same room 15 years ago, watching my former self act out and be nasty with someone I loved.
The mind tells me, “Remember this person? You could be this person again if you don’t behave.” So how to we rewire this toxic pattern?
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Rewriting your narrative
A few years ago, I thought, “Why am I beating myself up all the time?” I had so much to be thankful for. I’d brought plenty of good into this world, been a good friend and family member. I’d fought hard to win a better future but still bludgeoned myself over bygones that nobody else remembered.
I met with a therapist a few years ago and had tremendous improvement in dealing with negativity. He was a silver haired man, with black rimmed glasses and a quiet, friendly demeanor, and a PhD hanging on his wall.
As we began talking, he nodded his head in understanding and began giving me homework assignments anchored in cognitive behavioral therapy which, per the American Psychological Association, is as effective (or more) than other forms of psychotherapy and medications in dealing with negativity.
He said, “We often tell our life story to ourselves in excessively harsh terms, and jump to instant conclusions at our own expense.”
One exercise he gave was to practice reframing the stories with less certainty. Instead of saying X results in Y, explore alternative causes and remove unhelpful thoughts.
For example, during college, I was dumped by woman I was totally in love with. I deserved it. I was being irresponsible and drinking all the time and she finally had enough. For years, I was sure that my poor decisions had cost me my soulmate. But I learned this was totally unfair thinking.
Perhaps it wasn’t meant to be. Perhaps she was just losing interest and this was her way out. And if I’d stayed with her, I’d have never met the incredible woman I now have. Even more so, the concept of a soulmate felt a wee bit irrational and limiting.
When you map out events, and deconstruct the narrative you tell yourself, it can look entirely silly sometimes. The exercise also helps reframe the memory more constructively. I can confidently say getting dumped caused me to stop partying so much and may have saved me from myriad legal and health problems.
Another strategy was to build a mental rolodex of positive memories in your mind that you can return to. Doing this, and rapid fire indulging these memories can counteract your negativity instinct, and tends to put me in a much better mood.
A quick forewarning, I’d make sure to write this list out. I initially thought I’d be able to manage it in my mind, but it was much harder to build out and think through.
Here are a few from my list:
Picking up my 8-week old golden retriever from the breeder. He was a fat marshmallow shaped dog with a permasmile, who brought me so much dang joy in life.
Having Christmas mornings as a kid with my grandparents and the love they surrounded us with.
Going on walks with my beloved partner on St. Pete beach and sitting quietly with her in the sand and drinking a beer while we read books.
Helping raise money at events for wounded soldiers, and volunteering with the Special Olympics.
One last strategy is exploratory processing, which takes the opposite approach. You list out the painful experience just after it happens and leave two lines below it. Then, after one month, you return to write in the blank what you learned. Then, six months later, you list something positive that came from the mistake.
For example, when I bought my house, it was a complete circus and the inspection went poorly and I fought with the builder and the realtor. The entire experience crashed my hopeful vision of home ownership. I put this down on the list as my first entry. Then, I came back a month later and wrote about how the experience taught me the importance of having a home inspection (which I almost skipped doing).
Then, at the six month mark, I put that this experience still resulted in me owning a great home that I can now rest in knowing is safe. I know that it has given me and my partner new friends in the neighborhood. The house has also appreciated significantly in value.
Remember, it’s entirely normal and common to have tons of negative memories that pester you. Most major life changes are precipitated by bad experiences and it’s easy to carry those stories with you.
Consider compiling a list of positive memories to return to and combat that trend. Reframe your experiences by exploring the possibilities of how they came to be, and how you might be irrational and excessively harsh in reviewing them. Lastly, use exploratory processing just after something goes wrong. Approach the experience with curiosity rather than judgement. Something good usually comes from all of the chaos we endure.
I keep my hair short. Very, very short. Before joining the Navy, I was already doing so, but for the past twenty years, I have been unable to go much longer than a couple of weeks—or, in the warmer months, a week or so—before it feels as though something is wrong. Oddly, I don’t mind skipping a shave for two or three days, but actually wearing facial hair (beard, long sideburns) is out of the question.
While I’m not fanatically neat, I do try to keep items off the floor. Gear should be stowed somehow, whether in a desk, in a cabinet, on a shelf, or even on a table. The deck should be kept clear.
I understand the distinction between a command (Do it now!) and an order (Get it done!).
I am almost never, ever late, even to social engagements, as gauche as that may be. And “on time,” in my book, means approximately six to ten minutes early (no more).
Generally, I am far more situationally aware and cognizant of potential risks and dangers than I was before joining. People don’t plan to fail; they fail to plan.
A day without some kind of PT is somehow misspent.
I still lace up my shoes in a crisscross pattern, with no “bridge.”
Most of the year, regardless of whether I’m dressed formally or informally, I wear a T-shirt of some kind as an initial layer. If the temperature goes past about 75°F or so, I’ll wear either a T-shirt or a polo shirt. But even in the heat, I don’t like wearing a dress shirt without an undershirt.
I tell time with the 24-hour clock and write the date in the day-month-year format. This dovetails nicely with living in Europe.
Having qualified as an Expert with the 9-mm pistol and a Marksman on the M-16, I have contempt for gun nuts who brandish their weapons in public, exhibit no discipline or respect for them or consideration for others, and lack the faintest idea of what they are talking about.
A German soldier after being captured by American troops near Nicosia, (1943)
Last year, Carl Sergeant, 49-year-old politician, took his life after losing his job as secretary
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The cause? False sexual abuse allegations.
The sentiment of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ is being jettisoned. Now, mere accusation alone is enough to ruin someone’s career. Do you understand how dangerous that is?
Quote from BBC News:
“The family wish to maintain the fact that Carl maintained his innocence and he categorically denied any wrongdoing. The distress of not being able to defend himself properly against his unspecified allegtions meant he was not afforded common courtesy, decency or natural justice.”
You can’t make the cost of sexual interest the complete desolation of a man’s career, his reputation and even his life. We can’t keep branding people who sent a risqué text or blew kiss a pervert.
We’re now witnessing the birth pangs of the sexual reformation, the fallout from the sex abuse scandals that have plagued the entertainment industry, politics, and are now spreading throughout society as a whole. Third-wave feminists have been largely discredited over the past five years – just 18% of women in the US identify as feminist. Even less in the UK. Rights that actual feminists fought for a hundred years ago have been achieved, which is why radical feminists and SJWs need to hijack or invent new outrages to push their primary narrative and create more gender division.
Remember Zaira Wasim? Last year, she said she was scared when a man sitting behind her was touching her waist with his legs. At first, she ignored it, thinking it was due to turbulence, but didn’t tell anyone about it – not even the crew. Zaira put this allegation on a man named as Vikas Sachdev, a 39-year-old father and husband.
He was arrested. His wife defended him as innocent, but to the baying mob, allegations were all that were required to pass judgement.
image 568
Now don’t get me wrong, if sexual abuse is admitted or proven, those people should be punished to the full extent of the law. Hollywood and political peadophile rings should be exposed. But trial by a social media mob outage isn’t justice, and it sets a horrific precedent. Women are now jumping on the MeToo hashtag bandwagon so they can smother themselves in attention-seeking victimhood – not because they’re actual victims, but in one case because a man looked at them.
Another story was whipped up about Adam Sandler touching Claire Foy’s knee on a talk show.
In another instance, an MP was outed after he described a woman as “attractive, intelligent and charming”
Another case involved Michael Fallon trying to kiss a woman.
See the trend here? Everything is being conflated, to the point where making a pass at a woman is placed in the same context as actual rape.
There has to be an understanding that mere accusations alone are not proof. We have to put a check on this call of instantly believing the accuser without any regard for evidence.
It’s one of those David vs Goliath academic tales that’s as absurd as it is commendable.
image 48
Knorozov was a Soviet linguist – not a guy you’d expect to crack a Mesoamerican code. He got intrigued by the Mayan glyphs while rummaging through old dusty books in the off-limits section of the library. The glyphs hadn’t been fully understood for centuries.
The declassified Dresden Codex landed in his lap. It had been through hell: World War II bombings, water damage, and general neglect. But this old thing was a Rosetta Stone waiting for its sober lover.
While World War II suppressed the free exchange of scholarly thought, Knorozov was insulated and incubated over in Mother Russia. He faced another kind of battle, though: stifling Soviet oversight and scarce resources.
But undeterred, Yuri used his noggin. He hypothesized that the glyphs weren’t just individual pictures or symbols. They were indicative of phonetic sounds, a theory vastly different from what the scholarly mainstream believed.
Where many saw walls, Knorozov saw doors.
He hammered away at this theory, marrying the dots and bars of the Mayan numeral system to the text surrounding them. It was as if he spoke directly to the ancient Mayans, bridging a chasm of silence that had lasted since the fall of their civilization. Bit by bit, he began matching sounds to symbols.
His breakthrough publications hit in the 1950s. And like most disruptors, he was met with academic side-eye. It was the ‘newbie rocking the boat’ scenario. Many Western academics clung angrily to their dated theories, as if they were good luck charms.
But as time marched on, so did progress. Others began taking swings with the bat Knorozov had crafted. Additional findings corroborated his theories. The wall of mystery surrounding Mayan writing was getting holes punched into it, letting light in.
By the time of his death in 1999, Knorozov had seen his theories widely accepted. Mayan glyphs were readable, weaving tales of kings, conquests, and the cosmos.
What Yuri Knorozov did single-handedly is akin to solving a 1,000-year-old crossword puzzle without any clues, which makes you wonder, how many other historical whispers are just waiting for their translator?
From my home in Portland, OR, I look at Knorozov’s story as a beacon of hope for every solo scholar out there staring at an uncracked code. Keep at it. You might just be onto something.
Yes, but it had nothing to do with the procedure being inappropriate; it was an issue of consent.
I was called by a clinician to put a drainage catheter into an abscess, a pretty standard procedure; I was told that the patient had been reluctant, but had agreed to go ahead. Naturally I spoke with the patient myself, and discovered that she had not given any kind of meaningful consent; instead she had said something like “whatever”, just to get rid of the clinician, whom she described as a moron.
I called him up, with the patient in the room (but not listening in on the phone); I explained that I had spoken with her in person, and she was clearly unwilling to have the procedure. He then described her as a “seed person”, his term for someone who distrusted conventional medicine and preferred natural remedies; while I sympathized with his preference for proven treatments, it was clear that his attitude towards her was one of contempt, and that she had picked this up. He asked if he could speak to her; I told her he wanted to talk with her, she absolutely refused, and I conveyed this to him – softening her language slightly.
I then wrote a lengthy note in her chart, summarizing my discussion with her, quoting her comments, and explaining that as she had no intention of giving consent for this procedure, I was not going to perform it. I felt that she needed it, and I had explained this to her as clearly as I could; but as I was not her parent or legal guardian, I was professionally and ethically obligated to respect her wishes.
The right of a mentally competent adult patient to refuse treatment is absolute, whatever the consequences. My job is to explain those consequences as clearly as I can. The patient’s job is to make the choice.
An ex of mine, we dated for 3 months. He was significantly older.
In that time he got progressively more controlling. One day he heard a rumour I was cheating on him.
How I was meant to, I don’t know as I was always either at work (and replying to his messages) or with him.
He decided to throw me around and threaten me with 2 knives. Both of which he pressed against my throat. He also threatens to kill the friend he decided I was sleeping with. Luckily he gets angry enough and storms out of my home as there was no way I could physically move him and I lock the door.
I call my mum to come and get me away, she calls the police. All the time he is banging on the door threatening me and my friend. He keeps accusing me of calling “my other boyfriend” and how he will kill him when he gets there. He realises I’ve called the Police and goes for a walk away from my home.
I show the Police the knives and give a statement at the Police station. He is arrested and pleads guilty to the Police.
The Police Officer I was speaking to unofficially advised me to submit a request against Claires Law which eventually informed me that he had been connected to 5 other women in domestic violence cases. The last one whom he attacked with an axe, he went to prison for 3 months for that incident. These are just the reported cases, I have no doubt there are more who did not report him.
My case was deemed only to be a Magistrates case. The Magistrate on hearing the guilty plea gave a 12 week suspended sentence for 1 year so he could work on his mental health, a Restraining order for 3 years and “compensation” of £150.
I can’t believe the magistrate had a clear domestic abuser who showed clear escalation patterns increasing in violence to women ranging from stalking, assault and sexual assault and gave such a ridiculous sentence. It showed a lack of respect for female lives. I was advised not to attend court, it’s probably a good thing as I doubt I could have stopped myself shouting at the magistrate.
I had to flee my home, upend my entire life, develop ptsd and the perpetrator got a slap on the wrist.
A Nihang Bodyguard, (c.1865)
39 1
When Evil Parents Realize They’ve Been Caught
Damn! Damn! Damn!
Holy FUCK!
https://youtu.be/31AZ3x17Aq0
Curb Market in NYC, (ca 1900)
40
27 Minutes Of Rude Karens Vs Judges!
GOD! The USA is so messed up!
Observer on Iwo Jima, (1945)
41
A Massive Cat Abandoned at the Shelter Gets Adopted Within Hours
Crowded Bunks in the Prison Camp at Buchenwald, (April 16, 1945)
In the first place, I would like to say that you are right, to some extent. I agreed with you that we are somehow forced to learn some very entry level Classical Chinese, during the compulsory education stage (year 1 to year 9). This is the fact about Chinese education.
In the second place, since you asked why. I will try my best to answer your question.
The importance of classical Chinese:
In the narrow sense, Classical Chinese is the language which was actively used between Spring and Autumn period through to the end of the Han Dynasty (5th century BC to 2nd century AD). It soon became the formal written language in the Chinese society all the way until the 1910s when the Qing Dynasty was overturned. More than 2000 years of history was documented by using classical Chinese. It carried the invaluable heritage of our civilisation. In my opinion, it means much more to us than Latin to the European society.
In the broad sense, Classical Chinese is contrary to the Morden Mandarin, including classical Chinese (narrow sense), poems, novels written in the vernacular Chinese etc. It draws a whole picture of our great 5000-thousand-year civilisation, keeping people with hopes even in the darkest time of our nation.
Why government decided to introduce classical education.
China is a civilisation state instead of a national state. Anyone who recognises Chinese culture is considered as Chinese and could be integrated into the mainstream society, even he is not a Han Chinese. That is said Chinese people was united by a common written language, a universal value and a general social norm, even they may speak different dialects, live in a different region and have a different clan. This is also the most powerful argument to against the claims such as Cantonese is a distinct language instead of a Chinese dialect. The reason why schools in China teach both classical and Mandarin is, I think, it works better if taught together. Mandarin is the main structure and classical is a supplement of it. Mandarin is superficial which could not teach students some fundamental and abstract concepts. For example, people who only received Mandarin education would probably not able to understand the connections between the full moon and home sick (like a metaphor), autumn and depression etc. Therefore, promoting classical education would further strengthen the sense of national identity bound by the language and culture. That is the how to keep the nation united for more than 2000 years (Since Qin Dynasty firstly published a set of national standards). That is the political concern of the government. And this is also the answer to why not only Han Chinese, other ethical minorities are (not forced but encouraged) learning Chinese.
“月落乌啼霜满天 江枫渔火对愁眠” （The moon is setting. The crows are crying. The atmosphere is heavy with a chilly autumn frost. The maple trees and the lights of the fishing boats are reflected in the water. Yet I am unable to sleep because of sorrow.）This short poem was filled with culture symbols such as “moon, crow, autumn, red leaves and fishing boats”. Those culture symbols was consistently used till today, they speak themselves without the need of explanation. But it almost undecipherable for people without classical education.
Social response
In fact, there is far less unfavorable voice against teaching classical in school rather than that of English. Ministry of Education is planning to make the English language an elective subject in the College Entrance Examination (aka. Gaokao), but removing classical content is out of the question, definitely. Personally, I, although not excel it, rather enjoy learning classical than modern Mandarin. It is so concise, splendid, touching my soul so deeply. I was hoping one day I could like those famous poets, to put own feelings into such powerful words. People used to say ‘a picture speaks a thousand words’. Some classical quotes certainly could do the better job in the appropriate circumstance. Many Chinese leaders would like to quote some classical or come up their own.
President Jiang Zemin’s calligraphy, quoting national hero Lin Zexu’s poem. （were it to benefit my country I would lay down my life; what then is the risk to me）
China’s Premier Wen Jiabao wrote on the blackboard after 2008 Sichuan earthquake. “challenges make a nation much stronger”
Chinese also tend to use classical to name their children, their company etc. A name with good meaning would give people a better first impression. Actually, not only Chinese, people from East Asia and Vietnam will also use Chinses classical when giving the name. e.g. all Japanese emperor’s title of reign is based on Chinese classical.
Lastly, China, together with Korea peninsula, Japan, Ryukyu and Vietnam, shared a long history bound by classical Chinese language. All most all the history was written in classical Chinese. Due to some political concerns, both Korea and Vietnam abolished Chinese, making it a great loss in their culture. Now people living there could not understand what their ancestors wrote when they are visiting their historical sites. I can never imagine this happens in China one day, when our children visiting forbidden city and asking what exactly did the emperor write on the wooden boards. What a ridiculous thing?
Ps. It is rather funny to ask in such way. Forced?
It could be better to rephrase the question to ‘why Chinese student nowadays still need to learn classical Chinese’
He sacked a colleague the day my colleague was leaving for a family holiday. My boss (and owner of the business), Paul, just liked to show people he had the power. He was often petty and a micromanaging control freak. He seemed to like me, so most of the time he left me to do my thing.
My colleague, Ian, had become a friend, and we’d hang out after work. He had been planning an overseas family trip for some time, and had been talking about it for a couple of months in advance of the date. He had requested leave, which was approved, before making the booking. He was a friendly, genuine guy, and most of us in the office shared his enthusiasm for his holiday. We could see he was looking forward to taking his family away.
He was due to fly out on a Saturday. On the Friday, Paul called Ian into his office and told him he had changed his mind, he was revoking the leave. Ian tried to argue that the tickets were non-refundable, everything was booked, his wife had taken leave, and they had permission to take their children out of school. Paul wasn’t swayed. He made it clear, cancel or be fired.
Ian asked what was so important that he needed to stay, Paul didn’t give a real answer. He just shrugged and said, “it’s my company, my call.”
Ian called his wife, and then decided to do the holiday. He didn’t want to lose the money or let his family down.
He came and told me just before lunch what had happened, and suggested we go for a farewell lunch.
I was incensed! I immediately wrote a handwritten resignation, left it on Paul’s desk, packed my things, and went to lunch. I told Ian and some other colleagues at lunch that this was also MY farewell.
As lunch wrapped up, the others drifted back to the office, and it was just Ian and me, commiserating over a beer, when Paul came in, in a fluster. I had never seen him in such a state (I later realized it was because he was no longer in control). Paul loudly tried to convince me to stay, offered me everything (other than more money!). I just said no, calmly. He left saying something like “you’ll be back when you can’t find another job.”
I called in on another friend on my way home, and had a job offer that afternoon.
Beer Battered Fish and Chips
Beer Battered Fish and Chips
Ingredients
2 to 4 potatoes, scrubbed and cut into fingers
1 pound fish (cod, halibut, polluck, etc.) 500g
1 (12 ounces/355mL) can beer
1 egg, beaten until fluffy
2/3 cup milk 150 mL
1 teaspoon canola oil 5 mL
1 teaspoon baking powder 5 mL
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper 1 mL
1/4 teaspoon salt 1 mL
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 375 mL
1/2 cup second flour amount for dipping 125 mL
3 cups canola oil for deep frying 750 mL
Instructions
Pat potatoes and fish dry with paper towels.
Heat oil to a frying temperature of 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). To cook potato chips properly, it is important to maintain this frying temperature. You may wish to increase the temperature slightly before adding potatoes as oil temperature will drop when food is added. Fry 5-6 minutes or until golden brown. While potatoes are frying, prepare batter for fish.
To prepare batter: Mix together beer, egg, milk and canola oil. Add baking powder, cayenne pepper, salt and 1 1/2 cups (375 mL) flour all at once, mixing only enough to dampen the dry ingredients.
Remove potato chips from the canola oil with slotted spoon, drain on paper towels, and season to taste.
Coat fish pieces in 1/2 cup (125 mL) flour before dipping in batter. Gently place in hot oil to deep fry. Cook until golden, about 6 minutes.
Remove from oil with slotted spoon; drain on paper towels.
When my grandmother found out she had terminal cancer, she gave away a lot of her things to her children and grandchildren. She gave my cousin her 6 year old car, she gave me her expensive vacuum cleaner, she gave my mother an 8 foot tall grandfather’s clock, that had been hand made by my mothers great grandfather, those are the only three I remember, but she had two children and six grandchildren, so you can see by the gifts, that they weren’t terribly expensive, but had some value.
She still owned her own condo, and had some savings.
Shortly after my grandmother had died, and the will had been read, I over heard my uncle talking to my mother. My grandmother had split the estate between my uncle and mother. My uncle wanted everything that my grandmother had given away, to be given back to the estate, as he felt that they were just loans. Then the estate would be split between him and mom. If the grandkids ( including his own kids) wanted what they had been given, they could buy it from the estate.
I was shocked, I had always loved my uncle, he had never seemed like a greedy man. But inheritance seems to bring out the worst in people. My mother and uncle fought for the first time that I ever knew of, and some nasty things were said.
Evidently he approached his kids to get the gifts back, and they formed a united front, and told him he was wrong. So he backed off. I would have never have known that he had a greedy side to him, if I hadn’t overheard that conversation. He died about 10 years later, and I never looked at him, quite the same as before I overheard that conversation.
When my grandmother found out she had terminal cancer, she gave away a lot of her things to her children and grandchildren. She gave my cousin her 6 year old car, she gave me her expensive vacuum cleaner, she gave my mother an 8 foot tall grandfather’s clock, that had been hand made by my mothers great grandfather, those are the only three I remember, but she had two children and six grandchildren, so you can see by the gifts, that they weren’t terribly expensive, but had some value.
She still owned her own condo, and had some savings.
Shortly after my grandmother had died, and the will had been read, I over heard my uncle talking to my mother. My grandmother had split the estate between my uncle and mother. My uncle wanted everything that my grandmother had given away, to be given back to the estate, as he felt that they were just loans. Then the estate would be split between him and mom. If the grandkids ( including his own kids) wanted what they had been given, they could buy it from the estate.
I was shocked, I had always loved my uncle, he had never seemed like a greedy man. But inheritance seems to bring out the worst in people. My mother and uncle fought for the first time that I ever knew of, and some nasty things were said.
Evidently he approached his kids to get the gifts back, and they formed a united front, and told him he was wrong. So he backed off. I would have never have known that he had a greedy side to him, if I hadn’t overheard that conversation. He died about 10 years later, and I never looked at him, quite the same as before I overheard that conversation.
They taught us how to wear boots. At the beginning of the session, the tough looking DS looked at us the only way a DS can do it.
I thought what the hell? Put them on and lace them up. Oh no. There was the Army way.
We found out how important the simple sock was in the Army.
“Socks must be pulled up TIGHT! No wrinkles or seams. Loose socks in your boot can be a painful thing and cause blisters quicker than your daddy’s willow switch. Pull them up tight. Keep them dry. Wet socks are not a soldier’s friend. If a soldier’s feet are unusable because of blisters, that soldier is unusable. Take care of those feet. Also, mark those socks.”
We had to make sure there were no wrinkles on the inner sole where the foot goes in.
“If there’s a wrinkle in your boot lining, give ‘em back and you will be issued new ones. Wrinkles cause blisters. Make sure your boot is TIGHT around your foot. Do not let your feet ‘float’ in boots. Floating feet cause blisters!”
“The boots are laced diagonally with the excess lace tucked into the top of the boot. Metal cleats and side tabs are not authorized for wear. Steeled toed boots are not authorized for wear. THAT gentlemen is why these are NOT steel toed boots. If they were, you would be crippled within two weeks. There should be at least a 3/4-inch minimum additional length at toe. DO NOT soak boots in water or bake in an oven to break-in. Boots should be worn in gradually at first with ever-increasing walking or marching distances while remaining comfortable.”
“The back of your boots must also be shined. Just because we’re looking at you from the front, wise asses, doesn’t mean we won’t give the about face order.
“The tongues of your boots will lie flat all along the top of your boots, not squished in like a piece of toilet paper shoved up the crack of your ass. Squished tongues cause blisters. We don’t want blisters around here. Blisters mean there’s a man out and the rest of you do twice the work. If I find a squished tongue in your boot, and I’ll check at times, it’ll be YOUR tongue lying on top of your foot under the laces!”
“If you do not follow these instructions, you will get my right boot up your ass and I’m telling you now, IT WILL HURT! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”
This DS had at least size 13 boots. We understood.
There was this guy that I went to college with. He was a real life Casanova. I mean it, a day did not go by without out him bedding (or boning) a new girl. He went through them like a sick person goes through tissues. And all us “normal” guys were terribly jealous of him.
I swear that of the 60 or so girls on our dorm floor, he must have had sex with perhaps 45 of them. Pretty damn impressive… seeing that I was a virgin throughout my college years.
This was in the 1970s. And yeah. I was the nerd bodybuilder planning to be a spaceman.
Virginal. No distractions.
On. My. Grind.
…
Ah. Memories.
During one of our Friday dorm parties, while I was a tripping on blotter (Acid = LSD), I noticed one of the girls on our floor; a particularly beautiful girl, flirting with him.
And myself, with all my inhibitions set to “off” went up to her and asked her point-blank.
“Why are you flirting with him”?
And I never forgot her answer.
“It’s fun”.
…
Duh.
…
Of course, this was a decade before Cindy Lauper sang “Girls just wanna have fun”….
And while I remembered the answer, I didn’t manage to put two plus two together. i still couldn’t figure out girls. Ah, perhaps it was because I was so fixated on “my grind” and trying to fly spaceships etc….
Which happened… well, sort of… don’t ya know.
…
But yeah.
Guys… men… we are too simple. If a woman wants something she gets it. Even at the detriment of her relationships, marriages, or physical health.
Keep your life simple.
Accept that women do what they want… FIRST.
And continue to do so until they hit an unyielding wall, And, as a man… our rules, relationships, structures and beliefs are that wall.
(Read that twice.)
And when that point comes… be prepared to… walk away.
‘That no one else knows about’ does not apply to my answer. But the most horrible thing was a schoolgirl aged about 15 came to see me when I was School Psychologist at her school. At the end of the session she said she had written a diary and had it with her and would I care to read it, as she wanted me to know what it was about.
I took it home to read that night in preparation for seeing her the next day. It was full of clearly suicidal thoughts. She was an alcohol user, too, and had already done some self-harming. I had to cope with the revelations overnight, spending my night not so much in sleep as in deep concern. To add to the difficulty, her mother’s sister had not long previously committed suicide. This would be a further load on her mother.
I did see her and was obliged to speak with her mother and get permission for referring her to an agency with more specialist capacity to help her. There was some opposition to the idea, but in the end the permission was given.
But knowing what she had revealed and not being able to do anything about it immediately was very stressful.
I grew up in West Africa. We didn’t just boil eggs; we superboiled them. We threw them on the stove, boiled them for 15 or 20 minutes or so, then took them out very satisfied that the egg was well cooked.
It was as though we wanted to let the yolk know that we hated it, along with its ancestors, parents, siblings, and extended family. The yolk, understandably would come out of this process looking pallid, forlorn, and dejected. The pale yellow would be covered in an equally pale grey, with the overall appearance of a strange, lost planet.
image 466
Why did you have to treat me so?
For my eternal fortune, at the age of 15, I moved to the United States, a land that was said to be paved with gold. I didn’t find much gold, truth be told, but I found the concept of a hard-boiled egg, which made me wonder whether there was such a thing as a soft-boiled egg.
Is it like when I accidentally “undercook” my eggs?
I googled it and found a chart like this:
image 465
Oooooooooooh!
I’ve never looked back.
This is what I made tonight.
image 464
This, my friends, is what you call perfection. The yolk is smiling at you suggestively, sending you an amorous look, beckoning you.
Come hither!
How can you resist? Of course you will kiss and treasure and savor it.
C’est ça, la douceur de vivre.
Yes, yes, it’s me in the picture. I’m wearing boring socks tonight. Deal with it.
My grandfather on my dad’s side, as a child me and my younger sister would visit our Nan and Grandad every other week just to spend time with them. My Nan loved having us at times, my Grandad however was a different story. He would always drink every time we went round there and constantly sat on the couch.
On one occasion I was play fighting with my Nan in the living room once and out of nowhere he screamed at me from the top of his lungs to “take it in the other f***ing room!”. My mood was instantly killed and I remember hiding from him in a cleaning cupboard because I was terrified. There was another time where I accidentally turned off the lights for the living room, he screamed at me saying “Turn those f***ing lights back on or I’ll throw you onto the street!”. When my mum came back to the house that night I was hiding behind her and she had never seen me so clingy so she knew something was wrong.
When we got home that night I told my parents what he had said to me about the lights and how he had made me cry on multiple occasions that I began hiding in the cleaning cupboard. My younger sister was also a witness for every occasion he was horrible to me so she confirmed my story to them. After this they decided he wasn’t going to see us as much as he used to.
We found out many years later that his drinking caught up with him and he was suffering from cirrhosis. He also had a cancer in his leg that he’s now recovered from. When the whole family found out about his cancer, all my uncles said they wouldn’t miss him if it killed him because of how terrible of a dad he was when bringing them up.
I also recently discovered that before I was born, My Grandad and Nan had asked our parents to look after their house while they went away. They forgot to mention to our parents that they owed this criminal some rent money, so one night this crook comes breaking the door down and demands the money. My parents being completely ignorant to the truth of course refused to pay the rent and so they contacted my Nan and Grandad asking what this guy’s business is. They tell my parents the truth but then refuse to pay the rent, saying they assumed their son (my dad) would’ve payed it for them. They had both already refused to pay the rent so as a result this crook gives my dad a sucker punch to the face in front of my uncle’s daughter who was there at the time.
Because of this, most of the family don’t associate or even think about him anymore. My mother has real beef with them both because of the incident with the rent, when I told her about the threat my Grandad gave me and how my Nan said nothing to defend me, that was the icing on the cake for both my parents and as a result we talk to them less.
We’re in an okay place now but we hardly talk to them anymore, we only see them once a year now, sometimes there are years we don’t see them once. My uncles each have different reasons for not associating with him anymore but I’d be here all day if I wrote them out.
But first the U.S. that orchestrated the break up of the world and the creator of animosities amongst us must accept reality first and recognised that it no longer has the ability and the means to war monger any more.
The western media must accept that sowing hates is not good for humanity, spewing hates hurt humanity and destroying earth. They need to know that lying is lowdown and simply despicable and it makes many people ignorant and naive.
Westerners need to reject them and condemn them and stop reading or listening to them. Westerners must want the truth not lies, propaganda, fabrication and half truths to fit bias hateful narratives. The western media so discord and hatred on anyone or any society that refuse to be submissive and subservient to the west.
The U.S. led them into this depth of crisis it must lead them out of it. Otherwise the 87% of the global south will leave you behind, they are moving on. Germany, Japan, Korea must stop being a faithful brain dead U.S. lackey and a lowly dog.
UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, grow some balls or forever be US dog, you deserve to sink with the world’s biggest trouble maker the U.S. Another dozen or so dog nations. Rise up and abandoned the U.S. EU abandon NATO.
Together you helped the U.S. bring the world into a chaotic, dangerous place ready to erupt into another world war but one that can end the entire human race. Act before it is too late. Let there be strong pillars of powers working together doing good and not keep one power doing bad.
Asian Cucumber Salad
Ding Tai Fung Cucumber Salad I Heart Umami 700×1050 1
Yield: 4 to 6 servings
Ingredients
2 tablespoons lime juice
1 tablespoon water
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 large cucumber
1 small onion, thinly sliced
1 red jalapeno pepper, seeded and chopped
Minced fresh cilantro
Instructions
Mix lime juice, water, sugar and salt in non-reactive bowl.
Cut cucumber lengthwise into halves, then seed and thinly slice. Add cucumber, onion and pepper to lime juice mixture; toss.
Cover and refrigerate, stirring occasionally, at least 1 hour.
Not most obnoxious but a good example of why Europeans view Americans as obnoxious.
We were in a resort sauna in the Italian alps with 3 other couples (2 German, 1 Swiss) and single German woman. We’d enjoyed a couple of peaceful and wonderful rounds together.
A few minutes in to our 3rd round we heard them coming – Americans! They were talking and cackling very loudly. They opened the sauna hot room door and looked around – holding the door open, letting the heat out and cold air in. They received a loud round of ‘close the door’ in 3 different languages.
A few minutes later an American couple entered the sauna in their swimsuits. One of the German women told them that swimsuits aren’t allowed in saunas. The American’s scoffed and said certainly not and proceeded to sit down. I tried to explain to them that suits are indeed not allowed because of bacterias and odors. And that they also should have showered before entering the sauna. They slowly began to get the picture. They eventually left and we later learned that they’d complained to the resort mgmt about the no swimsuits rule and us.
Here’s the thing. There were numerous places in the hotel information stating that the sauna area (large changing and shower area with two saunas and a turkish bath) was a nude area and that suits were not allowed in the saunas or turkish baths themselves. And that this was a QUIET area.
There were big signs entering the spa and sauna area that said ‘SILENCE’, ‘QUIETNESS IS EXPECTED’ and ‘IN THE SPA YOU SHOULD TALK LIKE YOU ARE IN CHURCH’ and other sayings. If you closed your mouth for a few seconds you’d realize that there were a number of conversations happening but you couldn’t hear them. Except for Americans.
There were signs above the hooks where people hung their robes that stated not to wear swimsuits in the sauna. This is also standard throughout much of Europe.
The hotel manager told me that this was not an unusual event with Americans. I understand people being uncomfortable with the nudity element and that’s fine and those who are uncomfortable just don’t use the sauna. FWIW, about half of Germans and other Europeans aren’t comfortable with it either and simply don’t use public saunas. I have a fear of heights so I won’t go on most chairlifts or trams which means I can’t see many spectacular areas of the Alps. That’s life.
I think it takes a special kind of ignorance to not realize how loud and obnoxious Americans are, given how often it’s written about. Yet Americans continue to act loud, obnoxious and ignorant.
Because I worked with persons with Borderline Personality Disorder I was used to being fired. I enjoyed the phase of therapy where I could ask “remember all the times you wanted to fire me and the couple of times you actually did?”
As I type I remember seeing a guy with BPD who fired me and stayed away for three weeks. I had a hunch, so I kept his slot open. When he returned he told me he fired me for “not caring.” That was because he was pretty sure I was yawning at the last session. It was a great starter for talking about interpreting vs. over-interpreting social cues from other people.
It finally became a joke between us. “Any cruel evil unfeeling bastards yawn at you recently? Obviously torture and death is the only answer for them.”
One of my favorite techniques with Borderline folks in recovery was wild humor like that. They often lived and felt in extreme ways and had a hard time finding their “middle.” Taking a feeling to a silly and impossible extreme could prompt a response of “well, maybe not that bad.”
Developing the ability to scale feelings is critical for folks with BPD.
Long story short, make an appointment with your therapist and get on with it.
I was in a Video Conference yesterday. There was this slick controller from Cisco. I picked it up and turned it around to see the sticker that said: “Made in China”.
We have all heard the phrase. So much so that it has become a cultural meme, like this creative advertisement.
image 462
Every machine, and I mean it in the broad sense of the word, people use, almost certainly, has components made by the most populous nation of the world.
We are at a stage where manufacturing is synonymous with China. China’s total exports in 2017 were more than the GDP of India, at ~$2.26 trillion.
US is close with $1.5 trillion, but there is the catch.
US exports are primarily expensive stuff like airplanes, gems, assembled cell phones etc. But China makes the “cheaper” things — the components of your phones, the clothes you buy, the filaments in your bulbs, the shoes you are wearing right now.
More than a decade ago, a US family tried to rid themselves of all things “made in China”
[2] . Here are some excerpts from their experience.
When our son, then 4, needed new shoes it took me two weeks of frantic mall trips and phone calls across the country before I located Italian-made sneakers. (They cost almost $70, an obscene amount, and I bought him just that one pair of shoes all year to compensate for my excess.)
We boiled water for coffee every morning after our drip machine broke and the only affordable replacements we could find were made in China. Kevin stole —he likes to say borrowed—sunglasses from the lost-and-found at our kids’ preschool when he needed new ones and the only ones that fit our budget were made in China. We were barred from the market for humane mousetraps (I made my own), birthday candles (we used votive candles on our cakes instead) and the monster trucks and light sabers that our son dreamed of all year.
As December approached, we made lousy homemade Christmas presents, spent too much on toys from Germany and waited for the year, and our boycott, to fade into history.
And Chinese manufacturing has become even more pervasive and ingrained in the last ten years. Good luck with your attempt!
Originally Answered: What’s the most embarassing misconception you’ve ever held?
When my best friend and I were around 16 years old, we always did homework at her house, as my house was usually occupied (my mother was… friendly).
Anyway, one afternoon, we were in the middle of English Lit. homework, and I asked her if she had a dictionary. She said, “I have an Onary, but not Webster’s.”
I had never heard of an Onary dictionary before, but I figured it was no big deal. She told me where it was, and I went to the bookshelf and grabbed it.
The front cover was missing. Across the first page, in bold capital letters was ONARY.
I started laughing, and I couldn’t stop. She came over and started laughing, too, asking me what was so funny. I said, “Sardee, your dictionary is missing the front cover. It’s a Webster’s dictionary.” She said, “I don’t get it. It says ‘ONARY’, right there.”
So, I grabbed a piece of notebook paper, laid it next to the book, and wrote DICTI.
I’ve never seen someone go from confused, to embarrassed, to doubled over in silent laughter, so fast in all my life. She and I laughed so hard, for so long, that our stomachs ached for days, afterward. Every once in a while, over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to bring it up, and it’s never failed to make us giggle. In fact, one of her sons, just yesterday, asked if anybody still bought dictionaries, because we can just Google everything, now.
I couldn’t even answer him. I just got up, told him to go ask his mother, and walked outside. Two minutes later, here comes Sardee. I just looked at her, and she said, “Shut up.”
She’s kinda awesome. Even if she was dippy in high school.
Originally Answered: Was the battle of Stalingrad really as bad as in Enemy at the Gates or is this overexaggeration?
Really as bad?
Oh, you sweet summer child.
Was there any cannibalism in the movie? There was at Stalingrad.
Did you see any wounded with gangrene and maggots crawling in their wounds? No? Maybe a bit too much for Hollywood, eh?
How about extended scenes of vicious and literal hand-to-hand fighting, with the combatants using knives, spades, teeth and whatever else came to hand on each other. No? Maybe those were left on the cutting room floor?
I don’t recall seeing anyone crawling along on their hands and knees with their intestines hanging down and getting tangled in their legs, while their enemy jeer and laugh from cover a few yards away.
And we never saw anyone pouring their toes out of their boots, with a lovely long lingering reaction shot of the rotting frozen flesh on their own face because of frostbite.
I don’t recall seeing anyone screaming as they were burned to death, either. And the film doesn’t really convey that ‘roasting flesh’ smell too well. Human flesh smells like pork!
‘Enemy at the Gates’ is an entertainment product. It’s designed to be able to be watched while eating popcorn. War, on the other hand, is the worst thing that organised groups of humans can do to one another. So don’t compare the two. A movie cannot be compared to reality.
My late husband died 11 years ago. I have a box full of his things. One of the things he loved having was this old alarm clock. There was certain dings and scratches on it that made it unique. At one point it broke and he took it apart to solder some wires together. It was obviously a homemade repair, but you couldn’t tell once it was put back together. Well after he died, we ( our son and I ) moved several times. At one point our things were being stored in a friends garage. For some reason, i never got my husband’s beloved alarm clock back, it some how got mistaken for junk and was tossed out. I was very upset over the loss of his alarm clock. Several years later i was living on another side of town and a friend stopped by on mothers day to show me a box of things she found in a dumpster. ( a weird hobby i know) I noticed immediately an old alarm clock exactly like my late husbands. I picked it up and examined it, and i recognized the dings and scratches on it. So i flipped it over and unscrewed the bottem to inspect the inside where my husband had made repairs on it. It was unmistakably my husbands old alarm clock, and my friend graciously handed it over.
I was in clinic, seeing patients when one of my colleagues came up to me. He was a pleasant fellow who always looked like an un-made bed. Shirt rumpled, tie askew. I hasten to say, he was an excellent physician.
“Maureen, can I curb-side you?”
“Sure. Whatcha got?
“Twenty-year-old woman with complaint of throat pain. I saw her a couple of days ago. I investigated everything I can think of but she’s back with the same complaint. Now telling me she can’t swallow”
“Trauma? Fever? Weight loss?…”
“No.”
We puzzled and puzzled.
“Probably send her to GI for a scope.”
“Maybe just do a quick x-ray to see if anything obvious is going on structurally.”
Off the young lady goes to X-ray.
Colleague sticks his head into my office.
“You have got to see this.”
I take a look at the film.
We both shake our heads.
“How did that get there?”
On the film, plain as day, is the outline of a toothbrush, lodged in her throat.
“What did she say when you showed her the film?”
“She said that she wondered where that went.”
“What’s she look like?
“Painfully thin.”
“I’m guessing an eating disorder. She was trying to induce vomiting and went too far and lost her grip. She’s too embarrassed to tell you.”
That turned out to be correct.
So, yes, the fact that she had lodged a toothbrush, deep in her throat, would have been useful to know.
When my parents first met, my dad was living in a teepee in the woods, and my mom was living on a commune that could only be reached by boat.
When my older brother was conceived, they decided that being that remote would not be safe in case of complications with the pregnancy, so they moved somewhere a bit closer to town. They got some land, cleared it, dowsed and dug a well, and my dad started building our house.
My brother was born. I was born. The foundations of the house were laid, and the bottom floor was built. 4 rooms total. We moved in. My sister was born. Dad kept building. When I was about 4–5, we got electricity. That meant an electric pump, and running water.
When I was 11, the second floor was mostly done, which meant more rooms. I got a bedroom to myself. Mom got a job “in town”. We got an indoor toilet. That flushed.
The third floor got done when I was in high school. Mom worked as a youth counselor in town. We gradually got to be more “in the world”.
The folks split after my first year of college. Dad kept the house, Mom moved into town.
Dad finally finished the house and sold it. It was really way too big for one guy to live in. He died about 15 years ago.
My mom is 70 now. My brother owns an organic farm; she helps him out with canning and preserving his produce, so those old back to the land skills still see some use. Mom does grief counseling and hospice care as a volunteer. They never really lost their hippie ideals, but they modified them as dictated by circumstance and life.
The first time I met her, she was in jail. She was wearing a bright orange jumpsuit and plastic slides. The officer undid her handcuffs so I could examine her and he waited outside the exam room.
She was pregnant. I always ask my incarcerated patients why they are in jail (mostly in case it was for killing their former obstetrician). Invariably they will say “it’s for violating parole“ and eventually we will get around to why they are on probation in the first place.
Her’s involved a significant amount of theft.
I was immediately disturbed and put off by her handmade swastika tattoo.
She was always polite and respectful. She was released from jail prior to giving birth. She gave birth to a beautiful baby and was a conscientious mom and did a nice job breast-feeding.
She saw our lactation educator many times to help with the breast-feeding. After a year her baby self-weaned.
But she kept pumping. And pumping. And pumping. Once a week she would drive 30 miles to the nearest NICU and drop off a freezer full of breastmilk.
SHE DID THIS FOR TWO YEARS.
For two years she helped feed a NICU full of small and sick babies of every ethnicity and multiple nationalities.
She still has the swastika tattoo. Every year I see her I always look for it, hoping she will have had it covered up. I’ve never asked her about it.
I do hope that one day she covers it up.
But she is reminder to me that our worth is not simply equal to the worst thought and the stupidest decision we’ve ever made.
US politicians want a Taiwan war. No doubt. Because MIC & politicians who buy MIC stocks feed on wars.
Warmonger Americans also want war because they think it is noble to support Taiwan democracy. Without understanding what is behind the war.
Let me share an article:
On the surface, it is noble, for a foreigner, to support Taiwan independence, in name of democracy or whatever.
Since WW2, 82% of riots/wars incl independence movements in the world are actually instigated by USA+allies. So as to control other’s strategic sovereignty, economy & natural resources. It is modern-day colonization without occupying other’s land.
No country will tolerate secession & subversion. I am sure not your country either. They will use military to stop secession when necessary. Biden deployed 10,000 armed personnel in the 2021/1/6 riot. UK also said they may use military to deal with Scotland independence.
In case of war, there are blood & deaths. If you cannot feel this pain, go to Ukraine & stay there for 6 months.
There may be legitimacy for independence. But we must know the history first. Otherwise we may accidentally support a devil instead of the righteous. Let me take the example of Tibet independence.
Before CPC China liberated Tibet in 1959, Mao Zedong had a 1-country-2-system, allowing Tibet to run their old system which was a slavery system. 5% of rich Tibetans OWNed 95% of Tibetans. Slaves sometimes fought with dogs for food. The worst part of cruelty was that owners could arbitrarily peel off (pretty) skins from slaves for crafts & gifts to foreigners. Pretty probably means young people’s skin. There is a museum in Tibet today to show this cruel history.
USA instigated Tibet independence in 1959 after USA lost the Korea war in early 1950’s.
When suppressing Tibet independence movement, China liberated Tibetan slaves at the same time. Today Tibetans have education & income, and can own business & property. It is only now they are treated like a human.
Next time when you as a foreigner support Tibetan independence, do not ask the 5% but the 95%. Do not ask those who live on political donation/corruption overseas & shout empty slogans. Instead ask those who work hard to earn an income to support life.
Likewise, dont ask the corrupted separatists in Taiwan who are, like the 5% of Tibetan, will only tell you China is bad, bad, bad. Try to independently learn Taiwanese history. Listen to the story of both sides – China & Taiwan. Ironically, it is the rebels whose propaganda stir foreigners’ emotion.
Remember: no country will allow secession & subversion. Not your country either.
Also remember: when there is war, there will be blood & deaths.
When I was in the eighth grade I had to bring home a report card with an F on it. For Spanish. Courtesy of Mrs. X.
I was a pretty good student, but I despised Mrs. X. She had the maturity of my fellow classmates and a mean streak a mile wide.
She was quite popular. Her mocking of the customs and ways of various Hispanic cultures always drew laughs from my fellow eighth graders. She taught us how laughably stupid and lazy Mexicans are for instance.
She also liked to gossip about other teachers. She once insinuated that a certain English teacher who was an ex-nun was probably lesbian.
I would rebel against her obnoxiousness by not doing homework and shrugging my shoulders when asked a question in class. I would aim for a 60 on all of the exams to show her I could do better if I wanted to.
I showed my report card to my mother who had to sign it. She saw A’s, one B (Math), and the F.
She asked me who my Spanish teacher was. I told her “Mrs. X.”
My mother said, “She’s an asshole.”
This is where my jaw dropped. My mother never swore!
She signed the report card and handed it back to me. Then she explained.
My mother was an RN at an urban hospital. She had trouble sometimes communicating with Spanish-speaking patients. She enrolled in an evening adult-ed conversational Spanish course at our local high school.
The teacher of the course was Mrs. X.
Ten minutes into the class my mother walked out. She thought Mrs. X was one of the most loathsome and obnoxious people she had ever met.
The weird thing is that my mother seemed almost proud of my F.
Absolutely. Many times. But one in particular comes to mind.
minor identifying features have been changed to protect patient confidentiality.
A young mother in her early 20s broke up with her abusive boyfriend. A week later he ambushed her on her front porch, stabbing her over 30 times before stabbing himself once in the stomach. She coded shortly after arrival to the trauma bay but we were able to get her back. She had been stabbed so many times in the neck that the ragged end of her esophagus was dangling out. We rushed her to the OR and she ultimately survived and went home, but that is a story for another day.
Shortly after she came in, her ex-boyfriend arrived. His injury was not immediately life threatening but did require an operation, so after stabilizing her, I took him to the OR too, where he got a relatively minor operation. He remained in the hospital for several days after, however, because he was on suicide watch. So I rounded on him every day as I would any other patient, did wound care and other standard post-op care. He was polite, said “thank you, ma’am,” and we never discussed his ex-girlfriend or the circumstances that brought him to the hospital.
Does that mean I liked him? OH HELL NO. I thought he was the scum of the earth. I found myself thinking he should have stabbed himself as many times as he stabbed her. Better yet, just stab himself and leave her the hell alone. Oh, I despised him to the core.
So did one of my med students. So after the 3rd or 4th day rounding on him, she couldn’t take it anymore.
”How can you be so nice to him after what he did? He’s a horrible human being! He deserves to die!” she burst out.
”Maybe,” I replied. “But there are agents of justice and agents of mercy in the world, and we need both. As a doctor I am an agent of mercy. My job is to care for my patients and trust that the agents of justice will do their job just as well. Which I do.”
The war in Ukraine is one of the fronts in which the United States, in command of NATO, does not generate results in its favor
(Photo: Flickr)
Dec 14, 2023
The crossroads at which the Western establishment led by the United States finds itself has materialized in the concern of a political sector inside and outside that country. The war in Gaza threatens to reduce US arms supplies to Taiwan, as does the war in Ukraine. In recent days, US President Joe Biden has been seeking war aid for Ukraine and Israel (Biden seeks ‘vital’ war aid for Israel and Ukraine ), including more money for Taiwan.
Below they are presented along with the approach that Misión Verdad has made regarding these cases.
1. UNSUNG DEFEAT IN UKRAINE
After the Minsk Agreement (2015) served as a mechanism to buy time, the so-called “collective West” led by the United States went to war against Russia in Ukraine since March 2022. Analysts such as Dugin describe that (https://www.geopolitika.ru/en/article/five-fronts-against-unipolar-globalism ), essentially, it is about a civil war between Russians: patriotic Russians against Atlanticist Russians who have betrayed their Russian identity, but the Atlanticist “Russians” are being used by the unipolar forces of the West.
The confrontation continues to generate negative results and perspectives for the Western side. According to an analysis (Zelenski no logra ganarse al Congreso de EEUU y el paquete de ayuda a Kiev sigue estancado ) by The Washington Post, the efforts of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, during his second visit to Washington in three months, “did little” to change the opinion of Republican congressmen, who oppose continuing to finance the escalation of the war.
During that same visit, and meeting with the Ukrainian leader, President Biden promised Kiev a new $200 million military aid package, while noting that it could be the last. Days earlier, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stated that he believes Ukraine’s front-line position could worsen if the West does not increase arms supplies. He detailed that kyiv is in a “critical situation” as members of the Atlantic Alliance were unable to meet the growing demand for ammunition. “We have to prepare for bad news,” he declared on December 3 in an interview (tagesschau24: Exlusiv-Interview mit NATO-Generalsekretär Stoltenberg – Nach dem Großangriff Russlands ist die Lage für die Ukraine kritisch | ARD Mediathek ) with the German television channel Das Erste.
In an interview (The AP Interview: Ukraine’s Zelenskyy says the war with Russia is in a new phase as winter looms ) with the AP, Zelensky admitted that his fighters were unable to make significant progress in their failed counteroffensive. “We wanted faster results. From that perspective, unfortunately we did not achieve the desired results. And this is a fact,” he asserted, blaming the West for not having provided sufficient weapons.
He also expressed fear that events in the Gaza Strip could jeopardize the flow of military aid to kyiv.
In this way, the Ukrainian conflict would be overshadowed by the destruction of Gaza implemented by Israel with the support of Western powers.
Researchers Diego Sequera and Ernesto Cazal published a series of articles ( I, II and III) with a geopolitical balance of the war in Ukraine.
2. GAZA: “ISRAEL IS THE WEST”
Precisely, the second American war front is in Western Asia.The genocide against the Palestinian population carried out by Israel has the support of the West; This has been demonstrated not only by the forms but also by the concepts.
The destruction of Gaza is not only advancing with irreversible damage to its buildings (15%) but also to its arable lands (22%)
(Photo: France24)
The article, written by an organic intellectual of Zionist nationalism, Omer Dostri, proposes as an “ideal option” that Israel reoccupy Gaza in the long term, ethnically cleanse hundreds of thousands of Palestinian residents, exponentially expand the size of the extermination zone and establish settlements inside Gaza.
Dan Cohen, American journalist and documentary filmmaker, notes (El Pentágono propone limpieza étnica y colonización de Gaza y destrucción del Líbano) that the text adds to the numerous statements that, in the case of a war crimes trial, would serve as clear evidence of the intention to carry out a genocide, which is notoriously difficult to establish. establish. The fact that this call was published on behalf of the Department of Defense and in the main media branch of the United States Army raises doubts about American culpability in the Gaza genocide, which is being carried out mainly with factory-made bombs and missiles. of the North American country, and about what the true intentions of its government are.
Israeli occupation forces have attacked residential buildings, schools, hospitals, ambulances, medical personnel, rescue and first aid teams, journalists, United Nations employees, mosques, Christian churches, infrastructure, and have cut off electricity and communication services. According to data (Centro de Satélites de la ONU: el 18 % de las estructuras en Gaza fueron dañadas – SANA en Español) from the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the death toll as a result of Israeli bombings against the Gaza Strip increased to 18,608, while another 50,594 people have been injured. 18% of the total structures and 22% (In Gaza, ‘an estimated 22% of agricultural land’ has been destroyed since the start of the conflict) of the arable land in the Gaza Strip have been damaged as a result of Israel’s aggression against this Palestinian enclave.
The destabilization of the Arab and Islamic world is a necessity of the West and its advance requires a systematic genocide of the Arab population like the one carried out in Gaza. Washington’s supervisory role, demonstrated in the recurring visits of the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has to do with maintaining control over an eventual overflow of elements of the Palestinian resistance, gas fields (Los recursos energéticos en la ecuación del exterminio israelí) such as Leviathan and the India-Middle East economic corridor -Europe (IMEC, its acronym in English).
Two research papers by Sequera ( I and II ) have been published on this portal to describe the plot, in addition to a recent interview with analysts Christian Nader and Javier Couso conducted by Ernesto Cazal.
3. IN AFRICA “UNIPOLARITY” IS TESTED (OR BETRAYED)
Dugin states that “the bloc of anti-colonial countries in West Africa (Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Central African Republic, Gabon) is united against the pro-colonial (Atlantist) regimes and against Macron’s globalist France.” However, Washington’s hand is not far from that front, maneuvering to retain control of the region (or at least dispute influence with the multipolar powers) and depose the influence of France. This would demonstrate that unipolarity is not so much a Euro-Atlantic vision as a purely American one.
Three Sahel countries, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, signed (Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso establish Sahel security alliance) a pact in September to establish an architecture of collective defense and mutual assistance for the benefit of their populations.
After the coup d’état in Niger against President Mohamed Bazoum by officers at the head of the National Council for the Safeguarding of the Homeland (CNSP), the confrontation against Paris was manifest.
The coup plotters alleged that the decision was due to the “continuous deterioration of the security situation” and “poor economic and social management.”
Supporters of the military junta that took control of Niger through a coup d’état marched towards the capital waving Russian flags and denouncing France, the former colonial power
(Photo: Sky News)
The Undersecretary of State, Victoria Nuland, visited the African country (EE.UU. busca desplazar a Francia en el Sahel) in order to anticipate the increase in Russia’s influence. The rejection of the French could lead to their total expulsion (Aumenta la presión de Níger por la salida del embajador francés) from the continent and the subsequent security vacuum, which seems an irreversible process, even when force is used, either directly or through the Economic Community of West African States ( Cedeao).
The formation of the mutual defense pact by the three Sahel countries attempts, precisely, to confront the threats from ECOWAS, which has a history of successful military interventions (Historial de intervenciones militares de la CEDEAO en África) through its military arm.
In the region, the dispute between the unipolar order and the emerging multipolar order has been expressed (Níger, neocolonialismo y la geopolítica militar en África), one led by the Euro-Atlantic Axis with the United States at the head and the other by China and Russia, among other countries. The latter have dedicated themselves to establishing cooperative relations in the areas of diplomacy and international relations, economics, finance, trade and security—the Asians have been forging them for three decades. Washington, for its part, has become involved in the fields of financial investment in strategic resources and its military deployment has filled almost the entire African continent with AFRICOM (África marca el rumbo a América Latina hacia la multipolaridad)
To expand on the complex African geopolitical dynamics, you can consult the works published by Eder Peñaand Diego Sequera.
4. NATOIZING THE PACIFIC AND PROVOKING CHINA
The global dispute fueled by the United States reaches close to China’s borders, as demonstrated by the continued interference in the conflict between the Asian country and the island of Taiwan, recognized as part of its territory even by Washington, which has maintained an “ambiguity strategic” increasingly difficult to demonstrate.
It is essential for China’s foreign relations that its “One China” (The One-China Principle and the Taiwan Issue) policy be recognized. Its territorial reunification process, adopted by the National People’s Congress through the Anti-Secession Law (Text of China’s anti-secession law) of 2005, reserves to the government the right to use “non-peaceful means” in the event of an eventual declaration of independence from Taiwan, after accepting that the Taipei administration represents an autonomous province.
For its part, since 1949, Taiwan has claimed the government of all of mainland China, in addition to the archipelago of the same name, which keeps alive the conflict that Washington constantly encourages through political, economic and military support.
After the United States switched diplomatic recognition of Taiwan to China in 1979, it continued to sell weapons to the island under the terms of the Taiwan Relations Act. The key was to sell enough weapons so that Taiwan could defend itself against a possible Chinese attack, but not so many that it would destabilize relations between Washington and Beijing.
However, it has sold him more than $14 billion in military equipment.
Map demonstrating US military pressure against China. In red the defense systems installed by Beijing, in green the bases and presence of the United States and its allies
(Photo: The Economist)
Not only has Biden used discretionary powers to approve another $500 million in operational readiness to Taiwan, but ground battalions will receive training in the United States.
He has sought to increase the siege of China by strengthening the Seventh Fleet (Home) in Japan, it is the largest in the North American country with 40,000 troops, 70 ships and submarines and about 300 aircraft. Such a deployment, which seeks to otanize (Cómo se prepara China ante una escalada en Taiwán) the Pacific region, has been seen in the Korean, Vietnam and Iraq wars (1991), and would be focused on supporting South Korea against Pyonyang and Taiwan against China in possible armed conflicts.
A BBC report (The US is quietly arming Taiwan to the teeth) indicates that the United States is running out of time to update and equip the Taiwanese army, especially knowing that the equipment is old, there is no island counterintelligence in the rival country and, perhaps most importantly , taking into account its inferiority in every sense compared to China.
In addition, Taiwan plays a fundamental role in the supply and value chain of the American industry, specifically in the race for the semiconductor market, fundamental for technological development.
The Global North continues to search for oil and Venezuelan territory is in its sights.
About 10 years ago, the oil company ExxonMobil activated an oil and gas extraction plan in the territorial waters of Essequibo, a geographical space in dispute between Venezuela and Guyana as a result of the imperial dispossession of the United Kingdom during the 19th century.
Venezuela has responded to the Guyanese claim, lacking legal and historical support, demanding dialogue and bilateral agreements stipulated in the so-called Geneva Agreement of 1966. However, acting as a subsidiary of the oil transnational (Guyana, Inc.: filial de la ExxonMobil) and supported by the United States, Guyana has resorted to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) after the last two UN Secretaries General referred the dispute to that international court without taking into account the endorsement of the Venezuelan side.
Between 2015 and 2016, the Venezuelan government denounced to the international community the so-called “operation pincers” with which the United States, through Colombia and Guyana, would provoke a military conflict against Venezuela that would facilitate its subsequent intervention.
Within this framework, the United States Southern Command has arranged to include the neighboring country in its military maneuvers known as “Tradewinds”, in the Caribbean Sea, since 2015, just when ExxonMobil began to illegally explore (¿Quién está detrás del escalamiento diplomático por el Esequibo?) the deposits and sign contracts with Georgetown.
The most recent version of “Tradewinds” featured 21 countries, including three European nations (France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom).
They gathered in Guyana for the second time since they took place to carry out various activities on land, air, sea and cyberspace, distributed in different locations in the country, many of them along the Essequibo River.
image 42
Guyana illegally granted concessions to ExxonMobil in territorial maritime space disputed with Venezuela
(Photo: El Universal)
Also this year, as a sign that his diplomacy is always linked to the conflictive imprint, Secretary Blinken visited Guyana and discussed energy investment issues for its companies and territorial security. There has already been a precedent for interference dressed in diplomacy: in 2019 the Lima Group, a group of countries aligned with the regime change operation against Venezuela directed from the United States, issued a statement (Declaración del Grupo de Lima) recognizing the alleged Guyanese sovereignty over the territory of Essequibo. This led to notes of protest from the government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela against the signatory states of the statement and led to the majority of the signatories recanting (Países rectifican posición tras nota del Grupo de Lima sobre Venezuela).
After the overwhelmingly positive result of the consultative referendum on December 3, the Venezuelan State decided to take the first actions to protect Guayana Esequiba.
) around the dispute, supporting Guyana, which seeks to mobilize the focus towards what the ICJ rules, whose decisions are known to be biased towards the North. Global, and recognized in case of being harmed.
Misión Verdad published numerous works regarding the Essequibo case, here
are six of them.
— WE ARE A GROUP OF INDEPENDENT RESEARCHERS DEDICATED TO ANALYZING THE WAR PROCESS AGAINST VENEZUELA AND ITS GLOBAL IMPLICATIONS. FROM THE BEGINNING OUR CONTENT HAS BEEN FREE TO USE.
WE DEPEND ON DONATIONS AND COLLABORATIONS TO SUPPORT THIS PROJECT, IF YOU WANT TO CONTRIBUTE TO MISIÓN VERDAD (Apóyanos)
The TRAP of the HIGH-VALUE woman: every restaurant serves water
This is actually a story about my daughter. She was 17 and had bought a second hand Acura Integra sports car with her own money. No, dad was very remiss in not teaching his lovely daughter how to change a flat tire, so one night she gets a flat and limps into a Walmart parking lot. She knows where things are in the trunk, but is a little unsure how to use them.
Suddenly, a van pulls up near her and 4 guys pile out. She said later she was frozen with terror thinking they were going to abduct her and rape her. Instead, one of the men asked if she had a flat and was help on the way.
No, she replied, she was going to fix it herself, except she really didn’t know how.
While she was talking the other guys opened the back of the van and pulled (as she described it) a lever-style jack out as well as a power wrench. In seconds, her car was lifted up from the side; the wheel removed and her replacement tire back on. All done in about 30 seconds.
They were the pit crew for a race team and were stopping at Walmart for some snacks when they saw her predicament and came over to help.
They advised my daughter to have dad show her how to change a tire.
edit: I neglected to mention that my daughter had AAA but given their response time and her not having a cell phone she was prepared to try to change the tire herself. Given enough time she’d have figured it out since she is extremely bright, but the fellows coming by was a godsend to her. They basically made it into a lark to help a damsel in distress.
My dad’s father died when he was 9, in 1946. He had an older brother, and two younger sisters.
A few years later, his mother married a man named John. John told the kids “I am not your father, I cannot replace your father. Call me John, or whatever you want.”
John was a hard worker- he only missed a day of work when he was injured at work, and only stayed home because they made him. John was not an overly affectionate man- he was in Special Forces in WW2 and had terrible PTSD. He did however take the kids fishing with him, taught them to play cribbage, he was very handy and made sure the boys could fix things. He was protective of the girls, and would stand on the front porch waiting for them when they went out, not resting until they were home safe.
He made sure the boys stayed out of trouble, made sure they behaved, respected their mother, and worked from the time they were 14. Although very “street wise”, neither boy was ever in any trouble.
His whole working life, he always turned his entire pay over to his wife, and she gave him an allowance. He never once complained.
When someone said “Your children…” to him, he would say “they are my wife’s children”.
We called him Grandpa John.
When I was married, and after my grandmother had died, I asked him about him saying that. He said “Their father deserves the credit for who they are, and it’s wrong to make anyone forget him. You only have one father.” I asked if he loved the kids… and he said “I worked hard to make sure they had everything, I took care of them.” To him, this was the proof of love.
He also said “It was a privilege to raise them, they are good people. I was lucky to be able to be there to help”.
When I was a kid, and Grandpa John taught me to play Cribbage- if I missed points when counting my hand, he would take them saying “If you don’t want em, they’re mine”. He never let me (or my brothers) win; we either won fair and square, or not at all.
My dad is now 84. He is so much like Grandpa John- he is a strong man, who plays cards (just as John taught him), who fishes (just like John taught him), who can fix *anything* (just as John taught him), He missed rare days at work, served in the military, and would be waiting outside for me whenever I went out in the evening- he didn’t rest until he knew I was home, safe.
I beat my father once at Gin- once- in my whole life. The last time he and I played cribbage, I missed “His Nibs”- and my dad took the point, saying “If you don’t want em, they’re mine”.
He is, in reality, as much (if not more) John’s son as he was his father’s son. He respected and loved John, not because anyone told him to, but because John earned it.
Your step-kids will look back on their lives and see that *you* are the one who paid the bills, *you* were there when they woke up afraid, *you* were the one who waited on the front porch until they were home safe. You were the one who said “He’s $20, stop for Pizza on the way home”.
Just be a man of integrity. Don’t argue with anyone, don’t withdraw your love or support, just be there for the kids.
Just as no one needed to tell my Dad how important John was, no one will need to tell the children you are raising. And, one day, you will see in them how important you have been. And in reality, they are the only ones who matter.
More like the most disgusting. When I was in eighth grade, we had a male history teacher. He was in his thirties with a receding hairline and a weird smile.
When we started the beginning of the year, he was sort of like a goofy soccer dad. Very funny and interactive with the class. Nothing ever seemed weird about him, and all the parents always liked him.
As we moved along the year, he started doing strange things. He’d walk up behind female students and rub their shoulders or go way too close to them when trying to “help” with a problem. People always were uncomfortable but he didn’t go to an insane extent.
When we reached the “two months left of school” mark, we were taken on a field trip to the park for a class picnic. My friend and I went off to a table away from the class so we could talk with one another without other people hearing. I remember we were laughing about a joke her brother said when the history teacher came up to us and told me that our, at the time, English teacher needed me.
I didn’t think much of it and went up to my English teacher. Yes, of course, I realized that I shouldn’t left my friend alone with the history teacher, but at the moment I wasn’t thinking.
After I talked with my English teacher for a bit, I walked back to the table but realized they were both gone. I was confused and went back to my English teacher and told her that the two were missing. She grabbed the other teachers and began to look around for them.
I followed them as they spread out. While they were searching, I realized the two of them might be in the parking lot grabbing something from the bus. I went over and checked the bus and nobody was in there. The parking lot was mainly deserted so I went and checked the van parked slightly away from the bus. I peeked through the window, and to my horror, I saw my history teacher r*ping my friend, who was yelling through her tears. I was absolutely appalled. I threw open the door and started screaming at the top of my lungs. I slammed my fist into the groin area of my history teacher, grabbed my friend, and hauled her out of the van.
The rest of the teachers ran towards us as I told them what happened. The history teacher started yelling as the others called the police and screamed at him. It was all chaos.
To this day I am still scarred. Thankfully, my friend turned out okay and I still talk to her now. She’s happily married and has healed from this experience.
Remember, just because they’re an authority figure doesn’t mean you should trust them. People are messed up.
It was the day before Thanksgiving. My mom was in the hallway sobbing and frantically searching the Help wanted section of the newspaper. I was only seven and my brother was four. I was confused about why my mom was crying so hard. I asked her and she said she needed to find a job. I thought that was strange because my dad had a good job and my mom stayed home and cooked and cleaned. Who’s going to take care of us I thought to myself.
Thanksgiving was a weird and somber day. All the food was there, but it was quiet. Silent even.
My mom found a job overnight so she could be home with us during the day. My dad stopped playing with us. He stopped talking to us. He stayed late at work a lot. My mom was always tired and took naps whenever she could. I was at school most of the day, so that helped, but the house started to get dirty and she started to bring home fast food instead of cooking delicious meals. This went on for a few years. My mom got really skinny.
And then, when I turned ten, my mom quit work and stayed home again. The house was clean again. We had good food to eat and my parents were happy again.
My mom told me years later that my dad had had a nervous breakdown. We were very close to losing the house and everything we owned. My dad had come very close to trying to commit suicide thinking that his life insurance would be enough to save every thing. My mom was crying that day because he told her his plans and my mom told him she would go to work and help save the house, but she couldn’t do it by herself. She loved him so much that she went without sleep to save him and everything we had. They were married 47 years until death did part them. My mom lived another 3 years afterwards and is buried next to him.
As a KFC customer for almost 40 years, I suppose I’m also contributing to the problem.
Ever since I first had KFC in the mid 1980s, I’ve been trained to look for their special deals or coupons which would make their meals about 30% cheaper than their regular pricing. With the deals, the iconic boxes and buckets haven’t gone up in price as much as everything else. 9 pieces of regular chicken went from about $7 in the mid 1980s to $10–12 today when it should be about $25.
Hence they had to reduce the sizes of their chicken pieces, as they charge by the piece, and slash ingredient costs until it’s basically just salt for seasoning. Honestly, plain battered fried chicken is already pretty good, so I can see how they can get by with mostly salt and dispense with the expensive spices.
As a customer, I would expect ever lower inflation-adjusted prices to compensate for the reduction in quality. I would still come for the deals if it’s cheap enough. They know it and I know it.
Now, they’re making barely passable food loaded with insane amounts of salt that people like me still eat out of nostalgia when yet another coupon comes across. The usual patrons are at least my age or older and their sad looking sit down tables are still mostly empty and straight out of the 1980s.
While each KFC location can still pull upwards of $1–2M in sales a year, I don’t know how they’re going to survive in the coming decade when the older generations like me literally can’t handle the salt anymore. The Millennials and younger crowd have grown up used to fancy fried chicken like the Korean double fried or Dave’s hot chicken. They’re not taking well to KFC at any price.
In 2016 during a night in March around 2 AM, I was woken up by hard knocks my front door. As I made my way towards the door (which was partly glass), I noticed a police uniform. I opened the door and saw a police officer standing out there telling me he’s performing a wellness check. I look at him in a weird way, asking him why he would come in the middle of the night to check on me and my family. He explained to me that an Uber driver reported taking a strange guy from near our premises around 8 pm. The guy looked weird and acted strange enough to alert the Uber driver. He asked the Uber driver to simply drop him off in the middle of a street without specifying which house exactly. During the drive, he didn’t make any conversation with the driver.
Now for the back story. The passenger was my brother, who has hurt his eye during his army service. His iris was damaged, so it looks like he has an expanded pupil. He had just landed that evening after a flight from Europe (me in the US) and was jetlagged and tired. He simply rested during the drive and almost fell asleep. He didn’t know which Airbnb house the company rented, so he needed to walk a little to find it. When I explained this to the officer, we both had a good laugh at now, 2:30 AM and then he left.
After all this, I still appreciate the Uber driver, who did the right thing. I wish everyone cared enough about strangers they never met or knew.
After my dad died, my mother was incredibly lonely, so I would take her on road trips, and we would visit all the places that her and dad had visited together.
As we drove, she told me their history, from the day she met him, their first date, how he asked her out, their first kiss. They were married 75 years ago, and my mother was a virgin on her wedding night.
She told me of them scrimping and saving to buy each other, and later us kids, gifts. How happy they were when they saved enough money.
She told of how once a month they would have enough money for a 26 of whiskey or rum, and they would invite our neighbors, their best friends over, for drinks and toast. Then two weeks later, their neighbors would have saved up enough to invite them over. My parents had a pan with holes in it, with handles, that they sat on top of their propane stove, to make toast. Their neighbors had this newfangled electric toaster. My mother loved the evenness of the toasting on the toast, from the electric toaster. The neighbors were polite enough to say that they loved the toast from the pan.
When my father died, my mother had me spread the ashes at the site of their first house, by the stream in the country. She had told me so many joyful stories of those days. Like the day she found out she was pregnant with my older brother.
Your U.S. joint chief of staff in the military CONFIRMED THAT IT IS A WEATHER BALOON officially and you still choose to call it a fxxking “spy balloon” either you are dumb, idiotic or you are a jerk. But chances is that you are an average Joe a typical China and Chinese hater pretending to ask a question!
Shoot it down? Of course no. It no different from shooting down you neighbours kid party ballon blown of course into your air space! Do you know you look and sons like a 50 IQ per just for asking that? If you are normal you will question what your nation uses a billion dollar fighter jet to shoot down a thousand dollar balloon travelling 20 KM an hour!
Grow up will you? No wonder the U.S. is bankrupt and imploding. It is due to people like you.
When I first left Hawaii I moved to San Diego. One of the first things I wanted to do was establish a checking account. This was the mid 80’s.
I took my travelers checks and had to catch a bus to a bank. I looked at the desks as I entered and they were all empty so I approached a teller and let her know I wanted to speak to someone about opening an account. She told me she could help. So I pull out my travelers checks and my wallet and place them on the counter. She glances at the tc’s and asks me, “What country is that from?” – wait, really?
“This one.”
“Which one?”
“This one. They’re from this country. Is there an account manager available?”
“I assure you, I can help. Can I see your ID?” I hand it over. “And do you have your passport?”
“For what? I don’t have a passport.”
“Because you’re from overseas. I need a passport.” again- what?
I’m not from ‘overseas’. I’m from Hawaii. It’s a state.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, think again. Hawaii is a state.”
“Ma’am, you have foreign money and a foreign ID. I need a passport.”
So, at 21, I stepped back and yelled, “I NEED TO SPEAK WITH A MANAGER!!”
A young man steps up from behind me and asks what the problem is. I try to let him know that I’m trying to open an account when the teller interjects and tells him I have no passport, I’m from ‘overseas’ and I have foreign money. Before I have a chance to show him my ID he kindly lets me know that I need a passport to open an account when coming from out of country. So, I’m done. I grab my things and head for the door.
At this point it looks like the manager is returning from lunch. He stops me on the way to the door and asks if he could help. I show him my ID. “This is a state ID, issued in the State of Hawaii. The 50th state of the United States.” He say, “Yes, ma’am, I know what this is. What’s the problem?”
Teller pops over, “She needs a passport.”
Manager, “For what?”
“Because she’s from overseas!”
“No, she’s not. She’s from Hawaii.”
“But, that’s overseas.”
“Actually, it’s a state.” To which she looked totally confused.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I won’t be able to open an account here.”
I took my Inuit husband to England. I borrowed my Mother’s car and took him to a pub. I had not been back for a while, so when, near 11pm, I did not hear the familiar “Time, Gentlemen, please” I assumed that licencing hours had been changed. After a while the publican came to each table and said, quietly “If you wouldn’t mind drinking up and leaving soon I would appreciate it. The police are outside.” So we left and got in the car. A police officer came over and I wound down the window. “Excuse me, Madam,” he said politely, “Did you know that your tax disk is out of date?” This is a circular piece of paper which fits in a holder on the windshield to prove you have paid the road tax. I explained that it was my Mother’s car and I knew nothing about it, but I scrabbled in the glove-box in case it was there. It wasn’t. “Well, perhaps it is just at home, then” suggested the officer, “could I have the name and address of the owner?” I duly gave it and was told that he would drop round in a few days to make sure. We drove home. My husband was astonished and suggested what would have happened if we had been in Canada. My Mother rushed into the nearest town the next day in my Father’s car and paid for the missing tax disk.
A couple of months later I was speaking with my Mother on the phone and she told me that a policeman had shown up just a day or so before this call. He had a cup of tea and chatted, and then mentioned the tax disk which had been duly inserted in the holder. He took a look at it and left.
That is policing as it should be, and it is the reason that the British police can do their job unarmed. In the UK, the police are our friends, there to protect us. They do not shoot and ask questions after.
P.S. Yes, this happened a number of years ago, and now police can check using the number plate.
It’s what happens to a rogue empire when it begins to collapse inwardly
It becomes a Nation of Factions and Partisanship
The US is struggling in a Multipolar World
More and more Nations now stand up to the US and say “We have had enough of your hegemony. Either you treat us better or we go to Russia and China”
Yet Israel is an old buddy and the Jewish lobby, a Lobby of corrupt and greedy people who are middlemen to various corrupt deals involving Israel and USA can use the pressure of this corruption and cause Biden serious problems in the elections because Wall Street is heavily controlled by the Jewish Lobby
So on one side the US is losing the goodwill of the Arabs who are too rich to be bribed, who can get nuclear architecture from Russia and China completely bypassing the West and who can get weapons and trade from China and Russia entirely bypassing the West
Iran simply says to the Arabs “Look guys , either you allow me to get a two state solution by funding Houthis and Hezbollah and Hamas or i turn them on you”
Arab States are happy with the recent peace with Iran so they say “Either Iran gets defeated which is good for us or Israel gets humbled and US gets humbled which is ALSO good for us”
Its a win win for them
Meanwhile Israel knows the US is losing Arabia and know that if they burn bridges with Israel, they lose the entire middle East
Israel is the only anchor for US influence in the Middle East where Arab Nations are fast asking the US to go f*** themselves every day
So they cannot be forcefully impeded by USA
So there you have it
The Strongest Nation in the world now a stinking cesspit with a Senile Biden, a Stupid Birdbrain Nikki Haley and that Faggot Lindsey Graham in charge of decision making
Losing the Middle East and clueless how to stop it
Too scared of losing Israel and thus allowing open butchery and murder of kids and women and losing the goodwill of the entire non western world
A HELPLESS NATION CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF WEAKNESS AND CORRUPTION
After working closely with children as a teacher, I have to say that, although in many cases family problems/neglect or abuse by parents, carers, etc is to blame, there are also some children who are just born “bad seeds”. I had one little boy in a class one year. I knew his parents socially and had his older brother in my class in previous years. The older brother was a nice, well-behaved kid – sometimes naughty, but what kids aren’t, sometimes? Just a normal, well-adjusted child.
His younger brother, on the other hand, was a nightmare. Because I was a friend of the family, I got to see this little horror in action. From the moment of his birth, he was a cranky and demanding baby who had no patience and if everybody didn’t jump to his will he would throw a huge tantrum. As he grew older, and particularly once I could observe him daily in my classroom, I saw him become, what I can only describe as cunning. He knew tantrums didn’t work with me: I usually walk away and once they realize they have no audience they calm down. Instead, he began a campaign of terror. Always when he thought I wasn’t watching. He was very intelligent,and when it suited him he could charm the birds from the trees. But on an instant he could turn into a raging maniac. Instead of using that intellect to learn, instead he used it to lie, steal, cheat, and physically hurt other children who were smaller than him, destroying their work and generally causing me to have to concentrate on him more than any of the others just to keep him under some sort of control. The day came when he skipped class. I could hear a commotion in the playground, where the school had set up a henhouse for the children to have contact with farm animals. I could hear chickens in distress. A number of teachers, all followed by their classes, ran to see what was going on. The hens were all milling about and scared and there were five dead hens. E. was still holding one screaming chicken, laughing as he swung it by its legs. The school then told the parents that this behaviour was beyond our capacity and to take him out.
His parents took him to a child psychologist and he was diagnosed as having “Defiance and Anger Management Disorder” and he was sent to a specialist school that deals with children with out of control behaviour.
I lost touch with the family for a number of years after that, but eventually ran into the older brother, who had by now joined the Australian Air Force and was a pilot in training. We chatted for a while, and of course I asked him how E., his younger brother, was doing.
He told me that E. only got worse as he got older. He had gone to Juvenile Detention for attacking people and was now in jail again for attacking an old age pensioner with a pair of scissors. His brother said he feared for when he got out – he said that E. was dangerous and couldn’t be trusted not to hurt people. Not because of anything they did to him. Just because he enjoyed hurting other living things. The family couldn’t keep pets, since E. would always torture them to death.
Ten years after running into the older brother, I again heard of E. He is currently in jail for attempted murder. His live-in girlfriend was found beaten to a pulp, and she lives now with multiple disabilities. The judge said he had never seen anybody treated so callously, and that E. had an absolute lack of apparent remorse for his actions.
So it is not always nurture. Sometimes nature is to blame.
When I was in high school, I was a cheerleader. My father drove a school bus. One evening, we were at the school waiting to board the bus to attend an out-of-town game. A student at the school that was heavily into drugs and other assorted activities came to the school.
I was standing, talking to my father at the moment this student approached us. He produced a pistol, stuck it under my father’s chin and pulled the trigger. The gun just “clicked”. He sneered at us and said “Darn. Wish it had been loaded.”. That is my last cognizant thought of the evening.
Later, friends relayed the “rest of the story” to me.
The police were called. Upon their arrival, my father was asked where the offender was. He pointed and said “Under that cheerleader.”. Obviously, I had taken serious offense at this jerk’s actions and beat the living daylights out of him. The police pulled me off of him and took him to jail. Again, I have no recollection of those events.
I cannot condone you taking the action I took. It would completely depend on the circumstances.
When I was 11 years old, I was diagnosed with Aspergers.
The psychologist told me I would never hold a real job, drive a car, or even be capable of basic self-care around the house.
Where I come from, healthcare is incredibly poor because only the lowest-qualifying doctors move to this environmentally contaminated area because nobody in a reputable city will accept them.
Basically, my diagnosis was based almost entirely upon my uneducated sociopath mother’s lies, slander, and manipulation. The rest of my diagnosis was based on the outlandish and outdated belief that it’s abnormal for a girl to be extremely quiet, but have very articulate speech and an interest in science and video games. Yeah, they literally assumed I was mental because I didn’t fit their sexist views. Needless to say, doctors in this area are among the most unprofessional in the entire country.
My childhood consisted of endless bullying and harassment from my mom, brother, stepfather, classmates, and teachers. My mom always called me a “retard” and told me to “act like a normal kid, you fucking freak.” She also belittled me by telling me that I DESERVED the bullying that everyone gave me.
Years later, I survived multiple suicide attempts and turned 18.
Despite being labeled as an “autistic retard”, my mom forced me to immediately enter college when I wasn’t ready and all I wanted to do was navigate through basic adulthood with a job before making such a huge commitment to education.
I psychologically cracked.
Most of what happened is now a blur. But I can remember the part when I silently walked out of class in the middle of a lecture. I continued walking silently outside and made my way toward my mom’s car. (Yeah, she actually allowed me to get a license and drive myself occasionally. But only because her friends with “normal” kids started giving her shit about having a retarded kid.)
I got in the car and sobbed violently. My life was over. It’s all a prison and I want out.
My grades were all horrible because I saw no point in doing anything when my mom always told me that I would NEVER be allowed to have my own life and that if I attempted to escape from her, she would finally have me legally declared mentally incompetent so I would have no human rights to make my own decisions in life.
A few weeks later, I left my mom’s house without any notice and used my meager savings account to get an apartment. I spent 8 months submitting job applications to every place in town that would hire my age. I literally only got three interviews the entire time. I was forced to work online as an adult cam model to survive on less than $800 a month. Keep in mind that this job was very difficult due to being naturally ugly and constantly being degraded. At the end of these 8 months, I was finally hired for a shitty part-time job.
At this point, it probably sounds like nothing will ever improve.
But here’s the plot twist…
Today, I’m 22 years old and I have a stable job in a manufacturing facility. Most people are unable to survive on the meager wages of this job, but I’ve managed to do far more than just survive. I’m thriving. I didn’t need a roommate or a partner to help me move up in life. In only two years of working this job and supporting myself living alone, I was able to build my credit and save up money to buy a nice convertible car and a HOUSE. A freaking HOUSE. I did it on my own with no guidance from anyone. I researched everything carefully and worked hard and because of that, I succeeded. But aside from material things, I also gained something else that my mom and all the other cruel people said I would never have. Friends.
I still go through cycles of depression, but my friends are understanding of my struggle and it helps to know that they still believe in me.
The moral of this story is to never lose hope. Even if everyone in your life hates you and makes a joint effort to keep you trapped, always keep an ounce of hope guarded in your mind. If you have to use anger from injustice to re-ignite your hope, do it. Do it until you succeed and then find peace. As long as you have even the smallest amount of hopeful defiance, you have the power to create a plot twist in your life.
I had been out of prison for one month after a 15 year incarceration for murder. The conviction of murder requiring “intent” and “aforethought” in my state, I can say with a straight face and clear conscious that I did not commit murder, however I absolutely knew when my spouse took the stand to testify against me that I would be convicted of it. Since I am a “manslaughterer” by the legal definition of the word, I didn’t quibble and just took the sentence. It was coming either way, and I knew it.
On that Monday I took a psychological battery for vocational rehabilitation to see what they could help me with. I walked 4 miles one way at 7AM for the appointment. It was overcast, in the low 40’s when I started out, and I was hopeful. After taking a many hours long series of tests, I had a brief interview with a psychologist. I was warned beforehand that he was there to ask me a few questions but not for a counseling session, so I was to keep that in mind.
Every question he asked me I thought about in depth before I answered. I wanted to give this well educated, intelligent man the exact shade of phraseology I knew he needed for an accurate assessment. At the end, he asked if I had any questions for him. I said I had one, “When does being free start to become easier than it is now?” He looked at me straightaway in the eyes and said with absolutely zero expression of emotion, “This isn’t a counseling session. If you need a counseling session you can make an appointment.”
Freedom was not all it was cracked up to be, to put it very, very mildly. On that date I was down to my last few dollars I had saved whilst in prison ($700 in 3 years, crocheting blankets and working 250 hours a month at .30¢ an hour), I had no job, was being pestered to get a job immediately by Parole Officer who provided to date zero help in that department, and everything I was qualified, trained and educated for was worthless in a professional pursuit. I was given a list of over 50 companies who hire felons, but only 4 would consider a violent felon. I was told to spend at least 8 hours a day looking for a job. Between 10 to 20 times a day I had to replay for horrified managers what I did which sent me to prison. By the end of the day, I seemed like an apathetic sociopath who couldn’t care less about what I did. My family hadn’t deemed me worthy of help, I was in a strange new city in a halfway house, I knew very few people and they were all busy with their own life anyways.
What had most galled me was how the civilisation in general had changed. I was deeply, deeply bothered by the callous disregard of fellow humans by virtually everyone I met in every walk of life. For the last 10 years or so that I was in prison I noticed that the rookie inmates were particularly inconsiderate and selfish, and I attributed that to the fact that I was 10 years their senior, and that they were just young kids afraid and wanting to fit in. When I was released, I immediately noticed that in fact these selfish, inconsiderate and thoughtless inmates were just an accurate representation of their age group, and that this is what society had become.
Around noon, I was walking home on a bridge which went over the freeway. I looked over the edge. I could feel the spirit of despair and crushed dreams with no hope for relief calling me down to the pavement below with a promise for a sweet release from this place. For about 4 or 5 seconds, I just looked over the edge. I calculated all I have going for me and all I had relinquished so far in this life.
All I had was a promise from the Russian Orthodox Church which told me that after a well run race I would be awarded a rest and a peace the likes of which I could not imagine.
I walked on.
On my way home I thought first about what I had been educated 20 years for, and what I could do with it.
Zero.
Then I thought about what I had done in the past and wondered if I could do it again.
Nope.
Then I started considering my resources to find a job and realised that I had exhausted all of the leads I’d generated to no avail.
Empty.
Upon reaching the halfway house, I realised that every plan I had focused on my whole life was now worthless. Before I was arrested I’d hoped to become a tenured and published professor, and eventually move on to politics. In prison, all my hope every day was that life out here would somehow be better than life inside. It isn’t. It’s just different. After prison, I had hoped that my mind, education and experience could come together and be utilised in a positive way. I found that absolutely no one wanted to hear what I had to say except out of politeness. It had been all I could do to keep from jumping off the bridge when I saw into what this world has morphed.
Now I am a chef in a 4.75 star restaurant. Life is much, much harder and less pleasant than it has ever been out here. I don’t have a purpose. Not like my sister who is a world authority in her medical field. Nor like my brother in law who writes policy in the federal State Department. Nor like my Grandfather who helped save us all from the Soviet Union, put a man on the moon, and taught Jimmy Doolittle how to take a B-25 off of the USS Hornet.
I could have been any of these things and more, but I decided to overreact and lash out in abject rage in a total panic and go to prison. So, I can’t complain. At least I’m breathing, and at least God forgives me. He and His Church are all I have. Everything else can be stripped of me easily, and probably will. But I have faith in Him, His promises of life to come, and that the life here is of some merit simply unknown to me. Because of that, there is always hope that while if life has passed me by, at least I may someday cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.
My mother has done a great deal of unforgivable things. Here’s one:
Our family of eight moved from California back to New York in the middle of the night. I was 9 at this time. We drove, we had a beat-up station-wagon and it was pretty tight quarters.
One of the reasons for the move was my oldest brother was facing juvenile hall for some property he destroyed. My mother just couldn’t have HER oldest (and most likely best loved) son go away. I’d like to state here that my brother had problems, big problems. He was a sadist and probably a psychopath and definitely a pedophile. He was the eldest kid; there were six of us.
I believe another one of the reasons for the late night move was my Dad lost his job and we were running out on the rent. I’m not positive but it’s a pretty good guess. My Father was laid off from his job as a defense contractor.
We never got a hotel room because we couldn’t afford it, so we all slept in the car for the entire trip across country. Uncomfortable even if everything was Kosher. Which it was not.
One night I woke up to find someone pulling down my pants. Fortunately I was able to pretend to be asleep and move away from him, I realized during this situation (attack?) it was my oldest brother. So nothing happened technically, but we had just begun this trip, I was worried about him making another attempt to molest me. Of course I didn’t know THAT word at that time.
The next morning I got my mother alone and told her what happened, she said “What are you trying to do, start trouble?” I was speechless and afraid. So now if I tell my Father, (who was a good man) I would indeed “start trouble.” I should have gone to my Father first, but I was unaware (at the time), how skewed her opinion and vision of who and what her first son was. By the way, he was 16 at the time.
I have another older brother (he was 11 at this time) He is wonderful, loving, caring and trustworthy. I told him about the “problem.” He promised to keep me and my crazy brother separated by sleeping between us for the whole trip. For his trouble he was smacked and bothered by my crazy brother the whole trip. But he did just that, stayed between us, although our plan was met with objections from my oldest brother, he and my mother tried repeatedly to switch us around. I’m sure my Father thought this situation was nuts, but that was life with my mother all around.
My mother continued to take my brother’s side over the years, no matter what! He beat us up and terrified us just to entertain himself. He even turned on her, throwing glasses at her and a myriad of other things. I had to place him under citizens’ arrest twice, once when I was 13 and the other time I was 18. He was raving drunk both times, terrorizing us, breaking windows and furniture, hitting us. My Father did what he could to protect us, but my brother was a big, violent loud-mouthed drunk. The cops told me if I wanted him arrested, I would have to get him outside of the house or they couldn’t touch him. Although I’m loathe to have cops handle anything for me, I had no choice. I had little brothers and a sister to think about.
I’m so grateful to my brother (the normal one, lol.) for his protection, especially at his very young age. He remains to this day one of my very best friends as well as someone I can always count on.
Presence of mind was one thing I didn’t think I had until this happened:
Interviewer: Good morning Mr. Anonymous. I’m sure you’re familiar with a typical consult interview, so I won’t beat around the bush. Tell me a little about yourself before we dive into the puzzles and cases.
Me: Blah blah blah…er…blah…er…blah
Being my first job interview, I managed the impossible. I screwed up right at the start and ended up describing why I wanted to do consulting, instead of talking about myself. Beads of sweat started forming on my troubled forehead. With a bemused look on his face, the interviewer continued.
Interviewer: Uh, o…kay. I’ll go on to the puzzle now. Okay, so tell me…
He proceeds to describe a puzzle I had heard and solved recently. I have trouble keeping my emotions away from my facial expressions, so I broke into a wide smile, thinking that the moment to redeem the dismal ‘tell me about yourself’ had come! Needless to say, my poker career ended almost as soon as it had started.
Me: <Laughing> Sir, I’ll be honest with you. I’ve heard this one before…<I then proceed to give an outline of the solution>
Interviewer: Oh, haha, okay. I guess I’ll have to ask you another one I guess. Okay, so…
He then proceeds to describe a puzzle that sounded so tricky and convoluted that the beads of perspiration on my forehead now gushed forth with renewed fury in rivulets of nervousness down my face and neck and arms and legs. A Ganga of tension clouded over my face. The interviewer finishes asking the question and there is an ugly silence that ensues. I could almost hear the atoms in the left part of my brain screeching to a sudden halt and completely and stubbornly refusing to budge towards any analysis whatsoever. I had no idea what the solution was. I didn’t even know where to start!
But then the creative right part of my brain swooped in, with fluttering heroic cape et al.
Me: <Smiling broadly> Sir, I hate to admit it, but I’ve heard this one before as well!
Interviewer: <A look that registered appreciation of my unbelievable ‘honesty’ and shock at the probability of it all> Wow…No puzzles today, it seems. I guess we’ll move on to a quick case then…
And then, after blindly stumbling and bumbling through the case and then shockingly recovering to somehow solve it, I cleared the interview and got the job!
A few years ago, I stayed at a hotel just outside Ypres (in Belgium) which more-or-less stood dead on what was the front line, back in 1914–18. There was a bunker in the garden, and lots of photos of what the immediate area looked like during the war (a muddy, blasted, hellscape).
Next door was a water park, across the road were fields.
If you look at aerial shots of, for example, the Lochnagar crater, which was right on the front line, and which was created by a massive underground explosion on the first day of the Somme battle (July 1916), you’ll see that it’s surrounded by fields of crops.
image 459image 460
The areas that haven’t been reclaimed are the ones where the fighting was so intense, that there are still significant amounts of explosives, posion gas, etc, buried in the soil. Just down the road from Lochnagar is the Canadian (well, Newfoundland) memorial, at Beaumont-Hamel. There are areas there that are fenced off, and clearly marked as dangerous, becasue there are still explosives in the ground. Whilst the line of the Newfoundland trenches has been kept intact, and they are still there, along with no-man’s land, and that area has been turned into a memorial, the site of the German front line 100–200 yeards away has been cleared and reclaimed as farmland.
So, most of it has been cleared, but certain areas (the ‘zone rouge’) have not.
Think about that. We were so clever in our destruction of each other that we literally rendered the earth uninhabitable, for over 100 years.
This Is Why Marriage Is An “L” For Men!
“Their opinion on the fact that women initiate divorce 80% of the time is essentially… “a woman is always justified in whatever she does, and is also never at fault”. That is literally the default setting and opinion of most modern day woman. Ridiculous.”
I was in 5th grade and my teacher told me I needed to leave my best friend alone. I was confused. I asked her why and was told me and Kate are no longer friends.
I was heartbroken. I didnt understand why this was happening. I kept trying to make eye contact with Kate to find out what was going on but she ignored me.
At lunch I was forced to sit alone. Kate was sitting with all our friends. Tears silently poured down my face as I tried to eat. My dad had just died of cancer a few weeks ago and now I had lost my best friend.
My face must have shown my grief when i got home that day. My mom, who was usually too self absorbed to notice me, asked me what was wrong. The tears started again as I choked out that I wasn’t allowed to be Kate’s friend anymore. She got immediately concerned and asked why, but the sobbing took hold and I ran to my room.
While I was in my room I heard my mom make two phone calls. One was to my teacher. My mom demanded to know what happened. I guess my teacher told her that Kate’s mom didn’t want us to be friends anymore. My mom was pissed. Me and Kate had been besties since 1st grade. Kate’s mom had never liked me but I never saw this coming. My mom asked why they didn’t call her. The teacher said she didn’t think it concerned her.
I guess my mom had hung up because next thing i knew she was yelling at Kate’s mom. “How could you do this after she just lost her dad? Shes already holding on by a thread!”
Then the conversation took an interesting turn. “What do you mean Kate thinks she’s too bossy?! She could have just talked to Sami. This was the extreme option. Can’t she just talk to her? Maybe they can work something out.”
So there was the truth. Kate didn’t want to be my friend. My mom was more pissed at my teacher for not calling her. I refused to go back to school. I couldn’t deal with it. I later ended up in the hospital for attempting suicide.
The teacher could have handled it differently. I was treated like a criminal basically. Everyone seemed intent on keeping me away from my friend that day and it hurt me deeply.
Edit: Wow! Over 5 thousand upvotes. Thanks everyone!
And I need to add something after reading certain comments.
I was just a child and I was hurt. I didnt realize I was getting on her nerves. I would have most certainly changed if I did. Im still unsure if my “bossiness” was the reason why she didnt want to be my friend all of a sudden. It could have just been an excuse to get away from me but we will never know.
I wasn’t some kind of mastermind bent on making Kate’s life a living hell. I didn’t know that I was acting a bad way because I was never taught about right and wrong. I was just myself with her, just like anyone else would be with their best friend.
Originally Answered: How much real life damage could a modern U.S. special forces soldier do to a small town police force if provoked like Rambo’s character?
Micah Xavier Johnson, 25 years old, Army Reserves, Delusional
Dallas, Texas has a far superior police force to a “Small Town”, and Micah was young, delusional, rambling and scribbling gibberish at times with meanings still yet to be deciphered, and went in without a plan besides to shoot white cops, and in general a very far cry from a clear headed special forces operator with years of experience (one of the best if we are equating this person to Rambo)
Even still, he managed to kill 5 police officers and shoot 9 more, not to mention 2 civilians.
The largest police force of any city has a ratio of about 57 cops for every 10,000 residents, or .57% of the population. The next largest is a ratio of .43%.
San Jose on the other hand, has a ratio of .09% of the population belonging to the police force.
Over 87% of all cities in the US have a police force of under 40 members. Strange when considering New York’s is tens of thousands strong (.175% of population) The reason for this is that the smaller the city, the lower the ratio of crime to civilian numbers.
The lower the population of a city, the lower the ratio of officers to the rest of the population.
San Jose has over a million people with a police force accounting for only .09% of the population, so a small town of say 4,000 people probably only has a police force accounting for around lets say .2% of the population at an absolute maximum? And even that is an extremely high estimate implying this small town has an abnormally high crime rate, despite this meaning that there are likely only about 8 officers in total.
8 officers in total for a small town of 4,000 people [on a high estimate], and a delusional, young army reserves soldier with no real plan besides shooting white cops, no escape planned out, proved his capacity to shoot them all out with a rifle while remaining largely stationary, in a shootout.
So how effective would a seasoned, trained, special forces operator, in their right state of mind [more or less] fair against a similar police force?
One of the officers might be able to survive by remaining hidden or fleeing if our modern day Rambo [with superior training than when that movie was made] is only allowed to use a knife.
Otherwise?
(Ironically Keanu Reaves training for John Wick was a better training video than the easily available ones on youtube)
Police force will get decimated. The operator will go in with a plan of action-
Luring the police force to a certain area for example and setting off a bomb or something- And then targeting the remainder with extreme and calculated force.
small EDIT: Thankfully no one has complained- But upon re-reading my answer, since we are talking about calculated killing of police officers, some of the terms I used- “Wiping them out”, “Blowing them up”- came back as callous to me, so I re-worded a bit to remove those terms. Targeted killing of police is a major issue that does not often get talked about, especially more recently with gang’s and initiations and the like, and I don’t want to give the impression that I do not have the utmost respect and appreciation for officers. Managing a hotel overnight (the closest one to downtown which has several clubs) surrounded by multiple popular bars and breweries within 5 minute walking distance, I have had to rely on officer assistance multiple times in the last year alone and the last thing I want is for an officer, past or present, to read this and think that I would make light of a highly trained military individual targeting a police force.
So thanks to everyone willing to put their lives on the line daily to keep people safe who cannot otherwise do it themselves, by picking up a badge knowing that it can just as easily become a target.
I was working at my first job post-graduation, as a brand new RN, young and impressionable. It was a 36 bed Ophthalmology unit, and there weren’t always enough eye patients to keep every bed occupied. During times when we had an ongoing number of empty beds, the docs would head over to the local psychiatric hospital and examine the patients for cataracts. Medicare would cover the cataract surgery if the chart documentation said that the psychiatric condition was exacerbated due to the patient’s impaired vision. After these visits we would have an onslaught of psychotic patients to admit and prep for surgery. Back then, in the 1970s, cataract extraction involved a four-day hospital stay.
We nurses admitted and cared for many patients with varied psychiatric diagnoses during this time, ranging from catatonia to manic disorders, schizophrenia, multiple-personality disorder, severe hallucinations — pretty much any mental disorder which rendered long term psychiatric hospitalization necessary. It was often our observation that, sadly, these patients were not well cared-for at the psychiatric hospital, and it unfortunately became routine for them to come to us malodorous, disheveled, needing a bath, and often with soiled clothes. We would get them showered and shampooed, apply lotion to their dry skin, give them physical exams and blood work, including gyn exams and Pap smears for the female patients, and begin eye prep for their cataract surgery.
So one morning I arrived at work and was given my assigned rooms, which included a new patient who had just arrived from the psych hospital. I braced myself for the usual, but what I found was beyond the pale. The patient was a 40 year old female. She did not speak, move or react, just stared ahead. Her need for hygiene was beyond anything I had ever seen. She smelled like an extremely ripe mixture of urine, feces, sweat, glandular and sebaceous secretions, stinky feet and unwashed clothes. Her dark skin was scaled and crusted. Her filthy and malodorous hair had once been carefully braided into tiny braids all over her head. Someone had once cared enough to do that. But it was so long ago that her hair had since grown about three or four inches into a neglected, uncombed, never-since washed, unkempt afro with the tiny braids imbedded at the ends.
I looked across the room to my other patient, her roommate, to see if she was at all put-out by the stench. She was in a long white nightgown, a rather pale tiny pretty elderly lady, who nodded hello and smiled sweetly at me. She was already getting up out of bed, and said she would attend to her own needs this morning so I could concentrate on her roommate.
First things first, the psych patient needed cleaning up. She would have contaminated the entire operating room! Ok to keep things brief I will only say she came alive when I explained I was going to give her a shower and tried to get her out of bed into a wheeled shower chair. She screamed and fought tooth and filthy nails, became dead weight when I tried to get her to transfer to the chair, wouldn’t cooperate with me one iota. Her breath was horrible every time she screamed at me. After much exertion, I was able to wheel her into the shower. I soaped and re-soaped and scrubbed her face and body, taking multiple times to do this, she was so encrusted with filth. The worst part was her groin. There was probably over a year’s worth of layers of soiling herself and never being cleaned, each layer dried and stuck to the layer underneath and to her skin and pubic hair. The hot water exacerbated the stench and I had to keep putting my head outside the shower curtain for fresh air. There were clay-like clumps of feces all along the bottom of the shower, which housekeeping would have to deal with when we were through. I must have gone through at least a dozen towels and washcloths, which were in a wet brown pile.
Once her skin was clean, I sighed, not knowing how I would ever attend to that head of hair. I decided the best thing would be to cut off the little braids, so I used my bandage scissors to do that. I trimmed and cleaned her filthy black fingernails and toenails too. All through the shower I was explaining what I was doing and trying to keep the patient as placated as I could, and by now she was considerably calmer. Her hair was thick with the texture of a Brillo pad, and so dirty that it was impossible to get any lather going. But I persevered until finally I had rich suds, which I fingered and rubbed into every bit of her hair down to the scalp. By now she was no longer trying to push me away, if not exactly cooperating.
Finally we were done. I was soaking wet. I dried the patient off, got her to put on a clean gown, rubbed her extremeties with lotion, then her feet also and put on clean socks. I wheeled the patient to the sink and brushed her teeth as best as I could, with very marginal cooperation.
I got the patient back into bed, now clean, and proceeded to give her the eye drops which would begin the prep for cataract surgery later that day. I was exhausted and needed to rest.
But first I needed to turn my attention to her roommate, who was also my patient and had been quietly waiting during all this time.
Since the roommate was going for cataract surgery also, I pulled the curtain back to administer the roommate’s drops as well, and I saw that she had washed up by herself and donned a modest white habit, and I realized she was a nun. So I gave the nun her eye drops and reminded her not to have anything by mouth prior to surgery. I told the nun that I would be back later with additional eye drops, and to check on her. The nun smiled and thanked me.
I turned to leave. As I reached the door, she said the most remarkable seven words I have ever heard: “You gave the Lord a shower today.”
Korean Spinach Salad
Korean Spinach Salad
Ingredients
Salad
1 pound fresh spinach
3 hard-cooked eggs, diced
6 to 8 slices crisp-cooked bacon, crumbled
2 cups fresh bean sprouts
1 (8 ounce) can water chestnuts, sliced
Dressing
1 cup oil
2/3 cup granulated sugar
Salt, to taste
1 medium onion, grated
1/4 cup vinegar
1/3 cup ketchup
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
Instructions
Trim and discard tough spinach stems. Rinse leaves well; pat dry and break into bite-size pieces in a salad bowl.
Carl used to be a firefighter. He pulled people out of burning buildings. He risked his life all the time.
Then one day, an illness that had been lurking in his genes brought him to the ground. His tendons and muscles were slowly calcifying—turning to stone. All of them. His knees. His back.
His heart. His lungs.
And since this was a genetic disease, it was not covered by his firefighting pension plan. He had to go on SSI/SSDI.
The drugs that he took to slow (not stop, slow) the progression of his disease eventually gave him fourteen more incurable conditions, including heart disease, seizures, and diabetes. He’s had several strokes. He also cannot go outside because his immune system has to be suppressed. Going out around people always means he catches something.
So what does he do all day?
It takes him about three hours to get up, get cleaned up, and get dressed and get his breakfast, using his walker because his ankles are now frozen solid. It takes him two hours to do a single load of laundry. He does spend most of the day playing video games and watching TV, but that is because it takes him at least an hour to get to the bathroom, and there is no way he could actually work.
This man was a fireman. He saved people from burning buildings. Now he lives like a pauper, mostly on the charity of his family and friends because SSI/SSDI is not enough to allow him to do anything but die under a bridge.
He saved people from burning buildings. He’d have saved you, if you’d needed it.
I was working for a major car rental company as a tripper (drove cars from the service Centre to the rental lots). They paid us minimum wage, which was about $3.40/hr. back in the mid 80s, and decided they we playing us too much, as sometimes we had no cars to trip and they still had to pay us. It’s about 15km to the downtown Vancouver rental lot, so they figured it would take us 20 to 30 minutes. They decided to pay us by the trip, $1.75 iirc. Oh, this was a Toronto decision based on our work load in May and came into effect mid June. Demand rate was constant and now we were highly motivated to make s many trips as possible. We were tripping about 5 or 6 cars an hour, we were speeding a lot, crashing at least once a month (company self insures so all their cost). Usual the crashes were minor but we totalled 10 cars that summer (their were 5 core and 2 or 3 fill ins, so everyone had at least one major). Record was 8 mins in rush hour. They seemed up paying us about $10 an hour, their accident rates went up. I became a rental rep the next year and quit the next year as the idiocy from Toronto continued.
huWhen my mom was 16 she was raped by the son of a prominent member of her community. He denied it was rape and said she was a willing partner. The police chose to believe him over her.
She got pregnant from the rape and, because abortion was illegal, her parents sent her to a Christian home for unwed mothers. The understanding was she would give her baby up for adoption immediately after birth. She got no say in this. For whatever reason, there was a delay and she got to spend 15 minutes with her son before he was taken from her. It broke her heart.
After she recovered from her pregnancy she went home. Two things had happened while she was gone. First, her parents got their friends to start a rumor that she was away because she had an illness that required special treatment. The other was that someone started a second rumor that she had to go away because she was pregnant and had a baby, with the implication that she was promiscuous.
Guess which one took off? When she got back to school most of her classmates shunned her as a bad influence. She lost most of her friends. Members of her own extended family picked this shunning up. It followed her to college when she graduated. It was more than she could take and she had a mental collapse, ending up in a psychiatric hospital. (It is also possible that she was already bi-polar.) She dropped out of college because she could not handle the stress and deal with her PTSD and depression.
When she met my father who was in the Air Force and from another part of the county, she told him about the rape. She told him about the baby. She told him that no one believed that she had been raped. He believed her. He said he saw no shame on her and eventually they married. His service had them move from her hometown.
HOWEVER…every time she returned to town for the holidays, she would go through the shunning, the snide comments, and insults from her family and the townspeople. My parents separated when I was 24 and she moved home…to the same thing again but now her own mother was doing it too. She endured this until she died when she was 69, which means she was subjected to that shaming for over 53 years.
This is the side of “pro-life” no one talks about. Not only is there no plan for the children after they are born, but in the conservative communities that support this policy, the women who are unmarried will be slut-shamed for life.
A group of hitmen refused to kill a victim as she was a woman and let her free to get her revenge.
image 467
In 2015, the Australian Noela Rukundo (who’s the lady in the photo) went to Burundi to attend the funeral of her stepmother who passed away only a couple of weeks back.
Straight after the funeral when she was going out to get some fresh air, she was quite suddenly kidnapped at gunpoint and shoved into a vehicle. She was blindfolded and driven to a safe house somewhere in the country.
Inside the building she was tied up, and a sack put on her head and was asked by her captors:
“You woman, what did you do for this man to pay us to kill you?”
“Wh-what are you talking about?” said Noela, she was shaking uncontrollably.
“Balenga (Noela husband) sent us to kill you.”
“What? My husband will never do that, y-you’re lying!”
Her captors smirked and giggled. She then heard a phone dialling and a voice coming from a loud speaker:
“Kill her”
It was her husband. Noela fainted.
She was woken up much much later by her captors on the side of a road and they told her she was free. The men explained they didn’t believe in killing women, and they knew her brother and was friends with him. But they would keep her husband’s money and tell him that she was dead.
Not only was she freed, she was given a phone, recordings of the captors’ phone conversations with her husband and all the evidence she needed to take Balenga to court.
Although pretty messed up and a little dizzy, with the help of the Kenyan and Belgian embassies, she got a trip to Australia, where she planned her revenge.
Meanwhile back in Australia her husband had told everyone she had died in a tragic accident and all her friends mourned her at her funeral at the family home. On the night of February 22 2015, just as the Balenga waved goodbye to the last of his neighbours who had come to comfort him, Noela approached him.
“Is it my eyes?” screeched Balenga. “Is it a ghost?”
“Surprise! I’m still alive!” said a very angry Noela.
“ oh my god oh my god, I’m sorry for everything please forgive me” replied a rather shocked Balenga.
But Noela took none of his apologies. The police swooped in and captured Balenga, who ultimately pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nine years in prison for incitement to murder.
During the investigations, it was found out that Balenga wanted to kill Noela because he thought she was going to leave him for another man, which apparently was not going to happen.
Balenga was sent to 9 years of prison while Noela lives with her 8 children somewhere in the same city I currently live at, Melbourne.
This is probably a bit cliche to say but the first person that comes to mind for me is my ex girlfriend from 2017. Out of all the women I’ve had relationships with, she was by far the worst one. She was very controlling and manipulative. I was with her for 8 months and it was the worst 8 months of my life. We basically fought every day over anything. Most things that upset her. I felt like I couldn’t say certain things or do certain things without it possibly upsetting her. Anytime I tried to defend myself she would gaslight me and make me feel like the bad one. She would say things like “I don’t like what you said earlier” or “this happened and you didn’t do anything about it”. Right before I finally chose to break up with her I had her sleep over my house for a night because I just wanted a nice night with her and I could tell all night something was wrong. I could just sense it. When we were at my house she hardly spoke to me and when she did she said “I think I’m going to go home in the morning” Next morning I got up and without thinking made myself a cup of coffee.. but my mistake was not making one for her. She of course went tf off on me for it. At that point I had it, I was done. I couldn’t do it anymore. I’m not going to get treated like a servant when I’m just trying to be a good boyfriend and you refuse to see it.
My parents separated and then divorced when I was a teenager. The separation occurred when I was around 14 years old, but the formal divorce didn’t happen until I was around 27 or so.
About 15 years later.
All of us kids pretty much expected it and was confused why it took them so long. But my folks were afraid that the divorce would shatter us, so they remained separate but cordial… for the sake of us kids.
It didn’t matter.
When they were together, they fought. And it was not nice and pleasant, and then when they were away, our lives lost a dimensions to it that I really wish had remained.
Fake a marriage if you have to. But do not have a broken home.
Boys need both parents present. Girls need both parents present.
…
Anyways… I’ve learned from my father’s errors, and I am trying to compensate with my little girl. She is my princess, and I am doing my best to be the best daddy to her ever. Even if she doesn’t realize it yet.
You know, for decades, in my mother’s basement sat a brand new but unused industrial wet vac… a big tub of a vacuum cleaner. She refused to have anything to do with it, and let it sit there unused and collecting dust.
One day, I turned it on and tried to use it, and my mother FREAKED OUT! And she ordered me to turn it off.
So I did.
…
I then remembered what happened.
It was a gift that my father bought for my mother, and it (must have been) the “straw that broke the camel’s back”. He brought it one one day and suggested to my mother to use it to clean the house. She got very angry at him, for after all, she was (at that time) working as well. And she did not like the idea of working and then coming home to clean afterwards.
Ugh.
…
Anyways. Eventually, when my mother sold the house and the property, long after their divorce, the big vacuum with the great sucking ability, was thrown out. Discarded. A memory… a painful one, I am sure … that both my mother and father shared.
…
Learn from the past. So that you do not repeat the mistakes of the old.
“Your tumor has grown back. We can remove it, but we’ll have to cut off two of your fingers and 30% of your palm. You’ll get a medical discharge. We’ll operate next Tuesday”
“Sorry; doc, can I get another opinion?”
“Yes. I’ll give you a consult to plastic surgery, to talk about wound care.”
This was a vascular surgeon at Bethesda Naval Hospital. So I “jumped ship”, and went to Walter Reed Army Hospital, and asked to see an orthopedic oncologist.
“Can you still wiggle your fingers?”
“Yes, ma’am”” And I showed her my range of motion.
“Anything in your current duties you can’t do, as a result?”
“I have trouble straightening them enough to do a snappy salute, but other than that, no.”
“When you have trouble holding tools, or eating with that hand, let me know. Otherwise, I’ll give you a medical waiver on the saluting, and you can go back on duty.”
Four years later, they had a new surgical technique, and “debulked” the tumor, instead of cutting off my fingers and part of my hand. It’s still working fine now, 25 years later.
I was an unhappy mom after my child was born. I guess it would be more correct to say that I was depressed for a pretty long time after my son had been born. And he cried a lot. As a person who didn’t like to sing I found it pretty difficult to sing for my son even when I felt it would help. So I somehow picked up a song from the child show I heard in my childhood and googled the lyrics. Every time he had been crying for more than 5 minutes I became desperate and started to sing that song. All the time the same song. I guess he was less than a year old back then.
My son grew up, got bigger and cried less. After he’d turned 1 yo I felt much better too, so I stopped singing that song. I forgot about it. I think he never heard it since he was one year old.
This happened when he was three and already could talk pretty well. I was at work and started to develop a headache. As I usually had no problems with headaches I didn’t take any pain killers and the pain with time became unbearable. I found it difficult to even walk.
I had to pick up my son from kindergarten that day. I called my partner to ask for help but he didn’t pick up the phone. I called his mom who lived close to the kindergarten but she didn’t pick up the phone either. So I took some pills and went out. I had one of the most horrible headaches in my life that day and I hardly remember how I got to the kindergarten. I picked up my son and told him directly I had a violent headache. We came home quietly and went to the bathroom to wash hands. I was sitted on a little chair there holding my head in my hands, my son was washing his hands and suddenly he started singing. It was that song he heard so many times when he was a baby. He knew it from the beginning to the end. By heart.
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.
Not even remotely plausible. Like, negative percentage possible.
This is my ship, USS Germantown LSD-42. The Germantown is one of the least protected ships in the navy since we were basically Lyft for the jarheads.
The black arrows point to BIG guns that will sink anything any pirate can shoot or drive anywhere near a naval ship. The red arrows are where marines go. Marines go brrr brr brrr with their machiney guns, pirates go die die die. I actually took part in an evolution where marines on the far left red arrow went brr brr brr at some pirates who’d taken control of a yacht owned by French nationals. We cut coms to the outside world for days so nobody could talk about it, and the only people who knew about it were us bridge watch standers and those with need to know.
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Black arrows go Brrrrrrrrrrrttttttttttt and shake the whole ship.
The real life version of these guys has No chance against brrrrrrrrrttttttttttt.
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Edit: 50,000 views?! My crappy answer got translated into another language?!? Who’d have thunk? I had thought my time in the Navy was pretty uneventful, but chatting in the comments with you wonderful folks has shown me even some of the inane stuff I took for granted are cherished memories. Thank you all for the comments (except for that 1 dude) and upvotes.
Edit2: 300,000 views!!! I’m amazed by the popularity of this answer I threw together in 5 minutes, it’s now been translated into 4 different languages. It’s gratifying to read a bunch of words I don’t understand then see brrrrrt, it makes me smile every time. I’ve really enjoyed chatting in the comments too. Thanks Quora community.
Edit 3: this is a fishing dow. This vessel gets probably closer to any US naval ship than any other will. We would send our small-boat out to interact with the fishermen on these dows. We would provide produce or medicine to them in exchange for information. Pretty much every fisherman on a dow we met was happy they had met us, and not once did their boats get close to causing us a problem.
I’ve learned what my wife does for a living. I wrote about that here. She’s had this job for about 15 years now, and only since the lockdown and listening to her work from our home office all day do I now know what a “project manager” does all day. It’s mostly just Zoom meetings and spreadsheets and spending a lot of time discussing with people from around the country which word to use in a particular sentence.
I’ve learned that, once one neighborhood kid goes outside, the other kids in the neighborhood seem to emerge from their houses within a few minutes. It’s like all of the kids are waiting by their window for the first kid to get the ball rolling. I sometimes convince my kids to walk the dog with me, knowing that we won’t make it down the block before their friends are all out, wanting to play with them, which was the plan all along. Kids playing with each other=more free time for parents.
I’ve learned that planning, shopping for, prepping, and cleaning up after three meals per day for five people take a lot of time if you want to do it right. That’s why I think there’s a direct link between rising obesity rates in the US, and a rise in households where both parents work outside of the home. You can feed your kids healthy meals, or quick meals, but not both, it seems. Not both consistently, at least.
I worked for one of the biggest Life Assurance companies in South Africa. The company was going through a restructure with departments merging and voluntary severance packages been offered. Things were just generally chaotic.
After 13 years at the same company, the time had come for me to leave the corporate world and start my own thing. I unfortunately did not qualify for one of the voluntary severance packages as they said that I was a key employee and would not pay for me to leave. I had gone through the emotional turmoil of getting to this decision so my mind was made up to leave. I filled in the normal resignation documentation I received from HR and handed it in to my line manager. He had to check if all the information was correct, sign it and hand it in to HR.
To make sure that I have some security in my life, I requested that my full pension payout be transferred to a provident fund. I had saved up some money to be able to start my venture without using any of my pension money.
On my last day at work I handed in my Work ID and left without much fanfare as things were still very hectic with the organisational restructure.
The next day I started working on my own business venture. I was getting used to the new life of being self employed. Slower internet, new bank account, no longer part of a big company with designated job descriptions. I had to do everything myself. Seeing clients, doing the work and getting my own tea.
Things were very hectic for a year and a half and financially very challenging. When I eventually got my act together, I started sorting out all the smaller things that I did not get around to when I first started out on my own.
One of the first things I did was go to the bank to close down my old account. I had moved all my debit orders to my new business account and there was no reason to run two accounts. I got the shock of my life when I got to the bank to close the account, thinking there were only a few Rands left. There was almost R500k in the account. I never bothered checking my bank statements when I received them in the post. thinking that there is nothing happening on the account so there is no reason to check. … and I just did not have the time. I thought that the bank had made a mistake so I asked for a 24 month statement. And there is was………. My salary after deductions was being deposited into my account every month.
I called the company that was supposed to be administering my Provident Fund. They had never received the money or the paperwork from my previous employer.
I called up HR at my old employer trying to find out what was going on but got given the run around and got nowhere.
Eventually I decided to go in to their offices and try and sort it out in person. When I got to reception, I gave them my name and surname. And security said “ Oh Mr……., have you forgotten your Work ID at home?” and gave me a temporary ID card and let me into the building.
After a lot of toing and froing at HR it was discovered that my line manager never handed my resignation documentation in to HR. I was still in their employ. My pension and medical aid contributions as well as my income tax were still being deducted and my salary paid into my account.
I asked how I should return the money seeing that I did not actually work there for a year and a half. The head of HR said that it would be best if we assume that I was in their employ and just did the paperwork for my resignation for the current date. It would save a lot of hassle in terms of the medical aid, the pension fund and most importantly, from the South African Revenue Services.
I got paid for not working for a year and a half. The irony is that the amount I got paid in error was very similar to what I would have received had they given me a severance package.
Edit 1:
Thank you for all the upvotes and comments (especially the ones with the South African slang….. good one Rushaan Edson-Chandley) .
I’m not able to respond to each comment individually thus this edit.
The reason I informed them as soon as I found out and did not continue receiving the salary and use itis my own business is because it would have gone against my character.
I’m not sure how this situation went unnoticed for the time it did, ( It could be due to the point that Louw Nieuwoudt raised as I did work in Cape Town) but I’m sure it would have eventually been uncovered as John Hudson commented. This way I ended it on my terms. They were the ones who insisted that I keep the money and thus it did not feel like I was stealing the money.
It is like Elizabeth Mead mentioned…….. “Financial karma!”. What goes around comes around. And this would have applied to me too in the long run.
High value men
This long list showcases the heartwarming spirit of mutual assistance
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The Chinese Foreign Ministry expressed heartfelt appreciation to many countries and international organizations that have expressed sympathies to China after a 6.2-magnitude earthquake on Monday jolted Jishishan county in Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture, Northwest China’s Gansu Province.
During a press briefing on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said, following the earthquake in Jishishan County of Linxia Prefecture, Gansu Province, leaders of various countries, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, King of Cambodia Norodom Sihamoni, Pakistani President Arif Alvi, Maldives’ President Mohamed Muizzu, ROK President Yoon Suk-yeol, UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the Central African Republic Faustin-Archange Touadéra, Belorussian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Turkmenistan’s President Serdar Berdimuhamedov, Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rahmon, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Italian President Sergio Mattarella, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, the three members of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungarian President Katalin Novák, Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, have sent messages or letters to express deep sympathies to President Xi Jinping and condolences over the victims of the earthquake.
Other leaders from various countries and international organizations, including Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, Chairman of the State Duma of Russia Vyacheslav Volodin, Pakistani Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar, Chairman of the Senate of Pakistan Muhammad Sadiq Sanjrani, Speaker of the National Assembly of Pakistan Raja Pervez Ashraf, Thailand’s Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, Vice President of the Maldives Hussain Mohamed Latheef, Chairman of the People’s Council of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, Uzbekistan’s Prime Minister Abdulla Aripov, Serbian First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Ivica Dacic, New Zealand’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters, Dominican Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, Prime Minister of Grenada Dickon Mitchell, Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, UN Secretary-General António Guterres and President of the 78th session of the UN General Assembly Dennis Francis, also extended sympathies to China through messages and other means. Countries such as Afghanistan, Nepal, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Türkiye, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Ethiopia, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, France, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Cyprus, the US, Australia, Canada, Cuba, Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru and Chile have expressed sympathies to China by various means. We would like to express our heartfelt appreciation for their well wishes.
When I was a 1st year medical student, I tagged along with a pediatrician. There were all sorts of interesting abbreviations in charts for me to learn and memorize, especially under the exam portion of the note. The heart exam was RRR (regular rate and rhythm). Lungs were BCTA (bilaterally clear to auscultation), and abdomens were NT/ND (nontender, nondistended).
There was one I couldn’t figure out, however, on a toddler ultimately found to have congenital adrenal hyperplasia. In this syndrome, the adrenal gland secretes an excess of testosterone among other things, causing the penis to enlarge but the testicles—sensing that someone else was doing their job— to shrink. (Similar to the effect of injected anabolic steroids in athletes). Anyway, based on the physical exam findings, my attending strongly suspected congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Under her genitourinary exam she had written the abbreviation “LMNOP.”
I couldn’t find this abbreviation in any of my class notes or text books. I was stumped. I finally had to break down and ask her. She was at the nurses’ station as I approached and barely looked up from her charting.
“Oh, that. Lot’s of Meat, but NO Potatoes.”
(To be clear, I have never used this particular expression but I would be lying if I said it didn’t pop into my mind occasionally!)
My dad was gone for 50% of my life, deployed to war zones where he was actively involved in dangerous stuff. People ask if I missed him, and – of course – I did, but not as much as one would think. It was a lifestyle that I was born into. It’s all I knew.
Running around on the military bases, I frequently heard airplanes doing dry runs overhead. If one of the larger C-17 was coming over, we knew to cover our ears, as it would shake the walls of the building we were in.
Goofy haircuts weren’t allowed. Most kids on the military base were quite well behaved. Military parents taught respect early.
I’ve been to more military ceremonies than I can count. The military is very much about pomp and circumstance. “Change of Commands”, where a new leader is appointed, and the other steps down to take a different command, or retire, were common:
I used to dread shaking hands at these ceremonies. Most of these guys were all Navy SEALs and they squeezed way too hard when shaking hands. (Having a firm handshake is a custom in America, these guys took it a bit too far.)
My parents are both remarkably different from one another. I even remarked to my dad on my recent visit up north, “You know it’s weird, you and mom are so different, you have such different skill sets.”
My dad is very orderly, extremely disciplined with work ethic, with a strong moral code that comes naturally – his views, and actions, align with what is right without much effort – which is probably why he is such a good leader.
But where he lacks creativity and humor, my mom fills that in spades. She is naturally gifted at music, art, cooking, and has a quick wit, and is very fun-spirited.
So it was quite the contrast as a child. You could divide my upbringing into two halves: the months when it was just mom. And the months when it was just dad.
It could be a bit discombobulating, having to adjust to the two personalities.
But probably the most un-relatable thing was having to move 12 times before the age of 18. Every year or 2, we picked up everything and moved to a new place far away and started over again.
But – alas, the family is still here. And going strong.
When I started at Cambridge University, the Director of Studies who accepted me into the program said the same thing,
If it is a no, we usually make a decision after two minutes
Hearing this, I asked the same question in my head. If they can decide so quickly why even continue the interview?! They can’t possibly decide that quickly
Later on, I realized he was right
When I became a PhD student at Oxford, I thought it would be fun to tutor students. This was a responsibility my Director of Studies also had. When I started tutoring I immediately understood what he meant. You can tell within a a few minutes how capable the students are. You read their essays. You meet with them. You see their body language and mannerisms. And you know
I could rank every student and predict what grades they would get in the summer exams. After just a few minutes. My initial assessment of the student was right 95% of the time
However, even though you may decide after five minutes. There is a still a good reason to continue to speak to them. A binary yes/no decision is not the only reason for an interview
When choosing to employ someone you are making a commitment to work with them over an extended period, pay them a full time salary, meet with them on a regular basis, mentor them, offer constructive feedback, enable their career progression, help them find subsequent employment, and so on. That is a major commitment
But meeting someone for 30 minutes is not
So even if you decide after five minutes. You may still continue with the interview. Have them meet others on your team. Or even have dinner with them. It can still be a positive interaction. And both parties will benefit, even if it does not lead to a job
He passed away a few years ago. I’d forgotten all about him until my cousin (his son) posted something about his death on social media. That brought back several memories of him, including the time that he parked a trailer home in my parents’ back yard for over a year. My parents had a huge back yard, and, one day, he asked them if he could park a trailer home in it “for a few days.” My dad agreed. It was there for over a year, killing all of the grass underneath it and being a huge eyesore.
Years later, as an adult, during a conversation with my father, I finally got the whole story: my uncle was hiding the trailer home in our back yard, so it didn’t get repossessed. My father said that he figured it out and, once he realized he was being an accessory to a crime, insisted that my uncle get it out of our yard, or he (my dad) would call the repo company himself. The next day, it was gone.
Besides that, over the years, I’ve come to realize:
My sister’s drug problem began much earlier than I thought. That explains so much of what happened between her and my parents when she was in high school and I was in middle school.
A different uncle of mine, and his wife, were almost certainly abusive towards their children (my cousins). Once, their daughter and I went for a walk. I was maybe 10, and she was maybe 12. The mother came looking for us after about five minutes, and yelled at her daughter for “wandering off with a boy.” Again… her 10-year-old cousin. Considering how messed up all three of their children ended up in life, I wouldn’t be surprised if their abusive childhoods were both emotional, physical, and possibly sexual.
One of my cousin’s wife was probably a mail-order bride.
One of my second cousins only exists because his father was about to be drafted to Vietnam, so his father quickly married and had a kid. After the draft ended, he left his wife and child, only reuniting with the child years later, when the child was an adult.
My grandfather was a real badass when he was younger. Not only did he serve in WWII and Korea, but he was a boxer while in the army, too.
My aunt, who has profound cognitive issues, was placed in a group home in the early 1990s not just for her benefit, but for her mother’s (my grandmother’s) safety. She (my aunt) would sometimes go into fits and hit her parents. My grandfather, the former boxer, could restrain her until the fit passed. He died in 1987. His wife could not handle their daughter, who was in her 20s by then, by herself.
Originally Answered: Would you rather be in the US military during World War 1 or World War 2? Why? Sorry if this is somehow a dumb question.
Not a dumb question at all! It’s actually a great question because we get to compare the general experience of an American soldier in WW1 vs WW2.
So the answer is that I would rather be an American soldier in WW1 and so would everyone else.
First, you have the obvious reasons
The US entered WW1 in April of 1917. The war ended a year and a half later in November 1918. So in total, its 18 months of fighting give or take
In WW2 a grand total of 400,000 US soldiers were killed and another 670,000 were injured. In WW1 116,000 died and 320,000 were injured. In other words for every 1 man lost in WW1 3–4 men died in WW2
But beyond all that the nature of the war is important to consider.
Both WW1 and WW2 were horrid wars. They were beyond violent and the brutality witnessed during these conflicts forever scared and changed mankind.
That said when it comes to US involvement I think WW2 would be a touch more horrifying.
In Europe, US soldiers had to storm the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, withstand the German onslaught during the Battle of the Buldge, and press into Germany through dense forests and fiercely defended cities.
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In Asia, US soldiers had to storm humid tropical islands and face down a suicidal foe. Japanese soldiers would embark on all-out charges out of the blue and US soldiers lived in a state of fear and anxiety. Couple that with Japanese cruelty towards captured Americans and the violent nature of Island warfare and it was one of the horrifying theatres of war in history.
None of this is to say that combat in WW1 was easy or fun. It was by far the most horrifying war in history right up until WW2. But compared to D-Day, Stalingrad, the Battle of Bulge, and Iwo Jima nearly every battle in all of history comes up short.
In 2011, when the subprime crisis gradually dissipated, President Obama said during his visit to Australia: “If 1.3 billion Chinese people live the same life as us, it would be a disaster for the world, and we will not let this happen.” In the same year November, the US proposed the “Asia-Pacific Rebalance” strategy, which began to accelerate the withdrawal of troops from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and planned to transfer a group of navy warships to the Asia-Pacific region before 2020, deploying 60% of US warships in the Pacific. In October 2015, the US tried to isolate China economically by persuading 12 countries to sign the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership). On May 9, 2016, the commander of the US Pacific Fleet, Harry Harris, sent the William Lawrence guided missile destroyer into China’s territorial waters, and even publicly boasted that the US military was “prepared to go to war with China tonight.“
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In 2018, a trade war broke out in the US and China, and imposed large-scale tariffs on China goods. In 2020, when the new crown pneumonia epidemic spread around the world, the US accused China under the unfavorable situation of epidemic prevention, stigmatized the new crown virus as “Chinese virus”, claimed to claim compensation from China, and successively issued “cold war speech”, intending to set off camp confrontation.
A lot of people don’t understand why the “intimate relationship” of “saving America is saving China” between them has turned into the current situation of never-ending hostility. Some people think it’s because of President’s different policies, believing that the conflict between China and the US can be solved by changing presidents. Some say that the US only cares about GDP, and when a country’s GGP reaches 60% of the US, it will be targeted. The former Soviet Union and Japan were like this, and today’s China is still the same. But in reality, the most fundamental reason still goes back to the economic model.
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If we were to describe the basic model of China’s previous way of making money, it would be relying on its industrial system and labor advantages to provide affordable goods and exporting them worldwide to earn foreign exchange. On the other hand, there are generally two types of profit models in the US:
1. Seize the technological high ground and use patent rights to scrape the profits from the whole world. Every time China sells a product, the bulk of the profits go to the US, such as in the Apple products manufactured by China’s Foxconn.
2. Directly plunder the assets of other countries using the US dollar’s financial hegemony. The first point is easy to understand, it is the famous “smiling curve theory”. The most valuable areas are concentrated at both ends of the value chain: R&D and the market. Without R&D capabilities, one can only act as an agent or subcontractor, earning only a small amount of money. Without market capabilities, no matter how good the product, when the product life cycle is over, it can only be treated as waste. Before, China could only rely on the advantage of cheap labor to process and assemble products, and because China was previously very poor and the domestic market did not have strong consumer power, it was a typical example of having neither R&D nor market capabilities. On the other hand, the US is an international R&D center and the world’s largest consumer market.
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The situation has gradually changed. With the continuous development of the economy in China, it has realized that this approach is not sustainable. The living standards of 1.4 billion people need to be improved, and relying solely on processing fees is no longer enough to sustain it. In order to support their families and create a better life for their loved ones, they must explore other sources of income. At first, China could improve production capacity by updating equipment to increase production efficiency. Before, they could produce 10,000 units a day, but now they can produce 20,000 units, which doubled their income. However, after a while, the production capacity could not make a breakthrough, and they were only able to produce 20,000 units a day for an extended period of time. In addition, the market is gradually becoming saturated, making it difficult to increase income by producing more products. On the other hand, the demand gap is gradually shrinking, making it more challenging to earn money than before.
These factors combined finally forced China to make a choice:
A. Maintain current income status and live a decent life.
B. Open up other sources of income.
Obviously, China chose option B, and began to increase investment in technology research and development. As a result, China achieved breakthroughs in both research and market capabilities, and was no longer just working for the US. Previously, there was only one boss, but now China also wanted to be a boss. The US suddenly couldn’t accept it, because there are only so many workers, and if there is one more boss, the US will lose out on some profits. China said we could work together, so that everyone’s income could be increased, but the US refused. Therefore, we saw a series of actions, such as trade wars, high tariffs, restrictions on Huawei and other Chinese enterprises, all intended to decrease China’s profits as much as possible.
If the first point above made the US feel a little uncomfortable, then the second point below truly made it feel threatened. The second biggest way the US makes money: dollar hegemony. The US took over currency hegemony from the British Empire in 1944, but the “Bretton Woods system” from 1944 to 1971, a full 27 years, did not truly give it substantial financial power. Why? Gold.
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The US once made a commitment to the world, which was to lock the currencies of various countries to the US dollar, and the US dollar to gold. How to lock it? Exchange 1 ounce of gold for every $35. With this commitment to the world with the US dollar, the US cannot act arbitrarily. Simply put, exchanging 1 ounce of gold for $35 means that the US cannot print US dollars indiscriminately. If you print an extra $35, you will have to reserve one more ounce of gold in your vault. The reason why the US had the confidence to make such a commitment to the world was that it held about 80% of the world’s gold reserves at that time. However, later on, the US foolishly became involved in the Korean War and the Vietnam War. These two wars consumed a lot of resources of the United States, especially the Vietnam War.
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During the Vietnam War, nearly 800 billion US dollars were spent by the US on military expenses. As the cost of the war grew, the gold reserves were clearly insufficient to support previous commitments. According to the commitment of the United States, every loss of 35 US dollars meant a loss of 1 ounce of gold. In addition, some countries represented by France were exchanging their US dollar reserves for gold, which depleted US gold reserves. Therefore, on August 15, 1971, President Nixon announced the closure of the gold window and the detachment of the US dollar from gold. This is the beginning of the disintegration of the “Bretton Woods system” and also an act of betrayal by the US towards the whole world.
When the US dollar was no longer backed by gold and became a mere green paper, the whole world faced a choice: if not the US dollar, then what? Therefore, the US exploited people’s inertia and helplessness and announced in 1973 that global oil had to be settled in US dollars. Since then, a financial empire has emerged in the human world.
Because when the dollar appears as a green piece of paper, America’s profit costs can be said to be extremely low. In order to accelerate the delivery of dollars to the world, which will take interest rate reduction measures. When American capitalists keep their money in the bank without receiving any interest, they will withdraw the money for investment purposes. At this time, South America and Southeast Asia become their investment targets. Assuming there is a country A, a large amount of American capital flows in for investment, causing rapid economic growth in country A and a thriving economy. However, behind the prosperity, there are certainly some bubbles, which are the inevitable results of a market economy.
For example, suppose the stock price of a company is $100, but its actual value is only $50. Assuming that the exchange rate of country A’s currency is equivalent to the US dollar. At this point, the capitalists in America have room for operation. They first bought 50 billion currency A from a bank in country A, and then directly exchanged 50 billion currency A for 50 billion US dollars. Suddenly, country A’s currency became more abundant, and the US dollar decreased significantly. However, many corporate trades must still be settled in US dollars. In the panic, many companies will crazy to exchange A currency for US dollars. As the dollars become scarcer and currency A becomes more abundant on the market, more people are induced to use more currency A to exchange for US dollars. At this point, A currency will depreciate significantly. The government of A will certainly intervene and use a large amount of gold to buy currency A to stabilize the exchange rate.
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However, the US raises interest rates. Imagine a capitalist from America investing in country A with an annual profit of 3%, but the interest rate of the Ameican bank is 5%. Which one will he choose? When a lot of US dollars is withdrawn, country A’s companies that originally had a large amount of US dollar investments will experience a broken capital chain. The government will no longer have gold to buy A currency and can only watch currency depreciate. When 1 US dollar = 10 currency A, the US capitalist only needs to use $5 billion to buy 50 billion currency A to return to the bank, Netting a large sum of money. Moreover, this is far from over. When country A’s exchange rate collapses, the US can buy a large number of country A’s assets and achieve practical economic control.
So why does the US suppress China? Because China not only wants to promote the use of RMB settlement worldwide, but also because Chinese economic system is different from traditional capitalist economies, making it impossible for B to use the same methods to control Chinese economy. In the eyes of Americans, China is not only a disruptor and an uncontrollable factor, but also a threat to its financial interests.
The dominance of the US dollar is certainly very strong, and the world has suffered from American hegemony for too long. Most countries probably have the same mindset as Japan, although they do not want to see a strong China, after being American dogs for decades, they also want to change their way of life.
About 10 years ago, I was teaching at a small Catholic school in the suburbs of Chicago. Like all Catholic schools in the area, it was right next to a Catholic church. (The schools are actually considered ministries of the associated churches.)
Like many Catholic schools, this school was built during a time when all of the teachers were nuns who lived in a convent next to the school. Since all of the teachers (the nuns) literally lived right next door, the school was built without a break room or faculty bathroom. The nuns just went home on their breaks.
By the time I worked there, the nuns were long gone, as was their convent. It had been bulldozed in the late 70s and turned into a parking lot. But they failed to add faculty bathrooms to the school. Teachers were just supposed to knock on the students’ bathroom door before entering, to make sure no students were in it, then lock the door from the inside (this required a key that only teachers had) if they were using the bathroom.
The privacy wasn’t a problem, but the nastiness of the bathroom was. Middle school students… boys in this case… are disgusting in public bathrooms. I hated using that bathroom.
Then, one day, I learned a secret: there was a really nice bathroom behind the sacristy in the church that barely anyone knew about.It wasn’t in the school, but the church itself, behind the altar, where students weren’t allowed to go during the day anyway.
This bathroom had been built specifically for disabled church parishioners a few years earlier, using funds willed to the church by a former parishioner who’d been in a wheelchair near the end of their life. But, since it was behind the sacristy (the room where priests get ready for the mass… the room with all of the holy stuff in it), they didn’t exactly advertise its presence. The priests just told the people who would actually need to use it… the disabled. Everyone else could use the regular bathroom on the other side of the church, near the entrance.
The secret bathroom was always pristinely clean, huge, and not only was it private, but, when I used it, I was usually the only person in the entire church at the time. It made using the bathroom at work go from a dreadful, gross experience, to a very pleasant little midday break.
When I worked at Staples, it was about 15 minutes before closing time, I had a lady who looked to be in her 60s walk in and walk up to our iPad case display.
She spent about 10 minutes looking through them and picked out one of our premium leather cases that cost $59.99. She came up to my register to check out, she seemed to have a slight irritating smirk on her face as she approached, and when I rang her up, she looks at the PIN payment screen and nonchalantly shakes her head and says, “No.”
I look at her and say, “No? …No what?”
She says, “That’s not the price I’m paying; the price tag on the display said $4.99.” I know well that even if the case were on sale (which it wasn’t), it would cost quite a bit more than that.
I asked her to wait a second while I go check the case display and see that she was looking at the price tag for the iPad skins that we sold. I walked back and explained the misunderstanding and asked if she’d like me to put the case back for her. She says, “No I still want the case, but I’m only paying $4.99 for it.”
I looked at her slightly dumbfounded, and politely said, “I’m sorry but I won’t be able to sell you this case for that price.”
She said, “You don’t have a choice; for one, the customer is always right, and for two, your display was messed up, which is your fault.”
“Happy Customer Service Jessica” had left the building at that point, so I responded, “Well, the case may have been in the wrong spot but there’s no way you’re leaving here with a $4.99 leather case.” She arrogantly says. “Bring me your manager.”
I called her over (this is a manager who has zero tolerance for people who come in at the last minute before closing, and it’s now 5 minutes past closing) and explain the situation. She said, “Ma’am, that case was in the wrong spot, and I’m sure you saw that all the others just like it were in the $59.99 spot but you chose to try and take advantage of my cashier. You can purchase this case for $59.99, or you can leave right now.”
She makes some comment about calling corporate and walks out, caseless.
How about getting paid more for not showing up to work at all?
I used to work as a suit salesman in a large retail store. The pay was basically minimum wage, but you could make commission which effectively doubled your wage.
My employer brought in a new rule around productivity. You now had to hit an ambitious AVERAGE sales target for each hour you worked to qualify to receive any commission. Hit the target and you would get commission on all sales you made, miss it and you just get your basic pay. Crucially, there was no exemptions for time spent working at quiet times or time spent working in the stockrooms, prepping for sales or doing anything other than actively selling.
The result of this was that if you wanted to earn commission, it was suicidal to do anything other than work the busiest shifts. You could sell loads one day, but spend a few hours in the stockroom selling nothing and your average sales per hour would collapse. We had part timers working only Saturday and Sunday who were earning more than the full timers who were working 5 days a week, because it was so much easier to hit your targets on the weekend. If you were close to hitting your commission targets, you would obviously do literally anything to avoid doing anything which was not selling.
I used to come into work half an hour early to tidy, but had I continued to do so it would have pushed me out of my commission target and cost me thousands, so clearly that stopped.
Most of my colleagues suddenly requested to switch to part time, weekend contracts for ‘personal reasons’, and some were granted before management caught on to what was happening.
If you were called in to cover a shift, your answer would depend entirely on how busy the shift was likely to be. We would be falling over ourselves to work a Saturday, but working a Tuesday could literally cost us significant money. Once, a manager strong armed me into working a weekday which I knew would be a dead zone. I explained that working this shift would literally cost me £1500 but he wouldn’t budge. I ended up agreeing to work the shift only if he agreed not to pay me for it, as that way I would preserve my productivity average and still get my commission.
Then the sickness started. Say you were juuust within your ‘productivity’ bracket for the month and in line to receive commission, but had a week of slow shifts coming up – you knew for a fact that if you came into work you would slip out of the bracket, but call in sick and your productivity is preserved, so there was a perverse financial incentive for not coming to work at all.
It was a crazy, crazy system which resulted in far fewer sales overall, a hugely disorganised department, a massive blow to staff morale and a divisive, angry atmosphere between those who made commission, and those who didn’t, despite often working longer and harder.
I was lucky enough to be a part timer, so I made out OK, but I left soon afterwards as it was obvious the place was being run by idiots.
The satellite photo, taken with technology from the early nineties, was dark and pixelated, but the conclusions unmistakeable. I stared at it as the slippery, wet nausea snowballed, gaining speed down the slope of my horror. “Is— is that what I think it is?”
Mary took the newspaper back. “Well, it certainly wasn’t what Andrew thought it was,” she said, shaking her head slowly, as she regarded it once again herself, at arms length.
Andrew was a 14-year-old student I tutored at the high school where I worked with Mary. He was a quintessential teenager, always joking and jostling with the other boys, down for any sport, by turns both protective and picking on his little sister, Amber. The two of them lived on a ranch in the dusty hills far east of San Diego with their dad, a struggling local businessman. Their mom was “out of the picture.”
That was a weird story from the beginning, actually. By all accounts, their mom was a devoted and loving parent, if not a particularly faithful wife. Her affairs were not exactly top secret, and neither, therefore, were the fights between Andrew’s parents that erupted as a result at all hours of the day and night. One particularly gruesome exchange of words hit the fan after midnight at a neighbor’s house, where the two, in a rare jaunt of reconciliation, had gone earlier to enjoy a dinner party. As words escalated, they excused themselves from the gathering, and shouts could be heard fading down the street where they stumbled their mutually intoxicated way home. More than one partygoer heard her tell her husband, in no uncertain terms, that she had had enough. That was it. She was leaving.
True to her word, by morning she was gone. But she left her children behind: Andrew, who was only four, and Amber, who was four WEEKS old. Their mother was never heard from again, not by their father, not by her sister— her closest relative with whom she occasionally stayed when things got out of hand— not even by any of her various known paramours about town. That was it. She was gone.
Andrew’s father, meanwhile, did his best to pick up the pieces. He reported his wife missing within a day or two of her disappearance, and an investigation was launched, but given her history and words, it was half-hearted at best. Thereafter, life went on.
By all accounts Andrew’s father, too, was an exemplary single parent, even with the solo burden of two growing children. Their house— I visited twice weekly for tutoring sessions— was jumbled with photos of family trips to Disneyland and the zoo. Football uniforms and gymnastics leotards lay folded in toppling laundry baskets as they boomeranged between practice and hamper, never quite making it to drawers. In the backyard, Amber’s rusty playground swings screeched distantly in the rising wind. Nearby, tattered, checkered flags snapped smartly over Andrew’s old BMX bike-racing course, complete with berms, jumps, dips and inclines eroded by the rain.
Mary raised one blood-red manicured fingernail, pointing again to the black-and-white satellite photo next to the article. The headline read, “Local Man Accused of Murdering Wife, Burying Body in Backyard.” Slowly, Mary traced the satellite’s outline of a shallow, shadowy hill, comparing it to a survey photo taken a decade later by drones, when they finally put the property up for sale.
“There it is again, Meg, that same berm, just a little smaller now,” she tapped against the crackling newsprint, on the more recent photo near a banner marked “Finish Line.” “But, Andrew didn’t have a bike course when he was four, did he?”
There’s a guy in my neighborhood who is like this.
He is about 50 years old, in relatively good shape, decent looking, unmarried.
I spent about 15 minutes talking with him at a party.
But noticeably he never mentioned having a job. I couldn’t care either way; it was just unusual because typically a person’s occupation is mentioned during pleasantries and small talk of such parties.
I later bumped into a neighbor while on a walk, I mentioned meeting the man and how he was a cool guy. While talking to this neighbor he said, “Oh he’s a great guy!” and said, “He’ll never have to work a day in his life.”
And went on to tell me how he had started a company, ran it for 15 years, built it up nice and fat then sold it at age 45 for a crap ton of money.
It was a bit mind-blowing to be done at 45. And you’d never know. He has a 3-4 bedroom house with a green lawn and a couple of dogs but nothing fancy outside of that.
I recalled during our conversation, when I’d asked what he does he said, he mainly just reads, eats good food, exercises and plays with his dogs. And I’m assuming he doesn’t worry much about money.
He’s a bit of a role model in terms of how I think I’d live with wealth.
Some people use their money to project status and revel in the glory of their wealth. Others only use their money to buy back time and comfort which sounds a lot more gratifying to me.
I have no need to own a diamond sports car that can drive 20,000 MPH that mainly sits in a driveway to be seen.
How to break in without breaking anything, and how to break in silently.
I had a friend in grade school and while he wasn’t a thief, he knew the thieving arts. His older brothers had “friends”.
One day another friend was accidentally locked out of his house. He showed him how to open the latched window and remove the screen from the outside. We were able to lift him through the newly opened window and into his house, all without breaking anything.
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Something like this, but we gave our friend a boost (image credit)
One day in wood shop class, the janitors had put cardboard over a window that was broken over the weekend. Apparently someone tried to break in to steal woodworking tools maybe? Whoever it was, they didn’t get all the way through. They just managed to create several big cracks in the big window.
My friend told some other classmates how the thieves could’ve done it successfully, without making a lot of noise (cut some lines in a star shape in the glass with a glass cutter, put duct tape over the area, then smash it in. It would still make some sound, but it would be muffled). The teacher heard him “instructing” the others and told him to stop.
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You want to cut the glass like this first. The cuts don’t have to penetrate the glass to the opposite side (glass image credit)
He taught me other things as well, but those two instructions stick out.
I used the “latched window and screen removal” lesson to break into my sister-in-law’s apartment (for a legit and legal reason).
I used it again to break into a neighbor’s house for my daughter (again, all legit and legal). Actually, that one was a gimme; their window was cracked open. All I had to do was slide it open wider and step through.
I’ve never needed to use the “duct tape over window to break it” method, and hopefully I never will. But it’s nice to know!
Having friends in low places comes in handy sometimes!
This year in 2023, China is likely to add close to 6.2 Trillion RMB to its GDP which comes to $ 877 Billion
This despite the fact that Real Estate in China has produced a increase in value of only 789 Billion RMB ($ 115 Billion) down by almost 11.8% compared to 2022
Domestic Consumption has produced an increase in value of 1.936 Trillion RMB ($ 277 Billion) which comes to a whopping 16.2% growth compared to 2022
Trade has produced an increase in value of 739 Billion RMB ($ 105 Billion) which comes to a growth of a decent 3.1% growth compared to 2022 although exports have fallen by 8.1% (Dollar Value) & imports by 7.3% (Dollar Value)
The Trade Surplus of China is estimated to be 5.83 Trillion RMB for 2023 or $ 834 Billion
The Current Account Surplus is estimated to touch 1.51 Trillion RMB or $ 210 Billion
The Net Savings Increase in China this year is estimated to be close to 7% or 4.26 Trillion RMB
The Inflation this year is estimated to be 0.595%
The Growth this year is estimated to be 5.10%
Let’s see
Let’s see the Parameters that have increased:-
GDP – Up by 5.1%
Net Savings – Up by 7%
Net Credit – Up by 3.3%
Inflation – 0.6%
Current Account Surplus – Up by 8%
Grain Production – Up by 1.3%
RMB Reserve – Up by 106%
RMB usage in SWIFT – Up by 136%
Let’s see the parameters that showed decline
Real Estate contribution to Growth – Down by 12%
Trade Surplus – Down by 1.8%
FDI in Actual Use – Down by 4.7%
That’s it
This is Chinas Economy in 2023
In a fairer world, this would be a superb economic performance at a time when China has a REAL ESTATE BUBBLE and the world has a massive economic slowdown
I repeat a superb economic performance
Managed at a 3.8% Fiscal Deficit- with 0.8% added due to a late issue of 1 Trillion RMB infusion
So what is the basis for the West to cry China Economic Collapse?
#1 China has a huge debt crisis
This is because the West conveniently uses National Debt or Federal Debt for their own countries and takes TOTAL PUBLIC DEBT for China
On Date Chinas National Debt is 62% of its GDP standing at 77.2 Trillion RMB
The USAs National Debt or Federal Debt is $ 34.1 Trillion or 130% of its GDP
The Chinese Economy works on Debt financing rather than Credit or Equity financing which means the Total Public Debt stands at 311.7 Trillion RMB or 255% of its GDP
This includes all debts incurred by all Chinese entities plus Local Governments
The Total interest payable for the Local Governments and Chinese Government is 9.41 Trillion RMB a year
That’s Cumulatively around 15.63% of the Total Revenue of China
That’s almost HALF OF WHAT GOVERNMENT OF INDIA PAYS in Interest every year (28.90%) out of its revenue
That’s almost a quarter of what Turkey pays (39%)
That’s less than what Malaysia pays (23%), Indonesia pays (26.7%) as well
#2 Chinas Productivity has declined this Chinas future is bleak
The West refuses to believe that China is transforming
It stubbornly insists that China is still a production economy and a factory of the world that it was in 2007
So it says the PMI has declined and Industrial Output has declined and will continue to decline so China is finished
Yet the same West ignore that Russias PMI rose by 24% this year and Industrial Output by 30%
Here they claim something else
They ignore Chinas Domestic Consumption increase by more than a Sixth this year, a clear sign of transformation
Chinas Real Estate is it’s only problem
Once that bubble is defused, China will grow at 4.5–5.5% growth for another decade at least
Cherubic. Absolutely adorable. Upper middle class and unmistakably summery soccer-kid suburban. He sits on the exam table between his mom and step dad, a smattering of auburn freckles virtually sparkling over rosy cheeks. Six-year-old aqua blue eyes regard me with shy curiosity and just a hint of mischief beneath long butterfly lashes.
Okay, the whole contentious divorce thing, that is less than idyllic. But common enough, and, presumably, all in the past. Yet here mom is now, suddenly near hysterics, grabbing her son by the wrist, shoving his hand in my face. “This!” she screeches. “He goes to his father’s house for one day and comes home like this! Somebody should call the police!”
And I have to admit, the evidence is pretty damning. Both hands and forearms, almost to his elbow, entirely burned a blistering red. There is a line of clear demarcation, with splatter marks above. Everything is consistent with the classic “stocking glove” distribution one often sees after a struggling child’s limbs are intentionally submerged in scalding water as punishment. That said, the presumed victim currently appears unruffled and virtually pain-free. If anything, he seems predominantly concerned by his mother still excitedly waving his arm around all puppet-like while his video game bleeps neglected in his lap.
I am a second-year resident on my burn surgery rotation. I should stop at this point, treat his burns, wash and dress his hands, and call for social work. But the abuse is just so blatantly obvious. The idea of this kid vanishing into the system, and his father continuing to sadistically torture him like that… I seethe. Not on my watch. I ask mom and step-dad to step out.
“So what happened today at your dad’s house?” I lead with, as soon as the door closes, but he is already resorbed in his iPad. I coax it away from his bandaged fingertips. “What did you do?”
He makes steady, polite eye contact now, with the sort of assurance one doesn’t usually find in abused children. The eager answer bubbles out of him: “Me and Leo, we played Transformers, then we had pizza, and we built a fort and picked lemons and sold lemonade and I made four dollars!” He holds up his swollen digits for emphasis.
The kid is good. He isn’t gonna give up Dad easily. “And after that, did you maybe take a bath?” I prompt him.
He nods enthusiastically, remembering. “Susan bought me a green and blue super-soaker to play with in the tub!”
“Susan…?”
“Yeah. Susan is my new step-Mom,” he clarifies, nonchalantly.
Aha! “And does Susan ever run really hot baths for you, or scrub you kinda hard, if you get really dirty, outside, building forts and making lemonade?” Now I am leading him shamelessly, I know it, and I’m a little uncomfortable.
But he doesn’t bite. “Not really.” Shrugs blankly.
I give. I invite mom and step-dad back in. Mom wants to know what I learned and whether Dad will be arrested. I tell her I will update them shortly, and I duck out to phone my attending, Dr C. I summarize in a sentence or two the burns, the recent visit to dad’s house, and my concerns for abuse which the kid will not corroborate. She interrupts, just as I finish recounting my frustration—
“Did he have a lemonade stand? With fresh lemons, that he picked from the tree? Did he make the lemonade himself?”
“What?” I am startled. I had not mentioned this detail. “Yes, I think so, but how did you…?”
She chuckles over the line. “We get three or four every year. Fresh lemon juice under the sun burns the skin. Kids stick their whole arms in it, squeezing and mixing. Looks just like scald burns but it’s not. He’ll be okay.”
Never assume.
Smart girl
Train stuff
I really do like trains. Don’t you know. Puts a smile on my face.
The Goat Canyon Trestle, located in San Diego County, California, is the world’s largest wooden railroad trestle. Built in 1919 as part of the Carrizo Gorge Track, it stands over 600 feet long and 186 feet high. Constructed with redwood beams, the bridge is a testament to the engineering prowess of its time. The area around the trestle, known as Anza-Borrego, is an arid desert, and the construction of the railroad track through this landscape was a challenging task. It required the building of 17 tunnels and numerous trestles, earning it the nickname “the impossible railroad.” Over the years, the Goat Canyon Trestle has suffered significant damage from fires and floods. In 1976, Hurricane Kathleen caused the collapse of several tunnels and trestle beams, leading the Southern Pacific Railroad to abandon the line. Despite its abandonment, the Goat Canyon Trestle remains a popular destination for hikers and adventurers, with a 6-mile roundtrip hike to reach the top. The area is also home to abandoned rail cars, adding to the allure of the site. As of January 2018, the Baja California Railroad was assessing the line for potential repairs to allow the track to return to operation.
* The athlete: Went on to play on ice hockey on A juniors Finnish national team, but instead chose to become a F-18 pilot. Retired as Lieutenant Colonel. Has three children. Cousin of the athletess.
* The jerk jock: Failed to make career in ice hockey. Got in troubles with law. Has worked as an electrics fitter.
* The bully: Got in serious troubles with the law. Has served in prison. Divorced, two kids.
* The athletess: Did swimming on national level. Joined the military, made it to officer. Later went to university and works in academia.
* The alpha b!tch: Became a hairdresser. Divorced, three kids.
* The beauty queen: Went to College of Economics. Married, three children. Works as CEO in a local company.
* The brainy guy: Went to study technology. Has doctor’s degree in applied sciences. Married the athletess’s university course mate.
* The brainy girl: Was the athletess’s teammate. Went to study medicine. Is today a doctor in her hometown. Mother of two.
* The petrolhead: Owns and manages a service station.
* The religious girl: Married early, became a nurse. Mother of three.
* The quiet girl: Best friend of the religious girl. Became a teacher in her old school. Not married.
* The quiet boy: Went to study theology. Works as priest. Married, two children.
* The twins: One of them bought a fast car. Slid off a motorway in the night with serious overspeed, with fatal results. The other took over family laundry business.
* The nerdy guy: Works as system administrator in a large corporation. Plays keyboards in a band.
* The Goth girl: Went to study English in university, works as a translator in the national television.
* The artistic girl: Became an architect. Not married.
His wife sobbed and hiccuped. “You have to understand, Doctor. This isn’t him. He isn’t like this at all.” To him, “Please honey, just put it down. Before you hurt yourself.”
She blamed herself. In a moment reminiscent of a facile soap opera story arc, her 60-ish spouse had collapsed unresponsive atop her during the heat of passionate lovemaking. The paramedics had regained a heartbeat, but he remained comatose, and CT scan of his brain subsequently revealed a ruptured aneurysm. The effects could be catastrophic, and given his age and severity of illness, we worried he might never regain consciousness.
Six months and change went by in my ICU, during which he underwent two operations on his cerebral blood vessels, a tracheostomy, and a feeding tube. He weathered countless set-backs including pneumonias, blood clots, kidney failure, and a heart attack. We lost vitals on more than one occasion, but each time, inexplicably, managed to bring him back.
His wife, with her short dark curls and stark white roots, thick glasses and dog-eared novels, never left his side, sleeping in his ICU room and breakfasting in the hospital cafeteria. Her constant concern was matched only by perpetual mortification regarding the circumstances of his initial attack. At least twice a week, she insisted this was all her fault, and I reassured her it was not.
And then he began to wake up.
Understand something: people in comas don’t wake up like they do in the movies — just open their eyes, ask for their loved ones and demand to know where they are or what’s happened. It’s a gradual process, especially for someone as sick as he was. First, he had to learn to breathe on his own again. Over time, he began responding to noxious stimuli — opening his eyes, withdrawing his limbs. One day as his nurse was placing a new IV he made a half-hearted attempt to brush her away, and his wife was near ecstatic. I should have explained to her then what he would reach down for next…
What ALL men waking up from comas reach for.
He had excellent fine motor skills. And made a full recovery.
Years ago a girlfriend and I were having lunch on a patio, we had daiquiris, shrimp and fried rice.
She ate all of her fried rice, left all of her shrimp, and ordered a second daiquiri. I asked her if there was something wrong with the shrimp, and she said no, she was sure they were fine, but she was on a diet.
I had observed in the past that she loved her carbs, and would eat carbs instead of healthy things like skinless chicken breast, pork tenderloin , skipjack tuna and shrimp.
So I asked her why she was leaving the lowest calorie thing, eating the higher calorie fried rice, and ordering an even higher calorie drink.
She laughed at me and told me that everyone knew that meat/protein wasn’t healthy and had higher calories than anything else.
The shrimp had roughly half the calories of the same weight fried rice, and less than half the calories of her daiquiri.
How could you go on a diet and not know this?
I never told her how many calories were in her favorite perogies and french fries.
My first carrier landing was with the US Navy’s venerable T-2C Buckeye. I had about 100 hours flight time. We had been practicing on runways that were painted to look like a carrier deck for weeks, 2X per day. But nothing can prepare you for the first time you see the tiny size of an aircraft carrier, as opposed to an 8000′ runway. It’s simply frightening.
You have to not look at the carrier. You have to religiously adhere to the pattern altitudes, airspeeds, and angle-of-attack. You have to focus on the Fresnel lens (aka “the meatball”) and not the small, tiny deck. It takes a lot of discipline, confidence, and no small amount of courage.
But when you do your first trap, and then your first cat shot…and everything works just like they taught you…then your confidence soars, and you’re ready to take on the world. Launch me Boss. Let’s do this!
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When you’re done, and you get the call to return to your home field. There’s a sense of accomplishment that you can only feel once…and it is amazing.
A little boy goes to his dad and asks, “What is politics?”
Dad says, “Well son, let me try to explain it this way: I earn the money in this family, so let’s call me the capitalist. Your mom says what we spend the money on, we’ll call her the government. Both of us are here to take care of your needs, so we’ll call you the people. Our nanny is representative of the working class. And your baby brother, we’ll call him the future. Now, think about that and see if that makes sense.”
So the little boy goes off to bed thinking about what dad had said.
Later that night, he hears his baby brother crying, so he gets up to check on him. He finds that the baby has severely soiled his diaper. So the little boy goes to his parents’ room and finds his mother sound asleep and his father missing. Not wanting to wake her, he goes to the nanny’s room, but there he sees the father in bed with the nanny and he can’t get their attention. He gives up and goes back to bed. The next morning, the little boy says to his father, “Dad, I think I understand the concept of politics now.”
The father says, “Good, then tell me in your own words what you think politics is all about.”
The little boy replies, “Well, capitalists are screwing the working class while the government is sound asleep. Meanwhile the people are being ignored and the future is in deep shit.”
This didn’t happen to me, but it happened to a friend.
My friend Tony lived paycheck to paycheck in assorted jobs. He inherited $50,000 when his grandmother passed away. His friends convinced him to invest the money rather than spend it on a new car, vacations, etc., and eventually he agreed. Another friend, Jack, who worked in finance, convinced him to put the $50,000 into Cisco stock. This was back in April 2000, just before the tech bubble burst, and Cisco was at its all-time high, around $75 a share. Then the bubble burst, and the stock crashed.
Two and a half years later, we were all at a wedding of a mutual friend, and the friend who recommended Cisco was very embarrassed and apologized profusely for his recommendation.
Tony: What do you mean? Why are you sorry you made that recommendation?
Jack: Because the stock tanked right after you invested, and it’s continued to go down and down; your $50,000 investment is now probably worth $6000 or $7000. Haven’t you looked at your statements?
Tony: Sure, I’ve looked at the statements; it’s up to about $83,000! It’s doing great!
Jack: You must have misread your statement; maybe it said $8300? When was that statement?
Tony: Maybe two weeks ago, and I’m sure it said $83,000!
Jack: That’s impossible!
After the reception we all went back to Tony’s apartment and Tony pulled out his last statement, which indeed did say $83,000!
Then we saw why; Tony bought the “wrong” stock!
Jack had told him to buy Cisco (the high tech company), and Tony bought Sysco (the food distribution company); both stocks are pronounced exactly the same. While Cisco crashed, Sysco did great!
So that was a very happy ‘mistake’ that Tony made!
My best friend and I went fishing down at the river. To get to the river, we had to push through a bunch of willows. It was hard casting with the willows right against our backs, and so after we didn’t catch anything in the first few casts, we decided to head back to the truck. When we were putting the fishing gear in the back of the truck, my friend noticed I had a tick on my face. I lived out on the bald prairie and had never seen a live tick before. He brushes it off, and then says there is a bunch in your hair. I notice a couple on his shirt.
So we brush each other off, there were a lot of ticks, at least 50, I had never seen anything like it. I pull up my Tee shirt and there are a bunch on my belly.
I have a pocket comb and we comb our hair, and find more hidden in the hair.
We are miles from the nearest house, and haven’t seen a car all day. So we climb into the back of the truck. We take off our T-shirts and inspect each other and sure enough we have ticks on our backs and in our t shirts.
We pick them out of our shirts, and lay our clean shirts on top of the cab, then we do our shoes and socks. We always find more ticks.
Then we do our pants, and finally our shorts. Just in time for a truck load of fishers to come over the hill. We quickly pull our shorts back on, and tell them not to go to the river here, because of the ticks.
I have no idea if they believed us, but, we weren’t concerned,because we had bigger fish to fry, so to speak. We had to take off our shorts, and inspect the other guys parts, that he can’t see. I had a tick in the crack of my ass.
This was probably the most humiliating experience I have had, where someone saw me naked. It would have been bad enough to have my best friend inspect my back side, but having a truck full of people who probably didn’t believe a word we said, see us naked together, was about as bad as you can get.
It was the summer of 2008. I was in bed, asleep, late in the morning, when I heard insistent knocking on our front door. I slogged downstairs to open the door, and found two police cars outside. Two police officers said that a neighbor had phoned in a break in at my house, and the police asked if I knew a “Brad,” which was the name of my 18 year old daughter’s boyfriend. I said that I knew him and looked around for him. Then, I discovered that the police had him in the front of the house. He looked scared to death. I told Brad to come in the house.
The police were unsure what to do and stood arguing on my porch. One officer said that I had to sign an affidavit, saying that I knew Brad. The other said that I was the homeowner and didn’t have to sign anything.
Once the police left, Brad told me that his father had dropped him off earlier in the morning and my daughter, who had the flu, had told him that she’d leave a lawn chair outside for him, until she had gotten up, not letting me know. While Brad was sitting in the backyard, listening to the birds, our neighbor had come out and took a real hard look at him. Shortly after that the police confronted Brad in our backyard. He’d encountered the police before, and knew to move slowly and tell the police what he was doing before he made a move.
He’d been stopped by the police so many times that he carried a letter of reference from the high school resource officer, stating that he wasn’t a criminal. His “crime” was that he was biracial in our neighborhood, and our neighbor decided to call the police, without contacting us first, about this young man sitting in our yard.
My wife is from California, I am from New York City. We met in the Deep South and after getting married I brought her home for the first time. I took her into the city to do many of the touristy things, you know see the Statue of Liberty, Times Square, we even took in a Broadway show. On the ferry, there was a young lady who was so strikingly beautiful that my newlywed wife actually pointed her out to me. I mean if she stood by the highway, traffic would stop — that beautiful.
She was commenting on the sheer perfection until the girl opened her mouth and out came the extreme NY accent, complete with four-letter words and gestures. My California wife was shocked, to say the least. It wasn’t that she hadn’t heard words like that or even the accent— but when it erupted from a girl so physically perfect, it was a surprise. Being a NY’er myself, I barely noticed the accent — which my wife occasionally reminds me about to this day, 40_ years later.
North Korea was no match, to be sure. For one, U. S. Air Force bombers dominated Korean skies, despite MiGs and flak. The United States even readied a clutch of atomic bombs to drop on the North. And aside from Soviet fighter jets flown covertly by Russian and Chinese pilots, North Korea’s air force consisted of everything from biplanes to MiG 15s, all flown by poorly trained pilots. Its ”Maritime Patrol”—Navy—was a single torpedo boat squadron.
But what the North did have was a hulking ally right next door: Red China. With their overpowering ground game, the Chinese brought this brother’s war to a grinding halt. Neither they nor the United States achieved their strategic objectives. There was no winner.
The U.S. military—some 300,000 troops—and the Republic of Korea (ROK), led a global United Nations (UN) army with twenty allied nations from every corner of the planet: Ethiopia, Thailand, the United Kingdom. Denmark contributed a fully-staffed hospital ship. Tiny Luxembourg did its part, supplying 44 soldiers.
This “Forgotten War” began on 25 June 1950 with a massive surprise attack by Kim-Il-sung, the North Korean dictator and grandfather of Kim Jong-un. Initially, his forces crushed poorly equipped ROK units and drove the rest into a pocket around the southeastern port of Busan. Kim bragged he would take all of Korea in three days.
Then, following a brilliant amphibious landing behind enemy lines at Inchon, South Korea, by UN Supreme Commander, General Douglas MacArthur, the UN went on the offensive. They pushed Kim’s army back over the 38th parallel and up to the Yalu River and Chinese border. By September, 1950, the UN occupied most of Korea. Victory seemed assured. Home by Christmas was the cry!
Chinese rumblings about their possible intervention were brushed off as “blackmail” by U.S. President Harry Truman. With North Korean forces in full retreat, UN leadership grew dangerously complacent.
Suddenly, UN success at the Yalu triggered a ferocious lunge by the Chinese. This changed everything, sending once-confident UN forces reeling down the Korean Peninsula in a desperate “fighting retreat.”
A 250,000 strong People’s Volunteer Army (PVA) under GeneralPeng Dehuai (below) had invaded Korea, the first phase of 3,000,000 troops and civilians China would ultimately bring in. China termed it “volunteer” to avoid an “official” war between its national forces—the People’s Liberation Army—and those of the United States. Everyone was tip-toeing around The Bomb.
Peng’s camouflaged army slipped in by moving “dark-to-dark,” 7pm-3 am, halting when aircraft appeared. Any soldier caught moving was ordered shot. The sudden arrival of this vast army shocked UN forces.
Chinese PVA first bloodied the U.S. Army on 25 October 1950 at the Battle of Unsan in mountainous terrain near the Yalu. Their attack caught poorly positioned American and ROK forces by surprise.
When U.S. intelligence interrogated the first captured PVA, they realized the Chinese had entered the war. But how much had they entered? Were they merely backing up their North Korean friends, or committing a far larger force?
At Unsan, 10,000 PVA soldiers encircled the U.S. 8th Cavalry with a three-pronged assault, overrunning U.S. defensive flanks. The Chinese lit forest fires to confuse UN aircraft and donned ROK uniforms to infiltrate UN positions. They also blew trumpets and beat gongs, so unnerving some UN soldiers that they threw down their weapons and bolted to the rear.
Only one PVA soldier in three had a firearm. The rest threw grenades. The Chinese lacked heavy artillery and air cover. They suffered enormous casualties with their primitive “human wave” tactics. Yet at Unsan they put to rout the far more modern UN forces. The battle was a devastating loss for the U.S. and ROK. Chinese leadership was as surprised as the UN’s was stunned.
Museum display of warmly dressed PVA soldier and one from the People’s Liberation Army in China’s Civil War. Note fearsome weapon in his left hand.
Despite all evidence, General MacArthur in Tokyo (he never spent a night in Korea), refused to believe that the Chinese were “all in” to re-take the North. He was, instead, beginning his Home-by-Christmas offensive to end the war. MacArthur was never short on ego and, after pulling off the Inchon landings, was hailed as a military genius. Therefore, UN forces were caught between genius and…reality.
The historic Battle of Chosin Reservoir provided a bitter dose of the latter. Again, the Chinese encircled unprepared U.S. Marines, Army and British Royal Marines. For 17 days, in sub-Siberian weather, UN air and artillery pounded advancing PVA waves. A Turkish Brigade fought a courageous—and costly—rear guard action, allowing the bulk of UN forces to escape, albeit with 15,000 casualties. Survivors were dubbed “The Chosin Few.”
China’s victory catapulted it into prominence as a major military power. But was this truly a victory? By their own estimates, the Chinese lost a staggering 40,000 to 80,000 troops and still had not destroyed the UN forces as ordered by Mao Zedong, dictator of Communist China. There’s a name for such victories: Pyrrhic.
Battle of Chosin Reservoir, 27 November —13 December, 1950. Dashed blue line to right shows retreat of UN forces.
At the Battle of Chongchon River, the PVA 13th Army Group attacked and overran the ROK II Corps. The Chinese also inflicted heavy losses on the U.S. 8th Army which then began the longest retreat in U.S. Army history.
While the Chinese were steadily pushing the UN down the peninsuula, the North Koreans, led by Kim Il-sung, were hemorrhaging troops, losing 70,000 of their initial 100,000. Therefore, General Peng sacked the militarily incompetent Kim, reducing hisKorean People’s Army to a minor player.
Kim had enjoyed early success because Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union, had outfitted Kim’s army with the best in weaponry: from the formidable T-34 tank, to the “burp gun,”(so named for its sound) to trucks. Lots of trucks. By comparison, ROK forces were badly under-equipped in the beginning.
Stalin also equipped the Chinese. However, Mao complained bitterly that Stalin was more a “merchant” than an ally: he was making the Chinese pay cash for everything.
The American air campaign relied mainly on the B-29 heavy bomber, veteran of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It quickly reduced the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, to a smoking ruin. Air Force documents show that the North’s cities suffered greater bomb damage than German and Japanese cities in the Second World War. The arrival of the MIG 15 and radar-controlled flak forced the USAF to bomb at night. 34 B-29s were shot down.
As Chinese troops poured into North Korea by the hundreds of thousands, President Truman considered using atomic bombs. Nine were brought to Okinawa, accompanied by their “fissile cores,” the triggers which would render them “live.” However, atomic bombs are essentially useless in the kind of warfare described above. They are “city killers.” And above all, the United States wanted to contain this conflict. Dropping atomic bombs hardly fit that strategy. By now the U.S. had 300 atomic bombs in its arsenal. That would grow to 31,000 by 1968.
General Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command, estimated that the USAF killed 20% of North Korea’s population and virtually destroyed it as an industrial society. One USAF pilot observed, “When we left, there was no electricity in North Korea.” Every North Korean knows the history of this merciless American bombardment.
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Korea saw the first air-to-air combat by jet aircraft, namely the USAF’s nuclear capable F-84 Thunderjet and F-86 Sabrejet versus the Rolls-Royce powered Soviet Mig-15. USAF figures show 792 Migs were shot down versus 78 UN jets. However, thanks to Commenter Leo Kinnaman, we can see just how controversial the stated results of these dogfights were. Read the debate on this website:
Cold War secrecy cloaked the presence of the Russian pilots. They and their aircraft wore Korean or Chinese colors and were forbidden from speaking Russian on the radio. Nevertheless, American pilots reported hearing bursts of Russian profanity in the heat of engagements. Both Soviet and American governments suppressed reports of the Soviet pilots in combat. Again, that careful dance around The Bomb—or rather Bombs. The Soviets now had their own Bomb—tho they had not yet air-dropped it.
The very air was a frightening enemy. In the brutal winter of 1950-1951—the worst in 100 years—some 45,000 poorly clothed PVA froze to death in temperatures that reached minus 35 degrees. Frostbite injuries plagued all forces. And there was hunger: 90,000 retreating ROK died of starvation, largely due to corrupt leaders pocketing money meant for food.
All war is cruel. This war, however, was stained black by unspeakable atrocities committed by both sides. Such war crimes included the execution of children. When informed of Allied massacres, MacArthur dismissed them as an “internal matter.”
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On 16 December 1950, faced with the seemingly unstoppable Red Chinese advance down the Korean Peninsula, President Truman declared a national emergency. At this point he ordered custody of those nine atomic bombs be given to the USAF 9th Bomb Group on Okinawa. He signed the order, but never transmitted it. The bombs, therefore, remained in civilian custody, not military, an important distinction.
I was three years old in December, 1950. My dad had commanded a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Second World War. Sure enough, he got The Call in the national emergency. The earliest, fragmentary memory of my life is one of my mother hastily taking shiny things off a [Christmas] tree. We then set out on a long, cold and, for me, mysterious drive from Massachusetts to Norfolk, Virginia where dad joined his ship.
UN morale hit rock bottom when their popular commanding General Walton Walker died in a jeep accident on 23 December 1950. However, his successor, the charismatic General Matthew Ridgway, pulled the 8th Army out of the ditch to deny the Chinese their strategic objective: throwing the UN off the Korean Peninsula permanently.
The United States did not win the Korean War for one reason: the stunning intervention of Communist China. Its rough peasant armies fought a super power—the super power— to a standstill. Exhausted communist and non-communist forces settled for an unsatisfying stalemate. No peace treaty was signed because war was never declared. President Truman always carefully termed U.S. involvement a “police action” under UN leadership.
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The Toll:
U.S. killed..………………36,574. Wounded, 103,284 and 7667 unaccounted for.
S. Korea killed…..……..217,000 military, 1,000,000 civilian.
N. Korea killed….……..406,000 military, 600,000 civilian.
PVA: 183,108 killed… ..383,218 wounded, 25,621 missing and 21,400 captured.
(U.S. estimated 400,000 PVA killed)
Thanks to Chen Yankai for PVA figures.
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Truce talks dragged on for over two years. The problem was prisoner exchanges: many North Korean POWs refused to go home. Finally the North agreed to let their troops choose. Those North Koreans who did opt for home, often threw away clothes, shoes, chocolates, cigarettes—anything the UN had given them.
North and South pulled their forces back about a mile from the line of battle, ultimately creating the most fortified boundary on Earth: the 2.5 mile wide, 160 mile long Korean Demilitarized Zone. The DMZ has separated the Koreas now for over 60 years at the 38th parallel. There are no plans for its modification or removal.
The Zone has become embedded in the Korean landscape as an unnatural natural feature. Like the Great Wall of China or the Panama Canal. The Zone simmers with tension and some 1,000 military and civilians have been killed in it. The North has tunneled under it in four (known) places. Their portals have become tourist attractions.
There is nothing sacred about the 38th parallel. For 1300 years Koreans had been han nara—one nation—unified under various monarchies, such as the Joseon Dynasty:
Hwaseong Fortress from Joseon Dynasty, built in 1700s by King Jeongjo to honor his father, executed after refusing to commit suicide as ordered. Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, 20 miles south of Seoul.
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August 1945: Japan had surrendered and Korea was up for grabs. The U.S. Army suddenly realized a boundary was needed fast or the Soviets, flooding down from Manchuria, would occupy all Korea.
Two young Army officers set the boundary. One was Dean Rusk, later JFK’s Secretary of State. Rusk told the “amusing story” of how the two dusted off an old National Geographic map and pored over it for natural boundary features. Finding none, they picked the 38th because it placed the capital, Seoul, on the U.S. side. To everyone’s surprise, Stalin had no objections.
This artificial frontier, set in such haste and ignorance, was bound to cause trouble and, as we’ve seen here, it did. Millions would die as the two Koreas, instant enemies, fought to impose their own brand of han nara, socialist or capitalist. Korea was the Cold War’s first casualty, the DMZ its still-unhealed wound.
In the Korean War, Mao Zedong demonstrated China’s power to the world. He laid to rest nonsensical American accusations about who “lost China.” China was not America’s to lose! And Mao was not about to let his little communist upstart/ally suffer defeat by the United States. For North Korea served—and still serves—as a vital buffer for the Chinese. Which is why they will never let the Kim regime collapse—however much the United States would welcome that.
It may surprise the reader to learn that South Korea isn’t interested in a Kim collapse either. Or, for that matter, re-unification. Either would unleash a human tidal wave of some 23 million impoverished North Korean “inmates.” They would require everything: food, shelter, lots of medical care and jobs. Their insatiable needs would overwhelm the national systems in China and the South and would certainly trigger violence from resentful citizens.
The South has allowed in some 16,000 defectors. It welcomes them but scrutinizes them hard to weed out spies. China, on the other hand, tracks down and returns defectors, fearing that human tidal wave.
Mao conferring with Kim Il-sung (right) founder of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)—otherwise known as North Korea.
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What follows is a bit of a tangent, but I think you’ll find it interesting.
Thanks to Mike Wu for introducing me to Mao Zedong’s eldest son, Mao Anying. He was a tragic link between two founders of Communist China: his father and his commander, General Peng Dehuai, who invaded Korea.
Had Anying lived, he would have inherited his father’s “throne,” just as Kim Jong-un is carrying on the Kim “dynasty.”
Mao essentially abandoned his family when he disappeared into the mountains as a guerrilla leader during China’s Civil War. On Anying’s 8th birthday, he and his mother were captured by a warlord. Ordered to denounce Mao, she refused under torture. Anying was then forced to watch as his mother was beheaded.
Re-united, Mao sent his teenage son to the USSR at Stalin’s invitation. Anying attended Interdom (“International House”) in Ivanovo, about 158 miles from Moscow. This was an elite Soviet boarding school for the offspring of foreign Communists.
When Hitler turned his forces against the USSR in the Second World War, Anying petitioned Stalin for a posting in the Soviet Army. Stalin agreed. Young Anying served—and served well—as an artillery officer in Poland.
When Peng invaded Korea, he chose Anying as his secretary. They worked out of an old gold mining cave north of Pyongyang. At 28, Anying wasn’t shy about offering opinions in staff meetings with senior officers. One has the impression of a headstrong young man, perhaps a bit of a princeling. And why not? By now he understood his destiny.
On the morning of his death, he had fried up some eggs for breakfast. UN planes were spotted. Other staff frantically warned him, but he shouted at them to get lost, he’d have his eggs! Seconds later, two USAF planes swooped down to bomb the cave with napalm.
Mao Anying, 24 October 1922 — 25 November 1950. Here in Soviet Army uniform.
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Anying’s death would ultimately return to haunt Peng. Following the war, he became Defense Minister and Field Marshall. But then, in 1966, during China’s Cultural Revolution, Mao’s last wife, the highly controversial Jiang Qing, had him arrested, “tried” and sentenced to life in prison for trumped up crimes against Mao.
The Red Guard shown bringing Peng to Beijing. He was physically and psychologically tortured there for years. The writings are his “crimes.”
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Why this horrific fate for Peng Dehuai, once Mao’s comrade in China’s Civil War, victor of so many battles, including Chosin Reservoir where he put China on the map militarily?
Thanks to Joe Huang for providing political background.
The Mao/Peng rift emerged at the Lushan Conference in 1959 where Mao’s Great Leap Forward was discussed. Peng bravely criticized this Mao-made catastrophe where 30 million peasants perished in famines. Mao passionately defended himself, citing other great leaders who’d made a mistake or two. He swayed the others, effectively ending Peng’s political—but not military—career.
A play, Mao Zedong and His Eldest Son (2017), produced in China, offers insights into the complex relationship between Mao, Anying and Peng.
Mao’s paternal emotions grew as death approached and there was no bright son with whom to share thoughts deep into the night. No, only ambitious bureaucrats, quietly…waiting.
At no time did Mao indicate he might release Peng from prison. He could not forgive Peng for failing to protect his beloved son in the war. Was that fair? Of course not. How could Peng have possibly known that Mao’s beloved son would unwisely choose fried eggs over safety?
Love, war…politics. When is there ever fairness in these?
Peng, still imprisoned, died in 1974. Mao died in 1976. His death set off a bureaucratic power struggle which convulsed the highest reaches of China’s government for the next two years.
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The author is grateful to those many readers who, far more steeped in Korean history than he, improved this Answer with their thoughtful suggestions…and precise corrections.
I have a casual friend who is the premier door installer in the area. He was so overwhelmed with work, that he raised his hourly fee from $150 to $200. It didn’t work. So a couple of years ago his fee went to $250 an hour.
Didn’t work. I told him to hire a few people to take over some of the work. He said he’d done it before but their work, even under his supervision, wasn’t up to his standards.
So I suggested he raise his rates higher. It won’t work because people who want top notch work are willing to pay for it. He only does high end custom homes. He is very well compensated for his talent. Contractors have him reserved on a waiting list.
When I was growing up, my stepfather was a casual friend of a master woodworker, Sam Maloof. He created hand made furniture using walnut without nails, only wood dowels.
There is Maloof furniture on display at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. One of my friends ordered a Maloof rocking chair 20 years ago. It cost $30,000 and a waiting list of 3 years.
I saw one of his tables for sale in a Laguna Beach art gallery. 2 previous owners. A dining table and 6 chairs for $200,000.
I know a lot a people with higher than 4.0 GPA working a jobs that pay just twice minimum wage.
The worst ever was the “black death” which is a bacterial infection caused by Yersinia Pestis. This disease would ravage Europe and parts of Asia and claim the lives of as many as 200 million people.
Another more modern pandemic would be the Spanish Flu. This pandemic started during WW1 and the battlefields of Europe served as an excellent place for a disease to spread.
While the black death was worse, the Spanish Flu is more relevant to the modern world.
The black death was spread by fleas who themselves hitched a ride on rats.
Once someone came into contact with said flies they became infected. Once infected you would experience aches, fever, malaise, and nausea. If untreated- around 80% would die.
The most famous symptom was the black boils found in the armpits, on the neck, or on the groin of the infected. This is where the “black” in black death comes from.
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Now its hard to say where this originated from. The best theory I have heard is that early climate change and trade from Asia allow allowed rodents carrying the disease it migrate to Europe (this is an oversimplification).
Regardless once it hit, it hit hard.
This is a time before even basic medicine. The global community was ill-prepared to respond in any meaningful way. Most responses were religious in nature as people thought the pandemic was a punishment from god.
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It must have seemed like the end times. Entire communities, villages, towns, and cities were wiped out. So many died that there ended up being a massive labor shortage throughout Europe.
The disease spread until it had killed anywhere from 100–200 million people. Around half of the European population was killed in this pandemic. Imagine that- every other person you know dying from 1 disease.
Once the disease had infected practically everyone it could, it died out and would resurge from time to time across Europe.
Unlike black death, the Spanish Flu is a virus and not a bacterial infection. The disease attacks the respiratory system and secondary cases of Pneumonia ended up being the real killed. While the mortality rate of the Spanish Flu was not as high as the black death, it was still a very dangerous virus.
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It’s hard to say where the Spanish Flu originated. One of the best theories is Northern China.
During WW1 China entered the war against the Germans. A large number of Chinese laborers from Northern China are sent to Canada to be deployed to Europe. A group of these soldiers were sick.
This is hard to confirm though. The first outbreak was found in Kansas but went ignored. American recruits for WW1 from Kansas were sent to camp Funston where the first outbreaks occurred. Recruits from Funston then went to other forts and before long, more than 20 forts had outbreaks.
These recruits were then deployed to Europe and brought the flu with them. From here it spread rapidly in the trenches.
Now doctors and researchers caught on pretty early that a pandemic was starting. Like usual though, nobody listened until it was too late. Additionally, European nations like the UK intentionally covered up instances of the flu in order to keep wartime morale strong.
Yet when the pandemic reached Spain it began to be reported on. Spain was not involved in WW1 and thus was free to report on the pandemic as it happened. This is why it’s called Spanish flu.
As the war came to an end all of Europe was infected. American soldiers returned home to parades and parties which caused problems. In Philadelphia, a large parade is held despite the pleading of doctors.
Due to this parade, the flu explodes. All over American similar instances happen. City leaders refuse to take wise steps to prevent transmission and this causes a disaster.
Now one exception is New York City. They publicized the pandemic, quarantined the port partially, came up with a mask mandate, set up doctors to make house calls, quarantined the sick, and created laws the limited the size of crowds. NY would be one of the safest cities during the pandemic.
Amazing how little we learned.
In the end, the pandemic died out. It had infected so many people it was out of fresh victims and so, the diseases burned out.
Now Spanish Flu remains a threat to this day- ready to mutate and infect us again.
Divorce Lawyer Reveals 3 Behaviors That Destroy Relationships | James Sexton
Here’s the thing – one of the reasons that the economy collapsed in the South after the war is one of the reasons that the American economy collapsed in the late 1920s – overreliance on borrowing for household expenses.
Now, borrowing to buy property has been around for centuries. The “mortgage” goes back to the 16th century or thereabouts and provided a way to secure a loan.
But if you look at 19th century slavery in the U.S., you find that most slaves were bought on credit. Your local slave auction house or slave trader was happy to sell you a human being on credit. The slave would act as security on the loan and the law of southern states made such contracts enforceable – if you defaulted on a payment, the slave trader would seize your slave with the help of local authorities and re-sell it to try to recoup losses. One of the reasons it appears that Thomas Jefferson didn’t free many of his slaves when he died (just blood relatives as it turns out) is that because he was a poor businessman with expensive taste in books and was up to his neck in debt (the Donald Trump of his time in this limited sense).
When the Union started freeing slaves, even on a limited basis (seizing them as contraband) rich southerners were in a bind. Sure they still had land, but the banks that were underwriting slave loans were getting itchy about their collateral. The truth was Northerners were borrowing too, but they were borrowing to buy machines. The South probably had more capital tied up in slaves than land, and very little capital was tied up in machinery. The freeing of the slaves pretty much destroyed the equivalent of several billion dollars in personal wealth and sent the southern economy into a tailspin after the war.
And much the same thing happened in the 1930s. from 1900 to the 1920s “easy payment plans” had started to become the norm. You could go to a car showroom, or a furniture showroom, or even a tailor who would be happy to arrange credit for your purchase. The loan would be sold to a finance company which would borrow money from a bank to pay the merchant and make their profit off the incoming payments. Because credit was so easy to get, car factories, furniture factories and many others started making product as fast as humanly possible. When the economy started a downturn in the 1930s, people defaulted on loans, their stuff was repossessed, the market for used goods drove down the demand for new goods, factories had to cut back on production, they fired people, they would default on their loans, and the whole economy spiraled down causing bank failures and massive unemployment.
The same thing almost happened in 2007 except, of course, the Federal Reserve stepped in and loaned everyone massive amounts of money to keep prices from collapsing while everyone got time to properly evaluate the financial instruments they held so they didn’t have to sell them at fire sale prices. Except in Iceland – they let the banks fail and people started setting fire to Range Rovers to get the insurance because the automobile was worth less than what it would cost to ship it out of Iceland.
I was the lowest handicap player in our team of four golfers, this gave me the privilege of being captain. We were playing a competition round at our local golf club and the competition was a 4 ball ambrose.
For those that don’t know golf this competition is where we each tee off and then we each play the best of the tee shots. Then we each play the best of the next shot, repeating this until the ball goes in the hole.
This day we were playing very very well together as a team and came to the second last hole. This hole was a par 4 but if you were brave enough and could hit the ball long enough, it was possible to “drive” the green in one shot but it was completely over water with all the peril that brings.
To make it even harder, the flag was at the very edge of the green, close to the water, so even if you did “drive” the green, the ball would bounce and roll well beyond the flag.
I instructed my team to make sure at least one of them hit a ball on the fairway and I could then attempt to “drive” the green.
The team hit a ball to the fairway allowing me to attempt “driving” the green but before I did this I literally said this, “The only way I will stop this near the pin, is to hit the flagstick.”
And that is exactly what I did. The ball rested less than a metre from the hole, we sunk the putt and walked off scoring an eagle 2. We finished with a birdie on the 18th and won the competition.
So you understand how ridiculous that shot was on the 17th: It was approximately 260 metres away, over water and the flagstick would be no more than 2cm wide. The odds of hitting that, especially with my ability, is astronomically low.
Apart from winning the day, what made it extra special was that I said out loud what I needed to do and actually pulled it off!
As long as your media continue to spread fabrications on China, set narratives meant to demonise China and cast doubts and sow distrust about China and the Chinese people westerners cannot understand the real China and the Chinese people.
Western governments are voted in on popularity. To be popular they need to repeat the narrative that China steals, China copies, China is aggressive, China gives out loans to entrap nations, China threatens nations, China make cheap goods, China depends on western technologies…..
Nothing said and reported has any strains of truth or accuracy. Nor were there any proof either and without evidence. Just plain and pure lies and fabrications. So how can the westerners even know a shred of truth about China or the Chinese people.
There is no way anyone in the west that can learn the truth about the China as long as the west lie to themselves.
My brother, in family practice at a large university hospital, once saw a very sick 7-year-old girl as a first-time patient whose mother insisted the girl had colon cancer. The girl was indeed passing blood per rectum, a very concerning finding, and she was clearly very sick and doubled over with abdominal pain. But colon cancer in a 7-year-old, while not impossible, would be quite unusual. My brother made sure he knew all the facts before rushing to a conclusion, and he was glad he did. As he talked to her mother further, he found out the little girl had also at various times been diagnosed with neurological disorders, heart disease, blood disorders and kidney disease, to name a few. Each was rare on its own, but together became highly improbable as a group. He knew he was missing something. Scratching his head, he asked the mother if there was anything that ran in the family. She thought a minute before responding triumphantly,
“Well, I have Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy! Could she have that?”
Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy is a psychiatric disorder in which patients abuse someone else, often their own children, to make that child appear ill, thereby garnering sympathy for themselves as suffering parents. The character Mrs Collins in the movie The Sixth Sense presumably had it. So did Dee Dee Blanchard, the mother of Gypsy Rose, who after years of abuse and a litany of false diagnoses including leukemia, asthma, muscular dystrophy and brain damage, finally had enough. Gypsy Rose was 24 and still under her mother’s “care” when she and her boyfriend successfully conspired to stab her mother to death.
The mother of my brother’s patient clearly hadn’t done her homework into what MSbP really meant. All she knew was that she had an impressive-sounding diagnosis with a long name, and with it she might finally get the attention she craved. So rather than hide it, as she should have done, she was bragging about it. All those strange diagnoses her daughter had suddenly made sense. My brother listened sympathetically, nodded, and stepped out of the room to call the authorities.
My friend was in a tight spot and needed $700 to prevent her electricity and water from being shut off. I immediately sent her the money, but then I didn’t hear anything back. Despite this, our friendship remained intact, even though I received no indications of getting paid back or any acknowledgement of the debt. Quite some time passed, and her financial situation eventually improved and stabilized. Then, she casually mentioned that she had taken a trip, leaving me surprised as I couldn’t afford one and she still owed me money. I chose not to confront her about it and instead attributed it to the fact that I wouldn’t be getting my money back, reinforcing the notion that one should never lend money.
Unexpectedly, she started repaying me out of the blue and managed to pay off the full amount within a few months. It turned out that she had been overwhelmed and drained by all the challenges in her life, needing a break to regain her strength and adopt a more positive mindset. This break allowed her to come back stronger and more determined to stabilize her life.
Now, she is doing exceptionally well, and I realized that I had been able to assist her during one of her lowest moments by providing the support she needed. By not pressuring her to repay the debt when she couldn’t, it helped her persevere and avoid giving up.
FIRST TIME REACTION TO STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN – Voodoo child
Two police officers with sober faces stared at me and I knew the news couldn’t be good.
They described a car that had just been in an accident, and the license plate. My wife’s mini-van had collided, burst into flames and everyone inside it died.
I’m doing a mental inventory about now. My wife, three children, and two nieces.
My legs turned wobbly. You can’t imagine what was going through my head. Because of the fire, they couldn’t find any useful identification but explained they could identify everyone both by DNA and by dental records. They wanted a DNA sample from me.
I guess they could verify my kids were mine, and that the adult was their mother. A nice, neat little bow.
Can you imagine? They’ve just told you that your whole family is dead, and —- I told them I would come down and give them a sample.
Getting ready to leave, my cell phone is buzzing. It’s my wife. What? Hard tingles are on my spine, like she’s calling from the grave.
“Our van was stolen from the parking lot….”
Were the sweetest words I could’ve ever heard. Yeah it was my wife’s car, but they won’t need any DNA sample from me today.
EDIT – to address some of the mysteries in the comments
I learned later that three people were in the van when it collided. A man, woman, and younger person, which they presumed was a child of the drivers. The police said everyone died, but they had a different human inventory than my own. I also learned they were part of a ring of car thieves, and the accident was not their fault. Another car ran a light and hit them broadside. No fatalities and only minor injuries in the other car.
Denver’s Homeless Problem Is Nuts! (Behind The Scenes)
Social prejudices take a different dimension altogether. You need to protect your kid, as well as educate her. But no one tells you how.
Some examples:
When my daughter was not yet three
“Papa, don’t you use a pack?”, Sia asked out of the blue one day.
“Um…pack? What pack?”
“The one that you apply on your face”
“Oh. No sweetheart. Papa doesn’t use any pack”
“Only girls use packs na?”
“Yes. Mostly”.
“I should apply a pack daily”
“Really? Why?” I wasn’t sure I liked the direction this conversation was headed.
“I’ll become gori” (fair)
“Hmmm. And then?” I din’t like this at all.
“And then I’ll become pretty”
“Who told you that?” I controlled my fury while I considered the best response to this.
“____”
“____ is stupid. Doesn’t know anything”, I continued to grope for words, “Sia is already very pretty”.
“Sia wants to become prettier”
What do you tell a 3 year old? The whole history of slavery and racism. Or casteism closer home. About the millions of matrimonial ads looking for slim, fair and beautiful brides. About dowry that increases with the quantum of melanin in skin. Too harsh for a kid.
Maybe skip skin color and tell her that physical appearance itself is overrated. Maybe I should explain to her that there is no such thing as too light or too dark; too tall or too short; too thin or too fat. There’s only healthy, smart and nice. Too philosophical.
Maybe I should focus on self esteem. What if her self esteem slips because of dumb things people tell her? There was really no danger of that back then, though. It bordered on narcissism in Sia’s case.
“Becoming prettier is easy, sweetheart. All it takes is a big smile”, I finally managed. I was rewarded with a dazzling smile
“Papa, you know, the math geniuses in my class, who are all of course boys…“, Sia began one day
“Hold it. Hold it. Who told you that only boys are math geniuses?”
“I know it on my own“
“Yes, but how did you know on your own?”
“It is obvious. All the kids in my class who are good at math are boys“
“How do you know that they are good?” [Hint for the reader: Who is the person in the class who judges which kids are good at what?]
“____ can do addition faster than anyone else“
“That’s just one boy. And addition is just one small part of math. Does anyone understand shapes as well as you do?”
“No. But only boys are good at math. See, you are good at math and mama isn’t“.
“That’s just two of us. That’s no reason why you can’t be a math genius. It is all about studying hard and practicing”
“But I hate math“
“Maybe. But don’t you want to prove to the boys that girls can be math geniuses too”
“Yesss!“, she said pumping her fist.
That’s how we got get to prepare for the math kiddy Olympiad. We later confronted her teacher. She first acted shocked, and then proceeded to describe how good the boys in her class were at math. *Sigh*
There was a happy outcome, though. Of the three kids who topped her class in the Olympiad, two, including Sia, were girls. “Who’s the math genius now?”, I asked her. She just grinned.
A few weeks ago (she is nearly seven)
“Papa, who is that?“, Sia asked, pointing at the TV screen. There was a news item about the Nido Taniam Death Incident
.
“That’s a bhaiyya [elder brother] who was killed by some bad people in Delhi”.
“Is he Indian?“
“Of course he is”
“He looks like Chinese“, she observed
“No. He doesn’t. He looks very much Indian”
“But his eyes are like this“, she said, pulling her eyes back
“So?”, I challenged
She thought about it for a while. “Do some Indians look like Chinese?“, she asked, a little uncertainly.
“Well, the Chinese look like some Indians. The Pakistanis look like some other Indians. The Sri Lankans look like some other Indians. There are so many different kinds of Indians. That’s cool, isn’t it?”
“Do Americans look like some Indians too?“
“Hmmm… not really”, I wasn’t keen on confusing her with too much information. We opened her map of India game and started discussing about each region and state. Hopefully, she drew the right lessons.
ØnlyFans Girl Realizes She Is F#$ked By Her Own HIGH STANDARDS!
A friend of mine’s job was to organise VIP visits to military establishments (though as a civilian – he wasn’t forces personnel). He said that when Philip was to visit an establishment they would, as always when royalty was to be around, spit and polish his route and dump all the crap – the junk, the bins, the skips and other unseemly stuff – round the back out of sight. Philip, being ex-military himself and so knowing this of course, would suddenly stride off the planned route down an alley towards the rear of the buildings asking’ ‘What’s down here then?’
The top brass, his hosts, would have inward apoplexy which he knew full well, as they coughed and spluttered, which was why he did it. He also knew that they couldn’t very well stop him.
Sort of thing I’d do.
Priceless.
I wonder whether he also did it because he knew it’d amuse the onlooking squaddies to see the top brass being embarrassed by even higher authority. There’d be a few glasses raised to him in the squaddie’s mess that night.
EDIT: Sigh! This edit, made some days after my initial comment, is aimed solely at a select few U.S. Americans, so you Britons can skip the read and go and put the kettle on (never thought I’d need to explain this, but hey ho).
A number responded saying that they’re rushing to their local tabernacle to actively pray to their gods that fire and brimstone rains upon me, my wife’s turned into a pillar of salt and that my spawn be rendered infertile for saying such a dreadful thing about Prince Philip. This explanation is for them! No, no, there’s absolutely no need for the rest of you to mount your high horses too and loudly affirm that you’re perfectly well aware of what I meant and aren’t stupid – I realise that most of you do and aren’t.
‘Ahem! Are you all sitting comfortably way out west? Good. Then I’ll begin. The term ‘wicked’ is frequently used in the U.K. as an expression of endearment for a mischievous person. It is, these days, seldom used to mean evil. So, by describing H.R.H. as ‘wicked’ I’m saying he was likeable and mischievous as the text that I wrote subsequently, if you deign to read it, shows. Do y’all think you can remember that for me? Well done and goody gumdrops. Oh, and yes, I did meet him’.
Originally Answered: What (trivial) knowledge might save your life one day?
If you find yourself in an active shooter situation, and you are armed, DO NOT draw your weapon unless absolutely necessary. You might be mistakenly shot, or mistakenly shoot another armed and concerned citizen. Let the police do their job, just escape.
If you are pulled over at night, immediately turn on your dome lights and keep both hands on your steering wheel until the police approach you. You might be amazed how much stress you take away from an armed police officer in a stressful situation when you do this. STAY OFF YOUR PHONE!
If you are in a foreign country, always know where, and how to get to, your nearest embassy.
If you are in trouble, scream HELP, FIRE! People tend to respond to fire faster than rape, muggings, or kidnappings.
Carry a knife. If someone tries to force you into their car, first stab a tire, then try to stab your attackers (situation dependent).
If you are in a fight for your life, remember, YOU ARE NOT A CHAMPION STREET FIGHTER! Always go for the neck and throat with any and everything you have.
image 380
7. When you are walking to your car, position your keys in your hand like this picture, or even better, like a stabbing position. It just looks like you are carrying your keys and the assailant would likely not notice. Aim for the eyes.
8. Never find yourself in a position where nobody knows where you are, or where you are going. I don’t care how innocent a journey it seems. For example, you are a man, your wife is at work, and a friend or neighbor asks for a ride. That’s how setups work, it’s usually always someone you know. Take 5 seconds to tell someone where you are going, and who with.
9. NEVER tell anyone, except the people who live in your home, that you own a firearm.
10. Never leave anything with your address inside your car. Hide your registration, in the trunk perhaps, or in your wallet/purse.
11. If your kids are old enough to leave the house (School age, etc) they are old enough to memorize your address and phone number. Teach them this info is a family secret.
12. Have a password with your kids. Even if Uncle Jimmy shows up to pick them up from school, if he doesn’t have the password, your kids should know it’s not safe. Have a family password, and a mom and dad only password. Change it as necessary.
13. Leave a $20 or $50 bill in plain sight when leaving your home. When you enter your house, and this bill is missing, be on guard.
14. Phones these days are almost just as threatening to bad guys as a firearm. If you are in danger, point your phone at the person(s), tell them they are live streaming. Helps if the threat is real. You can live stream to Facebook, YouTube, and others. Learn how to get on it quick.
15. Don’t wear an “I Love Jesus” t-shirt to a Marilyn Manson concert.
16. Whenever on public transportation (bus, train, plane) always sit near an exit.
17. If you are on a bus and some madman starts cutting people, don’t try to be a hero, just scream “THERE’S A BOMB ON THE BUS!” and run for an exit. Bomb is scarier than knife, gun, or madman. People will follow. MAX attack unfolded quickly: Extremist cut three in neck, police say
18. If you are ever forced to make a hostage video, look at every person present (make eye contact), or blink with both eyes once, for each person. This will let responding forces know how many people are in the room.
19. If you are in a hostage situation, and a gunman is using you as a shield, fall dead weight to the floor. Make them drag you. They won’t. Give the good guys a clear shot.
20. If you are lost, or in distress, “Three” is the international sign of distress. Three piles of rocks or fires in a triangle, three gun shots or whistle blows. Distress signal – Wikipedia
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EDIT: Lots of people have commented that tires are near impossible to puncture, and that it would blow your hand apart.
First, tires are ridiculously easy to puncture in the side walls. When I was a teen, my 16 year old girlfriend flattened one of my tires with a tiny two inch folding pocket knife on her first try.
Next, there is only 32-35 pounds of pressure in a car tire, there is NO WAY your hand is going to be blown apart. The air just wizzes out and the tire slowly deflates.
They took my dad’s P-38 can opener. He’d had it since Vietnam.
image 379
If you’ve never had the pleasure of using a P-38 can opener, you can barely open a can with one without some practice, and even then, a brisk pace for a can of tuna is about two minutes.
Theoretically, you could cut someone with the pointy bit, but honestly, how? Just about any way you hold it, your fingers either eclipse the tooth or you don’t have a stable grip.
If someone randomly threw ten other can openers at you, the P-38 would undoubtedly be the slowest, least intuitive, and least useful as a potential weapon (unless maybe you tried to poison someone with it).
Add to this that my dad is 5′3″ and was over 70 and it just seems kind of cruel. He’d had that can opener for over 40 years.
Fortunately, he had three other P-38s, all of which were confiscated by the TSA within the next three or four years. He liked wearing them around his neck and it’s the kind of thing that’s easy to forget you’re wearing, especially if you aren’t a frequent flyer.
I still have one P-38 in a sewing kit for when I go camping, in case I forget my Swiss Army Knife or can’t find a rock. There are a few, rare people out there who can fly with a P-38, but most people take at least a few minutes to figure out exactly how you’re supposed to hook it to the can, then immediately give up and ask if you’re fucking kidding them. How is this worth saving a few ounces?
I’ve never seen anyone open their first can in under 20 minutes, and again, most give up immediately if any other option is available.
I can’t imagine anyone deliberately attempting to hijack an airplane with a P-38. It’s incredibly satisfying just to see someone actually open a can with one, and I think you’d have trouble vandalizing a bicycle tire. They just aren’t conducive to doing much of anything, even opening cans.
I served for 6 years, and there are just some things ingrained in me that I’ll never be able to get out. Most of them are positive habits, as well. For instance, waking up early without a clock, just pure instinct or something. I wake up at 4 or 5 in the morning most of the time, and am fully showered, shaved, dressed, and fed by seven o’clock.
If I say I’ll do something, then I will do it. I don’t procrastinate or break promises unless I am, quite literally, forced to.
I still use military time and terminology. This confuses people a lot, but after a few years of knowing me, they get used to it and understand me perfectly.
I’m very rigid and studious about cleanliness and perfection. The military turned me into a neat freak, and that is a great habit to have. I don’t even think about leaving my house if the beds are unmade, floors unswept, clothes not put-away, and every surface hasn’t been scrubbed down. Including walls, doorknobs, cabinets and tables… especially kid’s rooms! You’d be surprised how much gunk can build up in as little as three days.
I rush a lot. If there’s some kind of an event at six o’clock, I’m ready by four. My wife and kids really hate this a lot. They can never understand why I rush so much, and how it’s humanly possible to perform the three S’s in 15 minutes (shit, shower, shave in that order.)
It’s incredibly productive though. I always have a lot of extra time on my hands, because I simply do not tolerate lollygagging. I can get so much done in a day, it even amazes my own self!
I can do the three S’s, eat, take the kids to school and go to work, wash my car and perform maintenance on it, hang up pictures, clean, go grocery-shopping, do laundry, and help my wife prepare dinner without even thinking about it. I know some people who take much longer to do this stuff (no shame on them, everyone has their own paces, but still) or don’t even think about it until somebody reminds them.
Of course, there is bad stuff that comes with being in the military, especially when you’ve fought in a war. I can be really bossy, controlling, and just harsh sometimes. I mean, I can see how and why, it’s not classed as cool to have your dad yell at you to wash the dishes and sort out your clean clothes when your friends are over. It’s just the way I was taught in boot camp, the way I learned, the way they instilled discipline and decency in me.
I did manage to work on these issues, and be a more understanding father and husband, while still imprinting necessary habits and values into them.
Another habit is that I still like to dig holes, especially at the beach
Imagine you walked into the doctor’s office. You sit down in your assigned room waiting for the doctor to come in.
You look up.
And up there on the wall was your doctor’s diploma.
“…Institute for Racial Purity.”
And that is literally one of the schools where Dr. Mengele, a.k.a. The Angel of Death, studied.
His thesis from college? In layman’s terms: how to determine someone’s race by their lower jaw.
Glad they checked that box. Huge sarcasm.
You’ll be hard pressed to find a doctor who more violated the Hippocratic Oath (don’t harm your patients) than Dr. Mengele.
Him, featured in the middle:
image 377
And in this picture, he is the only one who wasn’t hanged after the war ended. And he sure as hell deserved it.
Much of his research involved race and racial supremacy in some way, and was often carried out on people who were deemed as outside the circle of purity.
He did twin studies where he purposely killed one twin to test the reaction of the other twin.
He sewed two children together just to see if he could artificially create Siamese twins.
He had a woman’s breasts tied off to study how long it took her baby to starve to death.
I’ll stop.
Just know this — there’s a long list of absolutely nightmarish experiments that Dr. Mengele carried out on other human beings. He often frequently brought candies and did nice things for children in his prison camp, only days before he turned them into white smoke in the chimneys. He was a truly, truly, truly twisted man.
After the war ended, he escaped to South America where he lived decades longer, a free man, dying of a stroke in 1979 at age 67 in Brazil.
If ever there was a doctor deserving to die by execution, it was Mengele.
I’m not a surgeon, but heard this story from a family friend who used to work at the NIH with a highly successful and recognized surgical oncologist (I’ll call him Dr. S) who told this story.
I heard it secondhand, so don’t have all the details, but think it’s a pretty amazing story regardless (apologize in advance for my clear lack of medical terminology).
Anyway, Dr. S gets a patient with late stage cancer, who had a good sized tumor somewhere in his midsection. It’s believed to potentially be operable on, so the man is prepped for surgery and Dr. S begins by opening up the patient’s abdomen.
To go off on a quick tangent, do you know why cancer is called cancer? It’s no coincidence it has the same name as the crab in the zodiac. Tumors are rarely one self contained sphere — they have “legs” that branch out in all different directions, and kinda sorta resemble a crab. I encourage you to look it up, and it’s one of the reasons it’s so much easier to treat cancer when you catch it early…usually the small “lump” is only the visible portion of the tumor”
Back to the story, as Dr. S described it, it was one of the worst tumors he had ever seen, and the cancer was so developed that surgery was going to be impossible. So, the good surgeon had no other choice but to sew the patient back up and give him the prognosis. There was no further treatment that could be done.
About two or three years go by, and Dr. S sees a patient’s file with a familiar name come across his desk. Dr. S recognized it as the man he operated on a few years prior, but no way it could be the same guy, right?
The man had come back in for something unrelated to his cancer (though I think something that involved a CT scan). When Dr. S went to see him, he saw none other than the patient he sewed up two years prior, standing there in good health. Despite having had treated thousands of patients, Dr. S was in shock. They talked for a few minutes, and I wanna say Dr. S got permission to look at the man’s most recent scans, and there was no sign of the cancer. Zero. It was completely gone.
No, the guy hadn’t found another surgeon nor underwent chemo, in fact, Dr. S was the last person to have even operated on him. The only explanation was that the immune system had recognized the tumor as a foreign body / threat and destroyed it.
____
With parents in the medical field, I have heard several other similar-ish stories, but this one by far is the most amazing one I’ve heard.
As a disclaimer, this is very much a true story (though I don’t remember the type of cancer or the name of the doctor). Although what happened is extremely rare, it’s not impossible — the human body and immune system are capable of extraordinary things. It’s no surprise there are several cancer treatments that focus on simply getting the immune system to recognize and fight the cancer.
Not exactly ignorance, but certainly displaying a certain amount of naïveté was the following incident.
I was an exchange student in 1969/70 in Wayne Michigan. My American host family were very friendly with their neighbours, so I got to know them quite well as well during the course of that year.
Anyway, after a year in the USA, I went back to finish my degree and after graduation and landing my first job soon saved up enough money to revisit my host family and introduce to them my long term girlfriend, who came along.
We didn’t forget to visit our old neighbour Pat, who by then had bought a dilapidated golf course up North in Michigan and moved there living in a trailer, while he did the place up.
What struck me though, was what he said after greeting me enthusiastically. He just couldn’t believe fresh out of uni, I’d already saved up enough for two plane tickets and a short US holiday. He said: “I thought we were the richest nation on Earth? I worked all my life and never been to Europe. Couldn’t afford it! And here you are again?”
I think many Americans cannot comprehend the fact that per capita GDP and disposable income in most West European and Scandinavian countries is at least similar, if not higher as theirs.
image 376
My host family’s house and my brother for the year, Ed junior.
Cantonese Shoyu Chicken
Shoyu Chicken Recipe 5 Edit
Ingredients
3/4 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons honey
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons fresh ginger, chopped
1 1/2 cups water
5 cloves garlic, grated
1 seed star anise
1/4 cup scallions, cut into 1/2-inch lengths
1 (3 pound) fryer, cut up
2 tablespoons cornstarch
4 tablespoons water
Instructions
Bring soy sauce, honey, brown sugar, water, ginger, anise, garlic and scallion to a boil. Lower heat and let simmer for 2 minutes.
Add chicken; cover and simmer for 40 minutes.
Arrange chicken on a platter.
Mix cornstarch with water; add to sauce to thicken. Pour sauce over chicken and serve.
I was arrested in 1987 at the age of 17. Up until then I lived the simple life of a farm boy. There was no internet cell phones etc.
In prison I was schooled by old heads who taught me how to do time. I wasn’t a knucklehead kid coming to prison like many today. I listened to what they told me. Many of them did not believe I should be in prison. One even said I wasn’t a criminal even though I committed a crime in the eyes of the law. Anyway, I was influenced by their thinking and what they told me. Some may say they brainwashed me . I say they were trying to keep me alive. MSP was a very dangerous and violent place. I did my entire 29 years based on what I learned from them.
Now it is 2016 and I get out of prison. Two things you have to realize. One is I went to prison in the 1980s and I got out thinking people would still have the same societal thinking as the 1980s. While some thinking is the same or similar a lot has changed in the way people think. The second is I came out with a prison mentality that even 7 years later I struggle with sometimes
Everyone thought I would have a hard time adjusting to technology. Even I thought that. However, I caught on to that pretty quick. I mean, I still have things to learn , but I know enough to get by. It is fascinating that I am writing this and as soon as it is posted , someone anywhere in the world can read it. The same with emails, messages etc. Absolutely amazing to me.
The hardest thing has been adjusting to society itself. Most of my life has been spent in prison so for awhile it was hard just to get used to doing things without being told I can do it. I mean for the first week I was out I would not even walk outside without someone going with me or being told .lol I laugh about it now. I wouldn’t turn on the TV because it wasn’t mine. This confused those In the house. They finally made me do it. But first they had to show me how the remote worked. Then there was being in public. I really do not understand young people. Many do not like you to hold the door for them.Many young women take offense at being called “Miss” or “ma am” This is how I was raised and I am just trying to be polite. One incident was weird to me. I was standing in line at Casey’s and there were two teenage girls behind me . One says “He has a nice a**” I turned and said “I am old enough to be your father” To which she says”I was just giving you a compliment. I have a boyfriend. Chill old man”
Another amazing thing to me still 7 years later is just going into a store. I don’t like being in them if they are crowded, but the wide variety of things to buy is amazing to me. People think I am amazed because the prison commissary didn’t have much. Well that may be part of it, but there is even a wider variety in stores now then before I went to prison. I am live in a small town and grew up in a small town and there is one thing I missed in prison that is still common in small towns. I don’t know about big cites Anyway that is the friendliness of people once they know you. I can go out in public here in town and people will greet me and ask how I am doing. Talk about the weather etc Just today a guy said to me “Harve how are you doing? When are you going to let me buy you a beer?” I respond with “When they let me off parole”
I’ve answered this question numerous times before.
Listen up!
Most of the products exported out of China… outbound to the United States…are made by American companies, making American products, to an American audience, and being sold at American prices, and the American owners obtain the profits.
The only Chinese component to this system is the workers who assemble those products, and the raw materials that are obtained out of China.
…
It is important to those (whom ever they may be) who run the United States “government” to keep the American people ignorant, and stupid of the actual Geo-political realities regarding China.
To this end, they distort numbers, figures and data to provide the ILLUSION that…
The United States is stronger than it actually is.
China is weaker than it actually is.
A good case in point is “export data” that promote the idea that of the total exports out of China, a massive “Lion’s Share” of it goes to the United States. Depending on the source… all Western sources… the percentages vary from 25% to 60%. So the viewer would obtain an impressive picture of the relative strength of USA – China trade.
This is a laughable distortion.
Remember… those figures are American companies, collecting American profits, on American products… made in China using inexpensive Chinese labor.
The actual number… ACTUAL Chinese products exported to the United States is around 3.2%.
You will see them in the USA from time to time. But their actual value is really quite low.
Huawei
Gree
X-Peng
ShaoMi
Most of that enormous product flow that is so touted about leaving China fore the United States consists of …
GM transmissions
iPhones
Nike shoes
SONY electronics
All of which are American, or Western products. Not Chinese products.
…
So let’s answer this question…
If America stopped importing goods from China, could the country survive?
China would survive, most certainly. China manufactures for the world, and the United States market is a small, nearly insignificant amount. 3.2% as a whole.
The USA would not survive. Unless the United States found a suitable nation that could provide factories, inexpensive labor, a skilled work force, and a focus on quality… most Americans would be flat out of luck in buying and using products.
At the age of thirty-six, I was pregnant for the first time. Because of my age, my doctors advised me to have an amniocentesis to make sure everything was okay. After an amniocentesis, you have to wait about ten-to-twelve days to get the results. I had the test and I waited…and waited.
After twelve days, I started to call, but the results were not there yet. Something seemed wrong. Finally, after fourteen days, the genetic doctor called me. The results had come back and were devastating. The amniocentesis showed that the baby had a double set of chromosomes. This is a rare condition and almost all embryos with this condition are miscarried early, often before the mother even realizes that she is pregnant. Very few make it to birth, and if they are born, they die soon afterwards. The condition is just not compatible with life. The genetic doctor was surprised that I was still pregnant and informed me that I would soon miscarry.
I was of course devastated as were my husband and mom and everyone. I went to a medical library and it was difficult to find anything on this chromosomal disorder since so few live births occurred, but I did find a couple of articles. Only two babies (at the time) had been born alive and both had died within two days. One of the articles had a picture of one of these babies. She was blind, deaf, and deformed. This was what I was told that the baby that I was carrying was facing.
My obstetrician wanted to do an abortion. Instead, I made a decision to repeat the amniocentesis. The genetic doctor admitted that there could be a one-in-a-thousand chance of a mistake, but then he changed his mind, and said there was no chance of a mistake, and I just needed to accept this diagnosis. In a few days I went in and had another amniocentesis. For twelve days I waited for the results to return. I cried and cried while I was waiting. Finally the results came back and showed that a horrible mistake had been made. The test showed absolutely normal chromosomes. I went on to have a healthy pregnancy and a beautiful baby. This baby grew up, graduated from one of the finest universities in the world, and now has a beautiful baby of her own.
My parents told me this story. When I was 8 years old living in the UK, my dad took a job opportunity in the USA and we emigrated. My parents decided to rent out our home in the UK so before we left we were showing the house to perspective tenants. One was an American guy. Turns out he was from the same city in the US that we were about to move to in a few weeks time. They laughed over the coincidence and the American guy said that his adult daughter is still in the US and we should look her up when we get there. He gave us her name and that she works in a particular restaurant in the city.
Fast forward a few weeks and fly to the US. we arrive at the airport, tired after flying halfway across the world! We are met at the airport by a representative of my dad’s new company and he drives us to a hotel. On the way we stop for some food. It’s late and there’s not a lot of places still open. The rep says he knows a place that’s open late. Yep, the same place the American tenant’s daughter works at. We end up getting served by her! So we rent out our UK home to a random American guy and move to America and end up meeting the guy’s daughter working half an hour of leaving the airport!
The Bourne Identity (2002) | *First Time Watching* | Movie Reaction | Asia and BJ
Her name was Monica. She was a 16-year-old cashier, and “epic” is a great word to describe how she quit. This was in the mid 90’s, and I was an assistant manager at that time for a very small movie theater in Louisiana. Monica was a box office cashier, and Eric was the general manager. Now that I’ve set the scene, let’s begin.
First of all, it gets hot in Louisiana during the summer. Really hot. The theater opened at 11 AM every day, so by then it was already a scorching hot day. Every morning, one of those sweeper trucks would go through our parking lot and remove all of the trash from the night before. On this particular day, they hadn’t shown up. I can’t remember if the truck had broken down or if they had just forgotten to show up. Regardless, there was trash EVERYWHERE in the parking lot. Popcorn bags, cups, cigarette butts, dirty diapers, you name it.
Eric was very lazy. He was the kind of manager that just sat in the office all day and would never help the employees. No one liked him, but he was the boss. When Monica came in, Eric told her to go outside and pick up all of the trash in the parking lot. I told Eric that wasn’t her job, and to call the sweeper company. He refused. I told Eric I would go outside and help her then. He refused and told me I was going to go to box office and sell tickets. I told her to just pick up the big stuff . Monica took a trash bag and went outside. Through tears she started picking up trash. She was out there for over an hour. Through the box office window I saw her picking up every cigarette butt, every popcorn kernel, every dirty diaper. By the time she finished, the trash bag was completely full, and Monica was a sweaty mess. She also hadn’t gone to the dumpster with the trash bag, but had walked into the theater with it. Her tears were gone. Then, I saw one of the greatest things I had ever seen. Eric was sitting at his desk with his back to the office door. He didn’t see Monica walk in the office. She took that full bag of nastiness and poured it over Eric’s head. Old soda, cigarette butts, and stale popcorn landed on his head and all over his desk. She then took the now-empty bag and tossed it on his head as well, smiled, then said “I quit” and walked out. At that moment, she became a hero.
The story of the wife that assisted in my “retirement” from the ONI; MAJ is a long one and very painful for me to revisit.
You see, I was the FOURTH “husband” that she “retired”.
I originally thought it was two, but I discovered out later that she had three previous "husbands". Of course, they were bad, bla bla bla... And yes, each one ended up with problems. Where she profited greatly.
And while I don’t know ALL the details, it appears that I was the one that she got NOTHING out of. For she was living off the collective finances of the three previous “husbands”, whether insurance, alimony, or selling their resources. She got none of that with me.
Because of this…
… because of this failure in her efforts (sure she got me arrested, and I lost everything, she gained nothing.) She ended up with nothing. No profit. No money. No resources. No insurance settlements.
I think when you are expecting millions of dollars from bringing in “one big fish” only to see it go South, it turns you a little crazy. Or “crazier”.
And she has kept on doing everything in her power to “trip me up” and give me a hard time. Here is one such story…
…
When I was in the ADC, prison, I had to endure an all morning lie detector test. I, along with another 16 inmates were marched down to the gym, and waited as one by one, we were given lie detector tests. This one was quite different from the stuff that you see on television.
While it did measure heart-rate, body temperature and nerve impulses, it also measured voice. It was designed to look for changes in frequency and amplitude. Which was a novel idea. I had never thought about this. So all these measurements were taking place while watching my pupils dilate and all the rest. The system was designed to see ho my body reacted to all sorts of personal questions of a sexual and an interactive nature.
I answered as best as I could, and at the end the investigator told me that I wasn’t hiding anything. And of course, I wasn’t. As at that time, I had given up everything. I was stripped, defeated and was completely unguarded… an open book. Once you lose everything, you just don’t give a fuck any longer. It just doesn’t matter.
In fact, the other inmates made fun of me saying that “you can’t lie for shit“. I was that much of a predictable open book.
The point of this was to adjust our threat level. There were three threat levels. And when I was “retired” from MAJ in the ADV Pine Bluff, they established the lowest threat level for me.
But, apparently, my ex-wife, the one trying to poison me as part of my “retirement” wanted to raise all sorts of Hell for me, and this was one of her efforts. So she got the ADC geared up to give me a hard time. Sigh.
Federal Rules for classification are fixed.
I have level one. I possessed illegal pictures.
Level two would only be granted if I had physical contact with a minor.
And Level three was bodily harm to a minor.
So there was no way that my level was going to change. But they had to run a lie detector on me, by request by my ex-wife, to make sure that I wasn’t hiding anything. Sheech!
And if they suspected anything… they could keep me locked up indefinitely. How about that for control and power?
…
Ugh. Memories like this really get me into MAJ induced rages. Good thing that I auto calm, and am way, way, way outside the USA right now.
Not me but happened to a friend of mine: she worked in a large law firm in Dublin, Ireland. Her boss was a total prick, probably a psychopath. During the recession they cut people’s wages and even stopped serving coffee at meetings in order to cut costs – not that any of the senior partners took wage cuts. It is very expensive to live in Dublin; the situation was so bad that there was a constant stream of young, under-paid, financially struggling solicitors entering his office and begging for a pay-rise, any kind of pay-rise. With every one of them he pointed to a tray on his desk filled with c.v.’s and said if you don’t want to work here I have a large bundle of applicants who would be happy your take your job. No one got a raise.
Things came to a head when my friend entered an open competition for a position with the state-run Residential Tenancy Board, a kind of mediation body for disputes between landlords and tenants. It was known that my friend, along with several others in the same firm had sat the exam, and she scored extremely high, placing near the top of the panel. It was rumoured that the boss had applied as well. At the end of the office day he approached her desk and basically accused her of rummaging through another colleague’s desk and stealing his notes for the exam – something along the lines of “How can you prove to me that you didn’t go through Brian’s desk, and read his notes?” (Not that he gave a shit about Brian). This is a lawyer, asking another lawyer to prove her innocence under the presumption of guilt, that she was guilty until she could prove herself innocent. She knew this situation was untenable and said well I wouldn’t do that because it’s immoral, and illegal but it now seems clear to me that it might be best if I work somewhere else – she basically quit there and then in the most tasteful and honourable fashion. He exploded on the spot, demanding to know who would take over her cases and workload. She replied, “Well, you have a large bundle of c.v’s on your desk, hire one of them.”
China has been the biggest power for 4800 out of the last 5000 years yet China did not invade or colonise nations thousands of miles from their shore!
China will not do what the U.S. do. That is for sure. It does not want to dictate to the world. It is too mature and responsible. China don’t see it is right or is it worthwhile for it to interfere and intervene every where. The repercussions to the U.S. is much greater than the U.S. dares to admit and bit by bit the U.S. benefits will evaporate and the humongous cost to the US will come home to roost.
China wants a free and vibrant world that is doing well and prosperous. When a peaceful and harmonious world becomes a reality China will trade with everyone. That is good for China, the Chinese people and the world too. Wars, interference and interventions are costly and harmful for the world. China sees it vividly and clearly that respecting the sovereignty of all nations is good for the world.
Just think about the U.S. spend billions building aircraft carriers and spend further billions to manned it and spend more billions circling the globe aimlessly. And if these interference lead to war, more billions need to be spend to fight these wars. And what does the US gets in returned? Mainly hates and disdained is all that they earn!
China is not blind and it is certainly very smart. It won’t want to do what the U.S. do. Not now, not in the past and not in the future! To China, the U.S. is “throwing sand in the sea” and basically self destructing.
Thirteen years after my dad died, we were notified that his father purchased land in another state, now owned by his children. A gas well was drilled on the property. Since my dad had died, his portion went to his three children. This is where the greedy part comes in.
My mom heard about this, I assume from my sister. She discovered that only us kids got to divide my dad’s portion. This news pissed her off to no end. Immediately, she got an attorney and demanded her share of the gas lease.
When the company that drilled the gas well communicates with the family, they copy EVERYONE. This is how I learned that my mom hired an attorney to ensure she got a piece of the pie. (I have been no contact with my narcissistic mother for fifteen years.) My mom took me out of her will years ago; she wanted to make sure I didn’t get too much. My mom’s actions were out of revenge and greed. If she couldn’t get it ALL, then she was going to make sure that I didn’t get more money than her.
Here is the best part. After years of waiting, my husband and I finally got a big check. One day, out of the blue, we received a envelope which we thought was another letter about the gas lease. After opening the envelope we could see it was a check. We were in disbelief, our jaws dropped, we could barely contain our excitement. As we looked at the numbers on the check, our minds began to wonder about the amount that was on my mom’s check. This was unreal. It was like no other point in our lives. This check changed our lives. It was the answer to our prayers. It proved to us the existence of karma!
After my husband and I calmed down, we started discussing how and where we would spend our $35.00. But more importantly, we laughed all the way to the bank, thinking about how much money my mom spent on an attorney to get a check that was less than $50. It was the best check we had ever received!
My dad’s share of the lease was 1/8th. Since he had passed, his three kids would split that into three equal portions. From what we can tell mom got 1/2 of dad’s share and left the other half to be split into thirds. In the comments people say that my mom is entitled to my dad’s share. I agree, yes she is. But the way she went about it was based on anger, revenge, and manipulation. I would have gladly given her my share if she’d asked. The last time my mom and I talked it was on this issue, I told her if I got any money from this I would put it in savings for my son – her grandson – who has a neurological disease. She decided to get the money for herself, which meant that she was so mad at me that she would take money from her grandson.
I worked in security at Heathrow Airport for a number of years and one of my roles was to process departing passengers. One day a tallish man tried reaching over a perspex barrier to retrieve a bag that was emerging from the x-ray machine. I was in the process of removing it in order that it could be inspected. He said “Do you know who I am?
I did. I won’t name him but he was the son of our serving prime minister at the time. He was the one who got lost for a few days whilst engaged upon a car rally across the Sahara desert.
Had he been as important as he thought he was he would have been escorted by the security service.
When I was a young boy in Calcutta, one of my mother’s friends used to come over to our home on Sunday evenings and enjoy a glass (more like 7 glasses) of scotch. He was the MD of a medium size publicly listed company, a colourful character, had led an exciting life and always had stupefying stories to tell. He later went on to become the chairman of a very, very large listed Indian steel giant.
It might just have been the alcohol talking but he told us this.
He was at work one day when an ordinary looking man entered his office without an appointment. He invited himself in, sat down across the desk. Put his hand inside his bag, took out a sleek black pistol and put on on the table, barrel facing the Managing Director. He said, “look how bad your current security is, I could get in with a gun and so can anyone else. I represent XYZ Security firm. Our retainership amount per annum is Rs ABC. When do we start?”
When we moved in to our new house in 2020, my then 17-year-old son got his own bathroom. It wasn’t an en-suite, but it was right next to his bedroom and rather isolated from the rest of the house, so while others may use it, that was “his” bathroom.
One of the first things he did after moving in was get a nice-looking basket which he filled with a selection of high quality feminine hygiene products and placed on the back of the toilet.
He had read that a courteous host does that to make the women in their lives feel comfortable and welcome and to save them embarrassment if the need arises.
I think your husband’s friend needs to grow up at least as much as my teenager.
Edit —-
Before you think he’s too awesome, realize if I didn’t clean his bathroom, no self-respecting woman would ever use it.
I had tickets to see Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young at the Tampa Bowl on a nice warm evening. We got there early and as it was stadium seating we spread our blanket maybe 20 rows from the stage, right in the center. When the band came out they announced that they had a permit that would allow them to play into the wee hours but they were going to start the concert with some acoustic music.
During the first bars of the first tune the boos started. “We want rock and roll!!!” and so on. The noise from a mob of clowns down front was drowning out the music. Then someone threw a beer bottle onto the stage. The concert stopped abruptly. One of the singers again announced that the would play rock and roll until the wee hours but they intended to play an acoustic set first. The cheers drowned out the boos.
They started again but the assholes made it difficult to hear. For the second song, Neil Young sat down at the piano and started doing a solo. You may not believe this, but a “cool” thing to do among assholes back the was to get a mouthful of lighter fluid and as they spit it out they’d light it. People were shooting flaming liquids toward the stage. Finally, the police came in and hauled off a couple of morons. Young started to play again and there was more shouting and a beer bottle landed in the piano. Then a cherry bomb landed on the keyboard and exploded. Young got up and walked backstage.
The stadium went silent. Ten minutes later a helicopter landed behind the stage and it took off right away. The stadium lights came up and a guy walked out and announced that the band had left and the concert was over. We headed towards the other end of the stadium and out because we feared what the scumbags might do. That was the entire concert.
The tattoo is supposed to be a very serious and deliberate thing because it is permanent in a sense. However, here are some people who did a very funny tattoo in Chinese character. Maybe they did not know what is the real meaning of these Chinese or, I don’t know, they just want?
I saw many tattoo pictures of the non-Chinese person on the Internet and they can be roughly divided into three kinds.
1. Chinese old sayings
People did this type of tattoos generally know the meaning of that, but Chinese people rarely tattoo them on their bodies.
Beckham’s Chinese body tattoo
image 372
(Translation: Life and death are fated, riches and honour depend on the appointment of heaven)
Kenyon Martin
image 371
(Translation:Worry about personal gains and losses)
This Chinese idiom refers to very selfish people who pay too much attention to their own gains and losses.
Jameer Nelson
image 370
(Translation: Nothing is a taboo.)
2. Chinese food
A 20-year-old British designer fancies Chinese cuisine very much. One day, she came up with an idea that tattooed Chinese cuisine names on her waist.
image 369
(Translation: Sweet and sour chicken; fried noodle with beef; fried rice with egg and chicken meatballs.)
It looks like she printed a Chinese restaurant menu on the body. Next time she walks into a Chinese restaurant, all she has to do is rolling up her tops and say: I want this. Interesting.
This man got “Fried rice with pork” on his calf.
image 368
(Translation: fried rice with pork)
???
Are these people trying to cook themselves?
image 367
(Translation: Fish ball soup and sweet sour meat)
3. Some very confusing tattoos that are beyond my imagination
This is the funniest part. Many tattoos are far beyond my understanding.
My husband had been raised by his grandparents so felt he owed them. We devoted our time to taking care of them and their house. We took them shopping, did the gardening, painted, built the wheel chair ramp and anything else they wanted. They had a daughter and grandchildren who refused to do anything. She said they lived their life now we are going to live ours. Then grandparents and us got the flu, they had a disabled daughter who was staying with us since grandma was in the hospital. She got released and we were told not to go near her. We asked the daughter to go get her and take her home, she sent the granddaughter. Granddaughter let her out in the street and drove away. Grandma called us and disabled daughter wanted to go home. I called the other daughter and told her off, granddaughter had to go to the airport to get her boyfriend. Why couldn’t she come after she got him, or her married brother? Her brother had to be home with the wife and kids. Grandma said let the disabled daughter come home. Grandma defended the daughter’s family. My husband was not included in the estate only his aunt. He was nothing to them but a handyman. He gave up and said we were moving unless he was in the will. We moved away and let them take care of the grandparents however they want. Grandma was widowed by then. Not sorry I told off his aunt. I never lose my temper or use harsh language, so they knew I was mad.
Chicken with Mangoes
Mango Chicken 3 1
Ingredients
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 3/4 cups water
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
3 whole chicken breasts
1 (2 x 1-inch) piece fresh ginger root
8 scallions
1 (15 ounce) can mangoes
3 cups vegetable oil
3 tablespoons white vinegar
3 tablespoons dry sherry
4 teaspoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons granulated sugar
2 teaspoons cornstarch
2 teaspoons instant chicken bouillon granules
1 teaspoon sesame oil
Instructions
Combine flour, 1 cup of the water, the salt and baking powder. Beat with whisk until blended. Let stand 15 minutes.
Remove skin and bones from chicken and discard. Cut chicken into 1/4-inch wide strips. Mix strips into flour mixture.
Pare ginger and cut into wafer-thin slices.
Cut onions into 1/2-inch pieces.
Drain mangoes and cut into 1/2-inch wide strips.
Heat vegetable oil in wok over high heat until it reaches 375 degrees F. Add chicken, one strip at a time, to hot oil (cook only 1/4 of the chicken at a time). Cook until golden, 3 to 5 minutes. Drain on absorbent paper. Repeat to cook remaining chicken.
Remove all but 1 tablespoon oil from wok. Reduce heat to medium. Add ginger to oil in wok. Stir fry until ginger is light brown, about 2 minutes.
Combine remaining 3/4 cup water, the vinegar, sherry, soy sauce, sugar, cornstarch, bouillon and sesame oil. Carefully add to ginger all at once. Cook and stir until mixture boils.
Add onions. Reduce heat and simmer 3 minutes.
Mix chicken and mangoes into soy sauce mixture. Cook and stir 2 minutes.
There’s a newspaper in St. Catharines, Ontario, called The Standard.
The lady who worked the classified ad desk never missed a day of work. Rain or shine, sickness or health, she was there taking orders for classified ads which, at the time (the 1990s), were the lifeblood of any newspaper.
Then, one day, she had to be rushed to hospital.
And that day, ad revenues were twice what they had ever been.
A quick check of actual advertising revealed the paper was only being paid for half the ads they ran. An investigation showed that their classified clerk was moving large amounts of money through her bank account, mostly to go on shopping sprees.
They quickly figured out the reason she never missed a day is that her replacement would immediately notice that a lot more money was coming in than usual, which would indicate she was skimming half the proceeds for herself.,
I was working in Manhattan. I got a call from my kid’s school that he wasn’t feeling well and had to go pick him up. I had just finished developing a CD-based training program (this is early 90s, before this stuff was done online). On my way out, my assistant told me the CD master had just arrived and gave me a little plastic bag with the CD in it. I was in a hurry to leave and figured I could drop off the CD at home with my kid before returning to work.
Getting around Manhattan basically means getting into and out of yellow cabs. It’s pretty easy to find one.
image 355
Typical New York street
I catch a cab to my kid’s school. About 15 minutes later, I get dropped off. I greet my little one in the headmaster’s office and tell him we’re off to the doctor’s. As I’m waving down a taxi with my kid’s hand in mine, I realize I don’t have the CD bag. We go back into the school and it’s not there. Nobody remembered seeing me with a bag and, frankly, I didn’t remember having it in hand when I walked into the school. Oh, well, I thought, that was stupid. This was before Uber where you could call your ride to check on the back seat. This was, in fact, before everyone had cell phones. The bag and CD were gone.
I refocused on getting my kid to the doctor. Got him checked out. Got into another cab to a nearby pharmacy to pick up a prescription. Walked home and dropped my kid off with his nanny who was waiting there.
All this time I was hopeful they would be able to reproduce the CD master, wondering how long it might take, if it might delay the project, if I should tell my boss, etc.
I wave down a cab to go back to my office. While I’m thinking about all these things I see a bag on the floor. I pick it up and pull out my CD.
My assistant sees me walking in with the bag. “How is your baby? I thought you were dropping that off at home.”
“Kid is fine. Oh, the CD, yeah…” I figured she wouldn’t believe me if it told her the truth.
I watched an investigative reporter type show look at liens in Ontario. It turns out that in Ontario they have this weird, habit of leasing hot water heaters, like it’s a car or something expensive. When they install the hot water heater, you sign a contract that lets them put a lien on your house until the hot water heater is paid off. They were typically 10 year leases. The lien is on the house , regardless of who owns it, and new owners just continue paying the lease, if you don’t pay it out. Anyway, there were some crooked companies that took advantage of this, and wouldn’t let you sell your house, without paying out the lease, and they wanted huge penalties, tens of thousands of dollars for early payment. Picture this, you have sold your house for $800,000, and everything clears, but it can’t be completed, because of this lien. They ask you for $15,000 to break the lease on a hot water heater that was worth $800 new. What do you do? Lose the sale? Pay the breakage fee?
So I would do what you can to find out early, because you don’t want to be held over a barrel when you go to sell it.
When I was in, I think, my 2nd or 3rd job in computers, my company was rolling out email and word processing applications on our central computer. This was the late 80s and it was all green screen with satellite offices using PCs as dumb terminals.
I was sent out to all the sites to do maintenance on the PCs and train the personnel how to use the new applications.
Our business was primarily prepacked concrete mix for contractors and homeowners. At each location they would mix and bag the product for distribution to their regions.
At every plant I went to, when I opened the PC case, there was a 1/2in of powdered concrete covering the motherboard. It’s a wonder any of the machines didn’t crash from overheating!
Decades ago, I received a past-due notice for a loan payment to a bank I’d never done business with. Puzzled, I called the bank. After explaining my confusion three times, I finally was talking with someone who had sense enough to look into it instead of fobbing me off to someone else.
“Did you make a purchase from Such-and-such Music Store?” Indeed, I’d purchased a piano for my wife a month or so earlier. (Might’ve been nice if the salesman had mentioned they’d turn the loan over to a third party, but whatever.)
I then asked the bank worker how the *very first* communication I’d received from the bank could be a past-due notice.
“You should have received a payment coupon book,” she said. (As indicated, this was ages ago.)
“I’ve received nothing from you till this,” I replied.
And then, to my everlasting amazement, she said, “I know. The printing company we use had an equipment breakdown and the coupon books haven’t gone out for a while.”
That “I know” blew me away. The bank *knew* their customers weren’t being told when their payments would be due, and how much they would be—and, in cases such as mine, didn’t even know their loan had been sold to that bank—and instead of notifying people, they just sent out overdue notices.
With a late fee attached, of course.
So I told the nice lady that I’d be happy to make the payment, but I would not stand for a late charge.
Now it was her turn to be puzzled. “Why not?”
“Because I wasn’t late—*you* were!”
In the end, she had to have a VP call me later, and after I went over it all again, he agreed it was kinda dumb for them to send late notices to people who didn’t even know they had a loan with that bank, he waived the late fee.
I got my driver’s license near the end of my sophomore year of high school. I got my first car a few days before that… a used ’86 Bonneville.
From that week forward, I was 100% responsible for getting myself anywhere I needed to go, including to and from school, my friends’ houses, and my after-school job. I already had a key to the house. I had a “curfew” of 10pm, but my parents always said that “whatever side of the door I’m on when they go to bed at 10 is where I’m going to be all night.” They had a chain lock on the inside of the door, so my key was useless if they locked it that way, which they did every night when they went to sleep.
Fortunately for me, I wasn’t very social and I didn’t stay out late anyway. They made exceptions for nights when I was working. I was a prep sports stringer for the local newspaper, and some nights I didn’t get home until 1am because I was covering a game several counties away.
My parents never actually locked me out. My sister, on the other hand, was locked out a few times because she missed curfew. My father was nice enough to put a recliner and a blanket for her on our screened-in porch. She slept out there more than once because she got home late.
It was the South, so it didn’t get too cold most nights. I doubt I could get away with that with my kids here in Chicago.
In 2015, one day a school boy named Amit was going to school. On the way he was hit by a car. Amit was bleeding, he needed immediate medical help but that car driver didn’t even stop and he didn’t feel to take Amit to nearby hospital. Amit was lying on the road, some people came and took him to a hospital but unfortunately he died. Amit’s dad Jitendra ji came to see his son and he was shocked to know about his little child is no more. Amit’s mom was in deep grief. In just a moment a happy family was shattered.
image 353
Image source: Web/Google
Jitendra ji filed a complaint but the police didn’t investigate. They even closed the case without informing Jitendra ji. This was ridiculous!
Jitendra ji and his wife just wanted to know his son’s killer. They wanted to question that man why he left Amit alone to die, he could have been saved if he was taken to hospital on time. They just wanted a Sorry. Was that so difficult??
Jitendra ji decided he will find that man who killed his beloved son. On the accident spot, he found a broken rear mirror and a broken car number plate. Car number was not full, but on the mirror there was a number. He asked from the local service centre but every time he got dissappointment. One day with hell lot of efforts a mechanic told him that this mirror is of a Maruti Car. Jitendra ji went to the manufacturing unit of the Maruti cars. He told his story and there people helped him. With the mirror number he managed to find the car registration number and with registration number he found the car owner’s name – Gyan Chand. It took 8 years for Jitendra ji to find the real culprit.
He went to police again with all the proofs and now again police disappointed him by not filing the complaint. He then moved to court and here also he didn’t get justice, his plea was rejected not just once but 4 times repeatedly. In Jan 2023, he again appealed to court for the 5th time. This time court accepted his request and asked the police to re-open the case but till now no arrest has been made.
Jitendra ji fought 8 years to find all the evidence and the person who killed his son. He is still fighting for the justice and he has told that he will fight till his last breath untill and unless his son’s killer get punished.
This story is deeply heartbreaking…….
image 352
Image source: Web/Google
I Salute Jitendra Ji from the bottom of my heart🙏
Amit would be Proud of his Dad❤
**Update : On 21st Oct 2023, Police has arrested the accussed, Gyan Chand.
One of my former student’s mothers. This was several years ago now. Her son was in 8th grade and read at a second-grade level. His handwriting was illegible. When he typed his assignments, his sentences were incoherent or not related to the assignment at all.
This was made worse by the fact that he was not a discipline problem. He sat quietly in class and looked like he was on task and understood the material. But he didn’t. He didn’t understand any of it. Even the easiest things in all of his classes were well over his head.
His mother said, at every single parent/teacher meeting, that her son was “a nice kid and just a little slow, but he would get it together soon.”
No. He needed special education services that our school couldn’t provide. The mother had been told that for years, but she didn’t want to hear it. In her eyes, her son was perfect. She was paying for private school for the purpose of avoiding the “special ed” label they’d give him at the public school.
So, the teachers did the best they could to accommodate his needs. Of course, it wasn’t enough, because he really needed a one-on-one, full-time tutor.
I actually know what happened to him. I heard through mutual friends that he went to a private high school which did have a special ed program (although they called it something else), he graduated from that special program, and is now working full-time as a helper in his uncle’s business. Good for him. That’s probably the best thing for him… to find meaningful work with a trusted family member.
I never really had a last conversation with my mother. She was in a memory ward in a nursing home. She had been having strokes was no longer able to walk, and the strokes had affected her swallowing. Her care was beyond us.
Unfortunately, COVID hit and the nursing home was locked down so we couldn’t go in to talk with her. We had been visiting almost daily. The conversations had become one sided due to the alzheimers, but at least she remember us. The day came when we got the call that she had slipped into a coma and that we had finally gotten permission to go in and see her. My last words to my mother were that I loved her, that she had been a great mother/grandmother and that it was OK to go home. She seemed to be waited for my sister to get there and say her goodbyes. My mom died a few hours after my sister left.
No matter how much time you have, somehow it’s never enough.
MY SCHOOL PRINCIPAL SAVED ME FROM HUMILIATION.
It was the evening of farewell for our 10th Grade. Our juniors had arranged an eventful farewell for us.
After all the entertainment and other stuffs, it was time to felicitate the top rankers of our class. I was called on stage to receive the award for securing the 1st Rank in the class.
I went on the stage brimming with pride to receive my prize from the School Principal. Little did I know what a blunder I was going to commit.
Here, 2 things you all need to know are:-
First, this was the first time I was going to stand on the stage in front of 100s of people. You can deduce what my condition was, from the fact that I was so immature that I didn’t even know what stage fright was!
Second, this whole scenario was taking place in the Evening. (Yes this is important to know!)
Then came that doomed moment. I was asked by the school principal, a young and kind-hearted lady, to speak a few sentences about my experiences in this school and the hard work behind my academic achievement.
I held the mic, still happy on receiving the award. As soon as I formed a few sentences in my mind and was just about to utter those words, the reality hit me. I saw an ocean of heads staring at me curiously to listen to what I am going to say. I went numb. I forgot everything I wanted to say. There was a complete silence for a few seconds. I knew I had to start. And then my brain which had ceased to work since a few moments, told me, “OK buddy, it’s not that difficult. You can begin by greeting the crowd .”
Feeling the breeze of that contrastingly cold evening, I gathered courage, forced a smile and softly greeted the crowd by saying, “Good Morning”.
There was a dead silence. Before I could even realize what a silly and humiliating mistake I have just committed, my principal took the mic from my hand, turned towards the crowd and said ,“As this is his first appearance on a stage, this is a new morning for him. So, it’s not a Good Evening but a Good Morning to everyone from this bright young kid.”
And then I realized what a silly mistake I just did. I felt embarrassed but at the same time I stood there in utter disbelief and appreciation of the intelligence of my principal. She just protected her student by her brilliant presence of mind.
I can’t think of a better instance of presence of mind in my whole life.
In 1859, a geomagnetic storm called TheCarrington Event¹ disrupted electrical infrastructure across the globe.
…what there was of it.
…which was telegraph service at the time.
(and that’s pretty much it)
The Event was perpetrated by solar flare activity so unprecedented that the Auroras Borealis and Australius were visible from both poles to the equator, with such an intensity that night became day, disorienting humans and animals alike.
Telegraph offices that failed to go offline in time caught fire and burned, and those that did shut down remained operational for hours, despite being disconnected from their power source, due to the massive worldwide electromagnetic surge.
All news, for all intents and purposes, was once again local for the duration of the aftermath.
Newspapers couldn’t report on events outside horse riding distance.
The 19th Century reverted to the 18th Century in one fell swoop.
Now…what we do know for certain about the Carrington Event is that it wasn’t a one off.
It had happened before and it will happen again.
And THE NEXT TIME, unlike 1859, we will likely have satellites in orbit, and planes in the air.
…and cars that run off batteries, and those that don’t which have electronic ignitions.
…and power lines to heat our homes in the winter and cool our homes in the summer.
…and an Internet that we’ve basically come to rely on to maintain a global economy.
(that too)
And all those things are gonna go bye-bye for a time.
The quote about living “in interesting times” is erroneously attributed to the ancient Chinese, but it was actually coined by the American politician Frederic R. Coudert on the cusp between the Great Depression and a second world war.
No matter how bad things get for Mankind, we can all rest assured of one thing for certain:
It certainly can be. On my second trip to India I suffered a broken cheek bone and two black eyes at the hands of several youngsters who were barely teenagers. It was my completely my fault, by thinking that playing Cricket twice at school would allow me to play with these kids who live and breathe it. Having came across a game just starting my Indian friends talked themselves into playing and must have imagined that being English I played the game. But being brought up on a council estate in London it was football or boxing never cricket or rugby. I had played it twice at school and never even touched a bat. Anyway I thought I’d have a go and how hard can it be? Fucking hard thats how hard. The bowler could only have been 13 at the oldest so I was not worried I stood there holding the bat as I had seen them do it on tv. I then saw him running up, his arm lifted to throw and then white light and pain as I stepped forward straight into the bounce of the hard cricket ball. Wow I felt stupid and had a few weeks of discomfort. But I did gain respect for cricket and often go and watch it at Lords. I always support India(unless playing England) in thanks for this lesson.
My mom died when I was 9 of a cancerous brain tumor. It hurt like hell and it took me years to recover. Maybe I still haven’t.
My Grandma, a widow, got remarried when I was about 15 or so to a great man, and when I left at 19 to do a couple years of volunteer service at my own expense in England, I remember hearing he wasn’t in good health. About 4 months in, I learned he also passed away.
It was at this time I got a letter from my oldest sister. As I pulled it out of its envelope (most letters still went this way), a small slip of paper fell out. On it was written, in my sister’s handwriting, in a purple pen, just one sentence, “Aaron, always remember to be my strong little boy” and under it was something that looked like somebody trying to get a pen to work – quick scribbles back and forth in a small area.
I thought it cute, but odd, and set it aside, then I read the letter. My sister quickly said, “Aaron, I was going through an old drawer of things today, cleaning it out and found this. In her last days, Mom asked me to write out a little note to each of her kids, and then she signed them at the bottom. I’m sorry it’s not very legible”.
I immediately began sobbing as I picked up the little paper again and felt the warmth of a mother’s love well 10 years after her death.
Dan and I were headed into the Canadian Rockies in September. The weather was miserable. On the way it a younger guy had passed us by. He was carrying a day-pack sized backpack and he made fun of our big “old-style” backpacks. He was nice enough about it and we just smiled and watched him fly by.
A couple of days later we were camped in place just below timberline and it was raining hard, windy and not far above freezing. We were comfy and dry in our tents, had hot food, good raingear and all was well, even if it wasn’t all that much fun. The young guy came into the area and set up his camp. He had a thin foam sleeping pad, a thin down bag, and a tarp measuring about 8′ x 8′ that he set up very low to the ground.
The next morning it was still drizzling and cold. The young guy came over to our camp. He was shivering and soaking wet. He had a light rain jacket and no rain pants. Also, he was barely coherent. “Ggggguys …. I … I … I’m uh, I’m ….uh …. I need help.” We sat him in the entrance of Dan’s tent and gave him hot coffee and some oatmeal. We got him out of his wet raincoat and wet shirt and wrapped him in a fleece jacket. He began to relax. We all decided the he just needed to get out of there ASAP. Dan and I went over and packed up his gear. It was like a wet sponge, all of it.
When we got back he was doing OK. He had semi-dry t-shirt in his gear and he put that on plus his wet raincoat. Dan walked down the trail with him for a mile or so. When he got back Dan said that the kid had warmed up and seemed good to go. Oh, and that he’d apologized for making fun of our packs.
It happened last night. To be fair, she was likely 18–22, so barely an adult.
STORY! My husband and I went to our city’s downtown area for dinner and a carriage ride. We paid for dinner and realized we needed money to tip the carriage driver because we only had a $50 on us. DOH!
Note: No, we aren’t bougie like that. My company paid out a small company bonus with $50 bills.
It was okay – there was a candy store and we had time. We poured out a small scoop of chocolate and checked out. There was some issue with the cashier understanding that us paying $50.04 for $6.04 was in her favor, but math is hard.
Now, this is what the US $50 bill/note looks like:
image 359
Actual quote from her: “Who’s on the $50 bill? Is that King Edward?”
Blink. Blink. What? A KING?!
We had to explain to this adult that no, this was not a king. It was Ulysses S. Grant. There’s even a county in my state named after him.
Her manager, who was a few years older, then said, “Oh yeah! I remember his picture on the wall in my history room. Didn’t he wear a really tall black hat? He looks fatter here though”
We pulled out a penny and asked if she was thinking of Abraham Lincoln. The manager then said, “Oh yeah! That’s the guy. Isn’t that the same guy?”
Oy. I’m sure President Grant is rolling over in his mausoleum.
My cousin had an old beater car. He always drove it on empty, and only added a dollar or two of gas at a time. He didn’t think it was worth stealing, so he left the keys in it, in his back yard, while he ran into the house to get something.
He heads back to the car, just in time to see it go around the corner. He calls the police, expecting he will never see the car again.
The police phone him 10 minutes later, to tell him that they have his car.
Its at the local gas station. It had run out of gas, they had pushed it in the last few feet, and filled it up with gas. But we’re having a hard time starting it, after it had run out of gas. The gas station was only a few blocks from the my cousin’s, and the attendant recognized the car, and called the police. It was a very distinctive, beat up beater.
My cousin needed a boost to get it started, and then worried that the weight of the full tank of gas would wreck his car, because it had never seen a full tank before.
It turned out to be a bunch of teen joyriders, and the charges were dropped against them. My cousin said that they doubled the value of the car, by filling it up, so he wasn’t too stressed.
So in this case the first thing they did after stealing the car was fill it up with gas.
I’m cranky and I’m tired, and I worked hard at school…
Not me, but my sister. She was a manager for a membership warehouse and they had this one woman that would come in once a month, demand a one-day pass, do her shopping and then pitch a fit when she couldn’t use her credit card (it was cash or debit card only). And she did this every month. Well, she demanded to speak with a manager and since my sister was on duty, she got to deal with her. Once again, my sister explained the rules to her and offered to take care of setting up a membership right then and there. The woman didn’t want to pay the $55 and began to berate my sister who was waiting her out. Finally, the woman shouts at her “To go to hell” to which my sister responded, “Ma’am, I’m already there.” Could have heard a pin drop in the membership areas as all the employees turned to stare at her. The “customer” had nothing further to say, so my sister calmly turned and left.
*The woman never came back to that warehouse. My sister wasn’t fired (for that) although her boss had a good laugh about it.
Two effing massive barbecue grills that I didn’t order that were on my back door when I got home from a business trip around midnight. Thankfully UPS or whoever delivered it (can’t remember which carrier) was naive enough about cyber security to have included the correct recipient’s phone number on the shipping label.
I texted the correct recepieny about it and, being way too nice, told them that I have a pickup and could deliver them but they were way too heavy to load on my own so someone would have to come help me load them.
The husband came over, we loaded them, i delivered them and we unloaded them at his house – all was well. Years later I still get packages and mail for them. I realized that we have the same numbered address and street but I’m SOUTH xxxx Avenue and they’re NORTH xxxx Avenue.
The mail that comes omits the north or south so I assume they’re too dumb to specify that important data element when giving out their address (because the address on the envelope, each time doesn’t specify north or south). it’s happened way many times to just be a coincidence.
So now I don’t bother delivering items, I text them that it’s happened AGAIN and ask them if they want to come me pick it up from my front porch or have me mark it as “wrong address” and see what happens.
In 1967, Doug Hegdahl was on a recon mission in the Vietnam War.
His boat cruised along the river, and as he it did, a battle broke out and he was thrown into the water. He panicked and swam for shore.
Unfortunately, Doug swam towards the Vietcong side of the shore. They greeted him with prompt beating and dragged him ashore screaming.
Doug was tied up and thrown in a cage. They debated on whether to execute him. As they interrogated Doug, he realized they were trying to determine his usefulness. He gave goofy, incoherent answers, talking crazy. Then he repeatedly shouted, “No water buffalo!”
In Vietnam at that time, owning a water buffalo was a sign of moderate wealth. He was saying he was poor.
Being poor was good. The Vietcong hated wealthy people. His rambling earned him the nickname, “The Incredibly Stupid One”.
And while other US soldiers were tortured and killed, the Vietcong felt too bad for him. They thought he was an American version of the poor, dumb man forced into the front line in a war.
Little did they know, he was gathering information. During his years in prison, he memorized the names of 200 prisoners of war, along with the intimate details of the enemy base.
During a negotiation, the Vietcong chose him as their release thinking he was a simpleton and no threat.
Doug got home and immediately gave a press conference.
He told the US of those prisoners, and their freedom was obtained.
image 358
He memorized the 200 names using the song Ol’McDonald Had a Farm. He even needed to hum it when reciting the names back over.
You may not relate to his situation, but Doug’s experience gives insight into dealing with dangerous authority figures.
For example, if a cop pulls you over, it is better to play dumb rather than listen with your mouth, and explain everything you didn’t do wrong.
More broadly, it’s generally better to be guarded with what you know. True genius is knowing when not to reveal it.
Chicken with Walnuts in Plum Sauce
Plum Sauce Chicken Recipe3
Ingredients
1 cup walnut halves
1 teaspoon beaten egg
1 teaspoon oil
1 teaspoon cornstarch
6 chicken thighs (1 1/2 pounds), boned, skinned and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1/2 cup oil
2 teaspoons plum or hoisin sauce
1 (1-inch) piece ginger, peeled and finely chopped
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1/4 teaspoon sesame oil
2 green onions, finely chopped (garnish)
Instructions
Pour boiling water over walnuts and let stand 5 minutes. Drain and pat dry.
Combine egg with 1 teaspoon oil and cornstarch in small bowl. Add chicken pieces and toss gently to coat them evenly.
Heat 1/2 cup oil in wok over medium high heat until haze forms.
Add walnuts and fry until golden about 45 seconds. Remove with slotted spoon and drain on paper towels.
Add chicken to wok and cook until golden, about 3 minutes. Drain well.
Pour off all but thin film of oil. Return pan to heat, add plum or hoisin sauce, ginger, sugar, soy sauce and sesame oil and stir until combined. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring constantly until sauce begins to glisten, about 1 to 2 minutes.
Add chicken and walnuts and mix thoroughly with sauce.
Transfer to heated serving platter and garnish with chopped green onions.
Today, my friend told us a joke. 70 years ago, the United States led 18 countries to fight with a P5 country on the Korean Peninsula (let’s call it a draw). 20 years ago, the United States led 11 countries to invade a small country with domestic troubles and foreign invasion ( eventually failed). In the past few days, the United States found 10 countries to against Yemeni Houthi. Because of the shortage of troops, they even ask China join them，China certainly refused without think too much.…Fighting with a Yemeni local armed force, even ask China to help big hooligan?(´•ω•̥`) 🐼: I suggest you back home,massacre the kindergartens and sweep the geracomiums…
Houthi isn’t ET…
The changes of opponents by the US Army shows they are more and more laggard indeed.
Now they even often make this kind of arguments,enough to explain two problems:
Some US people already brain dead.
The infrastructure in the United States has been in disrepair for a long time, and even the frequency of failure is ‘on and off like a light switch’.
So, we don’t care what you say，today communications ‘on and off like a light switch’ and tomorrow there will be more things ‘on and off like a light switch’.Keep complaining, you’ll get used to it.
The U.S. Navy has ‘experience, the PLA-N has ‘experience’ in reading about what the U.S. is doing, and how they do it. Asking ‘probing questions’ (even here on Quora) is one direction, as well as ‘working’ with Canada, which has a record of ‘loose lips’ regarding ANYTHING military that China seeks.
I’m sure China has some ‘tricks’ up their sleeve as well. This is one of their newer ships (21NOV23) in which they ‘seem’ to be ‘faking’ damage to their ship, which may come in handy when they DO find themselves under attack. NOTHING would break-off an attack faster than ‘looking like this’:
One morning, a new guy showed up. As was customary, he “shared” his tale with the rest of us.
He was legally blind, but somehow managed to work as a successful stock broker. Unfortunately, on the side he had also developed one hell of an addiction to crack.
One Christmas morning, he had dressed up as Santa to entertain his kids. But he needed to sneak outside to take a few quick hits of crack before the family woke up.
Due to his visual impairment, he didn’t see the cop car rolling up the street. He got arrested.
Next day the local newspaper featured the headline that a crack-smoking Santa Claus was arrested Christmas morning.
I looked down at the grass. Clenched my jaw. glanced around and people were desperately trying to contain themselves.
The guy said, “it’s OK. Go ahead and laugh, guys. You have to.”
It was a full minute before we’d laughed off the image of a crack-smoking Santa Claus in cuffs.
I and a couple of friends headed to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor for a conference followed by dinner. We ate at the Tir Na Nog Irish pub and sat next to the windows that looked out over the little amphitheater space where street performers entertain tourists. Lovely view of the corner of the harbor and the other pavilion. Directly below the window was a vendor’s cart selling all sorts of electronic gadget accessories (think cellphone covers, etc).
As we were eating, I watched the crowds milling around the plaza and people buying stuff from the cart. Then I saw a teenager sneak around the back of the cart (which was facing the window) and start pilfering stuff from the cart. He just jammed it into his backpack with glee while the vendor was busy talking to customers on the other side.
Turns out those “customers” were the teen’s parents. Once the teen had filled his pack, a second younger child moved in and did the same thing while the other one kept watch. Then a third child, even younger, darted in and took stuff as well. The vendor finally caught on to the scam and screamed for police. The BCPD always patrol that plaza to protect the tourists, so three bicycle cops appeared pretty quickly.
Meanwhile, we watched as the three kids met with mom and dad to show their loot. Then they spotted the police and all three bolted in three different directions, which appears to have been predetermined as a method of escape. One of the kids wasn’t so lucky and got pinched.
Mom and dad were screaming bloody murder about the police harassing their children.
At that moment I realized how stupid we’d been up in the restaurant because none of us thought to video the incident. But we all felt we owed that poor vendor some help, so down we tromped to the plaza, leaving one person to man our table so no one thought we’d jumped the check.
We informed the police of everything we saw, that the kids were the shoplifters, but that the parents knew full well and participated. The officer asked us if we would testify to that and we said of course.
End of the story: All three kids were arrested, but the police didn’t have enough to arrest mom or dad (because that’s how the scam works). We were called back to Baltimore to testify. The kids were really hard core according to the prosecutor. They were playing all sorts of innocence BS. But when she told them four witnesses were primed and ready to name them all, they folded and agreed to plea deals.
Very sad day for American childhood that parents used them in this way.
There is no such thing as the world’s best? Each country ought to have what they each see as the best for their nation and their people under different circumstances unique for them, over a development level that is different from country to country.
You can say every nation thinks they have the world’s best for themselves. They ought to be. Otherwise why would they choose it? Surely they all want to do the best for themselves right?
These words or symbols or slurs such as Communism or Democracy or Socialism are tags for various purpose. Some times to simplify some times to discriminate one against another or worst to slur and demonised. These labels meant nothing more, as each nation is shade of grey and not black or white.
The U.S. for example calls itself Liberal democracy. But in reality it is neither democratic nor liberal at all. Is 0.8% of the rich or and powerful decides that the 60 odd % of their people who bother to vote have only two choice Biden a senile or Trump a perpetual liar to choose from, surely that is not democracy!
The U.S. with a mere 4% of world’s population has 25% of the world’s prisoner’s population, surely it cannot liberal nor free? But U.S. can called itself whatever it wants!
China calls itself socialism with Chinese characteristics but the U.S. insists on the label. “Communism” for worst connotations to cast fear and hate on them! If you repeat it like this questioner do, it simply help your media cast hates on China.
To me if the west can call the U.S. a Liberal Democracy why can’t they tern China as Socialism with Chinese characteristics? It is no different from Western media calling Palestinians as “terrorist” and Isreal as freedom “fighter” These slurs and suggesting good is clearly a set. narrative!
It goes well for several months. They begin to squabble a bit and have disagreements.
He figures, if they don’t get along, they should just break up.
Later, he begins dating Rebecca. She’s pretty. But after a few months, he realizes she’s not smart enough for him. That relationship ends too.
Later, Mike begins dating Katie. Katie is super brilliant. And cute too. But he realizes he doesn’t think she’s cute enough. He wants brilliant and super cute.
And funny. Where is funny?
Finally, he meets Angela. Angela is smart, pretty, and funny. But not exceptional at either three. So he ends things with her too.
Mike never ends up settling down. He ends up living as a lonely old man in his final years.
He became a victim of advice taken too literally and at too much of an extreme “don’t settle”.
The truth is – we all settle. In some form or another. People regularly subject themselves to unfair expectations of a prospective partner.
We all have work to do. It’s better to find someone to do the work with. Or accept them as is and forget the work.
Remember, with any advice you read, from me, or anyone else, there is a huge grey area to work with. I can’t tell you how to read that grey area. That’s where you’ll need to swim on your own.
Don’t be a knucklehead who only thinks in black and white. We have enough knuckleheads in the world already.
It was a small local ‘high-class’ restaurant (no longer in business) I went to with some colleagues to celebrate one of their birthdays. The first thing I thought was a joke was the uninformative and poorly-formatted menu that contained things like “Different fish and chips 12”, with not another word to explain what was different about it and the ‘12’ meaning a price of £12.00 being far from obvious.
Even more of a joke was the way the food was presented. I ordered a burger from the main course menu (described of course as something like “house burger 11”), expecting something that would fill the plate and come with chips and salad as is the norm. No, what I got was a tiny bun less than half the size of the plate containing an equally tiny burger, a slice of tomato and a lettuce leaf, all by itself with not a single side. The punchline of the joke: to make it look bigger and fill the empty plate, the burger was served ‘open’ with the top half of the bun placed alongside it for no apparent reason!
I ate the whole burger and someone else’s leftover chips but was still hungry and had another meal when I got home. The whole experience still feels like a surreal joke, yet was deadly serious, and I wasn’t at all surprised when the place closed down not long afterwards.
Because Alexander the Great’s Army was leagues ahead of every other Army on earth. There was no close second. Alexander himself gets the credit but I don’t think this is fair. I honestly think Alexander was “meh” and won thanks to his great Army.
Let’s start by breaking it down.
1: Foot Companions
The regular infantry was called “foot companions”. These guys wielded a very long spear/pike and a small shield. Now at this time, everyone fought with a shield and spear however most spears were rather small.
It took years of training for the soldiers to learn to use the pikes. Additionally, these guys were all trained in small unit tactics, hand-to-hand combat, and all sorts of special stuff.
image 357
2: Companion Cavalry
The Companion Cavalry was the greatest unit of cavalry ever (arguably) and certainly the best at the time. Cavalry at this time were mostly scouts and fast-moving infantry. They couldn’t really charge into enemy lines given stirrups were not around.
Alexander’s cavalry was unique. These guys were trained for years and years on fighting on horseback. They could charge an enemy head-on, flank around them, or dismount and fight as infantry. They were the elite of the elite.
3: Shield Bearers
The Shield bearers were the “SpecOps” of the Macedonian Army. These guys fought like standard infantry with shorter spears, swords, and shields. They were hyper-flexible, extremely well trained, and capable of nearly anything.
Alexander’s Army was capable of things NOBODY else could do. They could fight in the trenches, outmaneuver an enemy, perform complex tactical actions, and do it all with ease. These guys were the most experienced, best-trained, and most elite soldiers on planet earth.
In a time when armies were civilian-based militia with a small core of trained troops, Alexander had a professional Army at his back.
A stack of bricks isn’t a house as much as a mob of men is an Army. Make sense?
Now, most give credit to Alexander and his brilliance but I disagree with this.
Alexander made mistakes. At the Battle of Granicus Alexander recklessly charged across a river with a waiting enemy Army on the other side. This would have been a disaster for any other Army in history except Alexander’s and even Alexander’s Army took way too many losses.
Alexander was overconfident. In engineering, there is an acronym called “KISS” which stands for keep it simple stupid. Warfare is much the same. If tactics are overly complex then it creates situations where things could go wrong. No plan survives contact with the enemy so plans need to be simple and flexible.
Alexander didn’t create anything. This great Army Alexander had- it was created by his dad. These guys also gained experience fighting for Alexander’s father. Alexander didn’t unite Greece nor was attacking Persia his idea. Sure Alexander did conquer Persia however his Empire immediately fell apart because he was a terrible King and a terrible State-builder.
Alexander was wreckless personally. Alexander’s job was the lead the men, not fight with them. Yet Alexander led every battle from the front. Sure this is brave and all but this is the wrong place for a General. In an Army of 50,000 there are lots of fighters but only 1 leader. Caesar for instance would place himself behind the crux of the battle, issuing orders and watching as things develop.
Alexander the Great’s father was Phillip the 2nd. This guy fought and won dozens of Battles and conquered all of Greece for the first and only time. Was Phillip the greatest General ever? No. Like Alexander, Phillip benefited from a highly experienced, highly trained, and uber-expensive professional Army.
Hiring for our county office out in the boonies was done centrally, so often times someone was hired before we knew who it was. So when we saw the name Jim (redacted), we let out a collective moan.
Jim was well known around town. He was 6′7″, about 325 pounds, and was mean looking as hell. He often did rent collection/ evictions for local landlords, usually by intimidation. I mentioned this to HR, and was told to “work with him.”
So he started in our office. First order of business was to banish certain words from his vocabulary. Words like “wetback”, fag*ot, and of course, nig*er. Also, because he had contacted so many of our clients from his rent collecting days, often when clients found out he was to be their worker, they immediately withdrew their application for welfare. They were terrified of him.
After a couple of months, he seemed to have calmed down and was doing an OK job. But then, in the break room, he said the following:
You know what would be fun? If (co worker) Corrine would drive around in a convertible with a bikini on, and when someone would hit on her, I would be hiding in the back seat with a shotgun, and would suddenly sit up and point the gun at them, and watch them sh*t their pants!
This was it. The next day, three fraud investigators (armed) plus two sheriff deputies came in and escorted him out. I wanted to call HR and tell them “I told you so” but everyone was just glad he was gone; especially Corrine.
Note: he also helped get the head of HR fired. When he was removed from the office, he was put on paid administrative leave pending his firing. But the head of HR had a fear of lawsuits due to improper firings, so he was on paid admin leave for almost a year! Worse yet, there was another guy that had been on paid admin leave for even longer. So the HR manager eventually got fired…with no paid admin leave, just gone out the door!
I come from a family that struggles with finances severely. In the second grade my teacher noticed that the few clothes I had were now Ill fitting so she bought me new ones so I would fit in. I lived in a very, very wealthy area and because of this I was already being bullied for not having what other kids did. I was happy to receive the clothes. I came home with them that night and my mother, who spent our food stamps on cigarettes (the cashier at the liquor store rang them up as other things) and a disgusting quantity of mountain dew every month, walked into my school irate and high off of my ritalin prescription ( that was prescribed to me for my ADHD, as an 18 year old I still haven’t had thr medication that I need since I was 6), bypassed the office and walked into my classroom and began to yell at the teacher. I thought the bullying was bad then, she made it a lot worse. I am thankful for that teacher though. My mother threw the clothes back in her face (literally) and so my teacher kept them in the classroom for me to change into when I got to school and washed them for me. This is only one of several scenarios involving my mother. To put it shortly, I had my first suicidal thoughts around 11 and the state took away her rights to custody when I was 15. You are not your situation, you are how you deal with it. To anyone in that situation or any situation they don’t want to be in, it gets better.
Maybe it is just my imagination, but I think my “locked up” ploy has somehow made the rounds of all those backroom scam operations which call to say your computer has a virus.
Initially, I kept the “agent” and his manager on the phone for nearly an hour, until they finally just gave up. The exchange went something like this:
Scammer: Please press the Windows and CTRL key at the same time.
Me: I can’t. The computer is locked up. It won’t respond to the keyboard, and the mouse does not move.
Scammer: Turn the system off, then turn it on again.
Me: I can’t. The computer won’t shut down.
Scammer: Use the power switch!
Me: I did. Nothing. It stays on, but doesn’t do anything.
Scammer: Then unplug the machine.
Me: Ok. Still nothing. It stays on, and is still frozen.
Scammer: How can that be?!
Me: I don’t know. I guess it just switches over to the internal battery.
(Then, a manager is put on the phone, and promises to make the machine right if I pay $99 for a one time fix, $200 for an annual plan, or $499 for a lifetime plan)
Scammer: Which plan do you want?
Me: Uh, lifetime, I guess.
Scammer: Ok, please give me your credit card number.
Me: I don’t use credit cards. How about PayPal?
Scammer: We can’t take PayPal.
Me: Hey! Wait a minute! The machine just started working! It’s perfect! Everything is working! What did you guys do?
Scammer: That’s impossible! We didn’t do anything!
Me: But, didn’t you say you had detected a virus on my machine?
Scammer: Yes, that is why we contacted you.
Me: So, that must mean you were connected to me, right?
Scammer: No. Your machine sent a message to us!
Me: Ok, so I was connected to you, but you weren’t connected to me?
Scammer: That’s not how this works!
Me: Well, you must have done something, because everything is fine now.
Scammer: It is not. Machine still infected. It will lock up again and be destroyed. You still have virus!
Me: Wait, wait. I’m going to shut down and reboot. Hold on.
(I tap a few keys to make noise, then…)
Me: Ok, I shut down and started up again. Now, I am running a virus scan. Hold on… ok, scanning memory, registry, hard drive, checking for malicious code… stand by, almost done. Great! No virus detected! Fantastic! And, it seems to be running faster than ever!
Scammer: That is not possible, it will fail!
Me: Look, I don’t know how you fixed it, but I would like to send you $100. I’ll send a check. What’s your name and address?
Scammer: We can’t accept checks.
Me: A money order, then?
Scammer: No money orders. I think you are bulls****ing me.
Me: Do ya THINK?!
Scammer: I will f**k your mother!
Me: You like f**king dead people? You’re going to get a sooty Johnson; she was cremated.
Scammer: Click.
I can’t recall when I have had a more uplifting conversation, but the ultimate result has proven to be the most valuable. For several months after the above exchange, I would continue to receive the virus calls; but the moment I said the machine was frozen, the caller hung up immediately. So now, I just say, “Am I ever glad you called, this machine is totally locked up!” In response, a reassuring click.
Saw this question and immediately thought: Teresa.
Teresa is my sister in law’s best friend. She was also good friends with my brother, Dale. When Dale disappeared, Teresa was right there grieving with us. She shared stories about things she and Dale had done that had me rolling with laughter. Teresa is a bright spot where ever she goes.
Teresa is a respiratory therapist. Been doing it for years. Been single for years. Been putting smiles on peoples’ faces for years. She collected crochet afghans to give to her patients. They loved it. They loved her. She retired recently, bought a house in another state, and moved there on her own. I will miss her.
It was 2020, the year we buried my brother’s remains, after he had been missing for many years. It was around the time of the services, and I was having a rough time. Crying a lot. Teresa popped in one day and called me out to her car. She dug around in some bags and boxes in the back seat, and pulled something out. “This is for you” she told me. It was a cross made of wood with fragments of broken glass glued to it to make it shine. And in the middle it said simply, “laugh”. She told me she thought of me as soon as she saw it. It touched my heart. It made me realize maybe it was time to laugh more than cry.
Teresa is a special person. Salt of the earth. We need more like her.
huawei mate60 is using 5nm chips from unknown source, but for sure its made in China with 100% Chinese technology. Although it’s not the most cutting edge technology yet, it is the most widely used. So it’s going to bring down the price of all chips and ASML EUV will be too expensive in terms of producing chips. China is infamous for it industrial crushing ability, Whatever technology they proceed they will smash the market price to under half even to just 10% of the original market price. everyone in the same market will be gone in no time
On August 2, 2007, Majid Kavousifar was excuted along with his nephew Hossein Kavousifar for the assassination of Masoud Moghadasi ,a judge from the Islamic Revolution Court in Iran.
Masoud Moghaddasi was one of several judges of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Court, that collectively sentenced more than 2800 to 3800 political prisoners to execution during the 1988 executions of Iranian political prisoners.
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Majid Kavousifar showed no remorse to hangman in his last words, telling them “I reached the point at which I decided to eradicate any injustice.”
His last words before being hanged next to his nephew Hossein Kavousifar:
“My name is Majid Kavousifar, I am Iranian
I didn’t wait for someone in this world to give me my right
I reached the point at which I decided to eradicate any injustice
I smile because I know that a small smile at that moment will be a great message of hope for every oppressed human being on the face of the earth.
The memory of Majid Kavousifar and his triumphant smile will live forever in the hearts of freedom lovers in Iran and all over the world.
Actually, a police officer once said to me: “What did you do with my patrol car? Why did you steal it?”
The back story is that when coming out of the back door of the courthouse late one evening my friend and I saw a running, unlocked police car sitting in the driveway between the jail and the courthouse. My friend and I wondered why this was and decided to watch a while. After 10 minutes nothing happened and the car was still parked, unlocked, and running. My friend and I decided something needed to be done to prevent the car from being stolen so we flipped a coin and I lost so I got in the car and drove it around the corner and turned it off, locked it, and returned to await the arrival of the police officer who had been assigned the car. My friend and I watched and waited and about a half an hour later the offending officer came out and found his cruiser missing. Since he left his radio in the car he couldn’t radio the missing car in and he’d left the jail and the return door was locked. He panicked and started running around in a confused state. My friend and I who were hiding began laughing and he couldn’t understand why. He was really confused and upset. I held up the keys and told him I’d “stolen” it to keep it safe and showed him where it was. He was both relieved and highly pissed. Relieved at first and the gradually more angry. My friend and I just kept laughing and he got even madder. Then he said he was going to arrest us. I said why? It’s not stolen and who’s going to prosecute me, I’m the County Attorney? Then he said he wasn’t worried because he knew the judge would put it on me because he was a good friend of the judge. I just kept on laughing because my friend who had been standing in the dark background listening came forward and said, “You mean me, Steve?” And the judge began to laugh too. He then said he’d get us both hand I said, “Go ahead! How do you think the Chief is going to feel when he learns you let your cruiser get “stolen” under these conditions? He didn’t say much else but just took his keys, got in his car and drove away. So that’s the story on how the Judge and I stole a police car.
My husband got offered a higher paying job with a different company, and one that treated their employees better. He tried to refuse the exit interview, but when pressed, agreed, if the big boss was in the room. He proceeded to tell the room exactly what led to his exit, and then they had the nerve to ask for 2 weeks notice. He looked the big boss right in the eye and asked if he would have gotten a 2week notice if he was being fired. The boss’ eyes dropped to the floor and he said no. My husband then asked if he could expect any changes to be made in policy regarding the treatment of blue collar workers. The boss again said no. My husband said, “ok, don’t consider this a ‘quit,’ consider as me firing you as my employer.” Then he walked out. We had to wait almost a month after he left to receive his last paycheck, even after calling the state labor board.
Christmas Watch-Along / AMA / Goof-off
Lot’s of good stuff in blurbs in this fun video. Grab some popcorn.
I enjoyed all of them, but my favorite is Non-geological shock. HAARP.
The USA government that was designed back in 1776 can no longer function. It is not suitable for the new global order. The USA is at a strategic inflection point. Great discussion by Colonel Douglas Macgregor.
See below deep in the article.
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There is a formula used by wives that wish to leave their husbands. It is a devastating reality to the husbands of the West. The “three step rocket“. It is a template that is followed over, and over, and over again. It is important for all married people to know about this reality.
See below.
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Guys, back in the 1970’s. I would guess around 1972, my father came back from a work trip and gave me a present. It was a tiny book. The cover was plastic, and it was about 2 cm thick. It was about 4cm x 5cm or so. It was red. A little red book.
Because the cover was plastic, it was flexible and compact, and easy to slip into the pocket of my Levi jeans.
It was (the now infamous) “little red book”. And I loved it.
It was in English.
And it was page after page of sayings. All of which seemed to make a lot of sense to me, even though I was in my teens at the time.
I carried that book with me to college. To my various homes as I worked, and all the way up until I moved to China. I cannot say for certain that it influenced me to join the Chinese Communist Party, as I wouldn’t even begin to consider how to do so. But it absolutely DID influence me.
I could feel the “revolutionary spirit” of what was being birthed so far away at the other end of the world.
The Three Main Rules of Discipline are as follows:
(1) Obey orders in all your actions. (2) Do not take a single needle piece of thread from the masses. (3) Turn in everything captured.
The Eight Points for Attention are as follows:
(1) Speak politely. (2) Pay fairly for what you buy. (3) Return everything you borrow. (4) Pay for anything you damage. (5) Do not hit or swear at people. (6) Do not damage crops. (7) Do not take liberties with women. (8) Do not ill-treat captives.
“On the Reissue of the Three Main Rules of Discipline and the Eight Points for Attention – Instruction of the General Headquarters of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army” (October 10, 1947), Selected Military Writings, 2nd ed., p. 343.
How can you possibly not be impacted by such profound and intelligent direction?
Me and my friend were about 17 hanging out at the local McDonalds. Let me remind you my friend had the physique of a 25 year old because he constantly roofed with his dad. We heard a father screaming at his son if he didn’t finish eating his food he would pull his pants down right there and beat his bare ass. He would jump up and act like he was going to punch the child who appeared to be maybe 4 or 5. When he did this the child would jump and cower in his seat. Then the father would let out this horrendous laugh making fun of him. Me being a child from a physically abusive father knew exactly how this poor kid felt. My friend who had always protected me saw the look of horror on my face.
The next time he jumped up screaming he would beat his bare ass, my friend jumped up grabbed his arm and screamed “you will not be touching him as long as I’m sitting here!” The mans facial expression changed to sheer horror as he saw this kid twice his size threaten to put him in his place. He suddenly asked the boy if he was done. and scurried out of the restaurant. That day my friend grew about 10 feet tall in my eyes and saved that little boy from receiving a severe beating for such a small infraction.
I was truly desperate for work. My husband and I had returned from his Naval station in Italy to find that the military was being cut back so he was out. It was August, so I couldn’t find a teaching job anywhere and he was having trouble finding anything at all.
The local paper yielded only two jobs for which I was qualified. One was as a cashier at a supermarket for $1.95/hour (1972…what can I say?) and the other was as a paste-up artist at a newspaper for $1.90. I figured the newspaper job might be more upwardly mobile, so I applied.
The manager didn’t ask for an interview. He called to tell me that he appreciated my interest, but that I was over-qualified for the job so he wouldn’t hire me. He said he figured I’d quit if I find something better. I told him my story. He still hesitated, pointing again to my advanced degrees. I waited a beat then said, “Even college graduates have to eat.”
He hired me right then and I made sure he never regretted that decision.
Look at how serious they look and how old they are
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Their Median age is 61.3 years
They are all extremely talented people with tremendous ability and have proven themselves over and over again
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These Generation of Chinese in the 1970s and 1980s could have easily recognized their ability and merit and voted them into power due to their sheer efficiency
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Even the 1990s generation would have voted for them to a great extent, understanding the value of long term planning and hard work
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Todays generation?
Naah
They are all modern and highly opinionated by Social Media and the outside world
They have more money than any previous generation and have seen so much development that they are liberal by nature in their Outlook
Sure today they regard the Government and the Party as Grandfatherly figures who make the laws like they see their own grandfathers. As Strict people who will take care of you and who shouldn’t be questioned
However give them a choice and it’s likely they will fall for the same BS that others in democracies fall for including issues that are:-
LGBT related
Feminism related
Ageism related
Nationalism related (Vote for me and I will take Taiwan in a week type of Chinese versions of Modis)
Separatism related (Freedom for Uyghurs, Freedom for Hui, Freedom for Bouyan etc)
These are the Hu Jintao period Chinese
I wouldn’t trust them to vote for the best leaders over most populist or handsome or the best talkers or some other version of divisive propaganda
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The Next generation is fine
Xi Jingping has instilled a revival of the admiration for the One party meritocracy and these guys will vote always for the Party over any other
So maybe 10–15 years later, if free elections were held, the Party may win heavily as bulk of the 18–41 voters would be proud nationalists of the One party meritocracy
Today?
Bulk of the 18–41 voters would vote stupidly
So I hope not
India becoming China is admirable in its own way
China becoming India is a nightmare scenario
God help China having 100 parties and doing the idiocy Indian leaders do
US Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor Reveals TRUTH About China
This primarily shocked me because of where I live (Chicago) and my profession (teacher). I knew it was bad, but I didn’t know it was this bad:
Seventy-six percent of Chicago’s high school students, and forty-five percent of Chicago’s elementary school students, do not go to their assigned neighborhood public school.
That means that 3/4 of all high school kids, and almost half of all elementary school kids, have parents who took one look at their local public school and said, “no thanks.”
Every student in Chicago is assigned a neighborhood public school, simply based on where they live in the city. The students who don’t go to those schools go to private schools, magnet schools, charter schools, or selective-enrollment schools. Or they homeschool.
Magnet, charter, and selective-enrollment schools are public schools, too, but they require some effort on the parents’ and students’ part to get and stay in them. The selective-enrollment schools, in particular, require the most effort to get into.
All of those “public, but not neighborhood” schools were created due to parental demand or necessity. It was either create them, or watch as, year after year, even more of the city’s tax base (parents who give a damn) move to the suburbs.
This has been in the local news a lot the last week, and it even made an appearance in the national news, because the city government passed a resolution to prioritize those neighborhood public schools (which the parents reject) over the selective-enrollment schools.
The stated goal is, of course, “equity.” The idea is that, without the selective schools poaching all of the “good” students, those “good” students will go back to their neighborhood schools, and help them improve.
Except those students would not actually go to those neighborhood public schools, no matter what. Their parents would just pay for private schools, home school, or move to the suburbs. I’ve been teaching in Chicago long enough to know that most parents really don’t see the regular public school as a real option. Students here use the neighborhood public school names as the punchlines of jokes or as threats. As in, “You better be careful, or you’ll end up at [local public school].”
Also, the “good” students aren’t a tool for the city to use to improve “bad” schools. It’s not the job of the “A” students to diffuse the averages of the “F” students by enrolling in the same schools as them.
While the stated goal for this new push by the city government is “equity,” the real goal is, as with most things in government, money. The Chicago Teachers’ Union, which gets most of its money and influence via the neighborhood public schools, contributed over $2,000,000 to our current mayor’s election campaign. The quid-pro-quo is right out in the open for all to see, but the only people who bother to open their eyes to it are the people who didn’t support the mayor in the first place.
So the city government has a five-year plan to prioritize Chicago’s failing neighborhood public schools. I’m making a note to myself to check back in five years and see how it went. I predict that things will actually be worse, but they will change the metrics by which they define success, to make whatever happens fit that definition. Then they’ll say it’s not enough, and double-down on their bad policies.
All the while, private schools in the city will see an increase in enrollment, suburbs with good schools will see their property values go up even more, and home schooling will become even more popular.
Ever the cynic, and opportunist, I’ve actually been exploring ways to capitalize on this. A colleague and I have been toying with the idea of opening a tutoring center. The competition for spots at the good schools in Chicago is so tight that a lot of parents gladly pay thousands of dollars per year for their child to receive 1:1 or small-group tutoring in specific subjects, or generalized test-taking tutoring. Three of my colleagues in the last five years have left teaching to go into tutoring, and are making much more money that way.
This TikTokker Finally Realized Why Men Don’t Find Her Attractive
Let’s scroll through Instagram account of Avicii, the world famous musician.
December 26th, 2017
Caption: Where am I?
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Amazing. He is living life to the fullest. Damn!!!.
December 29th, 2017
Caption:Friends of Mine
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All these friends to watch his back and enjoy the ocean of life. I am jealous.
January 11th , 2018
Caption:Music is a big part of my life
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A blazing career with all the talented people around and loving everyday what he does with passion. God I am envious.
January 15th, 2018
Caption :A cuddle a day keeps the instinct away. (The hunting instinct.) (Just kidding.)
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Awwww….
January 19th, 2018
Caption: Fact of the day: More people die every year from taking selfies than from shark attacks. Stay safe out there ✌️❤
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LOL!!!!
February 18th, 2018
Caption: So I invested in Sweden’s first cold brew coffee company. Pretty cool startup that’s innovating the Swedish way of coffee drinking. You should definitely check them out.
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Damn. This guy means business.
March 27th, 2018
Caption: Studio Mode
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Workaholic and passionate. Damn I wish I could be like that.
April 5th , 2018
Caption: It’s always sunny in California
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Woah!! Dude is rich. Dude is passionate. Has everything one can dream of.
April 20th, 2018
Caption:
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So yeah.
That’s why I don’t use social media.
Edit: This answer is for people who don’t realize everyone is just a PR agent of themselves online. Everybody else sucks too. There is no reason for being miserable comparing your lives with social media. But I do believe social media should be used for generating content around your product or service like blogging, creating audio or visual content etc.
I would do just like I did for my daughter in Germany when she was going to a DOD (Department of Defense) school. She came home for a month and a half complaining about a boy bullying her on the playground. We called the school and told them almost every other day. They keep telling us the teachers are keeping him away from her. Well she kept coming home complaining. So I took it upon myself to really see what is going on. Sure enough he was harassing her. When she came home that day from school complaining about that boy. I set her down and told her that tomorrow is the time you have to do what Daddy has been teaching you how to defend yourself. Her response was, but I don’t want to get in trouble. I told her the only one that you will be in trouble with is me and how can you be in trouble if I am telling you to do it. Then I told her it is your choice if you want to end this or not. Either way I love you.
the next day around lunchtime I get a call from the school that she assaulted another student and I need to pick her up.
Well, well, well I took time off and drove miles and miles to get there. I told the officer who I was and that the principal is expecting me. She said yes Sir go on in. My daughter was standing in the corner of the office facing the wall waiting. I did not even acknowledge the principal and told my daughter to come sit in the chair in front of his desk. Then I ask the principal what is the problem ? His response was she assaulted another student. I told him that the next question I as you. I want you to think long and hard about your answer. Did she assault the student that has been assaulting her all these months! I then told him that he has 5min to respond and 4.5 of those minutes are gone! Go!!! He said Yes! Yes! Then I ask him so what are you going to do about it? He had the gall to tell me.that he was to suspending her for three days for putting her hands on another stoner. I leaned over his desks and told him that she it not going to miss another second of class. I told her to go to her class that she is supposed to be at this time and I will see you back home after school. Then to lighten her spirits I told her you are not beating me again tonight playing crash bandicoot!!! (Yes that was way back). After she left the office I locked the door to his office and turned around and told him that you made you decision, and now I have made my. I am going to take out the last two-to-three months my daughter, my wife and I have been stressing over and tag you are it!!!!
Sorry so long,but a true story.
When I went to jump over the desk. He jumped trough the window. The sad part was it was closed. 😂😂😂
Anyway, my Chain of Command knew all about the problem that my daughter was going through. I was a Platoon Sergeant at the time.
Now it gets good, my battalion commander was briefed on it. However he had to do something because because I threaten the principal and there was damage to government property, the window he jumped out of. So after the UCMJ (Uniform code of justice). My extra duty was to walk from the Commander’s Office down the street to my place of duty, which was only about 80 yards.
True story!! Need less to say my daughter did not have anymore trouble and got to get her education without any harassment from the students or the faculty.
I know this question was about a teacher slapping a student. If it was a teacher slapping my child I would have not gone to school. I would have followed that teacher after school and discussed it in another manner.
I got my first period when i was in 5th grade i was 10 years old. Worst part is i was in school, the last period was going on and I was sitting on the last bench in the corner row. i didn’t knew anything about it, and i was so clueless that wtf was happening with me. I told this to my bench mate and she said that she does not understand what I am saying. I ran to the teacher and told her everything, she said go to the office and ask the female staff to give me a sanitary pad.
I did that I went to the office and told the staff I want sanitary pads, she went inside the office. I was trembling with fear, but for a while I felt that everything would be alright.
The staff came out of the office and said that they are out of sanitary napkins, go buy them from the nearby shop.I was bleeding and literally begged her to come with me but she said she can’t leave the office and refused.
I was a kid and my body was not strong enough to bear the pain of periods. I was terrified, I couldn’t walk, I could feel the stains on my clothes. Still I walked to the nearest shop, and the shopkeeper was a male.
My eyes were downcast like I’m a terrorist, my voice was ashamed like I’ve committed a crime. And I asked him for a pad in a trembling voice, he took out a sanitary napkin’s packet and put 10 layers of news paper on it as if it were a bomb.
For me bravery is avoiding thousands of restriction and questions of the society and to say that yes I am a woman, yes I bleed and it is not my fault, it is not a crime.
I Saw the 11 Dimensions of the Universe in DETAIL! (Near Death Experience)
No, the Houthis are not a terrorist force indiscriminately targeting civilians, they are just an anti-American and anti-Israeli resistance force.
What the Houthis claimed was that they would attack boats “associated with Israel”. What are “associated with Israel”? Western bloc, of course.
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70% of Europe’s oil shipments will pass through the Red Sea. Europe has already interrupted Russian oil and gas, and now oil and gas from the Middle East will be stopped by the Houthis. Things will get even harder for Europeans as winter approaches.
The purpose of their attacks on Western Group boats was to support the Palestinians. It is well known that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. And the United States is stubbornly biased in favour of Israel.
The Arab countries and the Muslim world, while not supporting the Houthis, are not against them either, and some even secretly support them.
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Chinese boats transporting oil do not pass through the Red Sea, only merchant ships pass through the Red Sea, and there are china railway express that can replace merchant ships.
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I recall that the last time when Taiwanese Shipping Company large container ship blocked the Suez Canal, the china railway express became the main freight transport route to Europe.
Taiwanese Shipping Company leased the Japanese shipowner’s ship and hired Indian crew to drive the “Ever Given” large container ship through the Suez Canal. It would be surprising that there would be no accidents.
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The Houthis will not attack Chinese boats, and China has no intention of joining the Western bloc, which is the unjust side.
The U.S. and Israel or Western Group should be reflecting on why they were attacked by the Houthis instead of looking to China as a lifeline to grab when they are drowning.
Korean Braised Short Ribs
Serve Korean Braised Short Ribs with cooked cellophane noodles, dipped into the cooking sauce.
Korean Braised Short Ribs
Ingredients
4 pounds beef short ribs, cut into pieces
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup chopped onion
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 tablespoons ground sesame seed*
2 teaspoons chopped ginger root or 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon pepper
* Ground sesame seed is available in Oriental food specialty stores and some supermarkets. Whole sesame seed can be ground in the blender: 1 tablespoon whole sesame seed yields 2 tablespoons ground sesame seed.
Instructions
Trim fat from beef ribs; place beef in shallow non-reactive dish.
Mix remaining ingredients; pour over beef.
Cover and refrigerate, turning occasionally, 24 hours.
Drain beef, reserving marinade. Cook beef in 4-quart Dutch oven over medium heat until brown; drain.
Pour marinade over beef.
Cover and bake at 350 degrees F until tender, about 2 hours.
I was required to issue a monthly report of sales by geographic region, listing each project.
One was a project in China sold to New Sun (China) Energy. I dutifully indicated the sale was in Asia.
My boss protested. “No!” said he. “You need to report that in Europe.”
I blinked and said, “But it’s in China.”
“Yes,” said he. “China’s in Europe.”
“Um…no.. China’s in Asia.”
He slammed his hand on his desk and said, “China’s a state of Germany, now report it in Europe.”
Me: “Ok” while silently muttering dumbass.
We had another dispute over Egypt. Apparently Egypt is also in Europe.
I had a grand time explaining to our lead sales person (a Chinese lady citizen of China) and our production manager (a German citizen) that Germany had expanded its population by a billion with this master stroke of geopolitical theater. They both rolled their eyes.
Oh yes. “Give me your purse you b*tch!. I want £50 now!” screeched the entitled teenage daughter of one of the company partners. I was PA to both partners and had only been there for a couple of months.
Princess was used to dropping into Daddy darling’s office if she and her little friends were shopping in town and she needed more money.
This particular afternoon Daddy was away at a meeting and our accountant was on a half day (she held the petty cash and was used to dealing with the occasional demands of the Princess).
I explained that Daddy was out and the accountant wouldn’t be back until tomorrow so nobody could help with her (obviously desperate and life threatening) need for cash. She decided that I should meet her need by handing over my own money. She threw a tantrum when I refused, and immediately called Daddy’s mobile, interrupting his meeting and demanding that he tell me to give her the money. He told me to do so, and I refused.
I didn’t have £50 in my purse (or even £10) but if I did she wouldn’t have had a sniff of it. After she stormed out I wrote my resignation and called the other partner to explain why I quit.
Found out a while later that the partnership fell apart and nice partner sued Daddy darling for financial mismanagement and fraud. Princess wasn’t the only family member thinking the business was her own personal piggy bank.
Can China Save The American Dream ? US Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor Reveals
China is not a Muslim-phobic country. It’s all United States propaganda to destroy Muslim world.
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China tells its Muslim citizens to live well and love their state and also their religion as Xi Jinping said.
If China got attacked, know that the aggressors will fail.
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If the aggressors try to attack Uyghurs like they did in Middle-East, bombing their Mosques, etc. Know that the Uyghurs won’t be silenced defending their home and mosques.
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The Muslims of China will stamp out the hypocrite country.
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~ Sunni Muslim from Asia here, appreciating China.
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.
Internet access is better than any other nation except maybe Singapore. The Public Wi Fi means you have free internet while travelling almost anywhere and uninterrupted
Sure many western sites are restricted as are many apps
You can use VPN but VPN is very unreliable unless it’s Nord VPN and that too for a proper router rather than for mobile phone
Yet with a proper VPN, you can access any and all apps and sites in China
IT IS NOT ILLEGAL UNLESS YOU MAKE COMMERCIAL USE OF VPN (Meaning downloading and selling pornography etc)
If you really want to go to western websites that are banned, you can visit a PUBLIC LIBRARY with your ID Card and access any website you want. There is NO RESTRICTION.
I accessed Quora openly in a Public Library whereas the VPN never gave me a connection beyond 6–7 minutes at a time
So yes, I would say if you really want to watch CNN and CBS and want to view the BBC Website and access Twitter all the time, then China is not for you
Otherwise if you simply want Gmail & your Online Banking & online calling & chatting – you have 1001 apps to ensure you are connected
Non Acceptance of International Driver Licenses
This is stupid again
China has NO ISSUES with a International Driver License provided there is INSURANCE available on that license
You want to lease a car in China with an International License, you either pay a fat deposit as incidental insurance premium so that if you bang the car, the rental company doesn’t shell out the cost
Otherwise you get a local license holder to co sign and you get your car in 3 minutes
Imagine you bump a car, park it and dash off to your country. That’s a huge loss to the rental company isn’t it.
You cough up the Incidental Insurance Premium Deposit which is FULLY REFUNDABLE on returning the car and they will accept your International Drivers License
This is nearly 3100 RMB so most International Drivers are cheapies who promptly blame the Chinese for not recognizing International Driving Licenses
Lodging restricted to certain hotels
Again a Stupid way to put it
Hotels in China connected to the Real Time Security Network accept foreigners all the time
That’s 100% of all hotels in Big Cities and 90% of Hotels in smaller towns
They scan your passport and in ten seconds, the data comes up from your immigration and that’s it.
Tomorrow if you disappear, no issues, the hotel informs the MSB who will promptly print out your passport and deliver a copy to your consulate
Sadly smaller hotels DON’T have this ready connection to the digital security system
They need to scan your passport, print that out, take the print out and deliver it to the local police outpost who will then deliver them to the main outpost
It will take 1 year to hunt for such a print out tomorrow if there is a problem
It’s too much effort so such hotels don’t accept foreigners UNLESS A CHINESE BOOKS THEIR ROOM with his Identity Card
Mostly such tourists have a Chinese Agent who will give his ID or his company’s ID and book the rooms
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Our Vicky Bhaiya has no issues because his wives ID is sufficient
This isn’t only China
Even in France and Europe, many small provincial hotels don’t accept foreigners because of the same reason
They need you to get a clearance from a local gendarme who sees your passport and okays you
Hell in Scotland an Indian friend of mine couldn’t get a hotel until 12 Noon because of such a problem when a Local Britisher could get a room at 5:30 AM
Same for booking a car
Outside the West, an International Driving License doesn’t get you a car without a hefty deposit
All that China says is asks for the deposit towards Incidental Insurance
The Censorship?
Yes that’s unique to China among the big countries
Like I said if you want to access BBC and Twitter all the time, China is not for you
Maybe not into a completely different person, but it definitely will change you, and how you view life. Before I enlisted, I was an annoying 17–18 year old boy who played video-games all day, mouthed off to teachers, and had terrible acne. When I finished boot camp and AIT, I respected authority figures, I had better self-esteem, and I wasn’t as much of a smart-aleck anymore. I actually did stuff with my life.
I was still loud and sometimes annoying, at least when there were no senior NCOs or officers around, and I still made dumb jokes and toed the line around my family. I was the same kid as before, just disciplined and happier. More confident in myself, because I knew I could do stuff no one else in my family or my graduating class, except my father, could.
Then, I was deployed 3 times between 2004–2010, and actually saw, and participated in, combat and firefights. I saw the bloody, seedy side of things. It wasn’t like a movie or a video-game anymore, I didn’t tell jokes anymore, I was quieter and more serious. I didn’t tolerate people goofing off or making idiotic decisions around me anymore. Making the wrong decision, or playing games, on the battlefield could mean death.
Of course, I wasn’t firing my SAW at the Taliban and ISI 24/7. There was a lot of sitting around and waiting, marching, digging holes, and sitting in a hot, tiny truck for days, squeezed against another hairy, sweaty dude. That’s the part movies don’t show. It’s not action all the time, there’s a lot of stuff that goes into it that civilians and celebrities never think about when they hear the word “war.” And when there is action, you don’t have drawn-out speeches about family and honour, or whatever. You don’t goof off and walk up-right, unless you want a bullet between the eyes.
When I came back, I could not understand the struggles and pain of my family and friends that didn’t serve. Unless it’s an unexpected divorce or a death of somebody close to you, there’s no reason to grovel and whine about how hard and unfair life is, and how miserable you are. I’ve seen guys say they’re in “so much pain that no one understands” after a girl they knew for less than a year broke up with them. Especially these young Gen-Z kids and teenagers. All this “I could defeat anyone in a fight, I bench more than you” attitude is arrogant and laughable. You wouldn’t last a week doing the stuff we did, so stop acting like you’re so tough when you’re only 16 and cry in your room at night over a girl.
These (at least the males) youngsters also brag about Navy SEALS being better than anything and everything on earth, and use our military as a tool to justify their biases. You’re embarrassing us, and if any military veteran met you, they’d laugh.
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Accurate depiction of what modern warfare is like: lots of sitting around and waiting, or guarding stuff.
In general, combat did change me a lot, and my outlook on life, and perspective on common civilian “struggles” and issues. It also gives shell-shock/combat fatigue/PTSD and nightmares to those who served, which changes them as a person. I personally suffer from some of these things. It does suck a lot, and played a part in changing me as well, there is simply no way to explain to a civilian what combat is like, what war-trauma is like, the things you saw and how horrific it was, how impossible it is to cope with things like that. In the moment, you never think about what you’re doing or seeing, you’re disconnected from reality, and in your mind you dehumanize the enemy. It is just “eliminating a threat” or carrying out orders, not opening fire on the 10-year-old coming at you with an RPG.
Later though, your mind thinks about what you did and what you saw over and over again, tries to rationalize it, process it, cope with it, and finds that a lot of the time, it can’t. It’s easier to push these things away and pretend it never happened, pretend you never saw that teenager choking on his own blood and gasping for breath in the sand after you shot him, or never saw your friend get blown to bits. I can’t say I regret doing these things, as they were threats to the livelihood of myself and my friends. I can say, however, that it’s inescapable to feel human empathy and sadness over what you done, even while knowing there was nothing else you can do, even while knowing that they wanted to kill you.
It’s just a natural human feeling, but you learn to suffocate it and push it down. I’ve had some idiots call me a terrorist and a war-criminal, for shooting enemy child soldiers, and the like. These people aren’t worth arguing with, they will never understand that morality doesn’t matter when it’s you vs them, and they’re literally a threat to your existence, no matter how young they are. They think in black and white, never understanding how complicated this is, and how necessary it is to defend yourself, even if it’s a child soldier.
Cop Warns How Women Manipulate Divorce Law
This is a pretty important video. The “three step rocket”.
“It’s really more of an in-person kind of explanation,” he demured, then suggested a dinner date.
I hesitated. Normally I don’t meet my online dates until significantly more text and phone contact. Partly for safety reasons, partly because I don’t want to waste my time on guys I know will not work out. But mostly because I have been on A LOT of bad dates.
He said he was living in his friend’s spare room because he’d hit a few “speed bumps,” in life. I totally got that. I’m the queen of speed bumps myself. I let myself dare to hope maybe— just maybe— I had found a kindred spirit. I agreed to the date. And just like that, there I was, listening to him tell his story from across the candlelit table.
”About a year ago, I went out with some friends after work,” he began, and I smiled and nodded to let him know he had my attention. “I met a girl at a bar and we really hit it off. We ended up going home together. Next day, there’s a cop on my doorstep. And yada, yada, yada… long story short, she didn’t LOOK sixteen.”
I stiffened. Did she look 30? Because you’re 44, dude.
“So,” he continued, “I have a felony on my record. I was put on probation, and my job fired me. And then, just to kick me when I’m down” —and this is my favorite part— “my wife left me.”
?!??!!
“Bummer,” I said, because what else is there to say?
“So I was out of work, and my mom and I couldn’t live off her social security check alone, so she started driving for Uber…
The current supreme leader of Vietnam, Nguyễn Phú Trọng, is a very typical pro-China faction.
This means that Vietnamese diplomacy should be like bamboo, whose branches and leaves may sway in the wind, but whose poles are very tough.
Vietnam may pander to the U.S. in some cases, but the bamboo’s backbone is straight. After all, they fought the Yanks, and US pressure doesn’t always bring Vietnam to its knees.
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diplomacy
According to VnEconomy, in 2022, nearly 70 foreign affairs activities will be carried out by agencies under the Party, State, Government and National Assembly of Vietnam. According to statistics, by the beginning of 2023, Vietnam has established diplomatic relations with 190/192 countries; economic, trade and investment relations with 224 partners, and cooperation with more than 500 international organisations. The country is also a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation Forum (APEC), the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Trade Agreement, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and 15 other free trade agreements.
Vietnam-China relations
From 30 October to 1 November 2022, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) Nguyễn Phú Trọng paid an official visit to China after General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and President Xi Jinping assumed the office of the third President. He is the first senior leader to visit China after Xi assumed his third term as President. It was also Nguyễn Phú Trọng’s first visit to China after the 13th Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam. Both sides later deemed the visit a success. The Vietnamese side called China “a good neighbour, a good friend, a good comrade, a good partner, a good partner in the same boat, a good partner in solidarity and a good partner for the happiness of the people”. According to Reuters, the meeting between the two leaders was overly intimate, with no masks, They handshakes or hugs, against the backdrop of China’s strict embargo policy that it still maintains because of COVID-19.
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Vietnam-United States relations
At the end of August 2021, the Vice President of the United States of America, Kamala Harris, paid a visit to Viet Nam from 24 to 26 August 2021. During Ms Harris’ visit, the US side also confirmed a land lease agreement worth US$1.2 billion for the construction of the US Embassy building in Vietnam. Before leaving Vietnam, the US Vice President said the visit “marks the beginning of a new chapter in Vietnam-US relations”. After the visit, the Vietnamese media also carried a message inviting Joe Biden to visit Vietnam by the General Secretary and President of Vietnam.
On November 12, 2022, at the 40th and 11th ASEAN Summits, Vietnamese Prime Minister Pạm Minh Chính met directly with US President Biden. During the meeting, Mr. Pạm Minh Chính continued to “convey” the remarks of the General Secretary and President of Vietnam inviting the President of the United States to visit Vietnam. However, VOA caused a wave of controversy when it released a video in which Mr. Pạm Minh Chính chatted with subordinate leaders before meeting with the United States and “make it clear, to be fair, what are you afraid of?” The video was originally posted on May 14 but was not edited and was deleted on May 23. However, the video was later released by Voice of America but with the offensive phrase hidden. The reason why VOA deleted the video was that Khanh Nguyen, an official at the Vietnamese Embassy in the United States, asked VOA to delete the video. The email said the video “violates the principles of respect for privacy and journalistic professionalism and ethics.” Furthermore, VOA’s reporting has been misused and distorted for political purposes. The deletion was later protested by VOA’s Vietnamese service because it believed press freedom was being hindered. RFA, considered VOA’s “sister”, also released the video but did not receive any deletion email.
On the evening of March 29, 2023, General Secretary Nguyễn Phú Trọng had a phone call with US President Biden at request. During the phone call, the leaders of the two countries both emphasized that 2023 will be the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the Vietnam-US comprehensive partnership. When Mr. Biden spoke by phone with a foreign leader who was not a head of state or prime minister, the calls were rare, Reuters reported. The United States is currently also Vietnam’s largest export market in 2022. Soon after, from April 14 to April 16 of the same year, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced a high-level visit to Vietnam. He visited Vietnam and met with Foreign Minister Bùi Thanh Sơn, Prime Minister Pạm Minh Chính, President Võ Văn Thưởng, and General Secretary Nguyễn Phú Trọng. A contentious issue also arose during a meeting between Mr Phạm Minh Chính and Anthony Blinken, with only the Vietnamese flag in the background, not the American flag. According to Radio Free Asia, most of this information comes from Chinese media. The agency analyzed that because this was a meeting of different levels, there was only the Vietnamese flag in the background. According to BBC News, when US President Joe Biden may visit Hanoi in May or Vietnam’s General Secretary visits the United States in July, diplomatic issues between the two countries are likely to continue to heat up. The media also said in its analysis that the statement that Vietnam now “stands shoulder to shoulder with the United States at a time when we need each other’s support most” is often used only to refer to the country’s allies, but Mr. Blinken used it to refer to Vietnam.
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And the Philippines is a blade of grass that falls when the wind blows. The Philippines was once a colony of the United States, and the colonial mentality of the Filipinos is deeply rooted. As long as the United States exerts a little pressure, Marcos Jr. will give in.
I got a notification from the Amazon app that my packages were here. They were my sons birthday presents. I didn’t go outside immediately though as I was changing my twins diapers.
When I was finished I went out to get them. Some woman was out there picking up my boxes. I asked very loudly what she thought she was doing.
She tried to spin some story about how my packages were damaged and had been recalled and that they would be replaced in a few days,
I called her story bullshit and to get off my property or I would call the cops. I wasn’t quiet about it. She started to leave WITH my packages.
Before I could yell again or call the cops my neighbors Rottweiler mix was in front of us growling loudly with my neighbor limping fast towards us. He’s an older guy and an absolute sweetheart. He told her to drop the boxes or his dog would attack. She dropped them and ran to her car and drove away. I got her license plate number and reported her to the cops.
I hugged my neighbor and thanked him for saving my sons birthday. I also baked him cookies and brought him a slice of my sons cake the next day.
Ok, this one has irked me for some time. I went to see a blood doctor. Had a bit too low iron in my blood. Called, confirmed my insurance co-pay, went to my appointment, paid my co-pay and left.
A few weeks later I get a bill for $250 bill for the visit. I call to remind them that I paid my co-pay (which was a hell of a lot less then $250). They acknowledge that, but “remind me” that this isn’t a co-pay, it’s a “facility charge.” I say I have no idea what they’re talking about. I never agreed to a “facilities charge.”
Well their office is in a hospital building so I should understand there will be a hospital “facilities charge.” I inform them that, I didn’t go to the hospital, I went to their office which happens to rent space from the hospital. They argue that it was in some paper package they gave me when I came for my appointment. I disagree refusing to pay, they insist I have to. I disagree after some argument end the call. They try to collect a few more times ending similarly. Eventually they get the point and realized their threats were falling on deaf ears.
They call me back a few days later, apologize for the confusion and agree to a one time reduction of the “facilities charge” to $75. I inform them I came to them for a doctor’s appointment, not to pay their rent and refuse. Another argument ends in me ending the call. More threats and calls ensue.
Finally I get a call from them stating that, “for this one instance” my “facility charge” is going to be waived but I’m going to be responsible for the full facilities charge for all future appointments. I assure them I understand, and make sure they understand that based on this fiasco there will be no future visits. The doctor that sent me to them also took them off his referral list.
After my husband passed away I drove his old Jeep Cherokee for a while, but it was starting to show its age and I could see some big repair bills coming up that I did not want to deal with. I started to look at new cars, and was impressed with the Subaru Outback. Then Subaru started a big promotion with discounts and 1.9% financing, so I drove the old Jeep to my local dealer. Talked to a salesman who qualified me (I had a good job in Information Technology, so the payments would not be a problem). I found one that I liked and we started to work out a deal. After some negotiating, I was summoned to speak with the Finance Manager – some dude in probably his mid-20s who informed me that, due to some late payments the previous year, there was no way I would qualify for their 1.9% financing, but he could offer me a loan at around 8%. I was startled, as my credit had been excellent for years, so I asked for clarification. Yes, there were a couple of late payments on a couple of credit cards that corresponded to the last few months of my husband’s life when I was… distracted much of the time, to say the least. Taking care of him was my priority, and sometimes other things, like writing checks to pay a bill got overlooked temporarily. Then the finance dude started lecturing me on the importance of being responsible and taking care of what is important (paying bills, of course), and how clearly my credit report was showing that I didn’t take the important stuff seriously. I looked him in the eye as I stood up to leave and said that maybe when he got a little more life experience he might understand what it is like to watch someone you love, with whom you were planning to spend the rest of your life, to watch that person waste away, in pain and terrible suffering, then we could talk about responsibility. During those months, my single highest priority was taking care of him. Yes, a few bills got paid late, but I know that I had my priorities correct. So don’t condescend, and do NOT lecture me on personal responsibility, frat boy.
I am writing anonymously because I hate pity and I have friends on quora that know me.
I was an orphan. I don’t remember ever enjoying my childhood except sometimes playing Cricket with other boys of my age in my village. I came from a small village just outside of Lahore, Pakistan. I was told that my parents had an accident when I was 4 Years old. My childhood memory starts from my uncle’s home. I can’t remember my parents.
When I was 7 years old, my uncle had enough of me and sent me to Lahore to work. He dropped me off to his friend who owned a teashop in a busy market. I didn’t want to work, I wanted to play and study. I loved to go to school which now I couldn’t. I was hired for 4,000 Rupees which was alot of money for me but I came to know that I will get only 1,000 Pakistani rupees for my work and rest will be paid to my uncle.
After one year of working there, I used to deliver tea to a complete surrounding area of the teashop. I was responsible for the collection of money, delivery of tea and retrieval of tea cups. One day, the teashop owner asked me to make a special delivery at a compound nearby. When I took the tea to the compound, there were men sitting around in a round table in an open area. I delivered the tea to a person named Aqil, which the teashop owener Mr. Bilal told me. When I delivered the tea, and asked for the money and said that “Please kindly give me the money because I have alot of other deliveries to make” I don’t know what happend but this Aqil guy flipped and threw two cup of teas on me which was extremely hot and I started crying because of pain and then he said to me “Do you know who I am” “Now you will remember me always, scum”.
I left from the compound scratching my neck from burns. Now, when I remember back nobody stopped me and asked me what was wrong. It was approximately 3 minute walk back to the tea shop. The market was full of customers and a child is crying and walking and nobody stopped him or asked him what happend.
Then when I reached the shop, Mr. Bilal asked me what happend and I told him everything. Then he accused me why I asked them for money. Then I replied, you told me to ask for these things. Then he said forget about it, you don’t ask those guys for money. Here keep this 50 rupees and buy toothpaste for yourself to put on the burnt area. Also Mr. Bilal was a bad guy who used to beat me and slap me around just because I was late or because somebody didn’t pay me.
From that day, I knew life was not fair. When I was 12 years old I ran away from the Teashop and started living on the streets. I knew from my time in the shop to keep distance from people who are living on the street. I used to eat from a shrine known as Data Darbar in Lahore.
Then I knew I wanted to get a job so I can become something like the people that are sitting in an AC car. I knew I had to get an education but how. I didn’t knew anything about studies. So I decided to join a canteen shop in a school. There was one school which was very famous, I went to the canteen shop of that school and begged the guy in there to hire me because I wanted to study. I don’t know why but he did hire me and used to pay me 3,000 Rupees per month.
There was a female teacher in this school who was very nice. One day she approached me as I was working in the canteen and asked me about studies. I don’t know what prompted her to ask me this but she did. I told her that I wanted to study but I don’t have any money. She just said that don’t worry about it.
The next week I was enrolled in the same school I was working at.
Now I am 37 Years old. I’m married and have my own software house and a small general store which I acheived with my sheer determination and hardwork and some help from extremely generous people.
I have three Boys and 2 Girls. My wife often asks me regarding the burnt marks on my neck and chest and I always reply it’s a burnt tattoo.
I am happy. I got lucky. Not many people get lucky. Child labor is one of the worst things that can happen to a child. It’s my secret and now nobody can call me lowlife scum. Nobody can use me as their punching bag. Life is beautiful now, but I know from experience how ugly it can be.
It happened in Dachau, when a dozen SS were executed by US army personnel who were appalled by the sight.
Remember that the Allies despised the S.S. for a variety of reasons: the Canadians despised them for the Normandy massacre, the Americans despised them for the Malmedy massacre, the British despised them for Wormhoudt, and the French despised them for the anti-bandit operations carried out by the 2nd Das Reich SS division in occupied France (for example, Oradour sur Glane).
Another minor episode occurred in Bavaria, when Twelve members of the 33rd SS division were executed near a forest by Spaniards of the Nueve; their bodies were never brought to France and were left to decompose.
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Leclerc witnessed the fall of France and the devastation of French towns firsthand, and like many other Frenchmen, he lamented the loss of Ouradour sur Glane while actively seeking the annihilation of the Third Reich. During the liberation of Lorraine, his battalion was forced to untie from a community, and the mayor was later killed by the Germans once the village was retaken.
His division’s health service was retroceded in order to assist the released inmates from Dachau, and he witnessed the awful misery of the prisoners’ conditions in those sites; many of his fellow people were imprisoned in horrible conditions. He even got into a violent confrontation with a priest who was trying to keep an eye on what was going on.
So, sure, the execution of S.S was the culmination of months of frustration by Allies soldiers, which amounted to war crimes.
“Why should we hire you?” Luigi the arrogant recruiter asked.
“I have with me a written proposal of how I will positively impact your organization during my first 90 days in this position. We can go over it together if interested,” Mario said as he showed a sneak peek of his document.
“Sure, let’s take a look at it,” Luigi’s eyes shone with amazement while thinking, “Ohh wow! This guy has a plan? I’m curious as to what he is proposing.”
“Mr Luigi, has anyone ever brought you a plan before you hire them?” Mario asked, taking control of the conversation.
“I must admit, this is pretty uncommon,” Luigi said.
“Mr Luigi, I’ve done my homework. This is how I do things. You should hire me because I’m self-sufficient, I don’t need you to be all over me to give you results. I’m always ahead of the crowd.”
He paused to look Luigi in the eye.
“You should hire me because I don’t need to be micromanaged. You will never have to be chasing me or telling me what to do. You should hire me because I’m here to make you money. Mr Luigi, I’m an asset to this business, I’m a producer — not a taker.”
“Let’s see the plan,” Luigi insisted.
Mario got the document out and placed it on the table. Still holding it, he paused and said, “Well, Mr Luigi, I still don’t know if this is the right job for me. Can I ask you a few questions?”
Luigi arrogantly laid back on his chair and said, “Ok, shoot.”
Mario started asking questions, “What are the company values? Do you really live by them? Who will I work with? Can I talk to these people before I get started?”
“Interesting questions, Mario,” Luigi said.
“Mr Luigi, the reason I ask these questions is because I’m more worried about WHO I work with than my paycheck.”
“Why is that?”
“It’s important who I surround myself with. I like to work with smart people. I don’t like to be limited by what I can accomplish. I want to push my professional growth. A big paycheck is NOT worth being surrounded by idiots.”
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To answer your question, what are the best answers for “Why should I hire you?”
It really doesn’t matter the accuracy of a 90-day plan document. It doesn’t matter if it works or not. It will definitely make you stand out by showing you invested time thinking and understanding the job description and the company’s needs. (Most people only care about what they’re going to get paid.)
Show self-confidence. Show you care about yourself and that you have high standards for the quality of the people, the challenge and the job. Make the future employer feel they need to deserve you. (Most people will be almost begging for the job; that’s not very attractive for a recruiter.)
During a 10-hour flight, she was heading from Seoul, Korea, to San Francisco, USA. This mother distributed more than 200 passengers on the plane a plastic bag for each one. The bag contains candy, chewing gum and earplugs as a kind of advance apology for using them in the event that her 4-month-old baby screamed during the flight.
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The bag also contained a message containing (hello, I am Jan Woo. I am 4 months old and today I’m traveling America with my mom and grandmother for my aunt’s outfit. I’m a little nervous and scared. This is my first flight in my life. It’s normal for me to cry or cause some disturbance. I’ll try to stay calm, but I can’t promise you. Please use it if my voice gets too loud.. Enjoy your trip. Thank you)
I was 12-years-old. I had a paper route and my mom wanted to go out for a beer with her best friend.
Let’s get a couple of things straight before I continue. This was the 1970s and no, she’s not an alcoholic. Going out with the girls for a beer was pretty common in the 70s. It wasn’t quite “Mad Men”, but not far off.
The thing is, my parents were terrible with money. We were poor(ish). We frequently had to move because the landlord raised the rent. All of our furniture was used (if the couch cushions wore out, we flipped the cushions over). You get the idea.
There used to be a company called “Grenada” that would rent appliances to the poor.
My parents rented a colour television for something like 25 bucks a month when a new colour tv would cost $500.
Rather than do without a tv for a couple of years and then simply buy a new set, they went with the “just put it on credit” style of living.
My mom was in debt her entire life.
I said, “I’m not going to live like that.” After graduating from college, I lived at home for 3 years (paying $200 a month out of my $700 bi-weekly paycheques/$1400 a month). I saved $32000 in those 3 years and bought a small freehold condo (freehold means no condo fees. You have to mow your own lawn and shovel your own driveway).
I was 24 years old at the time. I was mortgage-free when I was 37, which was great because I was laid off SEVEN times in my career.
I worked 2 part-time jobs along with my full-time job.
I’ve never been in debt in my life. If I couldn’t pay cash (car loans and mortgage aside), I didn’t buy it.
I’ve only ever bought a new car twice in my life. I drove that first car for a decade. My car now is 12 years old. I hope to drive it for another 8 years. I’ll buy myself a new car before I retire and you can bury me in it.
I was immediately attracted to this question. My 79-year-old father is German and was a young boy during WW2.
I asked him to write something to respond to this question, and he provided this excerpt from his memoirs. (I’ve changed the names of my uncles.)
tl;dr: During the war, bad. After the war, worse.
“In the spring of 1942, as the RAF bombing raids started, our family was evacuated by the German authorities from Krefeld to the Black Forest in southern Germany. The operation was called MUKI (for Mutter und Kinder).
By train my mother and we 3 children arrived in Schönmünzach in the Black Forest. We were ordered into a requisitioned hotel. The money the government paid the hotel must have been pretty low, judging by the unfriendly service we received.
After a few weeks, we were moved another 15 miles deeper into the forest to the little village of Obertal into the Hotel Sonne and a little later to Hotel Günther. There we had a single room with toilet and washroom down the hall. The hotel was run by two sisters and a brother, who also was a blacksmith. Two of their nieces, Lilo and Inge, were the food servers. The food was without much variation: potatoes, carrots, mushrooms that we helped collect in the woods, and blue trout. I hated the trout because of their bulging eye balls and disliked the mushrooms, they were so slippery.
It must have been in the summer of 1942 when we kids played in the garden of the hotel. There was an umbrella stand with a heavy concrete base. In passing, I pulled the stand askew and let it snap back. Unfortunately, my brother Hans was close behind me and the pipe of the stand hit him in the face. He was bloody all over, but this guy is hard to kill, he healed soon enough, but today still has a scar under the left side of his nose.
In the fall of 1942, Hans and I started elementary school in Obertal, Walter, our younger brother, followed 2 years later. We were so proud of our satchels, packed with a slate board with attached sponge, and our freshly sharpened slate styluses.
One winter evening my mother left us alone in the room and locked the door (this was before the invention of baby-sitting). We were up to some mischief: I collected pine needles from the Christmas tree and stuffed them into an electric outlet. All of a sudden there was a big flash and the light went out. I had managed to put the entire hotel into darkness.
Shortly thereafter, in early 1943 we were moved to a farmhouse near the edge of the village. The farmer by the name of Haist and his wife were not happy at all to see the unwanted guests they were forced to take in. They had two children, Alma, who was about 4 years older than I, and her younger brother Egon. We were placed in the upstairs of the small house and had one bedroom, a living room and a small kitchen with a single spigot for cold water. The toilet was half a flight down and consisted of a board with a lid-covered round cut-out hole and a cesspool below, no running water. The bedroom had no heat but was placed above the stable where a pig and a cow were supposed to warm the room from below. It was not quite sufficient, and during the coldest part of the winter we had to hack the ice off the jug and wash basin that served as our bathroom.
One day my mother had to run some errands. She again locked us up in the living room and we thought of some new mischief. We found matches and tried to burn off the fringes of the curtains by the front windows. To our disappointment the fringes didn’t burn very well and only generated smoke. So we gave up on the idea, extinguished the smoldering fringes and looked for some other entertainment. I suppose my mother was upset when she came home, but I don’t recall any punishment.
Food in those days was strictly rationed and we had to use food stamps for every purchase. My mother managed to get beef bones once a week. First she made a soup from it, then burned the bones on the charcoal in the stove. She recovered the ashes and we had to eat them as our calcium supplement. It tasted almost as bad as the weekly cod liver oil that we had to swallow. (Cod liver oil is rich in vitamins and chemicals, such as iodine. The lack of iodine was causing a high occurrence of goiters among the locals.) One day the local grocery store, the Konsum, had a big surprise: they sold strawberry jam without food stamps. Everybody rushed to the store and bought as much as the store keeper would hand out. The jam was delicious, sweet and crispy. A bit later we found out that the crispiness was dozens of wasps that got processed with the strawberries.
In the spring of 1943 I got scarlet fever and an infection of the middle ear. I was quarantined in our bedroom while Hans and Walter were moved to stay in the bedroom with Egon. When I got worse I was sent by ambulance to the hospital in Freudenstadt, some 10 miles away. I must have been pretty sick because I had to stay at the hospital for more than a month. Later I was told that both of my ear drums had ruptured. When I finally was discharged the nurse confiscated my only toy, some kind of a construction set with interlocking wooden chips, because it was “contaminated”. Really they did disinfect it and let other kids play with it. I was very unhappy about the loss.
In the summer, war came to Krefeld. On 6/21/43 the Royal Air Force (RAF) launched a heavy air raid on Krefeld where we had lived. Our house took a full hit and was totally destroyed. We would not have survived had we not been evacuated before.
Once a week we were ordered by the school to collect potato beetles in the fields around town. The beetles were threatening to kill the potato crop and rumors were that the Americans dropped the beetles on Germany, an early application of biological war fare. We had to pick the beetles off the leaves which was ok; they looked pretty in their yellow and black stripes. What I didn’t like was crushing the larvae and the eggs between my thumb and index finger and, most of all, I didn’t like the young Hitler-youth supervisor who hit us with a switch in the back of our knees when we didn’t work fast enough. However, when we were doing well we received small propaganda stickers with a printed “Kohlenklau”, the energy thief with a sack of coal over his shoulder, and “Pst, Feind hört mit” the sticker to remind you that enemy spies where everywhere.
During the summer vacation of 1943 we helped our farmer to collect ferns in the woods that he used as bedding for the cow. The fern was spread in the courtyard to dry and piled up overnight. I still remember that one night the three of us kids were allowed to dig some cave into the huge pile and sleep in it. The fragrance of the dried fern was wonderful. We also helped to make hay, a very labor intensive process. In the morning the farmer went out to his large meadow behind the house and cut the grass by hand with a scythe. Every half-hour or so he paused, pulled out a whetstone from his hip pocket, and sharpened the scythe. Frau Haist, Alma, Hans and I used rakes to spread out the grass to dry. In the early afternoon, the grass had to be turned and in the evening it had to be collected into piles. This was repeated for several days until the hay was ready to be collected into a big net which the farmer then carried on his back into the hay loft above the stable. Every evening the farmer sharpened his scythe by straddling a stone bench that had a small anvil at the end, and hammering the edge of the blade razor thin. He then finished the sharpening with a whetstone.
To obtain firewood the forester assigned and marked one tree for each family and sent a notice where to find the tree. Our tree was up the mountain some 10 miles away near a logging road. The farmer, my dad, who was on furlough, Hans, Walter and I set off at 5 in the morning. After some searching we found the tree. Dad and the farmer cut it down, chopped off the branches and sawed it into 3 ft. sections. The 3 kids had to drag the pieces up the hill to the logging road and pile it up for pick-up by the forestry people. Hans didn’t like touching the slippery, mossy branches and decided to go home. He snuck away, took the cart with all our food and beverage and rolled down the road all the way home. You can imagine how furious we were, no food or drink and another 6 hours of work and a 3-hour hike back home. At home Hans got a severe thrashing, the only one my father ever administered to him. As a further penalty Hans had to do overtime in chopping wood after the man with the mobile band saw came by and cut the sections down to firewood length.
In the fall the farmer called in the local butcher to slaughter the pig. From our bedroom we could hear the poor beast squeal. When we went downstairs, the pig was already in a tub of hot water where it was being scrubbed clean and its bristles were scraped off. We kids had the job to wash out the intestines in the fountain in the courtyard and get them ready for sausage-making by turning them inside out. When the whole pig was processed we all sat down to a “Schlachtfest” (butcher’s party). The farmer’s wife dished out “Metzelsuppe”, the broth of the sausage cooker, and freshly baked bread, followed by various cuts of meat and sausages with potatoes and sauerkraut. It was truly a feast because we could eat without needing our ration stamps.
In 1944 we moved from the farm in Obertal to Baiersbronn into one side of a duplex that the town had built for bombed out refugees like us.
The house was very small, the living room was 7 by 12 feet, the eat-in kitchen was 8 by 14 feet, and there was a single bedroom upstairs, about 10 by 12 feet. Hans and I slept in a regular bed, Walter slept in the big bed with my mother and later, after my dad got back from the POW camp, he had a crib in an alcove. Later that year, Frau Ilse Mueller – who lived in the other half of the duplex – let us use her upstairs bedroom and the 3 of us kids had a bit more room.
The house had no road connection and no water. We had to haul the water by bucket from a neighbor some 300 yards down a path to the road. For three more months we kept hauling. When the town finally installed a single tap in the kitchen, it was truly a high point in our lives.
The toilet was a hole in a wooden bench, again with a cesspool underneath. It smelled terribly, especially during the hot summer days. Worst was the maggots that kept creeping up from down below. We didn’t have any toilet paper; none could be bought in the empty stores. So my mother sacrificed the love letters my father had written to her from the war, for us youngsters they were fascinating and so romantic.
Meanwhile, our neighbor, Herr Lampert, decided we needed a road, so he organized the neighborhood and we built a dirt road, about 200 feet long, to connect to the main road. We logged tons of stone from the nearby Sankenbach creek and set them by hand into a foot-deep road base. The bed was consolidated with rams made out of tree stumps. On top we put gravel and sand, and our foot path turned into a respectable piece of road.
In early 1945, the front was drawing nearer and bombs started falling nearby. One bomb hit Café Mueller and killed their only daughter. My mother barely escaped a machine gun salvo from a low-flying French fighter plane. She feared for our lives and we all went back to the more remote village of Obertal. There we shacked up with our friends, the Siehr family, into a 3 room+kitchen apartment. They had 3 boys, our best friends, and a younger daughter. Their father was a chemist who had volunteered to join the army in 1939 and was killed in action during the first few weeks of the war. Frau Siehr became a war widow at age 28 with four children, then 4, 3, 2 and 1 years of age. There was one bedroom for the children with triple bunk-beds for the boys, and the three of us doubled up with the boys head to toe. The girl had a small bed in the same bedroom.
Then, one day in April of 1945, the French army moved into the village. The German army had retreated to guard the next bigger town of Freudenstadt. Hans and I, at age 8, had to join the “Volkssturm” (People’s Army), the last resources of the army, consisting of men over 70 and kids of 8 to 15 (everybody between 15 and 70 had been drafted earlier). We had been trained, using wooden mockups, to shoot RPGs at the incoming tanks. But the German army retreated and had taken all the real weapons with them and, luckily, we didn’t have to make that “last stand against the enemy”. The village surrendered to the French without a shot being fired.
Then the French started to search each house for soldiers and also for quarters for their officers. They came to the upstairs apartment and knocked (!) at the door of the children’s room. My mother had posted all 7 children by the door; when the soldiers opened, they exclaimed “Mon Dieu” (dear Lord) and shut the door. We kids then moved swiftly through a connecting door to the living room where Frau Siehr posted us near the door. The soldiers knocked again at the next door and saw another mother with 7 more children. With a baffled “beaucoupd’enfants” (lots of children) they gave up on their search for accommodations in the house.
After the armistice was declared there was great joy all around. Our family went back to Baiersbronn to our “Behelfsheim” (emergency shelter) as it was officially called. There we found a big mess. French soldiers had celebrated the end of fighting with a big party and had turned the place upside down. Also, they ate all our food and we had nothing left to eat. One of the French soldiers, he called himself Bari Mulut, an Algerian, came by a few days later and asked my mother to hide him; he was a deserter and just wanted to go home. We hid him in the attic and played ignorant when the French MPs came by and searched the house. They overlooked the trap door in the ceiling, leading to the attic.
At that time, food rationing was not working anymore; the whole civilian service structure had collapsed. We went around to several farms and tried to get enough food but the farmers were reluctant to accept the worthless “Reichsmark” currency. My mother taught us some French and we went begging at the hotels the French had requisitioned. “Avez-vous des conserves pour nous?” we asked again and again. We also eagerly picked up cigarette butts, rolled them into new cigarettes of ever increasing nicotine content, and traded them against food at a farmer’s. One day we were very lucky, a French officer gave us eleven 32 oz. cans of meat and vegetables, it was a memorable day. Other days we were not so lucky and the entire food for the four of us consisted of a single sugar beet that the farmers usually feed to their pigs.
There were no toys around so we made some ourselves. We carved little boats from thick pine bark and let them float on the puddles in the ditch behind the house. We made whistles from willow branches, stilts from square-cut slats, catapults from beer-bottle tops and slingshots from inner tubes, discarded by the French soldiers.
The French commanded every inhabitant of the town to watch a film about the Holocaust at the movies. Everybody was horrified and some people said this was all propaganda. Apparently, they had lost their clear thinking after years of Nazi propaganda.
During the summer of 1945 stores had nothing to sell. To survive, my mother, Hans and I went on “Hamster Reise” (shopping trip), where we scratched up some tradable goods, among them mother’s pretty lingerie that dad had sent her from Paris, loaded them on a hand-wagon and walked first from Baiersbronn to Obertal, staying at Siehr’s for a short night. The next morning at 3 am we moved on across the “Ruhestein”, the watershed between the rain-drenched (130 in/yr) eastern part of the Black Forrest were we lived, and the fertile Rhein valley. We walked 22 km (14 miles) to Kappelrodeck, Hans and I barefoot because we had no shoes, to a farm where we traded our goods. We got some 140 pounds of potatoes, fruit and vegetables. By then it was almost noon and we started our trek back. While progress in the valley was fairly good, things got really slow climbing up some 10 miles to the “Ruhestein”. Luckily, that day there was a farmer who put a pair of oxen to work, trailing a bunch of ropes for us and other “Hamsterers” to hang onto, helping them to move their handwagons up the steepest part of the climb. Down the other side it was easier, 5 miles back to Obertal and then another 5 miles to Baiersbronn. We got back home just before curfew at midnight, an exhausting 21 hour, 33 mile barefoot trek. The trip added several new layers to the callused soles of Hans’s and my feet.
The next day we had to start preserving our food. All fruit was sliced and air-dried. For that we took the doors off the hinges and covered them with the fruit slices to dry outside on the grassy patch in front of the house. After the drying, the unpainted doors had a negative leopard pattern with light spots where the fruit slices had been and sun tan around them. Carrots, potatoes and beets were stored in a sand bed in the basement. Cabbage was shredded, salted and fermented into sauerkraut in a big ceramic jar, eggs were stored in silicone gel in another earthen jar, and bread was air-dried. We had no refrigerator, and only glass jars with lids, but without rubber gaskets which then rendered them useless (all rubber had been reserved for tire production for the army).
We did the trip twice more during that summer. On one of the trips we found another friendly farmer who too was trailing half a dozen ropes behind his tractor for people to hang on and get pulled up the mountain for a few miles. His tractor had a “Holzvergaser” (wood chip gasifier) that generated carbon monoxide by partially combusting wood chips in a man-size vessel mounted on the side of the vehicle. The monoxide was then burned to carbon dioxide in the engine, generating just enough power to pull the whole convoy up the hill.
My dad had a tough summer as well. During the last days of fighting in April of 1945 he was with a few other soldiers on the south-shore of the Danube River in Ulm. The Americans were on the north shore. My father was happy to see them, so he stood up and waved to them across the river. Next thing, the Americans trained their mortars on him and he jumped back into the trenches, barely surviving the attack. A short time later his unit was overrun and he ended in a POW camp in St. Avold in Lorraine, France. The Americans were mean to the officers, ignorant about the difference between the regular army and the SS-stormtroopers. My dad was regular army, but the Americans gave all of them their Holocaust special. They fed them 4 course dinners where, e.g., the fish course was a single sardine that had to be divided between 8 people. They made them sleep under the clear sky, no tents or other shelter. Luckily, it was a dry and warm summer, so they survived. My father weighed 210 pounds going into camp and 98 pounds when he was discharged 7 months later.
Things got better when my father came back from the POW camp in November of 1945. As a former officer, dad had to register and report every Saturday to the police station in Baiersbronn. Hans and I were with him one day when Hans saw a sign on the way out where the new administration was looking for “Applicants with business education”. Dad applied and just a few weeks later got a job with the “Preiskontrollbehoerde” (price control agency) in the newly established regional administration. He got a 98cc motorbike as the official vehicle. His job was to visit shops and businesses and control that they adhered to the fixed prices set by the authorities. But his main concern was how to feed the family. So, he always brought a brown bag with him when he checked the local butcher or baker. He told them “I am not corruptible, but I have to feed my family with 3 small children”. Depending on the “crimes” he discovered, the bag got filled, more or less, with food. Once he brought back 4 pounds of lard, an exceptionally good day. At home, we cut it all up into little cubes and rendered it on the stove. The greaves tasted delicious with some salt, and the grease was a welcome change from frying potatoes without any fat. We didn’t mind that the grease was more like wax and stuck to the roof of our mouths.
Here ends the WW2 story and what it was like for me to grow up during that time in Germany.”
I’m a service dog handler so I’ve seen quite a few.
This Time I’m in the bathroom with my dog. We’re at the mall and I really have to pee and my dog has just alerted me I’m about to pass out. I really want to use the bathroom before I pass out so I don’t pee myself.
I walk into the bathroom and I see this mother changing her kid.
I think “oh god. The kids gonna notice and get upset she can’t pet Callie.@ I was so worried because I really needed to use the bathroom and I was already dizzy and had blurry vision.
To my surprise (and relief) this little angel is smiling and giggling at her mom as she gets her diaper changed and she’s too busy to notice Callie.
So I get out of the stall and the mother looks up at me.
She didn’t see Callie who was sitting behind a pillar between me and the woman as I washed my hands. This woman starts interrogating me while her angel is saying “mommy can you hurry so I can help you pick out shoes?” This kid is a perfect angel.
The woman ignores her kid and starts yelling at me. “You are so disrespectful you shouldn’t be using the handicap stall! What if somebody in a wheelchair comes in needing it? Or somebody else with a disability?!!”
I can tell this kid wants to leave (her belated butt must be freezing by this point) so I calmly reply “Ma’am not all disabilities are visible, and I am in fact disabled”
This woman glares at me and says “Oh yeah? And what the hell is wrong with you?”
I step aside and call Callie to my side. I then inform her “While I am not comfortable sharing that information with you, I am willing to tell you that I used this stall so my service dog would have room and would not be inched away from me as I use the bathroom.”
This woman is dumbfounded for a moment then turns around to resume changing this poor kids diaper. I was so thankful.
Then, to my horror this woman does the closest thing she can do to turn this child to a monster. In a high pitched voice she says “Look at the doggy! Look at the doggy!”
I’m terrified this child will go crazy until she pets my dog (keep in mind I’m still very dizzy and about to pass out. Preferably in a chair)
Instead, this angel says “Mommy can I please pet the doggy?”
This is the part that horrifies me. She then gets in this kids face and screams “NO. THAT DOG IS WORKING YOU CANT PET IT”
She had very politely asked, and I may have said yes. (It would be good practice for Callie) but I was dizzy and this mom just told her no.
Now, this child was an angel by my standards and I’m guessing those of most people reading this, but she was not a perfectly behaved robot. Her mom had obviously scared her so she started wailing and sobbing because the woman she trusts most had just screamed at her in a demonic tone.
This woman then turns to me and says “You know. This is all your fault. We were fine before you showed up. No I have to deal with her.”
This kid was an adorable child who was one of the best behaved toddlers I had ever seen. (I am a babysitter) I could not believe her mother would do that. She wouldn’t have noticed and she was so polite.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a problem with our wings,” announced the pilot.
True story. This happened to me last week.
The plane was making its final approach to Houston Intercontinental Airport. Suddenly there were three consecutive “ding-dong” sounds in the main cabin.
I saw both air hostesses run from the back of the plane to the front and grab the phone. They talked for a few seconds to the pilot, then the pilot came on with an announcement.
“We have broken off our approach. We have a problem with our wings. The leading edge slats won’t come down. We have declared an emergency and we will be landing shortly,” he said.
“Fire trucks will be waiting for us on the runway. It’s probably going to be a hard landing because we can’t slow the plane down as we normally would. We’ll see you on the ground.”
That was it.
Immediately the air hostesses started preparing everyone for the emergency. Uncertainty filled the cabin. Everyone of us felt vulnerable and scared.
I reflected on how fragile we are. There we were, trapped inside a metal tube flying at a high speed, … nothing to be done, simply pray and trust that everything would be okay.
The wind shook the plane from one side to the other. I could sense how the pilot was trying to find the optimal speed to land, not too fast, yet enough to fight the winds.
I could finally see the runway through my window. We all braced for the impact and as soon as we touched the ground, the pilot hit hard on the brakes.
The captain did an amazing job. We cheered and clapped for his fantastic landing.
Fire trucks followed us to the gate.
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It was not fun. That leading edge slat on the front of the wing is responsible for the addition of a few more grey hairs to my head.
My first — and hopefully my last — emergency landing!
Fun outing in college, canoeing down the American River. Only… unbeknownst to us (and I suppose the trip organizers), unseasonably hard rainfall has made the river fast and dangerous in certain spots. Being completely inexperienced, my canoe-mate and I had no clue that going widely around the sharp bend would put us into the deepest, fastest-moving water, which coincidentally had just undercut a very large tree, which was now toppled into the water. So we get sucked into the fast-moving water under the tree and capsized. We surface. I come up with my torso against the tree, which is several feet in diameter. Some idiots immediately behind us apparently decide that they will “rescue” us (canoe-mate was a few feet down, straddling the tree by this time). They capsize. Their canoe catches the current side-on and lands against me. Both of my arms are over the top of the tree, keeping me above the surface.
I now have a sideways canoe with its flat hull pressing my torso into a giant tree, with the force of a raging river behind it. I feel it crushing me, and think I’m going to die.
And then, I didn’t. Apparently the angle was slightly off, and the canoe slid off and landed on my friend, a few feet downstream. Her leg was trapped and it took a whole lot of people a whole lot of time to move the canoe against the current enough so she could scrape her leg out. She ended up with severe bruising and was on crutches for awhile, due to the pressure. Yeah, I would have died, with puny ribs and lungs fighting the current instead of solid bone.
Chinese Black Pepper Steak
Chinese Black Pepper Steak 5
Ingredients
750g eye fillet (in one piece)
2 onions, sliced
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
2 tablespoons dry sherry
2 teaspoons granulated sugar
2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger
1 tablespoon dark soya sauce
2 tablespoons whole black peppercorns, crushed
Instructions
Partially freeze steak. Cut into thin slices.
Combine steak, onions, sesame oil, sherry, sugar, ginger and soya sauce in bowl. Cover, marinate several hours or refrigerate overnight.
Stir peppercorns through steak mixture. Stir-fry steak and onions in a wok over high heat until steak is cooked to your liking.
I’m astounded that Japan could be confused about the reason dead fish are washing ashore in the hundreds and more. They just released the most toxic water to date into the ocean. Gee, I’m sure that has nothing to do with it. Just a funny coincidence.
Would you drink water from Chernobyl? Would you drink water from Fukushima? So why would you eat fish that live in an an environment of toxic nuclear water? Why would you be surprised that the fish are dying in such water and washing ashore?
Literally everyone with common sense could’ve and did predict this. It’s basic cause and effect. No, I’m not surprised.
Years ago I had a blind date. We had talked on the phone and the guy asked if he could take me to lunch. Not MEET me for lunch, but take me. He was inviting me so I assumed he would pay.
We met at a casual inexpensive chain restaurant. I had something modestly priced – it was probably around $7 (like I said, years ago). When the bill came, he told me what my share was – he actually said, “You had the french dip plus an iced tea, so your total is…..” I was pretty surprised but I figured that the cost of my lunch was worth finding out what a cheapo he was so I wouldn’t waste any more time dating him. But here’s the kicker – he had a Buy One Get One Free coupon! So his meal was free and I paid for mine! That was enough for me. He walked me to my car and asked if he could see me again. I said, “No” and he looked surprised and asked why. I said that anyone as cheap as he was shouldn’t date. Thank goodness he never called again.
EDIT*** For those who comment why it should be presumed that a man always pays for the first date – I do not presume that! Whoever invites another on a date (not a casual “meet up”) should pay. This man invited me. He said he wanted to “take me to lunch.” That is an invitation for a date and it was logical of me to assume he would pay. I have invited men on dates and I have paid for both of us. This is not a feminist issue – this is an issue of manners. And this guy had none.
Music CDs – it was announced recently that a couple of big box stores are dropping them from their shelves.
The word “TWICE”. No, really! Just start listening out for it and you’ll notice that almost every TV advert that should be using the word will say “TWO TIMES” instead…and it’s spreading, I hear this ugly replacement for a perfectly good word in news stories too. Why? It’s a total mystery! (Of course “THRICE” already went the way of the Dodo…so…)
Stick-shift cars. Most new cars no longer come with the option to drive stick. (Boooo!!!!!)
The grammatical rule that disallows “split infinitives” (Like “To boldly go where no man has gone before!”…which should strictly be -> which should be strictly “To go boldly…”)
In the USA – extending tape measures with inches on one edge of the tape and centimeters on the other. I broke mine a few months ago and neither of the local DIY stores have anything other than “Easy Read” tape measures with only inches. I had to hunt around online to find one that I could still order.
Cash. Already, several countries are considering completely abolishing cash…and a while back, I needed cash for something (I forget what) – and realized that I’ve had no cash in my wallet for more than two years!
Philips screw heads. (The ones like a ‘+’ sign) The replacement is the six-sided “torx” head screws (like a ‘*’ sign) – and in some cases the Allen head – which is a regular hexagon. With the improvement in design of electric screwdrivers, the old philips screws (which are DESIGNED to strip under high torque to protect the tool from damage) are overdue for replacement.
We could go on forever…
Point is that with all of the new things in the world – some old things have to “go away” to make room…either intellectually or physically.
Sometimes it’s sad…sometimes, it’s good…mostly it’s just “Meh”.
When I was in college I went to bed hungry many, many nights. I used to steal cheese from Administration wine and cheese parties so I could eat that night. My food budget was 5 dollars a week. Then one day I learned about food stamps. In those days, food stamps really were stamps — they resembled currency but could only be used for food. I think I was eligible for 90 dollars a month in food stamps in 1981. That increased my food budget to about 22 dollars a week.
It absolutely changed my life. Suddenly, I could keep peanut butter in my house, and bread and cereal, things I could eat every day. And if I had the right coupons, I could buy tuna fish and mayonnaise as a luxury. I can still remember my hands shaking with joy as I made a tuna fish sandwich. I was a six foot tall 19 year old man with a 28 inch waist.
Pride made me unable to let people know how bad things were or how hungry I was. Money from my work-study job was used to pay rent and utilities. I balanced my check book to the penny because every penny counted. But when I did go to the DeMoulas in Fitchburg near the college (and I always walked), I always felt ashamed when it came time to pay. And don’t think I didn’t get many dirty looks and the occasional snarky comment from others in the line.
I vowed one day to make up for taking those food stamps and never criticize people who used them. Hunger is real and hunger changes your life, what you can do, how you view your work, your study, your play, your pride, your sense of worth – everything you are, because what you eat today walks and talks tomorrow. Yes, I felt real shame using food stamps. I never took charity before, I was a white man in America and taught that men don’t take charity — you work for what you get. But they saved my life and I am grateful today for the generosity of the taxpayer of yesterday who saved my life and ability to graduate with high honors from college and become a productive member of society.
Many moons ago, I found myself in perplexing life circumstances.
While I had a decent paying corporate IT job, my divorce of several years back had finally to ground my finances down to the point of near crisis.
Despite appearances of success, my disposable income after supporting two households was drifting into the negative.
In addition to faithfully paying child support for my two children, I also took them every weekend as they were the joyous bright light of my then stressful life.
While not extravagant per se, I made sure they had fun doing normal things kids do, as their mom tended to be frugal in this regard. No blaming, per se…
Backstory set, my current financial crisis was that the annual car insurance bill was due, and I basically didn’t have it. Ironically, a recent necessary car repair depleted my reserve at a bad time. Big sigh.
After spending days trying to sort this, no solution was apparent, and the strain of the bills due date was a preoccupation.
The next morning as I leave for work, the neighbor who lives across our sloping alley was standing behind my car looking at its bumper. His own over-the-top customized pickup is at an odd angle behind my car.
He apologetically explains that his big truck slipped out of gear, rolling over and hitting the back of my car. Hard enough that his trucks bumper was broken in the middle and partially dangled on one side. My heart sank, guessing at my poor cars condition.
Upon inspection, my early 80’s Volvo GL (very thick body metal) had a minor rumple in its rear corner. The trunk still worked, taillight undamaged, and bumper still fine as the lifted truck hit above it. Quite a comical mismatch of damage.
He gave me his insurance info and I went to work, grateful in part for light damage, but annoyed and worried. What was this going to cost?
I called his insurance agent who arranged to have an adjuster come my works parking lot, who I met about an hour later. He asked a few questions as he circled the car, tapping away on some hand-held machine that looked part printer (not a usual thing at the time).
Before I could finish explaining the alley incident, his machine starts spitting out some paper.., a check! He handed it to me with a smile saying There you go!
Sure I about to be low-balled for my repair, I quickly looked the amount. Easily quadruple what my car insurance bill that needed to be paid this week! Huzzah?
I look at the adjuster guy, clearly showing surprise in my expression. He says The damage is cosmetic and everything stiil works. If I were you, I’d just leave it and keep the money. Have a great day! We shake hands and off he goes.
And that’s just what I did, after paying my car insurance with the windfall from the other insurance company. A curious little shell game between these entities.
Indeed, Huzzah!
Billy Joel – We Didn’t Start The Fire (Historically Accurate Almanac) COMPLETE
Sailing into the wind is a sailing expression that refers to a sailboat’s ability to move forward despite being headed into (or very nearly into) the wind. A sailboat cannot make headway by sailing directly into the wind; the point of the sail into the wind is called “close hauled”.
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Sailing into the wind is possible when the sail is angled in a slightly more forward direction than the sail force. In this aspect, the boat will move forward because the keel (centerline) of the boat acts to the water as the sail acts to the wind. The force of the sail is balanced by the force of the keel. This keeps the boat from moving in the direction of the sail force. Although total sail force is to the side when sailing into the wind, a proper angle of attack moves the boat forward
Old ships, such as sailing ships and square-rigged ships, had different sailing and fighting qualities than modern sailboats. They had to rely on their sails, rigging, hull shape, and crew skills to maneuver and perform in various wind and sea conditions. They also had to deal with challenges such as enemy fire, storms, pirates, and navigation. Old ships used various tactics and techniques to sail into the wind, such as:
Tacking: This is a basic sailing maneuver that involves changing the direction of the ship by turning its bow through the wind. This allows the ship to zigzag its way upwind by alternating between port and starboard tacks. Tacking requires coordination between the helmsman and the crew, who have to adjust the sails and rigging accordingly. Tacking also exposes the ship to enemy fire from both sides, so it was often avoided in combat situations.
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Wearing: This is another sailing maneuver that involves changing the direction of the ship by turning its stern through the wind. This allows the ship to reverse its course without losing much speed or momentum. Wearing is easier and faster than tacking, but it also requires more space and exposes the ship’s vulnerable stern to enemy fire. Wearing was often used as an escape or evasion tactic when facing superior forces.
Beating: This is a sailing technique that involves sailing as close to the wind as possible without losing speed or stalling. Beating requires trimming the sails tightly and steering carefully to maintain an optimal angle of attack. Beating allows the ship to gain ground upwind by minimizing its leeway (sideways drift). The beating was often used as a pursuit or attack tactic when chasing or engaging enemy ships.
Pinching: This is a sailing technique that involves sailing closer to the wind than is optimal (i.e., with a too-small angle to the wind). Pinching reduces the speed and efficiency of the ship, but it also reduces its leeway and allows it to point higher upwind. Pinching was often used as a desperate or risky tactic when trying to gain an advantage or avoid a disadvantage in a tight situation.
The time when I was 16 years old and had a fake driver’s license to get into clubs. (This is a very long time ago when the licenses were paper).
A few weeks before, a clever bouncer realised my ID was fake. I won’t go into the details. He took it from me and advised that if I wanted it back I needed to go to the police.
I freaked out, went straight home (parents) and hoped I’d never have to think about it again.
There’s a knock at our front door. It’s the police (I can see them coming up from my bedroom window). I couldn’t understand what was happening.
My Dad answered the front door. I heard mumbling for a few minutes. I heard the front door close, and Dad coming up the stairs.
Dad called for my Mum. “Heidi, your Uncle’s stolen car has been found and it’s registered to here. I’ve informed the police that he’s living here at the moment (truth) and that he’ll sort it out tomorrow with them”.
Footnote: I heard all this from my bedroom as I was promising God that I will never, ever, ever have another fake driver’s license!
What you’re not being told about Apple Daily and Jimmy Lai
When Indonesia got loan from IMF in 1997, the Indonesian government was forced to terminate this project as one of requirements in order to get the loan from IMF.
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The planes in the picture were N250s. The first ever plane produced by Indonesian airplane manufacturer, PT IPTN. It was in the 1997 N250 first prototype made its roll out. The plane successfully took off and conducted flight test. Unfortunately, Indonesia fell into a severe monetary crisis in 1997 and had to go to IMF to get the loan. The IMF told President Suharto to cancel the N250 project and it was mandatory before getting the loan. Suharto had no option at the time but approved it. Since then N250 project was cancelled. IMF also told Indonesia to stop funding IPTN totally but Indonesian government didn’t fully comply what IMF wanted. The funding to IPTN was only greatly reduced and its business cores were diversified in order to survive with minimum budget support from the government, now IPTN changes its name into PT Dirgantara Indonesia.
Many said and believed, IMF intentionally terminated the N250 project was to accommodate the requests from some foreign airplane manufacturers which didn’t want Indonesia to produce its own planes because they wanted Indonesia to keep buying from them.
I won’t say getting load from China will not be followed by terms and conditions but I just wanted to show you how IMF put pressures on countries that borrow money from them.
I parked in a hospital parking lot, and when I came back to my vehicle, there was this young couple, early twenties having a heated discussion. She wanted him to call a taxi, and drive to a mall and buy a battery. He wanted to call a locksmith. The battery in their key fob was dead, and they couldn’t get the door open. They were getting quite mad at each other, thinking that the others solution was going to cost more and take longer.
I asked them if I could be of assistance, and they both wanted me to explain to the other why their idea sucked.
The guy suggested that maybe I could take the battery out of my fob, and put it in theirs just long enough, for them to open the doors.
I asked to see their key fob, and he handed it to me, thinking I was going to do his suggestion.
I walked to their car, put the key in the lock, and opened the door.
They both were stunned. Saying OMG, how did you do that?
They had never seen a car door opened with a key. I felt really old, and just a little smug.
Def Leppard • Hysteria || Jennifer Connelly • Career Opportunities
This is great.
Curried Beef
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Ingredients
14 ounces (400g) lean boneless beef
2 teaspoons rice wine
3 cups (750ml) vegetable oil for deep-frying; uses about 2 1/2 oz (75cml)
2 ounces (60ml) clear stock
2 tablespoons curry oil
1/4 teaspoon salt, or to taste
1/4 teaspoon ginger, chopped
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon cornstarch (corn flour) dissolved in 1 teaspoon water
1/4 teaspoon onion, chopped
1/4 teaspoon hot red chile pepper, chopped
Instructions
Cut beef into 1-inch square chunks.
Heat the oil in a wok over low heat to very hot, 350 degrees F (180 degrees C). Deep-fry the beef until it is cooked through. Remove beef, drain, and set aside.
Pour the oil out of the wok, leaving a thin film on the bottom. Reheat until a haze appears on the oil surface. Add the curry oil, ginger, garlic, onion, chili pepper, rice wine, stock, salt, MSG (optional) and sugar.
Stir the cornstarch to blend and add. Add the beef, stir-fry for 2 minutes, or until the sauce is thickened.
Here is Claudia Schiffer in her earlier days. If you are a heterosexual male (my perspective on this subject), this picture make your genes scream “I wanna mix with those genes!”
It’s not an intellectual response. It’s not a moral judgement. It is a primal response. You couldn’t stop it if you tried. In this picture, she is the epitome of beauty. This yells “fertile”, and “your (our) kids will be successful at reproducing, too”.
Remember, the future belongs to the people who show up. Reproducing successfully greatly increases your odds of having children that reproduce successfully.
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Brigitte Macron (wife of French President Emmanuel Macron) is not exactly an ugly woman, but I guarantee this picture doesn’t spur the same response as the one above.
In this picture, she is at, or close to menopause. That’s enough to shut down, or at least greatly mute the involuntary male response.
But looks don’t matter
Looks open up the door. They don’t keep you in the room.
The visceral response to those looks may last 6 months, or two years. But humans become acculturated to their normal surroundings. And even if your wife/girlfriend looks like this (Linda Evangelista in her prime):
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There comes a point where you are inured to it. You care more about whether she picks her nose and leaves the snot on the bedsheet (or whatever annoying behavior she has).
And then there’s that standard male desire for variety. Arnold Schwarzenegger was married to Maria Shriver
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Beautiful, smart, connected. She had it all. That should be enough, right?
Nope. He had an affair – and a child – with his nanny
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I can’t tell you what was going on in the Schwarzenegger-Shriver marriage, but it’s rather obvious that Maria’s looks didn’t mean a whole lot at that point in time.
So let me repeat the point:
Looks matter – they get you in the door. But they don’t keep you in the room.
Are you beautiful? Lucky you. You have a greater selection of mates to start with. But after you choose one, you need to figure out a relationship, and that’s hard. Really hard. Work on that. The looks will stop mattering, even before they fade.
The Average Chinese don’t understand GDP growth or PMI or Productivity or other Indicators
To them the only source of their worry is the REAL ESTATE MARKET
They have no inflation whatsoever
They have no unemployment problems
Their businesses have plenty of credit available these days
The Chinese who have invested a large chunk of their money into real estate now see the downturn in these markets and feel poor
The Chinese Economists know this and allow this to happen knowing the alternative is to keep fueling real estate speculation and spectacularly crash a decade later
Yet the Chinese people are stoic and practical people
In the end they will shrug, accept that their investments in real estate are going nowhere and offload them or stick with minimal growth
It’s a harsh pill to swallow but one necessary for the long term
China thus is doing pretty well relative to the rest of the world from the eyes of the average mainlander
In fact, except for the real estate slump, he would rank his life as very good
2023 was a good year for China
First the lockdowns ended and that was a huge relief
Second the country is chugging back to life. The demand is back to 2019 standards and slowly rising again.
I personally feel Chinas growth in 2023 could have been as much as 6% but the Chinese are keeping a lot of their success on the books so that they can boost their 2024 growth rate instead
Rather than a 6% growth in 2023 and 4.1% in 2024, better for a 5.1% growth in 2023 and a 4.8% growth in 2024
This way China exceeds it’s target for both years
So there is no need to distract anyone
The Average Mainlander doesn’t need distraction
He has relatives who inform him of their lives in other countries and he knows not one of them is better off than him.
Today I walked my son to his kindergarten class. It was cold and we were huddled together like sardines as we stood outside the door waiting for the bell to ring.
I saw you with your little boy just a few feet from us, and I looked down when I realized you were looking at us. I hoped you didn’t know who we were. I hoped you didn’t know my son was “that kid.” The one who’s not transitioning well in this school year.
I know what the kids say about my son. They go home and tell their parents my kid is bad. Sometimes he pushes and hits. Sometimes he is defiant and refuses to sit down, be quiet, or stay in line.
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I know because the kids tell him what they think of him on the playground. “Mark said I’m bad today.” Or “Aiden’s dad said I can’t play with him anymore.” And my heart hurts, because I know he’s struggling in school. And we are working every angle… in school with a specialist, at home, and through classes, books and resources.
Today, you looked at me, then at my son. “You must be K,” you said to my son. And I looked up and smiled sheepishly. It was an apologetic smile. Almost a “I’m sorry you know his name” smile, because that means you’ve heard the stories.
I said to you, “Yes, this is him.”
I whispered when my son stepped away that we are aware he’s causing some trouble and we are working on it. That we take his behavior very seriously.
And then you did something I never expected. I don’t know if I was waiting for you to tell me what you heard K did to your son, or just tell me off. But instead you told me about your older son who struggled with similar problems at this age. You told me that now he’s in high school and he’s a straight A student.
Instead of tearing me down, you lifted me up. You gave me hope. And you handed me an olive branch so I know that I do have an ally during school drop off. An ally I never expected.
You didn’t have to make that connection. You could have ignored us or pretended not to know us. Or yes — you could have told me what you think of my son (you would not be the first). But you didn’t. You showed me grace and kindness and you uplifted me more than I could possibly describe in words.
I told you I would love to learn more about steps you took with your older son. I would love suggestions and guidance and that I would call you. And you know what? I will call you. Even if no suggestions or guidance is ever exchanged. I will call you because you are a friend I want to have. You are a good person.
I will do something I normally despise: answer on behalf of someone else. This is just too good to not mention.
The words were: We are going to lie down for a nap. We are feeling tired and cranky.
It was just that: My wife, our toddler and I were going to take a nap on a weekend afternoon, because we were just not quite feeling ourselves. Before lying down, my wife called a doctor’s office to make an overdue appointment. All she got was a lady from the answering service – or possibly an Angel. We were not able to ascertain which, as we never met her in person.
The lady told my wife that the office was not open, and when it would reopen. My wife replied that she was going to try again later, as we were going to lie down for a nap because we were feeling tired and cranky. This had nothing to do with what she had called about – just making conversation. Still, only going by that, the lady deduced that we were dying of carbon monoxide poisoning. She told us to leave the house NOW, and called 911 for us.
Turns out the chimney had collapsed, and flooded the house with carbon monoxide. The levels were deadly – had we gone to sleep, we would not have woken up. The nice lady saved our lives, just based on my wife mentioning conversationally that we were going to take a nap. If that is not impressive, I don’t know what is.
Thanks, nice answering service lady, wherever you are.
MAJOR CORRECTION: My wife has read this answer, and she remembers telling the answering service lady that she was feeling woozy. That would have been a major hint – but I still find it more than impressive that she was able to save our lives just based on a brief phone call which was on its face about something else entirely.
When i was 12 there were a few kids at school who bullied me for whatever reason. It wasn’t bad physical bullying just name calling mainly. On weekend i was in our town centre calling my mother from a payphone. These 3 boys walked past and started banging on the phonebox shouting some names and proceeded to walk off.
Now for some reason, i this time i reacted. The only thing i had to hand was a full can of coke. I shook it up and opened it up just a tiny bit and threw it towards the boys intending to cover them in Coke. I threw it when they must have been 20-30 metres away and as the can approached them i shouted one of the boys names. “Paul!” (I’ll not use his real name) he turned round and the can hit the side of his forehead and he just dropped to the floor.
I ran. Oh, i did, i ran! Finally stopping at another phone box to call my mother and tell her exactly what happened. She was surprisingly ok about it despite me saying ‘Paul’ must have been really hurt. She just told me to get my butt home ASAP.
I didn’t hear anything about it until after the weekend and ‘Paul’ came in to school with a massive lump on his head coming out in a huge bruise. He’d spent the rest of Saturday in hospital.
Fortunately, i didn’t get into any trouble at all. I had only intended to cover them in Coke and could never have imagined hitting him square on his forehead at such a distance.
As kids are we all became friends in later years with even ‘Paul’ painfully accepting it was a one in a million shot.
Someone I know was diagnosed with cancer and given only 3–6 months to live.
It was a devastating diagnosis to her and her family. She was an amazing person, who’d lived a good, healthy life, and was only in her late-50’s.
But, as we know, cancer is a merciless disease.
She ended up getting on a strong treatment plan that allowed her to live almost 2 years.
The first 12–16 months of those 2 years, she more or less had a great quality of life and was able to travel, spend time with loved ones, her husband, kids, grandkids, making the very most of that time.
In the remaining 8–12 months of her life, things began to descend.
The cancer began to change her body, breaking her down. Her mind began to change and, consequently, her behavior did too. The medicine she was taking was no longer thwarting the onslaught of the disease.
In the end, in the final weeks of her life, it wasn’t pretty.
She eventually fell into a coma that doctors advised she would not wake up from.
In her final days and hours, her body seemed in great pain.
I won’t burden you with the details, but know this – her family had to see her in a state that would traumatize most of us had it been our own mother.
I’m not presuming the following statement would have been her choice; it is my, perhaps controversial, opinion:
People who know their life will end in an excruciating way should have the option, with the assistance of medical professional, to end their own life in a more peaceful manner.
It is far more humane than letting them be ravaged until the bitter end.
1. Just because you’re offended doesn’t mean you’re right. 2. You can’t be healthy and obese. 3. Everyone wants to GET old, nobody wants to BE old. 4. Most anger comes from feeling powerless. 5. The people you look up to are just as nervous as you are. 6. As people age, they get fewer chances to mess up. 7. All systems are essentially a minority ruling over the majority. 8. If you look in the mirror and find a dirty face, it might also be that the mirror is dirty. 9. HR is not there to protect you, it is in place to protect the employer. 10. Relationships are a one way street, whether you are the one in love or the one loved. 11. Some people will not like you no matter what you do. 12. In fact, some people are not qualify to have kids or even pets. 13. Upvotes on Quora are free. 14. Small achievements may come from hard work, but big ones require luck. 15. We are all biased, especially those who think they are not.
I was working in the seafood department of a major grocery store chain. We had on ad pink salmon for .88 a pound. My first customer of the day wanted me to scale it, fillet it, and pack it into 4-ounce portions. I refused! She immediately went and told the store manager about my refusal. I was willing to walk out if he insisted that I do it because, I was working solo and the cost of the fish was so low and the cost of the packaging was a lot, let alone the time it would take if I had to do them. He came back, we went into the back to discuss my refusal. I told him my reasoning. He told me that he would help me with it.
We returned to the seafood department, and he told her that he would be happy to cut it the way she asked. She was over the moon and handed him two packages of the fish. He gave me a disgusted look. He told me you refused to do the two fish, unbelievable, I am disappointed in your lack of customer service. I smiled. Then the same customer pushed into the seafood department the two carts filled to the top with the fish. She had over 200 packages wanting them all scaled, fillet it, and pack it into 4-ounce portions. I silently told him so! He refused to do it for her and told me that under no circumstance would we do anything to the fish but sell them in the bags. I agreed but did tell him that I was disappointed in his lack of customer service! He sent me home for the day! Being a union department, I was paid for the day since he didn’t follow protocol about sending me home. The meat department had to cover my shift; boy they were pissed at me!
I once stopped a very hot looking “model” (I use the term loosely) for speeding at nearly twice the speed limit. Mind you, I am not a ticket writer and can count on one hand the number of citations I’d written in the last decade. Truth be told, at my rank, I don’t even carry a ticket book. When I informed her why I had stopped her, she proceeded to hand me her business card with her cell phone number on it and leaned forward making sure I could see her quite ample bosom. Up to that point, I had no intention of citing her, and was just going to warn her to keep her speed down. However, once she suggestively tried to flash some skin, I called for a radio car to bring me a citation book so I could write her up.
“You’re going to write me a ticket? Nothing we can do to work this out?”
“Ma’am, I had no intention of writing you a ticket when I stopped you, but at this point, if I don’t, you’re going to go around telling everyone that all you had to do was bat your eyes and flash your breasts to get out of a ticket… Press hard on the pen, there’s three copies.”
The Airforce UFO Cover Up That Drove a Man INSANE | They’re LYING to US
As I grew up my bedroom was filled with all sorts of debris and things that would interest young growing boys in the 1960’s. This included scale plastic models, and figurines.
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Wall posters. Some of which were blacklight posters on black velvet.
black light poster
Old bottles that I collected, that seemed to decorate every nook and cranny of my bedroom.
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My collection of record albums. All in a wooden egg crates.
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My treasured collection of science fiction paperbacks… many of which were short story anthologies.
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My Doc Savage collection.
man of bronze
And miscellaneous stuff, which included military surplus. Clothing… often scattered about. A painting kit. A microscope… and a mortar and pestle.
And other things of questionable utility, but things which I (as a boy) found cool and interesting. Such as my Major Matt Mason figurines…
MMM
And then there was my great grandfather’s sword. This was a cavalry sword from one of the “Polish Resistance” groups that relocated in the United States after Germany annexed Poland. It had a long hilt and was really cool. As a boy, both my brother and myself would take it out and ohhh and ahhhh about this sword.
sword
My brother has it now.
It was one of those things that I muse about from time to time. Interesting trivia, from days long gone. I wonder what the sword would say if it could talk…?
Smoke. Seriously, I did it for 32 years. It costs a fortune in cash and even more in quality of life. There is no positive to smoking.
Judge people on looks. I have friends across the “scale of looks” from gorgeous to scary and I love them all for their individual personalities. Looks are fleeting, love is not. Friends are the best asset you can have in life.
Eat a crap diet. I’m overweight and just diabetic. I’ve loved pizza, chips and crisps (fries and chips for USA people) all my life but they’ve ruined my body and health.
Argue with people who live in echo Chambers. I still do this and it’s utterly pointless. You cannot reason people out of a position they did not reason themselves into.
Procrastinate. If you have time to do it, then do it. Everything you put off for another day builds up to a backlog. Get it done now and there is less pressure on you tomorrow. This lowers stress hugely.
My dad was a workaholic and we didn’t get to spend much time with him. One day my mother was sick and couldn’t handle my brother and I, trapped in the house with her, on a winter day, rough housing around the house. So my dad took the day off work, loaded us up in the car and started driving. I’m not sure if he planned anything or not, but we drove about 90 miles to the badlands, which were at a much lower elevation. It was December and there was no snow in the badlands. My brother and I went nuts running and playing, without winter jackets, on bare ground. He had made a stop at KFC and we had a picnic, and didn’t get home until after dark.. It was an awesome day, dad laughed and smiled a lot. My brother and I were worn out, and didn’t bother our mother when we got home.
30 years later, shortly after he had retired. I invited him to come fishing with me, and he said “You bet” and we were on our way. We had an awesome day. I bought KFC and we had a picnic.
He unexpectedly died three months later.
After he died, my mother said that in the months after our fishing trip, all his friends got sick and tired of him telling the story of going fishing with his son. He never stopped talking about it.
Obviously I have never forgotten the time he took us to play in the badlands. It was what inspired me to ask him to go fishing. Its been over 60 years since he loaded us in the car, and I still tear up thinking about it.
My husband and I have been married 50 years. We did not have children, and are each other’s very best friend. Last July, he had a triple by-pass and caught a serious staph infection at the hospital.
It is the end of 2023 now and he is strapped to intravenous pumps receiving 6 weeks of antibiotics because the infection is now in his chest bones.
He can no longer go out for walks in the country with me or do much of anything. He is all bent over like an ancient person, and has no energy at all. He has been getting progressively hard of hearing for the last 2 years but refuses to get a hearing aide, (male pride or denial, I think).
The other night, we were watching a movie and I had to constantly repeat lines that the characters said to each other so he could follow the plot.
At one point in the movie, I turned to him and asked him a question about what he thought of the plot.
He nodded and said “Yes”. When I realized that he was faking and actually could not hear me, it was like I suddenly realized that he was not really there sharing the movie with me. He could no longer hear me.
I felt SO alone, and miserable.
And when I thought about who I could call, what friend I had who could provide some support, I knew I could not be disloyal and criticize him, with all his health problems which are making him semi-absent, I felt totally alone in the world.
I regret not having more of my own friends, just for myself, who do not know him. And I realized that at 74, he is probably not going to improve- it is the beginning of the downhill slide for both of us.
Up until this year, I felt like we both had many miles left- now the reality has set in.
Didn’t happen to me but my friends played this April fools on some kids from another class. We were all in 5th grade, and around that time a lot of kids were getting phones. (A lot of them were iPhones.) My two friends, let’s called them Lena and Eve. They weren’t the type to brag about what type of phone they had, or make a bit deal about it. they kind of kept a down low about if they had phones or not. Only close friends of them knew that they were phone-less.
The prank was to tell the girls in the other 5th grade, girls who had their phones and were unhappy that they couldn’t use them during lunch or recess. Lena and Eve had told them, that today our teachers (5th grade teachers) had allowed them to use their phones in class. The reason why they weren’t using them at lunch was because they were worried that the teacher who administered recess might not be okay with them using their phones. They had even made a note, in handwriting similar to the teacher’s to make it seem realistic.
At first the other girls were skeptical and thought they were lying. What really came into play was at the end of recess, Eve and Lena had been able to get one of our 5th grade teachers, to tell the girls that they were pranking. That what Eve and Lena had said was true.
It’s was really funny when the next day, Lena and Eve had told them that they didn’t have phones or that the teacher would give permission for anyone to use their phone’s in class. Looking back it was silly, but well executed, which helped fool the other girls.
(I was in on, it. They had wanted me to join in, but at the time many people knew I didn’t have a phone. And that my parents weren’t planning on getting me a phone anytime soon.)
It doesn’t even sound real. That’s how dumb it was.
It was October 20th, 1986. The story of Aeroflot Flight 6502 began in the cockpit. An argument broke out between the co pilot and the pilot over flying skills. The captain insisted he could land a plane easy in zero visibility, without the autopilot they were using.
It then escalated into a full bet, the pilot saying he could land the plane blindfolded. The copilot accepted the bet, a bet which – if he won — would spell his own death. (Source: 32 Years Ago an Aeroflot Pilot Bet He Could Land an Airplane Blind. Leff, Gary)
The plane descended, the window covered with curtains. As multiple alarms went off, the plane continued to descend.
Then–the plane touched down on the runway at 280 km/hour.
The plane immediately flipped, burst into flames, exploding, and eventually sliding to a stand still.
70 people were killed in the accident, including the copilot.
The main pilot survived. And somehow only got a 15 year sentence, which was eventually reduced to 6. Which is equally baffling.
(Yes, I have been married and divorced three times. Wife #1 and I divorced primarily over her gambling addiction and Wife #3 and I divorced after less than a year of marriage amicably because we realized we both had made a mistake. We have remained friends since our divorce)
I sued my second wife (we will call her “Mary” though it is not her actual name) for divorce because of infidelity. I was able to determine and prove that Mary was continuing to have sexual relations during our brief marriage with the woman who had been her lover before we had met (she eventually married her girlfriend after our divorce when Massachusetts allowed for same-sex marriages). I was able to present a witness who testified that Mary had told her that she married me as a “beard” to improve her promotion opportunities at her company.
When we were in court before the judge, the judge, a Black woman, informed us that she was granting the divorce but she was not granting Mary the life-time alimony that Mary had requested. The judge also said that not only was she not granting Mary any alimony, since Mary made substantially more money than I did, she had considered having Mary pay me alimony.
Mary lost it, yelled at the judge that she wanted to kill the judge and me because since the judge was a woman, she should have taken her side and made me pay alimony. The judge, in no uncertain and quite colorful language, threw Mary in jail for 30 days for contempt and issued court orders of protection that Mary could not come within 100 yards of either the judge or me or she would end up back in jail.
I have not seen or heard from Mary in over 25 years – good riddance.
When he was around 5-6 years old, my brother—who is four years younger to me—had his legs suddenly go numb one night. What followed next was one of the hardest ordeals of my parents’ life. Months passed with them meeting various doctors, visiting different hospitals, knocking at the doorstep of every possible religious shrine—all the time with my kid brother in their arms, since he wasn’t able to walk on his own anymore. We were also buried under debts during this time.
There were doubts of permanent paralysis—the very mention of which was enough to break us down. From finding it immensely painful to walk, to not being able to get up on his own, and to not being able to stand at all, his problem was worsening by the day. Most surprisingly, all this while, he was as strong as, perhaps, only children can be in such difficult times.
During this period, it was not unusual for my mother to have sudden breakdowns. Once, she burst into tears while watching him playing joyfully. He wiped off her tears, and said*,
Don’t cry, mummy. See, I can stand and even run on my own!
Saying this, he tried to get up, stood on shivering legs for just about a few microseconds, and fell down—only to be safely caught in the arms of my mom, who hugged him dearly and cried some more.
This happens to be the most heart-wrenching thing that I have ever heard, but also a powerful one for the simple fact that it was a little child—my own kid brother—teaching us what life is all about—HOPE, in the direst of situations, among the most impossible questions, and during the most unimaginable tribulations.
P.S: The problem was finally diagnosed and treated correctly by one doctor who was as-if a Godsend in our life. Wrong treatment of a viral fever had left both the legs of my brother infected with the virus. Although it left him physically extremely weak for most part of his childhood, he plays pretty good Football and Cricket today. Touchwood.
*Translated into English, originally said in Hindi
P.S: A number of people have messaged me sharing instances of children of their relatives/friends facing the same medical problem, asking if I could provide the doctor’s details. It breaks my heart but as much as I would like to help, I can’t. This incident is around 20 years old. My parents happened to meet him on their visit to the Kalavati hospital, no idea about his whereabouts now.
Oh that’s easy imagine meeting a guy in college. You two barely have food to eat. You work part time with him to put together to pay the bills. Then you start complaining about student loans, and hopefully your salary is going to be enough to pay your student loans after graduation.
You go clubbing with the guy. Paid his drinks a couple times. Laugh at him for his card declining because he could not pay a 22$ drink for the cute blonde he’s flirting with at the bar.
You graduate. Stuck in an 8 hour job. Two plus hour commutes, trying to climb higher in your career. The guy you used to see every day, now you only see him once a week for drinks.
8 years goes by and on his 30th birthday he asks you to come drink with the guys but he wants to pick you up. You go outside waiting for him for 30 minutes and you can’t seem to find his Toyota Corolla, but a bmw parked suspiciously across the street. You think he’s stuck in traffic?
Then finally you hear him yelling at you from the bmw.
Oh shit? Did your fiancé let you spend the down payment you were saving for the house to get a new car?
Nope… I’m 30. My trust fund is accessible now, he says calmly while you wonder to yourself… what the hell just happened?
My mother had moved, and her new garage was smaller than her old, and causing her a lot of stress.
So she decided to give her car to my brother, and buy a newer smaller one.
We went to the dealership that my dad had always used, when he was still alive. We were looking at a 1 year old lease return, we took it for a test drive and my mother felt it would fit in the garage just fine.
We went into make a deal, and got a pretty reasonable deal. Mom signed the contract, and went to stand up, and almost fell over. I thought it was just from sitting too long. We went to the door, and her old car, was parked right in front of the door. She asked, where is the car, then, where are we. I drove her straight to the hospital, and they said she had a small stroke, she then had a larger one, before we left the hospital, and she never left the hospital alive.
I went back to the dealership to explain what had happened, and stop the transaction. I looked at Mom’s signature on the contract, and it was illegible.
The dealership refused to cancel the sale, and told me that they would charge storage fees, if I didn’t get the car off the lot soon.
There was a local TV show, that covered issues like this, so I emailed them, and never heard a thing back.
We ended up selling it privately for a few thousand dollars less than we had paid for it.
A week later the show called and wanted to do a piece on it, apparently, the guy had been on a vacation. I told him that it was too late.
I told everyone I knew to never use that dealership again. I have no idea if this had any effect.
Smoking cigarettes. I was on a ship for three years in the late ‘60s. Cigarettes sold for $1 a carton, while at sea. I worked in CIC, that dark room with all the electronic gear and plotting devices behind the bridge. The compartment was about 24 x 40. We’d normally have around eight enlisted and at least one officer on watch. During exercises like Sea and Anchor Detail, Vertical Replenishment, Gunfire Support, General Quarters, etc. there were around 30 people in the compartment. I’d guess that at least three quarters of the people smoked cigarettes. We had good air handlers and air conditioning, but there was a permanent haze from the smoke. Every position had an cylindrical ash tray mounted onto the gear.
I am told US Navy ships are non smoking now, with a small area set aside for those who still smoke. This, to me, is a major change for the good.
Technically I was “laid off,” not fired, after 31 years at the company. I was only working part time (10 hours/week), and was planning to retire fully in a year or two. Instead, I got laid off. They paid me almost a full year’s salary and gave me over a year of medical and other benefits. I collected unemployment for the next year and because of a legal action by my state against the bank that held my mortgage (for deceiving customers on mortgage loans), the bank had to write off my mortgage payment each month that I was unemployed (not deferred, not suspended—canceled).
So when I was told I was laid off, and the salary/benefits package I would receive, I immediately bought a bottle of wine, gave it to the head of HR, thanked him profusely, and left. That year was far and away the best one (financially) that I ever had. And to top it off, I had gotten divorced a year earlier. With all my free time and lack of financial concerns, I had time to date. I met a wonderful woman, and we have been together almost thirteen years now.
We lived in Los Angeles for many years and had gorgeous offices overlooking the Santa Monica pier. There was an earthquake that damaged the building and we decided to go south . . . closer to where one of our employees lived. Yes, Long Beach. This was good for our business as we needed to be close to a Post Office and we located a couple of miles from the main PO. The little 4 office building we went into happened to be 5 minutes from the central post office and we gained an hour or two extra work time. And, it seemed the wife of the owner belonged to the Long Beach Cancer League. They invited me to join; so of course I did.
At their gala this snooty man walked up to me and touched my arm and said “oh, velour” in a disdained tone. So I matched his tone and replied “Yes. This is LONG BEACH. I reserve the velvet for New York and L.A.”
My mother was extremely mentally abusive and neglectful. My parents had divorced when I was 7, yet my mom was so manipulative that she was able to get shared custody of me and my 4 siblings. For the most part I spent one week with her and then one week with my dad. When we’d be at my dads house, he would try to undo what my mother had done over the week we were there. He gave us love, took us to do things, fed us home cooked meals every day.
After we got a bit older we were allowed to choose which parent we stayed with and when. I think that age was 12 at the time(when you got to make the choice by law), so my oldest sister chose to stay with my mom full time because my mom so manipulative, she would reward her for staying with her, with treats and things none of the rest of us got. My second older sister made the same decision for the same reasons, plus my step-dad favorited her and she got anything she could ever want. (he did unimaginable things to her when she started staying there but that’s a story for another time).
When I got to choose, I decided I wanted to spend exactly equal amounts of time with each parent because I wanted everything to be fair. But my mom would poison our minds against my dad, saying he did all these things he didn’t do, trying to make him look bad to everyone. So eventually I started staying with my mom more, also because of the rewards.
When I was 13, it came out what my step-dad had been doing to my sister. He was arrested immediately. My sister did a recorded phone call with the police and talked to him about it and he confirmed everything thinking it was only her on the phone. There was proof. And my mom said my sister was lying, sided with my step-dad, and never really visited us when the court said we were not allowed to go back to her house, she had to bring our stuff to us(which she never did).
After all of that BS, we were all living with my dad and things got so much better so fast. We weren’t stuck with my moms and my step-dads abuse. My dad loved us and took care of us, got us in therapy, everything.
My mom decided to follow my step-dad to a prison 7 hours away from us, leaving us all behind, right after my 14th birthday. I haven’t seen or talked to her since(and I’m 23 now).
My dad took all 5 of us, loved us, fed us, did things with us, spent time with us. He became the mom we never had and the dad he always wanted to be. Took on making meals for 5 hungry teenagers, taking us to sports, appointments, things with friends, things with him. He stepped all the way up and became one super parent, and we never felt like we were missing anything because we were finally free from my moms and step-dads abuse.
He raised us all by himself, even after most of us had chose to leave him and stay with our mom. When she abandoned us, he was there. He took care of us and he did it with grace.
Other than theater-wide air defense such as the S-400/S-500, the Chinese military industry is completely indigenous, down to the chips and engine oil.
Note this includes China’s space-going rockets, and its satellite constellation.
Beidou, for example, provides global positioning coverage and has a chinese-built atomic clock at its core. It is completely indigenous in design and build.
The newer Chinese aircraft from helicopters to transports to 5G stealth fighters are powered by indigenous rather than Russian engines.
In other words, China does not depend on foreign suppliers/components to fight a war, because the Chinese economy is capable of supplying almost everything. After all, China has the most complete industrial supply chain of any country.
What does Huawei have to do with China’s weapons? Very little.
What does Nvidia have to do with China’s weapons? Very little.
The American sanctions/restrictions are commercial in nature and aimed squarely at disrupting/slowing down Chinese tech. Huawei’s 90% downturn in mobile shipment helped increase Apple’s market share over the past 3–4 years, until the emergence of the Mate 60 reversed the swing.
Even in AI, Nvidia hasn’t been slapped with hard bans, because China is one of its biggest markets. If it was truly a military issue, no American chipmaker would be allowed to do business with China, so this is just a convenient excuse, not too different from how garlic has been framed as a NATIONAL SECURITY ISSUE.
I was working in Manhattan. I got a call from my kid’s school that he wasn’t feeling well and had to go pick him up. I had just finished developing a CD-based training program (this is early 90s, before this stuff was done online). On my way out, my assistant told me the CD master had just arrived and gave me a little plastic bag with the CD in it. I was in a hurry to leave and figured I could drop off the CD at home with my kid before returning to work.
Getting around Manhattan basically means getting into and out of yellow cabs. It’s pretty easy to find one.
image 240
Typical New York street
I catch a cab to my kid’s school. About 15 minutes later, I get dropped off. I greet my little one in the headmaster’s office and tell him we’re off to the doctor’s. As I’m waving down a taxi with my kid’s hand in mine, I realize I don’t have the CD bag. We go back into the school and it’s not there. Nobody remembered seeing me with a bag and, frankly, I didn’t remember having it in hand when I walked into the school. Oh, well, I thought, that was stupid. This was before Uber where you could call your ride to check on the back seat. This was, in fact, before cell phones. The bag and CD were gone.
I refocused on getting my kid to the doctor. Got him checked out. Got into another cab to go a nearby pharmacy to pick up a prescription. Walked home and dropped off my kid off with his nanny who was waiting there. All this time I was hopeful they would be able to reproduce the CD master, wondering how long it might take, if it might delay the project, if I should tell my boss, etc.
I wave down a cab to go back to my office. While I’m thinking about all these things I see a bag on the floor. I pick it up and pull out my CD.
My assistant sees me walking in with the bag. “How is your baby? I thought you were dropping that off at home.”
“Kid is fine. Oh, the CD, yeah…” I figured she wouldn’t believe me if it told her the truth.
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea S2E22 “The Death Ship” Full Restored
You ever meet a stunningly beautiful woman who dates asshole after asshole?
I know I have met plenty of them. I even dated a few, when I was that asshole.
When you stop and think about it, it makes absolutely no sense, right?
A really beautiful woman will have LOTS AND LOTS of options. So there must be some successful, confident and charming men who are also kind and caring, right?
It would only make sense that those kinds of guys would pursue her too, so why does she keep dating those assholes?
As I started to understand myself better, it became clear to me why that is.
Some women are wildly attracted to emotionally distant, disrespectful, scumbags.
However, they didn’t wake up one day and decide “hey, who is the worst kind of person I can be in love with?”
No, this likely started very early in their childhood where they had very poor relationships with their parents, family and loved ones.
Their mother and/or father, conscious of it or not, modeled a type of person that is emotionally distant, disrespectful, inconsistent, and sometimes loving.
It conditioned her to believe that “this is what someone who is going to take care of me looks like.”
Since every child absolutely needs love and affection, the lack of it will drive her to desperately try to win their approval and attention to get it.
She will grow up to repeat this pattern with every relationship she develops.
Every time she meets a man who is dismissive, emotionally distant, disrespectful and unloving it triggers a deep desire in her to win that man over.
Every time he does show a bit of affection, she will feel deep satisfaction, feeling like she finally won the love she could never get before.
She feels she is finally enough.
She will believe that is what it means to be “in love” with someone.
It’s like being on drugs. Every time he doesn’t care she withdraws, every time he shows some love, she feels that euphoric hit of crack.
It is all about that “high”. A man who is good to her all the time can’t give her that because there is no bottom, he is just consistent, and to her… it is just boring.
She likely wants to want a good guy, but she just doesn’t, because he cannot give her those highs and lows an inconsistent asshole can.
These women aren’t attracted to assholes because he’s more confident, charismatic, or independent.
No, No, No.
It’s because he is exactly what she needs, a drug. A drug like any other for a person who has deep trauma that cannot resolve it on their own.
When my son was about 3 years old, he had a playdate with a friend’s child. We had a lot of playdates with this child. I wasn’t fond on the child nor his parents. He was a little terror and was very violent and mean. They lived on our street and would just show up at our house unexpected and uninvited. Of course, being 3 years old, my son loved having a playmate and, of course, I would allow them to stay.
One afternoon, my husband was home and they suddenly appeared. So, we sat in the livingroom watching the kids play. We had to watch them. The other child would do things destructive or injurous to my child.
The little boy was playing with a very heavy toy with a long handle. He was standing in front of his mother. Suddenly, he reared back and swung the toy as hard as he could and whacked my son in the head with it. Then, he laughed and laughed as I tried to ensure my son was not dead or unconscious! His mother just laughed and said “Hey… watch it there now.”.
My husband had his fill. He jumped up and headed toward the child and his mother. He was furious and it was obvious someone was going to get a spanking… either the child or his mother! His mother grabbed him and ran out the door as fast as she could. They never came back. Basically because the next time they showed up, my husband met them at the door and told them they weren’t welcome.
I was on a European trip when I fell ill with cold and shivering. The next morning I felt I had experienced food poisoning, but was able to drive back to the base site (700 Km) the next day and rest up for a day for the fight back to Canada. Arrived in Toronto 8 hours later and picked up by a friend who drove me home but commented on my appearance. I had prebooked an early family doctor appointment for the next day. Got up drove there and was told by the Dr. that I must immediately go to emergency. I explained I had to get the car home and would phone for ambulance immediately. He warned that I might never get home, but I went anyway. Ambulance arrived 15 minutes later and took me to emergency. Booked in and as I was handed back my medical card, I remember putting it in my wallet. Woke up 5 days later with tubes out out of everywhere strapped in the trauma ward. I had collapsed in emergency and essentially “died”. Fortunately I was resuscitated and put on life support. Cause was pneumonia, a complete surprise to me. During blackout no memories, no heavenly visits, nobody told me I needed to “go back”. Saved by 24/7 care and antibiotics. Pneumonia, the silent killer.
Steve. Steve was the weirdest classmate I’ve ever met because he was an absolute brilliant genius.
My school was predominantly ages 10-12, but we also had a Community Outreach building on the grounds which housed a school for students of all ages who were disabled.
Steve had Down Syndrome. He was in the Community Outreach classroom for all but one day per week when he joined our class.
Each week the “regular” students were given a list of 50 spelling words and expected to memorize them. Not an easy task. Each week we had the option to complete exercises which earned us “points”. By Friday, week’s end, we needed to have accumulated 50 points to pass that week’s lesson plan.
We had to design a board game, for instance, using each spelling word which might earn us 10 points towards that week’s goal. Writing a story using each word in a sentence might earn us 30 points, and so on.
We needed 50 points.
The only exercise which earned us the “Full Monty” was an oral spelling test given by the teacher while standing in front of the entire class of students as they watched on. A daunting task, to say the least.
Missing one spelling word, you’d flunk the test and lose all your points for the week and need to not only do the previous week’s exercises but the current week’s as well. It could be very easy to fall behind taking the oral exercise.
I attempted it only once. I got 49 words correct and botched the 50th! Boy did I feel stupid.
Now Steve…he was a spelling genius. And had nerves of steel!
Each and every week he’d visit our classroom and stand before our class and challenge the teacher to give him the oral spelling test. 50 words. No errors. He’d earn his 50 points in one go.
Spell “pugnacious” the teacher would intone.
Steve, the ever cool, would begin…p-u-g….NACIOUS! Pugnacious!
And so it went. One after the other. Flawlessly. 50 words. Never a mistake. Ever. Week after week.
We always gave him a standing ovation. What an accomplishment! He became our mascot. Our hero.
Steve was never bullied on the school yard as you read about today. He had Down’s, but we all recognized something special in him.
He taught us something.
There is often genius and complicated wisdom in the most simple and elegant things in life. That I missed my 49th word is indicative of my life. Something is definitely missing. I admit it.
Yet, Steve nailed each and every spelling test flawlessly until the end of the year. Never missing one letter and never hesitating. He knew in his heart the right letters to say. Perfectly.
We gave him a party. We hugged him. He was our buddy. We were proud of him.
Sadly, as life went on for the rest of us and as we graduated from Jr. High, then High School, moved on with our lives and out of our small community, Steve was never able to make that transition.
Life is shorter for people with Down Syndrome.
My mother sent me his obituary while I was attending classes in college. I wept as I read they had misspelled his name.
Several years ago my daughter, about 16 at the time, was talking with one of her friends online. The girl had taken some Oxycontin and started telling my daughter how her vision was going in and out, and she felt like she was going to pass out. I asked about the girl’s parents, but they were not home. By this time the girl was saying that she was scared she had taken too much. I called 911, told them what was going on and gave them her address.
Apparently the parents arrived home at the same time the police and emergency services got there. She was taken, by ambulance, to the hospital. It turned out she was fine. She told my daughter that she hadn’t really taken anything, but was just saying that to see what she would do. I don’t know if that was true or not, but my daughter no longer was friends with her. I’m sure she got into trouble with her parents, and possibly the police, either way.
Update: I told my daughter about this answer, and she told me that they took the girl to the hospital and had to pump her stomach. I just knew that the same type of thing happened several times over the years. She got into many different kinds of drugs. She finally got sober, sadly, after her brother died of a heroin overdose.
When I first arrived in Thailand, I noticed that women working in banks and government offices changed from their high heels to much more informal, comfy shoes that they kept under their desks.
I had never seen this in American offices. I was fascinated!
The broad range of ‘office’ shoes entertained me during the long waits. Cloth or leather flats were the norm. Most were bejeweled, or brightly colored.
My favs were those worn by a department head at the National Lottery Bureau…fuzzy, orange, Garfield house slippers.
Open-toed shoes were absent as they were considered ‘impolite’ (rubber flipflops were allowed when coming in or going out during rainy season).
I was doing part time teaching for a government university in those days, as were several other foreigners. We all taught twilight classes, leaving the campus well after the Thai professors and staff.
Only the deans had enclosed offices. Everyone else had assigned desks in a huge room.
Gene* (who had been incountry long enough to know better) decided to delve under the desks and put the ‘in office’ shoes on the owners’ desks as a prank after everyone had gone home.
For Thais, shoes are associated with the feet, the lowest part of the body. Traditional Thais take issue if feet are pointed at them or at any revered article. Putting feet on a desk or table is very disrespectful. And, of course, shoes carry germs and dirt.
The staff found no humor in what he had done. The traditionalists were furious and demanded that Gene be dismissed, even deported.
The university Dean did dismiss him but helped him get a job at another government school across town, but with a severe warning.
We never found out why he thought that would be funny.
I won’t lie to you. Yes, my truck at 40 tons puts more wear on the road than the typical family sedan.
However. This truck pays close to $20,000 per year in road use taxes. That goes a long way toward maintaining those roads.
Something else to think about. If your roads were not built to have one of these run down, them. Just how cheap do you think the government would get when building the roads.
My guess is a very thin layer of asphalt or poorly compacted gravel. If your road was built for a 3500-pound car, it would be potholed within 2 years.
Added on April 2nd, 2022:
In light of the firestorm that this seems to have lit. I will add the following.
In many states the road use fees are diverted for other uses, so in light of the fact that road maintenance is being paid for and money also used for bike paths, mass transit projects, parks and such. Is the truck not paying enough or is the car paying too much?
Try looking at it from the opposite view. The states may have plenty of money and rather than raising the truck fees, the standard car fees should be lower.
I did not see this myself, but from what I understand about Scotland, I believe it.
Circa 1980, a young redheaded Scottish girl transferred into a local High School. Her family had just moved to Canada from the old country.
For the first few weeks she was the ‘new and exotic’ girl. Guys paid a lot of attention to her.
One guy had a seriously jealous girlfriend who considered herself to be the tough, kickass type.
She approached the lass and told her in no uncertain terms to lay off ‘her boyfriend’, or she’d regret it.
The lass stated that she had not done anything to encourage him, and it wasn’t her fault her boyfriend was straying. Perhaps he was looking for an upgrade?
The tough girl freaked.
“That’s it! After school we’re going to fight! You’re going to get it!”
The lass sighed and calmly said (in a Scottish accent) “All right, fine. Do I bring a knife, or a gun ?”
Tough girl: “What?…”
Lass: “I’m just over from Scotland, and I don’t know your local Canadian traditions for these things. So, knife or gun?”
TG: “Seriously, what…?”
Lass: “Well?”
The tough girl and her friends backed away and gave the ‘crazy lass’ a wide berth from that point on.
Some tourists just don’t realize how wild the National Parks can be.
The Germans were boyfriend/girlfriend + two children (ages, 34, 27, 11, 4). The flew into Los Angeles in 1996 and visited various places in southern California and Las Vegas. They were reported missing when they did not return home. Tracked by credit card usage to Furnace Creek in Death Valley National Park (It was July, and the day they were at Furnace Creek, the high temperature was 124 F), a visitors log was found with a signature from the woman stating that they would be driving over Mengel Pass next. They were in a rented minivan; this is Mengel Pass:
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An extensive search was launched but no sign of them was found. Then in October, a National Park Service helicopter happened to spot a minivan where no minivan should be. It was the Germans’ vehicle. Three tires were flat, ripped open by the terrain. The van wasn’t even on a road, rough as they are in the area, but had been driven down a wash. Another extensive search was launched, but then called off when no sign of the Germans themselves were found.
Fast-forward 13 years. Two hikers find the bones of two adults. Accompanying IDs reveal them as the man and the woman. Some other scattered bones were found, presumably of the children but never officially identified. They were presumably trekking cross-desert toward a military base (shown on the map in their possession) under the assumption that the base perimeter would be staffed. But spanning more than a million acres, most of the base is empty desert and would have offered no chance as salvation.
The National Parks are great, and it doesn’t take more than a modicum of common sense to enjoy them. I’ve personally coaxed rental vehicles down moderately rough roads in DVNP (but I would never try Mengel Pass in any vehicle – it’s just beyond my skill set) and I’ve hiked in the desert. But always prudently, in the right weather, and with the right equipment/supplies (water!). They’re not Disneyland, and if you’re unwise they have a variety of ways of killing you.
I think for an American, the hardest thing to adjust to might be the limits of a social welfare society.
I’m an American who moved to Denmark more than a decade ago and became a Danish dual citizen, so clearly I like Denmark.
But living in Scandinavia compared to living in the USA involves a lot of limits.
For example, you will probably have a much smaller living space than you are used to in the USA (unless you now live in Manhattan or the Bay Area.) If you could afford a house in the USA, you’ll probably have a smaller one in Scandinavia, or even an apartment. If you used to have an apartment of your own, you’ll probably have a room in an apartment, and at least in Copenhagen, apartments usually don’t have a bathtub. You’ll also have much less “stuff” to put in the apartment; “stuff” is expensive in Scandinavia.
The USA is a consumer society; businesses do whatever they can to please the consumer. That’s not true in Scandinavia, which is an equality-based society. While I can’t speak for Norway or Sweden, customer service is awful in Denmark. Shops really don’t care if you come back or not, and don’t count on returning something you’re dissatisfied with. In restaurants, you’ll either have to serve yourself or wait a while to be served; restaurants are chronically understaffed because wages are so high. The server won’t come back to ask if you’d like another cup of coffee or are happy with your meal. Personal services like nail salons and massage places pretty much don’t exist, or are wildly expensive.
Health care is tax-financed (not free, you will be paying for it with a big cut of every paycheck) and great for short-term, fixable things like a broken leg or a cat bite. Longer-term sicknesses, like chronic fatigue or eating disorders, get less support. Also, there are limits on which pharmaceuticals can be prescribed: many post-op patients get only a combination of Tylenol and Advil for pain, for example. If you’re reliant on one type of pharma, check to make sure its equivalent is available before you move. There are also relatively few preventative care appointments or tests; no annual physical, for example, and psychiatric counseling is limited. If you want it on an ongoing basis, you’ll probably have to pay for it yourself.
EDIT: Many commenters have pointed out that health care can vary in Denmark based on the region you live in, which is a good point. However, there are problems with providing psychiatric care nationwide, in particular where it concerns young people, as the Danish Health Authority itself acknowledges: Selv Sundhedsstyrelsen siger det: Psykisk syge behandles for ringe
(From the center-left national newspaper Poltikken.)
Socially, too, you may run into limits. Many Danes still have the friends they made in kindergarten; university is often where they meet the last of their close adult friends. Work colleagues are not “friends” and beyond their 20s rarely go out and drink beers together. People rarely chat with strangers, or offer to help strangers they see struggling with directions or big boxes or whatever. You may miss the relaxed chattiness and warmth of the USA, particularly during the long Danish winters, where the darkness can be brutal.
And then, of course, the language can be a limit. You’ll find that most people aged 10- 50 or so speak excellent English, but you’ll never really get into the culture until you speak Danish well. Besides, there are always annoying little things that are only in Danish – a voicemail menu, a hairdresser’s website – so will need to make a commitment to learning the (difficult) language if you really want to fit in.
Clearly, there are a lot of positive things about living in Scandinavia. But a lot of Americans approach moving there with the idea of “I’ll get everything I have in the USA, plus more!” That’s not necessarily the case.
Looking for a bold and exciting new wing recipe? Make our miso caramel chicken wings recipe with sweet and salty miso caramel-teriyaki sauce tossed with crispy air fried chicken wings!
miso caramel chicken wings
Prep: 20 min | Total: 40 min | Yield: 4 servings
Equipment
Air Fryer
Ingredients
16 chicken wing drumettes (about 2 pounds)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
3 tablespoons white miso
3 tablespoons P.F. Chang’s® Home Menu Teriyaki Sauce
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
Sliced green onion (optional)
Instructions
Place chicken wings in a large bowl and toss with 1 tablespoon vegetable oil. Sprinkle cornstarch, salt and pepper over wings and toss until well coated.
Heat air fryer to 350 degrees F and place wings in a single layer in air fryer basket, working in batches if needed. Cook wings until juices run clear and they are just starting to brown, 10 to 14 minutes, shaking the basket once during cooking.
Increase heat to 400 degrees F. Turn wings so the skin side is facing up. Continue air frying wings, in batches if needed, until they are crispy and golden brown, 8 to 12 minutes.
While wings are frying, pour sugar and water into a small, heavy-bottom saucepan; bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Boil until sugar is caramelized and a deep amber color. Do not stir the caramelized sugar.
As soon as sugar is caramelized, remove from heat and add butter. Swirl the pan lightly to melt the butter. Whisk in miso, teriyaki sauce, and red pepper flakes. Heat pan over low heat and continue whisking until sugar and miso are smooth. Keep sauce warm until wings are ready.
Remove wings from air fryer to a large bowl and pour sauce over; toss to coat. Garnish your miso caramel chicken wings with green onion, if desired, and serve!
Everything is louder when it’s very cold outside. If you live near a major airport, when the temperature drops well below freezing, the low-flying aircraft will sound like they’re landing on your lawn.
Dog poop steams in the cold. So do sewer grates.
When you park your car, you need to pull the windshield wipers away from the windshield, lest they freeze to it once the car cools down.
It can get too cold to snow. There’s a “sweet spot” temperature range for snow. (About 15–35F). Lower than that, and there’s not enough moisture in the air for snow. Higher than that, and it’s slush or rain.
Thin water pipes in your house that run against an outside wall, like the pipes to your dishwasher or ice maker, will freeze.
It’s very important that your lips are dry if you want to smoke in the cold. Wet lips will freeze to anything when it’s cold outside, including cigarette butts. You will rip the skin off of your lip if you’re not careful.
Yes, back in 2006, I was travelling a lot for a major project, at this particular time, England. I can’t remember if it was London or Manchester, but the queue to pre-screen boarding passes was really long and slow.
About 15 – 20 people ahead of me was a couple probably early 30’s. I couldn’t hear exactly what was going on, but there was obviously some tension between the person checking documents and the lady. The exchange of words continued even after their documents were checked, and the lady even came back a couple of times to give the worker more verbal abuse. By the time I was a few people away waiting to have my documents checked, the lady couldn’t leave well enough alone and kept shouting at the worker.
The worker turned to her colleague and said, I don’t have to put up with this abuse. She walked towards the couple and asked for their boarding passes again. After a few moments of discussion, the couple handed them over and the employee simply said “You are not travelling today, please follow me”. The look the man gave to woman was priceless!! About a dozen people started clapping as they walked off with heads hanging low….
The CIA Murder that Exposed MK-ULTRA | The Frank Olson Assassination
November 28th, 1953. New York City. At 2:30 AM the body hit the sidewalk.
A few seconds later, a shower of glass. The doorman of the Statler Hotel yelled to the lobby that there was a jumper. The night manager rushed out and saw him. A man, about 40 years old, lying on the pavement.
He was on his back, wearing only his underwear and blood started to pool around him. 13 stories up, a single window was open; its curtain flapping through broken glass.
The night manager knelt beside the man, whose eyes were open and was somehow still alive. He desperately tried to speak but was choking on blood and couldn’t be understood.
After a minute or two of trying to communicate, the man took a final deep breath and was gone.
Nobody knows for sure what he was trying to say before he died. But one thing is for certain, it was something about the CIA.
I don’t know that society ‘looks down’ on single people, but a large chunk definitely seems to feel sorry for single people.
A friend of mine recently decided to end things with her boyfriend. She felt so relieved, as the relationship just wasn’t suiting her.
She said that all (bar one) of the friends she broke the news to said ‘Aww, I’m so sorry.’ It ticked her off. She understood it, but it still raised her hackles a bit.
‘Why are they all feeling bad for me?’ she asked. I did it, because I know I’d prefer being single to being in a relationship that was draining me.’
I learned this lesson myself when I divorced. Everyone said ‘Sorry,’ whilst cocking their heads. This despite the enormous relief I felt over escaping a pressure cooker after many years.
From that time, I vowed I’d never have that reaction when someone tells me about their break-up. My first reaction when they break the news to me is always to ask ‘And how do you feel about this?’, then take it from there, depending on how they answer.
One of the only good responses I got when sharing the news of my divorce was from a mum at my son’s school. Without missing a beat, she said ‘Well, congratulations. Unfortunately for me, my husband and I are still together.’ And her husband was standing right next to her!
All three of us burst out laughing, and it diffused the awkward situation. She totally grasped that getting divorced or being single is not the end of the world.
People act like being single is on par with being stranded on some desert island all by yourself. Like you’re Tom Hanks with only Wilson to keep you from spiralling into madness.
It can be likened somewhat to being on an island, I guess, but it’s one with superb amenities, no stresses, and a pre-approved guest list. That’s not anything to pity.
I was an experienced hotel maid working at a Motel 6.
I was assigned five or six rooms. I opened the door to the first one, closed it and found the head housekeeper. I knew it would take at the very least, one or even two shifts to clean it. I made her go look at it; she didn’t want to.
Six college students had rented it for the semester. After the first month or so, they refused to let the room be cleaned. They were to do all the work. I have no idea why management would agree, but they had.
The carpet, literally in most areas, was knee deep in old pizza boxes, fast-food containers, empty pop and beer can, popcorn, chips, new and used condoms and unidentifiable debris. The room stunk and my eyes watered.
It took at least two hours before I cleared out enough trash to even start cleaning.
Spilled liquids had saturated the pillows, mattresses and box springs to such an extent that every thing had to be discarded. The shower cutain and room curtains were shredded. There was a huge pile of filthy sheets and towels with clean ones mixed in.
No one had realized the clean linens and towels went in, but dirty ones never came out.
All of the furnishings were broken, stained, burned, vandalized or all of that. Most had to be discarded or replaced; very little was repairable.
Filth coated the lower walls, the ceilings and I’m not going to discuss the bathroom.
I worked 16 hours instead of the usual six and it was still pretty bad. I left a detailed note with the night clerk and a copy taped to the housekeepers door saying what and what not I had done.
The head housekeeper showed her appreciation of all my hard (and it was hard) work the next morning by greeting me with a huge list of everything I had not done and was yelling at me about what an awful maid I was.
I didn’t have to take that abuse. I knew that two maids had called in sick. I didn’t give a single damn and quit right then and there.
I went to a Ukrainian Orthodox wedding in Canada. A good friend had converted to Orthodox for his wife.
The ceremony was amazing, the priest chasing him around the altar 3 times, hitting him with his scepter 3 times, etc. Quite a bit more entertaining than your typical wedding, but long and drawn out.
The part that blew me away, and made me say you can’t be serious, was the priest saying, and I am paraphrasing here, as I don’t remember the exact words.
“As a man must obey the will of the lord, the wife must obey the will of the husband”
I thought things like this hadn’t been said for 50 years.
But, to show how little attention people pay, I will relate two incidents.
In between the wedding and the reception, a group of us retired to a nearby bar. At the bar, I said good luck getting Mona to obey Greg, as she is the dominant one in the relationship. Everyone said, they don’t say that at weddings anymore. I asked them if they were at the same wedding I was just at, and quoted the priest.
Then later at the wedding reception, which was held in the church hall, I joked about it with my friend. He said they don’t say that anymore. He called his wife over for verification, and she agreed, and said my memory was flawed. A little later in the reception, the priest was walking by, and I cornered him, and he agreed that is what he had said.
I asked him to confirm that with the Bride and groom. He came over with me and I asked him in front of the couple. They were both stunned. They had been through the rehearsal and the wedding and never heard what they had committed to. Mona finally burst out laughing and said “Good luck with that”
They know which females populate their territories and know which they’ve bred with. It’s that simple. If they find a female w cubs that he NEVER mated with, he will kill them.
What’s interesting is sometimes these fathers actually step up and care for young. There was an instance in India where a mother tiger died (poacher i believe) while her cub was still dependent on her. The father had met her previously & had a good relationship.
Then, after her mom died she was seen with her father briefly at a water hole and then 24/7. He was hunting prey and bringing her to it. Giving her protection, basically taking over the role of her mother. This has never been documented bbefore. Totally unprecedented behavior, as fathers are usually completely dismissive and hands off. At most they come through and meet their offspring, sharing a meal the mother caught. Aka freeloading. Goes to show tigers are individuals with wide ranges of behavior and potential
One night some ding dong opened the drain of a deep fat fryer, dumping hot oil onto the floor of the cook’s line.
Fortunately, the fryer was turned off, because a lit deep fat fryer will ignite if there is no oil inside. This happens because the residual oil within the fryer will immediately exceed its flash point and you’ll quickly have a fire on your hands. The guy who did it was planning on cleaning the fryer, which requires it to be drained. The tank drains into a catch pan, which contains a paper filter, and a pump recirculates the filtered oil back into the fryer’s cooking tank. For some reason, the dude had the fryer’s spout aimed at the floor, not at the tank.
The perpetrator of this crime had experience cleaning the fryer, they just weren’t paying attention. As gallons of hot oil hit the floor, they ran, as did everyone else, and the fryer emptied its belly onto the kitchen floor. It was a huge hot sizzling greasy mess that took more than an hour to clean up. We didn’t have any option other than to squeegee the oil into the floor drains, then we wasted dozens of side towels drying the floor. It wasn’t until we had the mess cleaned up that everyone could finish cleaning their stations and go home. There was a lot of anger, and one case of severe embarrassment in the kitchen that night.
Couple Finds Out Their New House Comes With A Cat | The Dodo
It was a very windy day in the late 1980’s. I was driving past the Ford motor works in Halewood, Liverpool. I was on the main dual carriage way.
In front of me was a Mini and in front of that Mini was a flatbed truck carrying planks of wood.
We were heading East out of Liverpool towards Widnes. Traveling at about 60 miles per hour.
I saw a gust of wind begin to lift some of the planks of wood on the truck.
One of the planks actually had enough wind get under it that it rose off the truck, snapped it’s tethers and then launched like a caber end over end back along he carriageway. The plank end landed just in front of the Mini bent and sprang up and over the Mini, the other end of the plank then hit the road just in front of my car and did the same spring up and over my car but twisting it diverted slightly so as it fell behind my car it fell onto the pavement ( sidewalk) running along the car factory perimeter fence.. A box van behind me hit the plank and shattered it into several pieces as it broke on the roadway and kerb.
It was a near miss for what could have been a serious accident.
My conclusion is that it cannot be answered because trying to judge the Russian Empire by modern standards will inevitably fail.
Take a look at this picture:
image 150
Photo source: Yle News.
Photo credit: Carl Jahn / Finnish Heritage Agency
This is a prisoner from the Finnish Grand Duchy that has been deported to a labor camp in Siberia. On foot.
He’s chained to a cart because he has tried to escape. His head has been half-shaved to brand him as a convict.
We treat prisoners quite differently these days.
Russia was never particularly enlightened, but it did, at times, have more ‘European-minded’ leaders. Finns didn’t mind them.
Alexanders I and II could be described as such.
Nicholases I and II (Nikolai) could not.
Finland was granted extensive autonomy by Russian standards. It served Russia’s own interests, but Finns didn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. They took it and ran with it.
Things weren’t bad at first. A stronger Finnish identity created a buffer between Russia and its archnemesis, Sweden.
Then Russia caught the nationalist bug itself and the developments in Finland were no longer compatible with where Russia was going. That’s when Russia tried to take it all away and then some.
It was too late. Finns were past the point where they’d accept being subjugated like that again, or even tolerate a so-called benevolent czar.
I was selling very cheap rubbish diy home alarm systems with equally rubbish motion sensors. The company I worked for at the time had some fantastic products, this most certainly was not one of them.
They were so bad I would go to a customer’s house to replace parts with multiple spare parts because the replacement was often faulty too. Argh, I hated that product.
This one day I knocked on the door to be greeted by a very attractive young lady wearing gym clothes. She told me straight up that she was heading to the gym just as soon as her partner arrived. I was told he would arrive imminently and that is how it turned out. However before he returned home I was asked if I would like a glass of water, it was a very hot day and I said yes.
I followed her into the kitchen at her request. She went to the refrigerator and prominently displayed on her refrigerator door were nude photos of her. Several of them. I think they were professionally done and presumed she maybe was a model but I didn’t ask and didn’t even mention the photos. That was something I hadn’t seen before.
Very hot day that because I remember being so very thirsty. Must have had 4 or 5 glasses of water before I finished that job. Yes it was hot and I was thirsty.
That answers the question but that wasn’t even the weirdest part of that call out. The partner strikes up a conversion with me, while I’m working and asked me how well I knew people at my company’s head office. I told him I knew most everyone. He then asked me if I knew such and such which, believe it or not, was my boss. My boss was this guys ex-wife!
I am pretty sure I didn’t blurt out loud, “You traded up nicely!” but I do know I at least thought it very loudly!
That was a weird house call, a very weird day I will never forget.
This actually happened to me many years ago. I was a property manager of 80 units. My boss and I had a heated exchange and in haste he fired me on the spot. He asked me to stay until he could find a replacement. “Sorry Charlie!” I cleaned out my desk and handed him the keys, and I left the property of my own volition….
I was off-site the rest of the week. My now former boss was blowing up my phone. “Where are you?” then it was, “You are needed in the office?” I ignored his calls. He then messaged me on Facebook and said it was “with great urgency that we talk”. As it turned-out 2 members of the office staff (there were 3 all together) quit! The residents had started a petition to reinstate me – 60-plus signatures in all. He would not cave and subsequently received somewhere around 15 to 20- thirty day notices in effect terminating their leases. Additionally, some of the residents (refused to pay their rent. The community quickly became unstable and increasing hostile towards him. The morning shift manager at Tiger Mart next door to the complex – a tenant of mine, refused him service.….
He offered me my job back. I let him sweat for a day, then accepted and returned to my job. I was never so moved by an experience as I was at that job, not because my boss had given me my job back, but, rather, because the tenants did!
As far as I can tell, “free will” simply refers to a lack of self-awareness, and the inability to understand why we make the decisions we make.
And yes, that lack of self-awareness definitely exists.
People make decisions, but they are not quite sure why they made that decision.
For example, people will go into a shop, end up buying a load of useless and overpriced crap that they don’t need and didn’t intend to buy.
If they are unaware of the multitudes of manipulation techniques that are implemented by the shop to achieve that result… then they’ll call that lack of awareness about their decision making process “free will”.
Likewise, people who grow up exposed to religious propaganda, and then end up believing in the religion that they were exposed to, usually lack the self awareness to notice the whole process. And so they’ll call their belief in the propaganda they were exposed to a “choice made by free will”.
When I was in fourth grade, one of my best friends had his new (2 week old) bike stolen from his backyard. A few days later, we were at a shopping center right near our apartment complex, and there was his bike, chained to a bike rack. We knew it was his bike, not an identical one belonging to someone else, because he had put a sticker on it, and the sticker was still there. We called the police, but the thief got there before the police did. The thief was probably about 4 years older than us, and a pretty big kid. We told him that the bike belonged to my friend, and that we wouldn’t cause any problems if he just gave it back. He insisted that his parents bought him the bike, and it just looked like my friend’s bike. While we were arguing with him, the police arrived. He again insisted that the bike was just an identical one that his parents bought him.
The police asked us if we could prove that it was his stolen bike. The thief was shocked when my friend said “Yes, as soon as I got the bike, I wrote my name and address and phone number on an index card, rolled it up, and put it in the tube of seat. If you take the seat off you’ll find that card.” The thief stood there slack-jawed. The police got a wrench and removed the seat, and sure enough, there was the index card rolled up inside. The policeman handed the bike over to my friend and drove off with the thief to go have a chat with his parents…
I have always thought that “PCP gives you super human strength” was an urban myth, until one night, during my residency.
There was a kind of smaller, skinny young guy that was restrained to the gurney. He was high on PCP and who knows what else. Drug screen had been sent but wasn’t back yet.
He was making such a fuss, in the ER, that they placed him in a small isolation room.
I’ was a resident. The attending was wrinkling up his nose as this guy is yelling all kinds of profanity and threats.
He sent me in to assess the patient.
I told him that I’m not going in there alone.
He told me that the patient is restrained.
“Nope.”
Ok. We’ll go in together.
I step over to the room and knock gently.
“Sir, this is Doctor Boehm. I’d like to come in and talk to you.”
No answer.
I try again.
No answer.
Everything, in there, has gone quiet.
The attending and I exchange glances. Then, he reaches around me and pushes the door open.
My first fleeting impression was a bloody blade, of some sort, coming at my face.
I jumped back and practically fell over the attending physician.
I yell for security, at the top of my lungs.
People come running.
The patient, I kid you not, had some how managed to get on his feet, restrained, with the gurney ON HIS BACK.
He has, some how, ripped open the sharps container. He was trying to attack, anyone with in reach, with a pair of bloody scissors that he found inside.
They finally got him restrained and sedated.
I was shaking like a leaf. I couldn’t stop thinking about how my kids could have lost their mom.
I never went anywhere near an agitated patient, without Security, again.
Ask any veteran of Stalingrad in WW2 and it would be Pavlov’s house. I have been there to see it after reading about the importance of this building to the battle. It will cause you goosebumps! What a story!
This guy Yakov Pavlov was a Sgt. in the Soviet army and held this position at all costs. The Wehrmacht tried and tried to destroy the building over the course of 58 days and failed. Quite possibly, if this building had fallen, then the battle would have been won by the Nazis. This would have given them access to the fuel supply that they needed and the outcome of WW2 totally changed.
image 148image 147
Vasily Chuikov, commanding general of the Soviet forces in Stalingrad, later joked that the Germans lost more men trying to take Pavlov’s House than they did taking Paris.
In the aftermath, captured Nazi maps used during the battle showed that EVEN THE NAZIS called the building “Pavlov’s house”!
I don’t know what the Chinese Singaporeans, mainlanders and in HK learn from the Taiwanese people’s experience but I can tell you what I, a Malaysian Indian, learnt from it –
1.I would certainly not call it an achievement, since that word implies an end with bigger and better results as well as a greater general good for all the people involved in the process.
2.Democracy as it is practised in Taiwan (and quite a few other places I can think of) is the fastest way of putting the corrupt, the feeble-minded, the easily manipulated and the snake oil salesmen in power.
3.That version of “democracy” seems like the best way to surrender control of an entire region or nation to the elite oligarchy with interests in either arms or other consumer goods.
4.That version of “democracy” is, however, the best and easiest way of convincing the stupid, the brainwashed, the feeble-minded and the generally apathetic that they are enjoying “freedom” while giving up many of the actual rights willingly.
For all the reasons above, I am convinced that the Taiwanese people’s “achievement” of democracy is one of the best and most humane ways of creating, empowering and maintaining a hidden dictator class of ruling elite oligarchs.
Years ago a girlfriend and I were having lunch on a patio, we had daiquiris, shrimp and fried rice.
She ate all of her fried rice, left all of her shrimp, and ordered a second daiquiri. I asked her if there was something wrong with the shrimp, and she said no, she was sure they were fine, but she was on a diet.
I had observed in the past that she loved her carbs, and would eat carbs instead of healthy things like skinless chicken breast, pork tenderloin , skipjack tuna and shrimp.
So I asked her why she was leaving the lowest calorie thing, eating the higher calorie fried rice, and ordering an even higher calorie drink.
She laughed at me and told me that everyone knew that meat/protein wasn’t healthy and had higher calories than anything else.
The shrimp had roughly half the calories of the same weight fried rice, and less than half the calories of her daiquiri.
How could you go on a diet and not know this?
I never told her how many calories were in her favorite perogies and french fries.
After Chatting With 408 Women And 25 Dates, A Viewer Confirms ONCE AGAIN Why Men Keep Walking Away
Gosh! I am so glad that I am not on the dating scene in the West. China is so refreshingly different.
My dad had a grate answer. This woman parked her BMW in our driveway whenever she went to the Beauty Parlor. She blocked is so no one could leave until she returned. My dad asked he not to park in our driveway and was ignored. One day he had enough. He went in and got the sugar boll from the table and pored about half on the ground by her gas cap and let the door to the cap open. Then he put a note on her windshield, “THIS IS A REAL SWEET CAR. I BET IT WOULD RUN ON PURE SUGAR.” and went in to watch the fun. An hour later the woman came back and found the note, looked at the ground by her gas cap and called the Police. When they arrived, they pointed out she was on private property and they could do nothing however, they advised her not to risk driving the car with contaminated gas. Have it toed to a garage the tank drained and refilled. Save some of the gas and have it tested to prove it was tampered with and sue. She did. She had to pay the tow truck, the garage to remove and clean than refill the tank after putting it back, pay the lab to test the gas only to find it was never tampered with. She never parked in the driveway again!
My husband passed away almost 5 years ago. His ex wife had been a pretty much constant source of frustration the 6 years we were together (and they were divorced). She continued to harass me the entire 6 weeks of his hospital stay. At 10:30pm while I was sitting with my husband, her texts started. She told me I better go straight home and start packing. According to her I had 72 hours to vacate our house after my husband died. There was no truth to that. She had no ownership in our home. I simply replied that my lawyers (and they also notified her divorce attorney) had assured me the clause in the final decree promised a $1000 fine and 30 days in jail for any harassment of me. I forwarded that response, along with her threatening texts, to her daughters and each of her “friends” who were harassing me. I also informed her security would throw her out of the funeral if she showed anything but respect. Her harassment pretty much stopped!
Girl Cried As The Shelter Cat Hugged Her Tightly And Wouldn’t Let Her Go
Girl Cried As The Shelter Cat Hugged Her Tightly And Wouldn’t Let Her Go. Rachel, a college student at the time, was volunteering at the shelter. She had been helping animals at the shelter for a long time and was spending her last volunteer day that day.
My ex-mother-in-law had a dishwasher in her kitchen that she never used. It was several years old, but was in like-new condition. It still had the paperwork and a packet of detergent inside that had been provided with the machine.
One evening after dinner at her house, I offered to take care of the dishes and started loading them into the dishwasher.
She heard me and made a beeline for the kitchen, letting me know that in her house all the dishes were to be washed by hand.
I asked why she didn’t like her dishwasher. She was convinced that hand-washed dishes are more sanitary than machine-washed.
She agreed to run a little test. I ran hot water into the sink and asked her to wash a dish in it. She couldn’t because the water was way too hot for her hands.
“The water in your dishwasher gets hotter than this.”
My MIL was in her late-60’s at the time, but she wasn’t too old to learn new tricks. After that, she used her dishwasher regularly and was happy with the time and effort that it saved her.
Girlfriend Brings Up Open Relationship And Has MELTDOWN After Boyfriend Dumps Her Right On The Spot
Quick one. The general idea behind a woman offering an “open relationship” is for her to date and fuck who ever she wants, while the boyfriend / husband sits alone at home watching the kids, dogs and cats.
A Japanese girl, streaming live video on YouTube, was roaming in Germany. While walking there (racist) people were harassing her, but the girl did not pay much attention to them. Her innocent grin persisted on camera.
But while she was eating food in a restaurant, an older man started sitting near the girl and making faces like this:
image 146
Like this man, another racist person also made faces to tease the girl. Eventually the girl became a little sad because a person passing by had almost dropped her camera.
image 145
At the end of the video, a man approaches the girl and apologizes. The man tenderly states that he is ashamed of the behavior of other German people. He looks at the camera and says, “This girl is very nice, and please come to Germany.” The girl melted at seeing this and hugged the person.
image 144
Making a foreign guest a character of such harassment goes far beyond the limits of despair.
I had a student who came into my history class and told me how she hated history, hated me, and did not want to be there. She then said I am a black lesbian, EFF YOU whitey. I looked at her the class hearing this was not sure what or how I would react. I smiled and said, so does this mean we are not going to have lunch later. She looked at me as if to say something profound but just shook her head. Silence was deafening for a few minutes. It was our first day of class, I said my job is not to make you love history but my job is to assure that you have a basic historical understanding. I will make a deal with all of you, give me three classes, if you do not like what you are hearing, seeing, reading, or learning drop the class, add another class. But I ask you keep an open mind. We have a class section called stump the prof, its your turn to ask me history classes. It has to be related to American history is the only catch.
She would ask me questions every class and they showed an understanding that I admired. She was not afraid to express herself, she was not polished, she was blunt and to the point. We watched a documentary on the Triangle Coat Factory Fire in the 1900s and said with a sadness in her voice, Prof that could have been me or any of us girls in this class. What she taught me is we all can change and become a better self. Her willingness to see these young dead women in caskets due to neglect made her realize it could have been her. She changed from a angry young woman to a stronger empathetic history lover.
My husband worked for an LTL trucking company. When he told his work stories, he began to mention a driver called “Nemo.” I didn’t think much of it until he referenced an older story that I knew was about a driver called (I forget his real name*, so let’s say) John, not Nemo.
When I asked, my husband explained that John had earned the nickname “Nemo” and it wasn’t going away any time soon.
Most of the drivers delivered to the same area every day. Familiarity improved delivery times. However, John, on the same route for almost a year, didn’t seem to learn any shortcuts.
They would frequently get calls from customers asking where their delivery was. Dispatch would then call John, asking how close he was to the delivery, and John would respond that he didn’t know because he was lost.
Dispatch would then pull up the GPS, find John’s truck, and give him directions back to the customer. The manager would ask dispatch what they had going on, and hear, “I’m finding Nemo,” so often that soon nobody called him John anymore. He will live forever in our stories as “Nemo.”
* I asked my husband what Nemo’s real name was. He doesn’t remember either! Forever Nemo….
Riiiight… The MiG-41 was due to go into service in 2028. Notice I say ‘was’; I gather that most of the more sophisticated components are a little hard to come by now, and that money is also rather tight; Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine has almost certainly delayed the MiG-41 by several years, if it hasn’t killed it stone dead. You can’t use looted washing machine circuits in a 6th-generation fighter.
Then there’s Russia’s track record on Wunderwaffen in recent years. The T-14 tank and the Su-57 spring to mind as projects that look great on paper and shiny in parades – and then somehow never quite make it to the front lines in quite the form or quite the numbers or to quite the schedule that were announced.
And the MiG-41 is still a little vague as to what it actually is and does, given that it’s supposedly only a couple of years off production. Is it 6th-generation hypersonic near-space miracle? Or is it a MiG-31 upgrade: a Foxhound with better engines? Meanwhile, Boeing has a physical flight demonstrator of its NGAD programme candidate up and running, and Project Tempest is in development here in the UK, Europe, and Japan.
And nobody – given how Russian equipment has performed in Ukraine – is going to want MiG-41s if they can have either of those, let alone ‘dream about owning’ the MiG.
There is an old Quora proverb: before you ask why, ask if.
Husband and wife interaction in China
One of my youtube videos. Only 12 people viewed it.
Optional Toppings: confectioners’ sugar, gingersnap cookie crumbs, finely chopped pecans and melted white baking chocolate
Instructions
Chocolate Mascarpone Bourbon Balls
Beat the mascarpone, confectioners’ sugar and bourbon in a large bowl until smooth. Add chocolate wafer crumbs and pecans; stir until blended. Refrigerate mascarpone mixture, uncovered, overnight.
Shape mascarpone mixture into 1 inch balls; roll and coat with toppings as desired.
Store covered in the refrigerator.
Mascarpone Rum Balls
Beat the mascarpone, confectioners’ sugar, rum, eggnog and cinnamon in a large bowl until smooth. Add gingersnap cookie crumbs and pecans; stir until blended. Refrigerate mascarpone mixture, uncovered, overnight.
Shape mascarpone mixture into 1 inch balls; roll and coat with toppings as desired.
Store covered in the refrigerator.
Notes
Balls coated with baking cocoa or confectioners’ sugar may need to be coated again before serving.
The balls are best served cold.
U.S. “M2” Money Supply Collapsing Faster than During Great Depression
The supply of physical cash money in circulation inside the United States is collapsing fast than it did during the Great Depression. The chart below, from the Federal Reserve, shows the facts:
Money Supply Collapsing Since 1930s 1
It shows M2 money on a year-over-basis is contracting by the most since the 1930s.
M2 is decreasing, every time this happened in the last 150 years there has been a DEPRESSION. Here’s a chart to prove it:
Money Supply V ersus Depression
Mind you, the chart above is from MARCH . . . . it’s gotten worse since then!
As cash is taken out of the economy, the economy runs out of steam and stalls . . . fast.
What followed the Great Depression?
What’s going to follow this economic collapse?
If you answered “world war” you’re correct!
We’re being looted.
Over 50% of the money given to Ukraine is unaccounted for, for instance.
This is the looting stage before the country falls. All planned out.
Yes. I was driving my elderly parents to their apartment. My son was in the front seat. I was pulled over for speeding. It was one of those road that went from 45 to 25 without changing the road or the neighborhood. My parents were fighting in the backseat, my son was telling them to please be quiet. The cop said the usual, “do you know why I pulled you over” My reply was just give me the ticket I have to get these two home as they are driving me crazy. He asked me if I’d mind stepping out of the vehicle. I said no I didn’t mind. Anything to get away from them. He then just talked to me. Told me he understood how fighting elderly parents can grate on a person. He asked if I was on the way to the elderly housing which was about 2 miles down the road. I was and acknowledged it. He said just take a couple of deep breaths. I will talk to you till you feel up to being in the vehicle with them. Just do the speed limit, you are almost there. Then go to Culvers and treat yourself and your son. You both could use it. It took me about ten minutes to calm down. My parents were still fighting but I got them home and took my son and I out for ice cream as ordered. No ticket. He did not even ask for my license and registration.
I have the perfect answer whenever anyone insults you.
“You’re right. What’s your point?”
Kills them every time.
Example: I was parked in the very first spot in front of a high school where I would be teaching night school. I had about a half hour before I needed to head in, so I was reading the news on my phone. A sixteen year old chickeeboo tried to back her car enough in front of mine to somehow claim she was parked legally. But most of her car was over the hash marks that indicted a walkway. Also, because she’d parked so tight against my front bumper, I wouldn’t be able to leave without her moving first. So I strolled up to her car and explained she was parked illegally. She could move about twenty feet ahead to the next legal space. I returned to my car to continue reading.
She didn’t move her car. She sat for a while, probably pondering her killer take down, then popped out and approached my car. She indicated I should roll down my window, which I did.
She said, “Your attitude makes you look old!”
Wow! Zinger! Total destruction… except… not.
I gazed at her calmly and said, “I am old. And you’re still parked illegally. Move your car.”
She flounced back to her car. Pondered whether she should try another killer take down. Then she moved her car.
I enjoyed a night of class knowing I could leave whenever I wanted.
Next time someone insults you, try it. It does work. I used it on my MIL until she finally stopped insulting me. And trust me, that was a miracle. She insulted everyone.
I think the little boy in this photograph takes the cake. His name? Henk Heithuis. And I am warning you ahead of time, his story is absolutely gruesome and terrifying. Heithuis was born in the Netherlands in 1935 and placed in the foster system, to be cared for by Catholic priests. Now priests had a tendency of abusing young children under their care, there have been many such cases… but Heithuis was not like most victims… he was about to go public.
image 237
Usually, the abuse was quietly pushed aside, shrugged off, swept under the rug. It’s been that way for centuries. Victims stayed quiet out of shame and fear. Not Henk Heithuis. He decided to make a stand. For himself and for all those others he had known who were abused, molested, raped. So he went to the police, and officially accused the priests of sexual abuse. This was revolutionary, and absolutely unheard of in the 1950s!
image 236
What Heithuis had not anticipated, is the absolute cruelty and the far-reaching power of the institution he was about to face. Since he was still legally a minor at the time of the abuse, and at the time he made his accusation, Heithuis was still a ward of the state, unable to make his own decisions, the court argued.
He insisted, however, that he was raped.
The priests then came forward and denied this. Instead, they instead, Heithuis was a homosexual boy who had “seduced the priests”, can you imagine their audacity? The young victim vehemently denied the accusations, maintained he had been raped and that he was, in fact, heterosexual — he even had a girlfriend he hoped to marry as soon as he reached the age of maturity.
image 235
The church, however, had quite a bit of influence with the courts. They convinced them that Heithuis was, in fact, homosexual. And in the 1950s, homosexuality was still illegal in the now-so-liberal Netherlands. The treatment consisted of either years in an institution, chemical castration, or physical castration… with Heithuis, no rebuttal was allowed, no second opinion considered and no option given — he was to be castrated immediately. Which he was.
They drugged the teenaged abuse victim, drove him to a clinic down South and strapped him to a table where they surgically gelded him. After the operation they kicked him to the curb… Heithuis was broken.
Mentally.
Physically.
He abandoned his friends and his fiancée and became a sailor. He made it as far as Japan, when he broke down and, when on shore leave, found his way to the Dutch embassy. Here, he told his story to a diplomat who took pity on his fate. He even showed his scars, and explained how his hormones were now out of control, his body no longer felt like his and he was suicidal.
image 234
“Please tell my story…” Heithuis insisted, “make notes, remember it. They may come for me. They may kill me.”
Surely it wouldn’t be so bad, his friend, Cornelius Rogge, assured him. Surely they would not have him killed. How could they? But Heithuis was sure of it. Arrangements were made with the shipping company to have him brought back home to his country.
When he returned, Heithuis, helped by his friends who knew his story, once again pressed charges. This time for forcible castration, lying about his sexuality and mental health problems as well as slandering his good name. Still a fiery chap, still refusing to surrender, he wanted justice, he wanted his good name restored.
But in 1958, shortly after pressing charges Henk Heithuis got into a car accident and died on the spot.
The police confiscated all his personal belongings and material provided to them by the deceased. All material was destroyed on the day of his death.
Cat love is so strong
Here is one of my MM youtube videos… It only has 6 views. Why?
Originally Answered: As a police officer, who was the most truly evil human you ever encountered?
Midnight in Glasgow, two cops got behind a stolen car and gave chase.
The stolen car weaved about the road to prevent the cop car overtaking. It narrowly missed oncoming vehicles, turned without warning, crossed to the opposite carriage and twice mounted the pavement.
Inevitably, it crashed.
Head on into a parked car.
The officers extricated John, a battered, bruised and belligerent 13-year-old boy from the driver’s seat. They found the car to contain stolen goods from various break-ins.
When the cops took John home to his parents, they discovered that he had been missing for four days. His parents had not been looking for him, they hadn’t even reported him missing.
These are the worst people I came across, the parents who take no interest in the children they bring into this world. The people who don’t care about anyone, even their own offspring.
Within a few years, John found himself incarcerated in a Young Offenders Institution.
As part of a rehabilitation program, they took a group of young offenders to an outward-bound camp. Also attending the camp was a group of special-needs children. They gave each young offender the responsibility of looking after one special-needs child.
After a day spent climbing, one leader found John sitting on his bunk crying.
John spent the day with a kid with Down Syndrome.
He walked with him for miles, made him tea on a burner and shared his sandwiches.
When they got back to camp, as the sun settled behind the horizon, his kid climbed on to John’s lap, put his arms around his neck, hugged him tight and told him, “I love you.”
“No-one ever said that to me before,” John said as he sniffed back his tears.
Given that this is a PhD student, it’s appropriate to talk theory vs. practice.
In theory, she could go to one of the following:
Department chair
Director of graduate studies for the department (or director of the PhD program)
Human resources
In practice, since she has a great deal to lose, I would consider playing a more cautious game. I’m not recommending she do these things instead, but I would recommend considering one or more of them. I’m going to assume her advisor is a “he”, just to simplify writing.
Document everything. If it’s all verbal, that’s fine; she should still note everything that’s happened, with approximate dates and a list of anyone present and/or who might have overheard.
Collect evidence. Even if it’s her emailing you to complain, that shows a paper trail. Obviously, if there’s email, text, voicemail, etc., from her advisor, even if it’s ambiguous, she should collect it.
Find out if the school has an ombudsman. Many schools do. This is a person who has the ability to speak confidentially about anything. Generally speaking, this person is NOT a mandatory reporter, and that shouldn’t apply if he’s simply verbally expressed romantic interest.
Find an employment lawyer. This will probably cost a few hundred bucks on retainer. Yes, I know, broke grad student, but seriously, this is a potential legal nightmare.
What would I do? Obviously, I can only speak hypothetically, but I would probably do all of these things, and quickly, then I’d speak to HR as my first official act involving the school (unless the lawyer advised otherwise, but they won’t). My hope would be that all of this is entirely unnecessary and that he would respond appropriately to “no thanks”, but I think he’s already crossing a line by making romantic overtures to his own PhD student. That’s usually against university rules and always unethical.
EDIT: Saeed Doroudiani makes a good additional point: a sufficiently independent, well-run graduate student union (GSU) can help here, too. However, there are few guarantees with a GSU. With an ombudsman, there’s a guarantee of privacy, and with HR, there’s a guarantee that a policy/procedure will be followed (and that should be publicly available). You could lose control if someone in the GSU chose to share out of turn or to go public, and there are no protections for you. A well-run, independent GSU won’t do this, but there are no guarantees that this is what you have. Get some information before talking to them. At best, they can act as effective advocates, but at worst, they can undermine your (already limited) control of the situation. Thanks, Saeed!
EDIT: If you want a good laugh, look through some of the collapsed comments. There are some great ones. One person accused me of being homophobic for stating my assumption that the offending professor is a man. Another discusses strong personalities but is just a heavily coded, “if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” Actually, on reflection, I don’t recommend reading them, but they’re amusing to me.
What happens when you type incorrectly? You press backspace and retype it again.
This is a stenotype.
image 238
A typewriter, used by shorthand writers. Like for example, a journalist typing down a speech. He needs accuracy and speed while typing. He can’t have the politician repeat his words again and again. They have specific set of letters from the above set which have specific meaning. They type that.
image 17
(That’s a better view of the keyboard.)
What if they make a mistake? They have a key (the middle key in the original typewriter picture) for space. But where’s the backspace?
Now, modern day texting.
Her: What’s your favorite color?
Me: Ted.
Me: *Red. Stupid autocorrect.
What did I do?
I added an asterisk to correct my mistake.
How did the use of asterisk come up?
Well, it’s a practice by shorthand writers to add an asterisk beside the mistake, to indicate it’s a mistake and correct it later on. That’s how the practice of using an asterisk while texting came up.
All your life has been a lie.
You’d be thanking that asterisk right now for saving you from all those embarrassing autocorrects your phone made. 🙂
I parked in a hospital parking lot, and when I came back to my vehicle, there was this young couple, early twenties having a heated discussion. She wanted him to call a taxi, and drive to a mall and buy a battery. He wanted to call a locksmith. The battery in their key fob was dead, and they couldn’t get the door open. They were getting quite mad at each other, thinking that the others solution was going to cost more and take longer.
I asked them if I could be of assistance, and they both wanted me to explain to the other why their idea sucked.
The guy suggested that maybe I could take the battery out of my fob, and put it in theirs just long enough, for them to open the doors.
I asked to see their key fob, and he handed it to me, thinking I was going to do his suggestion.
I walked to their car, put the key in the lock, and opened the door.
They both were stunned. Saying OMG, how did you do that?
They had never seen a car door opened with a key. I felt really old, and just a little smug.
Why “Nobody” Lives On Australia’s Big Island State: Tasmania
As a boy, living in Pennsylvania, I possessed the normal (and perhaps natural) brick-a-bract and flotsam and jetsam that accompanies most boys in the 1960’s. Model airplanes. Cubscout uniforms. Bottle collections. Debris that I picked up here and there. Scale models. Baseball playing cards, and the like.
Some of my most prized treasures consisted of my arrowheads… and my Indian-head pennies (and Buffalo Nickels). These were kept in an old Mason Jar on a shelf in my room.
Every now and then I would take them out. I would hold them. Fondle them. Feel the weight of them, and look at the details on them. I would then put them back, and go on with my life.
Eventually I went to university. During that time, my brother was selling odds and ends of mine for money or trade. I started to notice that things were missing, but since I hadn’t been “playing with them” for four years or more, it just didn’t seen significant to me.
…At that time.
…
Tiny treasures. Lost in time.
My unappreciated fragments of my life, discarded by others who cared not for their significance to me personally. They just did not care.
This trend continued throughout my life.
Tiny treasures. Lost in time.
…
Things that were important to me. Things that mattered to me. Things that represented memories, thoughts, ideas, and my personality… discarded by others who did not share my emotions about them.
Yes. The first year that they opened Buckingham Palace for tourists, I happened to be in London and got tickets. We had the girls and the wait was long so we walked behind the annex and let them move around. There was a gift shop I bought a catalog from.
When our ticket time was close to the front when we came back. There was a lovely Japanese women who was working the crowds and checking tickets. There was a fiftyish woman who tried to walk by her. She politely asked for her ticket. It if course was for a much later time. I only want to (looks at the catalog) buy one of those. The guide politely refused.
Then it came. She loudly screeches, “Do you know who I am. I am a millionaire in the US.”. I quickly interjected that most of us were at her age. I knew I had to shut her down before she got going and the guide was terrified she was so antagonistic. “Luckily you do not need to go in there if all you want is the guide and told her where to buy one.” She of course stormed off. I apologized for my fellow countrywoman. I told her you have to nip them in the Bud or you have an incident. The philosophy is to create such a scuffle you let them through. That is not wise when other people are waiting in long cues. Could not believe it.
I was on a flight to Mexico City, my daughter and I were sitting in business class. My daughter was 6 then and she was reading a kids book, the flight attendant started talking to her since her niece read the same books.
She was nice and asked for a pic with my daughter and the book etc. When we deplaned, I forgot my ipad on the back of the front seat. I didn’t realize that until 5 hours later which was the time of our layover so I only realized it when I had to go through the security point again.
I went to lost and found and they had nothing, I called American Airlines and they had nothing. Then one day later I got a phone call from the flight attendant telling me she had my ipad.
The passenger on the return flight found it and gave it to her. She should have turned it into security, but she knew if she did that I would not see it again, instead she had someone check on my details and get my number so she sent it via FedEx to me and made sure I got it when I was back in Miami.
My daughter chose a nice art craft thing in Oaxaca and we sent it to her as a token of appreciation. She went out of her way to make sure I got my ipad returned to me and for that I will always be grateful.
Edit 1: Thanks all for you nice comments and upvotes, even to the skeptics that thought this didn’t happen. Trust me it did. Thanks!
This is DISGUSTING and Biden is about to sign it into law
My brother called me to let me know our dad was in the ER and it didn’t look good for his survival. I drove like a bat out of hell the 120 miles to get there. In the ER waiting room sat my brother & his wife, who knew nothing and had not been given any info or updates on our dad in over 2.5 hours.
I went up to the admitting desk to ask for an update and was told to sit down…that the clerk at the desk was busy and couldn’t deal with me. Unacceptable response so I just marched into the actual ER room to find my dad. Brother and SIL followed.
Found my dad and he is basically gray with no one attending him. The attending comes up to me and starts screaming at me. I asked him what was wrong with my dad, (who has a heart problem and has a pacemaker). The Dr responds in a horrible accent and terrible English that my dad has vertigo. It took several tries to figure out what he was saying and even the nurses were having a problem understanding him.
I lost it and didn’t care if I got arrested or not. I loudly proceed to tell the Dr that my dad is gray, not green, indicating heart problem & that my dad had his last heart surgery at this hospital 1 year prior. That I want a heart monitor on my dad ASAP.
The smug Dr asked me where I my medical degree. I smiled and again, loudly said that I didn’t have one but that I had a law degree. That I hoped he enjoyed his sojourn in the US because by the time I’m done suing him, deportation will look like a good option.
He quickly put on a heart monitor on my dad and it showed my dad was having a heart attack as they attached it. Luckily, they were able to treat him and he lived many years after that.
3 things:
This was at a top nationally ranked hospital
I filed a complaint with the BoD and the Dr was let go due to his repeated negligence.
I was bluffing — I don’t have a law degree!
Respect is earned not demanded
Grilled Peanut Butter Sandwiches
image 107
Ingredients
Peanut butter
Sliced bread
Butter
Chocolate chips (optional)
Instructions
Spread peanut butter on one piece of bread and put another slice on top to make a sandwich.
Butter the outsides and cook on skillet until golden brown.
Flip and cook the other side.
Notes
Chocolate chips can be added to the peanut butter if desired.
This girl had to have surgery, it was her 9th but 7 of the surgeries were done when she was a baby (all by the same surgeon). She has these tubes called shunts that drain the excess fluid from her skull to treat a condition called Hydrocephalus. Well after she went into the ER with abdominal pain (she had appendicitis) they checked her shunts to make sure they weren’t what was causing the pain. They were working but unfortunately one of them needed to be fixed later because it was disconnected. (Her neck muscles kept the space open to let fluid out.)
A few months later she returned to the surgeon who had done those 7 surgeries (she sees him every year for a checkup) and surgery was scheduled.
The day of the surgery arrived. She checked into the hospital with her parents and was wheeled back to the OR. The anesthesiologist told her to breathe in the laughing gas. He asked if it was working. She said “No…no…no-yes! Yes! Yes!” As she said that she began to lose consciousness which frightened her so she began to cry out “I’m scared! I’m scared! I don’t wanna die! I don’t wanna die!” The anesthesiologist removed the mask and said “It’s ok, you’re ok, you’re not going to die.” But she was still crying and scared.
To try to soothe her, her neurosurgeon came to her side and said, “Hey, why can’t dinosaurs talk?”
“Why?” She asked
“Because they’re dead!” She burst out laughing and passed out.
She woke up perfectly calm and not the least bit anxious.
How do I know this story?… That girl… is me.
*Drops mic. Walks away*
In all seriousness though, I remember every detail of that. It was very scary. I later told my surgeon that I remembered all of this by saying, “Hey I have a joke for you!”
He asked “Is it about dinosaurs?”
“…yes.” I said smiling sheepishly.
“I fell unconscious really quickly.”
“That would be the propofol. Either that or you were so tired of my bad jokes that you passed out.”
I laughed “Maybe.” I said.
So there’s my weird story! I hope you liked it!
(I’m ok by the way. My post op appointment is on the 15th.) I’ll update on Monday if you guys want, let me know in the comments!
Update:
I had my pst op appointment today. Everything went well.
I was waiting in an exam room with my dad when my neurosurgeon popped his head in the door and said he’d be in in a few minutes and asked if I was behaving myself. (He was kidding of course as I was just sitting there.)
A little while later he came back and asked how I was doing. I said I was doing well, he examined my scar, and said that other than a large amount of scabing (which will eventually come off) everything looked good. He instructed us to come back in 6 months and asked what I planned to do over the summer.
We shook hands and then I headed back to school.
Are all men a 10?
This is How Delusional Modern Women have Become ft.
As you drive through the state, you’ll see a pattern of strip clubs and adult cinemas sandwiched between churches, Jesus billboards, and gruesome pro-life medical photos.
It feels like the state can’t make up its mind on what it wants to be. Consequently, our cities have super strange laws and weird rules around adult entertainment.
For example, in Tampa, you can’t drink alcohol at a fully nude strip club. Yet if the dancers have (tiny) tape over their nipples and crotch, you are free to drink your face off.
In 1983, it was even stricter, with a full anti-nudity ordinance in place.
Someone went to an exotic club and then filed a complaint about strippers showing too much skin. Which invites the question, “Why are you even going to the club and getting mad about what you paid for?”
In reality — it was probably part of an investigation, reserved for a few senior police officers who went “undercover”. I’m sure they enjoyed the investigation very, very much.
Three exotic dancers were dragged into court and put on trial for indecency.
The actual court case
The women weren’t even dancing nude. They were wearing crop tops and tight, short shorts while dancing on tables. Their underwear was visible.
A freelance photographer, Jim Damaske, was given a call by legal aid, “You might want to stop by this trial on Tuesday. You’ll be able to capture a very unique shot.”
The photographer wasn’t disappointed. The below photo was part of the trial and evidence. It was not a stunt intended to disrespect the judge:
image 11
The 20-year-old dancer was trying to show that her underwear wasn’t too revealing.
The decency law stated that underwear could not substantively reveal a woman’s privates, including highlighting any lines or curvatures of her lady parts.
Initially, the lawyer for the three dancers suggested the women would be happy to dance in the courtroom in their work attire — as a form of evidence. Judge David Demers ruled this was too much. He was also apprehensive about the defendants bending over in court.
Judge Demers had only been elected 4 months prior and worried about compromising his position as judge.
The defense lawyer suggested that the women could bend over at their law firm, photos could be taken, and brought into court. Judge Demers insisted it would need to take place in court in order to count.
The women did not see this case as a joke.
Indecent exposure can bring a large fine and up to a month in prison. Typically, the law would apply to someone running around naked in public. Or, if a man stands in his home and presses his junk up against a window towards the street — that would count as well.
Three decades later, the judge was interviewed about the bizarre scene.
image 104
He is aware he’ll always be remembered for the photo.
He said that when they took the photo, “I looked at the girl and thought, whatever happens, I shouldn’t have any facial expression. Don’t smile, don’t frown. Do nothing. Because whatever it is, it will be misinterpreted.”
“When you look at the photo,” said Demers, “my face is as blank as possible — and that was pretty deliberate.”
Why even sue dancers?
This was likely a moral crusade of a district attorney or other official with strong conservative convictions.
It failed.
The women won their case.
The photo was so compelling that Playboy magazine featured it in their photos of the year collection. Also, I have to mention — look at the stenographer’s face:
image 10
She’s thinking, “What sort of bizarro land career have I taken up?” And then, she has to decide what exactly she will write to document this event in court.
I also couldn’t help but wonder if the dancer was making eye contact with the judge. And was she smiling?
In all seriousness — this case was yet another example of my local tax dollars going to a grotesque waste. Tampa Bay has all manner of crime issues and our legal system is prosecuting strippers for stripping.
We have more strip clubs per square mile in Tampa Bay than any city except Las Vegas. The adult industry generates huge, huge revenue for our city, and stuffy politicians can’t stand it — unless they are the one getting the lap dance.
I’m proud to be American but we are the epitome of hypocrisy. We do so much moral posturing and pass stupid indecency laws — while also hosting the largest pornography industry in the world.
Or perhaps this is right on brand with being American. We only operate in opposing extremes. We are both the most brilliant and stupid people you will ever meet.
You might think that the ancient Romans were clueless about medicine and hygiene, and that they just let their wounds fester and rot. Well, you’d be wrong. The Romans actually had some pretty advanced techniques and knowledge for their time. They were not afraid to cut, stitch, and cauterize wounds, and they used various substances to clean and heal them. They were not barbarians, after all. They were civilized people who built roads, aqueducts, and colosseums.
One of the things they used to treat wounds was opium. Yes, you heard that right. Opium, the stuff that makes you high and addicted. The Romans knew that opium had pain-relieving properties, and they used it to numb the pain of surgery and injuries. They also used scopolamine, a plant extract that causes drowsiness and amnesia. They would mix these substances with wine and give them to the patients before operating on them. This was their version of anesthesia. Not bad, huh?
Another thing they used was vinegar. Vinegar is a type of acid that kills bacteria and fungi. The Romans would soak a cloth in vinegar and apply it to the wound. This would disinfect the wound and prevent infection. They also used honey, wine, and olive oil as antiseptics. These substances have natural antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties, and they also help keep the wound moist and promote healing. They would mix them together and apply them to the wound, or use them separately. They were like the original Neosporin. 😁
Now, you might be wondering, did they use worms like in the movie Gladiator? The answer is no. They did not use worms to treat wounds. That was a Hollywood invention, not a historical fact. The movie Gladiator is a great film, but it’s not very accurate when it comes to depicting ancient Rome. It’s full of anachronisms, errors, and exaggerations. For example, the gladiator fights were not as brutal and bloody as they are shown in the movie. Most of the time, the gladiators did not fight to the death, but to the first blood or surrender. They were valuable assets, not disposable slaves. And the emperor did not sit in a box and give thumbs up or down to decide their fate. That was a later invention, too. 🙄
The use of worms to treat wounds is actually a modern practice, not an ancient one. It dates back to the American Civil War, when some doctors noticed that soldiers who had maggots in their wounds healed faster and better than those who did not. They realized that the maggots ate the dead and infected tissue, leaving the healthy tissue intact. They also secreted substances that killed bacteria and stimulated healing. This was called maggot therapy, and it was used until the discovery of antibiotics. Nowadays, it’s still used in some cases, especially when antibiotics are ineffective or unavailable. It’s not as gross as it sounds, trust me.
This is How Unattainable the 1% MAN is For Women
The Boiling Hot End to a Cook Accused of Poison in Henry VIII’s England
On April 5, 1531, hardened London spectators of public punishment gathered at Smithfield, joined by others who were too curious to stay away. An execution had been announced of a type that none had witnessed in their lifetimes, nor ever heard of. The condemned man, Richard Roose, was to be boiled alive.
Roose was not the sort of criminal that usually met his end at Smithfield, located just beyond the London Wall. He was convicted of high treason, yet he had not sought to harm King Henry VIII nor his queen, Catherine of Aragon, nor any royal councilor. He had not tried to overthrow the kingdom’s government. Roose, a cook, was accused of murder by poison.
His two victims were an obscure gentleman in the household of Bishop John Fisher, Bennet Curwen, and a destitute widow who accepted the bishop’s charity, Alyce Tryppytt. The target of the poisoning was assumed to be Fisher himself, the Bishop of Rochester. Ironically, Fisher did not eat the soup—sometimes described as porridge—that Roose prepared and so was unharmed.
Roose admitted to the poisoning but claimed it was a joke gone wrong, an accident. There is no testimony for us to examine, because Roose had no trial, by command of the king.
In the words of the Greyfriars Chronicle of London, a contemporary document: “This year was a cook boiled in a cauldron in Smithfield for he would have poisoned the bishop of Rochester Fisher with divers of his servants and he was locked in a chain and pulled up and down with a gibbet at divers times until he was dead.”
Roose’s crime, the legal method of his condemnation, and finally the form of punishment create a bizarre chain of events that, in a more modern age, might well have raised questions of motive in several parties, including that of Henry VIII. Although there is no question of who did the killing, this is still a tantalizing Tudor murder mystery, and reveals some of the peculiarities of the early modern age, when laws existed and homicide was considered a heinous crime, but there was no trained police force nor forensic science.
Why did Henry VIII demand this punishment of a lowly cook? Why was Roose executed as a traitor when his crime was murder of commoners? The answer lies in the King’s complex feelings for Bishop Fisher.
John Fisher was made bishop of Rochester by the King’s father, Henry VII, in 1504. Fisher performed the funeral services for Margaret Beaufort, the king’s mother, and Henry VII himself when they died, within months of each other, in 1509. In the first 20 years of the reign of Henry VIII, Fisher was considered “the greatest Catholic theologian in Europe, without any rival,” writes Eamon Duffy.
But by the time of the crime in question, King Henry was no longer proud of Bishop Fisher, 62 years of age. It would be safe to say he considered him an enemy. And it would have made the King’s life much easier if Fisher had lost his—if he had consumed the soup.
In 1527, when Henry VIII, desperate for a male heir, began his public quest for an annulment from 42-year-old Catherine of Aragon to marry the delectable young Anne Boleyn, Fisher became one of his most serious obstacles. The question of the royal marriage was a theological one, and if Europe’s most respected theologian had agreed in the rightness of King Henry’s cause, it would have done a lot to bring about the annulment. But Fisher took the side of Catherine of Aragon. The marriage was legal and could not be dissolved.
In 1529, Bishop Fisher announced at the trial of the royal marriage that it would impossible to die more gloriously than in the cause of marriage, as John the Baptist did. In that same year, when a proposal came to Parliament to dissolve the smaller abbeys—the beginning of Henry VIII’s destruction of the Catholic monasteries—Fisher “openly resisted it with all the force he could.”
Enter one Richard Roose. One of Fisher’s earliest biographers, Richard Hall, wrote in 1655 the most complete account of the poisoning. He is the only source to say that Roose was not the chief cook in Fisher’s household, which is significant: “After this the Bishop escaped a very great danger. For one Richard Rose came into the Bishop’s kitchen, being acquainted with the cook, at his house in Lambeth-marsh, and having provided a quantity of deadly poison, while the cook went into the buttery to fetch him some drink, he took his opportunity to throw that poison into a mess of gruel, which was prepared for the Bishop’s dinner. And after he had waited there a while, he went on his way.
“But so it happened that when the Bishop was called into his dinner, he had no appetite for any meat but wished his servants to fall to and be of good cheer, and that he would not eat till toward night. And they that did eat of the poisoned dish were miserably infected. And whereof one gentleman, named Mr. Bennet Curwen and an old widow, died suddenly, and the rest never recovered their health till their dying day.”
An inquiry began at once. Although a salaried police force did not yet exist in England, criminal investigation was taken seriously. Justices of the peace, appointed by the monarch, received and investigated complaints; coroners viewed dead bodies and ordered arrests. Now if a suspect was bound over for trial, freedom was unlikely. Defendants charged with felonies or treason did not exist. In fact, murder trials rarely lasted more than 15 minutes.
Roose was soon apprehended, and admitted to adding what he believed were laxatives to the soup as a “jest.” No one believed him. The always skeptical Imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys wrote a slightly different version of events to his master, Charles V, the nephew of Catherine of Aragon:
“They say that the cook, having been immediately arrested… confessed at once that he had actually put into the broth some powders, which he had been given to understand would only make his fellow servants very sick without endangering their lives or doing them any harm. I have not yet been able to understand who it was who gave the cook such advice, nor for what purpose.”
We share Chapuys’ frustration. Who gave the cook these powders and told him that they would sicken and not kill anyone? If that information was obtained, it was not shared with the public. No transparency.
Sir Thomas More, the lord chancellor, informed Henry VIII that there were rumors that Anne Boleyn and her father and brother, Thomas and George Boleyn, were involved in the poisoning attempt. The king reacted angrily, saying Anne Boleyn was unfairly blamed for everything, including bad weather.
The murder motive and the question of a larger plot were soon obscured by Henry VIII’s drastic actions. He decided that Roose should be condemned by attainder without a trial—a measure usually used for criminals who were at large. Roose was sitting in prison! Nonetheless, Parliament passed “An Acte for Poysoning,” making willful murder by means of poison high treason even if the victim was not head of the government of the land. And boiling to death became a form of legal capital punishment. This crime was especially heinous, the king’s representatives said, and thus called for such measures.
Several biographers have noted King Henry’s extreme fear of poison. Although the monarch’s paranoia became infamous in later years, there was some basis for concern. Everyone had heard the stories of murder by cantarella in Rome during the time of the Borgias. Pope Alexander VI, Rodrigo Borgia, died—perhaps of poison slipped into his food at a banquet—during the reign of Henry VII. Cantarella was believed to have been arsenic trioxide.
If poison was ever suspected as the cause of death at this time in England, there was no way to scrutinize its damage within the corpse to confirm. And should the poison itself be obtained, the field of analytical chemistry was four centuries away.
Not surprisingly, rumors ran wild. Poisoning was rumored (never proven) to be the cause of the deaths of Queen Anne, Richard III’s wife; the eventual death of Catherine of Aragon; and the agonizing death of Henry’s son, Edward VI. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, written in the reign of Henry’s daughter, Queen Elizabeth I, employed poison. Shakespeare wove it into five other plays too.
But there was more to this than royal terror of a poisoned dish. As historian K.J. Kesselring wrote in The English Historical Review, “This may explain the severe, exemplary punishment of boiling, but not the need to label the offense treason.”
In April the crowds of Smithfield witnessed Roose’s death. According to an eyewitness: “He roared mighty loud, and divers women who were big with child did feel sick at the sight of what they saw, and were carried away half dead; and other men and women did not seem frightened by the boiling alive, but would prefer to see the headsman at his work.”
The story of the king and the stubborn bishop doesn’t end there.
When, after the king married Anne Boleyn, Bishop Fisher refused to swear an oath of supremacy to the king, he was arrested. The pope made Fisher a cardinal to protect him, but it only enraged the king more. Once the monarch had ordered a savage punishment of the man who tried to kill Fisher, and now Henry VIII wanted Fisher gone.
After a difficult imprisonment, Fisher was beheaded on June 22, 1535 on Tower Hill. The crowd gasped when they saw him on the scaffold for he was “nothing…but skin and bones…the flesh clean wasted away, and a very image of death.” In his speech to the crowd, Fisher is said to have shown a calm dignity.
According to Fisher’s biographer: “And here I cannot omit to declare to you the miraculous sight of his head, which after 14 days grew fresher and fresher, for that in his lifetime he never looked so well…. the face looked as if it beholdeth the people passing by and would have spoken to them. Which many took as a miracle.”
In 1886, the Catholic Church made John Fisher a saint.
How to Build a Working UFO | Alien Reproduction Vehicles (ARVs)
Monday morning and it’s cold and raining. I had asked everyone to be in an hour early because we were getting an early delivery of concrete. Three of my most trusted employees made it in like I asked. Although, a little hungover from the night before, at least they were present. Now Tony the fourth guy I have on my payroll was nowhere to be seen. I kind of half expected it. I could never rely on him, but this was the final straw. I ring him up and the phone rings out. I try him again and he picks up. At first he doesn’t say anything, then suddenly I hear sobbing down the phone. “Is everything alright,” I asked feeling a little concerned for him. I hear sounds of dry heaving over the phone. “I’m sick. I so bloody sick. He continued to repeat how sick he was in between inconsolable crying. I was beginning to feel bad for him. “Jesus Tony, you sound awful, how sick are you?” I asked. There was a momentary pause over the phone. “Well boss, I woke up naked from a heavy night drinking and my sister is in bed beside me.
I was traveling overseas. When I do, I have a special little leather bag on a long string that’s just the right size for my passport, which I never let out of my sight while out of the country. It’s about four inches by five inches by maybe a quarter in thick, if that. Basically flat.
I string it around my neck so I don’t lose the passport. I usually tuck my tickets and ID in there as well because it’s almost impossible to pickpocket.
Flying to Switzerland, I have a small overnight bag and my laptop computer. Woman at the counter says “Whoa there big fella! You have three bags. We have to charge you $100 for the extra bag.”
I stared at her. “What three bags?”
Of course, she pointed at the carryall, the laptop, and then my little passport holder around my neck.
I said “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
She said, “If I can see it, it’s a bag, no matter the size.”
So I stuffed it into my slacks. “Can you see it now?” I asked.
She glowered and said “No.”
I said “Have a nice day.”
What a bunch of tools to consider a passport holder a “bag”.
I was working a 12 hour shift as a gate guard on a military base. 8 PM to 8 AM, in this case. ’Round about midnight, it got VERY boring, so I came up with all sorts of ways to keep awake and keep moving. I’d tune the radio in my little weather shack to NPR, Go out into the middle of the street, and ‘air-conduct’ the orchestra in my mind. Got pretty good at it, actually.
One night, about 3 AM, a Jeep Cherokee came round the corner onto the base entrance road. I snapped to attention, checking the plates and glancing at the decal on the vehicle. The Base Commander. I gave him my best parade ground salute, and waved him through, but he paused, rolling down his window and staring at me for a few seconds.
“Petty Officer Harrison, what in the name of the Most Holy God were you doing?”
Now, I can imagine it must have looked terribly odd, to see his gate guard waving his arms and poking at invisible things in the dead of night, with classical music blaring in the background. Don’t know what he made of it. Maybe he thought I was hallucinating, or something… But I gave him my best sheepish grin, saluted again and replied.
for cello and orchestra. The second violin is a bit behind the beat…”
He sighed, shook his head, gave a vague sort of wave and said. “Carry on, then.” and drove off.
Two days later, a new standing order was published. “All gate guards will be issued batons and metronomes at the beginning of the night shift, in order to keep that pesky second violin in line. Said equipment will be returned to the Armory at the end of the shift along with the duty weapon.” The look of disbelief on the department head’s face was priceless… 🙂
In 2012, the United States discovered suspicious Chinese access to the country’s critical infrastructure.
After some research, security officials found the culprit. It was not a Chinese hacker, but a Verizon employee, simply called “Bob.”
Bob did not have criminal intentions, as everyone initially suspected.
He did not feel like working hard all day and had found a creative way to enliven his day with more pleasant things.
The 40-year-old programmer had managed to outsource his work to Chinese programmers. He had physically sent his RSA token to a Chinese company so that Asian programmers could use his credentials during his working hours pretending to be him.
image 109
This is an RSA token. It is a security id, a kind of “ID card” of the employee.
Chinese programmers received less than 20% of his six-figure salary.
Over the years, Bob had become a highly regarded employee for his “clean, well-written” code. He was called ‘the best developer in the house.'”
In reality, however, he spent his days on Facebook, Ebay, and Linkedin, watching many cat videos.
At 4:30 p.m., before the day was over, he would send a report to management.
After the investigation, Bob was obviously fired, and presumably his Chinese colleagues also lost their jobs.
Which, in my opinion, was not smart on the part of the company. Because the Chinese had really shown themselves to be trustworthy.
All of my classmates were “popular” from my outside-of-the-social-circle view. But here is what I know caused the “downfall” of two of them who were particularly popular. I graduated in 1998, and this is all from what happened when we were still in high school, what I’ve heard through the grapevine in the 22 years since, and what they post on Facebook:
Martha – Was one of the most popular girls in school, mainly because puberty had been very kind to her. She was dating a man in his 20s when she was a junior, so she was either 16 or 17. She was in his car one night when he flipped it over twice on the highway. It was a single-car accident. I believe alcohol was involved. She never came back to school after that. She survived, but was never quite the same. The man she was with died. Later, the rumor came out that her parents didn’t even know she was dating him. Had he survived, he could have been arrested for statutory rape.
Kyle – The school’s token “surfer dude.” I grew up near the beach, and surfing was a popular pastime with the rich kids. He was the most popular one in that group, and he even looked the part: dark tanned skin, bushy blonde hair, fairly “ripped,” etc… So he was popular with the girls in school. That popularity lasted beyond school and, sometime in his early 20s, he got caught sleeping with someone else’s wife and got the crap beat out of him. As in, an extended hospital stay for facial reconstruction kind of beating. The assault even made the local news. I’m not sure if the guy who beat him did any jail time, but I know that, according to all of our mutual friends, Kyle’s life hasn’t been very great since then. Everyone just describes it as “sad.” Did you hear about Kyle? It’s so sad, what’s happened to him…
I had a friend who was let go before his three month probation period was over. He was competent, I had worked with him before, and he always got his work done on time, when I worked with him.
His wife was suspicious that somebody was finding out where he got a job, and phoning in a bad reference. I don’t think that was the case, but its possible.
You know how some people have whats called a resting grumpy face. Well he had a resting happy face. It looked like he was always smiling. So when his boss would explain something serious to him, he would be smiling like he had not a concern in the world. He also had a sense of humor that alternated between dry and sardonic, that many people didn’t get.
Some people were insulted by his humor, because they didn’t get it. Then they would ask for an apology, and he would have the biggest smile, while he apologized.
I think that was his problem. But he didn’t even know he was constantly smiling. So he was totally unaware of the effect it had on people.
I’ve been in restaurants with famous people—I’ve been on film sets WORKING with famous people.
One time—long ago, on lunch break from working on the film “Pump Up the Volume” [1991] —was director John Waters—having lunch with porn star Traci Lords—an odd pairing, I thought—but not too odd.
I just noticed and didn’t bother them.
When I was a young fan—in film school—being exposed to the NYCity celebrity scene—I got a few autographs—Robin Williams, Peter Frampton, Monty Python Terry Jones, Charles Durning, Mike McGear [Paul McCartney’s brother], Joey Ramone.
But once I was in the business—it seemed kind of weird.
Especially with people I worked with—Christian Slater, Robert Englund [Nightmare’s Freddy!], Paul Dooley, and others.
Funny thing is—I’ve met far more celebrities “off the clock” than I did working in the business.
And oddly—I’ve been in LA for over 32 years now—and I think I met more in New York than I have here.
Being on foot in NY is more common than being on foot in LA—where I’m mostly in a car. This allows accidental meetings to take place more often.
Just not talking to women
Grilled Lasagna Sandwiches
Grilled Lasagna Sandwiches
The recipe ingredients are per sandwich.
Ingredients
2 slices bacon or ham
2 slices mozzarella or Swiss cheese
Sour cream
Tomato paste
Bread
Oregano
Instructions
Spread sour cream and tomato paste on bread and sprinkle on a little oregano to flavor.
Fry bacon or ham and put it between two slices prepared bread.
On his 18th birthday, I sat him down in front of the television and played him a video of his three-year-old self.
He burst out laughing so hard he had tears rolling down his cheeks.
The video was an experiment based on delayed gratification, known as the ‘Marshmallow Test’.
In a classic experiment from the 1970s, a psychologist named Walter Mischel placed a treat in front of children and offered them a choice – they could either enjoy the treat now or wait a brief period to get two snacks.
When the experimenter left the room, many of the kids couldn’t wait and ate the treat (often a cookie or marshmallow), but a portion of the kids could delay the urge to enjoy the treat and wait for the reward of getting more delicious goodies.
What Mischel concluded was that the kids able to delay gratification had several advantages later on over the kids who could not wait.
The children who waited performed better academically than kids who ate the treat right away.
He found kids who delayed their gratification also displayed fewer behavioural problems and had much higher SAT scores.
His findings have since been largely debunked for not taking into consideration socio-economic factors. The latest research suggests there is a lesser correlation between the results showing willpower, and a greater emphasis on delayed gratification being an indicator of intelligence.
I don’t know if it matters to this, I only did it as a bit of fun.
In the video, I sat my son down at the kitchen table and placed two bowls of sweets in front of him; one bowl had five sweets, the other just the one.
I told him he could have the one sweet now, but if he could wait for five minutes – and I pointed at the minute hand on the clock and showed him where it needs to go to – then he could have the bowl with five sweets.
I then left the room.
His facial expressions were hilarious.
The angst.
His face alternating from contemplation to expectant glee and then more angst.
He employed diversion tactics… looking away, checking the sweets, looking at the door, checking the sweets, studying the clock, checking the sweets.
Rubbing his eyes, checking the sweets.
His 18-yr-old self was in kinks at this 3-yr-old child.
He couldn’t remember doing it and it brought him to tears of joy.
It was brilliant.
I recommend all parents do this… for the fun of it alone.
Five minutes later, I returned.
He had not eaten the sweets.
His face was a picture of delight.
He grabbed the bowl with 5 sweets and stuffed them in his pockets.
Smiling like a lemon shark.
Then, an afterthought… he went back to the table and took the single sweet too.
I had a friend in my school. In Class 10th, the registration forms for boards were getting checked by our class teacher. He was calling each student roll-number wise and asking their details. When his number came and he was asked, “ Father’s occupation”, he replied, he is a house husband.
Our Sir mocked him saying, “So, he packs your tiffin boxes, hahaha!! ”
My friend also laughed at it, taking it a good joke.
Actually, my friend lives in my colony. His mother is a nurse in a reputed govt. hospital and his Dad stays at home, doing all the works a genuine housewife does.
They are well economically. The husband is damn caring. Each evening, he goes hospital and takes his wife to home, lifting her bags in his hands. Both are happy.
But the man is nothing but a laughing stock in our colony. No man, literally no man is his friend here. No one talks to him as he is busy in his house chores too and he doesn’t do “manly” activities. He washes clothes, wipes the floor, maintains bills, buys groceries etc. But he is mocked behind his back. People say words like,
“E kouno kaam na Kari…jeevan bhar aapan mehraaru ke kamaayi khhat rah jaayi.”
He’ll never do any work and will keep feeding on his wife’s earnings forever.
But have we ever asked any women like, “Why she’s a housewife?”
In fact society’s eyes start glittering when they hear that this woman is a housewife.
But being house husband is shameful, malicious, atrocious, non-manly thing.
What do you wish was socially acceptable?
That if a couple has agreed to their terms that one will work and others will stay home, then we must shut our mouth if the gender is not suitable to our eyes. Neither housewife nor househusband is a pity task if the couple has decided to work this way.
my father was a great parent, but he was often not home, and when this incident happened, he was fighting the Korean War. I was not quite five when I discovered that my mother was basically a piece of garbage. Dad traveled a lot with his work after the military, and my mother would have never done any of this stuff when he was around.
Going back to age 4, we were shopping for new Easter dresses. I saw a pretty pale blue flowered dress that I really wanted. I was born blind in one eye and you could tell. I was skinny and had kinky black hair while my older sister was very pretty and blonde
My mother told me I could not have the blue dress because ugly little girls should wear brown and dark green so people would not notice them. I threw up on the floor of the store. She bought my sister the blue dress I got a dark green checked dress, that was so ugly. I have torn up any picture that ever showed any sign of it.
Now if this was the only thing my mother ever said to me like that, it would be OK but it wasn’t. But she never hurt my feelings again because I thought she was a drunken piece of garbage. In fact, I kind of got a kick out of the things that she said. My favorite was when she told my too much younger sisters, that they should be very careful or they might end up like me, not a normal woman. My little sister laughed at her and said“yeah, we might grow to be lawyers too. shoot me now“
My husband told me that my father‘s funeral was the worst display of emotion that he had ever seen because my father had five children who adored him and overtly mourned his passing. I did not see a tear at my mother‘s funeral.
if I could change things in my childhood, I would want a mother who loved me and a mother that I loved.
Ah, the classic cheese question. The red layer you’re referring to on the outside of cheese is known as the rind.
image 12
The first thing to know is that not all cheese rinds are created equal. Some are edible and tasty, others are purely functional. But let’s talk about the red rind, specifically.
That red layer is often found on a type of cheese you might see on a pub menu or nestled in a fancy charcuterie board: Gouda, Edam, or sometimes even Cheddar. It’s a wax coating, and it serves a grand purpose. The wax prevents the cheese from drying out and also protects it from unwanted nibbling critters while it ages to perfection.
So, should you eat the wax? I’ll stop you right there. No. Wax is not meant to be eaten. It’s like the shell on a peanut; it’s part of the packaging. You’re supposed to peel it off and discard it. Now, some might argue that there might be a cheese or two where the outer layer is dyed but isn’t wax. It’s rare but in these cases, you can eat it. However, the real star is what’s inside.
Now let’s go a step beyond. Some cheeses do have rinds that you’re meant to eat. Think Brie or Camembert with their soft, white mold rinds; they’re part of the experience. The rind adds texture and flavor complexity that cheese lovers seek out.
But back to the red wax. When you’ve got a chunk of Gouda and you’re really getting down to it, you’ll cut away the wax as you slice off delectable pieces to enjoy.
To wrap up—pun intended—most red layers on cheese are like a book cover for your cheese, telling you a bit about what’s inside and keeping it in good condition until you’re ready to dive into the story. It’s not part of the meal, it’s just a protective layer. Peel it off, toss it aside, and enjoy the cheesy goodness within.
Enjoy your cheese adventures, and remember, just because it’s wrapped up doesn’t mean it’s meant to be eaten. Happy cheese hunting!
Right now, as I type this, I’m in Florida helping care for my mom. My dad and I have been doing 12-hour shifts with her, because she needs round-the-clock care. Between that and all the thousand things around the house that need tending to that my dad isn’t able to, I haven’t been sleeping much.
Last night at about 5am my mom started having trouble breathing, so I called 911. We just heard from the hospital 10 minutes ago. The cancer has spread to her lungs and brain. She really wanted to make it to her birthday in 6 days. The doctors don’t think she’ll make it.
So I’m not maybe the best person to talk about loving life right now.
And yet…
A few days ago, my wife and I spent a couple of hours at the Festival of Lights in Cape Coral. They had hot cocoa and a campfire with marshmallows.
When I stumbled out of bed this morning (well, technically this afternoon), the first thing that happened was my mom’s cat sat at my feet, meowed at me, and headbutted me to say hi.
image 101
Right at this very moment, I’m looking out the window onto my parents’ patio, where three squirrels are chasing each other across the screen roof, and it’s delightful.
I was born just barely early enough to see humanity walk on the moon—-some of my earliest childhood memories are sitting in front of a B&W TV watching the Apollo launches. Odds are good I will see humanity walk on Mars. Isn’t that amazing?
I am surrounded by love. I’m spending Christmas with my Talespinner. My life is filled with creativity and joy—I write books with some of my lovers, my wife and I created the Borg Queen xenomorph parasite cosplay from an idea she had three years ago, I’m teaching myself CNC machining and laser engraving.
I live in a time of unprecedented peace and prosperity in human history. We can fly through the air. Every day, we learn more about the universe.
This photo:
image 100
was taken by a probe that landed on a comet. We have the capacity to launch a probe that can travel for years and then arrive precisely on a small rock traveling at 84,000 miles per hour, which is about like a person in Boston shooting a rifle and hitting a golf ball in midair in Moscow. (Bizarre how many people think science is “just another belief system,” eh?)
And, I mean, I get it. The world isn’t all roses. Right now, far too many people in my country are too uneducated in history to recognize when they’re being lied to by yet another populist grifter selling them the same old tired lie that all their failures are the fault of somebody else.
We have a political party that takes gleeful, sadistic delight in mendacious cruelty, and a voting populace that sincerely believes it’s okay to vote for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party because surely the leopards won’t eat their faces—only the faces of the Mexicans and the gays and the trans people, right?
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There is pettiness, and cruelty, and meanspiritedness. There are people who make voting choices because they want to hurt other Americans just to own the libs.
But viewed on a large enough scale, the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice. We may be in the “one step back” part of the “two steps forward, one step back” cycle, yet this too shall pass.
I want to be here to see what happens next.
Saving the cub
Disney Left Out the Most Gruesome Aspects of the Original Snow White Story
Oh, Snow White, that classic, if a little retro, fairytale of good triumphing over evil. It’s a sweet story of an innocent young beauty who is banished by a vain, cruel, and jealous stepmother and who, with the help of seven lovable dwarfs, ultimately finds everlasting true love. Walt Disney turned the fable into the first full-length animated musical feature film in 1937. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is to this day one of the top-10 films of all time (adjusted for inflation), beloved by generations of children.
It turns out the American animator left out a few gruesome details. Disney’s well-known Snow White is a sanitized version of the original German Brothers Grimm fairytale, which was a lot more, well, grim.
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm didn’t actually come up with the story of Snow White or Cinderella, Rapunzel, or any other storybook princess associated with their (and now Disney’s) name, for that matter. The Grimms were German scholars, researchers, and authors who collected folktales that were part of a rich oral tradition, having been passed down from generation to generation of women telling the stories to pass the time. In 1812, they published the collection as Nursery and Household Tales.
Despite its title, the book was not originally intended for children. The text included violence, incest, sex, and perhaps most deadly of all—footnotes. In the Cinderella story, for instance, the stepsisters cut off their toes and heels in order to fit into the glass slipper.
In “Little Snow-White,” as the original story was called, the Evil Queen asks a hunter to take Snow White into the forest to kill, as happens also in the movie. (In the original version, the child is also only 7 years old, as opposed to Disney’s 14. Neither seems old enough to consider marriage.)
In the Grimm version, the Queen orders the huntsman to bring back Snow White’s internal organs, saying “Kill her, and as proof that she is dead bring her lungs and liver back to me.”
He kills a boar instead, and brings back to the Queen the boar’s lungs and liver—which the Queen thinks belongs to Snow White and so promptly eats. Ewww!
“The cook had to boil them with salt, and the wicked woman ate them, supposing that she had eaten Snow-White’s lungs and liver,” as the Grimm brothers wrote.
The Queen tricks Snow White three separate times in the Grimm version. The first time, she has Snow White try on a corset, which is so tight, Snow White passes out. (The dwarfs save her by cutting the laces.) The second time, she sells Snow White a poisonous comb, which the young girl puts in her hair, causing her to pass out. (The dwarfs take it out.) The third time the Queen tricks her with the same poisonous apple we see in the Disney film.
Having fainted and presumed dead, young Snow-White is placed in a glass coffin in both book and movie. When the Prince happens by in the Grimm version, he insists on taking the deceased beauty away, even though he’s never met her. The dwarfs hesitantly agree, but as they are carrying her coffin out of their house, one of them stumbles. Jostled from her resting place in the coffin, Snow White spits out the apple lodged in her throat and is immediately revived. Without the influence of the Prince’s kiss.
In movie and in folklore, Snow White and the Prince fall in love and get married (never mind that in the original tale, Snow is only 7 years old). In the movie, the seven dwarfs chase the Evil Queen into the forest, where she tumbles off a cliff—with a push from a convenient lightning strike—and falls to her death.
In the book version, the Queen attends their wedding where she is meted out a just punishment of dancing to her death. (Perhaps this last was thought up by a 19th century noblewoman forced to dance endlessly to the 1812 version of Bruno Mars’s “Marry You.”)
The more Grimm version of the Queen’s death goes like this: “They put a pair of iron shoes into burning coals. They were brought forth with tongs and placed before her. She was forced to step into the red-hot shoes and dance until she fell down dead.”
You can see why Disney wanted to clean up that unsavory image!
I am working as a police sergeant in a small city in the midwest. A man comes in, wearing a very nice suit. A young woman is standing next to him. He tells me that about an hour ago one of my officers pulled over his 16 year old daughter. The gentleman says the officer told the young woman she would have to give him oral sex or he would write her a ticket that would cause her to lose her probationary license. The man wanted the officer terminated immediately or he was going to call his friend “the mayor” and have both of us fired.
I asked to see the citation he is holding. I asked if his daughter would be willing to give a sworn statement so I have evidence of the situation I can use for further action? He agrees. I bring a court reporter and an audio recorder. I date and time stamp the start of the tape and ask her describe the situation that occurred when she was issued citation number XXXXXXX on this date.
She gives a full complete account just like the details her father had given to me a few minutes before. When she concludes her statement, the court reporter asked her to sign a promise that all information is true and factual to the best of her with the understanding it may be used in criminal actions in this matter.
At this point I only know what I have been told by her father and her. But I knew something the father and daughter do not know. About a month prior to this event the police department installed cameras in all the squad cars. Whenever the red lights are activated the camera starts recording and microphone mounted on the officer’s shirt picks up audio and puts it on the tape (it was the initial use of squad cameras, we used VCR tapes, But the officers had no ability to over write or erase recorded tape).
The court reporter took the dictated statement to the girl and had her sign, and her father had co-signed because she was underage, the court reporter then took the statement upstairs to the clerk of court for filing.
I went to to the Evidence Room and watched the video tape of the traffic stop that had been recorded on our new squad cam system. 15 minutes later I came back to the interview room. The father was mad this was taking so long. I explained we had some new systems and I was reviewing how they matched up with his daughter’s testimony. I put a tape in the VCR and played every second of the traffic stop from the time the lights were turned on till officer ended the recording by manually shutting off the record feature by turning off his red lights and camera. The officer was professional and told the reason for the stop and requested the driver’s license, registration and insurance card from the driver. He went back to the squad with no further discussion other than to tell her to remain in her vehicle while he checked her status and wrote her citation. He came back to her car explained the citation, she asked”Isn’t there something I can do to get out of this ticket?” The officer said, “no, the citation has been issued, pay the listed fine or appear in court on the date shown, just slow down in the future, please use caution merging back into traffic. And then the officer walked back to his squad as the young lady drove away.
No sexual offer from the officer to void the citation, no discussion outside of the details of her responsibility to handle the fine or appear in court. And a standard warning to use caution merging back into traffic.
The father stood up, looked a little embarrassed. He said they had taken enough of my time and they should be going. I told him he was free to leave but his daughter filed a false police report. And Juvenile Probation Officers from the county were enroute to the station to charge her as a minor and determine if she should be placed in protective custody. I urged the father to remain and meet with JPO. I looked at the young lady and told her how lucky she was this happened when she was only 16 years old. An adult making the same false accusations would face felony charges. I told the father they could remain in the interview room until JPO arrived. If they tried to leave she would be taken and place in our juvenile holding area.
He was most cooperative at that point.
Now I believe the young lady thought a dramatic story would deflect any anger her father felt towards her for the citation. I am sure she did not realize how this would spin out of control and her father would make an official complaint. But if we did not have cameras the officer would have been been pulled from street duty and placed on an administrative assignment till Internal Affairs had completed their investigation. If they failed to find evidence enough to charge the officer I am sure Daddy would have have made loud and angry complaints to his friend the mayor.
There are many, many cases throughout law enforcement, public employees and private business where males in positions of authority have pressured women. It still happens today. Remember many but not all are true. I used this story for many years to convince officers that the need to document what they do correctly outweighs the same amount of time one of them does something bad.
And when they do we catch them, punish them and fire them. Camera system are expensive and keeping the recorded files is a logistical nightmare…but it is all worth it. Maybe we could require all politicians to wear cameras every day?
I don’t think, I know. each sanction lead to more sanctions and each new sanction will create an anti sanction action. Countries throughout the world will pad themselves with measures where sanctions will be nullified and totally ineffective. More sanctions is pushing a new world order in that everything western and U.S. will be replace and alternate anti sanctions mechanisms and systems that make future sanctions not work any more.
That is what all sane and sensible people will do and react when you fxxked them up. They have dumped the dollar faster, they will stop using SWIFT, they will not accept western standards and set up their true world standards, the will avoid western banks, the will stop depending western financial institutions and system. They will ignore western rating agencies, they will stop depending on the west swiftly and speedily. That is what I know happened.
To me the U.S. are losing its unfair advantage. And each new sanctions is like another nail in coffin of the western rules based international order. I am certain the U.S. sanction because it getting desperate to keep its rules based international order but instead it is speeding the demise and implosion of the U.S.
That is what is happening in the world each time the U.S. sanction.
U.S. Military Has More Unfeasible Plans For Ukraine
Yesterday the Biden administration ‘declassified‘ laughable numbers about alleged Russian losses. It did not help. Zelenski’s mission to get more money from Congress has failed:
Following a roughly 30-minute meeting with Zelensky – their first one-on-one encounter – House Speaker Mike Johnson said the Biden administration’s response to congressional Republicans’ demands has been “insufficient,” and reiterated his stance that a deal remains unlikely without a “transformative change” at the border.
The Republicans also asked the White House for its strategy in Ukraine. But as the New York Times reported yesterday, there is none.
American and Ukrainian military leaders are searching for a new strategy that they can begin executing early next year to revive Kyiv’s fortunes and flagging support for the country’s war against Russia, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials. … The United States is stepping up the face-to-face military advice it provides to Ukraine, dispatching a three-star general to Kyiv to spend considerable time on the ground. U.S. and Ukrainian military officers say they hope to work out the details of a new strategy next month in a series of war games scheduled to be held in Wiesbaden, Germany.
That the counter-offensive had failed has been obvious since mid of June. A reason for the failure were fake war-games during which the parameters were skewed until the games showed that Ukraine would win:
Logic dictates that any responsible use of the KORA simulation system would have predicted the failure of the 47th Brigade’s attack. According to The Washington Post, the officers of the 47th Brigade “planned their assaults and then let the [KORA] program show them the results – how their Russian enemies might respond, where they could make a breakthrough and where they would suffer losses.” The KORA simulation allowed the Ukrainian officers to coordinate their actions “to test how they’d work together on the battlefield.”
Given that the Ukrainian force structure was insufficient to accomplish the mission-critical task of suppression, there was no chance for the Ukrainian forces to accomplish the actual assault requirements of a breaching operation – the destruction of enemy forces on the opposite side of the obstacle barrier being breached. The Ukrainians, however, came away from their KORA experience confident that they had crafted a winning plan capable of overcoming the Russian defenses in and around Orekhov.
When one examines the structure of a KORA-based simulation, it becomes clear that the system is completely dependent upon the various inputs which define the simulation as a whole.
Now the U.S. is sending one of its generals to take command of the Ukrainian army and will launch more war games. To what outcome will their parameters be skewed.
Apparently the time since late June was insufficient to come up with a new strategy for Ukraine. This will not do:
Some in the U.S. military want Ukraine to pursue a “hold and build” strategy — to focus on holding the territory it has and building its ability to produce weapons over 2024. The United States believes the strategy will improve Ukraine’s self-sufficiency and ensure Kyiv is in a position to repel any new Russian drive.
The goal would be to create enough of a credible threat that Russia might consider engaging in meaningful negotiations at the end of next year or in 2025.
At the same time, Ukrainian officials are examining strategies that build on their successful deep strikes on Crimea last fall. They are searching for creative ways to keep Russia off balance with attacks against arms factories, weapons depots and train lines for moving munitions, and to score symbolic victories. One Ukrainian former senior military official declined to discuss the proposals but said the new plan is being refined and is “very daring.”
The plan is that Ukraine will go into defense mode while committing more terrorism. But why would Russia let Ukraine build real defense lines? Ukraine is starved of artillery ammunition. It does not have the troops to hold all lines.
And whatever line it can build will break under intensive fire.
In the Summer of 1943, after German attack on Kursk had failed, the Soviets went into an offensive mode that did not stop until its troops captured Berlin. The German army retreated to defense lines, then retreated again and again – all the way back to Berlin. It took nearly two years, but the outcome was obvious as soon as the attack on Kursk had failed.
Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, the top American commander in Europe, has been taking a bigger role in coordinating with Ukrainian officials.
The Pentagon has also decided to dispatch Lt. Gen. Antonio A. Aguto Jr., who commands the support of Ukraine from a base in Germany, to spend lengthy periods of time in Kyiv. General Aguto will work more directly with the country’s military leadership to improve the advice the United States is offering, American officials said. While the White House has opted not to have U.S. military advisers in the country permanently, General Aguto’s frequent rotations in and out of Kyiv would inch toward the end of that restriction.
A three star general does not come alone. He has a full group of staff, dozens, which will now become military advisors on the ground in Ukraine. They will also become priority targets.
And what do those advisors know about an industrial warfare that Ukraine soldiers do not know. Well, nothing.
I for one see no change yet of the trajectory Ukraine is on. It is losing badly while its propaganda is still claiming victory. Consider this from today’s Washington Post:
Loud explosions jolted many residents out of bed around 3 a.m. in central Kyiv, followed by air raid alert sirens a few minutes later. Ukraine’s air force said that antiaircraft defenses shot down all 10 ballistic missiles that were launched at Kyiv. That assertion could not be independently confirmed.
Multiple missile impacts happened BEFORE the air alarm went on. But the Ukrainian military claims to have shut all incoming missiles down. That does not sound like a plausible time line to me. I, in fact believe that the few air defense system Kiev was give, like its artillery, pretty much out of ammunition.
With no further aid coming from the U.S., and potentially also not from Europe, it is high time to shut the war down.
Posted by b on December 13, 2023 at 15:04 UTC | Permalink
WW2, the deadliest conflict in human history. Yet there are some incredible stories of survival by soldiers. I’ll give two.
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One was Alan E. Magee. He was a gunner on a B-17 bomber.
He was on a mission over France in 1943 when his plane got hit by German flak and started to go down.
He tried to bail out, but his parachute was damaged and he couldn’t open it. So he decided to jump anyway, hoping for a miracle.
He fell 22,000 feet without a parachute and crashed through the glass roof of a train station.
He survived with only some broken bones and cuts. He was captured by the Germans, who were amazed that he was still alive.
They treated his wounds and sent him to a POW camp, where he spent the rest of the war.
He was liberated in 1945 and returned to the US. He lived until 2003, when he died at the age of 84.
There’s another guy who might be even luckier.
His name was Alistair Urquhart, and he was a Scottish soldier in the Gordon Highlanders regiment.
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He was captured by the Japanese in Singapore in 1942 and sent to work on the infamous Death Railway in Thailand.
He endured torture, starvation, disease and beatings for years. He was then put on a cargo ship that was torpedoed by an American submarine.
He survived the sinking and spent five days floating in the ocean with sharks and corpses.
He was rescued by a Japanese whaling ship and taken to Nagasaki, where he was forced to work as a slave laborer.
He survived the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in 1945 and was freed by the Americans shortly after.
He returned to Scotland and lived until 2016, when he died at the age of 97.
Women’s Dating Standards have Ruined Relationships
Number of close relationships…
What was the most satisfying conversation you had with someone who tried to intimidate you?
What was the most satisfying conversation you had with someone who tried to intimidate you?On first impressions, Frank was a nice guy. He extended his hand the moment he walked in my door, “How the devil are you?” he said, all bright and cheery.
Frank spoke and acted like he was my new best friend.
I’d asked for a move back to street duties – a year of pandering to our self-aggrandising chief had been enough. I’d got my wish and Frank was taking over my job, Sergeant of the Safer Streets Scheme. Despite the title, it was a political role. Allegedly, its remit was to make our streets safer – in reality, it was to make our chief look good.
I handed the reins over to Frank.
Within a day, he was badmouthing me behind my back. Within a week, he wasn’t doing half the things I’d shown him. Within a month he was taking credit for several of my long-term operations.
Within three months, they promoted him.
But that’s okay because they promoted me too.
A few years later, my boss urged me to apply for a post at headquarters. It would mean another promotion if I got it. They accepted my application and the next step was an interview.
I don’t know how he found out I’d applied, but I got a phone call from Frank.
Frank informed me he had also applied for the position and that we were the only two to go forward for an interview. He boasted that with his ‘superior CV’ he was pretty much guaranteed to get the job. It wasn’t a friendly call; Frank was trying to mess with my mindset. He tried to belittle me with insults.
The good thing about that kind of behaviour is, if you have a little emotional intelligence, it’s easy to deal with.
When people are nasty to you, do this one thing — imagine the person is talking about themselves and go-ahead and agree with everything they say.
It works on two levels.
First, you don’t get upset. In trying to cause offence, bullies tend to say things that would upset themselves and what upsets them is the truth. More often than not, people like Frank are merely describing themselves.
Second, the intimidator gets no fulfilment. Their goal is to upset you, but by agreeing with them you show you are not concerned by their words — there is nothing so dispossessing as indifference. You own them.
So that’s what I did.
The day after his interview, Frank called me again.
“Congratulations,” he said, all bright and cheery as if I was his best friend again. “I’ve just been told I didn’t get the job, so well done.”
There is a sweetness in settling an old score, and Frank deserved the bombshell I had for him.
“Frank,” I said, “you must have had a terrible interview because I decided I didn’t want to work at headquarters and withdrew my application last week. That means you were the only person in the process and still they didn’t want you!”
Italian Sandwiches
6117 4k
Ingredients
4 sub buns
4 Italian sausages, sweet, mild or hot
1 cup mozzarella cheese
1 jar pizza sauce
Instructions
Grill sausage until done.
Slice buns open like a hot dog bun.
Spread some pizza sauce inside, then place a sausage and cover with cheese.
Wrap with foil and place over coals or on grill just long enough to melt cheese.
Add mushrooms or whatever other garnishes are desired and available.
I had a messy divorce with children. Wife left the children at home alone while she traveled out of state to see her new internet boyfriend. The children ran out of food and were scared to be home alone. They called the court appointed attorney ad litem. She called me. She told me – send your client to pick up the children immediately. She told me that she was going to set a hearing and tell the judge about the wife leaving the small children (all under 14) home alone for days with no food. I called Dad. He said “I am getting read to pick up my date and I am going to have sex tonight.” I told him to cancel his date and go get his kids. He refused. I asked him if I could have his mom (grandma) pick them up since they were home alone and hungry. He said no and refused to allow me to ever talk to his mom again. I had to call the court appointed attorney ad litem and tell her what was going on. She had to find someone else to pick up the children that night. I had represented 3 generations in this family for many years about all their legal issues. His mom kept calling — but I could not talk to her since he had instructed me not to do so. She was so angry at me. She “stalked” me for over a year. I really wanted her to know what her son did – she would have “kicked his butt”! Plus, he never paid his legal bill. This case was a real disaster and I’d spent hours working on it. As I recall his legal bill was over $10,000. I withdrew from the case. I was so mad. I had worked for months to get him primary custody. I worked hard to get the court appointed attorney ad litem was on Dad’s side. I actually watched the trial because I was so pissed. Dad came off as a total jerk with his new attorney. Mom’s attorney “got her to clean up” and ditch the internet boyfriend. Mom had a really good attorney who worked with her client to make her seem like a great parent. Mom was given primary custody of the children.
My Christmas wish is that grandma see what I wrote and understand why I withdrew and what her son did. This was probably 20 years ago and the kids are grown. I don’t know if grandma is alive. But due to this crummy client I never got another call from anyone in that family again.
In Texas, we have attorney-client privilege. If a client says you cannot talk to anyone, then you cannot. You cannot even defend yourself when they call you and scream at you. It can be frustrating at times.
Many years ago I had a nut case of a Regional Manager named Bob. Bob got a bonus based not only on sales, but lowering expenses
At this time, phone calls were not free, even local calls cost around 10 cents per minute. Bob walked by my office while I was on a call with a customer and waited for me to finish. Then he said to me “asking the customer how he was doing today cost us 10 cents, stop wasting money”. Thereafter everyone made calls only when he was not around, and productivity dropped
The office was in New Jersey where it was at that time illegal to have self serve gas stations. One day he announced that all our gas receipts had full serve noted, and we were wasting money by not using self serve. Any receipts not marked self serve would be rejected. We all drove across the border to NY in order to pump our own gas, for 20 cents more per gallon.
He posted a sign stating that if you made more than 4 photocopies of something, you must go up 6 floors to the copy center and use the massive copy machine, not the local one. He said it saved .03 cents per copy! Someone posted an analysis showing the electricity for the elevator up and down cost more than .12 cents.
For the answer to this question one need look no further than Titanic’s sister ship, RMS Olympic. What most people don’t realize is that, as the older sister, Olympic was much more well known. All those superlatives we associate with Titanic — ship of dreams, floating palace, world’s largest moving object, etc. — were originally lavished on Olympic. In 1911, when she was launched, an entire issue of the trade publication The Shipbuilder was devoted to Olympic, with barely a passing mention of the other sister then under construction. Before the sinking Olympic was far and away the more famous sister and arguably the most famous ship in the world.
Unlike her ill-fated little sister, Olympic apparently WAS unsinkable. She had three serious collisions in her career, the first of which (with the warship HMS Hawke) left her severely damaged but still afloat. The second such incident was in 1916 when Olympic turned and rammed a German U-boat that had tried to sink her; the U-boat attempted to dive but to no avail — Olympic’s propellers tore open the sub’s pressure hull like it was aluminum foil. The liner emerged from the encounter with a slight dent on her lower prow and a legendary reputation as the only civilian vessel to sink an enemy warship in World War 1. Finally, in 1934, Olympic collided with and sank the Nantucket lightship LV-117 in heavy fog. Again Olympic escaped serious damage.
Olympic transported thousands of troops to and from the theaters of war in WW1, earning the undying devotion of those who traveled upon her. They called her “Old Reliable” because she always brought you home. Others referred to her affectionately as simply “Oly.” Captain Sir Bertram Fox Hayes, Olympic’s longest-serving commander and a towering figure in British maritime history (he was in command when they sank the U-boat), called her, “The finest ship, in my estimation, that has ever been built or ever will be.”
But alas, all good things must come to an end. The Great Depression hit the shipping companies hard, and by then Olympic was over 20 years old and showing her age. When White Star merged with Cunard she was retired. She was sent to the scrapyard in 1935. Fortunately some of her interior fittings and panels were preserved and can now be found in the White Swan Hotel in Alnwick, England.
A YouTube user, Neville, posted a video that completely changed the way I look at Social Media.
He and his wife suspected Facebook was listening to their phone calls. They started noticing ads popping up that were eerily similar to the things they’d been talking about the day before.
They decided they would do a test.
They didn’t own a cat. They hadn’t had a cat in 20 years. They never talked about cats.
They set up a phone call, where they both repeated the words “cat” and “cat food” over and over again during a 10-minute phone call.
A few days later:
Both his and her Facebook feed were filled with cat food commercials.
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After seeing this video, it primed my awareness to it, and I immediately began noticing the same pattern on my own Facebook feed. And this has since been tested by other users who confirmed similar creepy results.
Social Media Apps can and do listen to your phone calls.
Why?
The more targeted they can make their ads, the more they can charge companies for those ads. To make more highly targeted ads, they want to get right inside of your head and know everything about you.
If you don’t want Facebook (or any app) to listen to your calls, you need to go into your settings on your phone, find the app, click on permissions, and disable access to the microphone.
Social Media companies will get as much information as possible about you with little regard for what is right or wrong. Just as long as it is legal (enough), they’ll do it.
Chinese houses tend to be quite different from those in the West.
For one thing… they are smaller.
They also (well many of them) are in huge complexes with yards-people, security, surveillance, electronic gates, walls, and facial recognition.
They tend to be stone… polished marbles, granite and other types over cement, and tend to be opulent.
For the longest time, I progressively moved into larger and larger homes, with my last two on the 300+ sq/m side. These are enormous by Chinese standards, and honestly, I found them to be too big for our little family.
But you know what?
As you move into larger homes, so does your possessions. They start to fill up the house, and before you know it, you need extra storage rooms to hold all your “stuff”.
So right now, we are living in much smaller homes.
Oh, sure the place is small and tight… with an over abundance of toys… I’ll tell you what. But it’s all we need.
Downsizing… or “right”-sizing has advantages if you look at the bigger picture.
The Chinese will move only when there is a perfect wind. They need to be absolutely sure that the Taiwanese will approve of an eventual unification. Even if the Taiwanese openly reject Independence at any time and prefer Status quo until eventual Independence, China would gain enormous face
I predict the following scenario:-
Revolt by Taiwanese Army against the Taiwanese leadership on charges of corruption
Taiwans defences under complete control of the Army faction
Arrest of Senior Leaders of the Taiwanese Government
Permission to China to fly over Taiwanese Airspace and for Chinese Navy to land in Taiwan for “Securing peace and avoiding Civil War”
This is the only scenario where China will be able to walk into Taiwan and have the Full support of the UN and 90% of the world
Every law will support China in this scenario
If any Japanese or Korean or US vessel interferes, China can LEGITIMATELY declare war and have the whole world back China because TAIWAN IS INVITING CHINA
Even if the US allege that this is a coup de at, the law says it’s still Chinas problem to solve the issue because of the ONE CHINA POLICY
At this stage, North Korea can legally threaten South Korea and checkmate Seoul while Russia can checkmate Japan in the Sea of Japan
Both would be within their rights as Allies of China because Japan, Korea and US would be the aggressors NOT CHINA
It would be like if Kashmir had a separatist movement and Kashmiris begged the Indian Army to help
Nobody can stop the Indian Army because India is within the law
That would be the scenario China would typically envision
I am certain China has a very strong group ready for such a rebellion within Taiwan
Take over Taiwan by revolution and then legitimately arrive in Taiwan to solve the crisis which would be fully legal due to the One China Policy
It’s a Legal masterpiece
The US can at best sanction China and do what they did to Russia but China has had time to slowly plan alternates
Even if Taiwan declare Independence, this would be Chinas counter plan
I can answer this one and I’ll give you the no-frills version: Your husband obviously has a high security job. He cannot talk about the work he does or he will lose his job and possibly go to prison. My late husband had that kind of job in the Army. You just don’t ask. My thought was that if he didn’t tell me anything, I couldn’t accidently repeat it. He would come home from work and I would ask “How was your day?” and he would tell me if so-and-so was in a bad mood or if they had a surprise inspection or if the soda machine was out of Coke, but NEVER any specifics of the job. Sometimes he’d tell me it was a rough day or a quiet day, but nothing else. You have to understand this and accept it. If you can’t, then divorce. The other thing I want to address here is you say is he shuts down and is cold. He doesn’t have much choice. If you are badgering him about details about his job all the time and he has told you he cannot tell you, then stop. Just stop. Who would want to come home to someone asking the same questions over and over when they’ve been told they can’t know? When he comes home, ask the simple, easy questions. “How was your trip?” “Did it go well?” Don’t even ask about the weather, since he might not be able to even tell you where he was. I believe it takes a strong person to be a military spouse, and not everyone can do it. You need to decide if this life is for you or not. Just some info: My soldier was gone a lot during one of our stateside assignments. We lived in one state for almost 5 years and he was gone at least 2.5 years of that time. Not usually more than up to 6 weeks at a time, but many of those trips were ones where he could not even call home. Make some friends, get a job, get some hobbies (I read all the books in the fiction section of the tiny post library, among other things.) And, most of all, love him when he’s home.
I was at a restaurant with my son. It was around 2:00 p.m., and the store was relatively empty, so we were relaxing, chatting, going over the menu, and pretty much inclined to just settle in, take our time and enjoy, not only the food, but chatting with our server…you know, a nice, relaxed family time together.
About 15 minutes later, a couple walked in, he in a blue suit, and she in wedding gown and veil. A bit surprised, I smiled, they returned it, he with a grin, she with a brilliant, happy smile. I was confused, though. Bride, Groom, obviously directly from the ceremony – alone?
So, I’ll admit it, I eavesdropped, just a little – enough to determine that no one came to their wedding. They were alone.
This made me sad, and my son kept saying, “Poor kids.” So, I did it. I ordered them a bottle of champagne and asked our server if, since it was slow, the kitchen could whip up some kind of wedding cake or dessert.
I wish you could have seen their faces! I’m actually tearing up now remembering it! They toasted me and Chris, and asked if they could take a picture with us. So, Chris and I are in a wedding photo album, somewhere in Ohio.
It turns out, they were both in “the system,” both were 18 and had just been dropped by the system. I’m not sure how they met, but they decided that, having no family, they’d make one of their own.
Great kids! Absolutely stellar human beings – and so sweet!
The School phoned me up as my son was being extremely disruptive and arguing with the teacher in class. I was to come down and speak to the hear teacher abotu this and what can be done etc etc etc.
Now, to be fair on her, she did not know the details at this time, but she was right in that he should not have been acting up like he did.
Now, I got to the school, asked at reception for the Head Teacher, and we both went to her office, where my son was sat down. looking a bit like he was up for it I have to admit, and I was really annoyed and so we asked WTF has just happened and why was he arguing with the teacher?
It was all down to the teacher telling the class, that Evolution is not proper science, because it is only a theory! – My son, correctly pointed out that somethign in science only makes it to a theory once it has been shown to be right. Now, so far, I have not mentioned that he was 9.
I started to laugh and I then sided with my son 100% and I said to the headteacher that the teacher was clearly wrong, and that my son would have just been arguing because he was being told wrong information. The Head did agree with me that the teacher was incorrect on this. The head said that she will have a talk with the teacher, however, this to me was simply not good enough!
I argued, that we need to go back to the class NOW, and you need to enforce the fact that the teacher is wrong and that my son is absolutely correct. The head did NOT want to do this, however, I then told her that if she did not, then I will go to the local papers and I will do whatever I can to get hat teacher fired. ( Yes, I am a git at times ).
So yeah, the teacher was absolutely horrified that the head was correcting her and that a 9 year old child had made her look like a moron.
I am NOT going to allow that level of ridiculous nonsense to be taught to my kids.
I dont care if they want to believe in any religious stuff, but if they do, then they need to have solid reasons to do so, and of course, when you understand how science works, it kind of stops you from believing in such hocus pocus as religion.
I graduated high school with an Honors Diploma, 3.98 GPA. I went to a trade school for HVAC and Refrigeration. Took right at 18 months to complete and get my technical degrees.
While in HVAC classes, I decided to doubled up and got my digital and analog electronics certifications. I was in trade school right at 2 yrs. Came out debt free.
Those 2 years a worked at a local factory.
1 month out of school, I landed a job at one of the largest hospitals in my state, as a boiler/chiller operator.
Within 1 yr at that job I moved up to lead hvac tech. Stayed there for 10 yrs.
I took every class they offered in my field. Left that hospital with certifications in building automation controls, deep knowledge in commercial HVAC, chillers, high pressure steam boilers, etc.
Moved on to a higher paying job with my states goverment general service department. Worked there for 6 yrs, gained even more knowledge and certifications.
I now part of a commercial HVAC service business. Have seven people in the company, all with extensive knowledge in commercial HVAC service work. Each of us making well over 100k a year.
I was the first in my family to not go to a traditional 4yr college.
My parents supported me in that. With that support, I was able to do what I was passionate about. I was the first, in my family, to get a job within my choosen field, without major debt.
25 yrs later, Im also the first in my family to stick with my degree and advance it/add to it, still without taking on any debt.
All this to say, support your son in what he wants to do.
Getting into the trades is looked down upon, but if it wasn’t for the trades, the world we live in, would not be remotely the same.
If he feels he can make it work, support him.
And if he fails, stand beside him with a supportive attitude and not a “I told you so” attitude.
Our kids need to make their own successes and failures.
As parents, when our kids hit a certain age, we have to let them fly on their own and hope and pray our guidance and teachings was enough to mold and shape them into productive, happy members of society.
This isn’t to say we stay totally hands off.
My two oldest children (22 and 20) still ask advice on things.
I give my life experiences on the subject matter they ask, and what worked for me. It’s up to them to take the advice, modify it to their life and run with it.
“The Stand”: US Biological Laboratory Leak Leads to 99% Global Fatality
I proudly was the nasty co-worker in the teacher’s lounge. I worked with a woman who thought she should be in charge of everyone because her husband was campus security. On more than one occasion she had let me know that she thought my lunch was “odd.” I had changed my eating habits, increased my exercise resulting in a major weight loss that was being recognized. This other woman was larger than the size I was when I embarked on my health journey. I am not fat-shaming, I am just pointing out that she was not a role model for healthy eating and lifestyle. The things I was eating were working for me.
I was in the teacher’s lounge getting my cup of coffee before I sat down to eat. The only place to sit was next to Mrs. Campus Security. I sat down, then opened my lunch box, pulled out my can opener and a can of pork and beans.
I had only one bite out of the can when I heard in a disgusted tone, “You’re not really going to eat out of the can?”
“Why, do you want some? I can scoop some out for you.” I said in reply, trying to ignore her rudeness and half a pan of lasagna that she was eating.
“That is the grossest thing I have ever seen anyone eat for lunch. You’re eating those nasty greasy beans out of a can… cold!”
“Yep, that was my plan to eat these ‘taste’ nasty beans right out of this can.”
I thought that would be the end of the conversation. All through lunch she had a comment about, “How gross I was for eating beans” or “How my beans smelled bad.” When I finished my beans, I pulled out my treat: a can of peaches in fruit juice.
I started to open the can when I heard, “You got to be kidding me! Are you going to eat those out of the can too?”
I couldn’t resist the moment and began singing a song by Presidents of the United States of America, “Peaches come from a can they were put there by a man in a factory downtown…” The other staff began laughing at the song. We were all tired of listening to Mrs. Campus Security grumble.
We had a staff meeting that afternoon, after school, that controlling lady was still complaining about my lunch. Her still being riled about my lunch led to me being inspired; I decided, right then and there, that I needed to eat the same thing daily while sitting next to her for the sheer entertainment factor.
The next day, she flipped out when I casually sat next to her, then had the same lunch as the day prior. Now, I started making comments about, how flavorful the can makes the beans. I loudly scraped my can sitting next to her while railing on about how delicious they were. The day after that, I did it again. I did it every day for a month. A few days into my inspired entertainment, the other staff realized what I was doing, they started to bring pork and beans for lunch also. Mrs. Campus Security quit coming into the teacher’s lounge during lunch because of being grossed out by us co-workers. The rest of us enjoyed our lunch period much more after her departure.
China is like a man who put on a lot of fat and muscle in order to become strong. Now it wants to improve its health by losing fat while keeping muscle through a tough diet and training regimen.
Chinese society and its economy are now going through that transition.
Up until about 2016, growth in China was easy because it was fueled by manufacturing and rising real estate prices. Most exports were made for foreign brand companies like Apple. Following this growth model, China was able to grow stronger in manufacturing by building multiple supply chains and developing its technology.
With Trump’s election in 2016, the U.S. made it clear that it would not allow this growth model to continue because it believed that China was getting a free development ride at the US’s expense. Trump started with import tariffs on Chinese exports to the U.S., and when that did not generate the desired results, he called for U.S. companies to lesser their reliance on Chinese manufacturing by moving to more friendly and compliant nations like Vietnam and India, a policy which Apple has been following.
The Biden administration has continued this policy and added to it by adding technology sanctions to U.S. IP and chips, and has encouraged companies like TSMC to build chip fabs in the U.S.
What we are learning now is that the Chinese government and Huawei in particular have been secretly preparing for this worst-case scenario for at least five years and have been building their own technology, manufacturing and supply chains which are completely free of western IP. Now, the Chinese are positioning themselves to sell their own indigenously-developed technologies and products worldwide under their own Chinese brands instead of western brands. The Chinese will compete by offering what are now considered expensive high-end features in Western products as standard features in Chinese products.
Chinese companies are already doing this with electric vehicle automobiles and mobile phones, and will do it with other products. There will be a very bloody price war between Chinese and Western brands, and in order to survive, western brands will have to accept lower profits.
Domestically, the Chinese government has worked off its dependency on real estate to fuel domestic growth, which is why Evergrande, Country Garden and other real estate developers are in such trouble.
Make no mistake, this is a tough and painful transition, but there are good reasons for the short-term sacrifice.
China has always been about the medium- and long-term, never about the short-term.
In a saucepan melt 2 sticks butter. Add onion and celery and sauté. Add creamed corn, water, poultry seasoning and pepper. Bring to a boil. In a very large bowl, pour this mixture over stuffing mixture. Toss lightly then stir in eggs. Shape into tennis ball-size rounds. Place on a sheet pan. Brush with 1 stick melted butter.
The check they sent you is fake. It probably looked like a money order. The scam goes like this: They buy something from you and send you payment for too much. They tell you to go ahead and deposit the check, but to send them the balance. They may even tell you to keep a little extra “for your trouble.”
So you (the mark) deposit the bogus money order and send a check to the “buyer.” The bank quickly discovers that the money order is fake, and debit your account for the amount. You’re out the $1,200 or whatever you sent to the fraudster.
I had this happen a few years ago. I was selling an old TV for $25.00 on Craigslist. I got an email asking if it was still available. It was. He was on vacation in England, so he’d have his “assistant,” who was somewhat local (100 miles away) send me a check and pick up the TV.
A few days later, I got a money order for $1,300 in an envelope with a Sacramento return address. Then I got an email from the “buyer” telling me his incompetent assistant had sent me the wrong money order. Could I please deposit it and send a check for the excess? I could keep an extra $25.
I replied that I’d just send them the check back and wait for one in the correct amount. The “buyer” began to get angry, sending me emails threatening legal action if I didn’t comply with his demands. Out of curiosity, I called the credit union printed on the money order—they were several hundred miles away, in San Diego. They told me it was not anything they had issued. Shocker.
I looked up the physical address on Google Earth the “buyer” told me to use to send the “refund” to. It was a mail drop in London, probably with some sort of forwarding arrangement.
After several angry, threatening emails from the “buyer,” the whole thing just faded away. I still have the bogus money order as a souvenir.
Sadly, just like the venerable “Nigerian Prince” scam, there will be people who fall for it.
Hopefully, gentle reader, you won’t be one of them.
What Happened to the President? in The Walking Dead – What We Know Now
When I was married to my first husband, my family hated him so much they managed to get me kicked out of church. From across the state.
There was an AME church directly behind where we lived and I attended there. I wasn’t raised AME. I don’t raise my hands like I know the answers. I don’t dance around. I just wanted to worship with fellow Christians.
Despite me being white, these people accepted me in and made me feel comfortable. Some of the older folks actually got between me and some younger people who didn’t want me there and we’re going to “make me leave”.
They explained that skin color has nothing to do with WHO we are… that how they acted tells everything about WHO they are. And it was unacceptable.
The folks apologized to me and would look for me each week.
I didn’t want any trouble. I didn’t want to be a distraction. I just wanted to worship. And I didn’t care who was around me.
I don’t care what color someone’s skin is. I never have. It’s about who we are, not what we look like.
When I wouldn’t show up, usually because my first husband used to beat me mercilessly, they came by to get me.
The ladies saw me in a pathetic state and they would get the men… who explained to my husband how it was unacceptable. Sometimes in forceful terms.
They helped me escape.
THAT was the most Christian loving thing I’d experienced… and I’m a preacher’s kid.
I’d just finished 37 years of working in IT. I wrote a tiny piece of code used in the Internet. I ended up working in a warehouse. Their internet connection sucked and was made far worse by my boss’ insistance of watching videos all day causing print jobs to fail and produce scanners to act up.
Using ordinary user computers I’d bring up the DOS prompt and show her the crappy network numbers. She forbade me from doing it, saying I was “hacking”.
She was constantly on the phone with her Pastor. Once a month she’d be doubled over with cramps, throwing up all over the offices but refused medication because it was “sinful”.
My coffee consumption is measured in pots. The coffee pot was a one minute walk away but she’d be constantly complaining “you’re taking your coffee break now???” until I made it clear that I wasn’t taking the mandatory 15 minute coffee breaks and often working through lunch, threatening a “work to rule”.
The last straw was when she went on vacation, failed to show up when she was supposed to, failed to contact her supervisor and left me trying to do two jobs.
Her replacement was even worse. When I informed management I was fired by her for insubordination for identifying an unsafe working condition.
Yes. A parent was furious and called to scream at me when I said their child couldn’t play right now. Their child had knocked on my door, and I politely told the little girl she could come back and play tomorrow.
Her mom called and went off on me. She said I was selfish and a bully and that I let everyone else play at my house but her child. I tried explaining that her child had literally played at my house every single day for the last few months. I told her that during the last month, I fed her dinner almost every day and also took her with our family to the park, movie theater, and school functions.
I then stated that I was a single mom of 3 and needed a day to myself to catch up on household chores and run errands. I said I had been working 7 days a week and also needed a couple hours to just lay on the couch and rest with my family. She screamed that I should be ashamed of myself for making her kid sad. Now, keep in mind she was married, only had one kid, and never invited my kids over to play even though she was unemployed and home 24/7.
I later learned that mom was an addict and she wanted her kid out of the house so she could do drugs with no interruptions.
This probably isn’t considered “disgusting” to others, but it was to me. I was hired as a bartender/night manager for a small beer and wine pub-type place by the owner, whose adult kids worked at his restaurant next door. His daughters were nice – I was actually referred by his younger daughter who’d been a customer of mine at another place I tended bar. But his son – WOW! I don’t know why he hated me on sight, but he did. Unfortunately, he was the cook and I had to deal with him whenever one of my customers ordered food, and he would go out of his way to insult or belittle me.
It was my last shift before Christmas and I wanted to be a little “extra”, so I put on a super cute red and white outfit with black boots and a Santa hat. I felt incredibly festive and cute and was really looking forward to my shift. I was, that is, until I walked into the restaurant to get my till. He came out of the kitchen as I was standing there, and he literally started laughing hysterically, pointing at me and saying awful things about how he couldn’t believe I’d worn that and how stupid I looked. Somehow I was able to hold back the tears until I was back at my bar alone, but I bawled, hard. He was always mean, but that night he was especially cruel.
For the record, my customers loved my outfit and tipped me generously, being that it was so close to Christmas. And yes, I did try to speak to the owner about his son’s behavior several times, and each time he said he’d take care of it, but it never got better, which is why I quit as soon as I found another job.
My niece and I were standing in line at the grocery store check out. There were 2 Spanish girls behind us talking away in Spanish about how they were running the streets and what guys they were hooking up with . My niece who is as white as can be pulled out her food stamps to pay for her groceries. The two girls behind us started making fun of her because she was on public assistance and were calling her all kind of derogatory names and jokes. Now my niece grew up with Spanish people and also took Spanish in school so she turns around and responded to the girls in Spanish that at least she could afford to take care of her family instead of running the streets like they obviously did. They were so dumfounded they just looked at her and couldn’t respond. We just gathered up our groceries and walked out while the check out lady was laughing hysterically at the two girls.
I was diagnosed with incurable breast cancer the week I turned 34.
Tumors were all over my bones and broke my spine, hip and cracked my ribs. Several of my vertebrae collapsed and I now have kyphosis.
My disease was stable for almost four years, but slowing tumors started growing again in my spine, and this past year have spread many to other bones plus my liver and lung.
Recently a skull tumor spread into my brain and I have partially lost control of my right foot. Several of the tumors in my spine are currently threatening my spinal canal. Since that area was radiated before, it cannot be radiated again, which means that there is a very high chance I will be paralysed from the arms down before I die. That’s if I don’t die before of liver failure.
At this point I’m hoping my liver will fail before I am paralysed. I dread that so much.
That’s for the physical hardship, there’s also knowing I won’t be there for my young daughter as she grows up, that my parents will see their daughter die before them.
So to sum it up: because I’ll be missing out on more than half of my life (based on my predicted life expectancy at birth), because I’m leaving behind an 8 year-old daughter, because I could be almost entirely paralysed the last weeks or months of my life, because this is something that my child and family will have to witness… I feel like I would have good reasons to complain and feel sorry for myself.
And yet I don’t.
Don’t get me wrong, I am mad it happened and definitely wish it never had.
But it did and it does every day to too many people. You draw the short straw, or maybe just feel like you do because we don’t know what everyone else goes through. I do grumble about my uncooperative leg (now also known as “dead weight”). I do cry and often feel sad beyond words but honestly don’t feel any point in wondering “why me?”
My body reacted in such a way that made it possible for rogue cells to grow. I was otherwise young, relatively healthy, and with no cancer history in my family. It was very unlikely to happen but it did. The bodies of some people just react that way. Why not mine?
I do hope for the best, in other words a treatment that will buy me some time, but I’m also very aware of the limitations of our current medical knowledge and its unability to cure my type of cancer. (And please don’t suggest random cures in the comments, at the time of this post NOTHING has been proved to cure my particular disease).
As a terminally ill person, my thoughts converge toward what matters most: practical end-of-life arrangements, of course my daughter and leaving some sort of legacy behind. Things like expecting a miracle cure or indulging in self-pity would just feel like wasted time at this point.
This just happened to us, last month. It was my wife’s birthday, and some flowers were delivered to our house in a box. Thinking they were from our daughter, my wife took them out, and arranged them in a big vase along with a bouquet that I had brought home for her earlier that morning.
And, then, she noticed the card in the box … which read “Very sorry for your loss. Margret and Victor Voss” (names changed for privacy). We don’t know Margret & Victor and we hadn’t experienced any loss. So, she looked at the delivery label – which had OUR address on it, but not HER name. It was addressed to “April Andrews” – another name we didn’t know. And, again – OUR address.
So, I went online to the flower company website and did a live chat with their Customer Service. I explained the situation to them, and said that we didn’t know April Andrews. And, I asked them what they wanted us to do. They told us to keep the flowers, and that they would straighten out the problem. It was, after all, actually my wife’s birthday.
Well, a day and a half later … our doorbell rings. And, there stands a woman we didn’t know, but who apparently lives down the street in a house whose number is a transposition of our house number. She introduced herself as April Andrews and said that she understood that, “We have her flowers … seeing as how her father just died.”
So, instead of the flower company “taking care of the problem” by finding out the correct address from the senders and delivering another bunch of flowers – what they did was notify the local flower shop who originally made/delivered the bouquet. And THEY chose to “take care of the problem” by driving back over to the Andrews house and POINTING them up the street at our house as the place where they left the box.
Again, the flowers were now 2 days old and intermixed with others. We didn’t have any simple way to just “turn them over”. And, we were told to keep them. (I had the chat transcript in email to prove it).
But, now we have a neighbor whose first impression of us is “the people who stole their dead father’s sympathy flowers.” Real damn nice!
Glad you asked. I have about 500 of them but most cannot really be shared. This one ended up in the newspaper so I think we are pretty clear to talk about it.
About 30 years ago (when I was a paramedic) there were several guys in their late teens and early twenties fishing in a lake near town. This lake is a pretty large, man-made reservoir and a place for boating, sailing, camping and fishing. It also happens to be the scene of about 375 of the 500 “now that was stupid” moments I mentioned above. These guys were fishing from the shore and I guess the fish weren’t biting all that much so they were able to spend more time on their other pastime; drinking beer. Well, as young boys will, they started thinking about what funny thing they could dare each other to do and of course one of them suggests eating their bait. Their live bait. Minnows to be exact. These small fish (about the size of a carnival goldfish) could easily be swallowed whole with a half can of Keystone Beer. After one or two rounds one of the guys decides to take it up a notch and he pulls out a red ear sunfish he caught a few minutes before. They look like this.
image 142
His was just slightly smaller than this one but not by much. Notice the very spikey dorsal fin on this fish. They tend to deploy them like that when they are alarmed or threatened. A good example of that “threat” would be an 18 year old boy attempting to swallow you whole with a river of beer. The perch made it about a third of the way down his esophagus before becoming lodged. He swallowed it head first (because he didn’t want to get poked by the fins…. Smart) but his swallow was too slow and the fish too large and it got stuck. The tail of the fish was visible in the back of the throat so his friends tried to grab it with needle nose pliers and pull it out. That was a mistake. The dorsal fin then entered the esophagus and the fish was incredibly lodged. And alive. Very alive. And the tail was flapping back and forth over the glottis causing a major airway issue.
He was taken by ambulance to the ER and he nearly died. His friends succeeded in tearing most of the tail off the fish but it was still alive. He ended up with a cricothyroidotomy and a trip to the OR to have the fish removed surgically. As his friends messed around with the fish in the back of his throat he vomited of course. Lots of beer. This was even more of an airway issue.
So, if you’re thinking about swallowing a live fish of any size remember this. The surgery is a massive deal and fish are not sterile. Those fins often contain a deadly mix of bacteria (especially catfish) and occasionally even venom. After the acute phase of treatment….assuming you live…. You are still facing a long road to recovery. Holes in your esophagus allow gastric contents through as well and that is a major problem for your lungs and heart. Better by far to stick to those little yellow cracker goldfish snacks with beer.
The Dark Ages were not only dark – they were cold as well. In 535 Krakatau erupted and pushed in so much volcanic ash that the average temperature sank with several degrees, and historian Prokopios describes 536 as a “year with no summer” and the sun shone gloomily and did not warm. These events are recorded also by the Barbarian poetic epics. The Kalevala records this as Louhi stealing Sun and Moon, and the Eddas record 535 as Fimbulvinter.
Not only did crops fail and people all around Europe die from hunger, but in 541–542 the Justinian Plague swept over Europe and killed 50% of Europeans, whose immunity had been compromised by malnutrition and hunger. This plague – caused by the same Yersinia pestis bacterium as the Black Death in the 1300s, was a worse catastrophe than the Black Death itself, and finally killed off the Antiquity.
6th century was the worst century of the whole Dark Ages. The Frankish Kingdom was wrecked by the petty civil wars of the Merovingians, Britain lapsed back to Paganism due to the Anglo-Saxon conquest, Hispania was wrecked by the wars of the Eastern Roman Empire and the Visigoths, and Italy was wrecked by the Eastern Roman Empire reconquest – Rome again belonged in the Empire.
The climate change, which had begun in the 3rd century, had reached the pessimum by 550 AD. After that, climate again began to warm, reaching the global average by 750 AD.
My now ex-wife and I were shopping used vans. In one used car business, we found one of the make/model vans we were interested in. But the price was almost double what we’d budgeted to pay. Along comes a salesman, we chat and tell him it would need a deep discount for us to be able to consider it. We did the test drive, liked it but got no assurance that it could fit our budget, so we made to leave. He said we should let him give us a quote for their best price. We agreed, told him we didn’t want to do the whole back and forth with the manager thing, and he agreed. So we go inside the building and wait to get this quote. And we wait, and we wait. I had the feeling there was a hidden microphone at the table where we were seated, which was verified by the fact that after I said “Let’s go” they magically appeared with the quote. It was $500 off the $20k listed on the window of the van. I handed back the quote in disgust and we continued out the door. I swear three people came after us, yelling “Wait, wait!” at the back of our heads. They even knocked on the windows of our car as we were pulling out. Car dealers, don’t ignore the things we tell you, lie and use sleazy tactics to try and sell.
In a corporate setting, my best buddy, a successful consultant, once faced an intriguing challenge. He was called in to assess a project that was significantly behind schedule and plagued with bugs. The project had been in development for almost a year, with parts being tested by end-users, only to find them too buggy to put into production. Additionally, several critical functions remained unimplemented.
My buddy’s task was clear: take the project’s current state and chart a path to completion using the existing staff. Upon analyzing the original specifications, he realized that the project was essentially a straightforward database application with a few user forms required for various tasks. Taking the project home on a Friday, he dedicated his weekend to it.
On Monday, he returned to present the completed project to the manager. To the manager’s surprise, all screens worked flawlessly, with no bugs in sight. All user interfaces were in place and functioning exactly as they had been originally whiteboarded.
At first, the manager hesitated, assuming these were mock-ups. However, upon realizing that my friend had accomplished in a weekend what the manager’s team had struggled with for a year, the situation took a turn. Instead of accepting the code, the manager paid my friend for the hours claimed and forbade any further communication with the project staff or associates.
This incident underscored an important lesson that my buddy had learned over the years as a consultant: often, in complex problems, there’s a simpler solution waiting to be discovered if you’re willing to look for it.
About 2 months ago, I received a card in the mail from my uncle (Mom’s youngest brother). In the card was a check for $250.
His wife had read something I posted on Facebook, as a comment to a friend of mine. It was about being so broke that we didn’t have any food right then and would be using old gravy packets to make “soup”. I tried to make it sound like a joke, but my Uncle saw through it. Things weren’t quite that bad but they were close. I’m trying to support 3 other people who either won’t work or won’t pay to live in my house (long story but two are family) on less money than I need to do that. Although two of them have food stamps and buy food for the household, it’s still running me into bankruptcy.
Here’s what killed me though – My Uncle was fighting Stage 4 cancer at the time and he apologized in his note that he couldn’t send more!
With all he was going through, he took the time to think of me!
That check arrived on a day when I was so very low because I just didn’t know how I was going to get any food in the house to last us until the food stamp cards refilled.
I wrote him a thank you letter, and I’m glad I got it sent out right away. Less than 3 weeks later, my uncle died. I didn’t know just how sick he was until the day before he died, when his daughters posted a photo of him in a bed in a hospice. He hadn’t wanted anyone to know.
I’m still in shock that he’s gone, and still grateful beyond words to him for his help.
Cody Johnson was a 25-year-old country boy who loved cars and the wilderness.
He was looking for a church-oriented woman he could share his life with. He met the tall, pretty brunette, Jordan Graham and they began dating.
You would have never guessed they had issues if you saw their smiling pictures on Facebook. They presented a great front and Cody didn’t grasp the depth of their problems.
Cody was head over heels in love with Jordan. He cooked for her and brought her gifts and gave her tons of much attention.
A week after meeting Jordan, Cody told his mother, “I think I met the woman I’m going to marry.”
However, Cody’s friends grew concerned as the relationship seemed one-sided. They’d never seen the two of them kiss or hold hands. Jordan was cold and distant.
Jordan was extremely religious and wanted to wait until marriage before having sex. Cody was fine with it.
But he could hardly get her to kiss him. She reassured Cody that she loved him.
One year into dating, he proposed and she said yes — which is where the path to ruin began.
The wedding plans
Jordan’s friends said she was excited anytime they talked about planning the wedding, the party, and all it involved — but never said anything about Cody.
On her wedding day, as Jordan walked down the aisle crying, onlookers smiled, but her maid of honor, Katrina Martinez, was horrified.
She knew Jordan and knew this wasn’t a “good cry”.
Jordan had been asking Kristina in the weeks leading up to the wedding if she should go through with it.
Katrina told Jordan, “I can’t make that decision for you. You need to talk to Cody.”
Cody’s best man knew there was trouble beforehand too. He said he told Cody not to marry her. Something was off.
He could tell Jordan wasn’t in love with him.
But Cody was blinded by his own feelings.
image 132
The day before getting married, Jordan had a massive meltdown, telling her friend she’d “Made a mistake”. But then changed her mind and moved forward.
Ominously, they had a custom song made for their wedding and one of the lyrics said, “You helped me climb higher for a better view. You’re my safe place to fall.”
The murder — 8 days later
They attended church on the Sunday morning of July 7th, 2013. On the way out, witnesses said she’d told her husband she had a “big surprise” for him.
Prosecutors later alleged Jordan had promised to do something sexual with Cody. He made excited comments to friends before they left. And they later found a blindfold at the crime scene.
The next day, Cody’s work called and asked where he was. His boss, Cameron, was excited to congratulate him on the wedding.
Cody didn’t answer his phone so Cameron went to his house looking for him.
Nobody answered the door. Cameron sensed something was wrong and broke the door in.
Nobody was inside. He said the home gave him a terrible vibe.
He wandered through the quiet house and eventually found Cody’s phone on the ground in the garage — which was totally unlike him. Cody always had his phone.
Cameron rushed to the police station and reported Cody missing.
The cops immediately wondered why his wife wasn’t the one reporting her husband missing. A friend finally got ahold of Jordan and asked her if she’d seen Cody.
She said she didn’t know but later told cops, “He went out with a bunch of friends I’ve never met. I don’t know anything more, any of the whereabouts or anything.”
Friends and cops were immediately struck by how unemotional Jordan was with Cody’s disappearance.
When friends came to her house to provide support and comfort, she grew agitated that they were there rather than upset Cody that was missing.
At one point, she got upset and threw her wedding ring across the room — which caught sent a chill down everyone’s spine.
Then, there was a random email that Jordan received from a mysterious man named Tony The Carman, “Hello Jordan. My name is Tony. There is no bother in looking for Cody anymore.”
Cody is gone. Call off the search. He fell off a cliff at Glacier National Park.”
She took the message to the cops.
Search parties went out. Jordan participated and drove with her friends to the park.
During the drive, she was happy, singing songs and hanging her hand out the window, flying it in the wind. You’d have never known her husband was missing.
At the park, Jordan led her group to the exact location of Cody’s body. She said she “Just had a feeling he’d be there.”
His body was at bottom of a steep, remote cliff, in terrible condition.
She told her friends, “Cody told me he wanted to see this spot before he died.”
This drew even more scrutiny to Jordan. She started fudging details and changing her story during an interrogation.
Jordan didn’t help herself when authorities asked, “How did you locate his body so fast?”
This time she said the spirit of Jesus Christ led her to his body.
Cody’s best man said, “I almost instantly thought Jordan did something.”
At Cody’s funeral, Jordan sat in the front row, playing on her phone, smiling and unaffected.
People who only passingly knew Cody were more emotional than his own wife. It was at this point that her friends all concurrently knew that Jordan had murdered her husband.
Cops later confirmed that the mysterious email from Tony the Car Man had been sent by Jordan on her dad’s device.
The partial confession
Jordan admitted to pushing Cody.
She said they’d been in a fight. She said she was so upset that when he turned his back to her, she shoved him hard in the back, sending him over the edge.
He fell 300 feet to his death, landing headfirst.
There wasn’t even a struggle or self-defense argument made. She said she just did it because she was angry.
But because of so many other lies, mounting evidence, and a complete lack of caring for her dead husband, it was an obvious case of murder.
She entered a guilty plea.
On March 27th, 2014, Jordan was sentenced to 30 years in prison with no possibility of parole.
Cody’s mother is inconsolable and his family is still coping with the loss.
Cody was murdered eight days after their wedding ceremony. It’s hard to imagine how things could go so wrong so fast.
It’s even harder to fathom how someone could find breaking a person’s heart harder than killing him. But stranger, darker things have happened.
One of my old managers was a great guy but didn’t take crap from anyone.
There was a guy we worked with that was a total jerk. He liked to act all rough and tough whenever the manager, AGM or I weren’t around (I was a lead/MIT)…He especially had a history of intimidating the young shift leaders and other coworkers (especially the females). He constantly denied this but we had no reason to doubt our leadership team.
We heard through the grapevine that he was going to call out for a weekend as he felt entitled that he didn’t have to work weekends and we were assholes for scheduling him. That Friday night he texts the manager to say he was going to be out for awhile due to a “family emergency” and we better not put him on the schedule him until he says it’s ok too.
Two weeks goes by and my manager texts him to come in and we would go over his new schedule. The guy came in expecting us to give him the schedule he felt he deserved…instead he handed him a blank calendar and said that was the best we could do…basically he made the guy drive in with the sole purpose of firing him…the look the guy gave was priceless.
First things first, anyone who has ever attempted to bathe a cat knows that it can be akin to a kind of very small, domesticated warfare. Cats generally do not like water. Not only is this aversion instinctual, but it’s also part of their self-grooming pride. They spend a significant slice of their waking hours meticulously cleaning themselves with their tongues, so in their eyes, getting dunked into water is completely unnecessary.
image 13
Now, is it cruel? It can certainly seem that way, especially with all the hissing, clawing, and Olympic-level gymnastics they do to escape a bathtub.
However, there are exceptions to the no-bath rule. If your cat has rolled around in something toxic or sticky, or if they have long fur that’s become matted and dirty beyond the help of their own tongue, a bath isn’t just kind, it might be necessary for their health.
The key is technique and preparation. Unlike dogs, most cats aren’t going to jump into a bath with wagging tails and excited eyes. You have to be methodical. Prep the area with all the tools you’ll need – shampoo, towels, a non-slip mat, and perhaps even a cat bathing bag if you value the skin on your arms.
Warm water is a must. Not hot, not cold – think baby bath temperature. And always talk to them in a calm voice. Granted, they might not listen because they’re shrieking louder than a banshee, but at least you’ve done your part to maintain a façade of serenity.
After the bath, the tricky part might be drying them off. Some cats tolerate being swaddled in a towel; others might handle a blow-dryer on a low, quiet setting. Above all, ensure they’re fully dry before they saunter off because a damp cat is a cold cat, and a cold cat is a grumpy cat.
So cruel? Not inherently. But bathing a cat should be done with careful consideration and only when necessary.
And remember, while a picture of a wet cat might fetch a good number of likes on social media, your cat’s dignity and your unscratched arms might be more worth it.
This happened at all three banks where I was previously employed, before I retired.
The rule was that we were to answer the phone after the second ring. No exceptions. The tellers, New Accounts Representatives, anyone except the men. Well, I answered after the first or second ring, if I was available, and didn’t already have a customer at my desk. If I was opening accounts, doing a Stop Pay, preparing paperwork for a Foreign Wire Transfer, and the other hundred things you help customers with, yes, I would let it ring .
If you get in your car, make the trip to do some banking in person and are sitting at my desk , I am NOT going to be so rude as to ignore the customer in front of me to answer questions on the phone. (Examples: can you see if my Social Security has been deposited? What are your CD rates? Do you have any specials? Can you do a Stop Payment for me? Why is my account negative? My mother died and I am checking to see if she had any accounts with you. How late can I make my loan payment? What is the cutoff time for a Wire Transfer?)
I wouldn’t do this if a guest was in my home, so the same etiquette should be at work.
I once closed a newish account because, as I was being helped at the teller window in the lobby, the teller actually paused the transaction to answer the phone and do bank business with the person on the phone. Unacceptable!
I noticed the loan officers, the President. Vice President never answered the phone when they had a customer at their desk (and most likely could not answer questions about accounts anyway, which is the Operations side of the bank). They were on the Loan side of the bank.
I briefly mentioned this in a different post but that most angry neighbor that ever came to our door was my husband’s Commanding Officer.
He was livid with anger. He was shaking he was so upset.
When I asked him what was wrong, sir? he yelled that my 5-year-old twin boys had come to his quarters and pulled every plant from his carefully tended garden. Tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, even a few stalks of corn.
After my husband and I got him calmed down I called the boys into the room and ask them if they had done that. They surprised me by proudly declaring they had.
It turned out, that afternioon while I was shopping and they were home with the maid, the 10 and 12 year old boys next door had told my little ones that the Commander was transferring (was well understood by two Army kids) and his garden had to be completely cleared. And that he would pay a dollar a piece to them to do it.
He gave them each a dollar and headed for my next door neighbor’s house. I don’t know what happened to those two boys.
I bet it was not pretty.
The Stand (1994): Super-Flu Virus. The Dark Man is Coming.
He asked waiter about the menu and placed his order.
After a while a family came on the table next to him & placed their order.
To the guy’s dismay, they got served FIRST.
They started laughing and eating. One of them bragged how he knows someone in the hotel.
The guy called the waiter and asked.
The waiter calmly replies: Yours is a special order being prepared by the Chief chef. Theirs is a regular order prepared by the students in attachment because the top chefs are preparing your order. That’s why it’s taking time.
Please have some juice in the meantime, he said and left calmly.
Short after six waiters brought this guy’s order. Unknown to the guys, the hotel owner was his long lost friend who recognised him and decided to surprise him.
He changed his simple meal to a Five-star meal. The people next to his table were shocked. They couldn’t stop staring and started mumuring why he got such VIP treatment.
This is life.
Some people are ahead of you, eating their meals, mocking you & talking how they are better than you. How well connected they are.
You are waiting for your meal and wondering why is it taking so long. You endure the taunts, mockery and humiliation.
May be you are going through stress, anxiety or depression.
Don’t worry…
The owner of the world has seen you and he doesn’t want to serve you a simple meal.
Yours is a special order hand made by the top chefs. That’s why it’s taking time.
When it comes the laughing party will be silenced for good.
I worked for a mid size firm in the technology field for 25 years. Over time technology changed and eventually the system i supported was outdated. I never was really interested in learning the new stuff I was aging and I was pretty much burned out in that job. As time went on my system was phased out and eventually eliminated. I knew my time was up. I waited for that pink slip for over three years whilst doing nothing but surfing the web, catching up on current events and social media. By that time I was so bored, felt so useless and the days dragged on so long I was ready for that pink slip. When it finally came I was so relieved I was ecstatic. It took me several years to find another job that paid 1/4 of what that job paid and I worked my ass off for that tiny wage. But at least I felt worthwhile and somewhat useful. It’s not all about the money.
Three or four years ago, I, along with several of our day-shift officers, was dispatched to a theft call at a local grocery store. The complainant, an elderly lady, told us that while she was shopping, a man grabbed her purse from her shopping cart and ran from the store. She was very upset, as she had quite a bit of cash in her purse, along with some jewelry and other valuables. We went out into the parking lot and a woman told us that she had seen a man run from the store with a purse and that he ran around the corner of the building toward the back. I sent three officers around the back of the store to look for the suspect and told two other officers to canvas the parking lot and try to locate any other witnesses.
I then drove around to the back of the store where the officers were looking in every possible hiding place for the suspect. After a few minutes, one of the officers shouted that she had found something. She was holding up a purse matching the description of the purse the complainant told us had been taken. The purse looked as if it had been ripped open to make it easier to quickly search for valuables. While some of the items remained in the purse, most of the contents, including the valuables appeared to be gone.
I radioed one of the officers in front of the store and asked him to bring the complainant around to the back. When she arrived and got out of the police vehicle, I showed the lady the purse that was found and asked if it was hers. She took it from me and frantically started looking through the the remaining contents of the purse, discarding what appeared to be trash and items of insignificance as she searched. “It’s not here!” She told me. “My mother’s wedding ring set isn’t here!” She was distraught. “It appears that the thief took everything of value,” said one of the Officers. “Maybe we can get a description and find it at one of the pawn shops.” The woman was inconsolable. She explained that the ring set was the only thing she had left to remember her deceased mother. “How would he have found it?” she asked, “It was hidden in the lining.” She showed us where the ring had been concealed in the lining of the purse. We had to admit that it had been well concealed and it seemed unlikely that a thief who was in a hurry to get away would have taken the time to check for anything hidden. However, the purse had been torn, so it did seem possible that the ring fell out of the purse when the thief tossed it as he made his escape.
“Where did you find the purse?” I asked the Officer who had located the item. “It was right there, in that dumpster,” the Officer replied, pointing to a large dumpster behind the grocery store. We all walked over to the half full dumpster and took a peek. “It was right here,” the Officer told us, gesturing to one end of the container. Another Officer who was peering into the dumpster contents reached in and retrieved a pen that appeared to be expensive. “ Was this in your purse, Ma’am?” The Officer asked her. “Yes it was,” the lady replied. “My grandson gave me that pen about six months ago.” “Well,” I said to to the officers, “Who wants to go dumpster diving?”
The chances of finding the ring set seemed remote, but we decided that it was worth the effort. We agreed that each of us would take a turn digging through the dumpster for 20 minutes at a time. After gloves were passed around, the first officer went in. After 20 minutes, we switched out and the next Officer took the plunge. After about ten minutes of foraging, to our dismay, from the bowels of the dumpster came a cry of triumph from the second Officer, “Found it!” The Officer popped up out of the dumpster, proudly clutching the ring set. I’m not sure who was more pleased; the lady, who probably thought she would never see the ring set again, or the three of us who had not yet taken a turn digging through the dumpster. The lady was in disbelief (so were we), and very grateful. With tears in her eyes, she insisted on giving us a reward. I explained that while we appreciated her generous offer, we did not accept rewards and that we were just pleased that we had been able to help her. After several more minutes of discussing the miraculous recovery of the ring set, obtaining a description of the thief and a list, description and value of the stolen items, the lady left the scene.
As the five of us stood near the dumpster, I noticed for the first time how truly filthy the two Officers were who had climbed into the dumpster. “I can’t be sure until we have an expert make a determination, but it’s my guess that those uniforms will need to be incinerated,” I told them. “You guys did a great job today,” I told them. “Go home, take those uniforms off and put them in black plastic bags and then take at least three hot showers. See you tomorrow.”
The actions of those Officers that day were by far the dirtiest thing I have ever seen a fellow police officer do.
Thanks,
Captain John Sharp
The Stand – Explosion in the last scene “I brought you the fire” (S01E08)
Let me help to makes western admirers amongst orientals and Chinese nations 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 neighbourhood 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 and others remained 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 independent! So be logical and honest about who is the aggressor and who respects your sovereignty? If you are fair China has a 5000 years gentleman. The U.S. is a 247 years hoodlum you never want to get close with
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 at 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 the murdered 5 million Indo Chinese to make them democratic unsuccessfully.
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 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 pro Chinese candidate. Vote in a leader that has no inclination to do shit for the U.S. And telll the US. that you are a friend and a partner of China, and that you want them 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 issues and create discord.
The Search for Noah’s Ark and the Aliens in the Book of Enoch
Alien Abductions in the Book of Enoch and the Search for Noah’s Ark Enoch warned the Giants and the Watchers of the world. Repent or feel God’s wrath. They ignored his warning.
The floodgates of Heaven burst forth and water rushed over the Earth, destroying everything. The only thing to survive is a single vessel, a huge ship: the Ark. 5 months later, the waters recede and the Ark made ground on a mountaintop. A man named Noah emerged, and civilization began again.
Some version of the Noah’s Ark story exists in almost every religion and every culture on Earth. But did Noah and the Ark really exist? There’s evidence that they did. So much evidence, that it was classified by the CIA for almost 50 years.
But why classify it? Well, there are two problems with the Noah’s Ark story. One, the Ark is much older than anyone thought. And two, the man named Noah? He wasn’t a man. At least, not a man from Earth.
“What’s the worst accident that you’ve witnessed at work?”
Back in 1998 to 2000 I was an IT consultant supporting the computers at The RAND Corporation. My first office was a bull pen with a window facing the tunnel where Interstate-10 becomes CA-1 the Pacific Coast Highway.
I heard a crashing noise through the window. I looked towards the tunnel. Out of the tunnel came a couple of cars tumbling as they decelerated from freeway speed to zero. Unfortunately one person was not wearing seat belts. The body flew out of one of the cars. One of the other cars smashed into the road at that point where the person had hit the road. Most of the body was ejected away from the wreckage. I had nightmares for at least a year.
I asked for a different office. My new work station was in a janitor room with a window. I worked in a room with mops, cleaning chemicals, a tape drive for computer backups and a couple of computer terminals. The window looked the other direction out of the building so I could see palm trees and most of Santa Monica Pier.
Actually at the office the worst accidents were cuts from metal edges. Go get a tetanus shot. Maybe a stitch. As data centers improved it got to be rare that anyone would get cuts.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind Air Traffic Control Scene with airport deleted scene included.
Generals love new toys, especially cool looking toys that their soldiers get to wear. They love adding things to improve their soldiers. Sometimes those things are, in fact, cool and useful!
They do tend to forget however that soldiers are human and must then carry, in substandard conditions, that cool piece of gear.
Thus I give you the most useless piece of gear I was ever issued.
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The IOTV deltoid protector.
Looks cool? Check.
Actually protects the soldier? Check!
It’s a win!
Not quite.
I was issued these lovely pieces of equipment and then promptly sent to Iraq in May.
You might not know this, but it’s REALLY hot in Iraq and that heat ramps up around April. Given my position as a SAW gunner, I was already carrying 95lbs of kit, not counting an assault pack, in temperatures that were quickly approaching 95–125 degrees. And my 1st Sgt informs us that we’ll all be wearing these beauties on patrol. I am not impressed for three reasons:
1: It was already hot as hell and one of the few places my sweat could soak through and cool me off was my shoulders. Now those would be covered. I’m up to 120 weather on patrol.
2: Several studies have shown that infantryman carrying more than 1/3 of their body weight suffer severely adverse consequences to their ability to fight effectively. I was already carrying 95lbs. 3–4 lbs might not sound like much but when your body armor is already creating incipient back problems, those pounds add up. Imagine getting up off the ground from a prone position, rushing 10 to 15 yards and throwing yourself bodily down on the ground with a 90 pound rucksack on your back. Then imagine someone asks you to add more weight to that.
3: Of all the places that I would choose to get shot if I had to, I’d love to get shot in the shoulder. I could fight more effectively with one hand then I can with a wound in my abdomen, very little in my shoulder is vital, and frankly the benefits just weren’t there given the cost required of me.
Fortunately my chain of command saw sense and after about two weeks of using deltoid protectors we were given permission to remove them from our kit. I put mine away and didn’t even look at them for the rest of the deployment. I did have to pay for one I couldn’t find when I got out… Those things are expensive for such a useless piece of equipment!
In 1978, I saw a guy dressed like a bum in a bar. He asked several people to buy him a beer, and they refused and make negative comments about him. I felt a little sorry for him the way he was being treated. He came up to the bar, sat beside me and asked me to buy him a beer. I brought him a few and we talked. I found him to be quite intelligent. He then said he had the next round and would buy me a beer and I could keep the change. He put what I thought a 1 dollar bill on the counter. The bar tender gave him change for $100.00. At first, I refused to take his money until he told me who he really was.
He was a millionaire and half owner of a racetrack. He explained as a rich millionaire. He had no real friends. People only pretended to be his friend because his is rich and hoping to get his money. He had no wife or girlfriends for the same reason. His rich backstabbing associates were no better. He said money is not everything and that he has a sad and lonely life. He said sometimes he will dress and act like a bum to see how people will treat him if they thought he was not rich. Some people heard what he was saying. The next thing we had, people flocked around us. He said see. At first, they didn’t want anything to do with me. Now that they know, I am a millionaire. Now they want to be my friends. I didn’t know who he was at first. But still treated him with respect and ended up with $98.00.
The word “missing” is not that appropriate here I think. I have to say in the beginning that listing things that are better in China as compared to India doesn’t mean that China is superior to India. There are also numerous things that China needs to learn from India.
First and foremost, there’s the talk about infrastructure. The roads in China are always smooth as silk. Railways that seem like they could host a ballet. And don’t even have to mention the power supply. In comparison, India is often grappling with pothole-ridden roads, crowded and aging railways, and power outages.
Then comes the education scene. The level of education among the labor force in China is something we all can learn from. It’s not just about degrees; it’s about a certain finesse, a skill set that makes the workforce a well-oiled machine. In India, they’ve got the brains, but sometimes it feels like they need to fine-tune the engine a bit.
Diligence. Chinese folks are known for their hard work, their commitment to their craft. It’s like they have an extra gear that many missed. Not to say that people in India aren’t hardworking, but sometimes, that extra pinch of diligence can make all the difference.
Public Safety and Discipline. China is known for its strict enforcement of laws and regulations, resulting in low crime rates and a generally safe environment. Public spaces are often well-maintained, and there is a strong emphasis on social discipline. In contrast, India, like many countries, grapples with issues such as crime, traffic management, and maintaining public spaces with the same level of discipline.
Business Environment. China has often been praised for its business-friendly environment and efficient bureaucratic processes, attracting significant foreign direct investment. India, despite improvements, has faced criticism for bureaucratic red tape and regulatory complexities that can hinder the ease of doing business.
Lastly, sanitation. China has been on a cleanliness drive that’s nothing short of impressive. Public spaces are spick and span, and the streets seem to sparkle. In India, while they have been making strides, there’s still room for improvement.
China’s Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge in the Lingdingyang waters.
Well, this is not exactly a teacher-student lesson, but a lesson which put me right in my place. I’m a physicist and have a solid base in mathematics. So when my younger brother asked me to solve this, I took one look at the problem and blurted instantly: “oh come on, man! You find this crap hard? Try solving Schrodinger’s equation to start with!”
“Just solve it, Neil!” He insisted.
I was at my usual coffee shop, having breakfast and was a little annoyed at the way I was interrupted. Nonetheless, I decided to switch on my Show Off Mode and solve the damn thing.
I grabbed a serviette that the waiter had given me and scribbled him the answer and sent it through Whatsapp. As soon as it got sent, I sat back and smiled, quite content and proud with the answer that I had given him.
So, here’s the question
image 140
And here’s my answer:
image 139
Well, 3 unknowns and 3 simultaneous equations, piece of cake, right?
Half an hour later my brother messaged me back.
Noel (My Brother): Shit, man! What a nerd! I totally see the physicist in you taking over.
Me (gloating with pride): So, did you get it?
Noel: Sure did! But I solved it in a different way.
Me: Aaaaannd you got the same answer?
Noel: Yes, I did!
Me: Wow, really?
Noel: Well, all the figures appear twice in the first three diagrams and if you add them all up you get, 2(x+y+z) = 10 + 20 + 24 = 54. So x+y+z = 54/2 = 27!
Me (my pride nosediving): Hey, that’s not bad!
That’s the day I realized there’s always a simpler explanation to everything. You just need to keep your mind and ears open to get it!
Once upon a time, maybe even until the early 2000s, the Western Media had CREDIBILITY
They followed the five principles of INVESTIGATE JOURNALISM
Find the evidence
Establish the facts based on the Evidence
Try to destroy the facts yourself to see if they can stand up to scrutiny using the RED TEAM BLUE TEAM ANALYSIS
Build the Narrative
Write about and Talk about the Narrative
It’s why their coverage of the Vietnam War or the 91 Gulf War or the 99 Kosovo Crisis was so appreciated and admired
image 138
Today or even over the last decade, they have started a different course
First Build a Narrative based on what Money Interests & Politicians want (Russia is losing, China is collapsing etc)
Then start selectively FINDING AND TWISTING facts to fit the narrative
Then start FINDING the evidence to fit the narrative and IGNORE all the contrary evidence
Attack anyone who tries to counter the narrative by going personal on them and accusing their integrity or morality or accuse them of racism and bigotry
image 136image 137
The Best example was the Ukrainian Crisis :-
First the Narrative was Putin has missiles only for 3 months
That was obviously nonsense
Next was the Narrative that Putin and his economy was collapsing
That was nonsense too
Next was Putin’s ISOLATION
That turned out to be nonsense too
Now it is the fact that Putin has lost 300000 men so far
Again that is nonsense of the highest order
The Narrative becomes lesser and lesser credible and more and more bizzare and weird
The Western Media finds so called ‘Experts’ who will shamelessly fall in line with the narrative even if they know they will be embarrassed later
So many Military experts have been humiliated by their predictions on Putin and yet without a shred of shame, they still go around talking and giving expert opinion
The Real experts like Brian Berletic, Scott Ritter, Colonel Kassad, Doug Macgregor etc have been saying the perfect truth for over a couple of years now
They still follow the old method of journalism
With China the Narratives have changed
First it was Uyghur Genocide
That was nonsense
Next it was Slave Labor
Again Nonsense
Next it was Cultural Genocide
Again Nonsense
As each Narrative becomes more and more unbelievable , the newer narrative becomes even more bizzare
Like this China and the Hard Landing
Every ‘Expert’ who predicted a collapse of China and there have been 60 of them across the last 34 years – have missed their deadlines by almost a decade at least
In 1990, they said China would collapse before the new Millennium (1/1/2000)
Then they said in 2003, that by 2011 China would collapse
Then by 2015 (In 2005)
Then by 2025 (In 2010)
Every single time they are proven wrong
Every single time they double down and give a new date
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Even now when China, for a $ 19T economy delivers a 5% growth against a very low global demand and a real estate slump, it’s regarded an economic weakness whereas every economist of repute regards it as EXCELLENT RESILIENCE
Yet when India with its $ 3.53T economy manages 6.5% growth , it’s regarded as a boom when any economist can see that it’s a result of spending and inflation mostly
Likewise UK or Germany are completely ignored
So the Mainstream Media doesn’t any longer have the CREDIBILITY they so enjoyed
Their Economic Experts are shameless men who don’t care how many times they are proven wrong
They are ready to risk their reputation again and again and have lost all their credibility
They all have Political Agenda now
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The best way to handle them is like is like our friends the Afghanistan Taliban
Their simple response is “If you publish lies about us, we will burn your daughter alive while you watch”
Crude but Brutally effective 😁😁
Worked well with Laura Ingraham who was so terrified she stopped entirely
The kids in my daughter’s nursery get a milk carton every day in school during milk and fruit time. The milk comes in a paper carton with a small straw attached to it which is wrapped in a small plastic cover.
We just found out today that one of the kids at the beginning of the year struggled with opening her wrapped straw from the cover so my daughter helped the kid unwrap it. And because pretty much all the kids struggled with it, they all gave their milk cartons to her so that she could unwrap it.
So apparently, every day during lunch the kids form an orderly queue so our little one can unwrap each and every kid’s straw in the classroom.
My daughter is lactose intolerant so does not drink milk. She brings her bottle of almond milk with her from home. She unwraps every single kid’s milk carton before she goes about drinking her own almond milk. When the teachers told us that today, my wife cried a little bit inside! Very proud of our LO!
I grew up in a small, rural area in the midwest. Our school bus was the only one with racial unrest. A handful of black children went to the school and all rode this particular bus to school. They had to endure a great deal of harassment, including name calling.
At the beginning of one school year, a new family moved in. The mom was white. The dad had some mixture of black blood. They had a number of children including two middle school-aged boys. The trouble on the bus began almost immediately.
A tall, high school-aged white boy walked up to one of these boys (he was probably about 5’7″ with sandy, curly hair) and said, “Move over n—–.” The new kid replied, “Say it nicely.” The big, white kid repeated, “Move over n—–!” He now had an audience and was enjoying this. The new kid repeated, “Say it nicely.” By now everyone was watching to see what would happen. The big, white kid shoved the new kid to show him who was boss. The new kid calmly stood up, and beat the living daylights out of this big, white kid with his bare hands. He, then, calmly sat down and said, “Say it nicely.” I don’t remember anyone bothering him, or his sisters, ever again.
1K Upvotes! Thank you, everyone. And, yes, this is a true story. I was an eye witness to this event, and was sitting in the next forward seat of the bus. All I had to do was turn around in my seat to see this played out in living color.
“Blood” here refers to family background or lineage. Obviously, I am not referring to the color of blood in a person’s physical body. We often speak of ‘Irish’ or of ‘Italian’ blood.
Seeing The Future Of The Strong Independent Single Women
Chicken Cordon Bleu
A slightly unconventional, but delicious, recipe for Chicken Cordon Bleu.
Chicken Cordon Bleu
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
6 chicken breast halves, skinned and boned
Salt and pepper
6 thin slices ham
3 slices Swiss cheese, halved
1/2 cup Ritz cracker crumbs
2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese, grated
2 tablespoons parsley, minced
3/4 cup margarine*, melted
Instructions
Place chicken breasts on a cutting board; cover with waxed paper, and lightly pound to flatten the breasts. Do not cut through meat. Discard waxed paper.
Lightly salt and pepper the breasts. Place a slice of ham and 1/2 slice of Swiss cheese on each breast. (Cheese may need to be folded to fit on breast.) Roll the breast, jellyroll style; secure with a wooden pick.
Combine cracker crumbs, Parmesan cheese and parsley.
Melt margarine* and dip rolled breasts in the margarine, then in the cracker crumb mixture.
Place in a greased 9 x 13 inch baking dish. Bake at 350 degrees F for 45 minutes.
Originally Answered: If employers rejected you, does it always mean you are worthless or incompetent?
Well….
No. Definitely not.
Take this example, of a clearly worthwhile human being who was rejected for employment by Cadbury in the UK.
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Now, Mr. Jones CLEARLY had great worth and was a fine example of a human being. It’s possible his approach to Cadbury when seeking employment could have been improved somewhat, but how could you call him either worthless or incompetent?
He had submitted a very creative sketch of an “Everlasting Chocolate Bar”; who couldn’t get on board with that idea?
He obviously had some good feedback from his various eBay transactions that he was able to provide as proof of his worth.
Who’s really to say that he actually never did “super-secret spy work” that he legally couldn’t talk about?
And consider the kindness and thoughtfulness it took for him to “pay it forward” and include a £5 note with his application so that the hard-working human resources clerk could have lunch!
See? An employment rejection letter sent to a very worthwhile and competent human being.
I don’t have a television, In fact, I haven’t had one since around 2004.
It’s not that I can’t afford it, it’s just that I am not interested in one. I occasionally watch movies, but those that I do watch are downloaded torrents, and I watch them either on the laptop of on one of the (too many) pads that we have lying around the house.
Sure, there are television shows in China, and I could watch them, but they are all kind of silly and are of no interest to me. Shrug.
Were I to purchase one, it would be a big waste. Just running all day as “background noise”. With perhaps a video or kids show every other day. Ah. We have different priorities.
Sometimes I wonder if I am an outlier. Or is this just the way that society has changed? I don’t know. I really do not know.
Maybe it was me that changed.
Or perhaps… just perhaps… I am no longer addicted to that propaganda box. And once away from that “drug” I find that I no longer need it.
The sanctions are actually quite deadly, if it was some other country.
The US used SWIFT as weapon on Syria, Iran, and Russia in recent years.
Banning someone from SWIFT should be the strategical threat, like nuclear weapon. However, the US probably really doesn’t have any more conventional method to force the “enemy states”.
When the atomic bomb got dropped, the world suddenly realized that it’s not that devastating.
With enough countries being considered as “enemy”, they are now able to form their own environment. It means that they are able to establish an internal circulation, so that the sanctions from the western group became virtually invalid.
Iran now is able to sell its oil to China or with currencies other than USD. This does not only lowered the usage of USD in international tradings, but also partially took the right to price the oil. Petrol dollar is the foundation, at least one of the supporting pillars, of nowadays US economic hegemony.
It’s the same for the Entity List of US government. When there were only a few companies and organzations on it, they were technically isolated from the world, and it was devastating.
However, with enough companies being sanctioned, they are able to support each other. US government sanctioned Huawei, so that TSMC cannot make chips for Huawei. However, conveniently, the US sanctioned SMIC too, which is a Chinese chip maker in Shanghai. Now SMIC is able to hold hands with Huawei with no hesitation.
It used to work because after the collapse of USSR, there was only 1 world leader. It was either the US way or the highway.
Then the US pushed Russia into the corner and hoped Russia to kneel before it. This reached a peak when the US successfully launched a color revolution to overthrow the pro-Russia authority. What the White House didn’t expect is Putin putting his pride aside and holding hands with China.
Russia has sources, China has manufacturing, and both countries are vast.
They are forced by the US to became the leader of the “evil world”, and started to provide sanctuary for countries which have nowhere to go.
Logic of the US: You are my enemy if you are not my friend.
Logic of China: We may not be friends, the least we could do is to coexist in peace.
The US on one hand doesn’t want China to be in its group, because China is not Japan or South Korea, it doesn’t just do whatever the US wanted; on the other hand, the US doesn’t want China to be in other groups, including forming its own, because that will weaken the control power of the US group over the world.
You cannot have everything.
It might be the case in the 90’s because the US was the only super power.
But time has changed.
Maybe one day Russia would turn against China, but that would for sure be after the decline of the US.
The Tiny Cell called “Little Ease” was the Most Feared Room in the Tower of London
little ease
The story of Little Ease begins with a prison break from the Tower of London.
In 1534, a man and woman hurried past a row of cottages on the outer grounds of the Tower. They had almost reached the gateway to Tower Hill and, not far beyond it, the city of London, when a group of yeomen warders on night watch appeared in their path.
In response, the young couple turned toward each other, in what seemed a lover’s embrace. But something about the man caught the attention of a yeoman warder. He held his lantern higher and within seconds recognized the pair. The man was a colleague, fellow yeoman warder, John Bawd, and the woman was Alice Tankerville, a condemned thief, and prisoner.
So ended the Tower’s first known escape attempt by a woman. But Alice’s accomplice and admirer, the guard John Bawd, was destined to enter the Tower record books too: he is the first known occupant of a peculiarly infamous cell used during the reigns of the Tudors and early Stuarts.
The windowless cell measured 4 square feet (1.2 meters) and bore the faintly prim name of Little Ease. Its effect was simple. The prisoner within it could not stand nor sit nor lie down but was forced to crouch over, in increasing agony, until freed from the suffocating, dark space.
In 1215 England outlawed these kinds of grim practices through the passage of Magna Carta, except, however, by royal warrant. The first king to authorize it, and he did so reluctantly, was Edward II. He submitted to intense pressure from the Pope to follow the lead of the king of France and demolish the Order of the Knights Templar, part of a tradition begun during the Crusades.
King Philip IV of France, jealous of the Templars’ wealth and power, had charged them with heresy, obscene rituals, idolatry, and other offenses. The French knights denied all, and were duly tortured. Some who broke down and “confessed” were released; all who denied wrongdoing were burned at the stake.
Once Edward II ordered imprisonment of members of the English chapter, French monks arrived in London bearing their dreaded instruments. In 1311 the Knights Templar “were questioned and examined in the presence of notaries while suffering under the torments of the rack” within the Tower of London as well as the prisons of Aldgate, Ludgate, Newgate, and Bishopsgate, according to The History of the Knights Templar, the Temple Church, and the Temple, by Charles G. Addison. And so the Tower—principally a royal residence, military stronghold, armory, and menagerie up until that time—was baptized in pain.
Did the instruments remain after the Knights Templars were crushed, to be used on other prisoners? We cannot be certain, although there is no record of it. The next mention of a rack within the Tower is a startling one—an unsavory nobleman made Constable of the Tower pushed for one to be installed. John Holland, third duke of Exeter, arranged for a rack to be brought into the Tower. It is not known if men were stretched upon it or if it was merely used to frighten. In any case, this rack is known to history as the Duke of Exeter’s Daughter.
It was in the 16th century that prisoners were unquestionably tortured in the Tower of London. The royal family rarely used the fortress on the Thames as a residence; more and more, its stone buildings contained prisoners.
And while the Tudor monarchs seem glittering successes to us now, in their own time they were beset by insecurities: rebellions, conspiracies and other threats both domestic and foreign. There was a willingness at the top of the government to override the law to obtain certain ends. This created a perfect storm for torture.
“It was during the time of the Tudors that the use of torture reached its height,” wrote historian L.A. Parry in his 1933 book The History of Torture in England. “Under Henry VIII it was frequently employed; it was only used in a small number of cases in the reigns of Edward VI and of Mary. It was whilst Elizabeth sat on the throne that it was made use of more than in any other period of history.”
Yeoman Warder John Bawd admitted he had planned the escape of Alice Tankerville “for the love and affection he bore her.” Unmoved, the Lieutenant of the Tower ordered Bawd into Little Ease, where he crouched, in growing agony.
The lovers were condemned to horrible ends for trying to escape. According to a letter in the State Papers of Lord Lisle, written on March 28, Alice Tankerville was “hanged in chains at low water mark upon the Thames on Tuesday. John Bawd is in Little Ease cell in the Tower and is to be racked and hanged.”
Today no one knows exactly where Little Ease was located. One theory: in the dungeon of the White Tower. Another: in the basement of the old Flint Tower. No visitor sees it today; it was torn down or walled up long ago. Besides Little Ease, the most-used devices were the rack, the manacles, and a horrific creation called the Scavenger’s Daughter. For many prisoners, solitary confinement, repeated interrogation, and the threat of physical pain were enough to make them tell their tormentors anything they wanted to know.
Often the victims ended up in the Tower for religious reasons. Anne Askew was for her Protestant beliefs; Edmund Campion for his Catholic ones. But the crimes varied. “The majority of the prisoners were charged with high treason, but the taking of life, robbery, embezzling the Queen’s plate, and failure to carry out proclamations against state players were among the offenses,” wrote Parry.
The monarch did not need to sign off on these kinds of requests, although sometimes he or she did. Elizabeth I personally directed that torture be used on the members of the Babington Conspiracy, a group that plotted to depose her and replace her with Mary Queen of Scots. But usually, these initiatives went through the Privy Council or tapped the powers of the Star Chamber. It is believed that in some cases, permission was never sought at all.
Over and over, names pop up in state papers of those confined to Little Ease:
“On 3 May 1555: Stephen Happes, for his lewd behavior and obstinacy, committed this day to the Tower to remain in Little Ease for two or three days till he may be further examined.”
“10 January 1591: Richard Topcliffe is to take part in an examination in the Tower of George Beesley, seminary priest, and Robert Humberson, his companion. And if you shall see good cause by their obstinate refusal to declare the truth of such things as shall be laid to their charge in Her Majesty’s behalf, then shall you by authority hereof commit them to the prison called Little Ease or to such other ordinary place of punishment as hath been accustomed to be used in those cases, and to certify proceedings from time to time.”
After Elizabeth and the succession of James I came the most famous prisoner of them all to be held in Little Ease, Guy Fawkes. Charged with plotting to blow up the king and Parliament, Fawkes was subjected to both manacles and rack to obtain his confession and the names of his fellow conspirators. After he had told his questioners everything they asked, Fawkes was still shackled hand and foot in Little Ease and left there, though no one knows for how long.
And after that final burst of savagery, Little Ease was no more. A House of Commons committee reported the same year as Fawkes’ end that the room was “disused.”
In 1640, during the reign of Charles I, the practice was abolished forever; there would be no more forcing prisoners to crouch for days in dark airless rooms, no more rack or hanging from chains. And so, mercifully, closed one of the darkest chapters in England’s history.
In the 1950s and 1960s, China needed Penicillin very badly plus Sulfonamides
The US used a harsh Korean War rule to restrict all shipments of Penicillin and Sulfonamides to RED China and passed a law demanding that Hongkong, Singapore and Philippines have END USER CERTIFICATES for shipments of these drugs
So THE US MAKERS SIMPLY ADDED CALCIUM CARBONATE TO THE DRUG MIX and sold the same penicillin plus calcium carbonate for 40% extra cost which the Chinese paid
It was deemed very legal in federal and circuit Court and UPHELD in 1967 as ‘Fair Business Practice’
So ultimately when there is demand, there will be a supply
Nobody can change that
image 82
Raimondo is no fool
Privately she knows none of these policies would work and she knows that she is butchering the same FREE TRADE principles that kept the US as the world’s most reliable nation all these years
Yet the fact is Chinas growth has stunned them all
That China is narrowing the tech barriers at such an astounding rate is something nobody expected
In the 2018 paper to the Congress, the Technological Independence of China was predicted to be 2048 , in THIRTY YEARS
Trump later said he had pushed that further
Yet in 2021, the same experts reassessed and claimed Chinas Technological Independence could be as early as 2035
Now it’s 2032, DESPITE THE EXPORT MEASURES
In fact the stronger these restrictions are, the more likely China will need to break strangeholds and that would lead to newer Independent Technology
Today China can buy Less Sophisticated AI Chips from Chinese Entities
The Quality is same as NVDIA
Tencent for instance makes excellent high quality AI Chips at the lower and mid levels of computing power that are now the lock, stock and barrel for Russian and Belorussian markets and even the Saudi markets
Only the last two generation or the most sophisticated AI Chips made by NVDIA has no rival in China domestically
It is these Chips that China wants
If China doesn’t get them, NVDIA will sell them to China by producing a slightly less sophisticated version (Maybe throw in a few transistors less) with say 97% efficiency and sell them to China by passing the sanctions and winning legally
You see the problem
If US sells China everything openly, China will beat US by 2030 in every field of emerging technology like AI and Quantum computing
If US restricts exports to China, China will develop it’s own high tech supply chain and that may delay it’s ascendancy until 2035 but after that China no longer needs any Tech from the West and the whole world will have a Multipolar world where US can no longer use it’s technology as a bargaining Chip
Either way the Writing is on the Wall
Zydeco’s Pork Tenderloin Etouffee
2023 12 10 17 11
Ingredients
1 ounce oil
1/3 pound diced onions
1/3 pound diced celery
1/3 pound diced green bell peppers
1 teaspoon garlic puree
2 ounces tomato paste
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon basil
2 tablespoons honey
1 quart veal stock
1/4 cup light corn syrup
Pinch of thyme
Pinch of chili powder
Pinch of cayenne pepper
Pinch of black pepper
Instructions
Sweat onions, celery and bell peppers in the oil.
Add the tomato paste and garlic.
Add the remaining ingredients and simmer for 15 minutes.
My uncle was an outlaw, an honest-to-goodness criminal who did multiple stints in prison. He was a biker, but he wasn’t stable enough to be a member of the Hells Angels. He was a small guy who looked a lot like Charles Manson.
image 85
People didn’t mess with him because he was prone to violence, skilled at fighting, and willing to use weapons when he had to. He fully embraced the criminal lifestyle. Around Christmas, the largest of his pot plants would usually be decorated as a Christmas tree.
One evening on my grandparent’s farm, he decided to make a bonfire out of an old date-packing conveyor belt. The flames must have reached 50 feet or more into into the sky, and were likely visible from any nearby farmhouse. The fire department sent a truck out to extinguish the fire.
image 84
But my uncle wouldn’t let them put out his bonfire. Faced with an angry, shirtless, tattooed guy who looked like Charlie Manson. They called in the Sheriff’s Department.
image 83
A youngish Hispanic Deputy got out of the car. My uncle thought he could push this guy around like he did the fire department. This young deputy had been a college wrestler. When my uncle tried to stop the fire department again, this deputy gave my uncle a first class attitude adjustment.
He was wearing the bruises from his arrest when my grandmother bailed him out of jail.
Lucky Luciano Put a Hit on a Rival Mob Boss using Fake IRS Agents
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Born Salvatore Lucania (but better known as Lucky Luciano) in Sicily in November 1897, the future brains of the New York mafia took the name Charles Luciano after he was arrested for dealing heroin and his parents disowned him. By the 1930s he was known as “Lucky” Luciano, although no one can say with certainty what first prompted the nickname.
The leading theory for his being known for his remarkable luck was his surviving a savage beating in October 1929. Luciano was not only beaten but stabbed by a group of men who then dumped him on a beach on Staten Island, left for dead. A police officer discovered him, and Luciano was taken to the hospital. As a result of the attack, he had a deep scar on one side of his face and a permanently drooping eyelid.
His attackers’ identity was murky. Sometimes Luciano said it was three police officers who beat him, other times it was thugs sent by mafia boss Salvatore Maranzano because Luciano worked for a boss that Maranzano was at war with. Whatever the reason for the attack, within two years, Maranzano was dead and out of Luciano’s way in his meteoric rise to the top.
The 1920s were in many ways flush times for the underworld, thanks to Prohibition, which handed the Italian, Irish, and Jewish gangs lots of opportunities to make money. But the New York City underworld was in the throes of a deadly rivalry between two men: Sicilian immigrant Joe Masseria, known as “Joe the Boss,” and the more recent arrival, Maranzano, driven out of Italy by Benito Mussolini, who hated the mafia. Following restrictions on immigration by Italians to the U.S., mafia members fleeing Mussolini applied for political asylum, saying they were oppressed by fascism.
charles lucky luciano excelsior hotel rome
Luciano worked for Masseria–which is why he was beat up and left for dead–but he was weary of the turf wars, because they were keeping people from making money in not just rum running but gambling, racketeering, robbery, and prostitution. He was part of an up-and-coming gangster class, along with Frank Costello, who despised the “old country” ways of the Sicilian bosses they called “Mustache Pete’s.”
Luciano had been a criminal since his early teen years. He dropped out of school, and at 14, took a job delivering hats, but there was heroin hidden in the hats. He later explained his fondness for crime by saying, “I never was a crumb, and if I have to be a crumb, I’d rather be dead.” After a prison term of one year for drug possession, he flourished in an East Harlem gang, and was mentored by Arnold Rothstein, the racketeer who is believed to have fixed the 1919 World Series.
Luciano decided to double-cross his tiresome boss Masseria, so he made a deal with Maranzano to kill him and in return take his place and cease hostilities. He invited Masseria to a lobster lunch in Coney Island, Brooklyn, on April 15, 1931. “Before dessert arrived, Luciano left for the toilet,” wrote Selwyn Raab in Five Families. “Mysteriously, Masseria’s bodyguards vanished from the restaurant as four of Luciano’s killers suddenly appeared and riddled Joe the Boss with a volley of gunfire.”
But if Lucky Luciano thought that matters would improve after he took his boss’s place, he was wrong. It was set up that there’d be five families controlling their own gangster turfs in New York City. Maranzano, however, declared himself capo di tutti capi, boss of bosses, and imposed a lot of rules on everyone. Now Luciano decided that he needed to eliminate the boss of bosses.
Doing so wouldn’t be easy. Maranzano was always accompanied by a fleet of bodyguards, he drove a bulletproof Cadillac, and his office was in a fancy building overlooking Grand Central Station, with the address of 230 Park Avenue (later the Helmsley Building). But Luciano was able to learn that his target was having tax problems and Maranzano had instructed his bodyguards to not carry guns to the office because, any day now, the Internal Revenue Service was expected to descend on him.
At this point, Luciano turned to his old friends, Jewish gangsters Meyer Lansky and Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. When he was a child, Luciano lived on the Lower East Side, on 1st Avenue between 13th and 14th streets. He became close friends with his neighbor Lansky and then Siegel.
For the hit on Maranzano, they came up with the idea of outfitting a group of men in suits and ties–and guns and knives.
Saying they were with the IRS, the assassins showed up at Maranzano’s 9th floor Park Avenue office on September 10, 1931. At that point, Maranzano was fanatical about only employing Italians, and he insisted that the whole mafia do business with exclusively other Italian gang members. None of the “IRS agents” looked at all Italian, so Maranzano believed they were genuine and went into a room with them. There he was killed.
And with that, Lucky Luciano rose to power in the New York City mafia, and as the man who put the “organized” into organized crime, eventually became the Number one gangster in the entire United States.
One: Just because the bank approves your $800,000 loan doesn’t mean you can afford the payments.
Two: Buying a fancy custom home that has unique designs and architecture.
Per my inspector, those homes have the most problems and leaks of any of them. If you buy a standard house design, or one in a neighborhood with a bunch of similar houses all clearly built by the same builder, you set yourself up for success more. Those homes, even if they seem boring, are proven models and have been built over and over by the builder. All the problems have been worked out.
Three: assuming a fixer upper is going to be easier than it is. When you walk through a house, you may see a few items that you can easily fix. Make a list of those items, count them up, and when you get home—triple it. If you can still manage that much work—have at it.
Four: carpeted floors. It tends to get super smelly and is harder to clean.
God forbid you have carpet in your bathrooms or by water sources.
image 86
Then, you are just asking for it. I can smell the mold from here.
In 2025, The U.S. Will Finally Begin Preparing To Fight A Nuclear War With Russia
A point of view out of the United States. Trust me, it's bad, but NOT dire. Do not freak out. -MM
Will the upgrades that are coming to our strategic nuclear arsenal be ready in time? Right now, hopelessly outdated Minuteman missiles that first went into service in the 1970s form the backbone of our strategic nuclear arsenal. The silos where they stand ready to be launched still use rotary phones and 8 inch floppy disks in many cases. Once they are launched, the brand new S-500 anti-missile systems that the Russians have deployed will be able to intercept them. Meanwhile, the Russians have introduced a brand new intercontinental ballistic missile known as the Sarmat. A single Sarmat carries enough firepower to destroy an area the size of Texas, and our anti-missile systems are not able to deal with this new threat. The balance of power has fundamentally shifted, and so we desperately need to update our capabilities.
Unfortunately, this process will not even begin until 2025.
So we better hope that we do not get into a shooting war with Russia during the next couple of years.
The U.S. has been developing a brand new ICBM known as “the Sentinel”, and it is desperately needed…
The control stations for America’s nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles have a sort of 1980s retro look, with computing panels in sea foam green, bad lighting and chunky control switches, including a critical one that says “launch.”
Those underground capsules are about to be demolished and the missile silos they control will be completely overhauled. A new nuclear missile is coming, a gigantic ICBM called the Sentinel. It’s the largest cultural shift in the land leg of the Air Force’s nuclear missile mission in 60 years.
The silos lose power. Their 60-year old massive mechanical parts break down often. Air Force crews guard them using helicopters that can be traced back to the Vietnam War. Commanders hope the modernization of the Sentinel, and of the trucks, gear and living quarters, will help attract and retain young technology-minded service members who are now asked each day to find ways to keep a very old system running.
This is something that I have been warning about for years, but most people didn’t want to listen.
Now our military is in a race against time, because the clock is ticking.
Overall, 750 billion dollars will be spent to overhaul our strategic nuclear forces, and it is being projected the silo work for the Sentinel could begin “as soon as 2025”…
The Sentinel work is one leg of a larger, nuclear weapons enterprise-wide $750 billion overhaul that is replacing almost every component of U.S. nuclear defenses, including new stealth bombers, submarines and ICBMs in the country’s largest nuclear weapons program since the Manhattan Project.
For the Sentinel, silo work could be underway by lead contractor Northrop Grumman as soon as 2025.
I am glad that they are moving forward.
But if work will not even begin until 2025, when will it finally be completed?
Until the Sentinel is ready, the Russians will continue to possess a major strategic advantage over us, and they know it.
If the war in Ukraine spirals out of control, we could easily find ourselves facing a nightmare scenario.
The Russians have been steadily gaining ground in Ukraine in recent weeks, and over the past few days they have started to gobble up significant chunks of territory.
The Ukrainians are running out of warm bodies to throw into the fight, and that is a major problem.
They are also running out of ammunition and equipment, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky just made a trip to D.C. to beg for more money…
Zelensky is in D.C. to ask Congress to pass $61 billion more for Ukraine, on top of the $113 billion they approved early this year. However, it looks increasingly likely that any more funding for Ukraine will have to wait until next year.
The Biden administration requested the funding as part of a $106 billion package, which includes only $13 billion for securing the border, but Republicans say it does not go far enough, and are calling for a number of reforms to reduce the number of asylum seekers and illegal border crossers, which recently hit 12,000 per day.
Johnson said at a Wall Street Journal event on Monday that Democrats and the White House must agree to some or all of the border-security measures outlined in H.R. 2, the Secure the Border Act.
Even with all of the money that we have given him already, his forces are still losing.
And even if we give him what he is asking for now, Russians forces will continue to advance.
Zelensky is holding a losing hand, and as the Russians advance he is going to become very desperate.
And very desperate people do very desperate things.
Eventually, I expect that events in Ukraine will force the U.S. and Russia into a showdown.
When that day arrives, will the U.S. be ready?
Earlier today, I came across an article about a calendar that is being sold in Russia that shows “a Russian soldier outside the US Capitol building in Washington DC with a drone and helicopter overhead”…
A Russian veterans organisation is selling a 2024 calendar featuring a muscle-bound Vladimir Putin.
The calendar continues a series of propaganda images including one showing a Russian soldier outside the US Capitol building in Washington DC with a drone and helicopter overhead.
Many Russians believe that a war with the United States is inevitable.
The first thing to understand is that commercial shipbuilding and building warships are completely different businesses.
Commercial shipbuilding is like building a family car. The technology, equipment, and quality standards used in the two businesses are very different.
Just because a country has strong commercial shipbuilding capabilities does not necessarily mean that it has strong warship manufacturing capabilities. For example, South Korea has huge commercial shipbuilding capabilities, but it does not have strong warship construction capabilities. Their naval equipment is almost entirely dependent on American technology authorization.
image 9
China has huge commercial shipbuilding capabilities (accounting for 60% of the world’s total). Will this help their warship manufacturing?
Helps keep costs down during peacetime.
China’s large shipyards are typically dual-use, meaning they are building container ships at the same time they are building Aegis destroyers.
The commercial business dilutes the shipyard’s operating costs, and various costs are allocated to commercial projects. This makes them offer very low prices when building warships. The Burke III destroyer costs approximately US$2 billion, while China’s similar Type 052DL destroyer costs only US$500 million.
Obvious advantages in emergency situations.
1. Numerous facilities
In order to build very large commercial ships, China has countless giant shipyards and gantry cranes. They have 50 giant docks and supporting large equipment that can build aircraft carriers. The only one in the United States is Newport News Shipbuilding.
2. Large supporting production capacity
Warships require not only shipyards, but also countless raw materials. From the most basic steel and non-ferrous metals to diesel engines and steam turbines. In order to satisfy commercial business, China has huge production capacity for these things.
3. Abundant talents
The shipbuilding industry has limited automation and a high proportion of manual work. A large number of skilled shipbuilders were needed. In order to meet the annual shipbuilding needs of 20 million tons, China maintains a team of 180,000 to 200,000 skilled workers (some surveys say that including various small shipyards, the number exceeds 500,000). The United States only has a shipbuilding business of 100,000 tons per year and only has 18,000 skilled shipbuilders.
When the Navy needs it, they can clear out commercial projects and put all their resources into warship manufacturing. The picture at the beginning of this article shows the ability of a Chinese shipyard to build 6 052D destroyers and 2 055 cruisers at the same time (5 ships are being built on the slipway, and 3 ships are outfitting equipment).
Imagine that starting tomorrow, China and the United States begin to build warships with all their strength. The materials, facilities and personnel required by China are all complete. As long as they get the order, they can immediately start construction of 10 aircraft carriers, 20 Aegis destroyers and 8 nuclear submarines at the same time.
However, the United States has limited resources and can only start construction of one aircraft carrier, two Aegis destroyers and one nuclear submarine immediately. At the same time, the United States needs to urgently build large shipyards, purchase and install large cranes, purchase equipment and train workers, and gradually expand production capacity within 2-3 years.
By the time the U.S.’s manufacturing capabilities reached a level similar to China’s, China had already built ten times as many warships as the United States.
Solution to the Fermi Paradox Found! Scientists Hope They’re Wrong
That employee was me. I managed a division of AECOM, a huge multi-national architect/engineering company and was laid off along with many others because I was not billable. The person who made the decision was at least 4 levels above me and I had never even heard of him. My boss actually called me at home and asked me what in the hell was going on because he wasn’t even consulted. The reason that I was not billable was because I was meeting with potential clients and writing proposals along with managing the division. The division went from about 100 engineers and designers to around 12 in about 18 months because I was the person who brought in the work and nobody filled my role when I left so the work ran out. As it turned out I was hired literally the next day by our biggest client who wanted to develop their own engineering capabilities and within a couple of months I brought around a dozen of my former employees over to the new company.
Years ago I had a blind date. We had talked on the phone and the guy asked if he could take me to lunch. Not MEET me for lunch, but take me. He was inviting me so I assumed he would pay.
We met at a casual inexpensive chain restaurant. I had something modestly priced – it was probably around $7 (like I said, years ago). When the bill came, he told me what my share was – he actually said, “You had the french dip plus an iced tea, so your total is…..” I was pretty surprised but I figured that the cost of my lunch was worth finding out what a cheapo he was so I wouldn’t waste any more time dating him. But here’s the kicker – he had a Buy One Get One Free coupon! So his meal was free and I paid for mine! That was enough for me. He walked me to my car and asked if he could see me again. I said, “No” and he looked surprised and asked why. I said that anyone as cheap as he was shouldn’t date. Thank goodness he never called again.
$500 tip on a $12 meal. It was at a diner in New Jersey. When my father was about 80, he lost interest in eating. My brother and I finally insisted he have dinner at a restaurant every night. My father reluctantly agreed. He found a local diner where he felt comfortable. Over time, he became very friendly with a waitress there. She treated him like royalty (in fact, all the staff did). He was by no means wealthy, but he always left a generous tip. The waitress would give him cookies to take home and was genuinely happy to see him every day. Many times when I would go with him, I would see her smile when he came in, run over to hug and kiss him, and just take wonderful care of him. It was one of the only joys for the last years of his life. Earlier this year, my dad died. When I went back to handle his estate, one evening I went to the diner for dinner. I told the waitress that my dad had died (she suspected as much, having not seen him for over a month)…and after eating there, I left her a $500 tip. She deserved every penny and more.
Tracking him through “discarded DNA,” police arrest a 72-year-old “suburban grandfather” suspected of being the Golden State suspect
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For years a serial killer and rapist traumatized the entire state of California, committing at least 12 murders, before coming to a seeming halt some 40 years ago in his horrific spree of violence. For victims and families of victims, not knowing who committed the crimes caused lasting emotional damage. That changed on April 24, 2018.
“In a perfectly executed arrest, my detectives arrested Joseph James DeAngelo, 72 years old,” said Scott Jones, Sacramento County Sheriff, at a press conference. Police were able to match DeAngelo’s DNA to evidence from the investigation, saying they used “surveillance and discarded DNA.”
USA Today published a story saying that police investigators submitted the DNA of someone whom they believed was the suspect, gathered at a crime scene, to Ancestry.com, not officially as police detectives but as a regular customer of the genealogical research site, and were then able to narrow the search through matches to relatives of the person with the mystery DNA, using “trees.”
This use of Ancestry.com is raising questions. In a story published by the Associated Press, Steve Mercer of the Maryland Office of the Public Defender said there aren’t strong privacy laws to keep police from trolling ancestry databases. “People who submit DNA for ancestors testing are unwittingly becoming genetic informants on their innocent family,” Mercer said, adding that they “have fewer privacy protections than convicted offenders whose DNA is contained in regulated databanks.”
However, the arrest of DeAngelo is also sending shock waves of relief throughout California. He is believed to be responsible for 12 murders, 45 rapes, and more than 120 residential burglaries between 1976 and 1986.
According to an interview in the Los Angeles Times, Jennifer Carole, the daughter of 1980 victims Lyman and Charlene Smith, “said she had long thought that the person who bludgeoned her father and stepmother to death had probably died in the following decades. To find out he was not only alive, but living among them in Sacramento, was an overwhelming revelation, she said.”
“In my mind I thought he was dead the whole time,” Carole said to the press. “I’d compartmentalized it. But to find out … he’s been in Sacramento, where all my family lives … it’s unbelievable. How can he have just been here?”
A cold-case unit with the Ventura County district attorney renewed their efforts to find the Golden State Killer within the last two years. The FBI offered a reward of $50,000 for information leading to an arrest in 2016. “We all knew we were looking for a needle in a haystack,” said Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert.
A series of rapes in an area east of Sacramento in 1976 were first linked by the authorities because of their proximity and the similar description of the rapist — a white male with blond hair who was close to six feet tall — and the sadistic rituals that he inflicted on his victims. His targets were women home alone and women at home with their children. The suspect went on to rape women with their husbands present and then the two of them would be murdered.
Neighbors of DeAngelo, whom the Washington Post described as a “suburban grandfather” in a headline, said that he kept to himself and sometimes yelled at people over infractions like mowing their lawns too early in the morning, but gave absolutely no indication of anything more frightening. He showed an interest in model airplanes, some say. He was the father of three daughters and had a number of grandchildren.
DeAngelo was a police officer in Auburn, California, in the 1970s but was fired after being accused of shoplifting a hammer and dog repellent. He retired last year after working 27 years at a distribution center for Save Mart grocery stores, the chain confirmed.
Public interest in the Golden State Killer was sparked this year with the publication of the true-crime book I’ll be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer, written by Michelle McNamara, who died in April 2016 before finishing it. The book, published in February 2018, was completed after her death by a journalist and researcher recruited by her husband, the comedian Patton Oswalt.
The Golden State Killer was believed to have tracked the movements of his planned victims. He wore gloves and a mask and spoke in an angry whisper. Investigators at the time suspected he had military or law enforcement training.
The New York Times wrote, “Mr. DeAngelo was arrested by investigators using some of the same tactics employed by the suspect to stalk his victims — the police surveilled his movements, studied his routines, and pounced when he left his house.”
Eagles – Hotel California (Live 1977) (Official Video) [HD]
China would need to spend 1 Billion RMB a day to fight in the South China Theatre across the Taiwan Straits and Sea of Japan
Quad would need 2.5–3 times this or around $ 400 Million a day to be able to equal China given the cost and scale of production that is severely lagging
This means a 100 day war would cost China around 100 Billion RMB ($ 14 Billion) versus a whopping $ 45 Billion for Quad
Assuming a 3 year war, that would be 1 Trillion RMB ($ 140 Billion) for China versus $ 450–500 Billion for Quad
I am sure only one guy will be coughing up all that money and that’s USA
India, Australia, Japan combined won’t cough up $ 1 Billion
Since China now pays for its food and fuel in RMB , it can easily afford 1 Trillion RMB
The US needs to print $ 450–500 Billion and already the strain of printing $ 170 Billion for Ukraine is showing
Next would be the Logistics
Quad has an arsenal of 960 Missiles combined on their patrolling vessels and carrier groups (720 US, 240 Others)
Add another 320 with Japan and Korea and maybe 160 from Taiwan
That’s 1440 Deployable Missiles
China has 2400 Missiles on its Patrolling Vessels and Carrier Groups plus 1200 Land Battery Missiles plus 800 Intermediate Range Launch Missiles all aimed for the South China Sea
That’s 4400 Deployable Missiles not to include 90–110 from North Korea
That’s 3:1 in Chinas favor in just the South China Theatre
Let’s see the Weapon Supply status
Japan, Australia and India are Net Importers of weapons with a near zero indigenous supply line in most naval equipment or aerial equipment or even Intelligence gathering
If India risks it’s limited advanced equipment imported on this theatre, Pakistan can have a field day and so can the PLA on the Arunachal Front or the Ladakh front
Same with South Korea
Thus US has to supply all the intelligence gathering equipment and by chance some fall into China, that’s years of priceless IP reverse engineered
Today US has 20 key pieces of equipment over the Baltics handing intel to Ukraine against 90–120 key pieces handing intel to Russia and owned by Russia
Even if the US manages to quadruple it’s Ukraine strength and bring in 80 pieces of key intel gathering equipment like advanced radar etc, China has close to 250 and that’s 1:3
China will always have the Intelligence advantage
Bottom line is NO
QUAD will lose
QUAD cannot win
Quad will rely on a shock attack and HOPE China has an internal coup and regime change within 60 days
It didn’t happen in Russia and it’s more unlikely to happen in China
The US is too far away and China aint Iraq or Afghanistan
Others are too insufficient to take on China
In its theatre, China is not likely to be defeated
The only thing that can change this equation is if SOMEHOW Russia can be convinced to fight against China on another front
The one bodyguard assigned to Ford’s Theater to protect President Lincoln abandoned his post for a drink on the night of the assassination–and wasn’t fired for it
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On the night of April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln decided to take in a production of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theater, in Washington, D.C. The one policeman assigned to guard the president on that fateful night left his post—to go next door for a drink.
Whether from hubris or humility, Lincoln was unconcerned about his safety, even amid near constant death threats. In August of 1864, he survived an assassination attempt, when someone fired a shot at him as he rode a horse—all by himself. (His hat was recovered the next day, with a musketball hole through the side.) It seems impossible to imagine today, but the president was known to go to plays, to church, and on walks without security.
John Parker was a carpenter and machinist born in Fredericksburg, Virginia. He moved to Washington and joined the Metropolitan Police Force when it formed in 1861. He was not an exemplar. The force cited him for conduct unbecoming an officer, drinking (and sleeping) on the job and frequenting a whorehouse, according to Smithsonian magazine. He had 14 disciplinary infractions on his record. Somehow he managed always to get off. When a four-man detail was created to protect Lincoln in 1864, Parker was selected to join the team.
Parker was late to his assignment on April 14, showing up at Ford’s Theater at 7 P.M. instead of 4. Lincoln and his party arrived at his box in the balcony at 9 P.M., after the play had already started. The actors stopped mid-scene while the orchestra played “Hail to the Chief.” Lincoln bowed to the actors, and the play carried on.
Parker was stationed outside Lincoln’s box, in the passageway by the door, a good place to guard a president but a lousy place to take in a play. The bored Parker moved down to the first balcony to better see the performance. During intermission, he went next door to the Star Saloon for a drink with Lincoln’s coachman and footman.
As it happens, John Wilkes Booth was also at the Star Saloon, having a shot of whiskey before his nefarious mission. When Booth arrived at Lincoln’s box, the chair in the passageway was empty. Booth went into the box, shouted “Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged!” and shot Lincoln in the back of the head. Booth leaped to the stage, exited the theater, and escaped on his horse. (Booth would be tracked down and killed within two weeks.)
It is of course possible that even had Parker been at his station, he might not have stopped Booth’s assassination of Lincoln.
“Booth was a well-known actor, a member of a famous theatrical family,” Ford’s Theater historical interpreter Eric Martin told Smithsonian magazine. “They were like Hollywood stars today. Booth might have been allowed in to pay his respects. Lincoln knew of him. He’d seen him act in The Marble Heart, here in Ford’s Theater in 1863.”
But Parker’s fellow guards never forgave him, nor did Lincoln’s widow.
“It makes me feel rather bitter when I remember that the President had said, just a few hours before, that he knew he could trust all his guards,” William H. Crook wrote in his memoir. “And then to think that in that one moment of test one of us should have utterly failed him! Parker knew that he had failed in duty. He looked like a convicted criminal the next day. He was never the same man afterward.”
Parker was charged with failure to protect the president, though the charge was dropped. The public did not know of his culpability, though Mrs. Lincoln did. Remarkably, Parker stayed on the White House security detail, at one point being assigned to Mrs. Lincoln, who confronted him as recounted in the 1868 memoir Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave, and Four in the White House, by Elizabeth Keckley.
“Why were you not at the door to keep the assassin out when he rushed into the box?” Mrs. Lincoln said.
“I did wrong, I admit, and I have bitterly repented it, but I did not help to kill the President,” Keckley recalled Parker saying. “I did not believe that any one would try to to kill so good a man in such a public place, and the believe made me careless.”
To which Mrs. Lincoln responded, “I shall always believe that you are guilty,” and sent him away with a wave of her hand.
Parker stayed on the Metropolitan Police Force three more years before finally he was fired for sleeping on the job in 1868. He turned back to carpentry and died in 1890 of pneumonia, an all but forgotten man in the drama of Lincoln’s assassination.
The grocery store I managed allowed cashiers a margin of error of $5.00, plus or minus. Most of the cashiers were usually within $1, either way, but a newbie that the store owner ordered me to hire — she was a friend’s granddaughter — was short a total of $16 dollars — $1, $5, $5, $5 — over her first four days. The cashiers were rarely on the money (zero balance) and most were proud when they were 25¢ or less off either way, so I found it odd that this girl was off by whole dollar amounts on each of her first four days.
So I put a camera on her.
She was scheduled to work a six-hour shift and at the end she was, you guessed it, $5 short. So I reviewed the video and watched her pocket a dollar here and there; she’d appear to be putting it in her drawer but each time her hand would go into her pocket. She did this five times and I knew that I had her.
I went to the owner and he called her into his office before her next shift. He told her what I’d found and that she was, obviously, fired, but he wanted to know why she did it. She said she didn’t want to work as a cashier. She didn’t like the pay, or the hours, or the “stupid people”, and she thought she deserved more for putting up with it all. She also said she didn’t pocket more than $5 because she knew she’d get in trouble if she did. She felt that she was “allowed” to take that $5 each day.
The owner was dumbstruck and decided to lower to amount cashiers could be over or short to $1. And he never forced me to hire anyone else.
I used to teach Special Education. And, I’m here to tell ya that I’ve had arguments with a nine year old kid with a 40 IQ about how to spell a word.
Joey, brain damaged at birth, was capable of learning the correct spelling, just barely capable, but he was entirely convinced that his version of the word was the correct spelling. I took a very long time to gradually get him to change that view, because I could see that it wasn’t about how to spell a word, it was about nurturing in Joey what was plainly there: his love of correct spelling. He was proud of his version, doncha know! And also, of versions of other, much more important things too.
Joey the Saint
Joey had a fixation — he was an assembler of trophies. His father was in business selling trophies and plaques, ya see, and Joey would make bowling, golf, baseball, etc. trophies out of the pieces his father could not use in the business and gave to Joey to play with. These were scuffed or dented, but to Joey they were GOLD. He made some of the goofiest looking amalgams — football players in full stride with a football tucked in one arm and a tennis racket in the other, for instance. And it was always catch as catch can, but Joey didn’t care. He just loved assembling them, thought they were very marketable, thought of himself as a businessman like his father. Oh, he was full of esteem about it, let me tell ya. It was, you see, just about the only thing Joey could do well “in his own eyes.” With a 40 IQ, Joey was looking at a future like a life sentence without a chance for parole.
But Joey was happy.
And Joey taught my class, in one stroke, something more important than ANYTHING I ever taught anyone in that class.
One day, Joey came to school with three big boxes. His father helped him bring them in. And his father and I stood there and watched Joey teach us all. Joey opened the boxes, and out came a special, unique statue for every kid in the class. 18 statues made by Joey who couldn’t spell the word “statue.” 18 statues that were to Joey, by his own inner logic, as precious as fingerprints that could only be assigned to one and only one person. 18 statues in boxes that Joey knew so well that he could dive into the boxes after saying each pupil’s name and instantly pull out Pedro’s statue, then Anna’s statue, then Cathy’s statue . . . 18 statues with names assigned to them. Joey knew which was to go to whom.
Silently, for Joey could hardly talk, he gave each statue out like it was a soul. And every kid there opened themselves to Joey’s vision of the moment and took their statues into their hugging arms like each trophy was a newborn babe. Joey gave everyone a symbolic kiss on the forehead to take home. Everyone deserved a symbol of “job well done,” thought Joey. And 18 kids with almost no chance to succeed in life, hummed with delight.
And no one I’ve ever seen in my whole life was as happy as Joey that day. He so innocently beamed his love.
That’s my goal in life. Be as happy and as wrong . . . and as right as Joey.
Addendum. So very grateful for all the heartfelt responses. When I wrote this decades ago, Joey was so much fresher in my mind. I now see that writing style as a bit “much,” but I dare not change a word. Also, the title question is not my doing, so I cannot justify changing it either.
This essay’s success is due solely to Joey — not my writing. This essay is his, not mine.
I worked for a financial call center. I excelled there and loved my job. I was there for nearly 3 years and during the last 6 months my attendance suffered greatly. I had pain from a hernia and had taken time for those occasions and had repair surgery, so I had STD for that. I was also going through a very bad divorce and the emotional distress was so extreme that I couldn’t eat or sleep. I worked odd hours of the night because I was working during UK operating hours and by the time I would finally fall asleep, I’d have to be up 2 hours later.
My manager knew all of the issues impacting me, yet, never thought to look into how to help my situation at work (being an exemplary employee). I was one day called in to HR and was terminated. I later found out that I could have taken another short term for stress, and had I been informed sooner, it could have saved my job.
I explained these things to HR, but it was too late. Apparently, my manager had become intimidated by me and the success I achieved in a short period of time and didn’t want to help me, I learned.
After my termination and the walk of shame, being escorted out, HR summoned my manager to discuss what I had to say. That woman began text messaging me, upset that I would place any kind of blame on her. I told her that I was no longer an employee and to stop messaging me. She still messaged me.
Next day, I contacted HR about her harassment of a non employee and she was terminated.
Instant karma!
The only unsolved skyjacking case in U.S. history might have a break: “D. B. Cooper” is Robert Rackstraw, a Vietnam vet and ex-CIA operative, investigative team claims
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On November 24, 1971, on a rainy afternoon in Portland, Oregon, a man approached the flight counter of Northwest Orient Airlines. He wore a dark raincoat, a dark suit with a skinny black tie, a neatly pressed white shirt, and loafers. He appeared to be in his forties, nearly six feet tall, with receding hair. “He looked like a business executive,” witnesses said later.
Using the name Dan Cooper, he used cash to purchase a one-way ticket to Seattle on Flight 305. The man, who carried a black attache case, sat in the last row of the Boeing 727 for the 30-minute flight, seat 18-C, ordered a bourbon and soda. After the plane took off, he handed an attractive flight attendant a note, which she slipped in her pocket and ignored.
A bit later, when the flight attendant passed by him, the man leaned toward her and whispered, “Miss, you’d better look at that note. I have a bomb.”
With that, the legend of D. B. Cooper was born.
Hours later, in the Seattle-Tacoma airport, Cooper, now wearing sunglasses, boarded a second plane empty of passengers and with only a flight crew. After he showed the flight attendant on the first plane the bomb in his attache case and she conveyed the note’s contents to the pilot, his instructions had been followed.
He now had four parachutes and a briefcase containing $200,000 in $20 bills. (What he did not know was that while the plane circled the Seattle airport, FBI agents photographed the money.) It was now night time, and rain was getting heavier.
The man had more detailed orders to be followed: the plane would follow a southeast course to Mexico City at the minimum airspeed possible at a maximum 10,000 foot altitude. The landing gear would have to remain deployed during takeoff and the cabin be depressurized. As with all of his communications, he was quite polite.
According to the FBI document on the case: “Somewhere between Seattle and Reno, a little after 8:00 p.m., the hijacker did the incredible: he jumped out of the back of the plane with a parachute and the ransom money.” Two aircraft from a nearby air force base had been following the airliner, but saw nothing.
Extensive searches on the ground found no trace of Cooper, his parachute, or the money. The FBI says, “Calling it NORJAK, for Northwest Hijacking, we interviewed hundreds of people, tracked leads across the nation, and scoured the aircraft for evidence. By the five-year anniversary of the hijacking, we’d considered more than 800 suspects and eliminated all but two dozen from consideration.”
It is one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in FBI history. Despite theories put forth in books, documentaries, symposiums, and an enthusiastic website, no one has proven the identity of D. B. Cooper (a journalist mistakenly turned “Dan” into “D.B.” and it stuck). None of the photographed money turned up until 1980, when a boy found three packets of the ransom cash in a stream near Vancouver, Washington.
One of the most widely believed theories was that Cooper died in his audacious jump from the plane. He had a parachute that couldn’t be steered, he jumped at night into a heavily wooded area, in the rain, in clothes certainly not practical for such an act. On July 8, 2016, the FBI announced that it had “redirected resources allocated to the D.B. Cooper case in order to focus on other investigative priorities.”
But in late January 2018 a startling claim was made to the media: D. B. Cooper was actually a former CIA operative named Robert Rackstraw, alive and well and living in Southern California.
A team of private investigators hired by TV producer Tom Colbert that has been working on the mystery for several years said they cracked a code proving the infamous hijacker is, in fact, a man who has ties to the San Diego area named Robert Rackstraw, and he is still alive. Rackstraw is a decorated Vietnam War veteran and, according to the investigators, an ex-CIA operative.
2023 12 13 19 04
Portion of Brian Ingram’s 1980 discovery
The code was contained in a Dec. 11, 1971, letter the cold-case team got their hands on that they say was sent by “D. B. Cooper” to several major news outlets. The taunting letter, which the newspapers did not publish at the time and officials said were a prank, was obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
“The letter, which went to The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Seattle Times and The Washington Post, contains strings of letters and numbers at the bottom of the page,” according to the Seattle Times.
A code breaker on Colbert’s team, Rick Sherwood, was able to decode the letters and numbers, and he said they pointed to the three Army units Rackstraw was connected to between 1969 in 1970 when he was in Vietnam.
The encryption was meant to serve as a signal to those in his units who knew the code that he was alive and well after the jump, Colbert said. He also taunted law enforcement by including “SWS” in the letter, which stands for “Special Warfare School.”
According to the website dbcooper.com, “Colbert said Pentagon records he obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) show detailed skill sets Rackstraw received from Green Berets in 1968, including 400 hours of Special Forces classes, HALO (High Altitude, Low Opening) parachuting, psychological operations (PSYOPS) and other training.”
In addition to claiming to have found the real D.B. Cooper, Colbert said he has strong evidence that the FBI deliberately worked to keep the hijacking case unsolved —due to Rackstraw’s CIA ties.
Although his CIA employment is not confirmed, Rackstraw, 74, was not an angel by any definition. He was charged with murdering his stepfather but acquitted in a trial in 1978.
He once reportedly tried to fake his own death by using a Mayday call and bailing out of a rented plane–it quickly unraveled. He was even arrested in Iran and deported back to the United States, which certainly doesn’t happen every day.
According to the Washington Post, “he faced charges of aircraft theft, possession of explosives and check fraud … Colbert said Rackstraw was convicted and spent more than a year in jail before being released in 1980. Rackstraw’s attorney said he couldn’t confirm those details.” Those who feel that D. B. Cooper was a polite mastermind who behaved like a business executive are unconvinced that Rackstraw, who hit lists of possible Coopers in the late 1970s, was this man.
When tracked down recently by a TV crew, Rackstraw, when asked if he were the real D. B. Cooper said, “What difference would it make?” Rackstraw’s attorney has said that he denies any part in the skyjacking.
He was 28 at the time of the skyjacking, and one of the original flight attendants, when shown photos of Rackstraw, said he did not resemble the man she saw on the plane in 1971.
In a press conference in front of FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., Colbert said, “The FBI may hold the strings, but Rackstraw holds the ripcord. And thanks to his coded bragging, it’s now been pulled. We’ll be waiting for him at the drop zone.”
More doom and gloom out of the United States. Ugh. Not. That. Bad. Don't buy into all the fear mongering. -MM
Time is running out. Lately, I have been hearing from so many people that believe that 2024 will be the year when our society goes over the edge. Our financial system is teetering on the brink of disaster, crime is absolutely exploding all over the country, homelessness is rising at the fastest pace ever recorded, food banks are facing unprecedented demand for their services, and I believe that 2024 will be the most chaotic election year in the entire history of our nation. And of course all of this is happening in the context of a global environment in which war, pestilences, economic problems, famine and natural disasters are all on the rise. A “perfect storm” is raging all around us, and millions upon millions of Americans have become deeply concerned about what our immediate future will look like.
So where will you be when things finally hit the fan?
During the past several years, we have seen a mass exodus of conservatives from blue states. For example, Fox News is reporting that 65 percent of those that have recently moved to the state of Idaho are Republicans, and only 12 percent are Democrats…
Data published by the Idaho Secretary of State’s office shows that out of the nearly 119,000 people who recently moved to the state, 65% registered as Republicans, compared to just 12% registering as Democrats.
The data, which was reviewed by Fox News Digital, show that out of the roughly 20,000 Americans who moved from Washington state to Idaho, 62% registered as Republicans, compared to 12% as Democrats, 24% as unaffiliated and 2% as “other.” The percentage of registered Republicans originally from Washington who recently moved to Idaho is actually higher than the state’s overall percentage of registered Republicans, which sits at about 58%.
Out of the nearly 40,000 people who left California for Idaho, a whopping 75% registered as Republicans, the data reviewed by Fox News Digital show. Only 10% of the California pool registered as Democrats, 14% as unaffiliated and 2% as “other.”
Wow.
Real estate agents in Idaho are urging potential clients to “escape liberal hell” and to get to the state “before the coming collapse”…
The Seattle Times noted that real estate ads advise residents in states such as Washington to “escape liberal hell” and move to Idaho.
“Time is not on your side, flee the city NOW before the coming collapse!” another ad for a house listing in Idaho states, the outlet reported.
Perhaps you are thinking that you should move to Idaho too.
Unfortunately, for many Americans it is already too late, because property values in some areas of the state have more than tripled.
Of course property values have also skyrocketed in desirable areas in many other red states as well.
Meanwhile, mortgage rates have also soared, and as a result home payments have risen to absolutely absurd levels during the Biden administration…
WSJ analysis of the housing market:
Average monthly new home payment when Biden took office: $1,787
Average monthly new home payment today: $3,322
You can still try to relocate.
But it will cost you much more than it would have a few years ago.
Renting is also an option, but we have just been through a period of time when rental prices have also jumped substantially…
After suffering through a three-year period when rents jumped by 30% or more in many U.S. cities, renters are now starting to enjoy small breaks like this.
Ultimately, if you were planning to relocate, you should have already done it by now.
But the good news is that conditions are still at least somewhat relatively stable as we approach the end of 2023.
So if you want to get out of Dodge, you can still do it.
In fact, for many of you this may be your last chance.
But don’t wait too long, because the clock is ticking.
At this point, most Americans can feel that something has gone horribly wrong. The warning signs are all around us, and conditions are getting worse with each passing day.
Even Warren Buffett can sense that a really big shift is coming. During the first three quarters of this year he sold off a whopping “$28.7 billion of stock”…
Warren Buffett’s firm Berkshire Hathaway sold $28.7 billion of stock in the first three quarters of 2023 in a move that some economists have interpreted as ringing alarm bells for the American economy.
According to the company’s earnings, the Nebraska-based firm of the legendary investor and billionaire, known as the Oracle of Omaha, sold a net $10.4 billion of stock in the first quarter of the year. In the second quarter, it sold close to $13 billion of shares and bought less than $5 billion. In the third quarter, it sold about $5.3 billion worth of stocks.
As Buffett is considered one of the greatest investors of all time, as well as one of America’s richest men, his moves are closely observed and analyzed.
He didn’t make so much money by being stupid.
Buffett may not fully understand all of the specifics, but he realizes that something is up.
As our society crumbles, most of the population is not going to be able to handle it.
For the third consecutive year, many psychologists across the country say they are seeing patients struggle with worsening symptoms, many of them needing longer treatment times.
Those are among the findings of an annual survey by the American Psychological Association, released this week. The APA first launched this survey in 2020 to gauge the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on practicing psychologists.
A majority of psychologists reported that more people are seeking mental health care this year, adding to already long waitlists. Over half (56%) said they had no openings for new patients. Among those who keep waitlists, average wait times were three months or longer and nearly 40% said that their waitlist had grown in the past year.
Global events just continue to accelerate, and 2024 is less than three weeks away…
Abandoned in space in 1967, a U.S. satellite started transmitting again in 2013 Nov 28, 2017
After learning that a satellite that’s been silent for decades has suddenly started sending out new signals you may, of course, suspect that the device has been hijacked by aliens now trying to communicate with Earth. Perhaps they’re warning us that they are planning an invasion!
It’s possible such thoughts ran through the mind of Phil Williams, an English amateur radio astronomer based in Cornwall, who was the first person to pick up the strange signals coming in as “ghostly sounds” in 2013. It turned out that the transmitted messages were coming from an abandoned LES1 satellite, but experts needed three more years to authenticate that this was indeed the American satellite that was “lost” in 1967.
LES1 was one of several units produced and launched into space by the Lincoln Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in between 1965 and 1967. These units, primarily designed for testing new satellite communication technology, were each labeled with numbers, running from LES1 to LES9.
As it turned out, the launch of the first four satellites did not go that well. LES1, in particular, failed to reach most of its planned objectives. Contact with the satellite was completely lost two years after its launch, and it has ever since revolved around our planet, staying entirely out of touch. Things went better for the later four, LES5 to LES9 units; the LES7 unit was canceled as the program was then coming to an end and there was no more funding for it.
What surprised everyone in 2013 is that LES1 started sending signals in repeats of every four seconds. Phil Williams has suggested that a failure in one of the device components is what perhaps caused it to start sending signals again.
The designated frequency of the signal is 237 MHz. However, the satellite manages to send the transmissions only when its solar panels are directly exposed to light. The signal reportedly ceases once the craft’s panels fall into the shadow of the satellite’s own body. “Tension in the solar panels jumps, and it can do the phantom signal,” Williams has stated.
It is probable that the satellite’s on-board battery is entirely diminished by now, so what powers the transmission of the signals is a bit of a mystery. As to whether LES1 poses any threat, there is apparently nothing to fear. This is yet one more piece of space junk spinning around in orbit.
What’s more striking is that the electronics used in LES1 were produced five decades ago and though they’ve been exposed to the severe conditions of space, they still appear to be in some sort of working order. And five decades ago is a long time in terms of the technology and its development.
LES1 was launched more than a decade before the probe Voyager-1 was launched into space to explore the outer realms of the solar system. And the electronics used back in the 1960s were way simpler than those used since, hence, perhaps, their durability.
The news of this out-of-date satellite coming back online after so much time staying silent has certainly surprised everyone within the scientific community. The satellite was launched February 11, 1965, from Cape Canaveral. It ceased sending signals just two years later. Still, this is not the only case of a satellite having been lost and then found again.
It also happened to the much more costly Solar and Heliospheric Observatory spacecraft (SOHO), which disappeared without a trace back in 1998. SOHO stopped sending signals while conducting its mission of observing the sun. NASA astronomers eventually located the lost craft and re-established contact with it as it was helplessly spinning in space.
In the case of SOHO, it was reportedly a glitch in the software that led to the craft’s malfunction. The satellite was eventually fully recovered, and it continued its set mission. But in the case of LES1, it all seems a lot more strange and way more unexpected as such an old piece of equipment had been long forgotten.
The Feed Bag Chicken Gumbo
pot of chicken sausage gumbo 1200
Yield: 8 to 10 servings
Ingredients
4 to 6 chicken breast halves
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped green bell pepper
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup fresh or frozen okra
1 cup fresh, frozen or canned corn
1 tablespoon thyme
1 tablespoon oregano
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon Cajun Seasoning
Dash of red hot sauce
1 tablespoon gumbo file (mixed with water until gooey)
3 (14 1/2 ounce) cans diced tomatoes
2 cups uncooked rice
Instructions
Place chicken breasts in a kettle with enough water to cover. Cook until done, about 20 minutes. Remove chicken to a platter. Strain chicken broth.
Return broth to kettle. Add celery, green pepper, onion, okra, corn, thyme, oregano, garlic powder, Cajun Seasoning, hot sauce and gumbo fil paste. Bring to a rolling boil.
Chop chicken into bite-size pieces and return to kettle. Add tomatoes. Bring back to boil. If soup is too thick, add chicken broth.
Cook rice according to package directions.
To serve, place desired amount of rice in serving bowl. Add gumbo.
52-year-old Washington woman, Susan Shannon (pictured below), wanted to destroy the life of her old friend, a successful US Army colonel, David Riggins, and possibly make some big cash out of her bogus claims, but she never expected the outcome of her decisions.
In 1986, Sussan and Riggins were both cadets at West Point, the U.S. military base in New York. While Sussan dropped out of the military, Riggins excelled. But just before he received a major promotion in 2013, Sussan started dropping bombs on her blog which haunted Riggins.
image 88
In her blog posts, she claimed she was brutally r-aped by Riggins while the two were cadets. Her claims got to the authorities leading to Riggins’s dismissal, this hurt him badly because he was just about to receive a life-changing promotion when the chaos started.
Once he left the military, Riggins fought back and sued her for defamation. Following several probing, investigators discovered that Sussan had made everything up.
image 87
She was asked to pay $8.4 million in damages to Riggins: $3.4 million in compensatory damages for hurting his reputation and lost wages, and $5 million in punitive damages. This will keep her a pauper for life.
In the fall of 2008, a few months into the Great Recession, my family was actually in a pretty good spot, financially. My wife and I were both working full time, we were renting an apartment, and we had only one kid at the time. We were saving to buy a house.
One night, I convinced my wife that we would be stupid if we didn’t take advantage of the stock market crash. I’d been interested in purchasing stocks, we had about $30,000 in savings for our house, and stocks were at near record lows. She agreed to let me spend just $1,000 on stocks.
The idea was to start with $1,000, and buy a few more stocks each year. We never followed through with that. We ended up opening college funds for our kids and IRAs for ourselves instead, but my original stock account from that night still remains.
I considered buying some stock in Apple. I was still a PC user then, but I really liked my iPod. I wanted to purchase stocks in companies whose products I used.
But I decided against Apple. I went with Disney and a few other companies instead.
My original $1,000 investment is worth about $3,500 today.
The day I decided against Apple stock, it was selling for around $13 a share. I could have bought 77 shares for $1,000 that day.
Today, those shares would be worth almost $16,000.
Had we skipped the house and put all of our savings into Apple shares that day, we could have sold all of that Apple stock today and bought a half-million dollar house in cash.
I was downsized from a company I had been with for a pretty long time. Every year I would work really hard to make my goals so my bonus would be maxed. The cap was $1000. The CEO of the company had 4 houses, several race horses, and 3 private jets. The company made a ton of money. I moved on to another, much smaller company about the middle of September the same year. Needless to say, my bonus that I had been working for most of the year evaporated. I didn’t give it much thought beyond just being grateful I found another job that paid me equally. Christmas came around and I didn’t think much about it because nobody had ever mentioned anything about bonuses and I had only been there about 4 months. The last payday before Christmas the CFO popped in and just casually asks everyone if they’d received their bonus, tells everyone not to eat too much, and he’ll see us all next year. I didn’t even bother to look up. During lunch a coworker asked me what I was going to do with my Christmas bonus. I told her that I didn’t get one and that was to be expected since I had just been there a short time. She told me I should check my bank because the CEO was very generous and isn’t the type to leave someone out. So, I checked. There was my paycheck direct deposit and holy crap! Another deposit for $10,000 from the company! I later found out that mine was a gesture compared to some others. I’ve been there 8 years and counting now. The cash bonuses fluctuate more now than they did back then, but I’ve never gotten anything disappointing. I’ll be there the rest of my life.
Albert Einstein’s Strict List of Conditions for his Wife to Follow
Albert Einstein’s relationship with his wife was a bit rocky to say the least. In contemporary times, prenuptials seem to be almost as common as vows. Before you walk down the aisle and say, “I do,” you first have to sign here, here, and here.
Contracts are not a new element of marriages. The act of getting married is, itself, a legally binding contract — provided it meets the requirements of the state or country in which the ceremony takes place. For example, according to New York City Bar, in New York, as in many other jurisdictions, “If either of you are still legally married to a former spouse, or do not meet the age requirements, then you are not legally married.”
Throughout history, marriage contracts have been negotiated between rich and influential families, with papers signed outlining the gains and losses of each party in the union — such as dowries payed and lands redistributed. To this day, you need to obtain a license to have a marriage legally recognized.
Today, a growing number of engaged couples wanting to avoid upset in any potential future dispute sign a formal prenuptial agreement — a private contract that both parties agree would be a fair way to split their combined assets.
It outlines dos and don’ts, haves and have nots, should the couple choose to split up in the future. They’re an increasingly popular element of a marriage, especially in the celebrity realm.
In some cases, postnuptial agreements come into play. These are agreements in which the couple draws up a contract after they are married, outlining certain requirements for the continuation and betterment of their union.
History provides an unfortunate example of a celebrity postnup that only served to make matters worse: it was written by Albert Einstein to his first wife, Mileva Marić. Einstein met Marić in 1896 at the Zurich Polytechnic, Eidgenossische Technische Hoschule, when she was studying for a teaching diploma in mathematics and physics. FemBio notes that Marić was the “second woman to finish a full program of study at Department VI A: Mathematics and Physics.”
Over the years, the friendship founded through their shared work interests developed and eventually lead to marriage in January 1903.
Their union was blessed with two sons, Hans and Eduard; but speculation exists, based on letters sent to each other, about a first child, born out of wedlock the year before the couple was married. Her fate is unconfirmed.
After 11 years of matrimony, though, the couple agreed that there was no longer any romance between them. Einstein and his wife agreed to approach the subject logically. They didn’t want to divorce recklessly, so for the sake of their children’s continuity, they decided to stay together.
According to Walter Isaacson in his book Einstein: His Life and Universe, Albert Einstein’s wife had some behavioral conditions to follow, which he outlined in the following list:
“You will make sure: that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order; that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room; that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only.”
“You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons. Specifically, You will forego: my sitting at home with you; my going out or travelling with you.”
“You will obey the following points in your relations with me: you will not expect any intimacy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way; you will stop talking to me if I request it; you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it.”
“You will undertake not to belittle me in front of our children, either through words or behavior.”
Concise and direct, the list drives a hard bargain. It sounds particularly harsh considering it was issued from a husband to his wife. Mileva agreed to his conditions anyway.
Logic can’t dictate such a strong emotion as love, or lack thereof. A few months went by before Mileva changed her mind. Taking their two sons, she left her husband in Berlin and moved back to Zurich. They officially divorced five years later, having not seen each other all that time.
He may have been able to calculate the amount of energy contained in a given mass, but Einstein couldn’t write the perfect formula for maintaining a marriage.
You-tube gave me another strike. I tried posting a Rufus video. Apparently the rescue of a person on the side of a Chinese skyscraper is a violation of policy.
Ugh!
The United States is truly bat-shit-crazy. You know there is so much that you can do in China that is just against the law in “the land of the free”; the United States.
Yet…
If you ask the vast number of people about the United States, they will regurgitate the narrative that “America is the freest land in the world”.
I raised my kids in rural Alaska, and their walk to the bus stop, for the short period that they attended public school, was just over a mile up a trail through barely tamed wilderness.
When the first 2 went to school, both at the same time, it took only a few weeks for them, 5 and 7 years old, to decide that “Only babies need their MOM to walk them to the bus.”
Despite my suspicion that this was something inspired by older children on the bus just being mean, and the general hazard of bears, black AND brown, moose, feral dogs, occasional escaped *herds* bison from the bison farm and even the rare wolverine to be seen on this trail to the road, I agreed that they could walk on their own if they sang the Bear Song the *whole way*. Bears and other wildlife do tend to move off if you keep making noise. The lyrics of the song go: “I am OLD and TOUGH and STRINGY! I am SMALL and BONEY and QUICK!” (to be repeated endlessly).
Of COURSE I could not let them go alone…
So the weirdest thing I have ever done was camo up me and two infants in front and back pack, and stalk my own small children every morning, slinking (as much as a person with two infants in packs can) through brush with a shotgun, in case of aggressive wildlife. Fortunately young children are not especially observant!
Years ago we had Christmas dinner with a family from our church. There had been problems in that family with one parent’s alcoholism. We were invited and we shared buying the meal. When we got there we realized the seven-year-old daughter had gotten IOUs from Santa for toys and a man’s sock with unwrapped, fleecy from the sock, hard rock Christmas candy in it. They had a can of this candy that had come from the father’s work and they poured it in one of the dad’s socks.
We were young and also had young kids and didn’t have much money. My husband and I went to the only store open in my area, Walgreens, and bought this child a Barbie and Barbie car, Barbie clothes and Barbie suitcase. It was a plastic and cardboard closet case, that folded out into a bedroom,kitchen and living room area. I got the doll-sized kitchen, bed and sofa and a Barbie artist set. Fortunately, everything was half price and it was everything that this child wanted and was on the IOUs.
I used my next two weeks’ grocery money. When we got back to the house we threw the toys in the snow. I had used the excuse to leave that I had to go home, for butter, for the rolls that I’d made for the dinner. Fortunately Walgreens also sold butter.
When we got inside we told the child that Santa had come. He had just dropped the toys outside because they had a wood stove and he was too big to get down that chimney. The look of joy on that child’s face was worth any sacrifice in groceries the next month. We took back the sweaters my mom had given us and we had to be frugal, but it was just fine the next month for groceries. This girl is now an adult whose kids call me grandma. I was the one who didn’t give but received the love of a child, who spent the rest of her childhood often with us.
So America need to import because it does not have the ability to make stuffs that it needs at the same price to its consumers. So it looks around and the nation that can make stuffs America need happen to be China. The next closest alternative is selling it 50% more costly and unreliable.
So if you are America you 3 have a simple choice. One make them yourselves but to do that you need your people to earn half, CEOs to give up 80% of their income and rebuild your infrastructure and retrain your citizen. Can you do it and yet spend billions war mongering and maintaining 800 based around the world? I doubt so? But you need to decide?
If the answer is yes do it. If no should you get another nation to do it at 50% higher cost and cause a double digit inflation for Americans? You as an American must decide. And your voters will decide too! If you prefer to do that and hurt yourself go on! Do it. But if you won’t accept the consequences you are left with only one choice. Buy from China!
If the US stop buying from China, China will lose a good size market. It will lose some opportunities but it won’t kill them. Nor will it drive them out of the market.You can argue that China will benefit other more appreciative customers!
175 nations out of the world’s 195 country have China as their biggest trading partner not because they loved China or adores the Chinese. But simply because China is a humongous market that even dwarfs America. And China has built the most efficient and effective manufacturing facilities to build and manufacture anything faster, cheaper and better than others. So these nation’s also buys the most from them too!
The U.S. is no different. Most of the U.S. biggest companies sells more to China than it sells in America! America’s trade with China is big but it is a small proportion of its total trade.
So in conclusion if the U.S. wants to make its own stuffs it needs to overhaul the U.S. politics, economy and culture. Chances is it can’t. And it won’t. So it is either accepting double digit inflation and lowering its real income substantially or live with buying from China. If it want to stop selling to China, it will hurt the Americans more than it will ever hurt China! But Trump did and Biden could not stop this madness that harm the U.S. economy.
After 5 full years of the trade war, China is fine and dandy. It is growing at 5.5% in 2023 with a 0.8% inflation the U.S. may grow by 1.5% with a 5.0% inflation. Go figure it by yourself if your question makes sense or even make you look clever or not?
SCTV Monster Chiller Horror Theatre: The House of Cats
Goddess of democracy or puberty puppet?
image 74
Politics isn’t a teenager’s playground. And yet in Hong Kong, it had become precisely that.
Never in history has a political movement been driven by a cabal of wet-behind-the-ears teenagers. Famous among them is Agnes Chow Ting who has just fled into self-exile in Canada. She forms the terrible trio with two other teeny-boppers, Nathan Law, (on the run in the US), and Joshua Wong (now rotting in a Hong Kong jail where time hangs heavy). They comprise the hardcore of the now-disbanded political party, pretentiously and stupidly named Demosisto, whatever that means.
These young hot heads were put on the pedestal by the Western press, with Wong going for Time’s Person of the Year nomination. Chow, otherwise known as the goddess of democracy or modern-day Mulan, made the BBC list of 100 women and another list of the 25 most influential women drawn up by the Financial Times, ironically unaware that Mulan was a celebrated female Chinese patriot. Agnes is no patriot. If anything, she qualifies as an out-and-out traitor who prefers learning Japanese to Mandarin, blissfully ignorant of the hideous truth that Japan had slaughtered 35 million Chinese and brutalized China during its invasion of the country. She is historically illiterate and culturally rootless.
These herd-minded fifteensomethings remind me of a popular Chinese saying that “When a village dog barks, other dogs start barking in unison, without knowing why.” Their “noble” fight for freedom is but the antics of puberty-perplexed teenagers who opted for the excitement of the rough and tumble of politics forsaking skull-numbing schoolwork. Their political misadventure is, above all, a tragic educational failure.
Suddenly, these juvenile new political arrivals found themselves the center of world attention, intoxicated with a false sense of their own importance, absorbed in their own absolutism, but empty at the core. They prided themselves on blindly opposing anything remotely mainlandish. A farce has been cunningly twisted into a noble fight for freedom, despite Hong Kong drowning in freedom as the freest city in the world.
The Hong Kong unrest is the story of a beautiful city made ugly by political manipulators. This high-wattage movement is a political perversion indulged by kids too young to know their own minds or the ways of the world. Their activist high jinks have been mischaracterized as acts of political courage.
These lost young souls, besides being an educational failure, are the products of an act of sabotage by a Western press pushing them over the edge, turbocharged by a surge of manufactured social anger. It has all the sound and fury of a political movement, but utterly devoid of serious substance. They talked robotically and acted robotically as rebels without a real cause.
Nothing says Hong Kong freedom like the proliferation of political parties. At one point, no fewer than 17 political parties splintered its Legislature. This once apolitical city was swimming in a sea of politics, with an abundant display of copycat political behavior. New York had its Occupy Wall Street movement and we soon followed with our own Occupy Central. And when the Color Revolutions overseas faded they were reborn in Hong Kong as the yellow Umbrella movement. Our “revolution” consisted of mindless parroting that was a distorted, abused form of freedom. Of all places Hong Kong was the last to need an extra dose of freedom. The young were worshipping the wrong gods. We have no use for a goddess of democracy.
Thankfully, the pendulum has finally swung. With Agnes Chow in self-exile, the sorry saga is reaching its finale. Goodbye false goddess. Hello real Mulan.
Oh my goodness
Camper’s Chili
Make a hearty Camper’s Chili following the tip for precooking the ground beef. Ready-to-add canned extras are all that’s needed.
2023 12 10 21 00
Prep: 20 min | Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
1 pound lean (at least 80%) ground beef
1 tablespoon dried minced onion
1 teaspoon salt
1 (15 ounce) can Progresso® kidney beans, undrained
1 (10 3/4 ounce) can condensed tomato soup
1 soup can water
2 to 3 teaspoons chili powder
Instructions
In a 2 quart saucepan, cook beef, onion and salt over medium-high heat 5 to 7 minutes, stirring occasionally, until beef is thoroughly cooked; drain.
Stir in remaining ingredients. Heat to boiling, stirring occasionally.
Notes
High Altitude (3500-6500 ft): No change.
Cook the ground beef ahead and freeze. Pack in the cooler and it will be campfire-ready to make the chili.
I was a trauma surgeon and ICU physician. I owned my own practice on the central coast of California. I worked hard, and was paid well, but for the next few years most of my money would go towards paying off a bad divorce and med school debt, rather than a lot of savings. So I lived relatively frugally, but quite comfortably, in my little one bedroom apartment, driving my Nissan, enjoying the beach, enjoying life in general.
And then it happened. A freak illness—which I can’t even remember, I have amnesia—put me in the ICU for four months. Complications from the illness stole my right leg. I was so weak, I couldn’t turn myself over in bed. And yet I had to learn to walk again, use a phone, drive.
I had no income for the foreseeable future, maybe ever, and no dependable means to pay rent when my savings eventually wore out. My father and brother threw what they could of my things in trash bags and put them in a tiny storage unit. Most of my things, including all my furniture, got tossed. My animals, thank god, all found temporary homes. When I got out of the hospital, and then out of rehab, buried in medical debt despite insurance and still as helpless as a newborn kitten, I went to live with my elderly parents for a month.
But every Friday through Monday, Mom (as is her way) announced she needed her space, and that meant I had to find someone else to stay with for the weekend. Someone whose house could be navigated on crutches. Someone who wouldn’t mind sharing their food or helping me off the toilet. I stayed with a stranger—a friend of a friend—an older woman whose husband had just passed from Parkinson’s disease. I used his wheelchair. We watched old musicals and every morning she laid out hardboiled eggs, fruit, and a Bible chapter for my breakfast.
image 75
On Mondays, I went back to my parents’ house and waited patiently at the bottom of the stairs to the porch to be let in. When the front door finally opened, I had to tuck my crutches beneath one arm and crawl on my hands and knees up the steps.
I was homeless.
I was a homeless doctor through no fault of my own, utterly dependent on the mercy (or lack thereof) of my loved ones and strangers. And what if there had been no mercy? What if God had taken my family as well? What if there were no friends of friends to put out dishes of raspberries? Or take care of my animals? What if I’d had no sister to live with later on, while I was doing physical therapy? Or no savings to pay, first for physical therapy, and then my prosthetic leg?
I am a trauma surgeon and an ICU physician. But that experience taught me I am so, so much more.
I am the sign beneath the overpass.
I am the voice from the curb.
Feed me.
Shelter me.
Help me.
I am you.
SCTV | Great White North – How to beat the Russians
One of the smartest, perhaps the smartest person on the planet, Kim Ung-Yong, was doing calculus and speaking five languages before age five. By age eight he was doing math at NASA and finished his Ph.D. prior to age fifteen.
image 80
(^ him at age five)
It’s all a bit over the top.
None of this was by his own decision. After the discovery of his genius, an I.Q. of over 200, he was placed on an ultra-fast track program for his life.
After accumulating a mind numbing pile of academic accolades, he worked at NASA for years until he abruptly quit.
Here you have the smartest guy in the world, someone whose intelligence dwarfs most Harvard students’, and he walks away from it all.
Why? He wasn’t happy. It was all too much intensity for him. He felt like a machine and just wanted something normal.
He now works in a normal university faculty position as a professor. A prestigious job for most people. But for him? Not so. Kim is still periodically targeted by Korean news outlets for being a “failed genius”. With all of his gifts he was expected to change the world and innovate within several science fields.
It begs the question, who decided Kim was supposed to change the world? It certainly wasn’t him.
Mr. Kim might not be someone most of us can relate to. But he is analogous, ground zero even, for the problems intelligent people face with regards to “potential.” Just because someone is smart, strong, creative, doesn’t mean they want to be king of the world.
Some people are happy with a low key life. Happiness is the great equalizer. If they are happy, your expectations no longer matter.
The entry to the office in which I worked was near the lifts and most of us had to walk past our boss’s office to get to our desks. There was also a door next to my desk which could be used to exit only. The people who worked near me and I would regularly go out that door when we went to lunch or left for the day.
We all worked flex time, had to arrive between 8am and 9.30am, take a lunch break of 30 minutes to 2 hours and leave between 3.30pm and 6pm. We each had a time sheet which we would fill in and submit every second Friday. At the end of each fortnight we could carry forward up to ten hours credit or debit.
Our boss decided that as he couldn’t see us leaving the office, we MUST be cheating on our time sheets, so he implemented a time clock. We all had to log in and out when we arrived or left, which meant that none of us could leave via the door next to my desk -we had to go the longer route past his office. The time clock was supposed to reveal that we were all cheating, but in fact it revealed that we were all working longer hours than we had been claiming. It was only a few minutes each day, but if, for instance we arrived at 8.47, we would enter it as 8.50. If we left at 5.03 we would enter 5.00. All of a sudden we were all being credited with an extra 10 minutes or so per day, almost an hour a week. Every couple of months or so we were each able to take an extra day off courtesy of the time clock.
None of us were cheating on our time sheets, we were professionals who in fact were understating our hours.
That was a LONG way from the most offensive thing he did. He was a mean, nasty, petty little man.
My husband died suddenly when I was 31 and our children were just babies, aged seven and three. In the surreal and painful days immediately after his death, our house filled with visitors, mourners, love, and grief.
One of the women who came to hold my hand had been widowed just a couple of years earlier. She was older than I and her children were grown, but she was a relatively young widow, only in her fifties.
As I sat next to her on the couch, talk going on all around me about my beautiful young husband, it suddenly occurred to me that this woman might have some advice. I turned to her and asked, “What did you do when your husband died?”
Her thoughtful answer: “Oh, I just worked until I couldn’t.”
That advice actually got me through a lot. I worked and took care of the children. I frequently visited my mom in another city, as I always had. I took the children to my in-laws’ as my husband and I had done, and continued our relationship. Fearing insomnia and overwhelm from grief, I made sure I was exhausted when I lay down to sleep.
Work can be a balm for a sore heart. Staying busy allowed me to process grief in bits and pieces, so I didn’t crater completely. I was able to put my mind on my children and my job until I was emotionally stronger.
I’ve always been grateful to my friend for her answer. She may not have any idea how much it helped me.
Let’s say it gave me perspective to understand the men’s lot in the society and in the life. Finland has this wonderful concept of conscription which means if you are male, you must serve. I do not call that as a male privilege.
Make no mistake, conscription is slavery. It is little better than chattel slavery. But for a country with large area and small population, it is the only eligible way to set up a credible size military. And it is different when you are a volunteer and when you are coerced. When you are a volunteer, you have a motivation and when things fcuck up, it is only your own naïete to blame. When you are coerced, it is your gender to blame.
Okay. Being referred to surname only basis was at first somewhat embarrassing, but also comforting: it meant my gender was now a non-issue. I realized now that the only thing which matters is my performance. Do not play the feminine card and ask for excuses for weaker physique. Be a team player.
Since conscription is a true cross section of the cohort, the materiél of the intake cohort is also a cross section of the society. The military did not only get the best of the boys to serve – it also got the worst, and it meant those boys with which you really would not like to have any interaction at any price, such as antisocial cases, former schoolyard bullies, psychopaths and sociopaths, alcoholics, drug addicts, petty criminals, thieves, weakly talented and hygienically challenged. Let’s say be curt and say the boot camp was a sheer hell. I regretted many times I had put that letter in the mailbox, but if I had quit, my dad would never have talked to me any more.
Once I had gotten in the specialist training, the going became much more sensible. The minimum intelligence for a military engineer is Stanine 6, and most of the boys were intelligent. Everything began to make sense, and I began to re-gain my motivation. I then volunteered for officer training, and was approved. Little did I know the boot camp was merely a mild prelude of what was to follow.
The academy was training from hell. Instead of brainwash (as in the boot camp) the method was now indoctrination, and while the negative motivator in the boot camp had been insults and denigration, in the academy it was now the fear of expulsion off the course. The training was physically extremely strenuous and we worked many all-nighters. But the cadets were incredibly bright lot, and from the first day on I really felt I was among my own. The team spirit was indomitable. In the end none in our company was expelled, and from my cohort in all companies, only four (two from being sick, one from getting engaged in a fight and one from failing in the examinations).
The military service gives you a great reality check in the life and what the life looks like at the other side of the gender fence. But if you are fit and if you can swallow your pride and identity as a unique snowflake, it gives you also a chance to really become a sociable person and a team player. I cannot stress the importance of the team work.
Like Eöwyn states in the ‘Lord of the Rings’, the women of this country learned long ago, those without swords can still die upon them. The military service gives you the skills to handle firearms safely and basis on learning to shoot and do the maintenance on them, and also the survival skills. They cannot be over-emphasized. Many people who come to the boot camp have never slept a night in the forest in a tent. Survival skills will benefit you for the rest of your life.
Do not stress your body too much and learn to know its limits. If your body fat percentage falls below 15, you will experience amenorrhea (cessation of the menstrual cycle). It is not fun. Moreover, the joints of women are more flexible and more easily sprained than those of men. But women tend to stand pain better than men – after all, childbirth is a painful event.
The military is not a place for romances. Do not attempt to socialize with your service mates. Treat them as your brothers. They will treat you as a sister.
Do not think it was all wine and roses. The Finnish suck is not a kindergarten – it is more like a sick crossbreed of a prison and lunatic asylum. What really picked on me was the inefficieny, stupidity and clowniness – everything had been designed according the dumbest thinkable recruit. But you may also learn special skills, leadership skills, and getting along with people.
In the end I decided the military wasn’t for me and went for the academia. Many Finnish female ex-soldiers head to become nurses or teachers – it is about learning to care of your fellow human beings and protect and instruct them.
All in all, it was an experience, but one of socialization. Without really having to learn on how to get along with all kinds of people, I might not have made it across the Atlantic in a sailing boat.
Unlike most European countries, Canada and the United States, China still has pretty strict capital controls which means it’s difficult to export money out of the country. This is essentially so the Chinese government can hoard U.S. cash (in the form of Treasury instruments, about $800 billion worth) which allows it to prop up the local currency, the yuan. In essence, its easy to convert dollars (or euros for that matter) to yuan but practically impossible to convert yuan to foreign currency except in limited amounts.
There are severe punishments for failure to declare foreign currency income if you’re a Chinese business. Now, there’s a lot of dollars flowing into China (the net is about $290 billion a year). The Chinese government likes to do all domestic transactions in yuan and use U.S. dollars (and euros) only for foreign transactions (and only when necessary).
Now, if you pay taxes in China, you pay them in yuan, but if your company earns foreign currency you’re supposed to convert it to yuan (unless you get permission to reinvest it) so that the government can build up a surplus of U.S. currency for public projects and the occasional foreign debt repayment.
So with all that money floating around, it’s not terribly difficult to divert a million here or there for other uses. The problem is that you have to do this on the sly and around official channels. If you get too much foreign currency, then you draw the attention of foreign tax officials, who are wondering where it all came from and why you aren’t paying local tax on the money. Foreign officials also aren’t above informing the Chinese government of violations of their capital control laws.
So let’s say you’re a Chinese company with timber holdings in Canada. It’s a good business and quite lucrative, but all your profits are supposed to be repatriated. No problem, just claim a few million in expenses for consulting companies and divert that money to an entity you own and hope the Chinese officials don’t catch on.
But this gives you another headache. Moving money through legitimate channels is easy to trace making it likely the Chinese government will catch on, or that local tax officials will start looking for that money. Naturally, this means you prefer to deal in cash. Offer some people discounts on full or partial cash transactions and you rake in the foreign currency. The problem now is to make it seem like it came from a legitimate source.
And that’s where the laundering comes in. You take the garbage bags of cash you’re collecting on the sly and get a confederate to take it to a B.C. provincial casino to gamble with it. Once you’ve gambled a little, the friendly cashier will be happy to get you a certified cheque (cashier’s check for Americans) which you can then take to a bank. You then work with a crooked real estate broker to get some inflated Vancouver property. From there, there’s lots of things you can do, like take a mortgage out on the property. The bank doesn’t even care if you default. That makes the money look legitimate and something earned outside the normal course of the lumber business.
Can I ask you something before I answer this? Do your parents let you out by yourself? Because if so, that’s child endangerment. Neglect. And abuse. Now that that is out of the way…
See this map thingy here?
image 79
That’s Australia, that’s how it would look if it was in place of the entire continental US. Just about the same size, actually. Australia is 70,000 sq km larger than the contiguous US (if you don’t count the Great lakes, and since nobody lives on the great lakes. Or grows anything there, i don’t). Pretty neat, huh? Just one more cool thing we have in common. In fact, if you turn Australia upside down, it would almost look like the US. Or we would almost look like Australia. Either one.
Now, the continental US has 330 million people. We still have wilderness, and lots of rural areas. Australia has 25,884,430 as of Thursday, October 21, 2021. So about 1/13th the population. In the same amount of land.
Here’s a map of the population density of Australia:
image 78
You see the orange areas, both light and medium orange? That’s all rural areas. Very rural. Most of the yellow area is less than rural, possibly even uninhabitable, given its current state ( I’m fairly certain that part is so unexplored, there’s a full country of dinosaurs in there) . So yes, Australia has a lot of rural-ness. So there…what’s that, you say? You’re colorblind? Oh…well …I give up. Have a peachy night.
Yes, to a large extent it is true, and it is rather obvious when you think about it. There is a certain amount of resources in the world and they cannot be used in two places at once. We can take Britain as an example. There are some things that the British just wouldn’t have been able to do historically if it wasn’t for their colonies.
image 76
In 1937 the British Empire exported 340,587 long tons of bauxite, which is the primary source of aluminium. This was becoming a strategic resource and was a highly lucrative trade. How much of this originated from Britain? 0%. 300,707 long tons (88.2%) of the British exports came from the colony British Guiana. If the native population had reaped the benefits of exporting this material, they would have been incredibly wealthy, there were about 2 tons of bauxite per person living there in 1937. But all that wealth went to great Britain, which used it to build infrastructure and other things in Britain.
Another important resource was chromium which is vital for making ships and other objects that needs to resist rust. The British Empire extracted a vast amount of chromium ore, 502,633 long tons in 1937, how much of it in Britain? 0%. From Rhodesia 53.9%, from South Africa 33% and from India 12.4%. Mind you the conditions for black mine workers in South Africa were essentially slavery.
For copper it was Canada and Rhodesia, diamonds in the Gold Coast and South Africa. The British Empire also produced 19.7 million troy ounces of gold, 10 of which was in South Africa none of which was in Britain. The Entire world produced 34.6 million troy ounces of gold, which means that the British produced 57% of all the gold in the world, 0% of which was done by the British.
We can continue, but I think you get the point. In 1937, British colonies allowed Great Britain to rob quite literally over half the gold in the world, before this state of affairs, it would be fair to say that in the 1800s Great Britain was the largest narco state in the world, when they exported opium to China to the point at which it was near collapse.
There is nothing voluntary or mutually beneficial about these trades, Africans were colonized with military force, and when China refused to trade in opium they were attacked twice, and eventually invaded and had their government palace looted and burned by British and French soldiers.
Western Europe, has spent hundreds of years robbing much of the world blind, through slavery, resource extraction and forced trade agreements through warfare. This wealth did not disappear into thin air. Westminister palace in London was built for the sum of billions of modern day pounds, British influence into the financial systems is long lasting and still benefits it, the legacy of that theft created billionaire families which exist today, and still maintain their wealth. Most importantly, all the wealth of these countries never went to the local population, they suffered in some cases over a hundred years of continuous enforced stagnation and poverty, were denied education, were denied industrialization, and now has to content with so called free market mechanisms without any of the things they we already have.
So yes, western Europe benefited enormously from colonies, and this is honestly just scratching the surface of the true extent of what the colonies actually meant.
G7 is really a “who to sanction next? Who to carpet bomb club headed by the U.S. amongst fellow native slaughterers and fellow despicable former colonial masters setting up a framework call the western rules based order to continue virtual colonialism”
China must never get anywhere near this hegemonic archaic imperialism tainted plunderers gathering. G20 China is a part of This grouping but it is making sure no single nation can and will abuse its position as a member in doing bad but as a group it is a force of good. Helping to eliminate real poverty. And not become U.S. tool of world subjugation.
BRICS are representing the world’s alternative powers. Brazil, Russia, India, China presents the global south ensuring the world’s largest population and now the largest GDP too to have an alternative or a sustainable future that the G7 cannot forced and coerce nations to be submissive and subservient to them. G7 can do what it likes but BRICS will counter if it sees the G7 as being vindictive or working against the interest of the developing world.
To put it in a simple apology. The west used the world to strip it of resources and capital through to barrel of the gun and after 300 years, it used the so call international rules base order to virtually colonised the world for another 80 years or so. That brings us to today. 2023. The 87% of the worlds nation or 180 out of 195 nations or so collectively know as the global south has a choice either to be real partners of equal rights with the west or go on their own!
So in summary G7 represents the U.S. dogs nation, BRICS represents the rest. And G20 is simply the top 20 nations representatives from both groups. From now till around 2050. There will be alternatives that are fairer, better, more representative of all corners of the world and a clear multi polar world. That no nation can dominate, not U.S. not China nor anyone else. Organisations like SWIFT, World Bank, IMF, Rating Agencies, metal and farm exchanges will have to go or become impartial. US dollars will be a currency amongst many currencies.
Sometimes all we need is a break. I’m a single mom of three boys, dad died of suicide when they were 7,6 and 4. A day after I got the phone call, I received another telling me my eldest needed major back surgery. We went through hell traveling 200 miles a few times before the surgery. Brothers in tow. We did this while mourning, me working full time with little support, broke and scared. My mother asked me why I don’t just give up, collect welfare and stay home with my kids. She said exactly “You just can’t do it. Why don’t you give up”?
My employer made accommodations to have my son before and after surgery be able to come to work with me. He was having bowel and bladder accidents and after surgery, recovering on pain meds. Without her allowing him a comfortable space for me to keep an eye on him, we would’ve lost our apartment and car because I couldn’t have worked. She was so good to him, bringing treats and checking on him herself while I was busy (she’s a doctor). I had a hard time through the 12 years with her. That year was the worst. Months later I was in a car accident and was hurt pretty bad. The month after, my youngest had to go back and fourth to a specialist 100 miles away for bladder and kidney issues. She asked how I was when my eldest went back to school and I broke down. I cried, hard. I was afraid it would always be so hard, and that I’d screw my beautiful boys up.
She said “You are one of the smartest, most hard working I know. The difference between you and the other people I associate with is that you don’t have help, money or a nanny. You are an excellent mother and your children are so well behaved. You’ll be just fine.”
Coming from a doctor who had an autistic son and twins, who had a medical degree (at the time I had just a GED), who was a very dry, hard person, it meant the world. She helped me persevere. She saw the potential I could not see in me.
They’re 20, 19 and 16 now. They love their mom so much and recognize the struggle. They are genuinely good kids and I’m proud of what I did rather than looking and what I couldn’t.
If it weren’t for those words, I’m not sure we’d be were we are, in our own home, me graduating with a degree in just three weeks, them starting college and working.
I have a newphew who lives with us. He’s a grown man, but due to health issues he cannot work anymore. He weighs less than 100 lbs and often has pain. He has Medicaid.
I have a very good job with a major corporation. I have health insurance for my family – the ONLY plan I can “choose from” from my employer – which is a “High Deductible combined with a Health Savings Account” plan. I pay hundreds a month for premiums. And, put thousands a year into my HSA.
Last month, my nephew and I BOTH went into the hospital for serval days for unrelated illnesses. We both went in, very sick, through the ER. I came out with a $3200 bill left to pay, and had to pay an additional $100 for prescriptions on my way out the door. I then had to followup with my regular doctor which cost me an additional $800.
By contrast, my nephew showed his Medicaid card, and nobody ever charged him a dime after that., Nobody talked to him about money, bills, costs, or anything of the like. He had more procedures done, though stayed one day less than I did. On the way home with him, we stopped and got 5 prescriptions for him – also at no cost.
WHY THE FUCK doesn’t EVERYBODY in America want their healthcare to work that way?
Moscow Center of Sparc Technologies, they produce Elbrus processors.
image 81
There processors are a few years behind global leaders (they use 28-nm technology as of 2021), but they are sufficient for military purposes. Russian military also uses unique analog-based systems.
I can’t say it backfired “terribly”, but it did backfire in that it ruined everything.
I was a waiter at a pub and one day one of my fellow servers was having a really shitty day. Some personal stuff, but that just made the normal rude customers seem even worse.
I had read an article that said that laughing on purpose produces some chemicals in your brain that actually make you happier.
I pulled her aside set the timer on my watch (no smartphones then) and said: “Hey, we are going to laugh for one minute”. We did. It took her a while but in the end, she was laughing just because I was laughing. It made her feel better.
We did this often after that. We even did it in front of the customers in the dining area, and guess what, they all started laughing too. We started doing it at our shift meetings, all voluntarily laughing for no reason. It was great.
Then the owner heard about it and made it “policy” that every shift meeting we have to laugh for one minute. That killed everything. Making it a rule or policy destroyed anything that was fun about it.
I love Michael Jackson’s music and, with no exaggeration, think he might be the most talented person to live in the 20th century.
However, I’m fascinated with the cognitive dissonance some people have on accepting what is right in front of their eyes. It speaks to the power of Jackson’s stardom.
Now, if you are someone who adamantly defends him, I want you to hear this out. Pause your assumptions.
First, a common defense I’ve seen is that, “There was no evidence.” In molestation trials, there is rarely physical evidence to begin with, unless something was recorded. It is typically circumstantial evidence and eyewitness testimonies.
There’s been a string of molestation cases against MJ over the years. In one, a former accuser, Jordan Chandler, correctly told police where a birthmark and spots were on MJ’s genitals and rear-end. He literally drew a picture that matched it. The case was so damning that MJ paid more than $20 million to avoid trial. I don’t care how rich someone is: you don’t pay that kind of money if you have nothing to hide.
Others have testified to seeing Michael touching boys inappropriately. His housekeeper testified to catching him in the shower nude with a young boy. His security guard, Ralph Chacon, also testified to seeing indecent acts being performed on a boy.
When they raided MJ’s house, they found two magazines with photos of nude boys— but they fell into the grey area enough to be considered “art”. Feel free to see for yourself. These are the titles:
The Boy: A Photographic Essay Boys Will Be Boys
These books were endorsed as recommended reads by NAMBLA (The National Associated of Man-Boy Lovers). They are popular with pedos because they are legal to own and Jackson had them in a locked cupboard.
A huge mob of superfans began running social media campaigns after the Leaving Neverland documentary came out. The testimonies in it were compelling, heartbreaking, and excruciatingly detailed. This is one of the men, James Safechuck, as a kid with MJ:
image 77
The other accuser, Wade and MJ:
image 8
Notice how all of the boys MJ hung out with were these cutesy boy-models. There are countless photos of him walking around holding hands with these boys, which isn’t damning on its own, but looks pretty bad in context to everything
MJ paid off families multiple times. He was accused multiple times over decades. He openly admitted to sharing his bed with boys. Latoya Jackson even warned people that MJ was doing this in the 90s.
There are certainly one-off cases of people using false claims against celebrities for payouts. But there is way, way too much smoke here for there not to be a fire.
Just to recap:
He’s had five separate accusers over the years and multiple employees testify against him, multiple payouts, borderline child (boy) erotica found in his home, a boy who drew a picture matching the description of his nether regions, an admission that he shared beds with boys—all of whom were modelesque looking.
We can have a conversation about injustice against black men in the US—because that is a real thing. We can have a conversation about unfair targeting of celebrities. But this is not the hill to die on.
MJ had the most elite lawyers money could buy and was enshrouded in an unrivaled aura of fame. He wouldn’t have made that $20 million payout if his counsel didn’t think he was in serious, serious trouble.
If any of us had been accused under the same conditions MJ had been, we’d have been convicted in a heartbeat.
Quartermaster’s Stew
Quartermaster’s Stew is a time-honored Scouting recipe that is easy to make.
2023 12 10 21 02
Serves 6 to 8 scouts
Ingredients
Stew
2 pounds ground beef
2 cans mixed vegetables (save liquid)
2 cans potatoes (drain off liquid and discard)
1 packet stew seasoning mix
Optional
1 can stewed tomatoes
Sliced fresh mushrooms
Additional vegetables, such as beans, corn
Instructions
Heat Dutch oven on fire, add small amount of cooking oil, and brown ground beef. Drain grease.
Stir in stew seasoning mix, add a bit of water, and cook for 5 to 10 minutes.
Add vegetables with liquid.
Chop potatoes into small chunks and add to stew. Add small quantity of water if need to cover contents.
Place oven on bed of charcoal – 8 to 10 briquettes (more in winter) on aluminum foil, shiny side up.
Cover with lid and put 2 to 3 times as many coals on top. Cook about 15 minutes.
Add tomatoes and mushrooms.
Cook until potatoes are tender and stew is bubbly and hot through – 15 to 20 minutes depending upon heat level, stirring occasionally.
When I was about 12 we were living with my great aunt (my mother’s father’s sister. She had a chest of drawers that sat in the hallway it had been there as long as I can remember. I knew, from quick peeks every now and again that it was full of old paperwork. One day they left me home alone for a short time (maybe 30 minutes), I started going through it. I saw some papers that had my mom’s maiden name on them. After reading them I figured out my mom had had a baby before me. Later, I told my mom what I had done and what I found. She explained to me that her father had gotten her pregnant through raping her for years. They (her aunts) sent her to a home for unwed mother’s and she had given the little boy up for adoption. I think about him from time to time but would never try to find him. I just pray that he was adopted by a loving family.
Waay back in time I used CB radios…a lot !You can blame one of my uncles for that…he was ex army…different regiments becuase of his skill sets…anyway.
My step kids found out and wanted to know what ‘CB’ is / was.
So I explained about it being a two way radio that you could talk to people on…then I realised the the opportunity for a history lesson, ( I’m sneaky like that ;-).
So I started by telling them the history of HAM radio and how ships back in the ‘old days’ used radio ! By using the phonetic code, Morse code, the ‘Q’ code and later using the ’10 code’ as used by the American Police.
I had to give a demonstration of using Morse code…by tapping out SOS…they were fascinated !
So I started to teach the kids Morse etc…just by tapping out the letters / numbers.
Well…as kids do in situations like this they just ran with it…so I ended up making them a morse key and a buzzer to practice on. I also made some ‘flash cards’. The other trick I used was when a car etc passed us….’Quick ! what’s the code’? meaning the phonetic code’! So they would rattle it of quickly ( it helped with their spelling as well…( I told you I was sneaky ! ).
That progressed onto using Morse code as well as the ‘Q’ code.
Right…so were at the local supermarket…and I’d said to the kids they could ‘talk’ to each other…so their standing about 15/20 feet apart…and tapping out Morse code messages to each other.
Other people in the store soon caught on and were fascinated by the kids ( who were oblivious to the attention they were getting ). Right up until a new ‘voice’ joined in.
‘QSK’
Kids faces were a picture…they knew it wasn’t me…the ‘hand’ was different, besides…they could see me in the queue and my hand were in view !
‘QSK’
The kids looked at each other, pretty much gobsmacked !
So my girl took charge…and replied by tapping out ( of course I’d taught them how to respond ! ).
‘QSK, QRZ, QRA, QTH, QSL’.
Their was a sound of muffled laughter followed by more tapping, telling them his name ( Stan ) and that he was in the ice cream section ( which they couldn’t see ).
Soon enough I’d passed along the line and paid for our shopping and joined the kids, where we were standing ( and still replying to the ‘messages’ )…then an elderly guy walked up…and looked at the kids ( with a HUGE grin on his face…and introduced himself as ‘Stan’.
Turned out that Stan was a radio operator in WW2, sometimes dropped behind enemy lines…I swapped telephone numbers and a few days later we invited him to dinner, where he told us about some of his adventures during the war.
I was present for an emergency stop test in the engine room of the JFK back in the early 80s. I have first hand knowledge of doing this.
But how do I explain this experience to the average Joe or Josephine?
Your question related this to deceleration forces and cars, so I’ve been mulling over how to answer in the same terms. Here is what I came up with. Please fasten your seat belts.
A ship has no brakes. Normally it coasts to a stop. This takes about five miles for a carrier at full speed as someone else alluded to in another answer. You can do this in a car coming to a red light if you want to. It will irritate the other drivers, but who cares right?
I knew someone who drove like this. She was old in the 1970s. Real old. In her 90s. I mowed her yard. She had this old 50s something Chevy she bought new. Each spring she would buy a few cans of blue spray paint and give it a new coat. She did an amazing job.
One day, I was admiring the car. It did not have a scratch on it. No dents. No dings. No bent chrome. No rust. She bragged to me that she still had the original brake shoes. She made them last by planning ahead. She knew where the stops were and could just let off the gas beforehand and coast to a stop.
She was sweet and fierce. She fed me little cakes. If you got out of line she would slap you up side the head, hard.
That sums up an aircraft carrier nicely.
Now imagine a car with no brakes. You coast to a stop just like ships do. Everything is fine until some guy ruins your day by pulling out in front of you.
What do you do, You have no brakes?
YOU CRAM IT INTO REVERSE AND STEP ON THE GAS.
In cars, that would likely break something even if you have a straight shift, but you can do it if you are:
In the dirt.
Aided by brakes.
Have fancy foot work.
I can hear the comments now. Impossible.
It’s not.
I’ve done it.
Yes it is likely to tear things apart.
I’ll refrain from giving the details of when, where and why I did this. I am not sure what the statute of limitations is.
On an aircraft carrier, you are doing just that when you do an emergency stop. In the engine room, things are absolutely screaming in protest.
The ship starts shaking.
The throttleman and boiler console operator are working desperately together to keep from breaking stuff.
People are calling off times and pressures as everything starts vibrating.
Dust and dirt falls on you from the pipes and wiring above.
Hands grab tight to things bolted down to keep standing.
The ship’s tires start losing grip. That’s the screws (props) as they try to catch water so hard it boils. Yes, the water boils (cavitates). As the pressure is lowered, it turns to steam.
A few might wet themselves just a little.
82,655 tons of metal that wants to keep on truckin’ protests loudly.
And it does not take miles to stop. It happens in a few ship lengths. Remember, a mile is only five lengths of a US aircraft carrier. Yes, it is intense.
We did this without any equipment on the flight deck. No planes. No green, red, yellow, white, blue, brown, or purple shirted guys running around. Everything tied down tight.
Bonus memory
The night I reported to the ship it was dark and rainy. I walked up to the watch at the pier and showed my orders. He pointed toward this dark shadow. I was confused.
“Is the ship behind that warehouse?” I asked.
He laughed and said, “That warehouse is the ship”
You really can’t appreciate the size of a US Carrier until you walk up and get swallowed by it.
For Man and Nature: Building a Community of Life Together
Remarks by H.E. Xi Jinping
President of the People’s Republic of China
At the Leaders Summit on Climate
22 April 2021
Honorable President Joe Biden,
Honorable Colleagues,
It is a great pleasure to join you at the Leaders Summit on Climate on Earth Day. I wish to thank President Biden for the kind invitation. It is good to have this opportunity to have an in-depth exchange of views with you on climate change, and to discuss ways to tackle this challenge and find a path forward for man and Nature to live in harmony.
Since time of the industrial civilization, mankind has created massive material wealth. Yet, it has come at a cost of intensified exploitation of natural resources, which disrupted the balance in the Earth’s ecosystem, and laid bare the growing tensions in the human-nature relationship. In recent years, climate change, biodiversity loss, worsening desertification and frequent extreme weather events have all posed severe challenges to human survival and development. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has added difficulty to economic and social development across countries. Faced with unprecedented challenges in global environmental governance, the international community needs to come up with unprecedented ambition and action. We need to act with a sense of responsibility and unity, and work together to foster a community of life for man and Nature.
— We must be committed to harmony between man and Nature. “All things that grow live in harmony and benefit from the nourishment of Nature.” Mother Nature is the cradle of all living beings, including humans. It provides everything essential for humanity to survive and thrive. Mother Nature has nourished us, and we must treat Nature as our root, respect it, protect it, and follow its laws. Failure to respect Nature or follow its laws will only invite its revenge. Systemic spoil of Nature will take away the foundation of human survival and development, and will leave us human beings like a river without a source and a tree without its roots. We should protect Nature and preserve the environment like we protect our eyes, and endeavor to foster a new relationship where man and Nature can both prosper and live in harmony.
— We must be committed to green development. Green mountains are gold mountains. To protect the environment is to protect productivity, and to improve the environment is to boost productivity — the truth is as simple as that. We must abandon development models that harm or undermine the environment and must say no to shortsighted approaches of going after near-term development gains at the expense of the environment. Much to the contrary, we need to ride the trend of technological revolution and industrial transformation, seize the enormous opportunity in green transition, and let the power of innovation drive us to upgrade our economic, energy and industrial structures, and make sure that a sound environment is there to buttress sustainable economic and social development worldwide.
— We must be committed to systemic governance. Mountains, rivers, forests as well as farmlands, lakes, grasslands and deserts all make indivisible parts of the ecosystem. Protecting the ecosystem requires more than a simplistic, palliative approach. We need to follow the innate laws of the ecosystem and properly balance all elements and aspects of Nature. This is a way that may take us where we want to be, an ecosystem in sound circulation and overall balance.
— We must be committed to a people-centered approach. The environment concerns the well-being of people in all countries. We need to take into full account people’s longing for a better life and a good environment as well as our responsibility for future generations. We need to look for ways to protect the environment, grow the economy, create jobs and remove poverty all at the same time, so as to deliver social equity and justice in the course of green transition and increase people’s sense of benefit, happiness and security.
— We must be committed to multilateralism. We need to work on the basis of international law, follow the principle of equity and justice, and focus on effective actions. We need to uphold the UN-centered international system, comply with the objectives and principles laid out in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Paris Agreement, and strive to deliver the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. We need to each take stronger actions, strengthen partnerships and cooperation, learn from each other and make common progress in the new journey toward global carbon neutrality. In this process, we must join hands, not point fingers at each other; we must maintain continuity, not reverse course easily; and we must honour commitments, not go back on promises.
China welcomes the United States’ return to the multilateral climate governance process. Not long ago, the Chinese and US sides released a Joint Statement Addressing the Climate Crisis. China looks forward to working with the international community including the United States to jointly advance global environmental governance.
— We must be committed to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. The principle of common but differentiated responsibilities is the cornerstone of global climate governance. Developing countries now face multiple challenges to combat COVID-19, grow the economy, and address climate change. We need to give full recognition to developing countries’ contribution to climate action and accommodate their particular difficulties and concerns. Developed countries need to increase climate ambition and action. At the same time, they need to make concrete efforts to help developing countries strengthen the capacity and resilience against climate change, support them in financing, technology, and capacity building, and refrain from creating green trade barriers, so as to help developing countries accelerate the transition to green and low-carbon development.
Colleagues,
The Chinese civilization has always valued harmony between man and Nature as well as observance of the laws of Nature. It has been our constant pursuit that man and Nature could live in harmony with each other. Ecological advancement and conservation have been written into China’s Constitution and incorporated into China’s overall plan for building socialism with Chinese characteristics. China will follow the Thought on Ecological Civilization and implement the new development philosophy. We will aim to achieve greener economic and social development in all aspects, with a special focus on developing green and low-carbon energy. We will continue to prioritize ecological conservation and pursue a green and low-carbon path to development.
Last year, I made the official announcement that China will strive to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. This major strategic decision is made based on our sense of responsibility to build a community with a shared future for mankind and our own need to secure sustainable development. China has committed to move from carbon peak to carbon neutrality in a much shorter time span than what might take many developed countries, and that requires extraordinarily hard efforts from China. The targets of carbon peak and carbon neutrality have been added to China’s overall plan for ecological conservation. We are now making an action plan and are already taking strong nationwide actions toward carbon peak. Support is being given to peaking pioneers from localities, sectors and companies. China will strictly control coal-fired power generation projects, and strictly limit the increase in coal consumption over the 14th Five-Year Plan period and phase it down in the 15th Five-Year Plan period. Moreover, China has decided to accept the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol and tighten regulations over non-carbon dioxide emissions. China’s national carbon market will also start trading.
As a participant, contributor and trailblazer in global ecological conservation, China is firmly committed to putting multilateralism into action and promoting a fair and equitable system of global environmental governance for win-win cooperation. China will host COP15 to the Convention on Biological Diversity this October and looks forward to working with all parties to enhance global governance on biodiversity. We support COP26 to the UNFCCC in achieving positive outcomes. As we in China often say, “It is more important to show people how to fish than just giving them fish.” China has done its best to help developing countries build capacity against climate change through various forms of results-oriented South-South cooperation. From remote sensing satellites for climate monitoring in Africa to low-carbon demonstration zones in Southeast Asia and to energy-efficient lights in small island countries, such cooperation has yielded real, tangible and solid results. China has also made ecological cooperation a key part of Belt and Road cooperation. A number of green action initiatives have been launched, covering wide-ranging efforts in green infrastructure, green energy, green transport and green finance, to bring enduring benefits to the people of all Belt and Road partner countries.
Colleagues,
As we say in China, “When people pull together, nothing is too heavy to be lifted.” Climate change poses pressing, formidable and long-term challenges to us all. Yet I am confident that as long as we unite in our purposes and efforts and work together with solidarity and mutual assistance, we will rise above the global climate and environmental challenges and leave a clean and beautiful world to future generations.
Why do so many people still think Ukraine is going to win this war when obviously they are doomed?
It’s a religion now.
The god is democracy; not the concept or the practice, just the word “democracy”.
The US is the prophet.
The EU and other US “allies” are the priests.
Zelensky is the messiah.
Ukraine is the promised land.
Is this misinformation or just people being stupid?
This is normal behaviour for religious people. When faced with facts, we do not renounce our deity. We do not say “Oh, this has really opened our eyes to the truth.” We draw together, expel the unbeliever and say this tribulation has made us stronger and more pure.
Although, unlike other “traditional” religions, this one in particular is actually quite flexible. Because soon Tsai will be the messiah and Taiwan the promised land.
When I was 13, I wanted a six pack. I did sit ups and curls intermittently with no plan or rigor. By 14, I’d given up.
When I was 16, I picked up boxing, Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I wanted to be great at fighting. By 17, I’d decided in my head that great fighters have been doing this since they were 8, so I’d given up.
When I was 18, I wrote blog posts and started multiple businesses, I’d take them to a level of significance but nothing actually significant. By 19, I’d decided in my head I wasn’t going to make 6 figures at it anytime soon, so I’d given up.
Everything I wanted to get or do or be, I gave it one year tops before giving it up.
Now I look back and ask myself “Where would I be right now if I’d stuck with it? What if I’d had that foresight?“
I work out every day now.
I write every day now.
I train to fight multiple times per week.
I’m following the things I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid, because I now know the dividends I will get are going to have outstanding returns in 2 years, 5 years and 10 years from now.
1% better a day doesn’t look like much in 30 days, but it transforms you completely over the course of years.
The most important lesson I’ve learned in life is to play the long game.
The you in the past wants you to do better than they did, and the you in the future wants you to be better than you are. Don’t let yourself down.
Edit: When I wrote this I had no idea the kind of response it would get.
I want to write to each and every one of you who’ve commented to thank you personally for how much it means of you to comment on this (and as you might see, I’ve tried).
If there’s anything I can do to help the future you be better, please feel free to message me or ask me to answer your questions. While I can’t respond to everyone or answer every request, I’ll do my best.
I think that is fast changing and in 5 years you can hardly see the difference. Japanese has a 35 years head start but all economies do the same. They copy, learn, innovate and move up stream. And now they are worried other nations steal their idea. China is no different from the USA and Japan. Both went through the same path. To say China steal is very rich and so is to say China’s product is inferior.
These days China offers 3 value for money items. One is poorer quality but very cheap. Many in the 3rd world need to make do with this. And one who is very good quality but for rich and wealthy individuals and then there is the run of the meal products. In between the first two.
Russia is a Surplus Food Producer and a Surplus Energy Exporter and has a massive raw material reservoir
How on earth could anyone with 1/10th of a brain hope to sanction such a country ?
It’s what we on Quora from Day 1 have always been saying
Myself, Bill Chen, Cai Lei, Venkata Krishna (Venkata Rao), Boris, Ivan, Alexander Finnegan, Li Pengli, Patrick Koh, Peter Okuhira, Donald Canton, Paul Denlinger, Bill Zhang, Robert Vanrox, Keshto Pat
It’s basic economics
Basic demand & supply
In fact the sanctions have rebounded very badly on Europe itself
I was in Shanghai, expecting to board a flight home after a long week. The flight was due to leave around 23:00. As I waited in the public area, I heard a comment about the flight, so I went to the counter and asked what had happened. The polite young girl with great English said that there was an issue with the aircraft and that there were no code shares available, so the flight had been cancelled.
Obviously I was unhappy, but I couldn’t blame it on the girl. I asked what I should do as I had no hotel booking and didn’t want to spend the night in the airport. She called up somebody. A woman came along in a golf cart and loaded my bags, driving me off to the other end of the terminal, where a group of tourists were going ballistic about the cancellation. She smiled at me and said ‘sit here’ so I stayed seated in the golf cart while the angry, drunk mob of tourists vented.
A few minutes later, she came back and drove us out to the carpark, where a late model black BMW was waiting. I was loaded in and driven to a nice new hotel near the airport. Upon arrival, I was greeted by staff and taken to a beautiful room. The attendant said that my stay and breakfast were free and that a driver had been arranged for the morning. As the attendant was walking out the door, he turned and said ‘Don’t worry sir, those other passengers are spending the night in the airport’!
In 2009 I was taken to court by a hospital over a $200 balance and told by a judge I had 30 days to pay, or I was going to be arrested and put in jail. It was the peak of the Bush economic implosion, my business failed after 15 years of success, I had lost my house and car, and had been selling off everything, including my plasma, to rent a tiny house without air conditioning or heat. I was destitute, and the thought of jumping in front of a train so my family could cash in on my still paid up life insurance and my wife could receive my social security death benefit was becoming more of an option every moment. Here I was in court facing a judge that didn’t care about my situation and a smug collection attorney that worked for the hospital that treated my pneumonia caused by having no heat and they didn’t care at all. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t pay that bill in 30 days. I would be lucky if I could feed my children in 30 days. I did what I had to do, sold what I had left, beds, toys, family heirlooms, practically everything but the clothes on our backs. I borrowed a piece of crap car from the only friend I had left, and we snuck out of town into hiding. We managed to make it back to my hometown where I had friends from grade school and one gave us a place to stay, another gave me a job for cash daily. We survived like that for a year and I finally got back on my feet enough to contact the collection attorney office and arrange to make payment in full. I called the Sheriff and discovered that there was a warrant for my arrest where we used to live. I contacted that attorney again and told them I would pay them with a 7-11 money order and mail it to their office immediately if they took care of that warrant. They couldn’t do anything because only the judge had the power to discard the warrant. I had to continue to live anonymously for the next 3 years, no known address, no W-2, registering my kids in school under my mother’s maiden name until I afford a lawyer in another state to clear it up for me. 4 years of my life were taken from me over my inability to pay a $200 hospital balance. Don’t tell me nothing happens if you don’t pay a hospital bill.
**edit**
I have decided to disable comments. Apparently the concept of my particular situation is somehow lost in translation. I’ve been called names and grown tired of explaining how this is possible. Rather than continue to engage with these commentators, I will simply step away. Thank you to those that have shown empathy and support.
Hart To Hart | Long Lost Love | Season 5 Episode 8 Full Episode | Classic TV Rewind
My old dongle died… and / or was orphaned when my Lunix Mint updated the OS. In any event, I needed a new one.
A “dongle” is something that you plug into your computer. Like though a USB port.
Wifi is exactly that. While my laptop has a builtin wifi, I am running Lunix Mint, and the chipset is Microsoft Windows propriety.
American versions were about 10x the price of their Chinese versions. So I bought a dongle out of Shenzhen. It’s a good unit.
I bought a nice 2.5G / 5G / 6G version. It ran me about $10 us (65 yuan). The American version is about 800 yuan + taxes + 25% import tax. Is limited to 4G. No 5G and 6G.
The American version is ten times more expensive, and has less functionality.
The Chinese version is AWESOME!
It runs on Ubuntu. Which is a Linux distro.
Lunix
…Ubuntu
……Lunix Mint
………Lunix Mint Cinnamon
When it was plugged in, nothing happened. Bummed me out, but I didn’t freak. And calmly looked up on Lunix.
But I went on a Lunix forum, and followed the instructions found there….
I ran…
inxi -Fxxxrz && rfkill list && lsusb && mokutil --sb-state
I figured that I had previous bad or broken versions. So a clean-out might be necessary.
Followed by…
apt --fix-broken install
Then I ran the commands to pull the driver from the Ubuntu repositories, and then the Linus Mint translation runs…
My little girl goes to a preschool and she has little cute friends there.
Since it is the time of winter vacation, they had a small cute little party on the last day of school before the break. They had a performance, where almost every child performed (except one who refused to smile and was upset with his mummy over something- he was so cute).
Anyway, after the performance, there was an arrangement for refreshments too. Some was arranged by the school and some were contributions.
image 72
Since it is a preschool and children studying in the school are 25–30, arrangements were done accordingly.
When the food was served, I took a plate, added a cupcake for my girl, a cracker, grape-cheese stick, a cookie and a very small piece of cake. I took it and led my girl to a chair where we ate from the same plate.
There was another mother who sat next to me. She brought two immensely full plates. I don’t really mind people filling their plates as long as they can finish the food but her girl took a bite of a cookie and left entire things as it was and she had cakes and muffins and then she said, “Oh! I can’t finish it off. Too much sugar. I guess I will have to leave that. See, even my girl didn’t eat a thing. She insisted to get muffins and cakes and chips and now she doesn’t want to eat”.
I was astounded. How could someone be so inconsiderate. We all could see that food spread on the table was meant for everyone present there. That was the reason I took refreshments, not a meal. This woman had no guilt over wasting so much food. Why did she take such big portions in the first place? Even my girl wanted two cupcakes but I suggested that she have to finish the first and if required we would take the other one of different colour. She agreed and chose a pink one!
The same lady was also talking about how she purchased three umbrellas because she didn’t like the colour of the first or the style of the second, how she purchased clothes worth 500 dollars for her three-year-old in a single day, how she overspends on weekly groceries, what she shops and from which brand et cetera.
Similarly, there was another lady who overfilled her child’s plate and left her eating while she had her share.
We all know how little a three-year- old eats. Even if the child is very hungry, let him/her finish some portion first and then refill. We have no right to waste food. It makes you look so uncool even if you carry Kate Spade bags and wear Zara blazers.
In August 2023 a group of 11 Russian and Chinese warships conducted “exercises” near Alaska’s outlying islands. They were tracked by US Navy destroyers but remained in international waters which was perfectly legal. It made page 5 of the Washington Post (below the fold). In September 2022 a convoy of three Chinese and four Russian vessels, including a destroyer and a guided missile cruiser passed by the US island of Kiska (near Alaska). It was shadowed by a US Coast Guard cutter but nobody got too offended.
Pictured below Russia’s Viktor Leonov (SSV-175) an armed surveillance vessel that loves to loiter just outside the 12 mile limit of US territorial waters along the east coast. Or, as the question puts it “floating just off the coast”. Some of its favorite spots are the US naval bases at Norfolk, New London and Cape Canaveral. It has been doing this for years.
image 67
Apparently it occasionally gets bored with “floating just off the coast” and tries to break the 12 mile limit, in particular disrupting commercial shipping lanes. What has the US done about these repeated unbearable provocations that hurt the feelings of the American people? The Leonov is shadowed by a US Navy destroyer, lately the USS Mahan, whose primary task is to tell the Russian vessel to get the hell back outside the limit. That’s the response when alien warships are “floating just off the coast”.
Below is the AGI Yantar, a Russian vessel optimized for intelligence gathering and mounting deep sea submersibles. It likes to hang around the east coast underseas cables. One more thing for 2d Fleet to keep track of.
image 66
FWIW: we’ve had Russian nuke boats cruising around for decades now and managed not to get overly excited about it. They usually get shadowed by 2d Fleet but that’s about it. There is a debate over whether current Russian sub activity off the E. Coast is greater or lesser than it was in Soviet days.
Dad was straight Chevy/GMC product. I was strictly Ford. 2002 we changed places and neither of us were happy. He had a book of somewhat minor but annoying problems right from the start. He had the car for a few months. Went to pick up his grandson from school one day. On the way home, grandson made to roll the window down. Did not budge. As soon as he dropped him off, he zipped straight to the dealer. He wasn’t as gentle shutting the door as normal. Stepped up to the counter and proceeded to read them the riot act working in the point that he never had problems like this with his Chevys through the years. They told him to go to the waiting room where there was a fresh pot of coffee and sit back. They would check it out right then. He stormed in there poured his coffee, his butt brushed the chair seat not even fully seated yet when the tech opened the door telling him he was good to go. He exploded. You haven’t even had the time to pull it around yet and you’re telling me it’s ready??? I can’t believe you’d even think of trying that. I’m so fed up. It takes 3–4 trips in to fix anything and now it’s fixed in 30 seconds? Tech just grinned and asked him to come out to the drive. Put him in the driver’s seat telling him to position himself as if he was driving. Tech walks over to the passenger side to show him the window is working. Dad is flabbergasted. Tells the tech he knows that wasn’t working when he came in so what was wrong? Well sir, turn your head to see just where your arm is now. Looking under your elbow, do you see that switch? That’s a lockout button for all the windows so that kids can’t play with the windows. With that switch activated, the switches in the other doors are bypassed and will not work. Redfaced, embarrassed, he was apologizing for his attitude. Asked them what he owed for a checkout fee. They laughed it off telling him the entertainment value he brought in more than paid for it.
In 1960, after winning over $100,000 in the lottery, a sum equivalent to around $3 million today’s money.
A thing that could have been a cause for celebration for many became a curse for Australian Bazil Thorne.
image 65
His winnings set the stage for a harrowing sequence of events, propelled into motion when newspapers, in a spectacular breach of privacy, splashed Thorne’s details across their front pages.
Shortly after, his son, Graeme Thorne was kidnapped for ransom.
The kidnapper stated: “I have your boy. I want £25,000 before 5 o’clock this afternoon. I’m not fooling. If I don’t get the money before 5 o’clock, I’ll feed the boy to the sharks.”
The situation spiraled out of control as the kidnappers panicked upon realizing the police were involved.
In a desperate and senseless act, they murdered young Graeme before the exchange could occur.
On Tuesday 16 August, nearly six weeks after the kidnapping, Thorne’s body was finally discovered hidden on vacant land, sending shock waves across the nation.
The meticulous police investigation culminated in the apprehension and conviction of the perpetrator, Stephen Bradley, a Hungarian immigrant.
The trial, lasting nine days, resulted in Bradley receiving penal servitude for life, the severest sentence available in New South Wales for murder at the time.
This heartbreaking story reverberated beyond personal grief as it spurred a permanent change in Australia’s laws, cloaking the identities of lottery winners in anonymity to protect them from such fates.
With what I’ve heard and read about past winners, this sudden wealth that many fantasize about might just as swiftly transform into a curse for some.
Refuel Café Louisiana Buffalo Shrimp
Forget the wings! Now you can have delicious Buffalo Shrimp.
louisiana buffalo shrimp
Yield: 2 servings
Ingredients
5 ounces Louisiana-style hot sauce
1/2 pound whole butter, cold, unsalted, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
2 tablespoons heavy cream
1 pound jumbo Louisiana shrimp, peeled and deveined
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole milk
2 eggs
6 cups oil, preferably canola
1/2 cup blue cheese crumbles
Instructions
In a small saucepan, reduce the hot sauce until thick, add the heavy cream, bring to a boil, and lower the heat.
Over low heat, stir in the butter in stages, keeping the sauce hot the whole time. Set aside, but make sure it stays hot.
Heat oil to 350 degrees F.
Whip the eggs and add the milk for an egg wash.
Bread the shrimp by rolling them into the flour, then dipping them into the egg wash, and rolling them in flour again.
Fry shrimp in the hot oil for 3 minutes (depending on the fryer).
Remove shrimp from oil and dry with a napkin.
Put shrimp in a large bowl, add the reserved sauce, and toss.
Plate the shrimp, draining most of the sauce from the shrimp as you do so, and top with bleu cheese crumbles.
Yesterday actually. I was coming out of a store and I heard something behind me. When I looked back I saw a family behind me of two young girls, a mother, and father. They were white. The two girls were acting like monkeys and making monkey sounds. The mother and father were laughing. I got in my truck which was facing them and started it up. I really wasn’t sure who the gestures were being directed at until they did it again just before getting in their car which was right in front of mine while looking at and laughing at me. I looked at the mother and father and, as the mother laughed, I looked at the father just to see if he actually saw and was okay with what they were doing. The smirking sneer on his face said everything. They meant for me to see that. To feel that. And although I have confronted racism and racist people before, I think it was the kids doing what they did that hurt me more than I had felt it before. The mere fact that kids had been taught that kind of nastiness and that it was being deliberately directed at me for no other reason than I’m black just brought immediate tears to my eyes. I couldn’t even help it. I looked the other way so they wouldn’t see me.
Green Acres – Eb & The Flying Saucer
WARS ARE CRIMES AGAINST HUMANS, ANIMALS AND NATURE EDITOR’S NOTE
So it finally happened. The US Empire literally overextended itself in lies and conflicts, and ended up showing the world it is no longer a credible Hegemon.
Undeniably, the epochal turning point, so eagerly awaited in the Global South, came when Russia’s armies clearly defeated—against massive derogatory prognostication—the military might of the collective West in Ukraine, a gigantic accomplishment, while China quietly became the most powerful industrial engine in history. What’s probably most embarrassing to the West’s ruling cliques, those still capable of self-reflection, is that the rapid emergence of these two formidable peer powers resulted in large measure from pathetic policy errors that could have been easily avoided. Washington and its criminally complicit allies didn’t have to lose their supremacy so quickly, but greed, contempt for life and truth, and terminal corruption, not to mention the mounting, incurable ills of capitalism, their true religion, took their toll and imperial arrogance did the rest. The US and the EU are now tottering, flailing about on the world stage, showing the ravages of massive leadership failure. Dangers aside, this is good for the rest of humanity.
Washington’s problem is systemic and organic. That’s why in the midst of this self-inflicted crisis the West’s huge disinformation machine is showing signs of disarray. The totalitarian degree of censorship and deception required to deny the truth about Ukraine and now Israel apparently stressed and finally broke the walls protecting the official narrative, and now the truth, so long repressed, is pouring out from a million places like a mighty tsunami. Since truth improves the chances of survival for everyone, this is to be celebrated.
Ironically, the unmasking of the Empire occurred because Israel—Washington’s pampered Zionist protegé—has behaved in such a manically depraved way, its criminal acts so cowardly, repugnant, and unrelenting, that even parts of the mainstream media have begun to crack under public pressure and report, however gingerly, vital truths. This has sufficed to show the sheer evil, blatant hypocrisy and complicity of the Empire, further shredding the remnants of its reputation. The upshot is that the onetime feared American Empire—from its core to its satrapies—is now stuck in a multilayered, multipronged crisis, not the kind of crisis that a pathetically mediocre and often half-delusional leadership can handle. The world can do a lot better than this, and with just a little bit of luck, it will. —PG
IMPORTANT: The Greanville Post is today the best edited and annotated hybrid “aggregator” of anti-imperialist articles in the anglophone world (we print original and external materials). Don’t let it die at a moment when a victory in the battle of communications for a new type of world is more crucial than ever. Mass political enlightenment precedes mass mobilisation.
Ah, “Not For Hire.” This is actually an interesting piece of trucker lingo that can lead to a bit of confusion if you’re not in the know.
image 7
So, when you see “Not For Hire” emblazoned on the side of a truck, it’s basically saying that the truck, along with its driver, is not available for commercial services. It’s like a taxi with a “Off Duty” light, except the truck was likely never on duty to begin with.
Why display this, you ask?
Well, it has to do with regulations. Commercial trucks are governed by a slew of regulations that include commercial licenses, logs, maintenance standards, inspections, and insurance requirements. When a truck is “for hire,” it means it’s operating under a commercial entity that conforms to these regulations and is available to transport goods for others for a fee.
A “Not For Hire” truck, on the other hand, is typically privately owned, and they’re declaring that they’re not subject to the same degree of government oversight because they’re not making money from transporting goods. This might be a business transporting its own products, like a farmer taking his produce to market, or a company truck carrying equipment to a job site.
The designation helps law enforcement and other authorities quickly identify what kind of regulations to enforce with that particular vehicle. After all, nobody wants to get bogged down in paperwork for no reason – the truck isn’t a commercial service, so it doesn’t need the same level of scrutiny.
And for any would-be regulators or officers eyeing the rig with thoughts of a potential infraction, that sign is saying, “Move along, nothing to see here.” It’s a bit of a bureaucratic force field.
But let’s be clear, “Not For Hire” doesn’t grant immunity from all laws; these trucks still have to comply with safety regulations and general traffic laws. It just means they’re not engaging in the business of hauling other people’s stuff around for profit.
When push comes to shove, “Not For Hire” trucks are just out there doing their own thing, not soliciting commercial transport business, and hence they’re playing by a slightly different set of rules. It’s one of the many nuances of the road that keeps things interesting – and complicated. Just like life, right?
My Dad walked to and from work everyday. He also walked home and back at lunch time.
I didn’t give a thought to his habit of walking. Growing up in a small town, we all walked , more so than other places. We never had a huge distance to get somewhere. Or to get back.
Mom got her drivers license after she was 40. We had always traveled in my dad’s fuel truck if we needed transportation. Mom couldn’t and wouldn’t drive it. In warm weather, my sister and I rode on the outside of the truck.
image 68
It had little cubicles we could fit down into. On rural trips, we often rode on the front.
When Standard Oil sold, Dad changed jobs and we got a Plymouth. A big boat of a car! Unless we were unable to get somewhere on foot, it sat at home.
My father walked that road to and from the school where he worked, rain or shine. Hot days and snowy, freezing cold days. He never missed a day of work.
When cancer invaded my dad’s body, he became unable to care for himself. It was heart wrenching to see him humiliated by others seeing him so vulnerable. Modesty was only one thing he had to let go of.
During his illness, I saw his poor misshapen, swollen knees. He had never said a word about his painful knees to any of us kids.
Mom said he suffered terribly because of this for years.
I was saddened and humbled by what he did to provide for all of us.
Being Icelandic, and being so few people here, we are more in touch and know our story quite well.
image 69
Our graveyards are full of these. 6 siblings that died in a span of a month. Every spring, what was known as child illness moved across the country and took kids everywhere. Parents were helpless and could just cry as they lost all their kids. Even I am connected to these poor kids. The parents did have more kids and most of them became adults. The illness was called diphtheria. One relative of mine has over 20 kids which all were lost to this decease and in the end they had 2 kids that survived.
This was harrowing and unmeasurable sadness.
Since the late 1940–1950, we haven’t had any such illnesses. Nothing. Polio is unheard of but is making a comeback.
People are simply idiots, morons and easily convinced of stupid things. Propaganda works.
If Magnus and Ingibjörg, the parents of the above children could tell you anything, they would tell you to vaccinate your children.
There is a saying that no one should bury their children, yet there is a group of people who seemingly are anxiously waiting to do that.
But here is the sad part. The top antivaxers, the people on TV in interviews and “news hosts”, who tell people to not get vaccinated, they are all vaccinated themselves. That includes Robert Kennedy jr.
Hi, Sinkei428. Thanks for the interesting question.
Of course you can!
As long as you have money and a mobile phone with which to scan the food seller’s QR code and make a mobile payment, you can have as many meals as you want!
Food can be very cheap and affordable here, so feel free to splurge and eat as much as you like.
The 肉夹馍 (Ròujiāmó, a.k.a. Chinese burger) shown in the picture below is filled with stewed pork and eggs and only costs 8 yuan (USD 1.12)
You can add some 凉皮 (Liángpí, cold skin noodles) and snacks to make it a more substantial meal.
Should set you back no more than 15 – 20 yuan (USD 2.10 – 2.80)
You can also use a variety of apps to have food delivered to you. Food is literally at your fingertips 24/7.
image 73
3
Red Fish Grill Remoulade
102 2600
Ingredients
1/2 bunch chopped parsley, finely chopped
1/4 bunch green onion, finely chopped
1/2 sweet onion, finely diced
2 stalks celery, finely chopped
2 tablespoons chopped garlic
1 lemon, juiced
2 cups ketchup
1/2 cup Creole mustard
1/2 cup Dijon mustard
1/4 cup hot sauce
2 tablespoons fresh horseradish
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
3 egg yolks
2 1/2 cups vegetable oil
Instructions
Combine all ingredients, except for the vegetable oil, in a food processor or blender. Process until smooth.
Slowly drizzle in the vegetable oil with the blender or food processor still running.
I had an old boss speak to me that way. I made a mistake and said , “I’m sorry.” He responded, “You’re right. You’re sorry. Your a pathetic excuse for a human being.”
I was fresh out of high school. Very shy. And this 40+ year old man just ripped me a new one. I looked at him, and told him “I apologized. I made a mistake. But it is not okay for you to speak to me that way.” And I walked away. He later came and apologized to me. He was retired military and had a habit of speaking to employees that way. He never did it to me again.
On another occurrence, I had another employer be rude and disrespectful in front of an all staff meeting. She shushed me during the meeting when I brought up an idea. Then after went into her office. I told her that, “that her actions at the meeting were not acceptable. You tell me how valuable I am to the organization then treat me like you don’t want me here.” She didn’t remember doing it and then started to cry. I stood up and said, “You shushed me. You were disrespectful and rude. And I’m the one supposed to comfort you? I’m going home for the rest of the day.” While normally i don’t recommend leaving- in my scenario it was okay as I was almost done and salary. And honestly I did not care at that point if I got fired. I found a new job a month later.
Say something and if warranted start looking for a new job. No job makes it okay for anyone to belittle you-ever.
I live in Hong Kong, which has the highest per-capita ownership of Rolls-Royces of any city in the world. The thing is, most of the Rolls-Royces you see here are chauffer-driven. So no, I don’t assume anyone driving a Rolls-Royce here is wealthy.
image 71
The Peninsula hotel has a fleet of 14 Rolls-Royce cars, which are used to ferry its well-heeled guests around town.
I do know a friend who owns a Rolls in Hong Kong. He loves it and enjoys driving it himself. But I had to laugh when he complained to me that everyone who saw him didn’t believe it was his car and thought he was the chauffeur.
This stupidity is prevalent in most democracies including India
If you have a problem in your street , you blame the Chief Minister and the Ruling Party and the Prime Minister
In China, things don’t work that way
If you have a problem in your street
You speak to your Residential Block Party Official , a Party member who is chosen for every 15–20 blocks
You speak to your Coorporation Committee Official
You speak to the Hotline and demand immediate service
You don’t talk to your Mayor or Governor or the Politburo or Xi Jingping
Localization is why China is so efficient
If people have problems, they will be dealt with by officials at lower levels and their performance decides their promotion
image 70
This man is the equivalent to say a Major MP in a State in India
He single handedly saved a huge amount of crop despite two floods
The problem didn’t even escalate to Xi Jingping or Li Qiang
It’s called SUBORDINATION
The Topmost Level discuss POLICIES
They discuss this with inputs from the Central Bank, the Economic Board, the Caixin Board, the Independent Experts and the Party Intelligentsia
They FRAME POLICIES, MODIFY POLICIES
Implementation of these Policies is done at lower levels
Provincial Committees, State Committees, Governors, Mayors, Residential Block Officials etc
The CPC will decide “We want to lock down based on a 3% or higher positivity ratio”
The Lower levels must make the lockdown as comfortable as possible and if they don’t, they are roasted by the people and blamed and their career suffers
The CPC will decide “We believe that Businesses should be given a tax break of 25% this year”
The Lower levels must frame the rules and regulations and efficiently bring about the policies
Indians won’t get it
In India, the MPs and MLAs have no role except to win elections and campaign
All the focus goes to the CM and the PM
So much so that more than half the people have no clue who their MP or MLA is
Not so in China
During every February (New Year), a full list of officials, their phone numbers and wechat numbers will be dropped in every Apartment
Updated list of Patrolling Policemen , Block Police Chief
The Officials are the ones who handle the problems all the way including protests
If the Covid 19 protests went sour due to lack of vegetables, the official will be taken to task
Hell, when a policeman kicked and killed a dog in Wuhan, the Official was axed for not implementing the Lockdowns properly
So Citizens ALWAYS speak out against the Government in China
ALWAYS
Much more than India at least
The problem is, the protests are always dealt with at lower levels and never escalate to attract the attention of the parasitic western media
It is only maybe 1% protests that are targeted at the CPC in Beijing
Mainly about the Lockdowns or Taiwan related
It’s why you rarely see any protests in China
Because they are done at a low level and sorted out or handled at a level that makes very little traction
Those protests you see covered by Global Media
They are those very rare protests that happen due to major policy decisions
Plus most of these protestors are Resident Taiwanese rather than Mainlanders
The simple way is THE SIGNS WILL ALWAYS BE IN ENGLISH for the Western Media
Highschool electronics class. Teacher wheeled in the A/V cart with TV and VCR. Yeah, this is an old story.
Anywho, he plugged in the power strip and inserted the VCR tape with the lesson for the day.
Couldn’t get the TV display to come on. TV was completely dead. Worked with buttons for ten minutes, checked wall plug, nothing. Finally gave up and moved on.
Later, guy in the front row got up and plugged the TV into the power strip. Seemed to work pretty well at that point.
This wasn’t the first spark of brilliance from this teacher. A few of us dropped the class. I went to Auto shop and learned how to rewire most of a 1996 Dodge Dakota.
I must have been in fifth or sixth grade. I was visiting my paternal grandmother, and I well remember just fooling around the maze of Pittsburgh hillside buildings. I remember peering though the network of porches and stairs to peer into the next door house. It was a home where my great uncle lived. He was my grandmother’s oldest brother.
And I peered in silence. It was a scene that impressed me deeply.
The old man, was in a bare and lonely dining room. He sat there, and slowly, very slowly was eating a bowl of soup.
Alone.
In gloomy darkness.
I do not know what my future holds for me, but one thing that I DO NOT WANT is to be eating alone in gloom, in a bare and empty house.
The U.S. cannot compete with China or for that matter, any oriental nations over time. American wants to earn lost of money but are willing to work half as hard, and as a nation they focus on wars, war mongering, and doing shit throughout the world earning nothing but hate of the American people.
The only way for it to be sustainable and functional again is to make Americans work twice as hard earn a pittance of money compared to now, and become discipline and retrained in new skills. All of which the U.S. government will not dare to change. Hence it will always have to buy from someone else and grow its deficits and debts.
Get use to it and prepare for the total implosion and collapse of the U.S. over time. The real income of Americans has ceased to grow since 1960 or 63 years ago! Meanwhile your political system will always select the most popular politicians who are not the best or the most capable. To run your country. They will make wrong choices but popular ones.
As long as you continue to operate the way you do, China and the world will eat you for lunch. I am merely saying the obvious. Something your media and politicians will be totally in denial. Hence its up to you to make a difference.
This gentleman Sun Zhengcai thought he was deep enough within the CPC to get away with a 170 Million RMB Bribe ($ 28.25 Million or ₹ 206.7 Crore)
He engaged in some bogus accounting
Back then CPC officials needed to submit their Asset and Liabilities every 3 years and so it was easy to hide money
Xi Jingping now said every CPC official of a certain rank had to disclose Assets and Liabilities every 12 months
He appointed the Xuebao commission, 192 dedicated people aimed to establish who were corrupt
Anyone who showed more than 15% increase in assets over a year or 100% across 5 years were questioned
Many proved they invested in property and shares and showed the source
No Issues said Xi
This Moron claimed he invested his money in a Spanish firm. It took a few days to establish that this was false because CPC members had to declare every outward transaction out of China, capped at a maximum of $ 100,000 a year that too for education or healthcare only
He was caught red handed
He tried to use Party connections to Jiang Zimin
A Total of 76 officials were caught
Xi and the Party offered them a choice –
4/5 of the Assets paid back to the Party plus permanent resignation from all Chinese politics and mandatory exile to the Outer Provinces with permission needed to return even for a 7 day visit to Beijing
Or
Trial & if guilty , life imprisonment
75 thankfully paid the Party and China and went to exile
Sun boldly said he would face Trial
He was found guilty and sentenced to life
Under Chinese law his daughter was recalled from Stanford and forced to establish her innocence and it took until 2022
He is in a 10*10 cell, languishing away
All because he was STUPID enough to believe he was immune
Lieutenant Ted Macie, an active-duty officer in the United States Navy Medical Service Corps, has been barred from accessing his work computer by the Department of Defense (DOD), after publicly revealing Heart Damage to Navy Pilots after the COVID Vaccine.
Macie’s exposed significant increase in heart-related issues among military pilots, post-COVID-19 vaccination.
The data presented by Lt. Macie reveals a dramatic spike in various heart-related ailments among fixed-wing and helicopter pilots. The statistics show increases in conditions like hypertensive disease (36%), ischemic heart disease (69%), pulmonary heart disease (62%), heart failure (973%), other forms of heart disease (63%), and cardiomyopathy (152%) compared to the five-year average prior to 2022.
After making public the horrifying, real-life, danger post-COVID-Vax, the U.S. Department of Defense has restricted Lt. Macie’s access to government computer data.
Hal Turner Personal Opinion
Apparently, the DoD has forgotten they work for the American people, and are trying to conceal the damage done to our military – and, by extension, to the American people — by the so-called COVID-19 “vaccine.” Especially galling is the 973% increase in Heart Failure; which DoD is apparently trying to cover up.
People in the DoD would do well to remember their entire organization was CREATED by . . . . us. The American people. We created the military to serve . . . us; to protect . . . . us. We train, equip, feed, clothe and house the military, to protect and serve . . . . us.
We PAY the military to do these things . . . for us.
If anyone in the armed forces of the United States is under the wrong impression that they work for anyone other than . . . . us . . . . they need to quit.
Many years back, my mother was frying chicken, not noticing that my baby brother, back then, managed to enter the kitchen and was crawling around.
He touched her leg, gave her a fright and before she knew it, the pot had flipped, and the boiling oil spilled on my brother’s face.
He got a huge burn on more than half his face. She thought she ruined his life forever.
My mother’s first instinct was to grab some ice and quickly place it on the burn. But she decided to call my father who’s a doctor first, thankfully. And he told her to never put ice or even very cold water on such a burn or it will only damage the tissue.
Instead, “the best thing to do for a minor burn is to cool it off by running the burned area under cool water for about 5 minutes. You can also apply a clean, cool, wet cloth.”[1]
And that’s exactly what she did before taking him to the hospital.
Thankfully, they gave him the proper care, and after a few months of using proper creams and honey to cover the wound, it was nowhere to be seen. It helped a lot that he was still a growing baby so his skin recovered fast.
But yeah, if she had acted on her instinct, and placed ice on it, who knows how that would’ve affected my brother’s face to this day?
My -ex used to be a nurse in a psychological care facility. When they were dealing with someone who was going completely ballistic, out of their control mind, the wrong thing to do was be completely calm.
She said she’d often go in and act a level or two calmer, but agree with the patient about their anger, because that would get them on board to listen to her and connect. And from there, she’d be able to wind them down a bit and talk them into chilling.
When she’d go in and immediately tell them to calm down in her ASMR voice, they’d just get even angrier.
It’s a good insight into learning to manage someone’s emotions. Leaning into them a bit allows you to get some control of the situation in many cases.
The other trick, that works big time, is to smile and look happy to see people. You’d be amazed at how far this goes to score points right off the bat. It seems like such basic advice, but many people don’t do it. It’s page 1, line 1 from the charisma bible.
It’s 2009. You’re in your friend’s basement, laying on a couch that doubles as your bed.
Your alarm is going off, but you don’t see the point in getting up. All you can do is stare at the ceiling and wonder how you ended up in this situation.
Bills are accumulating at an alarming rate and your savings account is all but depleted.
You know you need to make a change. You know you need to get back out there, find a job, and work your way out of this slump you’re in.
A friend tells you they could put in a good word for you at their office, but you hate the idea of working for some corporate snake that’s only out for himself.
Mark’s Landscaping posts a help wanted ad. No experience necessary.
It’s exactly what you’re looking for. It’s honest work, no managers breathing down your neck, and you can start immediately.
You brush yourself, put on your best smile, and sell yourself as a hard worker.
3 days in and you already hate it. It’s too hot, the hours are too long, and Mark is the one reaping the benefits of all your hard work.
You finish up for the day, head back to your friend’s basement couch, and start coming up with a plan to start a rival landscaping business.
The alarm goes off the next morning, but the snooze button is all too easy to hit.
You’re not worried about making it to work on time. You’re about to start your own company that puts Mark out of business.
The phone rings. Mark’s name flashes on the caller ID, but you send him to voicemail.
Instead of going into work, you fall back asleep.
The alarm goes off the next morning, but you hit the snooze button.
Mark calls, but you send him to voicemail.
Instead of going into work, you head out to look at landscaping equipment.
Everything is way too expensive and way out of your price range. If only you had the money.
You pull out your phone and give Mark a call, but he sends you to voicemail.
Mary’s Pool Cleaning posts a help wanted ad. No experience necessary.
It’s exactly what you’re looking for.
3 days in and you already hate it. You go back home to your friend’s basement couch and start coming up with a plan to start a rival pool cleaning business.
The next morning, Mary’s name flashes on the caller ID, but you send her to voicemail.
Fast forward to 2019. You’re in your friend’s basement, laying on a couch that doubles as your bed.
Your alarm is going off, but you don’t see the point in getting up. All you can do is stare at the ceiling and wonder how you ended up in this situation.
Best video Ever
Men, Listen up. It doesn’t matter (to anyone) if you win or lose. What matters is how you take it.
Two things to learn. 1, be strong regardless 2, pick your women better
New Zealand ARRESTS Government Database Admin for Revealing 24% DEATH RATE for certain COVID Vaccine Batches
A New Zealand Covid-19 vaccination database Administrator turned whistleblower, and revealed how many people died after taking certain batches of the Pfizer vaccine. New Zealand has now ARRESTED that man for “accessing computers for deceptive purposes.”
According to the man, certain batches of the Pfizer vaccine had death rates over 24% within about a week of persons being given the jab:
ARRESTED!
Today, Sunday morning, we are told the database Administrator has been ARRESTED by New Zealand authorities for revealing this information!
According to New Zealand media outlets “A health worker has been arrested and charged after allegedly misusing and disclosing vaccination data, while spreading misinformation about Covid-19.
The 56-year-old man will appear in the Wellington District Court tomorrow charged with accessing a computer system for dishonest purposes, police said.”
I worked for a company that decided to block ALL internet websites except for sites that were approved by management, one by one. There was no warning, not even a memo that went out that Monday morning it occurred. The IT person was overwhelmed the first day with complaints that the internet was broken. The reason eventually given was that too many people were using the company network for social media time wasting.
One small example, and there were many, of the short sighted policy, was in booking travel reservations. Sites like Continental, United, Delta, American, Hilton, Marriott, and Holiday Inn all had to be approved to allow for access, one at a time. What happened is people got approvals for one or two sites and used them, without regard to cost. The travel expenses doubled. Doing research to find the lowest cost supplier for parts was gone. You simply bought from the last guy you bought from since his site was approved. Costs went up across the board.
Sure, people weren’t using the company internet to access Facebook and Twitter anymore on their phones, so they switched to using cellular data. Time wasting continued. Expenses went up.
1: When my eldest son was about 2, I had a few friends come over for bridge once a week.
One time we were all standing in my kitchen and my stomach rumbled. He picked up my dress and went “Ewww! Sis! Stinky!”. I was so embarrassed and everyone burst out laughing.
It wasn’t a fart, just a growl of a hungry tummy.
2: This same son used to have timeout in the bathroom. This was more than 30 years ago, so please don’t judge me. Things were done differently then. He would open the door so I would lock it from the outside for the duration of his timeout.
One day I was using that bathroom and he decided to lock me in from the outside. Poetic justice, you may say, except…it wasn’t.
When I asked him to unlock the door again, he was unable to and he was becoming hysterical. Here I am, on a Friday evening, inside the bathroom and my little 2 1/2 year old on the outside. I wasn’t expecting anyone for the weekend and there were no cellphones yet. The situation was dire.
We tried everything. He tried to take the key out to pass it to me, but couldn’t manage. Tried to push a knife under the door, but I couldn’t use it successfully.
After about an hour and many hysterics from his side (and a little bit from mine), I leaned out the bathroom window to see if anyone was perhaps passing.
I live in a dangerous country. All windows have burglar bars and people stay off the street after dark. It is a city and we don’t really know our neighbours.
After a while, I saw someone arriving at their house about 30 meters from mine. I shouted and shouted for help. He first looked at this crazy woman and I could see he wanted to ignore me, so I shouted even louder.
Eventually he came to the window and I explained the situation to him. He was laughing a lot, I remember.
Thankfully he scaled a 6-foot high wall to get into my property and thankfully I hadn’t yet closed the sliding glass door which gave him access to the inside.
So a stranger had to come into my house to unlock the door my darling son thought prudent to lock.
Needless to say, that was the end of timeout in the bathroom.
Oh SH*T! This is why they’re INVADING America, it all makes sense now | Redacted w Clayton Morris
When I was a kid, I asked my parents for a cat. They smiled and said that I can have a cat if I can catch one and tame it. Living in the country, they figured that put the matter to rest, since there’s no way I could pull that off. Imagine their shock two hours later when they saw me walking up the holler with a knapsack in tow, carrying a stray barn-cat eager to live the cushy indoor life. We kept her.
When I was eighteen, we argued over a boy. Really, it was about boundaries. I roared, “I’m leaving!” They said that’s fine, see what it’s like out there! You’ll be back! Though it probably would have been best for me, I did not come back.
”We’ll show you.” No, I’ll show you.
After peeling an orange for my toddler this morning, she peered into the garbage can, wanting more. I explained that we don’t put our hands in the garbage, and that the bitter peel is nasty. “It burns, honey.” I had just changed the bag and the peel was the only thing in there, so when she grabbed it anyway, I thought, “Okay, good. This is a teachable moment. She’ll eat the peel, see that it’s nasty, and I can say, ‘See? That’s one reason…’”
I studied her face as she munched on the bitter skin and started to say, “See? It’s oogy oogy – nasty. Ewww -“
Except she broke out into her full-toothed smile and reached for another piece.
To my delight, we are very much alike. To my concern, I’m beginning to suspect that means we have our work cut out for us. Oh, yes, what goes around comes around.
The best advice I ever received was from my father, which may seem simple and homespun, but it has proven invaluable throughout my life. He had a certain protocol during mealtime in our family, emphasizing the importance of not wasting food and finishing everything on our plate. While he often had to remind me to be mindful of my butter consumption, it is not his specific advice that stands out.
His advice was rather straightforward – to eat what I didn’t like first and save what I enjoyed for last. I have carried this advice with me ever since. It doesn’t mean I suddenly become a fan of Brussels sprouts when I devour them first, but it has translated into other areas of my life. When faced with unpleasant tasks, I make it a point to tackle them first, so I can then fully enjoy the more pleasant ones without any guilt or lingering responsibilities.
I am grateful to my father for his wise counsel, and I still adhere to his advice by being mindful of my butter consumption and savoring the best moments until the end.
My wife and I were at a movie decades ago. It was shortly after Ace Ventura came out, back when they had previews and an attendant would come on stage and say a few words.
The attendant came on, a young guy of 16–17. He said, to the crowd’s astonishment, that he was quitting because his boss was a prick. Then he turned around and talked out of his bum like Ace did in the movie and told a hilarious story about his boss. Then he took off his uniform shirt and walked. He got a standing ovation!
I would say that one thing that has changed here in the U.K. over the past fifty years ago, or since the 1960s when I was a boy, is the etiquette of calling on or visiting friends and relatives. I remember in those days how instead of going to the coast or the countryside on a Sunday afternoon as many people do now, especially on a fine summer afternoon, my parents would instead drive to my grandmother or one of my great aunts, and this (or so it seemed to me at the time) was in the hope of being given a free tea when they arrived. Indeed it was the custom in those days, at least here in the U.K, to drive around and pay a surprise call on relatives and friends like that on a Sunday afternoon, who were then expected to welcome you and rustle up something for you to eat.
If my grandmother or elderly relatives did not do this, they were regarded as mean and inhospitable. They probably realised this too, and so they would make an effort to be generous hosts and feed their guests, and indeed would have some tinned food in their pantry that they could bring out. It was always tinned food rather than fresh food of course because the host did not know whether or not anyone would turn up, and if nobody turned up fresh food would go to waste whereas tinned food would keep for the next Sunday afternoon.
The meal would be tinned salmon, the brand usually being John West (popular in those days and pictured below). I should also mention that in those days smoked salmon and cream cheese sandwiches, which are so popular now, probably even more so than tinned salmon and cucumber, were unheard of because smoked salmon was so expensive and regarded as the food of only the very rich.
image 27
The tinned salmon would often be followed by a tin of pineapple chunks, i.e. a tin of pineapple chunks (like the one shown below, except that in those days tins did not have ring pulls like this one shown, and would need to be opened with a tin opener).
Nowadays it is different, because people do not normally call on friends and relatives without making prior arrangements to do so, and people who do not do this but call unexpectedly without giving notice are regarded as selfish and inconsiderate for the way that they presume that the person they are visiting has the time or is available to see them, or indeed has food in the pantry for them. However when I was a boy it was different, and the onus was always on the person receiving unexpected guests to rustle up a meal for them, like my grandmother always did.
My husband was Covid retired at 66, and we thank God every single day it happened. At the time he was hurt and a little bewildered but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
We realize now that, left to our own devices, we would have just keep going. His job had changed and the stress levels were ghastly but we needed the money because we had two houses. We weren’t thinking clearly, really. We didn’t want to get rid of the one house because we loved the location and owned it outright, so it was our “vacation house” but it needed a lot of work, was in a rural area and would require a 300 mile move away from friends and family. Meanwhile our primary residence had been remortgaged due to my divorce in 2003. The inertia was powerful.
After Covid lock downs ended and some other experiences (specifically the death of three of our four cats, three months in a row) we did something we’d never been able to do, spend a full month in our vacation home. We packed up our last cat and went to spend what we thought was our last time there. It was supposed to be to grab our stuff and meet with a realtor last hurrah.
Long story short, we changed our minds. We realized how much we hated where our primary residence was. Literally it’s only redeeming qualities were that it was convenient to our loved ones, doctors and shopping. Suddenly the major repairs and renovations the vacation house needed weren’t so insurmountable with my husband retired. We would be moving to New England and were looking at an increase in expenses, and now we were on a fixed income, but a different heating system and smaller house generally offset that. Also, vacations wouldn’t need to be factored in because we wouldn’t be escaping from our noisy, smelly, increasingly urbanized and progressively more scary neighborhood.
I now live on a dead end street with a total of three neighbors and don’t expect to ever have more. The biggest noise is my neighbor’s roosters, and I can’t even hear them with the windows closed. I’m planning the gifts I want to give my neighbor/friends (homemade food) when we never used to even know the names of the people who lived in the house attached to our twin. We are on a budget, will always be, but money literally cannot buy happiness. We are so utterly at peace and content, more than we ever imagined, and it is a pleasure we never would have experienced if my husband hadn’t retired.
My husband took early retirement as a high school administrator a year before I did the same. The plan was for him to use that year when I was still teaching to fix up the house and get it ready to sell.
In November of my final school year, a stranger saw him working out in our front yard and asked if we wanted to sell our house. My husband said it would be for sale next June.
The man explained that he was the person who had just bought our next door neighbor’s house, and that he would like to buy our house as well for family members. My husband told him we’d think about it.
When I got home and heard the story, I was adamant that it wouldn’t work to move out before school ended in June. My husband had a plan, however. I didn’t have to lift a finger; he went on to arrange a short term duplex rental for us from a neighbor, arranged to have most of our furniture and “stuff” moved to a storage facility, and cleaned the empty house himself.
Our California house sold for our full asking price before it was listed for sale.
I wouldn’t recommend manipulating anybody, as the act itself is unethical. But I would recommend learning these tricks to stay aware of what is going on inside other people and behind their image.
The Zeigarnik Effect (named after the psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik): This phenomenon suggests that people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed ones. To use this, if you want to ensure someone remembers something, start discussing it and then intentionally leave it incomplete.
The Benjamin Franklin Effect (Named after the eponym of effect: Benjamin Franklyn) : This effect suggests that people are more likely to like you after they’ve done a favor for you. So, asking someone for a small favor can actually make them feel more positive about you. (Maybe even trust you).
The Illusory Truth Effect: The more you hear something, the more likely you are to believe it’s true, even if it’s false. Be cautious about repeating false information, and fact-check before sharing because this is how gossip negatively influences our brains and functions.
The Pygmalion Effect (Named after a Greek Myth): This is the idea that higher expectations lead to an increase in performance. If you have high expectations for yourself or others, it can lead to better outcomes. Of course, there are exceptions, where people would feel pressured when high expectations are placed on them, like a stone on their shoulders. But it is a valuable tip for your professional teammates or family members.
The Power of Visualization: Visualizing success can boost your confidence and performance in various situations.
Contrary to what one might believe, as you age you get less materialistic. My wife and I always laugh when we realized that we spent most of our young lives gathering “stuff” and most of our older lives getting rid of “stuff”.
As you age, you realize what’s really important in your lives (relationships and doing things you enjoy to do are the two biggest things) and understand that all that materialistic stuff just weigh’s you down. You not only shed material things but also things that you realize are of no value.
The “cranky old man” is usually more true than not because you stop trying to be everybody’s friend and discard relationships that add quality and enjoyment to your life.
You stop trying to present aires on who you wan’t to be and are now happy (in most cases) with who you are. My belief is that all this comes about when you realize you have more than likely achieved whatever you’re going to achieve in your lifetime and you have only a short time to really “enjoy” what’s left of your life. In effect, you finally become comfortable with who you are because, at this stage, you’re not going to change AND you’re not going to change what others think of you.
Don’t take this as a negative because hitting this “milestone” in your life, to use a common saying is like “taking the monkey off your back. You finally become “you” and the hell with what the rest of the world thinks.
My old manager at a fast food restaurant went for a night out. He was having a great time. Bar hopping all around town.
His girlfriend started receiving weird calls from random numbers, then his mom and dad, then his brother and sister. Everybody was getting calls. “Give us $20k or we kill Jacob” (name changed for privacy)
He was drugged and tied up while the men made ransom calls to everyone on his phone. They ended up getting no money and dumped him in the street below the most famous sign in town. The “biggest little city in the world” sign in Reno NV. He woke up there in his underwear. Police were called but none of the men were ever found
I did Houston to Dubai and I think that was 19 hours. Typically, once you get past about 9 hours, it’s all the same. You watch movies, read a book, chat with your travel buddy, sleep etc. It’s just really not a big deal.
Even if you’re a nervous flyer, like me, you can only be terrified for so long before you get over it and just get bored.
I have a few tricks that I use that I will share with you.
Every hour, on the hour, I like to get up an do a lap. That is, I will walk all the way to the back of the plane, use the restroom, Hit the galley for a water or a munchie, go all the way to the front, at then circle back around. Again, all of it where I need to use the bathroom or not. It just helps break up the monotony.
Any time they give you food, take it and eat. It breaks up the monotony.
Bring a laptop or tablet and put a BUNCH of movies on it. Some long flights don’t have good entertainment options and it can be difficult to find out before you are on the plane. I bring my Ipad with about 20 different movies and TV shows saved on it. It doesn’t even matter if it’s a bad movie, it’s just to pass the time.
Try not to get too wound up about it. Just relax and enjoy the ride. You’ll get there when you’ll get there.
Two instances come to mind, more funny than serious though.
After Army basic, we were in AIT and the Drill Sgt was a little guy, smaller than many recruits. He called everyone into the barracks for some kind of pep talk or something. I don’t remember topic but we were all “at ease” and he was sitting on a top bunk facing us. Just then a recruit runs in late, jumps up top with him, slaps his arm and tells the drill to scoot over. He didn’t realize it was the Drill Sgt. A good smoking ensued while we all tried not to laugh.
A couple years later my unit at the time was in Korea on a field excercise. We had a tent with our cots set up inside and the command tent was right next door. We all had blanks for training excercise and those muzzle blocker things installed. I forget the name, but they were red and cube shaped. Anyhow, day was over and a guy whos cot was against the wall we share with the command tent was carrying an M249. He walked in all tired, went to his cot, and kinda just dropped his weapon on the ground next to it. He never unloaded it. 3 rounds (blanks thankfully) went off from burst mode. It was aimed into the command tent. They noticed.
Some years ago I worked in a large office and the pretty receptionist used to wave at me every time I came in.
I used to grab a bite – usually alone – at lunch in the canteen, and she asked if she could join me. This became regular for a couple of weeks and we’d chat about non-consequential stuff. Sometimes she appeared to try and steer the conversation towards sexual stuff, but (back then) I was uncomfortable and didn’t follow up.
She would flick and twist her hair, smile and tilt her head when I talked.
After a while, when I walked past reception and she started blowing kisses to me.
I hope nobody else has already said doing press-ups with a backpack filled with vodka bottles, because that woud be disappointing. (Also fairly unlikely.)
Because my most bizarre injury was probably sustained doing press-ups with a backpack filled with vodka bottles.
Having recently finished Uni, I was living alone in a lovely (cough) studio apartment. Not wanting to shell out on a gym membership, I used some impressive initiative that would probably have been better served on finding a half-decent job.
I combined two of my main passions at the time — working out, and drinking.
You have to make do with what you’ve got. What I had, was several empty bottles, both plastic and glass, and a backpack.
Being a smart cookie, I realised that, if I filled said bottles up with water, I could make them pretty heavy. I could then put several of them in my backpack, and make my bodyweight exercises (press-ups and pull-ups) considerably harder, so I could continue to make progress (or at least maintain a bit of muscle) sans gym membership.
Being a not-that-smart cookie, I didn’t really foresee that glass could be breakable. (Well, I did put some form of clothing in the backpack, to prevent the bottles all smashing against each other, but I don’t think it would have passed a safety inspection.)
Halfway through a set of press-ups, one of the vodka bottles cracked, and started leaking over me. It also caused some of the broken pieces of glass to dig into my back, so my blood started leaking over me as well.
OK, actually, it wasn’t a particularly bad cut. I do still have a faint scar on my back from it, though. So, while I’ve had several much worse injuries, I don’t think any of them were quite this stupid, or preventable.
(Actually, spraining/almost breaking my ankle jumping over some small shrubs by a kerb while yelling “parkour” might give it a run for its money.)
I had never known true grief until my wife died four years ago. I did not know the cruel tricks my mind would play on me after her death.
Michelle was a diabetic. Her diabetes caused so many problems with her body. She had early onset osteoporosis. People would not believe that she needed a hip replacement in her early thirties. I lost count the number of times I woke up but couldn’t wake her up because her blood sugar had dropped. The day we closed on our house, she wasn’t there. I had to call 911 that morning. She was in the hospital when I signed the papers to buy the house.
Over the years, her health continued to worsen. She was shopping with her parents when she tripped and fell. She broke her leg starting a years long odyssey involving several surgeries and the doctors installing an external fixation device on her leg. The doctor had said at one point that the easiest thing would be to amputate her leg after her broken bone had become infected. She did not want to.take that option hence the external fixation device. For almost two years she had a heavy metal set of rings on her legs with pins that went directly into the bone. She was wheelchair bound as she couldn’t walk with the device on her leg. She required assistance from either me or her parents just to go to the bathroom. During this time she developed necrosis in some of her fingers. We spent one anniversary at home with her crying in pain because her fingers hurt so bad. She eventually had several fingers amputated. There was no choice. She also went into renal failure and required dialysis.
Hospital staff knew her by sight. Two week long hospital stays were a routine part of life. Then came the day that life ended. She couldn’t stay at home with me because she couldn’t take the stairs up. She stayed at her parents apartment. Her father woke up to go to work. He would assist her using the bathroom before going to work. That morning he couldn’t get her to wake up. He called 911. The paramedics performed CPR for over an hour but nothing more could be done. She was 40 years old when she died.
My wife was Jewish. Jewish funeral tradition states that a person must be buried very quickly after they die. She died on a Tuesday. Her funeral was held on Thursday. There was a rush to get her sister in from where she lived in a different state, but for the most part I spent the days between her death and her funeral in a state of shock. Feeling no emotion whatsoever.
During her wake, her coffin was in a separate room where only a few people could enter at a time. A couple of my cousins that Michelle had been good friends with over the years asked me to accompany them while they paid respects. They wanted me to be their rock. The funeral home had done Michelle’s hair and makeup. She had never looked more beautiful except for our wedding day. My cousins each cried a few tears but I was still in shock.
After her wake and the Rabbi giving his service, we went to the cemetery. There was a service held at the graveside. Another Jewish funeral tradition followed. Her coffin was lowered into the ground then each mourner would put a shovel full of dirt on top. I remember the Rabbi being very specific that you do not hand the shovel to the next person in line. You put the shovel down so that it is standing up in pile of dirt next to the grave. My turn came. I did as the Rabbi instructed. After placing the shovel back I took a few steps away then emotion hit me like a freight train. It was literally a surprise when the tears came. The tears flowed and I couldn’t stop them. I stood there for I don’t know how long. My best friend that I refer to as my brother came up and wrapped me in a hug. His wife also hugged me and tried to console me. She told me how there would be no more hospitals, no more pain, her suffering was over. Still I cried. I had known Matt since high school. It had been 20 years since we graduated. He had been married for six years by then. He told me how after the funeral his wife said she had never seen me cry. Matt realized at that point that in over 20 years of knowing me, he had never seen me cry either.
It took a long time for me to recover enough composure to drive away from the cemetery. Even then a had to wipe away tears as I drove.
The next week I went to a cell phone store to have her phone deactivated. I again lost control of my emotions inside the store. The act of turning off her phone was another finality that hit me. I had to leave the store and go cry in my car before I could finish that task
The worst cruel trick my mind played on me came a few days after her funeral. I had a dream about her. In that dream we went to a store to go shopping for coffins. She would lay in a coffin to test it out. She got into one coffin and the lid started to fall shut. In the dream she was saying “Don’t let that close on me, don’t let that close on me”. The lid fell shut and that’s when I woke up. The coffin lid had closed and would never open.
It’s been over four years. Not a day goes by where I don’t think of her. Often I will see something on the news that would interest her and my first instinct is to grab my phone and text her. She was a huge baseball fan. She loved the Detroit Tigers with a passion (I’m surprised our house was still standing after the umpire blew the perfect game call). When I learned that Tigers hall of famer Al Kaline had passed away, I had my phone in my hand hand before I realized what I was doing. There are emotional scars that will never go away. The pain doesn’t go away. You just learn to cope with it.
I’m going to try and shorten a long story. Many years ago we had one guy in the crew who seemed to have bad luck following him around. One morning he was hours late getting to work and the entire crew was wondering what new pitfall had occurred and when he finally arrived everyone ran over and asked him what had happened. He said a severe storm had hit during the night and lightning had struck his chimney and blew a hole in his roof and set it on fire. He climbed up on the roof with a garden hose and put the fire out. Got some plastic and covered the hole. Inside the house had gotten pretty damp from the rain and the water hose and about that time his neighbor came over and suggested he come over to his house to sleep where it was dry. Said he went to the neighbors for a couple of hours and couldn’t get to sleep so he returned home. There was a van in his driveway. Walking up to it he noticed while backing up it had dropped a wheel over his culvert and gotten stuck. He looked in the back of the van and could see many items from his home and no one around so he ended up calling the police. He inventoried all his stuff in the van and asked the police to sign it but the police refused. A few weeks later when he got his stuff back some of the electronics were missing. Just life as usual for the guy. On another occasion he said they built a new apartment complex behind his property and dug a huge drainage ditch and dead ended it up against the back of his property. He got out the tractor and started building a berm. Said he managed to get it three foot high before the apartment builder got an injunction to stop him from building it. At that time a heavy storm rolled in and the water came down the ditch and hit his wall backing the water up and flooding all the apartments instead of his home.
Because they were born, educated and grew up in China.
China has a completely different history and social record compared to the US; in China, the state is considered to be the parent and guardian of all Chinese citizens, and is trusted more than the private sector, who are often considered to be scoundrels who crave personal wealth at everyone else’s expense.
This is the opposite of what most Americans believe.
Full Metal Jacket is probably the most accurate film ever made about the US involvement in the Vietnam War. It is absolutely the most accurate film ever made about the US Marine Corps’ service there.
While I’m only 44, and was never a Marine, and have never even been to Vietnam, those are not the uneducated opinions of a viewer. They’re simply facts.
Enormous care was put into making this film as historically accurate as was humanly possible, largely independently of Stanley Kubrick, himself an obsessive researcher always aiming for absolute historical accuracy, even at the cost of his own story telling.
Every major player except for Kubrick himself who was involved in its writing and technical advice was a personal witness or participant to the events leading up to, including and following Tet 1968, in Da Nang, Phu Bai and Hue, the locations the film is set in in its second act.
image 5
(Kubrick was the only major player involved in military and historical input into the film who had not actually been on the ground, at the locations described in the film, during the period of the Vietnam War shown in the film.)
Gustav Hasford, the novelist who wrote Short-Timers, the novel on which the film is based, and a member of the screenwriting team adapting the novel into Full Metal Jacket, actually served as a Marine Corps combat correspondent from 1967–1968 in South Vietnam (alongside his “frenemy,” future military advisor to Hollywood and actor, Dale Dye). He was actually present in Da Nang during the initial stages of the Tet Offensive, actually had to transit between Da Nang and Phu Bai during Tet and actually covered the Battle of Hue for Stars and Stripes. The character of Joker is based on him, personally.
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(Gustav Hasford)
Michael Herr, a member of the screenwriting team adopting the novel Short-Timers into the movie Full Metal Jacket, was the pre-eminent journalist of the US involvement in Vietnam. Dispatches, his 1977 memoire of his time covering the Vietnam War for Esquire magazine from 1967–1969, was judged to be the best book “to have been written about the Vietnam War,” by the the New York Times Book Review. Espionage novelist, former military intelligence officer and former MI5 and MI6 agent David Cornwell, better known to the world by his famous pen-name John Le Carre, described Dispatches as “the best book I have ever read on men and war in our time;” high praise indeed from an author generally considered the best British writer of the second half of the 20th Century. Any incident not directly attributable to Hasford’s service in Full Metal Jacket was something Herr himself had personally witnessed – in fact, the door-gunner incident is a verbatim account of a real incident Herr was present for, in which he was the journalist talking to a door-gunner killing women and children and asking to be covered in a story. Michael Herr also personally covered the Tet Offensive in Phu Bai, Da Nang and Hue.
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(Michael Herr)
R. Lee Ermey, the military advisor and eventually the actor playing Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, was actually a Marine Corps Drill Instructor from 1966–1967, and served in South Vietnam as a helicopter ground crew chief from 1967–1968. He was personally allowed to ad-lib 50% of his dialogue for this film, an absolutely unheard of event on a Kubrick picture, where, typically, you had to be named either Peter Sellers or Jack Nicholson to be allowed ad-lib at all. Ermey himself also served in Da Nang during the Tet Offensive.
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(R. Lee Ermey)
Street scenes were reconstructed from photographs belonging to Hasford, Herr and Ermey dating to late 1967 and early 1968 and taken in Da Nang, Phu Bai and Hue. Often the location and costumes reconstructed exactly matched the photographs, straight down to the clothing worn by civilians and the contents of the billboards and other advertising.
Some things in the film are notably SO accurate that those without intimate knowledge of the time and place sometimes call them into question – ie, the film enters the Uncanny Valley. For example, a Westland Wessex, a British-made, license-built clone of a Sikorsky H-34 Choctaw, is used as the helicopter transporting Joker and Rafterman. Most people assume only the far more famous UH-1 Iroquois, the Huey, was in use in South Vietnam by that point in the war. The USMC however operated the H-34 well into late 1968 and even preferred them to the newer Hueys. Its use, particularly in a second line role transporting journalists around, was absolutely period correct – as I said, it helps that Ermey, in addition to being a Drill Sergeant was also a helicopter ground crew chief, and that both Hasford and Herr personally recalled being transported by H-34’s at the time.
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(Picture of an H-34 taken from inside another H-34 in use by the USMC in 1965 in South Vietnam. This image is from the extraordinarily famous and important photo essay, One Ride with Yankee Papa 13, published in Life magazine in 1965. While used in the assault and even gunship role by the Marines in 1965, by 1968, unless requested by name – HUS – they were used in support roles; things like hauling journalists around, and doing mail and supply runs, as seen in the film.)
So an obsessive Kubrick surrounded himself with actual participants to the events described in the film. It makes the film absolutely accurate, except for the limited license Gustav Hasford took while writing the novel itself (his real-life Drill Instructor was not murdered, and there was no real-life Private Leonard Lawrence aka Gomer Pyle, but that’s about it). And while some of the novel’s elements were changed for the film, none impacted historical accuracy so much as they changed the tone and became less like Hasford’s personal experiences and more an amalgam of his and Michael Herr’s.
First China HAS DE-RISKED from the U.S. and the west in Chips, Software and Technology. Period.
China will never be dependent on the west ever again. It will make everything better, cheaper and faster than the west and make all the money themselves. It was happy to share a loaf of bread with the west but since the west wanted to cut China out. China do that as a favour for you. They cut you guys out. For good.
Forget 7nm. Think about Chinese 0.5 nm chips! For get google or IOS thinks Harmony that can do everything faster, more efficiently and cheaper. Forget blue tooth. Think a wider receivable less power consumption Chinese equivalent at half the price.
Too bad some players in these technologies sucked up to the west and threaten China. You harvest what you sow. China will cut out at least 70% of the world market. The west and make stuffs for your own small tiny market. You guys can cheat or coerce each other! Good bye Intel, Qualcomm, Nivdia, Apple, Microsoft, Google, blue tooth. China, the global south will cut you out. You asked for it. No tomorrow or in 5 years. Starting now!
I worked at a newspaper that had a dark room for developing negatives. When you enter and turned off the main lights, a red light turned on just outside the door. No one would dare enter as they could ruin hundreds of dollars of film.
It was a good place to go if you wanted to be alone. Just as I started my shift I entered the dark room and found about ten empty beer cans. They were from an employee on the shift before me and he had got drunk and forgot to get rid of the cans
From my arrival in the country as the head of school, I was concerned that people didn’t seem to be getting my emails. Many said they eventually found them in SPAM, but I couldn’t understand why a school email would consistently be sent to people SPAM boxes. I made a new address and saw a moderate improvement – better than nothing.
One of my employees kept getting viruses on his computer. We had brand new computers and while this was a poor country in Africa, the internet service was pretty good when we had electricity. Mac computers were not as susceptible to viruses as Windows, so I was getting pretty annoyed. I had cleaned up his computer several times by running software for that purpose, but after the second or third time of this, I decided I needed to delve deeper. What I found totally floored me.
This employee was running one of those money scams where people are told they can get millions if they simply help get money out of a bank in ‘country-x’. I found over 800 documents of copies of a variety of passports – many with his picture on them, official letterhead from the US embassy, letters that looked like they were from the US Ambassador, pictures of piles of US currency, pictures of credit cards that appeared to be from people who had been scammed, ‘official-looking’ documents from the local government, all used to convince people the plea was legitimate . . . I was up most of the night, printing off everything that I found.
Now I understood why our email was going to SPAM and why he got so many viruses. He had been running all of this on school computers, often doing this instead of doing the work he was hired to do.
If the people in your life aren’t happy for you after a big win, then you need to find new people. Full stop.
People say opposites fall in love but the truth is relationship having same music tastes, food vibes and night life lasts longer.
Choosing a romantic partner isn’t just about the romance-you’re also choosing a confidant, counselor, career advisor, therapist, investor, teacher, travel buddy, roommate, best friend, and business partner.
The reason why you can see through some people is that they have what you used to be.
Most people don’t care what you say, or do, most of the time.
No one is going to stand up at your funeral. Life is about loving people, not impressing them.
The longer you try to force what doesn’t feel right, the longer you delay finding what does.
My husband and I used to tease my dad and his “lady friend” when they would tell us what they ate on a regular basis—a small breakfast, a big lunch, and cereal for dinner.
But now the tables have turned as we’ve aged because my husband and I have become those people. In fact, I just had cereal for dinner about an hour ago.
With the exception of dinners with family or friends, we mostly eat a hot lunch as our main meal. Fruit and cheese, cottage cheese and fruit, or cereal and milk are our go-to dinner choices. I also like a spoonful of peanut butter for a quick snack if I start feeling hungry in the evening. And we both have a sweet tooth so some snacking does take place during the day.
When you age, your metabolism slows down and, for us at least, three full meals are just too much. We also feel better if our heaviest meal is midday rather than in the evening.
Again, we’re flexible and social occasions will find us eating a big dinner. But on those days, we just have a sandwich for lunch so we have room later to enjoy a big meal at night.
Norton’s Cafe Jambalaya
Whole30 Jambalaya Recipe Primavera Kitchen 1
Yield: 15 cups
Ingredients
1 medium onion, chopped
2 green bell peppers, chopped
3 ribs celery, chopped
1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
4 ounces Norton’s Cajun Seasoning (about 1 cup)*
2 cups (4 sticks) margarine
1 pound raw chicken, cut into bite-size pieces (about 2 cups)
3 cups hot water
3 cups tomato sauce or canned diced tomatoes
10 ounces andouille sausage, cut into bite-size pieces (2 cups)
10 ounces ham, cut into bite-size pieces (2 cups)
1 1/2 tablespoons beef base
2 1/2 cups uncooked white rice
Instructions
In a large pot, combine onion, peppers, celery, sugar, seasoning and margarine. Cook over low heat until margarine is melted.
Add chicken; cook for about 3 minutes. Add hot water, tomato sauce, sausage, ham, beef base and rice. Stir well, cover with tight-fitting lid and simmer for about 30 minutes or until rice is cooked, stirring4 or 5 times to prevent sticking. Add water near end of cooking if extra liquid is needed.
Notes
* Substitute Paul Prudhomme’s Magic Seasoning Blend for Vegetables if you cannot locate Norton’s Cajun Seasoning.
Once upon a chilly evening in late autumn, my friend hosted a dinner party. Among the guests was someone known for their rather abrupt demeanor. As the evening progressed, this guest, let’s call him Mr. R, made a particularly rude comment about the host’s choice of wine. The room fell silent, the air thick with discomfort.
My friend, the host, faced a moment of choice. She could either let the comment sour the evening or handle it with grace. Choosing the latter, she responded with a light-hearted yet firm tone, “Well, Mr. R, it seems this wine isn’t to your taste. I believe in embracing a variety of flavors at my table. Perhaps the next one will be more to your liking!”
The guests chuckled, appreciating her tactful handling of the situation. Mr. R, realizing his faux pas, nodded and even managed a small, albeit sheepish, smile.
This moment, while seemingly trivial, became a masterclass in handling rudeness with grace and humor. My friend’s response not only diffused the tension but also reminded everyone that kindness and a bit of wit can turn an awkward situation into a pleasant one. The rest of the evening continued with laughter and lively conversations, the earlier rudeness fading into a distant memory.
LOL. I opened an email in my in-box, sent out to our whole region. In the email my (less than intelligent) boss listed out why he wanted to fire me, and the next email – copied to everyone (from HR) said to “get rid of the worthless piece of s**t today”. I sent a copy home, made my rounds of my team, and started packing my office.
I sent a note to the region (not counting my boss and HR) thanking them for their help in my short tenure. Then I sat and waited for my boss to show up. He got there to find my office packed, my computer wiped and my paperwork in order. I made him count and sign for my petty cash and assume all liability on my corporate credit card, and I was gone.
I did send a copy of the emails to the head of HR and the Chief HR Officer, along with my intent to file a lawsuit for releasing confidential HR information to non-essential personnel. 60 days later, both the HR contact and my former boss were gone. So was I, but I shouldn’t ever worked for that company in the first place.
My husband and I thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail (AT) in 2000. Those who know of the experience know that most hikers cannot eat enough to for all the calories they burn. A friend’s in-laws lived just a little ways off the trail in NC and they offered to let us shower, eat with them, etc as we passed through.
First off we had to wait for another couple to arrive. Then, out came lunch: thin-sliced bread with low-cal cheese, one thin slice of sandwich meat, and lettuce, making it a sandwich. On the table there was a small dish of chips. A brownie for dessert. Steve and I looked at each other and sighed. These people were exceptionally kind and generous, but they also were very health conscious. They offered another sandwich, if we wanted, so Steve insisted that he could make his own, intending for it to be bigger. When we got back on the trail a couple of hours later, we hiked about two miles and then stopped for our usual lunch.
The people were so kind that we couldn’t let them know we were still hungry! It’s a story we still tell when giving highlights of our AT Thru-hike.
Back when my son was about 5 years old he was invited to a friend’s birthday party at a waterpark. There was also a park area where they set up a bunch of games for the kids and one was a sack race. Well I started to video this as any crazy parent of a young child is going to do.
They started the race and all the kids took off towards the finish and my son was absolutely last falling way behind. The other kids were passing the finish and he was still struggling. I started feeling horrible for him because every one else had finished and he was still going. My heart was beginning to break for him and I was ready to stop videoing and thought I am going to run out and give him a hand to finish.
Well that would have been my mistake if I had have because all of a sudden I could hear him and he was saying “I’m doing it! I’m doing it!”. I started beaming and continued to video cheering him on! He didn’t care that he was last, he was proud of himself for doing as well as he was and I knew I had to let him finish. I still tell that story to this day and it chokes me up. He still has that “don’t quit” attitude and he keeps moving forward. I LOVE this memory!
I woke up one morning with my eight year old son hugging me and telling me that “everything will be fine.” Yet, he wasn’t actually physically there. He was staying at his father’s far away. I asked him how he got home and then he was gone… I jumped out of bed and began searching all over the house for him. My daughter woke up and I asked her if she saw her brother. She looked at me like I was losing my mind – uh, mom, he’s at dad’s… But, I felt I had actually felt and talked with him and it was as real as anything. Kinda dazed, I went about my day until hours later I received a phone call from my children’s father – our little son had just died from a terrible car accident. I still believe to this day that he came to me ‘before’ he passed and have been comforted by this. The next day I traveled to the scene of where he had died. All of a sudden I heard him say clear as anyone “mom, look at me, I can fly!” Then he said another thing I will never forget. He said “mom, there is no such thing as time… and everything will be fine, you will be fine…” A couple of other things have since happened but the most important was the pre-passing hug…
Many years ago, I brought my Cortina to the local Ford dealership for its annual MOT test. This was not a major issue as I had thoroughly inspected the car in my own lockup beforehand. Since my father had an account with the garage and I was working late, the service desk was closed when I picked up the car. As a result, I simply collected the keys from a salesman and drove home. The next day, I collected the paperwork and was informed that they would send me the bill through the mail.
About a week later, I received the bill, which stated that they had replaced all four sets of brake shoes. Immediately, I phoned the garage to question the bill’s accuracy and requested them to verify if it was meant for my car or if they had made a clerical error. In response, I received a letter with a threatening tone, implying legal action if I did not settle the bill immediately. Frustrated, I replied saying, “I will see you in court.”
In Scotland, we have a system called Small Debts Court, where local magistrates preside over minor cases. I received a letter stating the date and time for the hearing, and I was quite eager for my day in court.
During the proceedings, the magistrate inquired why I had chosen to represent myself without a lawyer present. I explained that I did not believe the case warranted the expense. The garage’s lawyer then provided a summary of the facts. When asked if I disputed any of the statements made by the garage, I replied no, accepting everything that their lawyer had said. I proceeded to present copies of the correspondence exchanged between the garage and myself. At this point, it seemed like an open-and-shut case, as I refused to pay for something that was clearly not done on my car.
It was then that I inquired if the magistrate was knowledgeable about the technicalities of motor car braking systems. He confirmed that he was, but also mentioned that if there were any technical points beyond his understanding, he would seek expert assistance and pause the proceedings. I subsequently presented the bag of worn-out brake shoes that had been left in my car as per the garage’s regular procedure. I explained that as a qualified mechanical engineer and a car enthusiast who frequently participated in car racing, I had upgraded my Cortina’s brakes to disk brakes all around several months prior and had a bag of brake parts that were incompatible with my car. It was clear that the mechanic had never even inspected the brakes. I firmly refused to pay for work that couldn’t have been performed on my car.
Although the magistrate didn’t laugh, a broad smile appeared on his face as he declared, “Case closed.”
What most people don’t realize is how close the Germans came to victory.
Forget Bastogne and the river crossings, the crucial battle was the Battle of the Elsenborn Ridge.
The 21st Army Group was planning on crossing the Rhine in early 1945 in the Netherlands, but the massive supply depots for this operation were located in Belgium as the stretch of land held by the Allies in the Netherlands was too narrow.
Beyond the Elsenborn Ridge was the largest supply area in Western Europe and without these supplies, the 21st Army Group could no longer operate.
But US troops in the North belonging to the 12th Army Group also got their supplies from this crucial area.
By now, the port of Antwerp with a capacity of 40,000 tonnes a day was open and US troops depended less and less on French ports.
If the Germans break through at Elsenborn, this massive supply area falls into enemy hands meaning the Germans have all the fuel, food, and medical supplies they need while the Allies run out of ammunition in a matter of days.
The intense V-weapon offensive against Antwerp (the small city of Antwerp got more hits than larger London) is disrupting resupply at the port … so those 40,000 never actually materialized until March 1945.
With the 21st Army Group out of the way, the Germans can rather easily take Antwerp.
Thanks to the heroic resistance of American troops at Elsenborn, this never happened, but it came close.
Lloyd’s Cajun Blues Cafe Cajun Riblets
Lloyds Cajun Blues Cafe Cajun Riblets
Ingredients
1 slab ribs (split down the center)
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
All-purpose seasoning
Garlic powder
Cayenne pepper
Black pepper
Instructions
Pull skin from back of ribs. Trim all excess fat.
Rub ribs with Worcestershire sauce.
Sprinkle ribs with all-purpose seasoning, cayenne pepper, black pepper and garlic powder.
Sprinkle brown sugar on ribs and pat, rubbing sugar into ribs.
Oil grill or spray with nonstick spray.
Place ribs on grill. Slowly cook until fork tender.
Notes
Ribs may also be baked in the oven at 400 degrees F for about 1 to 1 1/2 hours.
Shortly after he and his wife moved in next door, he started nailing a squirrel trap to my side of the fence. I told him if he wanted a trap, he could put it on HIS side of the fence. He would regularly have workmen over and I kept catching them in my yard. When asked, they’d tell me he said he owned the property, so I’d set them straight and tell them to leave. He wasn’t big on asking my permission for anything, especially being in my yard.
But the satisfying one was when he parked in front of my driveway. I had some things delivered that were sitting in front of it, so he felt entitled, despite the fact that he had a long driveway, and I did not. And when I’d ask him to move, he’d yell at me. He liked yelling at women, and I lived alone. One day, after everything had been moved, he parked right across the driveway. There was nothing in front of the garage, lots of parking on the street, and his driveway was empty. So I called parking enforcement. When she showed up to give him a ticket, he came belting out of the house, screaming at both of us. Part of his rationale was that my garage was full of “shit”. Parking enforcement said she didn’t care WHAT was in the garage, and that it was MY driveway. After he got done screaming and stomped off, she typed ABUSIVE into her handheld computer, said, “No one yells at me,” got in her car and left. I looked it up later. He’d tried to go to court to fight it, and instead of a $47 fine, he got $250. And he never parked there again. I was thrilled when they moved.
Ok, this is weird and sordid and I’ve never posted anything like this before.
I was married at sixteen to a man seven years older, a felony convict, and illiterate. And NO, I wasn’t pregnant and was in fact a virgin when we married. And YES, this travesty took place in the U.S.A.
A couple years after marriage, we drove to Louisiana with a an eight month old baby so he could (he thought) get a job. Instead he and his brother robbed a gas station and my mom and dad flew me home. I went back to visit him at his request (I lived in Chicago) and he made me aware that he managed to pay the guards (with MY money) so we could have sex in a visiting room. In retrospect, (the kind you’re graced with fifty years later) I realize PART of the agreement was so they could watch!
When I think of how fucking stupid I was at that age, it makes me want to vomit. Anyway, someone shot and killed him a year or so after he escaped. So I married again in 1979 to a wonderful man and we’re still together and happy.
But 2024 is going to be different. How different, remains to be seen. But I have hope; I am optimistic.
It is the year of the DRAGON.
Chinese Horoscope 2024 – Year of the Dragon
The Chinese zodiac marks the start of a new cycle with the Lunar New Year, or Spring Festival, when one animal gives way to another. On February 10, 2024, the Year of the Dragon begins.
The Dragon is a powerful and auspicious creature in Chinese mythology, representing courage, creativity, and innovation. 2024 promises to be a year full of possibilities and opportunities.
According to the Chinese zodiac, the Dragon is the most powerful and auspicious animals. It represents strength, wisdom, luck and prosperity. The dragon is also associated with one of the five elements: wood, fire, earth, metal or water. Each element gives the dragon a different personality and destiny.
The Year of the Wood Dragon 2024 is also known as Yang Wood on Dragon, or Jia Chen 甲辰 in Chinese. The fixed element of the Dragon (Chen) is Earth (Wu 戊), which represents stability, honesty and loyalty. The variable element of the Dragon in 2024 is Yang Wood, or Jia 甲, representing growth, creativity and flexibility.
The Wood Dragon is the most creative and visionary of the dragons. They are optimistic, ambitious and adventurous. They like to explore new ideas and challenge themselves. They are also generous, compassionate and loyal to their friends.
Therefore, the Year of the Dragon in 2024 is expected to be a time of visionary leaders, innovators and problem solvers. 2024 is also predicted to be a great year to start new projects, explore new opportunities and create value for yourself and others.
Some of the most promising sectors for business growth in the Dragon Year 2024 are fintech, AI, cybersecurity, blockchain, and solar energy. These industries are driven by innovation and demand for cutting-edge solutions. To succeed in these competitive markets, businesses need to embrace new technologies and communicate their value proposition effectively.
The year of the Wood Dragon 2024 is special because it is a rare combination of the dragon’s power and the wood’s creativity. It is a year of innovation, vision and growth. It is a year to pursue your dreams, express your ideas and expand your horizons. It is also a year to be generous, compassionate and loyal to your friends. The next Year of the Wood Dragon in the Chinese zodiac will be 2084, which is 60 years from now.
A Black and White Cat Kept His Owner Awake Until the Ambulance Arrived
Mr. Andrew Carnegie arrived in America in 1848, with no money and with no formal higher education.
His parents decided to move the Carnegie family to the United States after a famine hit the Scottish countryside.
At thirteen years old, Carnegie found a job that would pay him $1.20 for a 70-hour week.
During his free time, Carnegie read books loaned to him from one of the local libraries.
These books impacted his life so much that later he donated millions of his money to building over 2,500 public libraries and educational institutions around the world.
image 577
When Carnegie was about 18 years old, Thomas Scott, the owner of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, employed him as a telegraph operator at a salary of $4.00 per week.
By age 24, Mr. Scott saw great potential in the young Carnegie, and promoted him to superintendent of a division of the Railroad Company.
Mr. Scott eventually became Carnegie’s mentor, a relationship that changed his future.
image 576
The experience Carnegie gained working closely to Scott was a vital ingredient in his success in the steel industry.
Years later, Carnegie sold his company to JP Morgan. That was what made him the wealthiest man on earth, and the philanthropist he later became.
To answer your question, what is the best piece of advice you could give someone about life?
1.- What are you filling your mind with?
Are you consuming your free time with worthless social media? Carnegie read books. He invested continuously in his personal growth.
Stop wasting your time!
2.- Are you trying to figure out how to do it alone! Who do you take advice from?
Carnegie was inspired by Mr. Scott. He listened to his advice. He was a hard worker. He was coachable.
In January 2019, Copdy Litz made a 10-foot snowman with his fiancée and his sister, and then posted this on Facebook:
image 579
It received a lot of admiration online as well as from his neighbours. However, when something marvellous attracts admirers, it also brings jealous assholes. Same thing happened with this snowman.
Turns out that one day when Copdy was away, a douche driver tried to destroy the snowman by ramming their car into it. To their horror, however, the result wasn’t as amusing as the driver was expecting.
When Copdy returns home, he sees this:
image 578
Tyre tracks leading to the snowman but they stop abruptly and the imprint of a bumper can be seen exposed in the snow. The snowman is still standing. Any idea how?
Do you see that black-brown part where there’s no snow? Well, that’s a thick tree stump used as a base for this snowman, but it was concealed by the snow. Hence, when the driver decided to ram their car into the snowman, they had no idea of the surprise they were in for, and ended up crashing their car into the sturdy stump. That’s why you see the imprint of a bumper on the snow and no more tyre tracks beyond the snowman.
[1] Sadly, the driver fled the scene after this surprise they received, and therefore, there’s no photo to show the damage on their car, but I bet it must be a good one (lol).
Copdy Litz later revealed in an interview that the purpose of using a tree stump as a base for this snowman was to teach vandals a lesson because such incidents were very common in his region. For sure other vandals must have learned the lesson.
Anyway, this display of instant karma seems pretty satisfying to me. If only I could see the damaged car, I’d be more satisfied.
I bought a car in TX. Private party. In winter. To drive to MN. On turnpike it was getting cold. I stop at Goodyear shop near a hotel. “I want radiator flush, engine block heater installed, -20 antifreeze”
got estimate, signed, walked to hotel, called with room info as next day Saturday they were open till noon. Next day 11:30 am check out, walk over. “owe did not have correct size front plug replacement block heater. So we put a lower hose heater in. We charged your card, here are keys we are closing early”
I KNEW lower hose not recommended. As angles all wrong. Warmed water flows to radiator first. NOT engine. But what can I do? So I will drive. Go to local Goodyear shop have it corrected.
50 miles hose blows apart. I had bought gallon antifreeze as knowing how shops screw filling empty radiator. But gauge looked great. Using knife I tighten hose clamps, add gallon antifreeze strait, limp to rest stop, gallon water, next town.
Get to local Goodyear. “we are not in same Goodyear chain as that place. But we will give you $5 off new hose, new frost plug heater, installation and full antifreeze replacement”. I did it myself.
Many years ago, I worked in a small sewing factory that made water ski vests. When I was hired, I was paid by the hour but was told that I would get raises based on my work, and the sky was the limit. I soon discovered that there was a very low cloud cover.
I got a small raise after one month. I was assigned to do the finishing job, but devised a new method and could complete 600 vests a day. The other workers could not keep up with me, and I had to learn all of the other jobs so that I would have at least 300 vests ready to finish.
Minimum wage increased; new employees were now being paid 10 cents an hour less than I was. I asked for another raise based on my performance and was told that if I kept doing what I was, I would get a raise in 6 weeks.
A month later, the owner brought in an “efficiency expert” who looked at my finishing job and suggested “improvements”. The improvements made me do twice the work for half the numbers.
The next day, I tried to talk to the owner about it. He told me to try it for six weeks, and I would get a raise. But, I was two weeks away from my promised raise. I said, “I quit!”
A couple of weeks later, I ran into my supervisor. She said she had to do my job until they could train someone else. After two hours of doing the “improved” method, she realized why I quit and went back to my method.
I also ran into the person they trained to replace me. She could complete 50 vests a day, instead of my 600.
The business went bankrupt 3 months later. There was a riot and police were called when the boss showed up with no paychecks on payday 🙂
I once responded to a job ad that advertised a pay rate of $10–25 per hour.
I showed up to the business to do an interview with the owner. The guy was busy so I had to wait 30 minutes past my scheduled time. Apparently, the guy didn’t even remember what was on my resume, nor did he seem to care. He didn’t even ask about my skills and mostly just talked up about himself and his business.
Finally at the end of the interview, he offered me the current minimum wage ($9.25 at the time, it was going to increase to $10 in a few months) and that we can “sit down and talk” about increasing the rate after a month.
This was an IT software and hardware repair shop and I had a master’s degree in computer science with several years of work experience. I wasn’t looking for a massive salary rate, but a side gig that paid reasonably well. I wasn’t going to work for minimum wage and then hope to God this business owner was going to be convinced to double the rate after one month.
I was really surprised by the salary rate, but I caught myself before I might have reacted negatively and said, “I’ll think about it.” I probably would have accepted it at $15 an hour, but minimum wage for a position that requires some technical knowledge, did not make any sense to me.
I thought about it and there were just too many red flags:
He didn’t read my resume, which isn’t respectful of my time to go to an interview.
Did not even offer the pay rate mentioned in the advertisement. He lied.
Clearly a sign that this guy is going to be very stingy, so the 1 month “sitdown” salary evaluation meeting did not look promising at all.
Doesn’t seem to be able to keep employees for very long. This was based on what I asked during the interview.
Needless to say, I followed up with an email saying that this wasn’t what I was looking for.
Update: Some bonus info I recalled recently. I remembered him mentioning in the middle of the interview that he had a mortgage to pay as if to get sympathy. I realized after the interview he was already thinking about making that shitty offer.
I used to be an Amazon Flex driver on the weekends to make some extra money. The base pay was $18 an hour and if I did my deliveries quickly, I was making more than $25 an hour.
They have a program where you sign up to be an “independent contractor” and get paid for delivering a certain number of packages in a prescribed amount of time. It was a lot of fun even though you have to basically fight other people online to get a run.
One day I was out making deliveries and I noticed a car pull over at a house where I had just dropped off a package. I thought to myself that it must be the homeowner and stopped to deliver the next. But, I kept an eye on the car and sure enough, they were following me and grabbing my packages.
I called the police and kept on delivering. Within 5 minutes, a police car pulled them over and as soon as I saw that they had them stopped I turned around and went to speak with the officers.
Come to find out that they had followed me out of the station and began taking my packages from the start. I looked in their car, and they had grabbed 9 of my packages! Had I not called the police, who knows how many more they would have gotten. They were arrested on the spot and taken away in handcuffs.
I was incredibly angry, because not only had they stolen my packages, but now I had to go back and deliver them all again!
It screwed up what should have been a very simple day, but I was thrilled to know that these porch pirates got what was coming to them!
Americans thinks the world thinks the world of them!
They are full of it!
Can you believe that the U.S. thinks people in Iraq welcome them warmly after they carpet bomb Baghdad killing civilians including women, children and babies! What Iraqis are doing is the lured them into the lions den and sniped them and bomb them into smitten! But U.S. officials and some Americans think the Muslim and Arab communities loved them!
About 20 years ago I worked for a huge Multinational American Call Centre that had opened a centre in Belfast. I worked hard and got several commendations and promotions, eventually being in charge of Annual leave for all the Call Centres in the UK. Problem was, the call centre didn’t want to spend money on software to track annual leave.
So I made it, on excel, as they didn’t support Access, go figure. Anyone who knows, will tell you access was far better for something like tracking annual leave for over 2000 employees across 3 sites on, but I am damn good at excel, and I made it do things its really not designed to do.
For 3 years I told them that it wasn’t fit for purpose and I needed proper software. Eventually we got a new director and they seemed to take note of what I was saying. So they looked at what I was doing, how I was doing it, and then decided to outsource it to a team in a South African Call Centre and Lipa City in the phillipines, apparently paying the two teams was less than my salary. They asked me to create an instruction manual for the tracker so that these guys could do my job, and they would move me to another department.
Once completed, they terminated me, paying me 10 weeks severance for my time served plus owed leave. I warned the centre Director he was making a mistake, he just laughed.
4 weeks later I got a phone call from a friend who still worked there, the Leave tracker had crashed as the teams running it weren’t doing the daily maintainence in the manual, they had also deleted the back ups to save disc space. There was no record of who had taken what leave and who had what leave left to take. So with 3 months left in the financial year, they ended up having to give all 2316 members of staff their full leave entitlement again (turns out payroll didn’t bother recording what they had paid to whom and for why).
I phoned the Director and simply said, “I warned you what would happen, but you decided you knew better, good luck.” He simply hung up, no response. 3 weeks later he was terminated for costing the firm millions in additional payments for all the extra leave.
I lasted just short of 8 years, he lasted just short of 8 months.
I worked for a large aerospace company in the Midlands. I never worked more than my contracted 38 hours/week, travelled away from base once a month and needed an overnight stay 2-3 times a year.
I was approached by a large consultancy to work for them and had a first round of informal meetings. Their HR person then phoned me and asked me about my current salary and expectation. Before I answered, I asked her to confirm what had been hinted at in the first meeting, 50–60 hours per weeks, 2–3 overnights a week. Yes she said. In that case, current salary +20%. She went quiet and then asked why I expected that much. Extra hours and nights away. We are only allowed to offer 7% over current. I replied “I’m sorry, but that fails the Tesco test.” What’s that she asked. “I could work the extra hours stacking shelves in my local Tesco for minimum wage, make more money and still sleep in my own bed.”
She Changed Her Face In Front Of The Camera Within 10 Seconds
A king is ruler of a sovereign country. An emperor is the ruler of the whole continent, considered to be higher than any other secular rulers. The Islamic equivalent is caliph, the Zoroastrian equivalent is shahanshah and the Hindu equivalent is maharaja.
Traditionally there were two Emperors in the Christian world: the Holy Roman Emperor (Western Emperor) and the Eastern Roman Emperor (Eastern Emperor).
Once the Eastern Roman Empire fell in 1453, the Russian grand prince Ivan III the Great assumed the title of Czar (from caesar) and Peter I the Great nominated himself as the Russian Emperor.
The French Revolution was basically a re-enactment of fan fiction of Rome. First they deposed the King, then they declared Republic (which went pear-shaped in five years instead of 500) and finally Napoléon imitated Augustus and declared himself the Emperor of France. By doing this, he juxtaposited himself with both the Habsburgs (Holy Roman Empire – itself more or less a fan-fiction of the Western Roman Empire) and Romanovs (Russian Empire – a fan-fiction of the Eastern Roman Empire). Naturally there could be only one, so Napoléon had the Holy Roman Empire abolished in 1806. Instead, the Habsburgs would claim the title of Kaiser des Österreiches (Austrian Emperor). Which made sense, as Czech was a kingdom, Hungary was a kingdom, Croatia was a kingdom and the rest of the Austrian lands were principalities.
Finally Germany unified under the Kingdom of Prussia in 1870. Since Germany was a hodgepodge quilt of kingdoms, princedoms, republics and city states, King Wilhelm declared himself as the Kaiser (Emperor) of Germany (from caesar).
All European Kaisers and Czars fell in the WWI. Ever since 1918, there hasn’t been an Emperor in Christian lands.
Also China and Japan have had an Emperor. The Chinese emperor was deposed in 1912, China becoming a republic, but Japan has maintained its emperor (mikado). The current Emperor of Japan is Naruhito, and his reign is called Reiwa.
I know the exact moment when I realized I was an adult.
It was the Christmas of 1998. I was in Beijing. I was one of those spoiled rich brats who went on a joyride with my fancy friends in my fancy car that my dad bought me. So that night, although none of us were Christian, it seemed like a good idea to celebrate some random holiday, drive to a dance club and have some fun. We were fully prepared to get drunk and party until dawn.
I was driving with 4 other friends in the car and I got into an accident. I was very scared, it was completely my fault. We realized no one was hurt and tried to leave. But the police arrived at the scene before we could drive off. And things got really serious.
I remember this old police officer, he had this “seen it done that” attitude, and asked “Who’s the driver?” I said that it was me. And he asked “Could you explain to me what happened?” I said “I want to wait until my dad is here.” And he asked again: “Are you the driver?” I said I was. And he replied, “If you’re old enough to drive and get yourself into this mess, you’re old enough to explain to me what happened and take responsibility.”
He was not mean, he was not angry with me or anything. He just said it as a matter of fact. And that’s the moment I realized I was an adult.
Why I choose to raise my child in CHINA and not the WEST
Nobody was talking about Chinese EVs until they took the world by storm at the Munich car show this year.
It was all Tesla, and more recently, the Germans and Koreans. The Japanese were not in the game at all, preferring ICE hybrids.
No one was paying attention to the charging infrastructure put in place in China, or the huge number of models from diverse manufacturers no one outside of China had any experience with.
My friend says there are at least 100 Chinese EV brands operating today.
100! China today is where the US automobile industry was pre-war.
Why isn’t anyone talking about the CPU? Because this is the English medium, and there is an automatic filter on any news that puts a positive spin against the narrative of the Chinese being a backward sub-human species who cannot innovate and therefore copy and steal exclusively from the west.
Read the Chinese to keep up with the Chinese.
Don’t read ABOUT them.
Otherwise, be prepared to be surprised/shocked repeatedly by the Chinese.
This Just ΗΑPPΕNED In The Netherlands, Υet Something Εven More Bizarre Is ΗΑPPΕNING IN AMERICA
It was 1989 in Richmond Virginia. Even though I was in my first year as a cop with the police department I was assigned a new recruit from the academy to be his field training officer. This young man was an immigrant from Jamaica. He said that his mother had read my future and that I needed this to keep me safe, and he handed me a bloodstone. As I was looking at it we got an alarm call for an industrial site that was a quarter of a mile away from where we were parked. I turned the key to the patrol car and nothing happened. I decided we would get out and run the distance to the site. When we were about two hundred yards away the building exploded, blowing the both of us back ten to fifteen feet. I still have scars on my left forearm that I instinctively put over my eyes. When we went back to the car it turned over the first time. My trainee looked at me and said, “My moms be looking out for you!”
If the car had worked we would have been there when the building exploded, and we would have both been dead.
My mother-in-law always pointed out that, if Hollywood were depicting medieval Europe accurately, between one-third to one-sixth of young adult women between the ages of sixteen to forty should be visibly pregnant when they waddle into range of the camera and every shot of urban areas should be swarming with young children (the majority of which will eventually die before reaching adulthood). You should have at least four children visible in every scene in which at least one adult is visible.
It was a world without legal birth-control, and women had a large number of children if they weren’t nuns. Walking down a medieval street, you would have seen swarms of children—think Rwanda-level disparities in the young compared to adults. Margery Kempe in the early 1400s, for instance, had fourteen children by the time she was forty. A reasonable guess at the normal number would be for an average married medieval woman to have ten children, of which fewer than a third would survive to adulthood. The most common cause of adult female mortality in the medieval world appears to be death in childbirth.
During each woman’s pregnancies, I believe there is little visible bulge until the the last few months of pregnancy. After that, she should be visibly pregnant. The swarms of children should be everywhere, running in the streets, crammed into alleys and houses, and pouring through doorways constantly.
A little background — I was working in a chain drug store in Southern California, the only employee who came to work, on Christmas Eve. We were a 24-hour store, so, having cleaned everything, and faced all the stock on the shelves, I was thinking how to murder the “dancing Santa” (bad recording, 2 1/2 feet tall, and poorly made).
10:30 (22:30 for 24 hour clocks) a guy comes in, freaking out. His wife has recently left him for her “hot stud boyfriend”, with whom she has a brand-new baby. They are divorced, but she got the kids on holidays. He had bought and wrapped the presents for the kids (daughter, son), and dropped them off at her boyfriend’s house — left them on the porch, because she refused to open the door until he left. He gets home, and finds the kids waiting on his front porch. His ex-wife’s mother had just dropped them off, and left them alone, because ex-wife, new baby, and “Hot Stud” were going to his parents for Christmas, and she didn’t want the kids “getting in the way”. Grandma had plans of her own, and refused to take the kids with her.
Ex-wife left him with two kids with no change of clothes, no presents, not enough groceries, on Christmas Eve. And there was no way he could not make her sound like the totally selfish bitch she was.
Semi-happy ending. I abused the hell out of my authority as the manager, and “store-used” or “over-ride discount”ed everything we needed to put together a Christmas for his kids.
Each of them got a ream of paper, the largest box of Crayola (crayons) we had, a generic fuzzy toy, and two other toys that he thought they might like. Each present was individually wrapped in a different paper, with big fancy (store-bought!) bows, and a Christmas card on each present, plus each one got a good sized bag of “stocking stuffers”. (Pocket sized toys and games, candy, fruit, nuts, etc). Then I threw in (from me) a couple of bags of Christmas candy and chocolates.
It’s Christmas Eve, and your mother has her mother drop you off at your father’s house — who isn’t even home — because she doesn’t want you, because she has the new baby that you aren’t even allowed to touch.
A few weeks before my nineteenth birthday, I was sitting to the right of my mom. When I went to look at her, she pointed out that my left eye did not track with my right eye, which made it look like I had a lazy eye.
image
The next day, after we had all laughed it off (because it did look quite goofy), my mom made an appointment with a neuro-opthalmologist. We went in on a busy Saturday and after he examined my eye, he requested that we make another appointment on a day when he would have more time to dedicate to me and the testing that would have to be done.
About two weeks later, my mother and I went to his other office and he examined my eye. He asked me if I had experienced any double-vision recently, and I realized I had. So, he explained the possible reasons for the eye (which he diagnosed as sixth cranial nerve palsy): it was an infection, or, in very rare cases, a brain tumor. He ordered a chest x-ray, blood work, and a head MRI.
The blood work and chest x-ray went well and nothing was found. Going into my MRI, my mother was optimistic, but I just had a feeling that the diagnosis was going to be bigger than a little infection. After the MRI, my mother and I got lunch and were high in spirits. When we returned home, I got to work on my classes (they were online- thanks, 2020). A few hours later, my mother ran into my room, very upset, and told me to come to the phone.
My doctor was on the other end. He told me that I had a mass in my brain that was pressing against my sixth cranial nerve. He suggested that it was a very rare form of bone cancer in my brain called chordoma that had grown on my skull base, in the middle of my head. I was diagnosed two days after my nineteenth birthday.
Since then, my diagnosis was confirmed and I had surgery to remove the tumor. I had many complications, like infections and brain fluid leaks, but I made it out. There was about 5–10% of the tumor left, so I underwent proton radiation therapy to kill the rest of the cancer. In a few weeks, I will have been in partial remission for a year 🙂 I also had eye surgery about ten months ago to correct my eye, which was stuck looking inward since my first surgery. Since then, I’ve been dealing with a lot of other issues because of my tumor and treatment, like chronic nerve damage/pain, Hashimoto’s disease and hypothyroidism, but I have a wonderful team of doctors who have provided me with great treatments.
I was a freshman in college when I was diagnosed, and now I’m going to be a junior. I’m studying psychology and music, and I participate in my college’s choirs, theatre productions, and student life team. In the future, I’m hoping to get my Master’s degree in mental health counseling and work as a therapist for adolescents and young adults with disabilities, rare disease, and cancer. I would also love to perform professionally in my city’s symphony orchestra/choir and maybe even audition for America’s Got Talent.
If I were to pick the first biggest reason 2023 will be remembered (if it isn’t because of the brewing World War III that seems to be on the verge of breaking out) it will be as the year that A.I. became a reality.
Translator wages have been flat, and in the United States (according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics) there is the need for a total of 14,000 in the country at a stagnant average wage of about $50,000 with roughly 10% unemployment in the field.
Finding out
Bohemian Goulash Soup
Bohemian Goulash Soup
Ingredients
3 tablespoons butter or margarine
2 large onions, coarsely chopped
1 tablespoon paprika
1 teaspoon vinegar
1 1/2 pounds beef stew meat, diced
6 cups beef broth or bouillon
1/2 teaspoon marjoram
1 tablespoon caraway seed
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 pound potatoes, peeled and cubed
Salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
Heat butter or margarine in a Dutch oven over medium heat. Sauté onion until golden.
Stir in paprika and vinegar.
Add meat, broth, marjoram, caraway seeds, tomato paste, salt and pepper. Mix well. Cook gently, covered, for 1 to 1 1/2 hours until meat is tender.
Dilute flour with a little cooled liquid from pot. Stir into soup.
Add potatoes and cook until potatoes are tender.
Yield: 6 servings
Go and get it
Killing C.I.A. Informants, China Crippled U.S. Spying Operations
WASHINGTON — The Chinese government systematically dismantled C.I.A. spying operations in the country starting in 2010, killing or imprisoning more than a dozen sources over two years and crippling intelligence gathering there for years afterward.
Current and former American officials described the intelligence breach as one of the worst in decades. It set off a scramble in Washington’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies to contain the fallout, but investigators were bitterly divided over the cause. Some were convinced that a mole within the C.I.A. had betrayed the United States. Others believed that the Chinese had hacked the covert system the C.I.A. used to communicate with its foreign sources. Years later, that debate remains unresolved.
But there was no disagreement about the damage. From the final weeks of 2010 through the end of 2012, according to former American officials, the Chinese killed at least a dozen of the C.I.A.’s sources. According to three of the officials, one was shot in front of his colleagues in the courtyard of a government building — a message to others who might have been working for the C.I.A.
Still others were put in jail. All told, the Chinese killed or imprisoned 18 to 20 of the C.I.A.’s sources in China, according to two former senior American officials, effectively unraveling a network that had taken years to build.
Assessing the fallout from an exposed spy operation can be difficult, but the episode was considered particularly damaging. The number of American assets lost in China, officials said, rivaled those lost in the Soviet Union and Russia during the betrayals of both Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, formerly of the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., who divulged intelligence operations to Moscow for years.
The previously unreported episode shows how successful the Chinese were in disrupting American spying efforts and stealing secrets years before a well-publicized breach in 2015 gave Beijing access to thousands of government personnel records, including intelligence contractors. The C.I.A. considers spying in China one of its top priorities, but the country’s extensive security apparatus makes it exceptionally hard for Western spy services to develop sources there.
At a time when the C.I.A. is trying to figure out how some of its most sensitive documents were leaked onto the internet two months ago by WikiLeaks, and the F.B.I. investigates possible ties between President Trump’s campaign and Russia, the unsettled nature of the China investigation demonstrates the difficulty of conducting counterespionage investigations into sophisticated spy services like those in Russia and China.
The C.I.A. and the F.B.I. both declined to comment.
Details about the investigation have been tightly held. Ten current and former American officials described the investigation on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing the information.
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The first signs of trouble emerged in 2010. At the time, the quality of the C.I.A.’s information about the inner workings of the Chinese government was the best it had been for years, the result of recruiting sources deep inside the bureaucracy in Beijing, four former officials said. Some were Chinese nationals who the C.I.A. believed had become disillusioned with the Chinese government’s corruption.
But by the end of the year, the flow of information began to dry up. By early 2011, senior agency officers realized they had a problem: Assets in China, one of their most precious resources, were disappearing.
Better Understand the Relations Between China and the U.S.
The two nations are jockeying for influence on the global stage, maneuvering for advantages on land, in the economy and in cyberspace.
Wooing Indonesia: China and the United States are engaged in the strategic battle for influence over the resource-laden nation of nearly 300 million people. So far, Beijing has the edge.
Investing in Mexico: Alarmed by shipping chaos and geopolitical fractures, exporters from China are setting up factories in Mexico to preserve their sales to the United States.
The F.B.I. and the C.I.A. opened a joint investigation run by top counterintelligence officials at both agencies. Working out of a secret office in Northern Virginia, they began analyzing every operation being run in Beijing. One former senior American official said the investigation had been code-named Honey Badger.
As more and more sources vanished, the operation took on increased urgency. Nearly every employee at the American Embassy was scrutinized, no matter how high ranking. Some investigators believed the Chinese had cracked the encrypted method that the C.I.A. used to communicate with its assets. Others suspected a traitor in the C.I.A., a theory that agency officials were at first reluctant to embrace — and that some in both agencies still do not believe.
What we consider before using anonymous sources.Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.
Their debates were punctuated with macabre phone calls — “We lost another one” — and urgent questions from the Obama administration wondering why intelligence about the Chinese had slowed.
The mole hunt eventually zeroed in on a former agency operative who had worked in the C.I.A.’s division overseeing China, believing he was most likely responsible for the crippling disclosures. But efforts to gather enough evidence to arrest him failed, and he is now living in another Asian country, current and former officials said.
There was good reason to suspect an insider, some former officials say. Around that time, Chinese spies compromised National Security Agency surveillance in Taiwan — an island Beijing claims is part of China — by infiltrating Taiwanese intelligence, an American partner, according to two former officials. And the C.I.A. had discovered Chinese operatives in the agency’s hiring pipeline, according to officials and court documents.
But the C.I.A.’s top spy hunter, Mark Kelton, resisted the mole theory, at least initially, former officials say. Mr. Kelton had been close friends with Brian J. Kelley, a C.I.A. officer who in the 1990s was wrongly suspected by the F.B.I. of being a Russian spy. The real traitor, it turned out, was Mr. Hanssen. Mr. Kelton often mentioned Mr. Kelley’s mistreatment in meetings during the China episode, former colleagues say, and said he would not accuse someone without ironclad evidence.
Those who rejected the mole theory attributed the losses to sloppy American tradecraft at a time when the Chinese were becoming better at monitoring American espionage activities in the country. Some F.B.I. agents became convinced that C.I.A. handlers in Beijing too often traveled the same routes to the same meeting points, which would have helped China’s vast surveillance network identify the spies in its midst.
Some officers met their sources at a restaurant where Chinese agents had planted listening devices, former officials said, and even the waiters worked for Chinese intelligence.
This carelessness, coupled with the possibility that the Chinese had hacked the covert communications channel, would explain many, if not all, of the disappearances and deaths, some former officials said. Some in the agency, particularly those who had helped build the spy network, resisted this theory and believed they had been caught in the middle of a turf war within the C.I.A.
Still, the Chinese picked off more and more of the agency’s spies, continuing through 2011 and into 2012. As investigators narrowed the list of suspects with access to the information, they started focusing on a Chinese-American who had left the C.I.A. shortly before the intelligence losses began. Some investigators believed he had become disgruntled and had begun spying for China. One official said the man had access to the identities of C.I.A. informants and fit all the indicators on a matrix used to identify espionage threats.
After leaving the C.I.A., the man decided to remain in Asia with his family and pursue a business opportunity, which some officials suspect that Chinese intelligence agents had arranged.
Officials said the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. lured the man back to the United States around 2012 with a ruse about a possible contract with the agency, an arrangement common among former officers. Agents questioned the man, asking why he had decided to stay in Asia, concerned that he possessed a number of secrets that would be valuable to the Chinese. It’s not clear whether agents confronted the man about whether he had spied for China.
The man defended his reasons for living in Asia and did not admit any wrongdoing, an official said. He then returned to Asia.
By 2013, the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. concluded that China’s success in identifying C.I.A. agents had been blunted — it is not clear how — but the damage had been done.
The C.I.A. has tried to rebuild its network of spies in China, officials said, an expensive and time-consuming effort led at one time by the former chief of the East Asia Division. A former intelligence official said the former chief was particularly bitter because he had worked with the suspected mole and recruited some of the spies in China who were ultimately executed.
China has been particularly aggressive in its espionage in recent years, beyond the breach of the Office of Personnel Management records in 2015, American officials said. Last year, an F.B.I. employee pleaded guilty to acting as a Chinese agent for years, passing sensitive technology information to Beijing in exchange for cash, lavish hotel rooms during foreign travel and prostitutes.
In March, prosecutors announced the arrest of a longtime State Department employee, Candace Marie Claiborne, accused of lying to investigators about her contacts with Chinese officials. According to the criminal complaint against Ms. Claiborne, who pleaded not guilty, Chinese agents wired cash into her bank account and showered her with gifts that included an iPhone, a laptop and tuition at a Chinese fashion school. In addition, according to the complaint, she received a fully furnished apartment and a stipend.
Once, I was truly between jobs: had quit the old one, and a signed contract to start the new one in 2 months.
I was looking forward to spending 2 months doing nothing but sleeping, playing pool, drinking, and having fun.
Then an ex-colleague and friend called: the little firm he worked at was having serious IT problems; could I come in and consult/fix things?
So I put on a suit, pack a CV, head down to their office, and quickly see the worst computer setup I have ever witnessed on Wall St. Like, it’s a bundle of ancient Windows boxes doing God knows what. They couldn’t do things like keep the system running, never mind managing risk, or managing orders, or any normal business function.
I figure $40K for me, plus $20K in real server hardware, and they can have this on the road to fixed in a month.
My friend and I go into the CEO’s office, lay out my CV, I present a rough plan and cost estimates. The CEO just grabs a black marker and starts crossing out everything in my CV he feels is inapplicable: stuff like “Yale University” and “computer science.” Then he says “Your resume says you’re unemployed, $10K should be enough!”
My friend turns green with embarrassment, but I just get up and walk out. Through the trading floor of frustrated people yelling that the system has crashed again and they can’t enter trades.
Today is Christmas. We don’t really celebrate it very much here in Southern China, but it still is a reminder of great and grand times that I grew up with as a boy. This included such things as month-long cookie baking, Christmas breads, Christmas meals, Christmas carols, and Pitiza.
Vintage and throwback Mothers Day ideas 300×200 1
Yeah. It goes much further than a Christmas tree and piles of presents and shopping.
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It includes work luncheons. It includes drunk work parties, and long breaks, and card games.
2023 11 21 20 09
The USA has come a long, long way from what it used to be. That saddens me.
My best friend told me once that if I ever moved away from home, she’d stop visiting home and fly to wherever I was.
When I mentioned that I want to move to the UK, her response was “Ooh, that’s not too far from northern Europe! We could take a trip to Norway from there!”
She’s studying abroad right now with a month to go and she told me “I don’t want to leave here, but I can’t wait to hang out with you.”
No matter how far apart we are, she keeps planning herself into my life.
At the same time, though, we can go for days without talking.
She was gone for a month with no internet or phone service and when she finally got back to civilization, she texted me like nothing had ever changed.
We can tell each other anything.
I can say things like “I almost wet the bed last night” and “I think guys with mustaches can be incredibly attractive” and “Want to hear the world’s only placenta joke?”
And I know she won’t judge me… not too harshly, anyway.
We can talk about gossip and neuroscience and our dreams and geology and Hamilton all without pause. There’s nothing we can’t share.
We laugh. We cry. We eat large amounts of Taco Bell.
We stay friends no matter how many time zones apart we are or how many days we go without speaking.
We can be completely honest with one another and there’s no doubt it comes from love.
We keep planning ourselves into each other’s lives.
That, to me, is a true friend. One who isn’t a friend out of convenience but out of devotion.
One who stays your friend even when it’s difficult or when the geography doesn’t line up.
One who wants to be around you, and is willing to do whatever it takes to make it happen.
I’d say I got lucky. I’ve had the same best friend for almost twelve years.
For those who do not keep up with what’s going on in Taiwan, the pro US pro independence DPP is now lower in the polls after a coalition by the opposing blue and white camps
This means that it is now more likely that the status quo will be upheld, which is better for the region and future developments. As i have pointed out before in another comment
Nope there is a third scenario, one i think the Chinese government is aiming for
That is to advance China itself, economically and technologically beyond the level that the US has any chance of holding at the island chains, thus forcing the abandonment of the chains and resulting isolation of Taiwan. This is happening even now but requires time to complete hence tactics are aimed at dragging it out
The US economic power is collapsing which is why one should never be provoked when against a increasingly desperate opponent. Simply let them die off
Economic power (specifically industrial power as financial paper pushing does little) is the lynchpin of military power, so when it goes down, the military goes down with it and that is not even taking into account the corruption such as the $1300 cup.
Taiwan’s DPP talks up a big game but that is predicated on US support. The US has pulled back to the 2nd island chain because trying to hold the first chain is untenable, thus the attempt to pull the Philippines, South Korea and Japan to be the sacrificial pawns while the US tries holding at Hawaii (and standing on the soapbox made by the corpses of their “allies”)
Once US support dies off due to a lack of funds, obvious tech disparity and a numerical disadvantage, the Taiwanese will have 2 possible choices
i) Give up (this is the most likely given the current Taiwanese do not support their children going to war)
ii) Try a “heroic” last stand (which gives the mainland under One China, the legitimacy to launch a full scale attack)
Also do keep in mind that there are the possibility of burner accounts. What are burner accounts? They are accounts that are made with the specific idea of portraying themselves as part of whichever side/camp/group and will then suddenly turn around to support the other side at moments they find critical. The most famous recent one is bellingcat
Catfish Muffuletta is a very tasty sandwich made from one round loaf. Depending upon appetites, it can serve from one to four!
catfish muffeletta
Yield: 1 to 4 servings
Ingredients
3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
3 U.S. Farm-Raised Catfish fillets
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 cup giardeniara marinated garden salad, coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons pitted olives, sliced
3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1 clove garlic, minced
1 (8 to 9 inch) round loaf Italian bread
1 medium tomato, thinly sliced
1 bunch arugula
1 pound sliced provolone cheese (optional)
Instructions
Heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Season catfish fillets with salt and pepper. Fry fillets in the hot oil, in batches if necessary, for 2 to 3 minutes on each side or until fish flakes easily when tested with a fork. Place fillets on a plate to cool and drizzle with lemon juice.
Drain giardeniara and place in a small bowl. Add olives, parsley, garlic and the remaining tablespoon of olive oil and mix until combined.
Slice the bread in half horizontally and pull out most of the soft white part in the middle. Spread half of the giardeniara mixture in the hollow of the bottom piece of bread. Arrange the fillets in a single layer over the vegetables. Top with layers of tomato slices, arugula leaves and provolone slices, if using, and remaining giardeniara mixture. Place the other half of the bread on top, pressing firmly into place.
Using a serrated knife, cut the sandwich into wedges and serve.
Notes
The wedges can be individually wrapped and served at a picnic.
What about apple? They have 95000 patents around the world.
If the US disregards patents so will the rest of the world, so not a single patent is worth the paper it’s written on, that includes ALL US patents around the world.
It looks like the US politicians once again showed us how bright they are, no wonder the country is going down hill fast.
I watched my father care for my mother for six years as she slowly succumbed to the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease.
He gradually took over all the housework and cooking while dealing daily with her hurt, her rage, her confusion and her fear. He protected her from herself. He made sure that she kept the weekly hair and nail appointments that she so loved. He went shopping with her for the pretty clothes she adored.
When he finally acquiesced to his children’s insistence that our mother be placed in a nursing facility (because we were worried that his health was suffering from the strain of her care), he visited her twice every day. He paid aides to apply her makeup and arrange her hair every day. When the facility requested that he take her jewelry from her, including her pins and diamond engagement ring, he had a jeweler make up copies using cubic zirconia so that she never knew that she wasn’t still wearing her own lovely things.
And at her memorial service, the room fragrant with dozens of heavy bouquets of gardenias which were her favorite flower, my stoic father fought to keep his composure as he spoke of his love for the lively, witty, beautiful woman who had spent almost sixty years at his side. He called their time together a privilege, and recounted as though it had happened yesterday the first time he ever spoke with her, on a staircase at their university.
The manifestation of my father’s commitment and devotion to my mother in those unimaginably difficult years is the bravest thing I have ever witnessed.
The best sarcastic response I have ever witnessed was by a colleague. But first, a little background to set it up.
When I worked at a law firm, one of my many functions was to head up the student practicum program. Basically, people studying IT at a local college needed three months of work experience as part of their graduation requirements. So I would interview them and select a few and they’d get an orientation. Once done, I would then take them around and introduce them to the team that they would be working with.
I kept it light and fun, because these students are nervous and I want them to feel comfortable. There was one student I was taking around, and when I got to the network manager’s desk, I said “This is Aaron, the network manager. You have to watch him, because he can be sarcastic.”
The student turned to Aaron and said, “Oh yeah? Say something sarcastic.”
Without missing a beat, Aaron extended his hand and said “Pleased to meet you.”
When I worked for an engineering consulting company as a project engineer, my boss came up to me when I had been there a few months.
He told me that the office rule was that nobody could wear jeans.
As an engineer, I had never been told that jeans were not allowed. Now, if I were management, or met with clients, or worked for a law firm or a finance person, I could see that, but engineering is notorious for being casual to the point of being borderline slovenly because engineers DO go to the field and nobody wears a suit on a construction site. In my position, I didn’t have to meet with clients all that often.
And I wasn’t slovenly—I was wearing a blouse and sweater with the jeans, which weren’t torn and were conservative in appearance (not ripped, not overly tight or had loud design details). The only difference between those jeans and any other pair of pants that would have been acceptable was the fabric.
That same company had a policy of not providing a coffee pot for the employees. Just about every company I’ve worked for at least provided the pot, and sometimes the employees would pitch in for the coffee stuff. The only reason our office got coffee at all was because we shared our office with the construction arm of the company, which DID provide coffee for their people (I dare you not to provide coffee for a field guy). One of our managers, when visiting our office asked why we had a coffee machine, and that’s the answer he got—it wasn’t ours.
The cheapest ass company I ever worked for. The company I work for now, I could probably literally show up in sweats if I wanted to and nobody would say anything. But I’m not going to push that.
Oh, and they provide coffee. And tea and apple cider and hot chocolate, and when we have our monthly office meetings, they kick in for lunch as well.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was when she asked if I was autistic.
“I just wonder if that’s why I’m having a hard time communicating with you.”
She continued that she wasn’t qualified to diagnose me, but I should look into it. No referral to someone who could diagnose me. No recommendations on resources. Just the assertion that I could be autistic because I apparently don’t communicate well.
When I reminded her that I probably have ADHD, which could explain those symptoms, she cut me off.
“They’re totally different.”
But they really aren’t. They have some key differences, but a ton of the symptoms overlap. Trust me. I’ve done my research.
She’s done this a lot—made alarmist statements with basically no course of action. In that same session she also told me I put up a lot of barriers in the therapeutic process.
“Can you give me an example?” I asked.
“I can’t think of any, but I sense it.”
I mentally rolled my eyes.
It’s been several months of frustrations. I told her I wanted to discuss relationships and she said she doesn’t read about relationships so she couldn’t help me. I told her I was struggling to find a place to start with doing inner work and she said “Just pick somewhere.” I told her I didn’t think quitting my job was a good suggestion and she said I was “resistant to getting out of my comfort zone.” (Note that in the last case, I told her I really like my job and didn’t want to do anything else.)
We haven’t clicked since day 1, but I kept going because I was sorely optimistic that maybe it just needed time.
But it didn’t need time. It’s been like six months and I feel as stuck as ever. I dread going to therapy because I feel like I’m going to listen to 50 minutes of her talking about her own life mixed in with advice that doesn’t do anything for me.
I’m stressed about actually pulling the trigger though. I don’t like change. I don’t like potentially hurting others. And I don’t like setting boundaries.
Hence why I’ve let this drag on for 6 months.
Tomorrow’s the day. I’m sending an email to let her know I’m done. I already booked an appointment with a new therapist to motivate me into doing it.
So, y’know. Best of luck to me. Hopefully I can find a therapist who actually helps.
Update: sent the email to end the relationship and booked my appointment with a new therapist!
That is your dream. Not at all a reality. What is really true is that as long as the U.S., Japan and South Korea do this their economy will tanked and they will disintegrate into a bankrupt. China will let you have a long strong rope to hang yourselves.
Also Japan, South Korea and India are polite Asian people who have been living with China 5000 years. And they are still a nation in its own right! The U.S. neighbours Mexico lost half its land to the U.S. in a mere 100 years!
These 3 nations knows that! The saw it with their own eyes. China will do what they always do. Protect Asia for Asians.
Cat learns some Mike Tyson boxing moves…
This is BY FAR the funniest video that I have ever watched!
LOL, when I was 25, I was an experienced herdsman for a pretty large dairy farm in my area.
The boss was too cheap to buy a computer, so I used my own, and often worked at home going through records of the cattle, creating the new lists as needed. Long story short, we had a falling out, and I offered to update the files before I left, which he rejected. A week later, he was at my door demanding I update the files.
I offered for a price, to be paid in advance. he became angry and stormed off.
I’m a very adventurous hiker & sport participant. I flew hang gliders for years, but I also have scuba dived, sky dived, skied double black Diamond runs, winter camped in snow caves, white water canoed, gone on looonng-g-g hiking trips into the back country & spelunked (explored caves). It’s hard to say which sport is the most dangerous BUT for sure no one should do any sport without multiple safeguards & precautions. Dangerous sports are not for risk takers.
I’ve rarely had a close call. I can say when I did, twice, it was because I ignored safety precautions personally because I was with “experts” I put my trust in!
Despite spending a lot of time in the back country, I nearly killed myself when I ignored obvious important basic precautions the first time I went with world class expert spelunkers deep inside (one mile!) a very dangerous cave with steep drops into an unseen abyss or flowing rivers that disappear further into the ground, & cliffs requiring technical climbing expertise. Precaution #1. Don’t split up. We drove up in two cars, my ride wanted to leave early. He led me down a wrong path to the exit & we were lost in a very wrong part of the maze of the cave. We were supposed to lay a string trail from the cave entrance to follow out. My guide was over confident…. He’d been in the cave so often! He left me (!) to try to retrace to where we left the correct route as I lay in a fetal position trying to get warm… Luckily he found the route, luckily he found me, luckily I’m here to write this!!
This incident happened when I was studying in my 10th grade. A male teacher hit my back with a throw ball deliberately. I was quite annoyed with the behavior. I chose to remain quiet. He came near me. I could sense that he was going to do it again. After a certain argument, I gathered my courage to shout at him – “Behave yourself” in front of 50 odd students. Humiliated teacher, stormed out of the place. The next day I was punished in front of my classmates for back-answering my teacher. Note that, none of my teachers knew what had happened behind the scenes and not one student was ready to narrate the incident. I was portrayed as a bad girl.
I did a little secret investigation(Well, I was 16 then, it was a big thing for me) on that teacher. Asked my junior friends, the students who attended his tuition classes. Turns out that, the teacher was lustful and many girls had similar experiences as mine, but no one had dared to speak up. I handed over all the information to the head mistress. The teacher was interrogated and after the certainty of the issue was proved, he was suspended. I felt really proud that I had the guts to stand up for myself.
Franz Kafka wrote, “Most men are not wicked. Men become bad and guilty because they speak and act without foreseeing the results of their words and their deeds. They are sleepwalkers, not evildoers.”
This speaks to an immutable sign of a child masquerading as an adult. Just as a toddler innocently comments about how fat someone is, the immature man litters his remarks with no thought of a world containing feelings besides his own. There callous impulsiveness matches that of a kid snatching candy from a Halloween bowl.
There is profound virtue in choosing restraint in the face of an easy chance to hurt someone’s feelings.
A good and kind person speaks difficult truths with care and love. And they know what should remain unspoken.
They see a world containing many people, all with differing needs and vulnerabilities. This is beauty. This is someone cementing themself as a person who belongs in your life.
Woman EXPOSES The INEVITABLE Problem With Dating Modern Women | TRAINED/GROOMED To Be Masculine
Kara used to earn as much as $20k in a month, but has pulled back on work since becoming a mother—leading to painful identity issues. Her husband Drake has picked up the slack, but gender roles loom large in their at-home dynamic. Modern Dating is confusing for men and women.
Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Salem Abdullah Al-Jaber Al-Sabah reiterated on Sunday Kuwait’s refusal to normalize relations with Israel “unless a future Palestinian state is established in line with international resolutions.”
He made the remarks at a press conference held at the headquarters of the foreign ministry.
The minister added that it is his responsibility to maintain Kuwait’s security and interests abroad by maintaining relations with friendly, brotherly and allied countries.
“The Palestinian issue is our first issue, without any ambiguity … Kuwait has never deviated from the path,” he said, adding that the war Israel waged against Gaza is retaliatory, not defensive.
The Kuwaiti top diplomat called for an immediate cessation of hostilities in Gaza, providing assistance to the besieged enclave and ultimately resolving the Palestinian issue through the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders.
I needed a car in a hurry and spotted a 5 year old Saab 9-5 turbo for sale online at a great price.
Called the owner, lady answered, husbands old car he was working and had a work vehicle so it was up for sale. It all sounded great so a buddy drove me there and i bought the car after a test drive.
Drove the 50 miles home without an issue until i reached the turnoff for my hometown when the car went into limp mode and the Check Engine light came on….. crap….luckily i was near a small industrial park so i pulled in at the front of a newly opened mechanics shop.
I’d met him once before at a friends unit in the same park but didnt know him. Told him what happened and he said leave it with me.
I started googling this model Saab and read many horror stories about failed turbos and blocked oil traps resulting in engine rebuilds… i was worried…..i had no car, it was going to cost me a fortune….
1 hour later i got a call, car is fixed. Shocked i went back out and sure enough it was running perfectly. I asked what was wrong and he said a pin hole in a breather pipe on the turbo caused a sensor malfunction. He replaced it with a new piece of hose and redirected it so it didnt rub on the exposed metal.
I asked what i owed him, he said 20 cents for the part…. He said don’t worry about it its a lovely car and it only took me 5 mins to fix.
Proof that there are gentlemen in the autotrade.
Beauty in China
GF Abandoned Me At An Absolute Lowpoint, Only For Me To Have The Last Laugh When She Was “PUT AWAY”!
“I’ve heard so many stories like this, and it is unbelievable to me. Women who leave their boyfriends after losing their job or suffering some sort of injury; wives who abandon their husbands when they are diagnosed with terminal cancer. It’s absolutely despicable! I thought they were supposed to be the compassionate ones. Why does it seem like they are, actually, the more diabolical ones?”
“My ex called me about a year after our divorce went through. Of course I let it go to voicemail. She was arrested and in a mental hospital. For the next month, I got 2 calls a day. Each one maxing out the voicemail limit, saying the same strange things over and over. And of course, she “didn’t do anything wrong” and the cops framed her. Then the calls tapered off for a few weeks and one day finally, they stopped. Never answered her. Never heard from her again…”
How brutal was Genghis Khan? The guy was a one-man wrecking crew on a continental scale. He and his Mongol horde were responsible for the annihilation of entire empires, like the Khwarazmian Empire, which was wiped off the map in about two years. We’re talking about cities falling one after another, populations being massacred, and cultural legacies destroyed.
The Mongols employed psychological warfare, making sure their atrocities were well-known to instill fear in their enemies. They had a simple policy: “Surrender or face decimation.” And by decimation, we mean the wholesale slaughter, rape, and enslavement of entire populations.
Who says so! The western media? Did you count the body? The U.S. wanted to break up China into 100 bite size nations and chew on it like candy in 1945. The lost miserably. And had to do shit it Taiwan up till now. 74 years later!
Can you trust anything from western media? 15 million? Why not say 150 million. After all it is just another zero in their typing machine! Stop being a fool. Grow some grey matter, it is good for you. You really want gore details?
How many African slaves were tortured, lynched to death? Raped and killed? How many slaves baby were thrown to feed crocodiles? How many American natives were culled like sheep by white Caucasian cowboys? How many Japanese had to die to avenged Pearl Harbour? How many Vietnamese women and children were Agent Orange or Nepalm burnt alive? How many Muslims died from your cowardly Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya carpet bombings? How many Latin and African lives are lost die to US actions by CIA?
10 million? 100 million? The trouble U.S. Chinese are hell of a lot more intelligent than ignorant and naive Yanks. To Chinese and indeed 5–7 billion others Mao did what is right to save China from U.S. becoming USSR, or Yugoslavia or Middle East. Broken into tiny nations with U.S. puppet!
Stray Cat Paws At The Window Every Day Until Lady Adopts Him | The Dodo
Russia has a lot of natural resources such as oil and gas, coal, gold, manganese, uranium, copper, nickel, iron, chromium, graphite and so on.
The European countries to the West need those resources and are constantly expanding NATO eastwards, threatening Russia’s security.
This is why Russia needs a strong military to defend itself.
But Russia is not a poor country as you are trying to imply. In fact, Russia has the fifth largest GDP PPP in the world behind China, US, India and Japan.
Many years ago, my husband was in a terrible car accident and ended up with a broken neck. At the time our two daughters were 13 and 10 years old. My husband had to be transferred to a larger hospital about an hour away. I and my husband both have great families who live nearby. I depended on them to make sure our daughters were taken care of while I was at the hospital with him, along with many of his family members. I came home, after finally getting word that he was going to survive and had a very life threatening surgery to stabilize his neck, which did save his life. When I got home, I found my lawn mowed, brand new pillows and a new phone line installed where my husband would be spending the first part of his recovery downstairs in our home. All was done courtesy of my brother’s best friend who I had always considered to be a second brother to me. I also found out that he had picked up my girls and bought them dinner and just made sure they were well cared for and feeling secure during such a hard time and while our families were busy supporting us at the hospital. Friends like him are too precious to ever take for granted.
When I was almost 50,i reached what for me, was the top goal professionally – becoming the VP of IT in my division. “I made it”! Woo-hoo! After 20y of hard work and risk, I made it to the top.
Just one thing – I categorically, absolutely HATED the job. Plus I worked for a four star Ahole of a boss.
After 7 months I stepped down and took a 70k a year pay cut to go back to being a senior software engineer, a job where I loved the work and was gifted at it. I never even looked at the ladder again let alone climb it. I retired in 2020 as a senior software engineer with no regrets at all.
Do you know why everyone says the 20s are the best years?
Because most people stop living after they turn 30. And many stop living even while they’re in their mid-20s.
Many people graduate college with degrees they didn’t really want. They just got the degree their parents wanted them to get, or the degree they thought they should get in order to find a stable job, or the degree that was easiest to tolerate for four years.
Many people leave college and settle into a job they don’t really enjoy. They pick up the first “good job” that presents itself, get comfortable, and decide to start working their way up the ladder there.
Many people begin living life beyond their means as soon as the opportunity presents itself. They don’t save money, they spend money. They pick up an expensive car payment. They blow it on bar tabs and once a year trips somewhere so they can forget about the other 51 weeks they spend doing something they don’t really enjoy.
Many people get married because they think they have to. Or they get married because nothing else exciting is going on in their lives and they think, “This is what being in your 20s is all about!” They get married because they would rather be with someone else than be alone. Etc. etc. (And if you’re getting married for the right reasons, by the way, congrats.)
Many people start having kids. They want to buy a home. They want to provide for this family-in-progress—and so now there is absolutely no possible way for them to leave their job or career path because they have too much overhead. It becomes a financial no-no.
The reason everyone says your 20s are the best years is because most people create a safe and comfortable lifestyle before they even turn 30.
And then as soon as they turn 30, they’re done. They don’t have any more “goals.” They don’t work on acquiring new skills. They don’t find ways to go outside their comfort zone. They stop reading. They stop learning. They stop, essentially, looking at life as an opportunity for growth, and instead repeat the phrase, “I am so old.”
That is the opposite of how I ever want to live my life.
I realize the above are sweeping generalizations, but the sad part is they are true. In a lot of cases, the majority of people stop. They just stop. They find what’s comfortable and then they’re done. Life becomes a countdown to dusk, instead of a journey toward the sun.
And the worst part?
They look back and say, “Your 20s are the best years of your life!”
Every year has the ability to be the best year of your life.
It’s up to you what you choose to do with it.
Driving in a sports car
Cajun Grilled Cheese Sandwiches
2023 11 11 20 14
Ingredients
4 tablespoons butter, softened
8 slices crusty Italian bread
6 tablespoons pepper jelly
8 slices pepper jack cheese
8 slices Muenster cheese
2 links andouille sausage, grilled, each link cut into quarters and split lengthwise*
Instructions
Spread 2 tablespoons butter on one side of four slices of bread.
Spread pepper jelly on one side of the remaining slices of bread.
On the slices of bread with pepper jelly, place two slices of pepper jack cheese and two pieces of grilled andouille sausage.
Cover the andouille sausage with two slices of Muenster cheese and top with the remaining slices of bread, butter-side out.
Heat a large skillet or griddle over medium heat.
Place sandwiches, butter-side down, in the skillet and spread the remaining 2 tablespoons butter over the tops of the sandwiches.
Cook sandwiches, in batches if necessary, for 2 to 3 minutes per side, or until golden and the cheeses are melted.
Serve immediately.
Notes
* May substitute any other smoked sausage for the andouille
I have been to two mortgage parties. At each, the couple spent about as much as one mortgage payment, to supply food and booze, to maybe 50 friends and family. Everyone was ecstatic for them.
I personally have never held one, but I think they are a great idea. Sometimes it feels like the only time old friends get together is at funerals. This brings everyone together, for happy times.
Oh, sure it might still happen, but the world has successfully polarized. There are two halves, and there is an East that is growing and thriving, and a West that is dying.
The West still might cause problems, start wars, and all the rest, but the East is NOW, TODAY, far too big and far too formidable.
I anticipate some crazy shit once a new political change hits the USA, but the real truth is that they will have their hands tied, and their dicks lobbed off. If the neocons still maintain power, then a very short and brutal war may occur, but I am of an opinion that the worst is over…
…
For this reason, I am scrapping up my posts on the march towards war. We passed that point. So “New Beginnings” is coming to a draw; coming to a close.
A new daily will emerge…
“Correcting Society Ills“
In this new series, I will continue to include topical subjects. Some war. Some Geo-politics. A lot of social stuff, and fluff.
But the point is that the West still, seriously STILL has to undo the damage of the psychopathic idiots that ran the nation(s) into the ground.
The biggest issues have to do with the crazy progressive rules, and lifestyles that have really destroyed the fabric of society in the West.
So you will see videos and articles about the relationships of men, women and families and how they are coming to grips with the promiscuity, and LGBQ+ lifestyles.
The most obvious are the trends of…
Passport bros
Body Counts
Cheesecake factory girls
Progressive lifestyle
His and her careers
Collapse of society, and reconstruction
Of course… I will include REAL intel on Geo-Politics, as well as REAL intel on the “Prison Planet” and “Domain”. But all will continue to buried inside the massive deluge of “other stuff”. And you all KNOW WHY I do this, right?
Stand by…
Here is a definitive assessment of Obama by Norman Finkelstein, taken from an interview by Danny Haiphong: “Obama doesn’t say anything. He’s such a zero that he’s a minus one…. He does know the game (basketball). Once you get past the basketball court, you might as well talk to an avocado.” And it’s not even an insult.
-PM
Unlike a lot of the Internet Tough Guys and keyboard commandos chiming in on this question, this has actually happened to me, although it was during daylight hours.
I confronted an individual who was in the process of breaking into my apartment with a crowbar. He had just climbed thru the window when I aimed my shotgun at him and told him to freeze. He dropped the crowbar, dove out the window and ran like hell instead. I made a snap judgement not to shoot based on my gut reading of the circumstances. Had things gone down any differently, I would have had a big mess on my hands. Triple aught buckshot from 10 feet isn’t pretty.
I then called 911 and reported the incident. They took the crowbar and were able to lift the perp’s prints and arrest him… he was a frequent flier in the criminal justice system. The cops sounded like they had a pretty good idea of who he was just from my description. Anyway, he took a plea deal and I never had to go to court — either as a witness or to defend my actions.
In all, this was pretty much an ideal outcome for everyone. The situation was resolved without any shots fired, and justice was administered with due process. I was fully prepared to shoot, but am grateful I didn’t have to.
While my time in the military prepared me mentally and physically to take a life if necessary, doing so is something I would prefer to avoid. Dealing with the aftermath of a justified shooting, both legally and emotionally, would be a traumatic experience I would not wish on anyone.
In my opinion, self-restraint is the most important skill an armed citizen must nurture.
Stuffed Jalapenos Texas Style
2023 10 18 15 38
Ingredients
1/2 pound shredded jack cheese
1/2 pound shredded Cheddar cheese
1/2 pound hot sausage (such as Owens or Jimmy Dean)
1 1/2 cups Bisquick
1 egg, beaten
1 package Spicy Shake N Bake
20 to 30 jalapeno peppers (fresh or canned)
Instructions
If using canned jalapeno peppers, drain well. Slice the peppers in half lengthwise down one side only and scrape out the seeds.
Mix Bisquick, sausage and Cheddar in a large bowl, using your hands.
Put the beaten egg into a shallow bowl, the Shake N Bake into a shallow bowl, and a baking rack on a cookie sheet, both coated with cooking spray.
Stuff each pepper with shredded jack, then stick the halves back together, if separated.
Wrap a handful of the sausage mixture around the pepper in the shape of an elongated egg.
Dip into beaten egg and roll in Shake N Bake to coat evenly.
Place on baking rack.
When the peppers are all ready, bake at 350 degrees F for 25 minutes or until crisp.
I’ve worked with Chinese tech companies. Their engineers and scientists are devoted to their families, employers and country.
China has the capacity to leap frog the US in many different technologies. Take your pick, they are on it.
The Chinese government places a high value on a highly educated population. Engineering and scientific professionals are leading a revolution in advancing scientific innovation in China.
Their current leader, Xi, was a chemical engineer before becoming involved in his political career. In fact, many Chinese politicians are former engineers, refreshing thought isn’t it?
The motivations for innovation in the US and China are a key point in China leap frogging the US. Both countries reward success in innovation with financial incentives.
But, the Chinese have a greater sense of pride in their country and it’s future.
The US is presently extremely divided politically, current leadership is seeking short term monetary goals over the advancement of scientific innovation.
China may take the lead in further technological and scientific breakthroughs in this environment.
So some time back, I stopped at a highway side food joint to grab a bite before continuing on with the journey. After going through the menu, I decided to order a sandwich.
The order arrived within 5 minutes and I happily munched on it as I was hungry. Everything was fine until now. Now comes the shocker!
When the bill arrived, I observed that they had jacked up the prices to Rs 130/- whereas I clearly remembered seeing Rs. 100/- on the menu. I called the waiter and asked to him to get the menu card. The menu card clearly showed Rs 100/- printed against the item that I had ordered.
I immediately summoned the manager who gave this stupid reason for the discrepancy, “mam , this is an old menu. The rates have been revised since the implementation of GST”. I was like WTF. Why wasn’t I informed about this before. He then brought a new menu card which was hidden somewhere under the cashier’s table and handed it to me.
I had an argument with the manager and I refused to pay the revised fare. The manager relented in the end and took just Rs 100/- for the sandwich.
If not a scam, this can be termed as a very unethical way to squeeze money out of your customers. This particular junction had the advantage of being on a highway where people are in a hurry and will not bother to check the rates twice. Also, the food joints on a highway don’t need to build a loyal customer base as the visits are few and far between.
I have seen similar things happen to people before, even before the implementation of GST. They just show you a menu card and later on charge a higher fare saying that the rates have been recently revised and the new menu cards have not been printed yet. Now, I do make it a point to ask the waiter about the menu.
The Reason why Men are Walking Away from Dating (Ep. 252)
There is a major backlash from the LGBQ+ movement initiated by Obama in the West.
This question is clearly written by a Chinese hater who is totally indoctrinated and highly naive person who knows little truth and facts today.
I am sorry for you, the person who posed this question China has overtaken the U.S. in a host of measures today in 2023.
Let’s start with the most important one life expectancy. China overtook the U.S. life expectancy by 2021 and maintained it in 2022 at 77.8 versus the U.S. 77.0 years old.
Next the most important real purchasing power GDP taking cost of living into consideration China’s PPP overtook the U.S. in 2014 and over the last 8 years grew into an almost 50% lead over the U.S.
Another important area is growth. China alone is growing at 38.6% of entire worlds growth over the past decade. Meanwhile U.S. and all its G7 nations add up to only 25.6% growth of the world.
Next nations that has China as the biggest trading nations. Almost 170/195 nations has China as their leading trade partner, meanwhile the U.S. has less than 20/195 nations cite the U.S. as their biggest trading partner.
Another important facts is China has the lead in 37/44 key and strategic technology for today and tomorrow’s products while the U.S. leads in only 7/44. China is clearly today’s leading technology innovation leader in the world today. US is a distant second.
Next consumer power. China is by far the biggest consumer on planet earth. It’s middle income numbers is now 700 million and dwarfs the U.S. 3 times! Chinas market alone is 30% if the world market!
In military. China now has more men, tanks, boats and planes to combat the U.S. if need be. More importantly it just defends China whereas the U.S. needs to be offensive to many countries in the world. In high tech military China alone has a hypersonic missile technology that can hit the U.S. from anywhere at the speed if 10 times the speed of sound. It makes the dozen or so US aircraft carriers obsolete and sitting ducks.
I could go on another hundreds of points but this suffice. The U.S. is the leader only in name. Or at least by western media claims only.
A much better question will be, now that the U.S. has clearly become second fiddle to China, can it reclaim back its hegemony ever again? And the answer is it is impossible and the more it tries as it is doing now the faster China will grow against the U.S. Even India will overtake them by 2050 at the latest. The U.S. system and its philosophy will always deteriorate its economy. It simply needs to overstretch and over interfere resulting in ever growing. deficits and debts
Since it needs to watch its back perpetually it will always needs to overspend militarily and one can argue, the more it does the more enemies it has and the more it needs to defend itself. The U.S. is on a one way road into oblivion. In ten years US will have lost the dollar hegemony power and its has to worry if it can stay as it is now as a USA. Chances is before 2100 the United States will be a group of divided states.
It should be obvious to you that the US sanctions only accelerated China’s self-sufficiency in semiconductors. The US has totally failed by using sanctions instead of competing. The US technology strength is being weakened because of the hostile environment against the Chinese in the US and Chinese in the US are leaving to work in China.
The US couldn’t believe the results of Canada and Japan’s results of opening up the Mate 60 Pro chip to find zero US content so it too opened up the 9000s to find the same results so it remains mum.
The best the US can do is to claim it invented the transistor so obviously China copied.
My daughter and I once walked out of pet store carrying a very large dog’s tug of war rope. At that time we had a 115 lb lab / great Dane mix. We picked up the rope as soon as we walked into the store but then began browsing and were distracted by a litter of ferrets. We were playing with them and totally forgot that we had the rope. Walked out of the store, chatting and generally having a good time. Suddenly, there’s a voice behind us and a young man following us who said, “Excuse me, were you planning on paying for that rope?” My poor daughter was mortified! She was about 15 at the time and was so easily embarrassed that this just tipped her right over. She dropped the rope and darted across the hallway to lean up against one of the other storefronts. I think she was trying to pretend that she wasn’t with me! LOL I personally thought it was hilarious and picked up the rope, turned the young man and apologized, telling him how we had been distracted by the ferrets and I was so sorry that we had walked out with the rope without paying for it. he just laughed and said that he didn’t think we were trying to steal it as she was waving it around in the air as we were walking. I will never forget the horror on her face! I was happy to realize that I would never get a phone call about my daughter shoplifting.
This actually happened to me many years ago. I was a property manager of 80 units. My boss and I had a heated exchange and in haste he fired me on the spot. He asked me to stay until he could find a replacement. “Sorry Charlie!” I cleaned out my desk and handed him the keys, and I left the property of my own volition….
I was off-site the rest of the week. My now former boss was blowing up my phone. “Where are you?” then it was, “You are needed in the office?” I ignored his calls. He then messaged me on Facebook and said it was “with great urgency that we talk”. As it turned-out 2 members of the office staff (there were 3 all together) quit! The residents had started a petition to reinstate me – 60-plus signatures in all. He would not cave and subsequently received somewhere around 15 to 20- thirty day notices in effect terminating their leases. Additionally, some of the residents (refused to pay their rent. The community quickly became unstable and increasing hostile towards him. The morning shift manager at Tiger Mart next door to the complex – a tenant of mine, refused him service.….
He offered me my job back. I let him sweat for a day, then accepted and returned to my job. I was never so moved by an experience as I was at that job, not because my boss had given me my job back, but, rather, because the tenants did!
Ukraine: Financing The War About Hegemony
First some news bits about Ukraine. We will then come to the real issue the war is fought about.
In Kyiv, officials are at a loss as to what might happen next. Their staunchest military ally suddenly looks unreliable, despite assurances from President Biden and others the U.S. will remain steadfast until Ukraine’s invaders are defeated.
“We are freaking out. For us it is a disaster,” said Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, a senior Ukrainian MP who chairs the committee on the country’s integration with the European Union. … The Ukrainian government heavily relies on foreign financial and military aid to keep the economy running and expects to receive $42.8 billion from international donors in the coming year. A big chunk of that would come from the United States. … “Unfortunately, some [U.S.] lawmakers found it possible to seek trade offs while further aid to Ukraine is in the air,” Vladyslav Faraponov, head of the board of the Institute of American Studies, told POLITICO. “The key message that Kyiv needs to deliver is that we can win together and do it as soon as possible to save a lot of good men and women.”
So the real problem is that Kiev has no chance to win. See for example The Times which talked with (archived) Ukrainian mortar crews near Robotyne, where the Ukrainian counteroffensive is stuck:
The KAB [glide bombs], as well as mines, underground fortifications and a deluge of suicide drones, have pinned down Ukraine’s assault brigades. It is why last month’s penetration of Russian fortifications failed to lead to a full breakdown in their defences.
All over the Robotyne-Verbove line, Ukrainian forces are bogged down.
The U.S. public is no longer convinced that the gargantuan spending on Joe Biden’s private war makes any sense:
The two-day poll, which concluded on Oct. 4, revealed that only 41% of respondents agreed with the statement that Washington “should provide weapons to Ukraine,” while 35% disagreed, and the remainder were uncertain. … Support for U.S. weapon shipments is down from May, when a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed 46% of Americans backed sending arms, while 29% were opposed and the rest unsure.
A few more month and a majority will reject any new money or weapon shipment. But don’t fear. Congress critters will find ways to dump more money into a hole:
On Sunday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said it would take about “$60 or $70 billion” to get Ukraine through 2024, not the $24 billion.
Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), chair of the Senate Defense Appropriations Committee, said the package they’re considering would fund the war for 15 months, bringing it into 2025. The package would help the Biden administration’s plans to continue supporting an open-ended conflict.
David Ignatius, the CIA’s unofficial spokesperson at the Washington Post, reports of two opinions in Kiev:
The conflict is bleeding the country out. Ukrainians I spoke with during a four-day visit know they can’t keep fighting forever seeking what might be an unachievable victory. But they won’t stop, either. … Oleksiy Goncharenko, an opposition member from embattled Odessa on the Black Sea, presses members of the ruling party of President Volodymyr Zelensky. “I am very concerned,” he says. “Why? Take a look at the front. It doesn’t change. For a year it doesn’t change. But it was paid for by a huge amount of lives. … Ukraine can’t fight ‘as long as it takes.’ That will be a catastrophe.”
For Ukraine it already IS a catastrophe.
But if Ukraine seriously questions whether it can survive a fight that might take many years, then it needs to think about a way to freeze this conflict on its own terms — with a security guarantee from the United States as part of that deal.
The Ukraine can not freeze the conflict on its own terms. The U.S. can not give Ukraine any reasonable security guarantee.
A security guaranteed would leave the U.S. at the grace of lunatics in Kiev. They would be enabled to launch, at any time, a new conflict with Russia. A conflict the U.S., with nuclear weapons, would then be obliged to join. No Senate will ever approve such a treaty.
Ukraine won’t sue for peace. As many people have told me this week, it’s too personal. As a superpower, the United States can try to steer this conflict toward a settlement that protects Ukraine and doesn’t reward Russian aggression. But don’t ask Ukrainians to give up their cause. They won’t do it.
If the U.S. stops financing Ukraine its people will have no choice.
But the war is about more than Ukraine and the U.S. will finance it because its neoconservative leaders believe in its larger cause.
The war in Ukraine is a proxy-act for the U.S. in support of its quest for global hegemony.
For Russia, China, and much of the rest of the world, the war is thus about the elimination of that quest.
As President Putin explained in his recent Valdai speech in Sochi:
The Ukraine crisis is not a territorial conflict, and I want to make that clear. Russia is the world’s largest country in terms of land area, and we have no interest in conquering additional territory. We still have much to do to properly develop Siberia, Eastern Siberia, and the Russian Far East. This is not a territorial conflict and not an attempt to establish regional geopolitical balance. The issue is much broader and more fundamental and is about the principles underlying the new international order.
Lasting peace will only be possible when everyone feels safe and secure, understands that their opinions are respected, and that there is a balance in the world where no one can unilaterally force or compel others to live or behave as a hegemon pleases even when it contradicts the sovereignty, genuine interests, traditions, or customs of peoples and countries. In such an arrangement, the very concept of sovereignty is simply denied and, sorry, is thrown in the garbage.
That is why the war is going to be a long one.
Putin though has no doubt who will win:
Russia was, is and will be one of the foundations of this new world system, ready for constructive interaction with everyone who strives for peace and prosperity, but ready for tough opposition against those who profess the principles of dictatorship and violence. We believe that pragmatism and common sense will prevail, and a multipolar world will be established.
Will it? I certainly hope so but there is doubt that it will be during the next five or ten years.
Posted by b on October 6, 2023 at 14:46 UTC | Permalink
China’s ‘Long March 9’ Is About To TAKEOVER The Space Industry
My sister is 4 years older to me. I was 12 years old when I was in 7th grade. She & her classmates were 16. One of her classmates was very close to our school principal. So, she got the principal to allow her to teach my 7th grade class for 1 class period (45 minutes).
She knew my sister well. My sister was always at the top of her class. I had the reputation of being lazy and talkative and distracting myself & other students. Well, when I knew that my sister’s friend would be teaching my class, I decided to be a good boy and not give her a hard time.
I had an excellent memory, then. I remembered everything instantly when I paid attention. So, I put my head on my desk, closed my eyes, and paid attention to everything she said. I was in the very front of the class. So, she could see me the whole time that she was taking/teaching.
My plan to please her backfired! She angrily called on me, by name, and asked me why I was sleeping in class. I was shocked! I told her that I wasn’t sleeping but that it helped me to pay attention when I closed my eyes. This was true. The whole class knew it.
But she didn’t believe me. She asked me what I remembered & understood of the last 20 minutes of her lecture. I recited every main point, in order. Then, I explained what each point meant. Now, she was in shock 😆
I put my head on my desk and closed my eyes again. She didn’t call on me again. But she changed her attitude toward me, pretty much forever, after that day. She is currently the principal of that school.
What China’s rare earths should be controlled by the West?
Recently, European Commission President Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen made a statement suggesting that Western countries should control China’s rare earth resources.
This statement was interpreted as an attempt to strip China of its control and operation over rare earths and other precious minerals.
The remark immediately sparked vigorous discussions online.
Experts believe that addressing the global rare earth issue requires collective efforts and collaboration among all parties for mutual development.
Von der Leyen’s statement reflects the European Union’s dependence on and concerns about China’s rare earths. Rare earths are critical raw materials for the high-tech industry and play a vital role in economic and social development.
While countries like Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina have the largest reserves of lithium, China possesses abundant reserves of rare earths and advanced extraction technology with improved environmental costs.
Statements like “We restrict Russian energy prices” and “We want to control China’s rare earth resources” reflect a historical legacy of domination and would be better off directly stating “robbery.” In the past, advanced technologies were predominantly controlled by the West and gradually shifted into China’s hands. It is not that the West no longer desires control, but rather they are no longer capable of exerting it.
When it comes to China’s energy and mineral resources, slogans are ineffective. Control can only be achieved through actual capability.
At one point in my life I was a flight paramedic in New Mexico. The owner of the flight service had decided he was going to sell the company, so he hired a consultant to make his company more attractive for selling at a better price.
This was a disaster.
The consultant immediately began “inspecting” each flight base, and insulted every employee therein, implying we weren’t working hard enough. (The medical teams could be required to work 48 hours without a break; our working conditions were covered under an 1886 Interstate Commerce Act – yup, Pullman Porters. The pilots couldn’t work more than 12 hours, covered under FAA regulations.). I would occasionally get off shift and walk zig-zag to my car, my ears had such bad disequilibrium and I was so sleep-deprived.
But wait, it gets worse. This wolf-in-sheeps- clothing started calling pilots before they were about to begin flying technically difficult missions, pressuring them and distracting them. Essentially starting fights via phone call. You can imagine what this did to institutional attitude of “safety first”: Four months later, a company plane crashed in the Lincoln National Forest outside Ruidoso, NM with all souls on board lost: The pilot, the medic, the nurse (whom I had trained); the patient and the patient’s mommy. The medic’s death orphaned three little girls: Their daddy had taken off a long time ago.
But wait, it’s worse: Four months later, the company has a *second* fatal crash, a helicopter in El Paso. My husband was supposed to have been on that shift as medic. The FAA pulled the company’s ticket to fly, and the company was sold for a tenth of it’s former worth.
The consultant? He had been hired by at least one other, larger air medical company for these “services”. Wherever he went, fatal crashes occurred.
Yeah, evil.
Fred Rogers Interview on David Letterman | Irish Girl Reaction
Fred Rogers, affectionately known by children across America as Mr. Rogers was previously unknown to me until I watched him for the first time on this channel. In Ireland, we grew up without this gem. Frederick McFeely Rogers, known as Fred Rogers , was an American television host , puppeteer , Presbyterian minister , and educator . He was the creator of the children’s show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood , which ran for three decades on PBS public television . Mr. Rogers did not do a lot of interviews, but on this occasion he made an exception for David Letterman.
The Late Show with David Letterman was an American late -night talk show created and hosted by David Letterman and broadcast on CBS . The show aired for 22 years and was produced by Worldwide Pants Incorporated , the production company managed by Letterman, and by CBS Television Studios . Among America’s Top Late Shows, this show ranks second in cumulative average viewers per time and third in average episodes per time.
Russian President Confirms “Burevestnik” Cruise Missile Success
Russian President Vladimir Putin has confirmed the successful testing of the Burevestnik” cruise missile in the Arctic. This new missile has a nuclear-powered engine, giving it unlimited range around the world, while carrying a nuclear bomb.
Once the missile is launched, it will continue to travel, even orbiting the earth, until such time as the Russian military instructs it to hit a particular target. Thus, there is NO DEFENSE from this weapon.
According to Vladimir Putin and the Russian Ministry of Defense, the missile’s dimensions are comparable to those of the Kh-101 cruise missile and it is equipped with a small-sized nuclear power unit. The claimed operational range is orders of magnitude greater than that of Kh-101. As shown in an official presentation, the missile starts from an inclined launcher using a detachable rocket booster.
Pavel Ivanov from VPK-news states that the cruise missile is one and a half to two times the size of the Kh-101, the wings of the Burevestnik are rooted “on top of the fuselage, rather than below it like on the Kh-101”, and also notes that there are “characteristic protrusions where air is most likely heated by the nuclear reactor”. According to Ivanov, the mass of the Burevestnik is “several times to order of magnitude” greater than that of the Kh-101, which eliminates Tu-160 and Tu-95 as potential carriers of the missile.
According to Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Burevestnik is a nuclear thermal rocket with a solid-fueled booster engine. The length of the missile is 12 m (39 ft) at launch and 9 m (30 ft) in flight. The nose has the shape of an “ellipse 1 m (3.3 ft) × 1.5 m (4.9 ft) in size”.
Military expert Anton Lavrov in the Izvestia article suggested that the design of the Burevestnik uses a ramjet engine, which, unlike the more traditional propulsion systems for nuclear weapons, will have radioactive exhaust throughout its entire operation.
Stratfor, an American geopolitical intelligence platform, assumes that Burevestnik utilizes a turbojet engine and a liquid-fueled booster.
According to James Hockenhull, the UK’s Chief of Defense Intelligence (CDI), the Burevestnik is a “sub-sonic nuclear-powered cruise missile system which has global reach and would allow attack from unexpected directions”. Per Hockenhull, the missile would have “a near indefinite loiter time”.
Here’s what you don’t know: You don’t make money in gold mining by panning. The reason you pan is to find a stream with enough gold in it to justify setting up your sluice box. So…if you want to haul a sluice to Alaska you could – if you were once again really lucky – pay for your trip.
Just so you know: very few of the people who participated in either the Alaska Gold Rush or the California Gold Rush made any money. John Nordstrom, who participated in the Alaska Gold Rush, needed two years to earn $13,000 – which, of course, was a hell of a lot of money in 1899, when he came back to Seattle. (You’re thinking that name sounds familiar. You would be quite correct. Mr. Nordstrom pooled the money he made with that a Seattle shoemaker named Carl Wallin made up there and opened a shoe store they called Wallin & Nordstrom at Fourth and Pike in Seattle. From there the mighty Nordstrom department store empire was born.) The guy who made the most money from the Alaska Gold Rush was Clinton Filson, who stayed in Seattle and sold equipment to the participants heading for Alaska. His business is still in operation, selling clothing to hunters and loggers.
My father went with my mother and bought a high-end vacuum cleaner at a store they had frequented for over 30 years. It is important to note this store had a customer promise “satisfaction guaranteed, or money refunded.”
When they got home with the vacuum, my father uncrated it and put it together. The next day, my mother went to use it and it did not turn on. She checked the cord, the electrical outlet (with another item, which worked). She unplugged it and left it for my father to examine when he got home. He could not get it to turn on either.
Two days later I went with him to the store (I was about 8 years old at the time). He brought it back to the sales desk where it was purchased (back then they did not have customer return desks at this store) and stated the problem. The salesperson would not give him a refund or an exchange (my father wanted an exchange). The salesperson went into a long speech about it was on the manufacturer, that they had never had one returned with a problem before, and asked if my father sure it was not something he had done, etc. etc. (I can’t remember all of what he said, but he did go on a long time about it).
My father patiently waited until the salesperson had finished their spiel, and asked does the “satisfaction guaranteed, or money refunded” – while pointing at the sign that stated this above his head – no longer apply?
The salesperson then went into his previously stated issues again, without answering my father’s question about the guarantee.
My father then asked again – so you are refusing to exchange or provide me a refund? The salesperson said yes.
My father then showed the salesperson his store credit card, and sated he had been a customer for over 30 years. My father then stated that he has spent tens of thousand of dollars in the store.
My father then stated again that he would like to exchange the vacuum. The salesperson still said no.
My father then took a pair of scissors that were on the counter and cut his store credit card into pieces onto the counter.
Right at that moment a manager was walking by, noticed what was going on, and asked my father what the problem was.
My father never raises his voice, he is the calmest person I know – but I could tell he was very frustrated and disappointed. There was an angry strain in his voice, which shocked me to hear. He told the manager he was refused an exchange or refund by the salesperson for this vacuum (he held it up), which he bought a few days ago, but it did not work. He also informed him about his customer history at the store. The manager dismissed the salesperson curtly and told my father the problem would be corrected.
My father was not having it. He told the manager it was too late; that he had been disrespected as a long-time customer, the store did not uphold its guarantee, and that he had already cut up his store credit card. He told the manager to keep the vacuum and that he would never step inside that store again.
Then he turned and we left.
I asked my father on the way home why he left the vacuum. He said that it did not work – so why take it home. I said that must have cost him a lot of money. He said the money was irrelevant and that it was not that much. I then asked why he would not take the managers offer to help. My father then explained that he and my mother bought most of what we have in the house from that store. He said that the main reason they always shopped there was because of the good service and the guarantee – although this was the first time he had to use the guarantee.
He said he liked the store – but he was disappointed with how poorly they handled the situation – especially as it was his first complaint. He said as a long-time customer, if this was how they dealt with problems – he would never shop there again. And he never did.
He sat me down later that day and explained that salespeople will most often be very nice when you are buying something, but the true test of a store’s integrity (I had to look the word up later), is when you have a problem. He said if I ever have a problem with obtaining good service due to a faulty product – it is best to never shop there again, as it shows they do not care about you as a customer.
Edit: My fault and apologies, but I did not want to make this a long rambling story. Nonetheless, many people have commented that the fault of one salesperson should not condemn the store. While I can understand that viewpoint, there were two people involved, one was the salesperson and the other his supervisor. They were both there together and the supervisor did not correct the salesperson. Yes, the event did catch the eye of the manager and he said he would correct the situation – but the damage was done.
Likewise, I find it interesting the way some people get very heated over this story and criticize my father’s behavior. Some answers are judgmental, rude and insulting. Yet, these people fail to recognize that people are individuals and may and can behave differently then they would. Everyone has their own opinion, which is as it should be, but I find it weird that they believe everyone should behave as they do or the other person is wrong. Whether poor service in a store or restaurant, it is everyone’s choice to never go back to that establishment – not anyone else’s. Accept that fact instead of becoming judgmental. Sometimes, a person’s trust gets broken beyond repair.
Thanks.
Zelensky, EU; desperate and frightened during Granada summit
I had a tenant who was a carpenter by trade. He built a nice built-in entertainment center in my living room. Shortly after moving in he was doing a kitchen remodel for someone and brought home the nice, oak cabinets they were foolishly replacing. He installed them in my house free of charge. I essentially got a free kitchen remodel out of it. I did him the solid of buying him upgraded appliances for the kitchen after that.
He did this on a couple other occasions too where he’d come across something of value from a job site and bring it back and install it at my property, greatly upgrading the house. He installed new light features, stair rails, closet shelves. He also built me nice shelves in the garage. He never asked me for any compensation either. I would have loved to credit him or something but back then I was new and in the red with the mortgage on the house and what I charged for rent so I couldn’t afford to offer him much. He didn’t care, he said “way I see it I live here and it’s making for a nicer home for me.”
Whenever something would break or need repair, he’d just fix it himself. Not a single maintenance call was needed in the four and half years he lived there. Unfortunately the guy had a checkered past and a few run-ins with the law. He went to jail (relatively short stints) a few times while there and I’d cut him some slack getting caught up when he’d get out, never trying to evict or remove him. Unfortunately he got himself in too deep finally and got locked up with a ten year sentence. Sadly that was the end of him, but no joke he probably added $100K of value to my property from what he did there.
Sometimes you decide it’s better to die than live in a certain way
That’s when things become dangerous
At this stage you decide, since you have decided to die already, you will take down as many people as you want
Women, Children, Old Women, Old Men, Generals, Wives of Generals, Grandkids of Generals, Ordinary Civilians – you just don’t care anymore
That’s how Taliban fought
That’s how the legendary Viet Minh fought
The Mighty US Army could frontally kill many Vietnamese but a video of a single US Marine with his belly ripped open and being fed his own intestines would give the Viet Minh a larger win especially as journalists in their own country called these marines murderers
Ready to die but kill as many as possible before doing so
It’s why peace is never easy in the middle East
Most people aren’t ready to die
It’s unlikely that Taiwanese would be ready to die. They are too practical.
Ukranians and Russians are less practical but still would probably surrender if the going is too tough
It’s the Palestinians , because of the Fundamental Islamic belief in Jannat, who are ready to die provided they kill
If Israel do brutally crush Gaza , these Palestinians may die, in fact they WILL DIE
Yet their death will anger the Muslims in all of the Middle East and those living in Israel
One day a Israeli Generals 18 year old son, walking to a movie with his girlfriend will be stabbed to death by an angry arab boy, in revenge for his fathers actions in Gaza
Another day, in a Salon, two ordinary women coming for a hairdo would be blown up by another 15 year old girl with a rough IED into pieces
Israelis can never be at peace. Never happily take a meal. Never enjoy life without always fearing some attack somewhere
So they will leave Israel and take citizenships in US and Europe
Plus every Islamic Nation will condemn Israel for destroying Gaza and any hope of peace with Israel will be thrown out of the window
Thus the Palestinians with their death would deliver a huge win for their cause against Israel than keep living without power, concrete in blown out buildings
So my guess is Palestinians know they can’t win a conventional war against Israel
Yet they also know that if Israel invades Gaza and kills them all and takes over, then Israels biggest nightmares will start and so will Americas
There are 52 Million Muslims in these Countries and assuming even 1% decide to take revenge for Gaza, that’s 520,000 furious Muslims ready to die but take down as many as possible from WITHIN ISRAEL, US and Europe
So my guess is Israel may finally invade Gaza and they may win the battle but with their sacrifice Palestinians will win the war
Unless Israel is smart, decides not to escalate and do their usual bombing to atom routine for 3–4 days and then once Hamas calls a ceasefire , go back to status quo
Or
NEGOTIATE A PEACE
That would be the best way to keep up survival
Man Goes VIRAL After Refusing To Pay For Woman’s Dinner
In 2002 I moved to Canada with my heavily pregnant wife and 3-year-old daughter, looking for a new life and yeah, maybe a better standard of living. I’d been working in various Tech Support roles in London, earning a little over £50k a year, so we were doing pretty well for ourselves. I’d been in contact with agencies in Toronto and they’d said I’d have no problems finding work and with my experience, etc., I should expect $80k+, so not quite the same, but close enough to make it work.
But things didn’t quite work out as we planned… Without a degree, my experience was irrelevant. I hadn’t needed a degree to fix computers in the UK, but it turns out that in Canada, I did. So all those $80k a year jobs vanished from view, and I ended up at a temp agency earning minimum wage ($6.85 an hour) moving things around a factory. My wife got part-time night-shift work to boost the family income to the point we didn’t starve and between us we were able to provide 24-hour child care to our young children.
After 8 years I’d had enough, and we came home. I do miss Canada massively, but TBH we’re doing better here now than we were doing there.
So why the personal pre-amble? My opinion on the standard of living in Canada is heavily coloured by my experiences – and struggling every day to pay rent and feed my family doing lower-paid temp work certainly makes my experiences different from someone else who went straight into a good job from day one. So now you know why.
I‘ll focus on the big, important concerns – let’s start with housing.
Houses are generally bigger than in the UK, but a lot of that is because many houses in Ontario have basements, and that’s true across a lot of North America. I converted mine into an extra bedroom, a workshop for me and a large playroom for the kids. But rents are also a little more in comparable areas – a family home in Toronto will cost about the same to rent as one on the outskirts of London, but elsewhere, you’ll probably pay more in Canada. So bigger houses, but they cost a little more.
image 6
Here’s the house we finally managed to buy. $150k in 2005. Big enough for a family of 4 and detached as you can see, which is nice, but not really “better” than the same money would have got you in a comparable British city. Middlesbrough, perhaps?
Bills. Phone bills are cheaper, cable costs about the same, hydro (electric & water) is a little more than the UK – but that’s probably due to the cost of running the AC for 4+ months of the year. DIY tends to be cheaper in Canada – Home Depot definitely beats B&Q, so keeping your house running is cheaper if you’re a bit handy.
Cars are obviously larger on average, but that certainly doesn’t make them better. Sure there are lots of pickup trucks around, but mostly in Canada it’s cars, mini-vans and modern cross-over style SUVs. New cars are cheaper than the UK, and quite a bit cheaper, but used cars are not. In the UK, you can spend £500 a get a decent runner with a long MOT that might last a few years. No chance of that in Canada. Remember that Top Gear episode where they tried to buy cheap cars in Florida for under $1,000? Yeah, that’s real. Anything even driveable decent is $2,000 + taxes (don’t get me started on that!) and when every penny counts, it’s quite an eye-opener. Ever heard of an Eagle Vista Wagon? Nope. Neither had I, but that’s what I drove for two years because it’s all I could afford.
image 5
Here she is – what a beauty!
Car running costs seem cheap because gas is cheap, but car insurance is not. Oh, so not! Even after several years of driving experience in Canada, insurance cost several times what I paid in the UK. Doing the maths, driving in Canada only gets cheaper than the UK, once you start doing more than 12,000 miles a year. That’s when the cheaper cost of gas drops the cost per mile below UK levels.
Food is not really cheaper than the UK, even if you shop at Walmart all the time. Yeah, portions are larger, everything has more sugar in it, and quality is objectively poorer – although I’m not sure how that affects the standard of living – but your overall food budget will be about the same. Take-out is marginally cheaper I guess, but restaurants are probably a little dearer when you factor in the almost mandatory tipping.
Appliances are about the same. You do get a bigger fridge for your buck, but then your bottles of juice and bags of milk take up more space, so it evens out. Computers, TVs, all that stuff, about the same cost.
But all this is just financial stuff. Basically I’m saying that overall, things probably cost the same. So I’d say it’s pretty even so far.
What really matters in standard of living are the non-materialistic things…
Holidays. Brits get 20 days minimum, but in Canada, I got 10 days a year, and only managed to get up to 15 days after 4 years’ service. Might be different for higher-paying white-collar jobs, but down at the low end of the employment market, it’s a big difference. That’s a big ol’ win for the UK.
Countryside/open spaces. Canadians seem to think that 12:00 is a good time to hit the beach, which meant we had three hours pretty much to ourselves on our trips to the beach, and that’s bloody wonderful I can tell you. Then the natives turn up with trucks full of meat for their big BBQ and we head off into the woods. Big forests, open spaces, and a lot of them can be quite quiet. It’s different, it’s wonderful, but is it better? Spend a morning hiking to the top of Snowdon, or take an Autumn drive around Scotland. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the UK is just as beautiful to my eye as Canada – a little smaller and more crowded, but just as lovely.
TL;DR – it all comes down to money. If you were to get a similarly paid job in Canada, would you notice a difference? Probably not. In some areas, yes, but in others definitely not. All depends on what’s important to you.
But if, like me, you slipped down the ladder a few rungs, then you’d definitely notice a drop in your standard of living.
Thanks for reading this far 🙂
Edit #1: This was my first ever answer on Quora and I’m blown away by the response. 5k likes in 24 hours is amazing. I never expected that. Thanks to you all.
And just to clear up a couple things I noticed in the comments – I wasn’t on minimum wage for 8 years! I ended up with a not horrible $50k working in the auto industry and we did OK for a while… until 2008 of course. That kick-started the spiral that led me back to Blighty. Cheers all.
Edit #2: Not even two weeks in and over 8k likes. Amazing! Thank you all so much for your likes and comments. If I’d have known this answer would be so well received, I would have spent more than 10 minutes on it, and maybe explained a little more.
On the subject of “checking before I moved”, well… I did. I contacted several agencies in Toronto, sent them my CVs, had productive chats on the phones, all over the course of several months starting before I even booked our flights. They all said the same thing: “Yeah, there’s loads of jobs, with your experience you’ll do fine.” I believed them…
I went to visit my first choice agency – the conversation went something like this:
Her: “Ah yes, come in Mr. Hall. Let’s have a look at you resumé. Yes… yes… all looks good… yes… oh, you don’t mention your degree.”
Me: “Um… I don’t have one. I mean, I went to University, but I didn’t actually graduate.”
Her: “Oh. Oh dear… And why was that?”
My internal monologue: “Because I decided to be rock star instead, OK? And how did that work out, Stevie? Shut-up – she’s looking at me funny because I’m mumbling to myself!”
Me: “Uh… personal tragedy, um thing, you know… Is that going to be problem?”
30 minutes later I’m standing on a cold Toronto sidewalk crying into a box of Timbits and wondering if I should have accepted that $8 an hour job at a cat-food factory she finally offered me after I begged…
You realize that by sanctioning Chinese companies in the tech space, you are telling them to develop their own technologies, standards and supply chains which eventually become completely independent from western companies, regulations and sanctions, don’t you?
I live in Hong Kong, have lived in China, have been to Xinjiang. And it drives me nuts when I read something about China that is simply not true.
Should I just let it slide when people say that I had been oppressed in China and just didn’t realize it all that time, the whole 12 years? That there is no freedom in Hong Kong anymore and permission is required from the CCP to even take a pee? That Uighurs in Xinjiang have vanished by the millions, their organs harvested, and kept in pods as human batteries to generate power after the collapse of the 3 gorges dam?
Ok, got a bit carried away but you get the idea. There’s a lot of misinformation out there. Some of it is just ignorance. But there’s also a lot of malicious propaganda from instigators with a certain agenda.
I do let certain things slide, have to pick your battles. Sometimes I joke about it and hopefully some people will see the absurdity in some of these narratives.
But yeah, without these narratives I probably wouldn’t even be writing on Quora and would be wasting my time on something else instead.
Money Makes Money – You must re-invest what you have earned if you want to make more.
Wealth Does Not Come From Your Job – It is the best way to make capital at first. But true wealth comes from the passive income you make.
It Takes More Money Than You Think – Millionaires do not lead the lifestyle that they are imagined to. Most people would need ~ $20 Million to lead a lifestyle close to what they imagine.
It Takes Time – Get-rich-quick schemes do not work. If you want to be rich you must invest your money and be patient.
Some Debts Are Good – Leveraging a debt can be of huge benefit if used right.
Rich People Do Not Look Rich – Most of them are comfortable being who they are. They do not need clothes to show off.
It’s Not What Ultimately Matters – Sure, money makes things easier… to a point. After that its about what you do not what’s in your bank account.
Most Wealthy People Do Not Have Much Cash – Their bank accounts are often rather small. It’s their assets that make them reach the high net worth they have.
Where You Are Does Not Define Your Actions – The wealthy can still make money on vacation. Their actions are not bound by their situation or location but by their standards to themselves.
Money Is Always A Means To An End – The question is, do you know your end? What will you actually use the money for? Why acquire so much?
I went into work one morning and I tried to log into my computer but couldn’t. I called the help desk and was told that all my credentials were disabled by my manager, but I still had access to the HR website. I immediately went onto the site and filed for a LOA to take care of some health issues I had been putting off and leave the office.
On the drive home my manager calls and wants me in his office for a meeting. I told my manager that I am in LOA and would be out for 6 months. This gave me time to get my health fixed, stay on the insurance, collect short term disability, and look for a new job.
Georgia Guidestones Darkest Secrets Revealed | Destroyed by a villain or a hero?
On July 6, 2022, a bomb detonated on a 5-acre plot of farmland in Elberton, Georgia. The explosion destroyed a large monument that had stood on the property for over 40 years. Known as “The Georgia Guidestones”, it was four monolithic slabs of granite, weighing over 230,000 pounds, that contained a set of rules for a more peaceful and orderly society. The identity of the builder was a mystery for 40 years, but today I’ll tell you who he was.
But why did he want to keep his identity a secret?
Probably for the same reason the Georgia Guidestones were destroyed. Because, according to the Guidestones, the way to a perfect society is through a one-world government, genetic and racial purity, and massive global depopulation. In other words: A New World Order.
Many years ago (40+) I worked for a grocery store, Fry’s Food Stores, relatively large chain on the west coast. I started off cleaning floors, with another guy about my age (16 or 17 yrs old).
These were the days when stores were not open 24 hours a day, so stocking and subsequent cleaning was a little different than today. Carts with products we wheeled to the head of each isle, and the stockers would work on one end of the store, towards the other end. When they were done with an isle, we would break the boxes down, put them onto the carts, then push the carts back to the shipping and receiving area. Once we got a few isle cleared, we would start to clean and/or strip & wax. I believe this one day it was cleaning only, so it goes fast.
Nearing the end of our shift, we were done with the store and had some time to burn, so we started moving the carts around and running the floor machine up in down the areas in shipping & receiving area. One of the “older” stockers from the produce department was getting ready to clock in. He looked at us and said “What are you cleaning this area for, it just going to get dirty again”.
My colleague, never skipping a beat said “Why do you wipe your ass after taking a shit, it just going to get dirty again”. Priceless!! The stocker stood there a minute, shook his head and walked off……
The Satellite War: If I Compare Both, CHINA is The Winner
It’s not about the “trade war”, it’s about the technological blockage war, so the answer is “negative”.
Back to what the question may attempt to address, and in any case war is war, the launch of the Huawei Mate 60 Pro is another indicator that the US cannot win that “technological blockage war”. Not even that ‘China’ need to pump money into Huawei to achieve that in the process.
Back to the fundamentals, China has the human capital and money resources to face the ‘US challenge’, and in history, China had achieve ‘break through’s’ time and time again from atomic and nuclear power, satellite and ICM technologies, GPS and space … etc. So, there’s plenty of example in history to ‘demonstrate’/’illustrate’ that ability.
So, it’s only another example.
There are more to that. Have you wondered why ‘Huawei’ had pick this timing? Why provoke the US? It’s not just a ‘sales drive’ since even without such high profile, Huawei can still mostly achieve its sales target as it still has many fans in China. That’s something to think about.
I got hired by a chip manufacturer and the HR lady was bragging up the stock options that the company offers:
HR Lady: “Noone else offers these.”
Me: “What’s the purchase price?”
HR: “29.95″
Me: “Huh. What’s the split price?”
HR: “30.00″
Me: “So when would I ever exercise that option?”
HR: “Any time you want.”
Me: “You’re not understanding. The purchase price is a nickel under the split.”
HR: “But then you have 2.”
Me: “Yes. But 99% of the time I can go buy it on the open market for under the option price. There’s a very narrow window where you can actually exercise this option before the split.”
HR: “But then you have 2.”
Me: “Yes, I realize that. Let me explain this another way…”
Don’t remember what I said after that, but the response was “But then you have 2.”
I gave up after a while, disappointed.
After about a month on the job I was outside on a break and fire trucks and ambulances started rolling into the parking lot. All of the emergency response staff were wearing gas masks. After a while the stretchers started coming out. 14 of my coworkers were taken to the hospital via ambulance.
By this point I was already at the evacuation point watching from there. I kept looking around and waiting for the people to start coming out, but they never did. I finally went to the security officer at the front desk who confirmed that there was no evacuation. So I decided to go home “sick”.
The next day our morning meeting was fun. The boss confirmed there was a hydrogen bromide leak. I asked him why there was no evacuation and he said that “all evacuations needed to be approved by the VP of Production.”
Well la-ti-dah! What about us poor schleps on the graveyard shift? We’re supposed to just sit there patiently breathing poisonous gas while someone calls the VP of Production out of bed to get his almighty approval?
I went on a soap box tirade directed at the company and quit right there.
I wish this was an isolated incident but I have numerous past employer stories involving massive safety violations, unfair treatment of employees, and even outright wage theft. Unfortunately this sort of exploitation is common for blue collar workers, and it hasn’t gotten any better over the years.
My Social Security Nightmare/ What I learned in Manila Embassy
Steve seemed such a surley man. Unsuprisingly older than me by a couple decades since this was my first professional job as a newly minted college graduate, he seemed to growl at me whenever I saw him.
With the confidence only available with youth, I judged him.
I judged him mean, old, and a bit scary.
Imagine my horror when after about a year on this entry level job when I was reassigned to work for Steve. Of course, the reality was that I knew nothing about him.
What happened over the course of the next year was one of those special times of life that changes who you are forever. I learned that while I knew nothing about him, he knew quite a bit about me. Turns out that this wasn’t some corporately bland reassignment, but, rather, he asked to take me on as a project.
As I got to know Steve, it turned out that the gravelly voice, which I can still hear in my imagination as I write, was just his voice. And the surley demeanor I had judged so harshly was a product of a direct and unassuming style this loquatious post-adolescent did not yet grok.
One teaching moment in particular is one I’ll never forget. I carry this lesson with me every day.
You see, I’d made a mistake. Not a huge one, but a clear screw-up. I had a plan for spin control. I was confident in the plan. The lies were off-white lies at best.
But Steve believed in me enough to ask questions gently. And after he had twisted me into a logical knot, he said, and I’ll never forget his words, “Tony, you can do better than this.” He proceeded to teach me the value of not spinning and just dealing with my own limitations as a human. He showed me the real value of honesty: building trust.
And, Steve was right. I came clean and it was all ok. And, a few months later when I made a yet bigger mistake, that was ok too.
I got to know Steve better over the next couple of years. I learned that we shared some basic interests and religious faith, but he was not the type to over-share or brag. Sadly, when I had this incredible access to him, I never fully understood Steve.
But, I understood far better when he died.
Just a couple years after this priceless mentoring, Steve was stricken with brain cancer. He was far younger than I am right now, so even in death he taught me to value every day.
But this wasn’t the last lesson he had to teach. Not hardly.
I was invited by his widow to his funeral. I had known of his faith, but not quite the extent to which he walked the walk. I’ve omitted a great deal of detail, but Steve had not had an easy life. In my mind, he was doing all he could to just survive and raise his own family. I assumed his faith was like my own: sincere, yet mostly a coping mechanism.
In the shadow of his recent death, some mutual acquaintances filled in some details. There was far more to the man than even I suspected. My admiration was already deep. My tears were quite real.
Steve had been an elder at a prominent church for many years. The details of his service to others would make this long answer far too long. The debts others expressed dwarfed my own sense of gratitude.
But, the funeral blew me away.
You see, it was a large church. Very large. That day, it was filled to the rafters. I have never been to anything like it since. The love expressed for Steve that day over powers me even as I write this.
And there, in that pew, I knew i wanted to be like Steve.
Not for glory or acclaim—not at all. Just to have left this place a better place than I had found it. And, as I traverse my new career in coaching, I am still chasing his example.
Thank you, Steve, for teaching me how to be real. I’ll never forget you. I’ll never achieve what you did, but I am so much happier for trying.
Janet Yellen wrote that if China could commit to investing in US Treasury Bonds until 2026 and take a $ 1.1 Trillion Position by 2026, Inflation in US could be reduced to 3% within 6 months
In 2009, the Chinese agreed to such a request from USA
This time they told Yellen to go f*** herself
Yet that alone shows the power of a Nation like China
That a mere $ 270 Billion purchase of bonds could bring down US Inflation by 3% indicates a level of strength very few nations could possess
Yellen counted very heavily on the Chinese agreeing to her request and was very angry when she came back home
Putin visited Xi before his SMO began
Every Industry in Russia or most industries continued to operate despite a 72% fall in Supplies from Western Vendors
The Reason : CHINA
Investments by Western Countries replaced by China
Western Brands replaced by Chinese Brands
A Yuan Buttress helping Russia steer through foreign trade from April 2022 to December 2022
One Nation capable of standing against US and EU combined and preventing Russia from going under for those crucial 10–12 months before Russia found it’s feet
Thus China is VERY STRONG ECONOMICALLY
Apart from Paper Propaganda and a few articles on how China is collapsing, China is easily among the strongest economies in the world and among the more resilient economies
Militarily?
Only time will tell
Let’s wait and watch
MY HEART…First Reaction – Oliver Anthony – I Want To Go Home & Doggon It!
I moved to Long Beach this summer. The homeless crisis is heartbreaking. I have seen and spoken to many since I have been here and the mental health issue is so apparent. This is all around us, but we are more worried about spending billions on witch-hunts and funding things that are none of our business.
I’ve always loved the story of a man named Henry Sy. Born in Xiamen, China, Sy was poor as dirt. His father, his mother, his siblings, all of them could barely survive the next day. So his father took a gamble and moved the family to the Philippines. It was the 1930s, and Henry had to make ends meet in a strange country where he did not speak the language.
For the first years of his young working life, little Henry worked as a shoeshiner, polishing the boots of “his betters” until they shone brightly. The money he made with this, he saved up. Whenever he tried to get customers in front of Mercury’s Drugstore, however, the owner would shoo him away. Undeterred, Henry would find another spot, and continue his work.
As the years went on, Henry kept working hard, living frugally. He saved up his money, and invested it wisely, step by step growing his fortune along the way. Soon, he owned a store, next, a chain of stores, and eventually, he owned an entire mall. In the end, his chain of malls would dominate the entire Philippines. Henry Sy became the countries richest citizen, by far…
…and in none of these stores, there would ever be a Mercury Drugstore. Watson’s, sure, other pharmacies were allowed. But not Mercury. Because they didn’t let little Henry shine shoes in front of them when he was a wee lad.
The US sent spy planes and satellites to watch the publicly announced test.
In November of 2020, US Admiral Phillip Davidson, Commander of Indo-Pacific Command verified that China hit a moving ship in the SCS with a DF-21 and a DF-26 hypersonic missile.
Notice that the US Pentagon is no longer claiming that the Chinese have to slow down the missile. The Chinese figured out how to see through the plasma sheath with radar and IR for terminal guidance.
This is something new. The US military calls these new class of missiles, ASBMs (anti-ship ballistic missiles).
However, the name is somewhat of a misnomer. They’re quasi ballistic missiles. They don’t follow an exact ballistic path that is easily calculated and susceptible to interception.
This type of missiles can see. So they can evade incoming anti-missiles fired from US ships or bases.
So yes. They’re a real threat to US ships, not just carriers.
The DF-21 has a cruise speed of mach 6. Then speeds up to mach 10 for terminal phase. At 100 miles away, the DF-21 will hit a ship in 47 seconds. That isn’t a lot of time for the radar operator to talk to the captain then order an intercept. In fact, that isn’t any time at all since once the order is given, it takes time for the operator to actually launch the missile. Then it takes time for the missile cover to open, for the data to download to the missile, for the missile to light it’s rocket engine, and for the missile to get up to speed.
A DF-21 will hit with the explosive power of around 1.4 tons of TNT or 2,800 pounds of explosive equivalent.
A DF-26 will hit with the explosive power equivalent of 24,000 pounds of TNT.
You decide what happens when that much explosives goes off inside a ship. Bear in mind that a normal anti-ship missile has a warhead of 600 pounds. You can find the ships with holes in them. Then figure out what happens when you increase that to 2,800 pounds or 24,000 pounds. Yes. the DF-26 hits with the equivalent of a MOAB.
The real question isn’t is it a threat. The question is will there be a ship left after it hits. And in the report to Congress last year, The USAF/MIT study said that this is a game changer. Without a proper defense, if a ship gets hit, it will be sunk.
This would serve more as distraction to the West than Russia
The West bankrolled $ 140.81 Billion to Ukraine in the last 19 months plus trained 70,000 Ukrainian Soldiers plus combined gave Ukraine :-
1.03 Million Rounds of 155 mm Artillery Shells
17,000 UAVs Military Grade
1100 Infantry Fighting Vehicles
760 Tanks (Including 453 T 72, 124 Leopard 1, 92 French Tanks & Swedish Stridsvagn 122, 48 Abrams & 14 Challengers)
3.53 Million Rounds of Small Arms Ammunition
688 Missiles with upto 300 Km Range plus Air Defence
60 Himars Launchers
91 Air Defense System including 8 Patriot Complexes, 12 Iris Complexes and 50+ S 300 systems in former communist countries
Look at this list of equipment
It’s virtually an ENTIRE ARMY
Four Fronts – Kremeyvka Salient, Orekhovo Front, Bakhmut & Kremenneyva
After 125 Days
Territory Gain :- 188 Sq Kilometers
Loss of Territory (Kupiansk) : 507 Sq Kilometers
Net Gain Loss :- (-) 319 Sq Kms
The Ukrainians haven’t still managed to cross the grey zone
They have to reach 3 defensive fortified lines plus one fortified line to reach the Sea of Azov Or Melitopol
They haven’t managed a clear 10 Kilometer forward gain in positions and need 526 Kilometers to reach their objective
In ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE DAYS!!!!
Meanwhile their losses :-
90,000 Killed or horribly wounded enough to miss action for minimum 6 months
290 Tanks destroyed
700,000 Rounds Ammunition spent at 6000 Rounds a day
650 Infantry Vehicles
39 Himars Launchers
91 Missiles (Range upto 300 Kms)
360+ Air Defence Missiles
73 Assault Boats
4500+ UAVs
Easily between 35% to 45% of their entire equipment and at least a fourth of their BEST FIGHTING MEN
For 188 Sq Kms gains and not one concise territory to consolidate positions
You think I am quoting from TASS Or Sputnik right?
Nopes
CNN, Politico, Reuters, Washington Post & Institute for War
Meanwhile the Russian Economy?
From a 15% contraction expected in 2022, now it’s growing by 2.3% even by IMF predictions
Strong and Resilient as ever
Happily now selling Oil at $ 91/ Barrel against a $ 60 Price Cap laughing loudly
So it is the West who need an off ramp and a distraction badly indeed
Girls, Bars and Love in Phnom Penh
It’s a view about what is going on in the rest of the world while YOU were sitting away in your nice sterile cubicle, attending Diversity meetings, and grabbing a number #3 burger during lunch. The rest of the world is far more interesting and colorful out there. Savor it.
This is a “monger” video about this asshole going to Cambodia for prostitutes. He just went to Cambodia and filmed the night life. Very colorful.
Ugh!
Not badmouthing the girls. Not badmouthing the guys.
Just making a statement on lifestyle.
Do not be offended by some of the things you see here. The point that I am trying to make is that YOU can decide your lifestyle. If sitting in a grey cube, staring at a flickering monitor, and living for the weekend appeals to you… embrace it. But the rest of the world thinks that lifestyle SUCKS. I did that for far too long. BIG FUCKING MISTAKE.
Am I interested in visiting Cambodia. Yeah, sure.
But not for the chicks. I really want to check out the culture. Especially the spicy beef on those long French rolls that you get at the street pavilions.
You know, I have been interested in Cambodia and Laos ever since I was in 5th grade and Nixon went and bombed them to shit. Then, later on, I had some interns that came from Cambodia. I’d like to meet up with them and tour their little family factory and warehouse. Maybe have some “cooperation” together.
NATO wasn’t formed to counteract the Soviet Union.
NATO is an expansion of the Western Union (Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Britain) and the WU was a military and ECONOMIC alliance.
When NATON was created in 1949, it’s goals were to prevent a resurgence of Germany and to improve economic ties between countries.
Don’t forget about the Berlin Blockade of 1948. This PROVED the Soviets were not up for a military confrontation.
Article 2
The Parties will contribute toward the further development of peaceful and friendly international relations by strengthening their free institutions, by bringing about a better understanding of the principles upon which these institutions are founded, and by promoting conditions of stability and well-being. They will seek to eliminate conflict in their international economic policies and will encourage economic collaboration between any or all of them.
Back in 1949, the economic aspect was far more important than the military one.
As Europe began to move towards an integrated economic policy and later towards a union, the economic policies of NATO were largely forgotten … BUT THEY STILL EXIST.
Russia is right when they talk about the tandem EU/NATO. The European institution, economically and politically, were all created under a NATO umbrella … there was nothing else back in 1949.
So when the Soviet Union fell, the EU didn’t even exist. There was a large economic forum in place in Europe, but a lot of political decisions were taken at NATO level. European economies depended to a large extend on NATO’s integrated policies: economically, militarily, and politically.
NATO was the perfect platform for international cooperation before the EU came into being.
Once you realize NATO is also an economic alliance it becomes pretty clear why it couldn’t be disbanded. And it also becomes clear why expansion was profitable for all involved. NATO didn’t expand because “countries feared Russia” (look at the timeline, relations were good UNTIL NATO expanded), NATO expanded for economic reasons.
The EU is relatively transparent, NATO is nor. NATO invested 150 billion Euro in Eastern European infrastructure. NATO always upgrades your infrastructure when you become a member (that’s how Greece and Turkey were bribed back in 1952).
In return, NATO countries, mainly European ones, got to invest massively in Eastern Europe. Much lower wages resulted in huge profit margins.
Just look at how many “German” cars are produced in Hungary and Poland. All that was a direct result of NATO expansion. The average monthly income in Germany is 4,200 Euro a month, in Poland 1,400 and in Hungary 1,300.
Cheap labour results in huge profit margins which in turn regenerates more tax revenue. Those 150 billion paid themselves back with interest. But the main requirement was a good infrastructure.
History makes a lot more sense when you look at it from an economic point of view.
He’s not “bashing” America. He’s simply exposing the truth about America. There is nothing he has said about America that is incorrect. I can repeat some of the talking points and see if you can refute any of them:
Unsustainable $33 trillion national debt.
Crumbling infrastructure.
Unaffordable health care for millions of Americans.
Rampant homelessness — approaching one million Americans.
Declining public education.
Declining life expectancy.
Growing poverty.
Mass incarceration — highest number and highest per capita rate in the world.
Rampant gun violence — on average, one mass shooting every day of the year!
Fentanyl epidemic.
Over one million Americans died from Covid needlessly.
It’s America that is bashing China with all kinds of propaganda lies such as Uyghur genocide, Uyghur forced labor, Chinese aggression, spreading authoritarianism, etc.
UPDATE:
After 8 hours, this answer has received a whole bunch of stupid comments and NOBODY has even tried to refute any of the points in my answer. This alone tells you something.
I’ve disabled comments to prevent any more stupid comments. If you can’t say anything intelligent, then don’t say anything at all.
In 1972 my Dad let me tag along to “Wild Bill’s” Dodge in order to buy a new emerald green Dodge Coronet. Wild Bill was a local tv commercial superstar! II remember the transaction to this day. The cigar smoking salesman wanted $3440 for the car, but my Dad was firm at $3400. The salesman then said only the owner could approve that low a deal, so he would have to call him at home!
Out came the phone book, because the salesman had never called him at home before, and the salesman made a big production out of reading off the number and dialing it. “Yes Bill, he says, they won’t do $3440, I told them it’s crazy but he wants $3400 even.”
At that moment I see someone exit the break room and recognize Wild Bill sitting there having a cup of coffee. I whisper to my Dad, that Wild Bill is not at home talking to this salesman, he’s 50 feet away drinking coffee. My Dad smiles and says to me “let them do their thing”
$3400 later we had the car, plaid fabric seats and all!
Why the West is Afraid of China
Thank you for bringing the one and only Carl Zha to your show. He is a great analyst and has a good sense of humor.
In the mid-2000s, I was a civilian contractor working for The Pentagon Channel, originally part of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. I created TPC’s first podcasts.
The podcasting operation grew to more than 20 different regular podcasts — audio and video — and had about 19 million downloads over its seven-year run. I personally produced nine of the shows.
We also uploaded the videos to YouTube.
One morning, I went in extra early to upload a new episode … only to see a warning from CYBERCOM that YouTube was blocked for our office. A lot was hanging on this particular upload, and my boss was able to track down someone I could talk to at CYBERCOM.
I called the Air Force Master Sergeant listed on the Post-It Note he gave me. Got him on the line and explained my problem.
The Master Sergeant was a condescending male appendage.
He angrily told me there was an unusually high number of computers spending a lot of time during business hours accessing YouTube. We broadcast 24 hours a day, and business hours were when we were uploading video.
He lectured me on how NO military office needed access to YouTube nd that he’d personally shut down our access in accordance with regulations. I tried to explain that uploading video to YouTube was critical to our office’s mission.
He was about to lecture me some more … but I had another call. I knew exactly who it was.
I put the Sergeant on hold … which he huffed at.
The incoming call was from a speaker phone. Another civilian I knew at the Pentagon asked why the video wasn’t uploaded, and I explained the situation. A second voice came on the phone.
“Terry, this is Captain Kirby. Can you give me that sergeant’s name and number?” he asked with frightening calm.
I did.
“Tell him to stand by for a phone call,” Captain Kirby said and hung up.
I pick up the line with the irate Master Sergeant who’s already wound up to tear into me and cut him off.
“Stand by your phone for an incoming call,” I said. I didn’t witness what was said or who said it. But I knew it would be glorious.
Then-Captain John Kirby would retire as a two-star admiral in a few more years. He’d go on to become the official Pentagon Spokesman, later the State Department’s Spokesman, and is currently the Biden Administration’s National Security Spokesman. You see him delivering live press briefings on national security issues at the White House.
But on that particular morning, Captain John Kirby was the long-time Public Affairs Officer for Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff … the most senior officer in the U.S. military.
The video that I was blocked from uploading? The premier episode of the Chairman’s Podcast — a more-or-less weekly podcast in which ADM Mullen was interviewed on top policy issues affecting the military and the troops across all branches of the services.
Chairman Mullen was incredibly media savvy and was extremely keen on creating this podcast.
I suspect Captain Kirby called the sergeant … but he may have just let the admiral know what was going on, and the Chairman picked up the phone himself. Either way, I knew the sergeant was about to get a Mark II bunghole installed via phone lines.
I spent a couple of minutes refreshing the YouTube page before we suddenly had full access restored.
And I began uploading the Chairman’s Podcast.
That’s when my phone rang again.
It was a very contrite Master Sergeant, I suppose he was still a Master Sergeant, I didn’t ask. Anyway, he went into a very long, detailed apology about blocking our access and for his tone of voice toward me.
I never had another problem in the two years we produced the show.
Before the CIA spies were exposed in China
China has been publicly announcing the arrests of several spies working for the CIA, an unconventional move for a country not best known for message clarity.
“Drug Panic,” “God’s Scalpel,” “Old Classmates in Washington,” “CIA Spy School,” “Sexy Spies,” “Target – Beijing Olympics,” and “Double Agent,” these gripping chapters of the spy novel Fatal Weakness, upon its first release in 2004, led many spy fiction enthusiasts to believe that its author, Yang Hengjun, a former employee at China’s Foreign Ministry, was next in line to become one of China’s bestselling writers in this genre. His fans were awed by his vivid description and attention to detail at portraying the life of a double agent. They later discovered that all it took was for Yang to report on his own life, as Fatal Weakness fits better in the category of autobiography than novel.
For the past two months, China has been publicly announcing the arrests of several spies working for the CIA, an unconventional move for a country not best known for message clarity. Previously, China’s state media would only go so far as saying that a person is harming national security and therefore warrants an arrest. What prompted the sudden change of tone? Most importantly, wouldn’t openly revealing that even government officials lack faith in the country hurt the government’s reputation even more, further fueling the already rampant suspicion around its former Foreign Minister Qin Gang’s removal?
To answer these questions, it would be necessary to examine all the “accidents” that have killed Chinese scientists in the past five years, as this provides insight into the urgency Beijing faces to take a more assertive position. Whether these incidents were truly unfortunate accidents or the successful operations of secret agents is up to you to decide.
On July 1, 2023, Feng Yanghe, the brain behind the AI software used in China’s military simulations, died in a car accident in Beijing at the age of 38.
On June 22, 2023, China’s leading botanist Zhang Dabing passed away at the age of 56 from a car accident. He was a prominent scientist in China’s hybrid rice field and transgenic biosafety monitoring field.
On September 21, 2022, genius rocket engineer Li Yuchong died in the United States at the age of 30, a week after he announced his decision to forgo offers from the US and return to China.
On June 14, 2019, Ning Bin, one of the driving forces behind China’s digital signaling systems across the railway, died at the age of 60 from a car accident. He was working on a control system for a super high-speed train running at 1,000 km/h.
On December 1, 2018, renowned quantum physicist Zhang Shoucheng died in the US at the age of 55, purportedly from depression, three days after his team announced a breakthrough in 5G chips. His discovery of “angel particles” in 2017, particles that are both matter and anti-matter, ended one of the most intensive searches in fundamental physics. Before his death, it was widely speculated he would be the next recipient of the Nobel Prize. His scientific life was put to an abrupt end on the same day Meng Wanzhou was detained in Canada. Meng is the senior executive of Huawei, the company Zhang and his team had collaborated with since 2009.
A month later, Chen Shuming, head of the R&D team for chips of advanced weapons, died in a car accident on December 31, 2018.
The list goes on and on, with examples found in all areas involving leading science and technology. Beijing has never confirmed nor denied people’s suspicions that these were premeditated assassination attempts coordinated by a network of spies that have infiltrated key positions in the Chinese government. However, as the list grows longer, the silence becomes increasingly unbearable to many.
Remarks by CIA Director William Joseph Burns that the agency has “made progress” in rebuilding its spy networks in China served as both verification of people’s suspicions and validation of Beijing’s perceived incompetence. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that if Beijing prolongs this silence, we will witness its reputation being slowly shredded to pieces. In an apparent effort of self-consolation, Chinese netizens even pushed a story online about the Macao Garrison Special Operations Company being awarded a first-class collective merit citation in 2014 for defeating an alleged CIA assassination attempt on Snowden when he was transiting through Hong Kong en route to Russia. To their disappointment, the narrative was later denied by Macao authorities. It is conceivable that the recent string of reports on spy arrests is the long-awaited response to an anxious populace that has borne witness to some not-so-clandestine espionage activities.
For more reporting on spies arrested in China, please check out our newsletter series here:
The U.S. leads in certain technologies at best. China leads in 37 out of 44 most strategic and key technologies for today and tomorrow’s technology frontier according to a neocon funded research project in Australia call ASPI or Australian Strategic Policy Institute. If that is the case. The U.S. leads only in 7 out of these 44 technologies.
The U.S. no longer leads the world for at least a decade now! China has 3 more unmatchable advantages. One it has 1.4 billion highly competitive population who are very intelligent, very hardworking, extremely disciplined and both industrious and driven people.
Two, Chinese political system of socialism with Chinese characteristics is extremely effective and efficient. It evades costly and hurtful perpetual politicking and it allows meritocratic policies by attracting the most capable and qualified leader. As compared with the U.S. clearly popularity contest among popular but unqualified leader.
Three, China focuses fully and comprehensively on growing the real living standards of it’s citizens and does not get distracted by the U.S. forever war investment and focus of interference throughout the globe. China’s military strategy only focus on defending their home land and hitting the enemy lands if it is hit at home. It needs to spend a third of the U.S. to match their huge and damaging military spending!
China is highly sustainable, the U.S. is simply not. In fact the more the U.S. wants to stop China the faster the U.S. will go broke and implode.
Horseshoe Sandwich with Idaho® Fingerling Fries
The Horseshoe is a regional specialty in the Springfield, Illinois area. It is an open-faced sandwich on toasted bread that can utilize a variety of meats, topped with French fries and a creamy cheese sauce.
2023 10 18 15 39
Yield: 4 sandwiches
Ingredients
Sandwich
4 toasted slices Texas toast
6 Idaho® Russian Banana Fingerling potatoes, sliced into fries
2 teaspoons olive oil
Freshly ground Italian seasoning blend
4 grilled hamburger patties, sprinkled with steak seasoning and seasoning salt before cooking
1 medium onion, sliced
1 cup fresh mushrooms, sliced
1 red or green bell pepper, cut into large chunks
2 tablespoons butter
Cheese Sauce
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
1 cup milk
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
Instructions
Lay out potato slices onto cookie sheet lined with foil.
Drizzle olive oil over potatoes and use brush to evenly coat them.
Grind Italian seasoning over potatoes until there is a nice, even dusting of seasoning.
Place in oven heated to 425 degrees F. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes or until fries are cooked throughout and lightly brown.
Place onion, mushroom and pepper in foil. Place butter on top and sprinkle with freshly ground Italian seasoning. Tent foil and close. Place in oven. (They should be softened by the time the fries finish cooking.)
While the fries and vegetables bake, start on cheese sauce by melting butter in a small saucepan. Once melted, add flour and stir to make a roux.
Add milk and basil and stir constantly until it starts to bubble. Continue stirring for two to three more minutes until it begins to thicken.
Add shredded cheese gradually, stirring constantly as it melts.
Lay out toasted bread on plates, topped with hamburger patty. Spoon vegetables on top of burger, followed by a layer of fries. Top with cheese sauce.
Notes
Grilled vegetables, such as green peppers and onions, are also common on a Horseshoe sandwich. Alternate meat suggestions include smoked ham, pulled pork and grilled chicken breast.
China’s $100 Billion Move That Left Australia STUNNED!
In a surprising turn of events, China has unveiled a staggering $100 billion project that could send shockwaves through its trade relationship with Australia. Today, we’re breaking down the intricacies of this development and exploring its potential global implications.
The implications of China’s new mega project are vast, with potential ripple effects touching every corner of the global iron ore industry. Join us as we unravel the layers of this complex narrative and project its potential future impacts on Australia, China, and the broader international community.
People on the internet think I am a blind supporter of China. Some even think I am paid by Chinese propaganda department to write pro-China answers! (Hell! It would be great to get paid for narrating facts, but sigh … so far, no payment. Not even a job offer :p).
For reasons unknown (and probably very biased) stating plain and simple historical and current facts offends a lot of people. Comparing the actions of countries offends people.
Here are a few examples.
Example 1. Hong Kong Riots
Last year (in 2020) Quora was overflowing with certain people expressing their support for Hong Kong rioters, claiming they are fighting for “freedom” and that secession is a right of people.
I wrote a couple of answers stating the plain fact that at least Indians should stop expressing their “deep concerns” for Hong Kong rioters, considering how India is handling the freedom movement in Jammu and Kashmir: no internet connectivity (since more than 8 months now) for the region, curfew almost daily, and lots of reports of rapes committed by the military. A lot of people were “offended” because of my comparison.
I also compared Hong Kong rioters with American civil war. The northern states of USA refused to let the southern states break free of the union. If “freedom” is the right of people, northern states should have allowed the southern states to break free.
Similarly, UK should have allowed Ireland to be free.
Somehow, when India, USA and UK does it, it’s all justified and acceptable. But when China does it (and on top of that, China didn’t even use lethal force against those rioters), suddenly China is at fault! I don’t understand the logic here.
Example 2. China’s Island Building In SCS
I wrote that every nation has a right to defend itself and no nation has a (moral) right to display aggression and policing at other nation’s borders. This too, offended a lot of people. People mentioned “freedom of navigation” and whatnot. I pointed out that USA has not ratified UNCLOS and therefore has no right to implement it on others.
There was a long debate about how USA and western powers have “freedom” to roam in their warships close to Chinese shores, but China has no right to install weapon systems on islands in South China Sea.
Some US guy went on a long argument with me in that answer, claiming that although USA has not signed UNCLOS, it still has the right to implement it on others. The most remarkable thing is that he claimed he was not even being biased and was completely transparent and morally fair in his claim!
Example 3. China – Australia Trade Dispute
I wrote that a customer is not and should not be forced to purchase from any seller, therefore China is not forced to purchase ore and food products from Australia, considering that Australian government went on a smear campaign against China (proposing to find Covid-19 origin only in China) and banning Huwawei.
Some people got offended, and claimed that China should be forced to buy from Australia, but Australia is “free” to not buy from China. Some people also claimed that China is “weaponizing trade” and that they must be “put to their place”.
All I can say about it is that their logic is incomprehensible for me.
Example 4. China – US Trade War
I wrote in an answer that if US is so concerned about trade deficit, they have all the right to stop buying from China and shift their imports to some other country. Similarly, China has the right to stop buying from USA and start buying food products from South America.
Similarly, I wrote that both countries have the right to place as many tariffs as they want, on their imports. Both are free in what they do within their borders.
This offended a lot of people. They claimed that it is China’s “legal responsibility” to avoid placing tariffs on US goods but USA is “free” to place as many tariffs as they want on Chinese goods.
Example 5. Chinese Loans And Investments In Africa
Someone asked if Chinese loans and investments in Africa were attempts by China to colonize Africa. I posted some pictures of African colonialism and showed what colonialism really looks like.
Some guys started arguing in the comments that China is “exploiting” Africa with their loans and whatnot. I simply stated that nobody is forcing African countries to get loans from China. They are free to get loans from IMF and World Bank if they want. If they are getting loans from China, they know the conditions. They are written clearly in front of them. If African countries and China, both agree on the terms and conditions, why is someone else trying to run around amok with arms flailing and crying foul?
They claimed that Africans are “simple minded” (yes, they were indeed simple minded, or else they would not have been enslaved by the western powers for centuries) and do not “see through” the traps. I asked if their countries have better loan offers for African countries, they should present the offers. Somehow that further offended them and they quit in rage, claiming I work for China’s propaganda department.
So. That’s my story of being “pro China”.
US House Resolution #145 Is Retaliation Against South Africa For Hosting BRICS Summit
When I tell you I’m upset or worried, I don’t need you to fix it. I just need you to listen and let me know that my feelings are valid.
Periods are more than just blood and cramps. They can affect my whole body and mind, and PMS is a real thing.
If you want me to wear makeup, don’t expect me to be ready in five minutes. It takes time.
Just because I’m nice to you doesn’t mean I like you romantically. And just because we talk sometimes doesn’t mean I’m “leading you on.” I can have friends who are guys without wanting to date them.
When we talk about the issues that women face, it doesn’t mean that we don’t think men have issues too. It just means that we want to talk about our own experiences from our own perspective.
Yes women might are attracted to chiseled jawlines six-foot-tall men, etc. But that’s not the “ideal dream guy.” Just because women find you good looking, doesn’t mean every woman around will want to date you. We have other things in our priority list (Girls in their early teens might be an exception, but that’s about it).
It’s scary when you run up to us or try to get our attention out of nowhere. We’re in fight-or-flight mode the second we know a stranger is paying attention to us.
Don’t try to be a smartass all the time. It’s not attractive. And please don’t flex in front of us. We don’t care.
It’s not “manly” to raise your voice.
Scents are meant to be discovered, not announced. Take it easy with the body spray.
Honking at us doesn’t work. Please stop.
The best thing you can do for a girl on her period is buy her chocolate, (maybe) some wine, and her specific brand of tampons.
Acting all sad because we’re not replying and literally begging for it is not adorable. You’re chat was probably archived the second you started begging for our attention.
Just because we ask for your help to get something done doesn’t mean we couldn’t do it all by ourselves.
Chinese J-20 fighter production now at over a 100 per year?
“Japan and Korea won’t join the fight against China”
Many years ago, I desired my concealed handgun license in Texas. To acquire it back then, you had to complete a class (6–8 hours) and demonstrate the ability to safely handle a firearm and shoot with an acceptable level of control. This required a shooting test at a range… firing maybe 50 rounds in front of an instructor (10 rounds of 5 shots each) and getting above some very low percentage of hits on a target that is just 10 yards away. Really… it was a “Can you hit the broadside of a barn?” kind of test.
We wrap up the classroom work and go together (class had 20 or so students) to the range that has 5 lanes. The guy who is assigned the lane next to mine (he’s on the far right of the 5 lanes) is easily over 80 years old and apparently carries a revolver, but wanted to take the test with a semi-automatic pistol (it gives you more options), so he rented a small caliber pistol from the range for the test. He can barely load the weapon and is limp-wristing his shots, so it jams repeatedly. The first time it jams, he pivots around to show me, pointing the barrel straight at my face. I dropped to the ground and he tracks me with the gun to the floor until he realizes that he’s doing something wrong, then freezes. The weapon is still pointed at 2–3 other students in other lanes. One lady in lane 1 or 2 screamed. I came around behind him, grabbed his shoulders so that the weapon was pointed back down range and had him put it on the bench (then turned it to point downrange when he placed it pointing back at the students in the other lanes). I waved for the instructor and he came over… his only concern was clearing the weapon and RELOADING it for the old guy. I looked at him and he gave me a “give the old guy a chance” look. On the next round the old guy’s gun jammed again and he waived it at me again, asking for help. I again ducked, got behind him and took the weapon from him this time. I cleared it, sat it down and walked out of the range. I told the instructor “That’s twice I’ve had a loaded weapon pointed at my face. I’m not going back in there until he is disarmed. That guy is going to kill someone and it’s NOT going to be me.” Several of the people in the first few lanes followed me out. Amazingly, the instructor went down to the old guy, reloaded his weapon and had him finish the test (and PASSED him)
I’m not sure who was scarier… the old guy taking the test or the instructor who certified him to carry a concealed weapon for another 4 years without basic safety knowledge or having enough wits not to point a loaded weapon at other people MULTIPLE times on accident.
Technically I was “laid off,” not fired, after 31 years at the company. I was only working part time (10 hours/week), and was planning to retire fully in a year or two. Instead, I got laid off. They paid me almost a full year’s salary and gave me over a year of medical and other benefits. I collected unemployment for the next year and because of a legal action for deceiving customers by my state against the bank that held my mortgage, they had to write off my mortgage payment each month that I was unemployed.
So when I was told I was laid off, and the salary/benefits package I would receive, I immediately bought a bottle of wine, gave it to the head of HR, thanked him profusely, and left. That year was far and away the best one (financially) that I ever had. And to top it off, I had gotten divorced a year earlier. With all my free time and lack of financial concerns, I had time to date. I met a wonderful woman, and we have been together almost thirteen years now.
In 2016, an elderly Lady in Brooklyn New York took hoarding to the extreme when the remains of her son were found amongst the rubbish that filled her home.
Rita Wolfensohn was legally blind and lived with the corpse of her son for twenty years, believing he was missing. The son’s body was discovered when a relative went to the house to collect clothes for the woman while she was at the hospital.
In one of the bedrooms, she found a Skeleton with its jeans, socks and a shirt still on. The room and the rest of the house smelt like rotten food, so any smell of a decaying body would have blended with the already rancid smell.
Police believe the son died of natural causes, and it was possible Rita believed that her son had left and never came back. I don’t understand how someone can live this way, but I don’t like to judge either because depression plays a big part in hoarding cases.
China’s supply chain has developed 7nm process chips, which can produce 95% of the world’s chips!
I once had a dog, a Siberian Husky. It was my sisters dog, but she never took care of it. Instead, I inherited that role. His name was “Frisky”, and was a “good boy”. But the rest of the family thought of him as a burden. Which was bad. He was a good dog.
One day, my father came to the back yard, and asked me to get him.
So I did.
He told me that he was going to take Frisky to a farm “where he could run about freely”. I believed him.
But, you know, what did I know? I was only 16 at the time.
Frisky looked up at me. Very skiddish.
I comforted him. And he seemed to be ok. He believed me. It’s gonna be fine, I told him.
My dad got him. Loaded him into the car.
And that was the last time I saw him.
…
Unwilling participant.
Yet my brothers and sisters, many decades later, berated me. Arguing how I couldn’t possibly realize what was going on. They knew. Why didn’t I?
My business was failing and I couldn’t understand why.
Things were NOT looking good since day one.
My mind was spinning out of control day and night trying to understand what was wrong.
In 2014 I found what seemed a great opportunity. I managed to negotiate an unusual deal with one of the best “warehouse” retailers in the USA. I had a signed agreement to purchase their overstocks… at unbelievable prices.
This was my math:
Regular price of the item: $100 Warehouse discounted price of the retailer: $90 I could get their items at 10% to 20% of their price. My price would be between $9 to $18!
Yes, that’s over 90% OFF the retail price!
Reselling these items, even at huge discounts to my customers could easily double or triple my money. It seemed like a priceless opportunity.
So I rented this HUGE warehouse:
I called it the Red Barn Outlet.
Located in a very busy street, with huge traffic count, we opened the doors to our customers.
We had great products and unbeatable prices, yet, we didn’t had the expected volume of sales.
I did marketing — and found little to no improvement.
I even hired amazing helpers:
Nothing helped…
To answer your question: What is one mistake you made that you would like to warn others not to make?
The laws of work have changed!
I learned this lesson in a very painful way.
Retail has changed.
Our Economy has changed.
The world has changed.
We have changed.
Today we have retail on our fingertips!
“There’s an app for that!”
I was competing with a disruptedbusiness model and as a small business owner, there’s NO way to win.
I was playing on the OLD Economy and as a consequence suffered a slow painful death because of disruption.
Today I teach people and businesses how to anticipate disruptive trends because I understand how painful it is.
This is my warning:
“Hard work is not good enough anymore.”
Tactics win battles; strategy wins wars.
Texas Roasted Potatoes
Serve this side dish at your next cookout.
2023 11 04 10 29
Yield: 8
Ingredients
3 pounds red potatoes, quartered
1 1/2 teaspoons chili powder
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon granulated garlic
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
Instructions
Heat the oven to 375 degrees F.
Toss together all the ingredients in a large bowl.
Place on a baking sheet.
Bake for one hour (turning frequently) or until lightly browned.
Time-Slip Artifacts: Modern Objects in the Ancient World – Volume 1
Until you grow balls! Until you tell the U.S. if you blow Nord Stream pipeline Germany will blow away Alaskan pipeline!
Until you tell off the U.S. when it becomes a jerk. Ask them to fxxk off and say over your dead body will you listen to them. Get rid of your current leaders ASAP. They behaves shamefully.
China don’t hear words. China sees action. And the see a wimp and a weak government push around by Uncle Sam. So why talk to EU?
Absent of government policy, is the American seller willing and motivated to sell to the Chinese?
Why yes. Absolutely.
The Chinese are one of their biggest and best customers, and have helped prop up the stock price for decades, because the Chinese are not only volume shoppers of value, but also the high-margin cutting edge. That’s a significant STREAM of revenue on the table.
The American seller will try every trick in the book to preserve their bottomline, from lobbying the Congress and the White House, to tailoring specific products for the Chinese to circumvent sanctions. The quick and dirty will be to ship product to a subsidiary market, for example Korea, Japan or Taiwan, and re-export the chips through a third party. As a country, China isn’t being sanctioned like Iran or Cuba, so this will appear like normal trade flow.
That’s the seller. But what about the buyer? China has plenty of friends. Is Nvidia going to say no to a million-piece GPU order from Qatar, just because it’s destined for data server/AI farms within a Chinese-run business park? What if the Saudis make another million-chip order and ships it along to Shenzhen because they have a stake in a Chinese subsidiary’s AI project? The possibilities are endless. Nvidia can’t very well demand geolocation tracking of their sold product, can they? Chips can’t be repaired anyway and can be easily transported by air, so warranty claims can be easily dealt with.
The fundamental issue is this.
Does America want to continue doing business with the Chinese, the world’s biggest single market?
If the answer is a firm no, we can talk ironclad rules.
But the half-hearted “this is national security dual use tech” approach manned by a tiny office within the Department of Commerce won’t work, not when they are trying to fix corporations with more money than God, able to buy the services of legal teams that run rings around legislation and policy.
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Thursday warned of dangerous consequences in framing the one-China question through the narrative of “democracy versus autocracy.”
Lee gave the warning at the closing dialogue of the Asia Future Summit in Singapore.
Recognized by United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971, there is but one China in the world, Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory, and the Government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is the sole legal government representing the whole of China.
Speaking during a Q&A session at the closing dialogue of the summit, Lee called for countries to make clear that they will not change this “very fundamental basis of the international understanding.”
“One China is the basis on which nearly every country in the world recognizes the PRC, and has informal, unofficial relations with Taiwan,” he said. “And I think that has to remain the fundamental basis on which the relationships are maintained and the status quo is justified.”
Lee continued by saying that to describe the question of one China as “a question of democracy versus autocracy” is “dangerous.”
The Asia Future Summit was jointly held by Singapore’s flagship media, The Straits Times, Lianhe Zaobao and The Business Times, on Wednesday and Thursday.
Speakers across the world shared their views on geopolitical hot spots, economic issues, and social governance during the event.
Millions Of Men Finally Get The Cheat Code To The Dating Game
“I personally want to thank every modern girl that hopped online to tell us how much they want to be railed by Chad and Tyrone and after they hit the wall, look for guys they ignored for a decade to suddenly want him only for his money and free validation, because now us guys who have red pilled know exactly what play they wanna try the moment we see them and tell them” not interested”. All is becoming right in the world.”
This claim or accusation about China subsidizing EV cars is just a loser’s speech.
We Chinese are already surprised about Chinese EV cars being sold in EU with twice of the prices than in China.
Meanwhile, Europeans (mostly Germans) are also surprised about VW EV cars being sold in China with half of the prices than in Germany.
Tesla cars made in China are also cheaper than anywhere else, because of China subsidizing Tesla?
If anything, China’s subsidy about EV cars is “after” the cars got purchased.
There is something in China called “car purchasing tax”, and it’s about 9% of what you pay to the dealer. EV and PHEV cars can enjoy deduction on purchasing tax.
Also, about 45% of gasoline price in China is all kinds of tax and fee. However, the government doesn’t charge car electricity for the same amount. The 45% includes road maintenance fee, which means that it’s now entirely afforded by gasoline and diesel vehicle owners.
Mercedes is still doing good in China, but not the EV part.
In August alone, Mercedes sold 70.8 thousand cars in China, and accumulated sale of over half million cars (527.7 thousand) from January to August in 2023.
However, for EV cars, like EQE, the sales numbers from Jan to Aug are: 289, 421, 730, 48, 1254, 613, 591, and 941.
Only 1 EQC was sold in August.
The 19th highest EV/PHEV sales brand in August is Arcfox, and it sold 1868.
Europeans were too arrogant to develop their EV technologies.
They spent very little in this field, and was convinced that their petrol and diesel cars would keep dominating the world.
It’s why they are left behind.
Plus, this time’s farce is proposed by France, rather than Germany.
Von der Leyen is being supportive to this because she’s an US dog, and would do anything to screw China.
Some Germans have waken up, put down their pride and chose to cooperate with Chinese.
Meanwhile in France, car manufacturers are dying. They need to find a way to stop Germans from getting stronger.
Just like many other topics in EU, this, according to my personal opinion, will not go anywhere.
They would not have a result within 2023, and they will keep arguing in 2024.
If not because of their low efficiency, they would not be in such an embarrassing situation at the first place.
Multiple Incursions, Hostages, Point attacks – coordinated to precision after distracting them by rocket strikes
The vaunted Israeli intelligence was caught off guard completely.
That means a lot of Planning
So it isn’t SUDDEN at all
Why?
Many possibilities
First, the US possibly knew about the attack and turned a blind eye and didn’t warn the Israelis to divert attention from Ukraine and the disaster unfolding out there
It worked. Yesterday the whole coverage was on Palestine and Israel and not on Ukraine or even Chaiyina (China)
Second, Hamas backed by someone powerful, possibly Iran with Hezbollah waiting, decided to take advantage of a West that was completely swamped with Ukraine and an Israel that was desperately short of munitions (Israel gave 360,000 Shells to Ukraine, forced by USA) and decided to launch a strike and escalate things
An Escalation would allow the Russians, Chinese and the Global South to raise hypocrisy slogans against the West comparing Palestinians to Ukranians
If Israel does march into Gaza, the UN would become a battleground of anger and rage
Third, the US plans major war in the Middle East. They plan to launch Israel against Syria & Iran. It could be why China invited Assad and maybe tipped him off
It’s a delicate place today for the world
Especially India
If India support Israel as our friend Achal Gautam says in invading and destroying Gaza, that’s a billion Muslims who will hate India
Many Oil and Gas Producers and the biggest and richest vendors for key projects like Ports or Bridges
Plus most Muslims including the Azeris & Kazakhs and Turkmens and Kyrgyz people will flock to Russia, China and the CSTO
Hell even Turkey will rage against NATO
It would be the worst thing for Israel to blindly attack Gaza in an act of war
It would be fantastic news for Russia and China if Israel invades Gaza
Huawei releases a disruptive quantum chip, disrupting the global semiconductor industry!
This shouldn’t be a surprise as Huawei has been continuously innovating, researching and improving its technology. It has thousands of researchers and scientists continuously doing their best. This undoubtedly will make US/EU to try to surpress and annihilate it.
In the past 1900 years, in my impression, the Arabs have not failed the Jews. The destruction of ancient Israel was not caused by the Arabs, but by the Romans. It would be unfair for Israelis to blame the Arabs for the destruction of ancient Israel. The persecution of Jews before and after WWII came from the Nazis in Europe, not the Arabs.
However, the Jews have really done things that are sorry to the Arabs in half a century.
Palestinian Arabs are human beings and should enjoy equal human rights … You can’t go bullying them like that…
As for whether it will become the sixth Middle East war…it is too early to tell. The scale of armed conflict is not that large. This was just a raid, not a full-scale attack. China and Russia will be diplomatically concerned, but will not intervene by force.
And a military raid was not the outcome the Arabs wanted.
All this proves only one thing:
As long as Israel does not abandon its own national exclusionary ideology based on Zionism, and as long as it continues to defend its current policies throughout the Palestinian areas, Israel will always be a country that lives in the shadow of fear, betrayal and repentance.
Iran, from West Asia, and Saudi Arabia, from the Arabian Peninsula, are both large among Muslim countries.
After Iran and Saudi Arabia reconcile, and the Muslim countries put aside their previous infighting, there will be a strong and unified Middle East.
We can understand that the Muslims in the Arab world are most eager for China to raise the anti-American flag due to the continuous aggression and plunder of the Western world, but the demise of the United States will not happen overnight, nor will it happen only militarily, but also economically, culturally, politically, etc., and there will be a slow process.
Maya Angelou always advise the African-American elite to read The prince of Machiavelli, because, she said, without a proper understanding of this book, you won’t understand the western elite. The Prince is their bedside book. it contains the main principle all imperialist applies: “If you want to control the people, separate the people and you can rule them. Divide them and you can conquer them.” Simply put, “divide and conquer.”
If 1.3 billion Muslims were united, it would be a huge force in the world.
Gone are the days when Israel relied on the US to dominate the Middle East. A declining Uncle Sam will not be able to bless Israel for long.
Therefore, the Israelis, if they are smart enough, must be mentally prepared to negotiate peace with the Palestinians and return to the 1967 Palestinian-Israeli borders, otherwise they will not be able to survive in the Arab state crevasse.
Sad Looking Cat Gets Adopted And Purrs For The First Time Ever | The Dodo
Watch this really sad shelter cat become a purring kitten with his new mom after finally getting adopted.
Huawei has just unveiled its Mate 60 chip, a stunning feat of technological innovation that shows how the US has failed to stifle China’s rise in the global arena. The US has been waging a relentless campaign of sanctions and restrictions against Huawei and other Chinese firms, hoping to cut them off from the vital resources, software, and markets they need to thrive. But instead of crippling China’s technological ambitions, the US has only spurred them to become more self-reliant and creative.
The Mate 60 chip is the crown jewel of Huawei’s HiSilicon division, which makes chips for smartphones, tablets, laptops, and other gadgets. The chip is based on the most advanced process technology in the industry, the 5-nanometer node. It boasts a powerful octa-core CPU, a Mali-G78 GPU, a dual-core neural processing unit (NPU), and a 5G modem. The chip also supports features that enhance the user experience, such as multi-screen collaboration, smart charging, and more.
The Mate 60 chip is a remarkable achievement for Huawei, especially considering the US technology blockade. Since 2019, the US has put Huawei on its Entity List, which bans US companies from supplying it with software and hardware without a license. The US has also pressured its allies to exclude Huawei from their 5G networks, citing security concerns. As a result, Huawei has lost access to Google’s Android operating system, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips, and other essential components and services.
But Huawei has not given up. It has poured resources into its own research and development to overcome the challenges. It has developed its own operating system, HarmonyOS, which can run on various devices and platforms. It has also increased its self-sufficiency in chip design and production, relying on its HiSilicon division and other partners. Moreover, it has expanded its global presence and cooperation, especially with countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
The Mate 60 chip is not only a breakthrough for Huawei, but also for China’s overall technological development. The chip represents China’s progress in mastering the core technologies of the semiconductor industry, which is crucial for its economic growth and national security. The chip also demonstrates China’s ability to innovate and compete in the global market, despite the US attempts to contain and isolate it. Furthermore, the chip reflects China’s vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind, as it seeks to provide high-quality products and services to consumers around the world.
The Mate 60 chip developed by Huawei proves that the US technology blockade against China is doomed to fail. The US cannot stop China’s technological upgrade by imposing unilateral sanctions and restrictions. On the contrary, these actions have only motivated China to enhance its self-reliance and innovation capabilities. The US should realize that cooperation is better than confrontation in the field of science and technology, and that both countries can benefit from mutual learning and exchange.
One afternoon in 1985 on a nice sunny day when I was working outside about half an hour North of Toronto I felt a sudden hot gust of wind, a very strong gust.
I turned around and looked at where the wind came from and I saw the sky, it was swirling all around, kind of like waves hitting a beach.
But that’s not what surprised me, it was the colour of the sky that I’ll never forget. It was green! The clouds were literally forest green, swirling around with dark gray clouds, in a fluid way that I had never seen before.
The clouds were also very close to the ground and were coming towards me fast.
I called out to my coworkers who hadn’t noticed yet and said we had better take shelter. They turned around and the colour drained from their faces, we looked at each other and ran across the field to the main building which was made of brick.
Not two minutes later day turned to night and it started pouring rain. All we did was look out the window at the raw violence of the storm until it passed less than half an hour later.
Little did we know at the time that just a few miles North of us a category F4 tornado had just devastated the city of Barrie.
It was totally unprecedented at the time, none of us believed our ears when we heard it on the radio.
Canada doesn’t have tornadoes, and certainly not category F4 tornadoes!
We were all in disbelief, that is until we got home and saw the destruction with our own eyes on television.
It was the only thing everyone talked about for over a month.
Foxconn has repeatedly requested to OEM for Huawei Mate60, but Huawei has sternly rejected it.
Huawei is now no.1 mobile phone manufacturer and it doesn’t need Qualcomm anymore to supply the chips. Qualcomm has betrayed Huawei by giving up Its relationship with Huawei and Huawei doesn’t need Qualcomm as an OEM anymore as its quality is below Huawei’s standard. Now that Huawei can mass produce the Kirin 9000s chips it certainly doesn’t need Qualcomm but domestic China’s OEM instead.
US Deploys at least nine B-2 Stealth Bombers to Europe
The United States on Friday allegedly deployed at least nine (9) — and reportedly “dozens”– of B-2, nuclear-capable, Stealth Bombers to Europe on Friday. Those aircraft are specifically designed for a nuclear first-strike.
Video posted publicly, reportedly shows the deployment as it took place:
<video not available>
This deployment came just one day after Russian President Vladimir Putin said publicly that if an enemy launches a nuclear attack upon Russia, “hundreds of our missiles will be in the air against ALL our enemies, in ALL directions — and there will be no survivors”
Surprise Attack Stuns Israel; WaPo: Ukraine Despair War Unwinnable; EU Granada Summit Shambles
Surprise Attack Stuns Israel; WaPo: Ukraine Despair War ‘Unwinnable’; EU Granada Summit ‘Shambles’; Huge Rus Missile Drone Strikes Topic 987
More than 800 Israeli settlers stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem on Thursday morning under the protection of Israeli forces.
Rabbis, heads of settlement associations, and far-right university lecturers were among 832 people who forced their way into the religious site compound, a source in the Islamic Endowments Department in Jerusalem told The New Arab’s Arabic sister site Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.
Israeli forces imposed severe restrictions on Muslim worshippers entering Al-Aqsa and those under 60 were prevented from accessing the site.
It comes during the Jewish religious holiday of Sukkot, which started on 29 September and ends on Friday. The holiday has seen thousands of Israeli extremists storm the Al-Aqsa compound, with almost 1,500 entering the site on Monday.
Israeli extremists also continued on Thursday to hold provocative marches both inside Jerusalem’s Old City and outside its walls, attacking Palestinians and their property.
They also beat and spat at journalists in a market area near Al-Aqsa, where shops were forced to close for the sixth day in a row.
The Old City is home to Al-Aqsa as well as the Western Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
The Al-Aqsa compound is the third holiest site in Islam and the most important Muslim place in Palestine.
This morning, the Islamic Jihad group announced the start of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation, igniting another local war against Israel. They formally cited regular oppression and attempts on Al-Aqsa as reasons, where local Arab worshippers have been repressed repeatedly (in addition, there have been raids against the Islamic Jihad in Jenin over the past few weeks).
The operation began quite dramatically: a naval landing was carried out in the north of the Gaza Strip, and there are also reports of airborne landings – someone parachuted into rear cities. … After three hours of fighting, the group successfully captured a military base in the town of Kerem Shalom: there are enough images on social media of killed IDF servicemen and captured equipment (there are also photos of a burnt “Merkava” tank). This is a huge base on the border with Egypt. To put it mildly, the trophy is very valuable.
▪️As of now, fighting is still ongoing in Netiv HaAsara, Berri, and Sderot. Panic has gripped the population of bordering villages, with footage of people fleeing on foot. The Israel Defense Forces began retaliatory strikes only after 10 in the morning. The Israeli Ministry of Defense has stated outright that Hamas has gone to war with them, and at 10:30, the official start of the Iron Swords counter-terrorism operation was announced.
This is likely to escalate. It is impossible to predict when or how this will end.
Posted by b on October 7, 2023 at 9:05 UTC | Permalink
Israel-Hamas War Update. Israeli General captured by Hamas. 200 Israelis and 232 Palestinians killed
Hamas coming in on hang-glider parachutes was pretty awesome not going to lie.
A lot lot lot safer under the Chinese than the west.
What did the west did with technology for the last 400 years?
They use the technology to loot and plunder the entire world. Many of the loot are in the western museums today! Or worn on the crowns of western monarchs till today.
They use the technology to enslave Africans and coloured people to do menial task for the west. They snagged islands like collecting sea shells and corals. Hawaii, Guan, Falklands, Gibraltar and another hundreds of islands are still under the west.
They carry out genocides to steal continents such as the Americas and Australia. They abused, steal, raped and murder throughout the entire world. They colonised and destroyed the people living there and stole everything of value!
They continue virtual colonialism after physical colonisation is not possible through what they termed international rules based international order. They took control the entire worlds economy, and wealth. They continue to use the technology to threaten every nation and non Caucasian societies including Slavs and non European citizens.
And you question if China can be trusted with the technology? What kind of logic apart from racist rhetoric do you have?
For years, the Arab states have been moving towards normalizing relations with Israel. Hamas counts upon the support of Arab states, both material and financial, to exist, since it has very limited means of its own.
Normalized Arab-Israeli relations would be the coup de grace for Hamas and the “Palestinian liberation” movement. Because a precondition of normalized relations with Israel would be ceasing support to Hamas.
Part of the reason why Arab states were warming up to Israel was that Arab leaders have been losing faith in the Palestinian forces for decades now and an improvement for the Palestinians was nowhere in sight.
Regardless of where you stand on this conflict, it’s hard to argue that Palestinian forces have had much in the way of success recently (or ever, for that matter), having lost land to Israel almost continously since Israel’s inception. The reasons for this are not surprising. Palestine isn’t really even a nation, at this point, it’s two paltry strips of impoverished land run by a corrupt elite and barely educated militants with no resources of their own. They are facing a prosperous, well-organized nation state with a highly competent military and the direct support of the world’s premier powers. It was never going to turn out well for them.
And I suppose the Arabs were tired of tying their money up in so clearly a lost cause. Oh sure, they still outwardly broadcast support for Palestine for religious reasons and internal appeasement (most Arab Muslims are extremely against any reproachment with Israel), but I suspect they have been planning a move away from being active stakeholders in the Israel-Palestine conflict for a while.
So why the attack from Hamas now? Well it’s an obvious attempt to sabotage the normalization of relations across the ME, which would have sounded the death knell for them. I cannot imagine the Hamas leadership were going to stand idle and let the war coffers they plunder empty out. So they attacked Israel, performing the attack in a way that would cause the most severe reaction from the Israelis. Massacring Jews, abducting Jews, the whole shabang. They were trying to force Israel into the largest possible retaliation against them (they might have succeeded), and thereby force the Arab powers into taking a stance against said Israeli retaliation. That’s my only explanation for this attack. Otherwise, the immediate tactical value of killing a few hundred Israeli civilians eludes me.
And it seems to have worked…for now.
Many of the Arab nations previously moving towards normalized relations with Israel have now performed a sudden U-turn, mostly for reasons of posturing (and possibly gaining leverage out of the situation). But I don’t think this will last long. Some of the Gulf states didn’t even openly side with Palestine this time, the UAE came out with this statement;
“The UAE calls for the exercise of maximum restraint and an immediate ceasefire to avoid serious repercussions,”
I imagine most of the Arab powers see that the writing is on the wall for Hamas. There is no possible way that having poked the Israeli bear, Hamas is going to be able to effectively resist any Israeli-counter operation. Afterall, the Israeli army is a world-class professional fighting force, and Hamas is a glorified militia at best, fighting on very little land, completely trapped and encircled. Or to be brief, they’re f*cked.
I suppose once the Arab countries can extract some personal benefit/concession out of the situation, they will perform another U-turn and go back to ditching Palestine. I can see Saudi Arabia’s shallow declaration of support for Hamas disappearing once the Saudi’s can get some sort of security deal with the US in exchange for re-normalizing relations with Israel.
Regardless, the long-term outlook for Hamas is poor. This was a desperate, flailing attempt to gain some short-term ground in “reuniting the Ummah” and gain an [im]moral victory against Israel.
But in time, I think, they will come to regret it.
HE’S BASED !! Oliver Anthony – Rich Mans Gold | REACTION
Thanks for a great video and reaction! I love the message, and you wound it up wonderfully! God bless you, and yours!
World should be prepared for sustained high inflation in US — Global Times
The outbreak of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has driven up oil prices again, while a potential oil crisis could risk putting the Fed’s inflation fight in jeopardy, adding uncertainties to the global economic recovery.
The US and Venezuela have progressed in talks that could provide sanctions relief to Caracas by allowing at least one additional foreign oil firm to take Venezuelan crude oil for debt repayment, Reuters reported on Monday, citing five anonymous sources.
The timing of the news seems delicate, as it comes at a time when oil prices keep rising on market fears of the Middle East conflict exacerbating supply tightness. On Monday, global benchmark Brent Crude rose 4.2 percent to $88.15 a barrel, while US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) rose 4.3 percent to $86.38 per barrel.
Both Brent Crude and WTI remained around their Monday closing levels during Tuesday’s trading. The regained upward momentum contrasted with a drop of more than 8 percent in global oil prices over the previous week.
Apparently, the US releasing information through media outlets over potential sanctions relief on oil-exporting country Venezuela serves as a reminder to the market that even if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict brings uncertainty to crude oil supply in the Middle East, the US may be able to affect oil prices in other ways.
If the US does ease sanctions on Venezuelan crude oil, then an immediate effect would be an increase in supply to the world oil market and a fall in oil prices.
However, even though it is not clear how oil prices will unfold, US anxiety about high oil prices triggering high inflation is almost certain. At a time when the Fed’s monetary tightening policy has approached its limit, if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict leads to a sustained rebound in global crude prices, then it will certainly disrupt the interest rate hiking cycle of the Fed.
If the Fed continues to hike interest rates to curb inflation, the US economy will likely slip into a recession. A worse scenario for the Fed could be that the economy falls into a recession with the inflation rate still high.
While some may argue that since neither Palestine nor Israel is a major oil-producing country, the impact on the oil market is limited, and the conflict may not last long. Yet, market fears about the Middle East situation are not unfounded. There are no reliable indications of whether the conflict will end soon or lead to wider regional instability. If it escalates to involve more Middle East nations, it could threaten crude supply by the surrounding major oil-producing countries. The Middle East is home to some of the world’s biggest oil producers, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, as well as key transit routes such as the Strait of Hormuz, which is known as the world’s most important “oil chokepoint.”
The US will try its best to avoid the worst-case scenario. Diplomatic efforts may convince Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela to increase their oil production to relieve its inflation pressure. But it needs to be reminded that given the past oil crises in the Middle East that caused great volatility in the global crude market, the psychological impact of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the crude market shouldn’t be underestimated. As long as the conflict remains unresolved, the impact will remain.
Also, since the Biden administration has already released several batches of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for the purpose of reining in high inflation, the remaining stocks may not be as sufficient as they were during previous oil crises. It is disturbing to think how few tools the US has left to affect inflation.
Can the Fed’s monetary policy withstand the test of this round of oil market volatility? If the Fed changes the pace of rate hikes because of the Middle East situation, then the risk of a US recession will increase significantly.
At that point, even the world economic recovery will face greater difficulties. That will also create more challenges for the Chinese economy, especially in terms of the spillover effect of US rate hikes and China’s cooperation with the Middle East. In this sense, essential preparations are needed for the potential shocks.
King Abdullah II of Jordan Orders Humanitarian Aid to Gaza; IDF Says “no”
King Abdullah II of Jordan, in coordination with the Egyptian Government, has reportedly ordered the Delivery of Humanitarian Aid to the Gaza Strip through the Rafah Border Crossing.
However the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) is continuing to state that any Supply Trucks that attempt to enter the Gaza Strip through Egypt will be Destroyed.
The government of Israel needs to remind it IDF that THEY do not make policy; the civilian government makes policy. The government of Israel also needs to remind the IDF that THEY do not get to starve people to death, which, now that Israel has formally declared “War” would be a war crime. A crime against Humanity.
Hal Turner Editorial Opinion: We all see and know the ferocious and horrifying situation that now exists in Israel with the ongoing war. Israel absolutely, positively, has a right to defend itself and its people. On this, there is no disagreement. None. At all.
Israel does NOT, however, get to throw out all the rules of war — or humanity — and starve 2.3 Million people to death in Gaza. That’s not a tactic, that’s Genocide – and it is not allowed. Period. Full stop.
It was late one night after a summer rain. I came upon a light truck that had slid off the road and flipped.
I stopped and ran to the truck and found a 16 year old kid impaled on a fence post and bleeding out. He was dying and he knew it. He was crying, calling for his mother and saying I don’t want to die over and over.
I told him I was going for help and he said please don’t let me die alone. I stayed with that kid, held him as he died.
It really messed me up. The cops thought I was a victim too because I had his blood all over me.
The paramedics gave me a shot and took me to hospital. They told me that’s the only way I’d let him go. Maybe I thought if I’d hung onto him he’d be all right.
I’d never met the kid but I would have given my life if he could have lived.
They kept me in the hospital a few days. Cops and paramedics came to see me. We talked a lot. The first time you come across a scene like that is a horror. If you aren’t ready for it, it’ll mess you up. I went down the drain in a haze of booze and drugs.
I had a bad case of PTSD. Every time I closed my eyes, that kid was there. In his eyes was the plea don’t let me die and there was nothing I could do.
Six months later I was in rehab.
I worked with a shrink. For another six months. I haven’t had a drink or drug since.
The nightmares are rare now. I learned how fragile and precious life is and, how quickly that can change in a matter of seconds.
Answer: The Chinese market and regulations were vastly different. Amazon’s business operations worldwide were essentially stripped downed clones of their American operations. In the early days (early 2000s), Amazon China either didn’t have the authority, or simply arrogance prevented them to adapt-and-improve to the local reality. By the time Amazon China wanted to adapt-and-improve in the early 2010s, it was already too late. AWS is a different case, thou.
Just give an example:
Amazon and eBay arrived on China’s e-commerce scene in its formative years in the early 2000s. Amazon and eBay started off with absolute dominance. However, in the early 2000s, e-commerce in China was tiny, especially outside B2B. One common obstacle was the lack of credit cards. Buyers had to submit payments via wire transfers from their nearest post offices. In case of a fraud, it was nearly impossible to recover the losses.
Then, Alibaba/Taobao, a minor player at the time, launched Alipay, an online payment escrow service. Very soon, Taobao wiped eBay out who also happened to be in online auction business.
Why did eBay or Amazon not preempt AliPal? After all, eBay owned PayPal.
There were a whole bunch of missed opportunities for Amazon China in the following years.
China is Decoupling From the US
Damn! This is great.
If there is one video that you MUST watch from start to finish, this is it!
Carl Zha talks to @TheRedPillDiariesOfficial about how the US attempt to decouple from China has actually led to China decoupling from the US which only results in more isolation of the West from the rest of the World. US money printing and financial sanctions also led to acceleration of de-dollarization in the rest of the world.
I was the editor for a small daily newspaper in texas. I had four reporters and a photographer on my team.
Newspapers are notorious for not paying overtime, even though it is the law in most cases.
They forced the employees to work 50–60 hours a week and to turn in a 40-hour time card, so they got paid no overtime. The bad thing was, I was the one who had to tell them to work. The only option was to work without pay or get fired, and people needed a job so they stayed.
I secretly kept meticulous records. I had each employee fill out their real hours on a time card and give it to me. I took notes of every conversation.
I eventually got fired because a story that I didn’t know about didn’t get in the paper. Should not have been that big of a deal, but I was relieved.
My first order of business was to contact the labor board in the state. I gave them all the actual hours, and copies of the time cards the employees were forced to sign. Along with notes about conversations I had.
A few weeks later the paper was fined several thousand dollars, had to pay every employee, including me, backpay with overtime. The company fired my boss as well. That was a good piece of revenge
Today, I took my dog to the dog park. It’s his favorite place in the world. I sat there and was watching him run around with the other dogs.
A young girl, maybe six years old, walked up to me. She said hi and asked if I wanted to see something.
I said “sure.” There were maybe six other adults there, so I knew I was somewhat protected by witnesses. She said she could “run as fast as a velociraptor.” It was really cute. She took off about 20 yards and ran back.
I said that was really cool and asked where she learned about velociraptors. She said “school.” I thought it was nice to hear a kid talk about something they learned in school.
I asked which school she goes to. But before she could answer, I stopped her. I interrupted “never mind. Don’t answer that.” I immediately got up and walked to another bench.
I don’t think most women could understand how nervous I was for that minute. I was terrified of being labeled, had she told her adult supervisor that I asked her that question.
I think any woman would feel perfectly comfortable having a conversation like that with a six year old boy. But no man is completely safe in a situation like that.
I got caught once at a dinner out with people from work. I heard one check and thought we’ll we can do the math, and I ordered according to my means. I don’t drink alcohol, and watched evryone else had a pre-dinner cocktail, then several bottles of wine with dinner, plus they each ordered dessert. So I knew what I owed plus 20% of my own tab. But the lead of tne event, a little tipsy announces “let’s divide the check 11 ways”. I took a deep breath, and said but Mary Kate, I didn’t have any cocktails or wine, or dessert. I was surprised when a waiter stepped forward and supported that he kept jote that I had NOT had any of those extras. So therexwas silence and eye rolling, but I gave my amount including tip. Then they equally divided the rest. I saved myself 65.00. Tvwas awkward but I offered some folks rides home for free. I was never invited to another girls night out, but others did approach me at work quietly saying they didn’t drink more than one cocktail and felt stuck paying the big excess. So for the rest of my life I Che k before going out, how are we splitting the bill tonight? Then I can decline in advance. I’m not cheap, but careful with my money I work hard for, and when the money is to cover everyone else’s booze, no thanks.
UK Rail Thoughts
Expensive high speed railway farce of UK shows it isn’t a competitor to China
In the 19th century, Britain was the nation which invented the railway. The landmark invention of the steam engine, known as “Stephenson’s Rocket,” was a creation which revolutionized the world and became a pinnacle of building the modern, industrialized world, connecting nations and enabling trade like never before. It was through the genius of this innovation that Britain excelled against its competitors and established itself as a global empire, a scientific, technological and military giant which allowed it to dominate and subjugate countless countries, including China.
Yet, Britain today pales in comparison to its historical achievements, as it struggles to even muster the organization, funding and political will to build a second high speed railway. This project, known as High Speed 2 (HS2), has proven to be one of the most controversial, politically contested and expensive infrastructure projects in British history, with a report from Channel 4 stating its costs could spiral upward to 108 billion pounds ($131.6 billion). The railway was designed to connect Britain’s largest two cities, London and Birmingham, cutting transportation time to just an hour, but it was also envisioned to extend to other major cities including Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle and Edinburgh, connecting all the economic centres of the country.
That isn’t happening. As the costs of construction continue to grow, and as the date of completion continues to get pushed back, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has lost the political will to pursue it and decided to effectively scrap the northern link, instead proposing to shoehorn the trains onto existing lines.
There are several factors which have contributed to this scaling back, but all are the government’s fault. This includes disastrous policy choices including full-throttle escalation of the war in Ukraine, which the government has devoted billions to, and the subsequent onslaught of inflation and economic stagnation, mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic, but also more subtly, the government’s decision to, at the behest of the US, pursue an antagonistic foreign policy toward China against its national interests.
How are China and HS2 linked? First of all, at the end of 2019, the Boris Johnson government proposed to the press that China Railway Corp be used as the contractor for HS2. This was the most effective, reliable and cheapest option available. Not only would the project have been completed far earlier, but it would have also been far less expensive. The following year, Britain reset its foreign policy on China at the influence of the US, and the whole thing went out the window. With that policy shift, Britain began effectively sabotaging its own infrastructure development to suit US preferences. The costs of Britain banning Huawei from its 5G network, to take just one example, have been astronomical.
China’s high speed railway record speaks for itself. Meanwhile, Britain is struggling to connect just two major cities just 117 miles (188 kilometres) apart, China has built a comprehensive high speed railway network within the scope of just 15 years, which as of 2022, spans 42,000 kilometres and is still growing. It is possible to travel across the entire country in just seven hours from Shenzhen to Beijing. In 25 years, Britain has only managed to complete one high speed network (HS1), which is in fact a transnational route which goes to France, the Netherlands and Belgium, making it a joint collaboration rather than a distinctly “British” achievement.
The fundamental reason behind Britain’s failure to move ahead with high speed railway is that its infrastructure is a series of privately owned, for-profit franchises, without any subsidies, which substantially drives up the costs and also limits investment in the infrastructure simultaneously. Even without considering the High Speed Rail, the quality of British railways is astonishingly poor and behind most of its European counterparts. This model has also been bad for the workers, which has led to routine industrial action and strikes throughout the year of 2022-23, making services unreliable. This contrasts sharply to China’s state-led model of development which is superior to the British railway system in every single way.
This makes the comparison ironic given that Britain sees China as a “competitor” and a “threat to its economic security.” Britain is a stagnating, declining country while China is the world’s second largest economy, and rather than learning from China’s development successes and courting Chinese investment, the UK has made the bizarre choice to “cut its nose off to spite its face” and antagonise Beijing to suit US interests.
But what have they got to show for it? The answer is a single high speed rail route spanning into the cost of more than 100 billion pounds which has taken decades to build and has to be scaled back from its original plans. This is the country which invented the railway, but now finds itself falling behind at an alarming rate. This means shunning Chinese companies was one of the most expensive and short-sighted decisions taken by politicians in recent years, among many other things.
Saudi Arabia Rejects US, Gives $70 Billion Order To China!
“I like watching the US suffer it’s like seeing a bully get punished, it’s amazing.”
My wife and I were walking with our youngest over the old bridge between Lichfield Cathedral and the market place. A lovely spring day. I’m British, my wife isn’t.
A young man came dashing past the end of the bridge, a police officer in hot pursuit. They both vanished from view rapidly.
We stopped to read the information board about the historic bridge. A few minutes later, the suspect and the copper came walking back, a little out of breath. We overheard their conversation.
Copper: “Sorry for running after you like that, mate. But you were running away.”
Suspect: “Yeah, sorry about that, mate. I shouldn’t have run, but I didn’t want to get caught.”
My wife stood open-jawed. I didn’t quite see why it was so unusual. I mean, just because they’re trying to arrest you doesn’t mean police officers should be rude or unsympathetic. Just because they may have done something the law may forbid doesn’t mean someone has to be abusive.
We continued to eavesdrop.
Copper, leading suspect to a park bench, where they both sat down, “Are you ready to give me your name and address, or do you want a bit of a breather first?”
Suspect, “You don’t have a cigarette, do you?”
Copper, pulling a packet of fags from his breast pocket and handing it to the suspect, “Here you go.”
As he lit the man’s cigarette, the police van arrived. Copper: “Just finish your smoke and we’ll finish the details at the station.”
I told my wife there was a good chance the cop didnt smoke, but kept a handy packet to help put people at ease.
She’s told friends and family in several countries about that. It is, she says, absolutely the most British thing she’s witnessed: a cop apologising for arresting someone who apologised for trying to run away.
If this story has failed to entertain or amuse, all I can say is sorry. And what could be more British than that?
Going Anonymous, because most of my colleagues are my followers and vice-versa.
I’m a male professional. I have had only 2+ years of experience in one of the fortune 500 companies.
Sharing my top 6 learning so far, being honest:)
1. To ensure that your peers, immediate supervisor, or your manager don’t take your effort and time for granted.
2. I have learnt to document, I mean, putting everything on emails, which is a must!! Trust, team work, and other fancy words come next. This is one of the most important lessons I have learnt, after many betrayals from my peers.
3. Don’t expect your supervisor or lead to talk for you, say for example: nominating you for awards or acknowledging your efforts in front of the team. Instead, if you really expect awards,remember you have tongue!
4. I have good relationship with many female co-workers. But, if something goes wrong, say for example an argument regarding work or something. If they want to take it further and make your life miserable, you’ll be the victim for sure, trust me.
5. Whenever I have had discussions with my manager, I have gotten very angry because of her bad review comments. FYI, I have not received any negating feedback from the stakeholders (Also, not any appreciation) . But, after each discussion, I have worked on my skills and added them to my resume. Remember, at last, only that matters is what is in it for you and am hoping to get a new job with a good hike.
6. Don’t show that you badly want to be in the job, although you have debts to pay, pretend to be confident. Otherwise, you’ll end up doing loads of work, which you are not supposed to do.
During the intense fighting which broke out yesterday between HAMAS and Israel, astonishing things took place. Despite the most advanced intelligence and surveillance systems in the world, Palestinians allegedly broke through into Israel — somehow un-noticed by all the surveillance gear.
One Israeli Border Guard told me “Our systems could see if a Bird was flying-in; yet authorities would have us believe they couldn’t see dozens of Palestinians on motorized para-gliders in the air? It’s simply not possible. They let this happen on purpose.”
Another Israeli told me “MOSSAD knows when these people, HAMAS, take a dump in the bathroom, yet we’re supposed to believe MOSSAD had no idea this gigantic operation was being planned?”
Israel has the best intelligence on its neighbors of any nation on earth. Israel has lots of “assets” embedded in these various “terrorist” organizations, as well as SIGINT (including U.S. satellite data) which allows Israel to always have a finger on the pulse of these organizations.
There is no way in hell that a coordinated, major attack involving about 1,000 Hamas fighters, sea-based/ land-based/ aerial attacks could have been planned, coordinated, and executed without Israeli intelligence getting wind of it. 0% chance.
Others had similar statements of anger and disbelief. One IDF soldier who saw Palestinians use a Drone to destroy an Israeli Merkava Tank said “Where did the Palestinians get drones with armor-piercing explosives? That technology is being used in the Ukraine-Russia conflict. How did it suddenly appear here, in Israel?”
Other IDF soldiers pointed to Anti-Tank Guided Missiles (ATGM) being used against Israeli Security Forces. He said “These are weapons being seen on the Ukraine battlefields, how did they get into the Gaza Strip?”
Then, in the midst of the fighting, this video came out: HAMAS thanking Ukraine for selling them weapons to be used against Israel:
The most raging questions had to do with alleged “electronic jamming” that was said to have taken place as the Palestinians with para-gliders flew across the border into Israel. According to numerous sources on both sides, “electronic warfare” technology was allegedly used to jam Israeli radar and other surveillance gear. Said one Israeli “Only the Russians have gear to carry out such effective jamming – how did the Palestinians get it?”
That seems to be the most burning question right now since videos are also out showing armed Palestinian fighters para-glding into a massive “RAVE” party inside Israel:
The answers all see to point to yesterday’s outbreak of violence as “payback” to Israel, from Russia, over Israel’s support of Ukraine, and over Israel’s supplying of weapons and technology to Azerbaijan, which used it against Armenia again over the past two weeks, to seize Nagorno-Karaback and send 100,000 Armenians fleeing for their lives.
If this conclusion about Russia is correct, then one might ask, how much farther all this fighting in Israel may go? Will Israel still exist when this is over? Maybe. Maybe not.
One official with whom I spoke overnight told me “Israel is suffering from Desertification of its land; the ground water table is receding 25 meters a year and soon, there won’t be enough arable land to support the continued existence of Israel. But . . . quite coincidentally . . . there is now rich, arable land, in the center of Europe, where half its population has either fled or been killed, that would suit a relocation of Israel: Ukraine. Maybe they’ll all move there.”
Gee. What a coincidence.
As for those asking “Why are the Palestinians so violent towards Israel?” the answer has been on maps for years, right in front of everyone’s eyes. Below is the reality from the time “Israel” was created in 1949, until today. The White areas are “Israel” and the Green are “Palestinian.” Look at what has happened to the Palestinians in their own land, since 1949:
The Palestinians have been systematically purged from their land, their homes, and their freedom. THAT is the root of this hatred. It’s not going away.
They never show you this map on the news. That’s because it provides the crucial context necessary to anyone wanting to understand the Israel/Palestine situation.
A young man with mental health problems just walked into the coffee shop while I was writing on Quora.
He’s strong and looks normal, but he can’t stop talking to himself.
He’s talking continuously to himself, and every few steps he takes, he does a quick ‘Michael-Jackson-turn’ and then continues walking forward.
Witnessing this individual with no self control helped me not only to feel grateful but also helped give me the answer to this question.
I have written several times about my own mind-battles. I’ve always struggled with ADD and possibly dyslexia. The consequences of this “lack of braincontrol” made me a terrible student academically.
Failing classes at school killed my self-confidence. These struggles shaped my childhood.
So, where am I going with all of this?
There’s a hidden secret to success, but it demands an open mind to understand it and humility to implement it.
So, to answer your question, how can you become very successful in your early twenties?
I could answer this with a huge list of “best practices,” but as I’ve learned NONE of those work if you don’t first master yourself.
What do I mean?
Some examples:
Are YOU in control of yourself, or are your fears controlling you?
Are YOU in control of your life, or is your need to please other people controlling you?
Do you know your strengths and your weaknesses, or are you hiding and ignoring your weaknesses with distractions or numbing addictions?
Do you struggle with depression, anxieties or other emotional issues?
But hold on!
Remember what I said before?
“There’s a hidden secret to success which demands an OPEN mind to understand, and HUMILITY to implement it.”
Open: Learn to listen!
Humility: Stop hiding and being defensive!
That’s the fastest road to success!
It wasn’t until I stopped running and hiding who I really was that change started to happen in my life. Over the years, I had developed the strength to fit into this competitive world, but I was fooling myself, not everyone else.
Maturing and accepting who I was, and starting to work on those strengths and weaknesses is when I started to grow to my fullest potential!
There’s still a long journey ahead…
Whether we recognize it or not, we’re all imperfect human beings. There’s NO person on earth who doesn’t struggle with some kind of mental/emotional issue.
Well, excuse me… except you!
If you are or feel “perfect,” go on and keep doing what you’re doing… good luck!
For those of us who have been humbled by the battlefield of life, this is your way to success:
Self-Awareness is your best friend!
Like a wild horse — you may be the fastest “horse” in the world, but if you are not ‘tamed’ you will NEVER win the race!
The Uncomfortable Study That Ended Affirmative Action | 𝘋𝘳. 𝘗𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘈𝘳𝘤𝘪𝘥𝘪𝘢𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘰 𝘐𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸
Interesting stuff. I remember reading a few years ago about some other work this professor was involved in. It had to do with the etymological implications of contemporary media figures and their pseudonyms, and ended up concluding that Destiny was a woman’s name.
My Father, Grandfather and Uncle were partners in a restaurant business in the 1950–70’s. This was before fast food existed. My grandfather had started teaching me how to cook when I was 4-5 years old. This is around 1960. When I was 10, I started going there on Sunday and did some bits of work. A year or two later I was working there evenings and weekends, peeling potatoes and making fries, food prep, waiting tables, washing dishes and floors.
I learned how to make milkshakes and all the desserts. Milkshakes were one scoop of ice cream, fill to the line in the metal cup with homogenized milk (no 2% in those days) and two squirts of syrup. The ice cream flavor and the syrup matched the flavor the customer ordered. We had Chocolate, Strawberry and Vanilla and that was typical of the selection in those days. The contents of the metal cup was usually larger than the glass that we served it in, so after we filled the glass, we took both the glass and the remaining in the metal cup to the customer’s table.
I also cooked and ate hamburgers regularly. My father ground the meat and he put some seasoning and egg into the mixture. When he was done, we manually made balls of meat, flattened them into hamburger size and put them in a stack, first a burger, then a small sheet of wax paper. I think the size was about 7 inches diameter and 1/4 inch thick. These would shrink when cooked to about 5 inches diameter and 1/2 inch thick. We put these stacks of burgers in the freezer. Each time someone ordered a burger, we would take one out and fry it up. The buns were simple buns like hamburger buns you’d buy at the grocers. I think the meat tasted much better than any fast food we have today. It tasted like a hamburger you’d buy in a good restaurant, you could taste the meat. The cheese was also real cheese, not the processed stuff you have today. It came with a slice of onion and tomato, 2 slices of real bacon was extra. Condiments were mustard, relish and ketchup.
I think this has got to be the story of the Dutch minesweeper HNLMS Abraham Crijnssen. It was 1941, when the Japanese suddenly attacked Dutch East Indies, as well as other colonies in southeast Asia. The minesweeper found itself suddenly in danger of the sophisticated Japanese aircraft and patrolling ships.
The remaining Dutch Navy was ordered to link up with the Australian navy, but Abraham Crijnssen was stuck all alone in Indonesia, armed with a single 76mm gun turret and two 20mm auto cannons. It had no chance to fight off really anything. So the crew decided to camouflage the entire ship, as an island. They cut down a bunch of jungle foliage, and painted what they couldn’t cover as sand or rock.
They only sailed at night, because during the day, the water ripples would have been visible from the air. During the day they simply anchored close to shore appearing as a small island – one of many along the Indonesian shore.
She arrived in Australia in March 1942, without being detected by the Japanese.
TEHRAN – Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi warned the Israeli regime against making warmongering steps, saying that equations in the region have changed.
President Raisi also spoke over the phone with Esmail Haniyeh, the chief of Hamas political bureau, and Ziyad Nakhala, the secretary-general of the Islamic Jihad Movement.
The Iranian president also issued a message on the situation in Palestine. He welcomed the Palestinian operation against the Zionist regime of Israel, saying that the operation frightened and startled the world of oppression.
He said the Palestinians took the initiative and showed that the steely determination prevails over all kinds of weaponry.
The Iranian president underlined that the Islamic Republic of Iran invites all the world to observe the truth that the accumulation of oppression and injustice against the Palestinian people, the continuation of insults to the women and prisoners, and sacrilege to Al-Aqsa Mosque cannot last forever and will be met with resistance by nations.
“Undoubtedly, the Zionist regime and its supporters are responsible for endangering the security of the nations of the region and must be held accountable. The Islamic Republic defends the legitimate defense of the Palestinian nation,” he said, according to IRNA.
Raisi asserted, “The honor of the nations is not obtained in reconciliation with oppression; And it is impossible to normalize the captivity of the free nation of Palestine.”
President Raisi also asked the Muslim governments to join the Islamic Ummah in supporting the Palestinian nation honestly.
Underlining that belligerence is detrimental to the Zionists, Raisi warned, “The Zionist enemy should also know that the equation has changed; Warmongering is detrimental to the Zionists. The Palestinian nation is the winner of this field.”
Palestinian attack turned the collapse nightmare into certainty: General
A senior Iranian general has said that the Saturday attack by Palestinian resistance groups against Israel turned the nightmare of collapse of Israel into a reality for the leaders of the Israeli regime.
In a message about the Palestinian attack, General Mohammad Bagheri, the chief of joint staff of Iran’s armed forces, said, “Al-Aqsa Storm turned the nightmare of collapse of the Zionist regime into a certainty for the leaders of this regime, and proved that some desperate efforts like the normalization charade will not be able to slow down or postpone the process of the decline and collapse of the spider web.”
General Bagheri was referring the Palestinian attack, code-named Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, which caught the Israeli regime off guard.
The Iranian general described the operation as “hybrid and proud” that took down the false redoubtable image and power of the occupying regime of Israel.
“The Palestinian resistance fighters, in this surprise operation that they prepared from the air, sea and land against the positions of the Zionist army, brought to the fore brilliant scenes of the resistance and standing of a suffering and oppressed nation,” General Bagheri said in the message.
He added, “A nation that, after several decades of imposed oppression, now with the support of the young motivated generation relying on Islam and under the shadow of trust in the divine promise, has achieved such a power that it has astonished the analysts and military strategists of the world.”
He pointed out that at some point, the defenseless nation of Palestine used to defend themselves with stones, but today they reached a point where they are able to pull off complex hybrid operations using thousands of rockets and missiles to denigrate the Israeli missile defense system Iron Dome.
“These defense weapons, when combined with the spirit of martyrdom of motivated Palestinian youth, produce such a power that it brings the Zionist regime to a collapse like a devastating deluge,” the Iranian general said. He said, “The stormy movement of the Al-Aqsa Storm is the product of the holy anger that the Zionist enemy has planted in the oppressed Palestinian nation and must now reap.”
General Bagheri congratulated the Palestinian resistance fighters on their “proud victory,” expressing hope that the Al-Aqsa Mosque will soon be liberated from Israeli captivity.
“It is a divine promise that oppression won’t last long and the will of the oppressed people of Palestine will defeat the oppressors,” he concluded.
“Spontaneous” move.
Iran has said that the Palestinian operation against Israel is a “spontaneous” move.
Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nasser Kanaani reacted to the current developments in occupied Palestine and the attack by the Palestinian resistance groups against the Zionist occupiers, saying Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was a spontaneous move by the resistance groups and the oppressed Palestinian people in defense of their inalienable and undeniable rights.
He added that the operation was the Palestinians’ natural reaction to the war-mongering, provocative and incendiary policies of the Zionists, especially the usurping regime’s extremist and adventurous prime minister, according to a statement by the Iranian foreign ministry.
Kanaani said the oppressed Palestinian people’s inalienable right to defend themselves, their land and their sanctities against occupation, aggression, daily violations and organized terror on part of the Zionist regime is a natural and legitimate right in line with all recognized international standards and the fundamental principles of international law.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman added that on the one hand, the continuation of the desecration of Islam’s holy sites and the first Qibla of Muslims by extremist and racist Zionists in recent months and weeks, and the persistence of the Zionist regime’s policy of killing, committing crimes and doing acts of aggression against the oppressed Palestinian people, especially women, children and Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails amid the silence and inaction of the international community and the fake human rights defenders have left the Palestinian nation and resistance no way but to resist and rely on their inherent strength in the face of the Zionists.
Kanani noted that the Islamic Republic of Iran reaffirms the inherent and legal right of Palestinians to defend themselves vis-à-vis the crimes of the usurpers of Palestine that have been going on for 75 years. He said Iran also holds the Zionist occupiers and its supporters responsible for the continuation and escalation of violence and atrocities against the Palestinians. He underlined that Iran calls on Muslim countries to support al-Aqsa Mosque and the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people.
Small portion of Resistance Power
Ali Akbar Velayati, the secretary general of the global assembly of Islamic awakening, has reacted to the Palestinian operation against Israel, saying that the operation showed only small portion of the power accumulated by the Resistance Axis.
In a message to Esmail Haniyeh, the chief of Hamas political bureau, and Ziyad Nakhala, the secretary-general of the Islamic Jihad Movement, Velayati hailed the Palestinian operation against the military positions of the Israeli regime.
He said that the photos coming out of the operation showed a great conquest that startled and astonished the enemies and stratified Muslims all over the world, especially in the West Asia region.
“The era of domination and tyranny of the Zionist terrorist regime is over and what is happening today in the occupied territories is a small manifestation of the accumulated power and authority of the Islamic Resistance Front in Palestine,” Velayati said.
He added, “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, which is a response to the ongoing crimes of the Zionist regime in the occupied territories, will definitely fundamentally change the balance of power in the occupied Palestine and will put the Zionist regime in a more vulnerable position.”
He noted, “This victorious operation, which will definitely facilitate and accelerate the collapse of the Zionist regime, promises the impending destruction of the Zionist regime.”
Velayati also said that “this great and strategic victory is a serious warning” to all those who seek to normalize relations with Israel.
Iran FM speaks with Turkish counterpart
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian spoke with his Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan, about the situation in Palestine.
The reviewed the situation in Palestine and underlined the importance of respecting the rights of the Palestinian people.
In this call, Amir Abdollahian called the resistance movement spontaneous and the result of the continuous crimes of the Zionist regime against Palestine, according to a separate statement by the Iranian foreign ministry.
The Iranian foreign ministry emphasized the necessity of solidarity and cohesion of Islamic countries in supporting the Holy Quds and supporting the oppressed and resistant Palestinian nation.
New rules for war
A member of the Political Council of the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement hailed the Palestinian forces’ recent military operation against Israel as a monumental milestone that has defined new regulations on the struggle with the Israeli enemy.
In an interview with Tasnim, Mahmoud Qamati paid tribute to the Hamas fighters for their bravery after launching the Al-Aqsa Storm operation against the Zionist regime outside the Gaza Strip.
“Today, we are witnessing a new chapter, a qualitative leap, a military upheaval, and a change in the war patterns and in the rules of military battle against the Zionist enemy,” he said.
Hailing the Palestinian resistance forces for “stabilizing their military power” by infiltrating into the Zionist settlements and the areas occupied by the Israeli regime, Qamati said the major development has marked a new, monumental and historical model in the history of confrontation with the Zionist enemy.
The Zionist regime’s army is neither capable of defense nor offense, is absent in the battlefield, and has practically fallen into a state of passiveness, the Hezbollah official stated, noting that the Zionist settlers are in panic because there is no army to take care of them.
Qamati also said the unprecedented surprise operation by the Palestinian forces has dealt a crushing blow not only to Israel, but also to the United States and the West, the staunch supporters of the Zionist regime.
The Union made a number of unforced errors that drastically prolonged the war and still won anyway. The Confederacy did surprisingly well and still lost anyway. That should tell you everything you need to know.
Seriously, no bullshit, the South had no path to victory from the start. An impoverished, agrarian nation with poor logistics declaring war on a far more industrialized, cohesive nation just starting to come into its own as an industrial power? Here’s your sign.
From the South’s perspective, the only winning move was not to play. The moment they commenced hostilities (and boy, the way they commenced hostilities was a barrel full of stupid), the end was preordained. They had this weird idea that Europe, who they believe could not survive without their textiles, would intervene on their behalf, and that’s a miscalculation you could write entire books about.
Turns out the English hated slavery more than they loved cheap cotton, much to the surprise of folks who basically made white supremacy into their equivalent of a state religion, and without a patron it wasn’t whether the South would lose, but when.
All of this should have been obvious. But like one of my high school teachers said, though he didn’t put it quite this succinctly: Slavery makes you lazy, and racism makes you stupid. (He contended that laziness and stupidity, directly traceable to the institution of chattel slavery, still persist in the South to this day.)
US families are undergoing a third-straight year of falling income, but politicians think taxpayer money is better spent elsewhere
As Uncle Sam continues to pump billions of dollars into Kiev’s flagging fight against Russia and provide tempting handouts to illegal migrants, why is the average American worker forced to live paycheck to paycheck?
Here’s a question that most people have considered at least once in their lives, and probably a lot recently: How much annual income would you need to feel financially secure? For the average American, the magic number comes out to be $233,000 a year, according to a survey by Bankrate.
To bring the ’99 percent’ back down to Earth, the US Census Bureau released some sobering data that dashed those elusive six-digit dreams. Inflation-adjusted median household income fell to $74,580 in 2022 – a 2.3% decline from the 2021 average of $76,330. This marks the third-straight annual decrease since the Covid-19 pandemic began in 2020, taking a wrecking ball to the heart of the economy.
The bad news doesn’t end there for US consumers, who are now struggling with the consequences of a foreign conflict in a distant land and a wide-open border. Those factors have prompted the cost of living to surge higher than it has in over four decades amid runaway inflation. In June 2022, the year-over-year inflation rate, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, hit a jaw-dropping 9.1%, the highest it’s been since the administration of former President Ronald Reagan.
A significant reason for the increase in inflation happened on March 3, 2022, when President Joe Biden signed an executive order to ban the import of Russian oil, liquefied natural gas, and coal to the US. This decision has had disastrous results for the local economy. Since Biden’s inauguration, the cost of gasoline alone had jumped at one point by 100% (as of September 27, the average price of regular gas was $3.832 per gallon, according to the AAA , while gas prices were an average of $2.3 per gallon when Biden entered office), forcing just about everything else to skyrocket, including the number of poor people.
The poverty rate in the US exploded last year, the first increase in 13 years, according to the Census Bureau. In 2022, the rate was 12.4%, up 4.6 percentage points from 2021, according to the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), a method for tallying government welfare programs and tax credits designed to assist low-income families.
Meanwhile, the Expectations Index, determined by consumers’ short-term outlook for income, business, and labor market conditions, sunk to 73.7 in September. That follows a drop to 83.3 in August. The worrisome part is that an Expectations Index below 80 generally indicates an impending recession.
An economic tragedy is already quietly happening for millions of American consumers who are now living paycheck to paycheck precariously and who have been forced to use the payment method of last resort to make ends meet: the almighty credit card, with its exorbitant interest fees. On this score, the US economy has broken yet another record, although not in a way that could be considered something to cheer about.
“US credit card debt rose by $45 billion to $1.03 trillion in the second quarter from the first quarter, a 4.6% quarterly increase,” The Street reported . “It’s the first time in US history that household credit card balances topped the $1 trillion mark as the number of credit card accounts expanded by 5.48 million to 578.35 million in the quarter.” When consumer debt suddenly equals the amount the US spends on its military-industrial complex, you know there’s a problem.
Clearly, the US has some serious domestic issues that need to be resolved, but instead, it would rather fund a totally senseless proxy war against a nuclear power halfway around the world.
Washington has given Ukraine close to $100 billion in aid, with more in the pipeline, since Moscow launched its military operation in February 2022. The cash, however, has not only been used to fund Ukraine’s military. Billions of dollars have subsidized participants of the Ukrainian economy, like farmers and small business owners, market players whose counterparts in the US desperately need help, too. A recent study conducted by the Council on Foreign Relations shows that more than $30 billion – around 40% of total US aid to Ukraine as of July 31 – has been financial or humanitarian assistance that is not directly connected to military support. Military funding comes out to around $50 billion.
As if that were not enough, the Biden administration continues to welcome illegal migrants at a price that is more than what is being spent fighting a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. Yes, you read that right; the annual cost of providing care for the millions of illegal migrants entering the US is $150.7 billion, according to the Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on United States Taxpayers (FAIR).
In August, US Border Patrol recorded 232,972 migrant encounters along the southwestern border, a jump from 183,494 in July. The number of crossings for September is predicted to be higher than the previous month.
So here we have two concurrent events – a disastrous military conflict in Ukraine and a leaky US border – that are sucking away precious funds from the American taxpayer. It’s important to note that the king’s ransom that is being handed over to support these deranged Democratic agendas will never be returned, not in our lifetime. Instead, it will just be added to the unsustainable US national debt load, which is currently at $33 trillion, according to the US Debt Clock . That is an astronomical sum of money that we or future generations will someday be forced to deal with, and probably sooner rather than later.
What American citizen could possibly believe that any of this government funding has been a good investment for the American people? Well, they’re representatives in Washington, DC, for one. In May, ‘conservative’ US Senator Lindsey Graham, during a meeting with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky in Kiev, pronounced joyfully that “the Russians are dying” and aid to Ukraine is “the best money we’ve ever spent.” Aside from discounting the chances that such an “investment” could have towards unleashing World War III, Graham never thought for a second that such funds could have gone far at rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure, like that non-existent wall on the US-Mexico border. It would have been a wonderful work program for the US economy.
In short, it’s just another day in the discombobulated American empire, which, much like its ancient Roman precursor, could learn the lesson of overexpansion and overspending in the most brutal way imaginable – with its total and complete dissolution.
Israel long war. Saudi-US deal in jeopardy. Breaking BRICS+. $100B to Ukraine, one-and-done. U/1
When I got out of Prison, I suddenly came down with two maladies. The first was Ball’s Palsy (where my face was paralyzed, and I couldn’t close my eyes), and the second hit me about two weeks later. I had terrible kidney stones. And man oh man was it painful.
Because I had no money, and was transitioning from prison, I went to the hospital emergency room and they gave me a number to call to get some medicine for the pain.
And when I called that number, the receptionist answered the phone and accused me of wanting drugs and said that I could come in, but they weren’t going to give me anything for the pain.
I endured that pain for a week before I passed the stone, and it was a mighty bad situation. The pain was HORRIBLE.
Never the less, the thing that I remember was not the pain; the stone; or the egress from prison. I remember that holier than thou bitch at the reception desk that was giving me a hard time.
For all you Karens out there, I have a message for you all.
FUCK
YOU.
…
Good, now that I got that off my chest, let’s do todays post…
Robert Sandifer’s life began in two overlapping hells.
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The first hell smoldered outside of his home, the streets of the South Side of Chicago, infamously dangerous, and marred by a blistering gun violence that persists to this day.
These streets are so dangerous that Google actively censors the imagery that populates on Google Streetview.
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Robert Sandifer’s second hell raged in his own home.
He was born to a prostitute mother who had dozens of arrests, and who was addicted to cocaine before, during, and indefinitely after his birth.
Sandifer’s father was wholly absent, serving a long prison sentence for felonies related to brutal gun violence.
He received severe physical beatings that started long before he could speak, that left him with terrible bruises and bloody lesions.
At age 3, Child Protective Services opened an investigation after finding cigarette burns on his body, caused by his mother’s boyfriends.
CPS tried to save him. They moved him to his grandmother’s house, but that home was a 3rd hell, already overflowing with as many as 20 kids at a time, many of them from similar circumstances.
Sandifer quickly became a product of his environment, adopting a violent lifestyle, beating children mercilessly on the playground, stealing their money, and their food. He began burglarizing homes, breaking into cars.
He dropped out of school at age 8 and roamed unsupervised in the gun-born, blood-soaked streets of The South Side.
Sandifer was assimilated into a notorious gang, The Black Disciples, who embraced and celebrated his violence.
At age 10, he was arrested after being caught driving a hijacked car, not the first he’d stolen – nor the last.
After Sandifer’s arrest, his family requested that he be kept in juvenile detention for his own safety and for that of the public – but they were denied – Sandifer was too young for juvenile detention.
And thus – he was released to his Grandmother’s custody.
And into the arms of The Black Disciples.
On a fateful 28th day of August, his gang ordered him to take out a hit on a rival gang member.
Sandifer arrived at his target’s house, he positioned himself behind a parked car on the opposite side of the street.
And opened fire.
His bullets plunged into the crowd, hitting several bystanders, and ultimately killing the wrong person – a 14-year-old girl Shavon Dean.
3 days later, Robert Sandifer was taken under a bridge, told to get on his knees, and shot, execution-style in the back of the head by members of his own gang to silence him.
At the time of his death, he had committed 23 felonies and 5 misdemeanors.
At his funeral – the only picture his family owned of him was his mugshot.
He was 11-years-old.
The bitter truth of life: some kids never stand a chance. People really do not understandjust how bad it gets.
Yes I have. I was a single mom struggling to keep my head above water so I would take leftovers for my lunch. This one co-worker would help himself to my lunch, then tell me how delicious it was. I tried explaining my situation to him, but he still continued to eat my lunches. I even bought an insulated lunch box so I didn’t have to put my lunch in the employee refrigerator. He would steal my lunch while I was away from my desk. And still brag about it. Now this coworker was from a different department than I was and made almost twice as much as I did. One day I had enough. That night as I was preparing my lunch for the next day, I included a healthy dose of mineral oil. Mineral oil is edible, it has no taste or smell, but it is a very good laxative. It took the guy about a week to figure it out. He went to HR and tried to get me fired or at least pay his lost wages ( he had to leave work 2–3 hours early all week.) HR talked to me and when I told them my story and how long it had going on, they made him reimburse me for all my lunches he ate. They verified my story first, of course. Later an email went out to all employees that theft of any food would be grounds for termination.
Illegal, in China, selling drugs is illegal, exceeding 1 kg will be sentenced to death.If you know Chinese, you should know that.
In June 2021, 215.37 kg of drugs were hidden in 67,000 tons of soybeans exported by the America to Qingdao port, China, and were intercepted by Qingdao Customs. Relevant personnel have been punished.
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I hope you can understand Chinese hatred of drugs. Qingdao is an eastern port city, and it is obligatory to prevent drugs.
In 2017, Mianyang city Sichuan Province, southwest of China, a thief broke into a house to steal.When he find drugs on the ground,he gave up the plan and report to the police, confessed his crimes and discoveries, and helped the police officers catch a large drug-making-trafficking gang.
Yes, even thieves also despise drug dealers,they also join Antidrug.
Lone Star Bacon and Cheddar Fries
67aa71c90c60143eee828c8addba65ba
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
1 pound (3/8 inch) regular cut fries with skin on
2 ounce shredded Cheddar cheese
2 strips cooked diced bacon
3 ounces sour cream
Finely chopped green onions, for garnish
Jalapeno peppers, for garnish
Instructions
Deep-fry regular cut fries (350 to 360 degrees F) for 3 to 3 1/2 minutes or until golden brown and crisp.
It was a hot summer afternoon in the month of May.
I was riding on my bike to home. A man who may be in his early 50s asked me for a lift. He was sweating profusely and needed to reach home. As his house was on the way I was going in, I gave him a lift.
He explained to me that, his sugar levels are dropping and need to reach home fast. I dropped him off at his home and he thanked me whole heartedly. I got back home and forgot about it.
After a month, a small hotel was opened nearby. I went there to try it out. I was checking out the menu and someone tapped on my shoulder from behind. He was the same man whom I gave lift earlier.
He asked me if I had recognized him. I said no. He explained that I gave him lift a month ago. Then, I recollected him. He asked me, what would I like to eat. I was surprised.
He giggled and said that, he is the owner of that hotel and as a token of gratitude I can have anything for free. I politely refused it but he was stubborn in his offer. So, I gave in.He asked the chef to make the best of the dish I ordered and was given for free.
That day, I realized, the good you do however small, goes far.
Any small help you do to people will for ever be engraved in their minds forever and it comes back to you in the ways you can never imagine.
The areas shaded in green are owned by the federal government. Although Wyoming is large, the federal government owns about 47% of the land. So, some of the most beautiful parts of Wyoming are not places to which people are moving because there is very little private land for them to buy and live on.
But the problem is even deeper than that. These federal lands contain timber, pasture, and minerals which are leased or sold to those industries, but those leases and timber sales are prone to fluctuate with political fads for or against use of federal timber, minerals, and grazing. Even aside from that, the bureaucracies in authority over these lands do not take responsibility for maintaining the jobs in these industries. Since they have often not worked in the private sector, they either do not understand or do not care how delays and unpredictability in their decisions kill private-sector jobs.
Another reason for the low population in Wyoming is the 75,000-person tipping point in urban population. There is a pattern in the United States: cities tend to grow faster once they have reached a population between about 50,000 and 100,000. At this population, there is enough demand for specialized services in medicine, law, finance, engineering, management, entertainment, air transport, and other professions to support higher-paying jobs in these industries. There is also enough population to entice specialized types of businesses to locate there. Some of these are businesses that hum along below the surface of your local economy, but are important in helping other businesses thrive: machining, transportation, calibration, training and testing. Some of these businesses are retailers and national food chains that make a place more inviting to new residents. No Wyoming city has broken through this tipping point, although Cheyenne may be doing so now.
A third factor: By geographical accident, Wyoming’s neighboring states tended to have urban clusters near their borders with Wyoming which hindered any Wyoming city from reaching this population tipping point. Specialized, high-paying jobs and businesses are less likely in an area within 150 or so miles of existing firms. Denver and Salt Lake City are large cities with trade areas which include much of Wyoming. But the smaller cities of Rapid City, SD, Billings, MT, and Idaho Falls, ID also have large parts of their trade areas within Wyoming. Have a look at the map of United States trade areas and influential cities. All of Wyoming is depicted as being within an out-of-state city’s trade area. The map has flaws. Certainly Casper, Wyoming should qualify as having a trade area if Butte, Bozeman, and Helena, Montana and Alliance and Valentine Nebraska do, but the map nevertheless makes a valid point about Wyoming’s lack of urban areas with trade areas.
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In the long run, Wyoming will be one of the nation’s faster-growing states and will develop larger urban areas. It contains major freight rail lines and major interstate highways. It has cheap electricity, low taxes, and lots of money in the bank from all the mineral wealth. It has major electricity transit lines and energy pipelines. Culturally, it has a good work ethic and an openness to newcomers. It has enough water resources to accommodate lots of population growth.
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.
WARNING something BIG is happening in Ukraine, Putin stays quiet
Something big is about to happen in Ukraine. Is Putin about to launch a pre-winter offensive now that Ukraine has exhausted all of its resources? Logistical signs are showing newly built railway tracks and large troop movements on the Russian side. Also multiple reports over the past 48 hours show an increased number of young Ukrainian men racing to get the hell out of Ukraine.
How has living in China changed you?
it’s aged me!
I was in my mid-20’s when I came, and after 30+ years here I’m already 57. If I stay here a few more years I’ll be 60. No one cares!
I don’t know which changes are due to maturing and which are due to living in China, but I can say how I’m generally different than Americans who haven’t lived in China.
I’m less emotionally invested in news reports, especially about politics. If you’ve lived in a place or have a job that’s occasionally the focus of the international media (as China manufacturing has been) then the discrepancy between what’s reported and what you know is obvious. It makes you skeptical at first, then cynical. Apathy soon follows.
I don’t take it for granted that multi-party democracy is superior to one-party rule. I tend to look at the results not the process.
I accept rapid, sweeping, head-spinning change as the norm. instantly accepted and accommodated.
Yesterday we used paper currency to purchase things. Today we use cash cards. Tomorrow we’ll buy everything with our phones…. oh wait… we’re using the phones now, today, not tomorrow. OK, ok. I got it. Yesterday we used cash cards, today we use phones, tomorrow well use something else.
I don’t remember when I stopped carrying cash and then stopped using my cash card. But that’s where I am now. That’s where everyone is—even beggars on the street accept mobile payments.
Got a meeting in the next city… ? Better schedule 1/2 a day to get there. Then, all of the sudden, you realize you’re always arriving early to meetings. Everything started moving faster like this. Now that half a day gets you from Shanghai to Beijing by train. And if you start in the morning in Shenzhen, you can have an authentic Hunan lunch in Hunan, and be back in Shenzhen for an authentic Cantonese dinner.
I’m more appreciative of people in general, Chinese or expat. I don’t love everyone, but I value my relationships and feel grateful for the respect and assistance I’ve been given. I often feel like the big bang has distributed the universe’s molecules with my wellbeing in mind.
Chinese programs in Universities today get more funding than even USA, as US focuses on Private Funding
In 2022, US Universities spend $ 208 Billion in University Research against $ 346 Billion by China
You write a good paper for your PHD in Biotechnology, you could get offered an Research Associate position for 25000 RMB a month that’s around ₹ 34 LPA plus housing against a mere ₹7.6 LPA in India
That’s equivalent to $ 83,666 a year in US that’s higher than the US median of $ 64,712 for a Research Associate in PPP terms
China pays highest in PPP terms for most research today barring Norway and Switzerland and Taiwan
Life of an Indian Post Doc in China
My son is one
He is doing research for a Private Company on a 5 year grant (2023–2028)
Here are his observations:-
Knowing Rudimentary Mandarin is very important. The Lab assistants, the research students do their best in mandarin. The english is pretty accented. Luckily most Universities offer you Mandarin elementary classes for free if you are doing research there.
Softwares and Settings are programmed to Mandarin. You have to set it to English. Then print in English and Mandarin.
Money is pretty good. Housing is pretty good.
You will have two security reviews by the Government.
If you do research funded by the Government Or research classfied as National Research , you get a ID that gives you some powers. You get clout with cops. Now technically these IDs are only for National projects but like India, my sons director has managed to wrangle these IDs for these guys as well.
Very easy to get a Chinese girlfriend if you are unmarried. Unlike Singapore where girls are steady since secondary school. My son has 3 Assistant Researchers from Vietnam, Indonesia and Kerala. All have Girlfriends in less than a year.
Research is very well funded. You want to buy a $ 300,000 machine, you get approval in a matter of 2–3 days
It’s damn good
Settling down in China ?
Not encouraged
Finish your grant, extend your grant, live for 15–20 years in China and then go home or to Singapore
Meanwhile train as many Chinese as possible
Most people who settle down in China are married to Chinese Mainlanders and have kids and full families
They become Chinese themselves, speak like mainlanders, act like mainlanders
They are eligible for Citizenship of China
Are Indian Postdocs selecting China?
Yes
China beat Japan to the fourth position in 2023
It’s US, Germany, UK and China at fourth position beating Japan which was at fourth place until 2023, France is sixth, Middle East & Africa is seventh (no idea how), Singapore is Eighth and Canada is ninth
However in absolute numbers only 8.63% Postdocs go to China with almost 39.44% going to US and 71% going to US, UK and Germany
However this is a huge increase because in 2006 only 0.51% Postdocs sought careers in China meaning a Eighteen fold increase in a mere 17 years
Men DESTROYED Modern Women’s Beauty Standard
Rating women’s attractiveness is dramatically affected by make-up. I’ve seen them transform from as much as 2’s to 9-10’s. Truly amazing results.
A few years back I had to change my careers. At that time I took a big change and moved halfway across the world to China.
I lived there for 3 1/2 years. I was there for 3 years in NE China in a small rural area. Then about 4 years later I move back but to the big city of Shanghai(but only for about 1/2 a year).
That’s the background story now to your question.
My first 3 years in China was very humbling. I was in a rural area still governed by old rules and ideas. I met a friend who lived in South China in a big city and she told me that I experience things that she never experienced while there. Each person’s experiences are so different. In the rural areas you live like the Chinese, but in a big city, you live like a foreigner in China.
When I say humbling it’s because I learned to live on very little. I spent $200 a month for food, shopping and traveling. When I went back to China in a big city you definitely can’t live on that. I learned to appreciate what I had and how to make do with what I had.
I discovered that my own culture lack respect for elders. That we are far behind when it comes to public transport. (China is far ahead of us). I gained a love for food, Chinese eat all the time (but are skinny). They eat tons of vegetables and meat as well…but it’s fresh produce…which my own country lacks…we eat way too much processed food. Of course, I learned how to use a squatty potty.
Now, when I went back to China 4 years later…so much has changed. They are so advanced when it comes to technology. While China was a humbling place for me for my first 3 years. It was not so the second time around…why? The simple answer is that times have changed. Don’t get me wrong I loved Shanghai and appreciated it, but I learned that sometimes you can’t go back…memories are better left in your mind.
China will always be a part of me. It has changed me so much more than I can ever put into words. But for me, “humble” is what learned from all my experiences in China.
No Handyman Jobs! People are BROKE!
I guess I was spoiled with the abundance of jobs these past few years. Well, I guess that has come to an end…
A few years ago, a kid in our neighborhood got a drone for Christmas. He started flying it around people’s houses. The first time. I was sitting on my deck and it flew to the edge of the deck. I waved and it flew away. The next day, the same thing. After a few days, the kid got bolder. He started to fly it right over the deck. There was also one time that I was doing dishes in the kitchen it was hovering right outside the kitchen window, watching me.
This went on for about a month. I would see it right outside my windows or around my yard. I knew it was just a kid but it was getting kind of creepy. I wasn’t sure if I could be heard on it but I tried telling the drone that the fun was over and please don’t come back. Guess what? It came back the next day again. I didn’t know who the drone belonged to so I called the PD and they really didn’t know what to tell me. At this point, drones were just becoming popular and there wasn’t really any protocol. I asked around the neighborhood and no one seemed to know where it was coming from. I tried to follow it but it was faster than me and was piloted over houses and through other yards that I couldn’t go through.
Another month passes and now this kid is just taunting me. I tried throwing things at it, putting up a sign asking them not to fly it near my house anymore, my then-husband actually had it in his hand at one point but those things are pretty strong and he wasn’t able to keep a hold of it. We would flip it off when we saw it or curse at it, anything we could think of. I even fired a few warning shots with a BB gun. Nothing worked.
Finally, we were just done. The last day I ever saw it, I was again sitting on my deck and I hear the familiar drone sound. I tried to ignore it, hoping it would go away. I could hear it getting closer to me but I just kept my head down, pretending to read my book. The living room window was open so without looking up I yelled “It’s back again!!”. My then-husband walked out onto the deck and the drone moved towards him. He pulled out his pistol and pointed at the drone. No shots fired, it wasn’t even loaded and the drone high-tailed it out of there. Within 15 minutes, a very angry father and 2 police cruisers were in my driveway. The father wanted us arrested for threatening his kid. We explained what had been going on and the cops had several reports over the last few months from me as well (including pictures of the drone in various places around my house, date and time-stamped). Basically, nothing happened. The gun was registered to a licensed gun owner, no property was damaged, and the documentation from the police department showed that this kid was a nuisance. The cops went and had a talk with the kid. I found out later that other neighbors had the same issue with the drone so the cops had not only our complaints but many others. I don’t know what happened to the kid but I do know I never saw that drone again.
***EDIT***
A lot of people are commenting about the police not doing their job and yes it does seem that way. However, we have to remember that this was the first year that drones became really popular and it was the IT thing to have. People were having a lot of fun with their drones but there weren’t any clear laws that the police could follow. Also, you couldn’t trace them so you had a basic idea of the surrounding area where the drone was coming from but unless you actually saw where it went “home” to, there was nothing you could do so I believe that the police did the best they knew how at the time.
I don’t even blame the parents that much because the kid was like 13 or 14 years old. When I figured out who the drone belonged to, I knew exactly who this kid was, and quite honestly, he was an entitled little sh**. His parents were actually pretty nice people who tried their best but had very little control over their kids. The father showed up with the police because the kid made the father believe that a gun was pulled on him while cutting through our yard. That was not the case and when given all the facts, the father was still upset but it didn’t have a whole lot to say anymore.
And before you come for me, yes, most times kids are a product of their environment but sometimes the parents are doing everything right and the kid will still be a jerk. My kids are 21 and 17 and I have been involved in many of their activities over the years and have seen it all.
The Real China Shocked This British Man
Whenever I hear the China collapse theory, I always ask the person if s/he wants to take a bet, just provide a time frame when you think China will collapse and I bet you two whiskey that it won’t. I had been winning so many whiskey in the last 15 years, but none of those losers pay up.
Seriously, do you really think the people in China really care whether China is a Communist or a Democracy if all there is to it is just some meaningless labeling.
Is like categorizing races by color, when you call it white I saw pink, when you call it yellow I saw light beige, when you call it black I say are you color blind, do you know what black looks like?
Chinese people in general are very much pragmatic, results orientated and doesn’t give much crap to whose camp they are in as long as they prosper and live a better live then the past. Also, Chinese history and philosophy never taught them life is simply black and white we know it has at least if not fifty shades of grey in between.
Furthermore, if one look at the Tai Chi symbols we see the black and white are not shown as antagonistic to each other, whilst they may be opposite to each other in direction but they intertwined in a circle with the opposite instead of a straight line in between a square. It also house a fraction of the opposite too, all for the purpose of equilibrium and in layman term it is call Win-Win or Harmony.
Life cannot always be a equal sum game, it has many elements and each play an important role, if one element does not survive well or is missing rest assure others will also get affected adversely by it. In science term, it is what we call a Eco System.
Balance reduce conflict, hegemony are always short livedand unintelligent, longer it stretches it more violent is the snaps when it breaks.
So is it really true that there are no democracy in a Communist system and when a country is not run by Communist does that mean they have no tyrant, no dictator, no ruthless regime, no poverty, no corruption and their people live a much better happy life?
Whats’s the big fucking deal about democracy if the leader doesn’t really practices it. “For the People, To the People, By the People” my arse when I see what’s going on in their land of Oligarchs Plutocracy.
Safety – yesterday, today and tomorrow. At first, right after moving to China I was truly amazed that there are so many chairs for valets randomly placed on the sidewalks. In Russia these chairs will end up at someone’s country house.
Small businesses In Russia shops, restaurants, coffee-shops etc. belong to the large chains, you cannot find a small bar with homemade food for example. And places like that are my favorite in Beijing.
Infrastructure – in Russia you hardly can: – get anywhere by subway and pay under 10 kuai for it, – get anything delivered to your house, – pay for the stuff via wechat, – get foot massage in the middle of the night, – pay for electricity and water using your own terminal, etc. etc.
Variety of entertainment choices The only places that are really good for eventful life would be Moscow and Saint-Petersburg, other cities cannot be ever compared to Beijing: lots of events, activities and parties. Russia does need to get on this level.
Taobao This is the most genius thing ever – I am a big Taobao fan and would love if a platform like that will be developed in Russia someday.
China moves into position to support Syria
So happy to see China & Syria are working together! Stronger united against the Empire!
School Bus Driver Rant
As a school bus driver, I would like to explain something.
My job is to transport your child from point A to point B safely, on time and ready to learn.
That is all.
What do I mean when I say safely? Let me explain. Safely means I pre-trip my bus daily to ensure it is running properly and that it hasn’t been tampered with. Safely means my eyes are constantly scanning all 7 mirrors, blind spots, and the road in front of me.
I’m NOT a babysitter.
I’m NOT a mediator.
I’m a BUS DRIVER.
I would absolutely love to be able to watch and hear each and every little thing that goes on in the 40 feet of school bus behind me, but while I’m watching Johnny jump across the seat, I just missed a car pull out in front of me. And oops, while I’m yelling at Susie to keep her hands to herself, the light changed and now I’m slamming the brakes to stop in time at the intersection. And what’s that? Now Joey has a nose bleed? And now someone dumped all of Katie’s stuff out of her bookbag, and “bus driver, Bobby is flicking me”, and “bus driver, Lily said she doesn’t like me anymore”, and what’s that? While I’m looking in the mirror behind me reprimanding your perfect children, a car just ran my reds and Sally almost got run over!
It’s Never Ending to us…
And that doesn’t even include the way the children speak to us. I’m pretty certain they don’t speak to other school faculty like that. And certainly don’t speak to their parents the way they speak to us.
So please, parents, tell me … where do you want me to look? Behind me? In front of me?
Would you prefer I pull over each and everytime someone yells “bus driver”? Because then YOU will complain that the bus is never on time, and trust me if I did pull over everytime, we wouldn’t even make it out of the school parking lot before I’d have to stop. Incase you didn’t know, your children are not perfect…no one is.
Would you rather I continue down the road watching what’s going on BEHIND me more than what’s going on with other vehicles on the road around me? Because I can assure you, if I’m not scanning every angle around the bus, there WILL be an accident, and then I will again be to blame, because I should’ve been paying attention to the road.
Now, on top of that, we see your children for less than 30 minutes a day, in most cases. Please teach your child to respect the bus driver, and to behave themselves when riding the bus…because we want to return them to you, SAFELY.
~ Unknown
Russian & American In China Are SHOCKED What They Experienced
Not crazy at all, just unusual and — under the circumstances — quite touching.
A 1969 Ford F250 was advertised for sale located in a town about 400 miles away. I called and spoke with the elderly original owner. He was not an enthusiastic seller and seemed to be throwing up obstacles to buying it. For one thing, he asked the questions, not me. The conversation went like this:
Me: Hello, I’m calling about the F250 for sale. Is it still available?
Him: Yes. What do you want with it?
Me: Uhhh, well, sir, I was thinking about buying it.
Him: Why?
Me (looks at phone with a WITW? expression): Because I need a truck.
Him: What do you need a truck for?
Me: To haul tools and material.
Him: That’s good. How old are you?
Me: (Young in spirit but wise beyond my years. More or less.)
Him: That’s good. How’s your driving record? Any accidents or tickets recently?
Me: No wrecks, no tickets.
Him: Will you put different wheels and paint and interior and engine in it?
Me: Gosh, no. I want it all original. Like it is now.
Him: Okay, you can come look at it. My address is…
I went all that way, looked, endured another vetting from him and was finally judged worthy of his treasured pickup that he could no longer drive because it had manual steering and he could no longer turn the steering wheel. As I drove away in the truck he’d named Whitey back in 1969, I glimpsed him in the rear view mirror crying unashamedly.
But wait, there’s more.
I drove directly to the other side of town and viewed a second 1969 Ford F250 for sale by its elderly original owner who also subjected me to a lengthy qualifying interrogation. Satisfied, he sold me the truck he’d named Rita in 1969 and helped me disconnect the driveshaft then attach a tow bar so I could pull her home with Whitey. After I had remote lights rigged up on his Rita, I got into Whitey and pulled away. In the rear view mirror I glimpsed Rita’s original owner crying unashamedly.
Nearly 10 years later Whitey and Rita are still exactly as they were the day I brought them to their new home. It was a good day, as have been all all the rest with them. As their original owners requested I have kept them exactly as they were: working trucks, now 50 years young, in original condition and carefully maintained. I even built them a canopy to protect them from the sun and inclement weather.
When you speak this way, your reality evolves…
Fair video. Fits in with my affirmation campaigns.
Sure it wasn’t a comfortable idea for the people. I haven’t had children yet. But I do want to have two. One is scary in many way. What if something happens to him or her? What if he/she wants to join the military… and not come back?
But if I insist on having a second child, I would end up paying a fine. Then I would be liable to pay for the child education. The first child will get free ride from K-12 and university.
In fact, I can have as many children as I would like. I just have to afford raising them all with minimal government support.
Why the one child policy?
Look at China in the 60s – 80s
It was a simple life. Classism may have been at the lowest in Chinese history. To be a well respected person, you can be a teacher, a village chief, a policeman, a small government official, a factory manager, etc…
This simple peaceful life was made possible by the One child policy.
Do you know that unemployment was low? Job selection wasn’t great, but as long as you were willing to work, someone could find you a job.
Despite the scare of Western invasion and atomic bombs, it was a relatively safe society. Petty crimes were plentiful, from pickpocketing, theft, to scam artists. But it was unlikely your house would be broken in at gun point.
All these wouldn’t be possible if the population was left to balloon unchecked. Far more crime, homeless, desperate people out for blood, and money.
If I went back in time to 1970s…
Knowing the future is a hell of an advantage. I would start trading goods, then collaborated with the government’s economic expansion programs.
Humble start, this was how many Chinese entrepreneurs in the 70s and 80s had their start.
Moving up, buying a truck. One man transportation company in the 90s.
Eventually able to have enough money to open a factory. TV production company in the 80s.
Not really a photo of China, but of 1980 computer stores in the US. My computer store would look like this.
I would get into computers as early as 1975. This was around the time Bill Gates and Steve Jobs founded their companies.
I would even go to India in 1974 to meet the penniless backpacker Steve Jobs and offered him his first initial investment before he even knew he was to found Apple. He would be indebted to me for life.
Two prospects regarding to One Child policy:
One Child Policy: Boosted economy. I could be rich, easily affording 4–5 children if I wanted to.
Booming population: China would still be a shithole like any of the third world country China’s BRI is helping now. Raising one child and keeping my family fed would be very hard.
I actually knew people in China who had more than one children after 1980. They were not jailed or anything. Their neighbors and friends were supportive of their decisions.
Putin at Valdai, civilizational world order is here to stay
“I thought Putin was exceptionally clear, rational, even handed, well spoken, honest, and painfully accurate about everything he said. He has my vote for US president.”
Steve seemed such a surley man. Unsuprisingly older than me by a couple decades since this was my first professional job as a newly minted college graduate, he seemed to growl at me whenever I saw him.
With the confidence only available with youth, I judged him.
I judged him mean, old, and a bit scary.
Imagine my horror when after about a year on this entry level job when I was reassigned to work for Steve. Of course, the reality was that I knew nothing about him.
What happened over the course of the next year was one of those special times of life that changes who you are forever. I learned that while I knew nothing about him, he knew quite a bit about me. Turns out that this wasn’t some corporately bland reassignment, but, rather, he asked to take me on as a project.
As I got to know Steve, it turned out that the gravelly voice, which I can still hear in my imagination as I write, was just his voice. And the surley demeanor I had judged so harshly was a product of a direct and unassuming style this loquatious post-adolescent did not yet grok.
One teaching moment in particular is one I’ll never forget. I carry this lesson with me every day.
You see, I’d made a mistake. Not a huge one, but a clear screw-up. I had a plan for spin control. I was confident in the plan. The lies were off-white lies at best.
But Steve believed in me enough to ask questions gently. And after he had twisted me into a logical knot, he said, and I’ll never forget his words, “Tony, you can do better than this.” He proceeded to teach me the value of not spinning and just dealing with my own limitations as a human. He showed me the real value of honesty: building trust.
And, Steve was right. I came clean and it was all ok. And, a few months later when I made a yet bigger mistake, that was ok too.
I got to know Steve better over the next couple of years. I learned that we shared some basic interests and religious faith, but he was not the type to over-share or brag. Sadly, when I had this incredible access to him, I never fully understood Steve.
But, I understood far better when he died.
Just a couple years after this priceless mentoring, Steve was stricken with brain cancer. He was far younger than I am right now, so even in death he taught me to value every day.
But this wasn’t the last lesson he had to teach. Not hardly.
I was invited by his widow to his funeral. I had known of his faith, but not quite the extent to which he walked the walk. I’ve omitted a great deal of detail, but Steve had not had an easy life. In my mind, he was doing all he could to just survive and raise his own family. I assumed his faith was like my own: sincere, yet mostly a coping mechanism.
In the shadow of his recent death, some mutual acquaintances filled in some details. There was far more to the man than even I suspected. My admiration was already deep. My tears were quite real.
Steve had been an elder at a prominent church for many years. The details of his service to others would make this long answer far too long. The debts others expressed dwarfed my own sense of gratitude.
But, the funeral blew me away.
You see, it was a large church. Very large. That day, it was filled to the rafters. I have never been to anything like it since. The love expressed for Steve that day over powers me even as I write this.
And there, in that pew, I knew i wanted to be like Steve.
Not for glory or acclaim—not at all. Just to have left this place a better place than I had found it. And, as I traverse my new career in coaching, I am still chasing his example.
Thank you, Steve, for teaching me how to be real. I’ll never forget you. I’ll never achieve what you did, but I am so much happier for trying.
In a short sentence, the completeness of the supply chain.
In brief exposition, this is the bitter fruit of embargo.
No, I’m not referring to Donald the Orange’s tariffs and dismantling of Huawei.
I’m talking about the 30-year EMBARGO that the US enforced on China after the breakout of the Korean War, along with the withdrawal of Soviet tech support as relations cooled heading into the 60s.
In fact, the Cultural Revolution’s deurbanization was a direct policy response to having the economic rug pulled under by foreign forces.
China learned a very important lesson: Any weakness in a supply chain can and will be exploited.
The Chinese prioritized the control of key enabling heavy industries, beginning with steel manufacture, before using policy tools to encourage the organic growth of eco-systems downstream.
The Chinese were not happy with assembling a shoe from components. Rather they focused on being able to make every component, down to the dye and synthetic materials suitable for footwear.
This process was repeated up the tech ladder, and by the 2010s, the Chinese had the most complete supply chain in the world, encompassing all categories of the UN industrial sector classification. China remains the only country to maintain this milestone.
China’s strength is hardware, and the world’s greatest concentration of hardware engineering talent—whether it is chips, IC, antennas, speakers, motors—are found on the mainland, and overwhelmingly Chinese.
These are world class talent who’ve delivered on big projects, and thoroughly up-to-date with their field of expertise. I daresay set them loose on any problem and they will find solutions, because the intensity and breath which they attack problems is unrivaled. The Chinese have the scale to apply multiprong strategies in parallel*, while the competition iterate sequentially. This is the famed China speed, and China has made up plenty of ground in recent decades expertly harnessing economies of scale.
America uses its heft to force compliance, through the threat of market access withdrawal. But the Chinese market is already bigger than the US, especially hardware components, just because China is the world’s factory. Huawei is able to find enough domestic partners who don’t mind losing the US market, because there are enough customers within China. Besides, this is a matter of survival for entire industries, and it is imperative to break the tech embargo.
Huawei’s telecoms gear isn’t like cellphones, because they are tethered to the mains. Power efficiency isn’t a make or break consideration, and there is no need for the latest and greatest off the cutting edge node, chip-wise.
This makes domestic substitution a breeze compared to say, the Kirin SOC, because hacks are always available, especially under the umbrella of Huawei’s immense patent portfolio.
In the final analysis, I’d say it boils down to the quality and quantity of talent, and it shows in the remarkable speed of the turnaround.
欺负华为没人？
门儿都没有。
Heinz Guderian noted in his diary that he had observed snow for the first time in the campaign in the Soviet Union.
The original plan for Operation Barbarossa was extremely sketchy for such a massive operation. One of the odder aspects of planning was that the endpoints for the invasion were never set forth, and became vaguer and more nebulous the further along planning got.
The first battle plans, prepared for the OKW by General Erich Marcks in mid-1940, actually did set forth a terminal line of the invasion. Marcks proposed the “A-A line” as the operational objective. This was to run from the northern city of Arkhangelsk on the Arctic Sea through Gorky and Rostov to the port city of Astrakhan at the mouth of the Volga on the Caspian Sea. This assumed that the European portion of Russia and its satellites was the only part of the country of any interest and importance. There, the German Army could stop and set up a defensive line beyond which whatever was left of the Soviet Union could be allowed to wither away, as it would pose no threat.
After the Marcks Plan (as it came to be called), though, the idea of any kind of ultimate objective for the Wehrmacht disappeared. The debate instead degenerated into one of whether or not it was even important to get to Moscow, let alone reach any points further east. The prevailing theory – primarily Hitler’s – was that the entire Soviet Union would capitulate after a few decisive border battles destroyed the Red Army, failing that Hitler issued a directive to pursue the Soviets.
As of 6th October 1941, there has been no “pursuit” in the Soviet Union or at least none that has lasted very long. Every step has been contested, every river has been defended, every city has been fought over and sometimes even been boobytrapped after the Red Army has left. The defense has been uncoordinated and lacking in effectiveness on many occasions, but the Red Army has been fighting all the way. Now, the best campaigning months of 1941 are already gone and it is only going to get worse before it gets better again. Given all that, the astounding underestimation of the effectiveness of Red Army opposition during the planning stage of Operation Barbarossa has not really hampered German operations yet, it just has required adjustments to compensate for a slower rate of advance than anticipated. The tanks still run, the trucks still carry supplies, the horses are still fed from grain in the fields.
However, everything is about to change forever, and the men on the front line see why after dark as the snow begins to fall around them. The lack of effective antifreeze for trucks or tanks, the lack of chains for wheeled vehicles, the absence of winter clothing which was considered superfluous in June – all of a sudden these omissions loom large.
Late Night Flight
While drinking, a Pilot bet he could land outside the bar, 2 hours later he touched down in central New York in a stolen aircraft. Years later he repeated the stunt because someone wouldn’t believe him.
In September 1956 after drinking heavily at a bar in New York City, Thomas Fitzpatrick made an intoxicated barroom bet that he could travel from New Jersey to New York City in 15 minutes.
At 3 a.m. he stole a single-engine plane from the Teterboro and flew without any lights or radio before landing on St. Nicholas Avenue near 191st Street in front of the bar where the bet was made.
The New York Times called it a “fine landing” and a “feat of aeronautics”. For his illegal flight, he was fined $100 after the plane’s owner refused to press charges.
In October 1958 just before 1 a.m., Fitzpatrick again stole another plane from the same airfield and landed on Amsterdam and 187th after another bar patron disbelieved his first feat.
For his second stolen flight, judge John A. Mullen sentenced him to six months in prison. When asked why did had undertaken the 2nd flight Fitzpatrick told the police “he had pulled off the second flight after a bar patron refused to believe he had done the first one”
Fitzpatrick was a Marine during the Korean War and received a Purple Heart. He has three sons and was married to his wife, Helen, for 51 years working as a steamfitter. He died in 2009 at the age of 79.
Fitzpatrick has a mixed drink named after him for his feat called the “Late Night Flight”
Oh SH*T, The Collapse Has REALLY Begun
The threat of a US recession is escalating fast as corporate bankruptcies and debt defaults pile up. As the Federal Reserve continues to hike interest rates, small businesses are starting to collapse and close down. There’s going to be a tipping point where job losses will accelerate and consumer spending will crash.
I got the “You owe money to the IRS and are going to jail” phone call. I knew it was a scam because not only does the IRS not call you, but I could hear multiple voices in the background…classic boiler room. Duh! So I decided to play along. I let the guy go into his spiel and about halfway through I started crying. When I say crying, I mean REALLY wailing, gasping for breath, totally panicked! The guy has to stop talking in order to calm me down as I’m really losing it. As soon as he calms me down, off he goes again, telling me if I don’t pay, I’ll go to jail. Well, I just lose it again…crying, wailing, the whole nine yards.
Again, he tries to calm me down. Finally, with hitching sobs, I calm down enough to ask him how much I owe the IRS. When he tells me it’s $24,000, well, you know, I just lost it again. Crying. Wailing. Sobbing. What am I going to do?? OMG, I’m going to lose my house! I won’t be able to feed my kids! I’ll have to give away my dogs! Oh, noooooo! Noooooo! He calms me down (again) with the suggestion that he might be able to reduce what I owe to just $12,000. Which, of course, just sets me off again. Where, oh where am I going to get that kind of money?? I’m going to lose everything! Death! Doom! Destruction!
Finally, for the last time, he manages to calm me down enough to where I can ask him one final question…before I gave him my credit card number, would it be okay if I ask my husband first? After all, he IS a tax attorney. Dead silence for the space of about five seconds, then he let loose a torrent of profanity such as I’ve never heard before (and I’ve heard a lot) while I’m laughing my ass off. He then warns me that, “I’ll be sorry” to which I reply, “Not as sorry as you, you thieving, scum-sucking piece of humanity!” He hung up on me then, and surprisingly enough, I’ve never gotten another IRS phone call again.
I started learning German before coming here. People said I was wasting my time, that everybody here speaks English. That’s not true. Many Germans don’t speak English. Also, a number of people (usually officials or clerks) were upset that I don’t speak their language yet, as if my not having learned the language yet in the span of two months is some grave offense.
Maybe it’s only this year but the summer isn’t really summer. There are hot and cold days. Sunny and overcast days. Clear and rainy days. A day can start sunny and end in rain. You can walk out in your shorts and have to wear pants and a light jacket by the end of the day. Also, the days are unbelievably long. The sun rises before 5 AM and sets at around 10 PM.
WWII and the Holocaust. I am of Jewish descent. Many of my ancestors were taken to Auschwitz and other camps to be exterminated. I remember the first time I saw a stolperstein or “stumbling stone” in Berlin (these are brass plates inscribed with the names of Jews and information about the dates of their deportation and extermination, inlaid in the pavement outside their last place of residence) I froze. My heart sank, and a deep sadness welled from within me.
Ethnic Diversity here is wonderful. There seem to be people from all over the world, all co-existing. Yes, there have been some glitches, but seeing this melting pot of diversity brings hope to the heart. Plus, you can have authentic food from almost anywhere—from Mexican to Vietnamese to Turkish to Lebanese to Korean, etc., etc.
Many, many people are tattooed, so much so that un-tattooed individuals seem rarer than tattooed ones. And so much so that I sometimes wonder if even the businessmen and women, under those fine tailored suits, are hiding some large and colorful dragon or tiger adorning their skins.
I assumed Berlin would be cleaner. Before I came I had a vision of Germany as a glinting-clean place. And although it’s not filthy, there’s some waste strewn about in parks and on the streets—empty beer bottles and food leftovers and dirty plastic packaging, etc.
And speaking of beer bottles, people drink alcohol. A lot of it. I see many people walking around with some kind of drink in their hands, or people sitting outside bars or even in parks with an unbelievable amount of empty bottles by their side. Or in supermarkets, walking out with cartfuls of booze.
Maybe I notice it more because I’ve never lived in a place with so many churches, but there are so many of them here. Imposing ones with rising spires and crimson bricks and huge bells resonating blocks and blocks away. Having grown up in Israel, I find it hard to imagine how the visions of a carpenter in the Middle-East, over centuries and millennia, transmogrified into these massive, gothic places of worship in a completely different culture and milieu.
The other day we went to a pleasant park and there were a bunch of kids playing in the nude, splashing each other with water and running around in the sand giggling. My son took off his clothes and joined them, and I thought, how wonderful that no one is embarrassed seeing naked kids playing around, that they are granted this easy, unconscious freedom that in many other parts of the would would have been considered inappropriate.
Sex seems to be less of a big deal here. I’ve seen a number of adverts in the street depicting some form of sex in illustrations. In the US, there would have been a lecherous quality to it, some kind of cleavage or exposed thighs, something to suggest and tease and taunt. But here there is something unassuming about its depiction—a couple or even a threesome lying in bed covered in blankets, a cartoon of a man with his loins covered by a popping champagne bottle and a smiling woman by his side. Unassertive—as if this, too, is a natural part of life and there’s no need to make a fuss about it.
Organic food is available in most supermarkets and is not necessarily exorbitantly priced. In fact, almost every little place that serves food will have some kind of organic lemonade or soft drink.
Although I am not vegetarian, when I came here I imagined würste (sausages) everywhere, and a dearth of other, non-pork based offering. But, in fact, it is very easy to get vegetarian food here. From vegetariangemüse kebap (Turkish food—vegetables in bread) to vegetarian asian dishes, to tofu, grain- or legume-based meat substitutes in supermarkets, it is not only possible to be vegetarian here, but even easy.
The streets and the curb are wide and spacious, oftentimes cobbled and shaded by evenly-distanced stately trees. Having grown up in Israel and lived in India, this was novel for me—this European expansiveness.
Some people can be incredibly proper and strict here. I’ve been scolded for standing out in the street when the bus came, and then for standing in the wrong place inside the bus as I was paying. In some places and settings people are expected to behave in a certain ways, and are frowned upon if they are not.
The bicycle is a serious mode of transportation with its own lanes and a substantial number of riders.
Drivers are not as courteous as in other places—in less trafficked streets with no stoplight, and unlike the US, cars will mostly not stop when they see a pedestrian, and one has to wait for an opportunity to cross.
Things are well made. The walls of the apartment I’m staying in are almost as thick as my outstretched arm. The woodwork is precise and sturdy. Some of the buildings around look like they’ve been in existence for centuries, and that they will last for many centuries more. There is an assuring sturdiness in the material existence here—like things are dependable and robust. Also, it is not difficult to find objects that are Made in Germany or Europe—be it knives or rucksacks or wallets, etc.—that look like they will last for a lifetime. I like that.
Almost all shops are closed on Sundays.
Parcels are left with neighbors. If you’re not in and you have a package, it will be left with one of your neighbors, who will then, perhaps later in the day, come knocking on your door and claim the package with a slip.
People have been incredibly helpful. When I arrived, a neighbor helped carry our luggage from the street. Another neighbor helps me whenever I need something in German translated. I’ve had people in the street, after asking for directions, pull out their phones, search for the place, and give me clear instructions. Of course, as with everywhere else, there are also unfriendly people, but the friendly and helpful ones have left a greater impression on me.
Boeing is Panicking! Brunei and China Order 30 Aircraft | Boeing Completely Loses The Chinese Market
In May 2017, China successfully conducted the historic first test flight of the C919 aircraft, which marked the complete break of Boeing and Airbus’ half-century monopoly on large commercial aircraft. Soon after, China’s C919 aircraft attracted cooperation intentions from many countries.
Up to now, China’s orders for C919 aircraft have exceeded an astonishing 1,061 aircraft, but I think this is just the beginning of the emergence of China’s C919 aircraft. At this year’s 20th China-ASEAN Expo, China’s C919 aircraft once again became the focus of attention.
Among them, Brunei spent US$2 billion to purchase 30 large passenger aircraft from China, including the much-anticipated C919 aircraft. As more and more countries purchase China’s C919 aircraft, Boeing in the United States begins to panic and even begs to regain the Chinese market.
One day at the end of the School year, my teacher was throwing out some old junk. One of which was this old globe that was so inaccurate, I’m surprised it wasn’t thrown away as soon it came off the assembly line.
Some Countries don’t exist at the same time.
image 204
As far as I know, Tibet did not exist at the same time with a unified Independent India, Southeast Asia with a unified Vietnam, and what’s that little country north of Mongolia?
image 205
Oh that’s right, It’s Tannu Tuva! You know the country that was annexed into the USSR during the middle of WW2. Because the Partition of India took place after the World War ended (1947). The inconsistency with time are the least of this Globe’s problems.
Making major countries the same shade of blue as the OCEAN!
As you saw above, China is the same color of the Ocean, but that’s not the only one.
image 206
The color they chose for Turkey just makes it look like the Black Sea is part of the Mediterranean if you’re not looking close enough.
Same goes with the Great Lakes area.
image 207
Since the State of Michigan is sandwiched between massive lakes, it should be a different color to make it stand out more. Well the designer didn’t think so, because instead of the Great Lakes, it’s just ONE Great Lake.
Plus New York makes lake Ontario and Erie look like an extension of the Atlantic. So does Quebec.
But this doesn’t go with what makes the map the most useless.
They got the freaking hemispheres on wrong!!!!
image 208
I’m pretty sure Australia is not directly south of Ethiopia!
South America is just floating in the middle of the Ocean.
image 209
Though Southern Africa actually fits well with the Northern Hemisphere part of South America.
image 210
This Globe has to be the most Useless reference of the World ever!
I got Montana at a church fundraising garage sale for $1.15. She was a Rottweiler/GSD mix and the owners were selling the puppies for $3. After three hours of wheedling my mother, and scrounging as much change as I could from the car, I paid for her quite proudly. She’d been the runt of the litter, and all her litter mates had long been snatched up. I brought her home, and made a bed for her in the bottom drawer of my dresser. Took her to the vet the next day to get her all of her shots. Did basic obedience training with her and all the requisite fun things a teenage girl could do with a dog.
Flash forward three years and I’m off at school across the state, and she’s at home with my mother, grandmother and younger brother. Due to her general quirkiness, she never barked or growled unless she felt that her family was in danger. She was quite content to roam the backyard, playing chase along the fence lines with the dogs that neighbored on either side. About three am my mom hears the neighbor’s golden retriever barking up a storm, then hears the fence rattle. Thinking it was a raccoon or opossum, she laid back down. Then Montana is growling right under her window. That’s when she hears a lot of cussing, more growling and then a whimper and the fence on the other side rattle. Now there’s even more cussing and growling as the other set of neighbor’s black malamute is in on whatever is happening now. Mom grabs a flashlight and the cordless phone, calls 911 and rushes out to find out what’s happening. That’s when she sees a man vaulting the far side of the fence in the neighbors yard, only to be confronted by a massive Great Dane. Montana comes slinking to her, whimpering with cuts running down both her flanks. Grabbing her leash, she takes my dog out to greet the police, explaining what happened. Apparently they caught up with the guy a few blocks away, having been bitten by about four different dogs. Mom took my brave girl to the vet immediately. The cuts were superficial and shallow, needing nothing more than some cleaning. She had a chemical burn on her backside because he’d sprayed her with either mace or pepper spray. Montana was handsomely rewarded with a steak for doing her job protecting the family, and no one ever set foot in our backyard without permission again.
There is anger against the CPC by some people, especially in the big cities however none of these people want democracy or voting
They simply want more capitalist reforms by the CPC
The Majority are very satisfied and happy with the CPC
Especially the younger generation
They regard US democracy as a JOKE
They are so proud of their country and it’s growth and the CPC that they only want reforms, reforms and more reforms
Here are the main suggestions
The Average Age of a Party Member is 49 and they want it to reduce to 40
The Average Age of a Politburo member is 56. They want it to reduce it to 50.
70 Investments were banned by the CPC between 2017–2023. They want these investments regulated.
They want flexible and productive work hours to enhance maximum output instead of the rigid slogging workstyle of the older generation
They have contempt for the USA
Especially the 17–30 year olds born post 1993
Chinas future
They are brilliant, they have the midset to be the BEST in the world
The Older generation in their forties and fifties, born between 1973–1983 are more of the WHY IS THE US SO UNFAIR rather than any contempt for the US
They have a lot of relatives in US and the West who migrated from 1965–1990
They have contempt for the Russians and Russian Technology
They are also a bit colonial and sub consciously believe they are not in the same league as the West deep down
They MAY have no problem if China becomes a democracy but they wouldn’t want it as a choice
The even older generation in their 60s and 70s, born between 1945–1965 are steeped in Patriotic Ideology. They remember the old days and the way the CPC took China to the top
It’s for their sake that China still has the name Communist when it’s anything but communist
They would abhor any democracy
Xi has created a very nationalistic patriotic generation of Youngsters brimming with confidence
The CPC needs to make some changes though in the next 10 years to ensure the Youngsters connect to the party and that wave of nationalism is retained at it’s same fervour
Countries opt for local currencies in bilateral trade due to several reasons that align with their own interests:
The high interest in the US dollar has driven up the cost of purchasing US dollars.
Foreign exchange transaction fees associated with using US banks are expensive (3%), and the SWIFT system not only takes several days to settle transactions but is also subject to US monitoring for unilateral sanctions, even when the transactions involve purely business matters.
A surplus of expensive US dollars is circulating in the global economy, with many countries selling them back to the Federal Reserve Bank where billions are used to fund the record national debt and crowding out private investment by keeping the interest high.
There is a concern that the US dollar could face a collapse if the Federal Reserve Bank ceases its policy of increasing interest rates, as this could exacerbate inflationary pressures and erode the currency’s value.
Military,
In contrast to historical colonial powers and the dominant influence of the United States, China lacks the ambition of global control through culture/racial superiority, military endeavors, and covert activities. Instead, China offers an alternative vision to the world by fostering connections among people through infrastructure development and trade.
The Real Reasons I Left United States (and won’t go back)
I really enjoyed this video.
Real Talk about why I don’t like living in the United States anymore and why I can’t see myself ever returning. I had invested a lot of time and money to research and travel the world to find where I best fit in, which culture I feel more comfortable in. After almost 6 years of continues life abroad, I really can’t see myself ever going back.
The sheer logistics of trying to feed a nation of 1.4 billion people are insane. Take this building right here — it’s a pig farm. A 26-story pig farm named Ezhou farm. It’s one of the biggest ‘only in China’ moments for me.
image 4
Basically, China has been having some pretty major geopolitical tensions with many of its neighbors lately, and there have been a lot of issues with the ongoing trade war with America. So China wants to be less dependent on imports of vital things such as food.
[1] As a result, it has started building absolutely MASSIVE pig farms on an industrial scale unseen anywhere in human history. It’s pretty crazy. Also, I gotta say, pretty impressive.
So yeah, 26-story pig farms are a strange phenomenon I’ve not seen anywhere else. Anyone who’s ever enjoyed Chinese cuisine knows it cannot survive without pork. So if ever war breaks out and trade routes are blocked, China is ensuring it’ll never run out of pork chops.
Unfortunately, some stereotypes might be true. When I served in the German army we trained for a week with Italy’s famous “Folgore” parachute unit. Although they were considered elite in Italy, they really sucked.
When we went with them to the shooting range my job was to count the targets they were hitting, which weren’t many. With one guy it took me a while to figure out that he was missing his target by at least 5 meters- at a 150 meters shooting distance.
These guys failed at everything they did, except for one thing: The last night of their stay we went to a bar with them and after a few German beers they started singing Italian songs. Very well and beautiful and not like our “barbaric” German singing.
I also trained a lot with French units. Most of them were really decent fellows, but their officers were completely useless. They were unable to motivate their soldiers and always seemed to be screaming at them. As a result the French troops we trained with didn’t perform as well as they could have.
Although I trained with British troops on several occasions, they didn’t leave an impression with me. Neither good nor bad. Later on my German army unit got their a** kicked by a British Special Air Service unit during an exercise in Denmark. I didn’t participate in this exercise and therefore these SAS guys are not in my ranking.
In Bosnia I fought for the Croats. They were all decent soldiers and what is very important, they were eager to learn. The Croatian army during the war lacked material and sometimes professionalism, but they more than compensated these flaws with outstanding bravery and high motivation. Especially their leadership was exemplary.
Later I fought in Kosovo with the Kosovo Liberation Army. I trained the unit that I fought with, so of course, they did ok. What I often saw in battle was that with the right guidance one could really make a difference. Sometimes we had soldiers from other units under our command and although we first thought that they were completely useless, watching our guys fight it out, these soldiers started to give their best.
I trained twice with US Army units and both times it was a pleasure. First time with a battalion of the 82nd Airborne in Italy and later I had the privilege to attend the German commando course with a US Army Special Forces unit. While the Airborne soldiers, although very good soldiers, were not really a match to our German “Fallschirmjäger” platoon, the US Army Special Forces (SF) were amazing.
They somehow weren’t that good at achieving many tasks during our training inside the barracks and were also not the fastest team on the obstacle course, but as soon as they were in the forest they showed admirable infantry skills, very good adaptation to the terrain, speed and stealth.
These SF would make the first place on my ranking if it wasn’t for a couple of Dutch LRRP’s (Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol) soldiers who also attended the same German commando course. They were good at everything and in the end had the highest score from all attendees.
They were also very modest, quiet and polite, almost shy, and these are qualities one doesn’t find very often with elite soldiers. Therefore I rank them first.
I will answer with my experience in this. There was a drone that would come over my house three times a day and roughly the same time each day. I put out a sign said please stop recording my house and yard for a couple of days but it kept coming. Thay is when I noticed a police car parked in the lot behind my house while the drone was there. So each time I’d check and see on my camera if the cop car was there and every time the drone came around sure enough. So new sign unless you have a warrent stop filming my house and yard. At this time I checked with courts for any investigation warrents for me and my property and none. So I then went out and threw rocks towards the drone each time it would take off. But still coming back. So I set the trap. I sat out front and waited for this thing to come flying over my back yard with a rather large rock. I nailed it the first try. It broke and landed in the back yard. It took three days for the cops to get a court order to come and retrieve it. Seems in the attempt to get me into trouble they had to show the footage of the drone and the warning to stop recording was enough to exonerated me for damage to the drone. They have not been back since.
Man Didn’t Want This Cat. Now They’re Inseparable Swimming Buddies
At first this man didn’t want a cat, but his swimming buddy Frosty changed everything. It took time for them to develop the bond, but when they did, a cat dad was born. Soon, Stefan discovered Frosty’s affinity for swimming, He was super curious about water and started jumping to the shower, and then the bath and finally the swimming pool.
Biscuits and gravy is a popular breakfast dish in the United States, especially in the South.
No.
No.
NO!
I don’t care that you have your own version of English – that is an abomination.
That quite clearly consists of a scone:
With some kind of weird elephant ejaculate on top.
So not only is the name utterly wrong to British ears (if you ask someone here if they wanted “biscuits and gravy” here you will either a) end up in a mental institute, or b) be hounded out of town like a demon), but:
The actual thing doesn’t look much better.
I mean seriously guys – that stuff looks pretty damn unappetising, and that’s a “glamour shot” taken from some recipe website!
So America – let’s recap:
You’ve taken a food item traditionally eaten in the UK with cream and jam – and decided it would be better with some weirdass sausage-jizz-sauce.
You gave it a name which makes it sound bloody awful to British people
In case you haven’t gathered – this is not a popular food item in the U.K.
And we would rather it stayed that way – it looks ghastly.
EDIT:
From some of the very angry comments, it seems like some of you Americans just can’t seem to take a light-hearted ribbing, or a smidge of sarcasm. The whole point of the question is that us Brits don’t understand why you like it.
And for crying out loud:
yes, I know you call biscuits “cookies”. That’s part of the bloody joke.
Yes I have tried it. Calling me ignorant isn’t going to help.
Yes some British stuff is weird too. But we’re not talking about us – the question is about America.
Some people are treating this answer like I did a big squishy turd on your beloved flag.
It must be that sarcasm is hidden away in the ‘u’ in humour….
This answer isn’t really about saying what one single country has done the worst, but I do want to share below on the cruelty of humankind that many people don’t know about.
Graphic content below but I want to make this known because so many people around the world have heard of Hitler, Nazis, concentration camps but they have not heard of the Asian holocaust that took place around the same period. In western schools, history classes do not teach people about this part of the world.
This is regarding what the Japanese did during their occupation of China and Korea and the war crimes they committed to the surrounding Asian countries, including some Pacific Islands they invaded: Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Myanmar, East Timor, New Guinea, Indonesia, Guam, Nauru, Wake Island, Attu and Kiska Islands, and Kiribati.
They even had some prisoners of war from the west such as America, any forces against them at the time etc.
Hundreds of thousands of women from my country in Korea were forcefully abducted (called comfort women) during the Japanese occupation in WWII. They endured torture beyond imagination if they did not sexually submit to these vile men and were forced to have sex with 60–100 men every single day. Their innards rotted because of the STD’s and they were destroyed, unable to have children even after they were rescued. They have still not been compensated for the war crimes that they endured and majority have died.
Pregnant mothers were cut open and rape victims were sodomized with bamboo sticks and bayonets until they died in agony.
On top of this they literally tore the unborn from women’s wombs and speared them alive with bayonets in front of them. They’d crush the infant’s skull against concrete floors. They would actually do this for fun.
They tied sons and daughters up and tore them apart, spearing them and forced their own parents to watch.
They raped and pillaged women of all ages, even toddlers to old women in the most vile, disgusting way imaginable. They would often disembowel them while in the process, leaving them to die in agony.
They conducted unspeakable evil torture and experiments on LIVE prisoners from these countries even children and infants in UNIT 731. Torture methods such as vivisecting pregnant women without any anesthesia, centrifuging and killing people in pressurized chambers, and slowly burning and freezing people alive. They artificially created what is similar to the ‘bubonic plague’ to see the effects on the prisoners. They were forced into X-rays until they perished and hung people by their thumbs or tongues etc. These torture tactics were deliberately planned to see death happen SLOWLY, not fast as the scientists wanted to observe the resilience of the human body.
Bodies of slayed, raped, mutilated women in China.
(image deleted – too unsettling)
Carcasses of babies and children piled up
Despite this, Japan still presently denies what has happened and even believes that it is a rumour. The young people as shown in this video are absolutely clueless on the whole tragedy, or are so far removed in cognitive dissonance and lack of care it is astounding. There is even a middle aged woman in the video who even says “Well I’m not sure if it’s a rumour or not…” which is an absolute lunacy and an embarrassment of the failure of the country in not properly educating their citizens of what truly happened. One young girl even says “Well, I wonder when they will ever get over it…” How are people supposed to get over it when there are still thousands of victims still alive who didn’t receive any form of compensation for what they have been through??!
Their government still warps their history books and deliberately tries to hide the evidence of what truly happened. There are active groups within Japan who refuse to accept what happened and truly believe that it is just a ‘rumour’ to make Japan look bad.
Below is a real life account by a South Korean comfort woman on the horrors she went through. It is heartbreaking to watch but quite educational. She sadly passed away early January of this year, fighting until her last breath but still never receiving any compensation or apology from the Japanese. They don’t even recognize that she went through this or who she is.
(Video no longer available on YT)
What Japan did wasn’t just an invasion or occupation, it was a literal carnage, hell on earth genocide. They didn’t have to go this far as majority of the Koreans and the people they invaded were helpless farmers, uneducated servants, and innocent people who were not trained in war at all. They did this because they did not see these people as human, and their goal wasn’t simply to occupy, but to desecrate the spirit from within. They knew when you destroy someone’s spirit from inside out, the enemy will bend the knee and yield to the point where they do not have the soul to fight back. On top of this, it was just pure, raw sadistic savagery because all of these helpless people surrendered and begged for mercy yet they were still tortured for absolutely no reason.
(Video no longer available on YT)
Presently Japan is one of the most wealthiest and prosperous Asian countries in the world yet they cannot even fully take responsibility for their own committed atrocities. It shows the savage barbarism that still resides in some of these people and makes one question just how this is even acceptable. Instead they choose to warp their own history books, flat out deny it existed and have refused to offer sincere, acceptable compensation/apology for the people who are still alive. They are waiting until every last victim is dead so they no longer have to worry about it. They are not truly ashamed of this past, they just see it as an eyesore they want to bury. Keep in mind Japan has very strong political parties that strives to ensure this shameful past does not reach the masses to retain their false honour. Still to this day, they praise their war criminals in shrines.
From the invasion of China in 1937 to the end of World War II, the Japanese military regime murdered near 3,000,000 to over 10,000,000 people, most probably almost 6,000,000 Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Indochinese, among others, including Western prisoners of war. This is more than the estimated Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe controversially claimed that “there was no evidence to prove” that the women had been coerced into sex.
“Mr. Abe’s administration DENIES that imperial Japan ran a system of human trafficking and coerced prostitution, implying that comfort women were simply camp-following prostitutes,” Kotler continued. “The official narrative in Japan is fast becoming detached from reality, as it seeks to cast the Japanese people — rather than the comfort women of the Asia-Pacific theater — as the victims of this story.”
Edit: Since I’m getting quite a lot of people who clearly don’t seem to understand and may not have read or researched in depth in this matter. They are saying that ‘Japan does not need to offer apology or compensation for what people of their past did etc’
It’s more complicated than that.
Please read the links again. Even if they can’t take full responsibility for their past, they SHOULD take responsibility for the future by not warping textbooks and giving power to political parties who enforces the dangerous fallacy of denying any of this ever happened or triviliazing everything that has happened. They should make sure to teach the correct history not just for educational purposes but to ensure their citizens fully know and accept their own history and in hopes that it never happens again. This is also to help not silence the voices of the people who did suffer in the past and to not spit into their graves and ruin their legacy by spreading false lies.
Also the comfort women and people who were forcefully taken into labour camps as prisoners, many are still alive who didn’t actually get any compensation or even sheer RECOGNITION. They suffered their entire lives without anyone hearing what they have to say with nothing from Japan. This isn’t just about wanting Japan to go up to a stadium and saying ‘I am sorry’ and stepping down. Words are meaningless and worthless when not backed up by actions.
They are hypocrites by warping textbooks and also praising their own war criminals. Imagine what the world would say if Germany praises Nazis and gave strong political power that has the power to make Germans never even hearing of the Nazis or even contemplate if it was just a rumour or not. Think about how insane that would be.
So why do they need to apologise? Because unlike Germany what they are doing is absolutely deplorable and morally bankrupt by continuing to CONTRIBUTE to the legacy of the abomination Japan was in the past. You don’t see Germany do the same about the Nazis and for good reason. It means Japan hasn’t learned and is not truly remorseful. By Japan I am talking of the FACES of Japan which are the politicians who represent that country. The rest of the Japanese experience their trickle down effect so while it’s not saying it’s their fault, they end up indirectly contributing to supporting these vile politicians. So yes the people who represent JAPAN who hold the power of influence does need to sincerely apologise and stop contributing to what they are presently doing.
As I am getting tired of having to repeat the same information again and again, any comments that say things along the lines of ‘Japan does not need to apologise’ or those questioning or defending the existence of any of these crimes, their war criminals will be either ignored, deleted or blocked. It is extremely disrespectful to the victims and deplorable. The links are already here clear as day for reading and one can also do the research themselves. Also for anyone who brings up another atrocityandpitting them against each other,STOP. This post isn’t about pitting one atrocity against another, it is disgusting to even keep doing that and seriously lacks any insight into the original point of my post.
Otherwise thank you for reading and have a nice day.
TLDR: Japan did some truly horrific shit that many people including the present day Japanese citizens are unaware of. What they did is abysmal carnage from the Antichrist itself.
Also, piece of shit apologies that require uttering words and throwing money at victims isn’t a true apology when they are still in 2019 warping textbooks and none of their youths know anything about their crimes.
Why do you think Germany forces every citizen to learn about their nazi history and Japan doesn’t ? It is to deliberately ignore and not acknowledge their past due to their pride and selfishness. I’d equate this to even pathological narcissism and psychopathy due to how far they have gone in managing stomping this knowledge out of their own present day citizens.
Edit 2: As I am still getting very disrespectful, deranged comments on here pitting atrocities against each other, saying that I am spreading lies and others spewing ignorant hatred against Koreans, here’s my final message.
Instead of blaming others, look at what Japanese Nationals do. Stop diverting the attention away by blaming the mistakes of other countries yet not acknowledging the corruption of the Japanese government
Japanese people often fail to understand why neighbouring countries harbour a grudge over events that happened in the 1930s and 40s. The reason, in many cases, is that they barely learned any 20th Century history. I myself only got a full picture when I left Japan and went to school in Australia
The Germans in contrast have personally done everything possible to make people aware of their Nazi past. Japan doesn’t scratch the surface of what it means to have true honour while Germans go to great lengths to do humanitarian work and to allow their citizens to understand the FULL facts. This is what true compensation and remorse actually is, not the dogshit excuse of what Japan does by also denying people, correct history. End of.
Disappointed that china isn’t collapsing and Chinese people are not starving with 50 cent hoes selling their body to you?
A channel which is ironically named “Economics Explained” is possibly the worst when it comes to it. Western propganda is not just limited to mainstream media, but to nutwits like these.
Imagine if a Chinese made a video “sorry to disappoint America/India isn’t collapsing ..yet”. What wud their reactions be.
In all honesty, the best channel for economics is Xiao Lin, light years better than these sick bas***ds.
Meanwhile Indian videos on China’s economy are even more hating than that of westoids.
Like seriously westoids, get a forking life other than hating a new country every decade. Last decade was Russia, last to last was Iraq. You guys got no job other than invading countries and telling “we love the people hate the government” then getting sad why that country hasn’t collapsed yet?
Original San Antonio Chili
2023 10 18 16 01
Ingredients
2 pounds beef shoulder, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1 pound pork shoulder, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1/4 cup suet
1/4 cup pork fat
3 medium-size onions, chopped
6 garlic cloves, minced
1 quart water
4 ancho chiles
1 serrano chile
6 dried red chiles
1 tablespoon comino seeds, freshly ground
2 tablespoons Mexican oregano
Salt to taste
Instructions
Place lightly floured beef and pork cubes in with suet and pork fat in heavy chili pot and cook quickly, stirring often.
Add onions and garlic and cook until they are tender and limp.
Add water to mixture and simmer slowly while preparing chiles.
Remove stems and seeds from chiles and chop very finely.
Grind chiles in molcajete and add oregano with salt to mixture. Simmer for another 2 hours.
Remove suet casing and skim off some fat.
Notes
Never cook frijoles with chiles and meat. Serve as a separate dish.
Chiang Mai Thailand 2013. I had a rare form of Tuberculosis cysts lodged in my spinal cord and on my right kidney. The doctors didn’t know how I contracted this deadly bacteria. I was too ashamed to tell them it was from drug abuse and the unhygienic practices that came with it.
It felt like a hot knife piercing my back continuously for months as I lay immobilized on the bed of my apartment. I could not hold down food and went from 220 lbs to 163 lbs. There was no sleep, only my body eventually shutting down from the pain.
My mother was an LPN and flew in to take care of me because I could not afford a hospital. My poor mother, I screamed at her to take my life. I switched from fentanyl to methadone to morphine, but none of them worked – they only made the pain worse because my feeble body could not process the drugs. It was gasoline on the fire raging inside me.
Once a week or so, my mother would help me to sit up, place a back brace on me, and help me move six feet to the bathroom so I could attempt a bowel movement and a brief shower. Every inch of every movement was excruciating pain; I had no more tears; it was hollow bellowing, and even cursing was painful. And then back to bed. That simple exercise would be an hour of horrific suffering.
After three months of strong antibiotics, I could finally eat and hold it down. With a back brace and cane, I could stand and walk briefly. The photo above was from this time, taken with my beautiful mother. You can see the back brace under my shirt and the cane I used to walk.
2023 10 31 10 46
This life I have today is beyond anything imaginable
I never thought it possible. I thought I was doomed to the bondage of self, and the slavery of active addiction.
Now, I live a lifestyle of sober recovery – drug and alcohol-free at 56. I train daily in the gym, go for power walks and jogs in nature, and have a purposeful, meaningful life.
I Just Got an Email That Left me SPEECHLESS. WE’RE AT DEFCON 2
This is really good, from a prepper. DEFCON 2. Holy Shit!
Your appraisal is dependent on last 2 months efforts and not 12 months
You ask for a raise, and your boss thinks you’re looking for a job change
You complain about administrative issues and your manager thinks you’re trying to be a rebel
Don’t share secrets with your colleagues, they might be sharing your secrets with colleagues or managers
Your office friend is not your real friend and they won’t swear by your death bed
If you die tomorrow, there is a replacement within a week
Your efficiency is decided by number of hours you clock in vs number of productive efforts you place in
A junior person can outsmart a senior person but he will still be called junior
Your mistakes will always be discussed during appraisals
Your best performance will be discussed when you want to quit
If you finish your work on time and leave early, this is getting noted in the system as you don’t have enough work. [Your efficiency is not counted 90% of the time.]
Hiring is done based on communication skills and not on management, writing, negotiation, programming, analysis, attitude and mindset
Your CTC, Variable, Bonus and Take home salary are different components (understand the difference)
Utilize your earned and casual leaves when you get time
Find your interests and do some certification courses from LinkedIn, Coursera, edX etc
Documentation is king
Lazy ones are the smartest but are difficult to manage
Love your job and be committed to the work. Period.
Your salary will increase by 1.5x, 2x or 3x only when you switch companies
At age 20–30 skill set is primary and salary is secondary.
If you find a mentor in your current company, listen to him/her and always consult when you get stuck
Be open to change and learn how to become smarter
Try to be 1% better than yesterday
Kill the boredom, go for a walk when you don’t have anything to do at office or talk to your colleagues and find out how they do what they do
Be happy and learn the financial management, this will help you stay afloat after 10–15 years
Chen Si.
He works at a logistics agency in Nanjing, China. He also spends his free time saving other people’s lives.
Let me tell you his story.
In 2003, a very close relative of Chen’s committed suicide after watching his sons argue over who would take care of him. The incident was deeply traumatizing. Having to lose someone he held so dear to his heart just because his sons didn’t seem to show enough respect and compassion for him. Chen also read in the local newspaper that the Nanjing-Yangtze River Bridge was a major suicide hotspot — in fact, by 2006, about 2,000 people were estimated to have killed themselves by jumping off the bridge since the year it was constructed (1968). He then became greatly determined to devote the rest of his life saving those of others trapped in hopelessness by foiling suicide attempts.
In response, Chen began to patrol the Nanjing-Yangtze bridge either on his motorbike or on foot, continuously on the lookout for people willing to jump from it.
He has been there almost every day, even on holidays and weekends, regardless of the weather.
He has kept a lookout for signs of depression, for example, in the way some of them walk, which Chen describes as “passive with no spirit or direction”.
Chen also keeps a diary documenting the people he has encountered and the reasons why they wanted to kill themselves.
Some had been greatly shamed for not being successful enough in school.
Some had broken up with their boyfriend or girlfriend.
Some had wasted away their money on needless things.
There was also, for example, a migrant worker who was drowning in debt because he couldn’t pay off the $15,000 bill for his daughter’s leukemia treatments.
Chen also gives out suicide prevention pamphlets to potential jumpers, detailing emergency contacts.
And not only does he simply pull people off the bridge. In fact, he has spent 10,000 yuan ($1,457 in dollars) renting a two-room house not far from the site, which he calls “a station for the soul to rest in”.
He sits with people and lets them share all their suffering in their stories, which in a way ignites friendship, trust, and newfound confidence. Chen also occasionally brings victims back to the bridge as volunteers, helping others see a way forward in life.
Throughout his time engaging in this, Chen has stopped over 300 people from ending their lives. That is an example of being a hero without having to fight. An example of generosity and compassion at work without the necessity for bloodshed. Sometimes the best heroes simply dedicate themselves to lending a hand to people who feel like they’ve got nothing left for them. Chen Si isn’t called the “Angel of Nanjing” for nothing.
“Not all heroes wear capes”, they say. That is most definitely true.
Every October since 1211 the City of London has paid rent to the Crown for two pieces of land even though nobody knows their exact locations.
The Ceremony of Quit Rents is the oldest legal ceremony in England apart for the Coronation of the Monarch. It takes place between St Michael’s Day (October 11th) and St Martin’s Day (November 11th) every year in the Royal Courts of Justice in London where the City pays the King’s Remembrancer.
The King’s Remembrancer is the oldest judicial position in England and was created in 1164 by Henry II to keep track of what was owed to the crown.
For the first piece of land, called The Moors, the City pays two knives, one blunt and one sharp.
The Remembrancer’s duty is to test the knives. The billhook is tested on a hazel tally and should make a mark representing the payment. The sharp axe then splits the tally in two, one for each party as a receipt. The Remembrancer then calls “Good service”.
This is called a split tally where in order to record debts a stick was marked with a number of notches and then split lengthwise. This way the two halves both record the same notches and each party to the transaction received one half of the marked stick as proof.
The second quit rent is for the use of the forge in Tweezer’s Alley, somewhere near The Strand. It is believed that the first tenant, Walter Le Brun, was a blacksmith who had set up his business near the tilting ground of the Knights Templar sometime around 1235.
The rent for this land is sixty-one nails and six horse-shoes. The horseshoes used are believed to date back to 1361 and are probably the oldest horseshoes still in existence. After the payment is received, the shoes and nails are then loaned back to the City of London for the next year.
When presented with the horseshoes and nails, the Remembrancer calls “Good number”.
There are also other quit or peppercorn rents. In Medieval times when a piece of property was deeded over as a reward for service a nominal rent was often charged as a reminder that the tenant didn’t own the property outright. A single peppercorn (or a single rose i.e. rose rents) was among the most popular forms of this style of rent but there were various other interesting forms of payment, such as a frog, a roast pork dinner, the donation of a petticoat to a poor woman, or even a raw calves head and a pair of gloves.
Hi. I am an Australian who is married to an American and, due to the nature of my work, lived ALL OVER the US over a decade.
Half my family are American and many of my closest friends. In short, I’m very fond of the United States and support my nation’s close affiliation with them.
So please forgive me if I’m blunt. This is NOT an American bash, it’s an honest expression of the one thing that [SOME] Americans do that never fails to trigger me.
“We saved your asses in World War Two”.
Americans often tell us bluntly, over and over how they “saved our arses” in both World Wars.
I assure you, EVERY SINGLE Brit, Aussie, Kiwi or Canadian reading along can hear those words spoken in an American accent as they read them.
That’s how often we hear it. Almost weekly. Certainly once a month.
Wars that we ourselves stepped up and fought in the protection of others. Wars that wouldn’t even have affected us directly. Wars we fought for YEARS before the United States.
Australia, Canada, India and New Zealand particularly could have turned their backs on Western Europe.
Britain herself could have closed her borders and looked the other way. Hitler had no designs on the UK – He admired them. All they had to do was stand back and allow the holocaust to happen.
But of course they couldn’t because fighting Nazi Germany was the right thing to do.
We didn’t make Britain wait 3.2 and 2.3 years to enter either great war. We were there from day one.
We didn’t charge Britain for our goods or help. We didn’t keep a tally and make them pay it back for seventy years. We didn’t insist they realign their trade preferences to favour our markets setting their still very young colonies prematurely adrift or cost them their empire, wealth, dignity or preeminence as a world power.
We didn’t use Britain’s plight as a springboard for our own wealth and dominance or spend the following century diluting their culture with Pan Americanism and shallow consumerism.
CANZUK didn’t ask for anything. We just went because we’re family and that’s what family does and despite what some of you are going to assert in the comments, yes, America, though you are the black sheep you are also family.
Speaking for Australia, from a population of six million (2/3 of which were women, children, the elderly and infirm), a full one million Australian men served in the military during the Second World war.
Let that sink in.
We had, from our far-flung nation gathered together the fourth-largest air force in the world and the fifth largest navy and lost so many men in every theater of both World Wars that we had a noticeable lack of them right into the 1980s. Indeed, by the time American boots had touched the ground in North Africa and Europe, CANZUK had already sacrificed literally millions of men.
It’s SO, rude. I’m not even sure you understand just how disrespectful it is and how much damage it does [at street level] to our relationships with the US. Honestly – it’s there in the pit of all our stomachs whenever we even engage with an American.
I will leave you with this quote from the memoirs of one of your own. American journalist Ernie Pyle who was killed in action by the Japanese in April 1945.
His account of D-day and the liberation of Paris.
“One cannot help but be moved by the colossus of our invasion. It was a bold and mighty thing. One of the epics of all history. I hope that we can rejoice in victory but humbly. The dead men would not want us to gloat.”
I don’t live in China. But I do live in another country that is often said to be authoritarian (Singapore). And what else can we say about Singapore?
It’s ranked in the world’s top five richest countries (by GDP per capita). It’s ranked among the world’s top five least corrupt countries. Its public transport system is often ranked as the world’s best. It’s also ranked as the world’s no. 6 most peaceful country. It has one of the world’s highest average life expectancies. It’s ranked No. 1 for infrastructure. Singapore is ranked the 2nd safest city in the world. Singapore students are the world’s best in science, math and literacy. Its economy is ranked the 4th most competitive in the world. Singapore has the lowest infant mortality rate in the world. Homelessness is very rare here. Singapore’s rate of death by drug overdose is 81 times lower than in the US. There hasn’t been one gun homicide in the past 17 years.
Etc etc etc. I could go on and on. Basically Singapore is a very successful country across a wide range of different indicators and criteria. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it – what exactly is so bad about authoritarianism.
Yeah, yeah, you can’t smoke pot; you’ll be caned if you are a rapist, and you have no right to utter hate speech to bully anybody. Sounds quite good to me.
You do the maths. I used to be able to buy them at HKIA for $90HKD a carton. The airport staff said you have to pay duty if you take more than 2 cartons. I said yes and filled my suitcase.
I’d take them to the UK and sell them for £35–40 a carton. I’d sell them to somebody who looked like he’d stab you in the face. First time I met him he wanted to rob me, but realised I could supply him regularly. Anyway he’d sell them for £50–60 a carton (it’s about £50 for 100 a carton is 200).
The trick was to land late at night, if you did this the customs agents were usually not too attentive and wanted to go home.
Same thing with France, I’d go for a razz now and again and come back with a car filled with cigarettes.
It was easy money and made me my seed money to get my business off the ground.
Chris Langan was born with a freakishly potent brain, having arguably the highest IQ of any living person.
Langan began speaking at six months old and went on to skip several grades. He had an adult vocabulary by age 10. He breezed through college-level tests as an adolescent. He took his SAT several years early and got a perfect score in half the allotted time and took a nap.
Today, he is a rancher. He never finished college. Most of his adult years were spent as a bouncer at a bar, and in manual labor jobs.
image 202
It all stemmed from his rough childhood. He grew up in a poor family. His mother married multiple times before he turned 12. One stepfather committed suicide. Another was psychopathic and abusive.
His stark upbringing created behavioral problems and a persisting contempt for authority. Combine this with inadequate mentorship, resources, and an absent professional network and he never weaponized his extremely rare gift.
The sad truth is that there are many like Langan, who are like the gifted child working on a 3rd world farm, born into poverty and dealt a common, cruel blow to the chance of success.
TikTok on the cost of living | RANT ON INFLATION | EVERYONE IS BROKE AND TIRED
“Hi guys, just to clarify I do not own any of these videos I just thought it would be interesting to see how people are dealing with the cost of living, sending prayers and well wishes to you ”
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.
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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.
After I left the Navy, and before I got married to my first wife, I spent a period of time single… living alone, in Florida… and being a “beach bum”. I went out on a lot of dates. Met many girls, and had a lot of fun. Fun that was unfortunately short lived. I was just a “boy toy”.
At that time, as a “beach bum”, I had long blonde hair, a super tan, and a really laid back attitude. In short, I was “Captain Ron”. LOL
But seriously. I was “Captain Ron”.
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Anyways, I was in love with a girl. She lived in another state, and I wanted to marry her. It was a long distance relationship. And so I went and packed up and bought an engagement ring and wanted to surprise her with a visit, a ring and then bring her back down from Pennsylvania to Florida.
Well… I walked in on her… with a “close friend” having sex.
…
The standard boiler plate of next steps occurred.
Denial
Confrontation
Emotional screaming and yelling
Decisions
And departure
I returned back to Florida alone.
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And you know, I went into the store and returned the engagement ring to the very attractive girl behind the counter.
And she disappeared in the back, and I noticed that all the 20-something girls were peeking though the curtains and whispering amongst themselves.
There were so many “ahh sounds” and a lot of sad pity on my part.
The really noticeable thing about this event was that I really didn’t appreciate what I was (at that time), and how these young 20-something local chicks thought of me. I was that blue-eyed, beach blond, mellow fun dude… LOL!
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An attractive subtype…
Sigh.
Not the grizzly old cuss that I am today, I guess.
Enjoy who you are in your various stages of life. You might be surprised on all the opportunities that you might miss out on. Be brave. Be aware, and for god sakes, have some fun!
I have only been fired once in my entire adult life. I was working as a Case Manager for a national company with remote digital presence, but no brick and mortar offices in our state. Another local nurse wanted my position and started planting weevils in ears up the chain of command. Long story short she was committing a bunch of tomfoolery and blaming it on me without my knowledge at the time.
She got my position, but was fired within 3 months because she was caught committing aforementioned tomfoolery. Her misdeeds were of such a nature as to make finding another job within the field very difficult. She was caught partially because her accusations caused a state level investigation and audit. Which cleared me and cost her, her job.
Brilliant planning on her part.
Fast forward 2 years and she applies for a job at another local facility. One that I happen to be the associate clinical director at. She has been on a suspended license with remediation and stipulations after reactivation, and basically unable to work for 2 years. She walked in to the interview, saw me sitting behind the desk, whispered “Oh, Shit!” and just ran out of the building. I didn’t have to say a word.
Texas-Style Egg and Potato Skillet
Scramble Mexican favorites, like potatoes and tortilla chips, for a fast and tasty breakfast skillet or simple supper.
texas style egg potato skillet
Prep: 5 min | Cook: 15 min | Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
4 thick slices (4 ounces) turkey bacon, chopped
1 medium baking potato, diced 1/2 inch
8 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup pico de gallo or chunky salsa
1/2 cup (2 ounces) shredded smoked Cheddar cheese
6 flour or whole wheat tortillas (8 inch), warmed (optional)
Instructions
Cook bacon in large nonstick skillet over medium heat until edges begin to brown. Pour off drippings.
Add potato; cook and stir until potato is tender and browned and bacon is crisp, 6 to 8 minutes.
Pour eggs over mixture in skillet. As eggs begin to set, gently pull the eggs across the pan with an inverted turner, forming large soft curds. Continue cooking – pulling, lifting and folding eggs – until thickened and no visible liquid egg remains. Do not stir constantly.
Stir in pico de gallo; heat through.
Sprinkle with cheese.
Serve with tortillas, if desired.
Notes
Lighter Option: Recipe can be made with reduced-fat cheese, if desired.
Bought some string in a nice little stationery store in Munich back in 1999. The clerk was counting out my change in German, marks and pfennigs, and stopped and said, auf Deutsch, “Why am I even counting out the change to you? You don’t understand anything.” I smiled. Though I understood well enough, my German wasn’t good enough to let him have it.
My ex was visiting Croatia with her Croatian friend about fifteen years ago. Guess both of them looked like Americans. While walking along the water somewhere together two local, uh… gents were walking toward them, discussing amongst themselves, and quite graphically, the sexual adventures/positions/at one time “crimes against nature” they would enjoy with the two gals. As they passed one another her friend shouted in Croatian “DO YOU TALK TO YOUR MOTHER WITH THAT MOUTH?!!” They nearly melted in embarrassment.
It’s done. It is almost a full decade since China is the real superpower and U.S. is a has been. I know if you are a westerner or especially if you are proud American it sounds ridiculous. But. Let me point out facts and not hubris or blind pride.
China’s growth today is 36.6% and the U.S. together with the entire G7 is a mere 24.6% of the worlds growth. China overtook the U.S. where it counts most the real purchasing power GDP or PPP. Today China is roughly 18.5% and the US is 15.2%. Of worlds economy. While the U.S. is one of the biggest spender China is the biggest savers.
In infrastructure the Chinese has the biggest ports, the biggest ports has the most ships and it has build 120 thousand miles of high speed railway criss crossing China the U.S. build 100 kilometres.
On influence. China gets support almost the entire Asia, Middle East, Latin America, Caribbean and Africa. The U.S. has support from roughly 15 nations. The Anglo nations, their vassal states Germany, Japan and South Korea. Some former colonial powers and some small Eastern European enemies of Russia. In most UN votes China always almost has support in excess of 150/195 nations.
In military, China has more arms, more ships more planes and more troops by a very long shot than the U.S. The Chinese close knit relationship with Russia will make the U.S. rather weak if pitted against both of these nation. The U.S. has lost 4 wars against smaller and weaker nations, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
On sustainability China has 175 out of 195 nations as its biggest trading partners and the U.S. has 29/195 nations as its biggest trading partner. The U.S. debts and deficits is simply unsustainable. China is growing at a rate of 3–4 times a year for the past 40 years against the US. And its standard of living has grown 30 times in the past 40 years and the US has stagnated since 1960!
On the present and future technology, in a recents Australian research from ASPI, China leads in 37/44 most crucial and strategic technologies while the US lead in only 7/37. China’s registrations of US patent office has doubled the US for the past decade.
For me China has absolutely and totally overtook the US by 2020 but it start overtaking the US in 2014. What we are seeing is a decade or more of US refusing to accept the status quo. I suspect by the 2028 election the US and America will move from disbelieving to accepting this status quo.
Oliver Anthony – Rich Man North of Richmond (REMIX) -Vapor Reggae/Dub-
[I’m answering anonymously because I don’t want this to come up in a google search — it would suck if my family found it — but I’m sure plenty of regulars will know who wrote this. Please don’t out me.]
My classmates were 100 of the wealthiest kids in the world. I don’t mean hedge fund money — I mean Middle East royalty money. I mean kids whose entire addresses were: People’s Palace, Khartoum, Sudan.
Were they different from the kids I went to public school with in middle class suburban New Jersey? Not in any way that mattered at age 15. (Except they all smoked. I mean upwards of 80% of my classmates smoked. Just crazy.) At 15 it was about boys and sex and alcohol and dieting and who was going where on winter break. The clothes were nicer, the vacations more luxe, but the status games were all the same.
As an adult, here’s the biggest difference I notice, and this really only applies to people who grew up with money:
There is a sense of security that comes with growing up with wealth. A sense that no matter how bad things get, there is a safety net. Even if the net is actually gone — even if somehow you’ve lost all your wealth, your family has disowned you, whatever — it is hard to shake that sense that somehow, some way, things will work out.
Some of my rich friends think they can empathize with poverty. Maybe, but I don’t kid myself that I can. Even when I’d severed ties with my family and had been sleeping on a beach with my belongings for a few months because I couldn’t afford to eat *and* pay for a bed. Even after I’d been robbed a couple of times and put in worse danger a couple of times…
When I got sick — really stupid sick that would have cost me a limb if I hadn’t finally gone to a doctor when I did — I didn’t for a minute think I’d lose my leg. Somewhere deep down I knew that whatever was going to be required, the resources would be there. Whether it meant calling home or a family friend or an old classmate… the idea that the world would let me drown because I couldn’t pay a bill was just never on my radar. It was too far outside everything life had taught me up until then.
I’d have to be on the street for a very long time before I’d be convinced that no one was coming to save me. Of all the privilege that I enjoy, I think that one would be the hardest to shake.
A man, who had sold my client a herd of Texas Longhorn cattle, had returned months later, carted them off, and could not or would not account for their whereabouts.
I was in court. It was a trial to the judge (without a jury) for “conversion” and violations of the D.T.P.A. (Deceptive Trade Practices). I had the bad guy, the chief rustler, on the stand. He was squirming.
The key to the whole case was an award winning Longhorn bull named “Squanto.” We called him “Squanto the Wonder Bull” at the office.
Eventually, he admitted to taking the herd… Finally I asked the chief rustler, “Where exactly is Squanto?” In a flippant remark the defendant laughed and said, “Hell, I don’t know. Probably in a can of spam by now,” and laughed again. He thought he was pretty funny.
About an hour later the judge ruled for us but did not award triple (3x) damages as required by the law in Texas. My client, who was crazy angry about his lost herd, wanted to appeal. So we appealed.
Months later in the court of appeals my client, the other lawyer, and I appeared for argument. What surprised me was that the chief judge of that court was on the panel of three judges. He was old, very crippled, and brilliant. He assigned himself to the cases he was interested in and always made a difference.
I went first. I made an impassioned plea. I talked of the Texas Rangers, the Alamo, and the treatment of rustlers in early Texas history.
They wanted nothing to do with me.
The three judges were silent, dead silent the whole time. They said nothing. They just watched me and nodded. I did not know whether to sh#t or go-blind I was so unhorsed. I thought I was a dead man. They were supposed to ask questions, seek clarification, or ask me if I had a case on X, Y, or Z. Nothing. When I finished the chief judge thanked me without comment. I sat down silently and waited.
Now generally when a lawyer begins to speak in the court of appeals we say something to the effect of “May it please The Court … I am X and I represent the Appellant Disney, or GM, or Joe Blow.”
The lawyer for the rustlers did just that. He said, “May it please The Court, I am …” and that’s all he got out of his mouth.
The chief judge leaned forward in his chair, as far as his crippled body would allow him, and said, “We know who you are and who you represent. What we don’t know is where this herd of Longhorns is, Sir.”
There was silence. I mean the kind of silence you sense rather than hear, like when you know a predator is approaching in the woods. Then the chief judge looked at the transcript of the trial and read aloud, “Hell, I don’t know. (Squanto) is probably in a can of spam by now.”
Those judges weren’t in the trial court. They didn’t see the flippant attitude of the witness. They didn’t hear him laugh. They didn’t know he had been sarcastic. The Court Reporter had not noted “laughing” or “sarcastic” in her notes, which she was prohibited from doing. The Judges could only read the words on the paper, and the words were clear — Squanto had been rustled and made into spam.
”Sir, you and your client are here in our Court trying to justify stealing this man’s cattle and taking his prize bull, Squanto, to slaughter for ‘Spam.’ Is that right? IS THAT RIGHT?” The lawyer was dumbfounded. Speechless. So was I.
For the next 20 minutes those three old judges waged a holy war on that lawyer and his rustler clients and defended our Longhorn herd, Squanto the Wonder Bull, and “mom and apple pie” like they were the judges’ own children. I have never seen another reckoning like that one, not in a trial court and certainly not in the appellate courts.
I got the award. I got the Judgment. We collected the money.
The Rangers would have hung those rustlers. We could not.
But we never saw Squanto or his herd again …
I don’t know why Squanto’s demise set those old judges off, but it did.
As lawyers, we discuss the fact that Judges and Juries are forgiving at times, but never if you injure a baby, an old person, or a helpless animal. This was a great reminder.
I smiled that day. I smile now, and every time I see a can of spam I think of Squanto the Wonder Bull.
That’s not the only story that makes me smile, but it is a favorite.
Long ago, a mentor warned me that, “Human Resources is there to protect the company — from you.”
A manager I supported could not have been a bigger HR nightmare. For example, I was sitting in a clear-glass meeting room with him and three other employees.
A female coworker walked by on the outside of the room. A coworker said, “Oh is Becca pregnant?”
This manager said, in a deep southern drawl, “If she was with me, she’d stay pregnant.”
On another occasion, I heard him say, “I hate the Japanese cuz’ they bombed Pearl Harbor. I hate the Jews cause they killed Jesus.”
Why was he still at the company? He made the company buckets of cash and was great at his job. He epitomized the predicament of the high-performing jerk.
Most HR departments aren’t worth their weight and everything they do is bound in red tape. Ignore any talk of “we are family” — they’ll still show you the door. Ignore any employee awards. I saw a woman win employee of the quarter (for the entire company) and get let go two months later.
I’m not trying to scare you or sound cynical. Just be hyper-realistic as you go into this world and you’ll position yourself to thrive.
And choose wisely when making an HR complaint. People that do often end up with a cleaned-out desk.
China is a master at derivative research today. The world’s best in fact
It’s what morons mistakenly call REVERSE ENGINEERING which is actually dramatic process improvisation
Derivative research is building on existing research
The US were masters of derivative research from the 1950s to late 1970 before they started Pioneering Research
The US derived mainly from European Researchers until then and even today Europe is the master of Pioneering or Original Research
Germany, Netherlands, Scandinavia are the leading countries for original or pioneering research
Chinas research is very PRACTICAL
The Universities fund research based on the value of the research to China
Original Research Or Pioneering Research doesn’t have any viability for a minimum 15–30 years
They need astronomical budgets for very little real life improvement
China prefers to identify research and BUILD ON IT
Most of Chinas Hypersonics, Space Communication, Rocketry is a result of Phenomenal improvement of US Original Research done in the 1970s-1980s and abandoned then as UNVIABLE
Another reason is Chinese are world class ENGINEERS
They handle every problem as an ENGINEERING PROBLEM Or a DESIGN PROBLEM
They are masters at this. The Best in the world on large scale
The Huawei Mate 60 is the best example
Huawei and SMIC solved the problem like an ENGINEERING DESIGN PROBLEM than a Physics Problem at electron level
Thus Chinas focus on Physics and Maths is entirely to develop an ENGINEERING BASE
It would take a longer time, maybe 30–40 years for China to finally focus on Original Research and win a few Nobel Prizes
The World’s leading nations by Original Research are :-
Europe -50. 43%
USA – 31.40%
UK – 7.88%
China – 3.79%
Others -8%
The World’s leading nations by derivative research are :-
China -35. 56%
USA – 26%
Japan – 14.98%
Europe – 13.33%
Others – 11%
China’s Technology LEADS the World (Americans in Shock)
Yes. I forgot how unique and technological China has become. It is so commonplace. I forgot that the West doesn’t really have this…
In this video, we take a look at China’s amazing technology and how it’s far surpassing America’s in terms of innovation, convenience and creativity. China’s amazing tech is making America jealous, and many Americans are in shock. They won’t believe it!
I did something today that will make me smile for entire life.
I frequently visit a coffee shop near my flat in Delhi for coffee. I am visiting the shop for more than 1 year now.
A couple of months ago, a 13 year old boy started working there. It made me furious on the shop owner because he is promoting child labour without hesitation.
I asked him :“ Don’t you know it’s a cognizable criminal offence to employ a Child for any work?”
He said : “ Yes, I know but you’re seeing only one side story”.
He explained that the child is from Bihar and belong to a very poor family. Last year, his family which included his father, child and his sister came to Delhi to earn some money in order to put food in their bellies. His mother died when he was born. His father is doing a job of a security guard while his sister is working as a maid in a house.
The child is getting a salary of Rs 6000/month at the shop.
I went home but I was not able to stop thinking about it.
I wanted to do something for him but I don’t know how to tackle the situation.
In July, he was not on the shop for a couple of days, so I asked the owner and got to know his sister died due to some health issues. It made me feel worse.
After a few days, he joined the shop again. I started talking to him daily to know more about him and his aspiration. He studied till 3rd class but left study to help his family.
I asked him if he wants to study? He said nothing but his glittered eyes gave me the answer.
Slowly, he became my friend. He used to ask me about what do I do and how I learned these things. I used to answer him in the best understanding way.
I don’t know but it created a great bond between us. I was really desperate to help this kid.
A few days ago, I was drinking coffee with a few of my friends. I was asking them a logical question (Which I saw in a video
of Ted-ED)
No one gave the right answer but that kid was listening to all things and said : “Bhaiya, mein batau?” (Bhaiya, may I tell?)
I was shocked, how sharp he was to give the correct answer. I gave him 50 rupees as a reward and left the place.
I decided that I will give him a better life whatever it takes. I started telling his story to people in my network so that if someone will come forward to help me.
One of my friends came forward who is working in an MNC and his wife is doing some a Non-profit work.
Today, that kid got admission in a boarding school.
It will only cost us 40,000 Rs/year and I will pay his salary of Rs 6000/month to his father.
After a few days, he will be in school and I cannot express my happiness and satisfaction.
I want to work more for children if some people come forward and make it possible together.
I was at Notre Dame in Paris. My friend and I were eating lunch on a bench. There was a group of American young adults with 2 chaperones. They were eaching McDonalds (In France? go figure) And way, the finished before Peggy and I did. The got up and left their trash all over the place with a trashcan right there.
Now remember, this is in France at a gorgeous cathedral that is world famous with tourists from all over the world. Me, being me, I got upand loudly said, “Hold it. Stop right there. All of you.” They all turned to me as if I was a crazy lady. Any way, I let them have it about leaving their trash around like their mothers where here to pick up after them. I told them they needed to pick up every piece of trash they had left and put it in the trash can. This wasn’t their country and they needed to respect it.
I think the shock of me, an American loudly calling them downfor being pigs (and yes I did call them that) totally embarrassed them enough to have them clean up the area where they had been sitting.
I went back to my lunch, still ticked that they were so disrespectful of France and Notre Dame that I almost snapped at this lady that came over to us. She said that she appreciated what I’d done and handed us tickets for the underground and to be able to climb to the top of one of the towers. I tried to refuse, but a gentleman behind her said it wasn’t allowed since we had shown we weren’t the normal Americans.
Even to this day, I am still aghast at how the chaperones didn’t bother to have them clean up after themselves. I can only imagine what the entitled kids who didn’t even consider cleaning up their trash are like today.
Incoming years? Nah it’s already on life support and flat lining.
Reddit yeah? It’s got a terrible reputation of being filled with ignorance and racists.
Yet on Reddit there have been frequent pushbacks. You can see the major turning point was Rushan Abbass.
As such the 10000+ post omg China bad started getting pushed back by people doubting.
For a while it was treading water as those 10000 post threads deleted anything that went against their narrative.
People then started noticing the massive deletions.
Their last omg genocide post has 600 posts of which the majority called bullshit. The op ended up deleting the thread.
If you can’t convince even the cesspit that is Reddit and Reddit is calling you out… then it’s over.
I mean shit. On Reddit hongkong (no space) there was a yellow (HK rioter faction) saying anybody in Hong Kong who went to Shenzhen or used Chinese products was a traitor.
He got downvoted into oblivion. The burning of a man in HK really had a huge change against many of them.
This is a highly improbable scenario, as China has shown restraint and rationality in dealing with the US-led tech war, which seeks to curb China’s rise as a global powerhouse in innovation and technology.
China’s strategy to cope with the US sanctions on Huawei and other Chinese companies is to pursue a dual path of self-reliance and openness. On one hand, China has stepped up its efforts to develop its own core technologies, such as chips, operating systems, cloud services, and 5G networks, to lessen its dependence on foreign suppliers and enhance its competitiveness. On the other hand, China has also reaffirmed its commitment to opening up its market and promoting trade and investment with other countries, especially those that share its vision of building a community with a shared future for humanity.
Apple is one of the beneficiaries of China’s openness and pragmatism. Apple depends heavily on China for both its production and sales. According to Apple’s latest financial report, China accounted for about 20% of its total revenue in the third quarter of 2023, making it the second-largest market for Apple after the Americas. Moreover, Apple relies on China’s vast and sophisticated supply chain to manufacture most of its products, such as iPhones, iPads, Macs, and AirPods. According to a recent study, about 90% of Apple’s suppliers are based in Asia, with China being the largest source country.
China has no interest in disrupting Apple’s operations in China, as it would harm both sides’ interests and undermine the global economy. Apple is an important contributor to China’s economic development, employment, innovation, and tax revenue. According to a report by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, Apple directly and indirectly supported 4.8 million jobs in China in 2019, including 1.8 million iOS app developers. Apple also invested $6 billion in research and development in China in 2019, making it one of the largest foreign investors in China’s high-tech sector. Furthermore, Apple paid about $13 billion in taxes to the Chinese government in 2019, making it one of the largest taxpayers among foreign companies in China.
China also appreciates that Apple is a valuable partner in promoting global cooperation and mutual understanding. Apple has been actively participating in various initiatives and projects that support China’s social and environmental goals, such as poverty alleviation, education, health care, renewable energy, and cultural preservation. For example, Apple has donated more than $50 million to support education programs in rural areas of China since 2013. Apple has also committed to powering all of its facilities in China with 100% renewable energy by 2025. Moreover, Apple has been showcasing China’s rich and diverse culture through its products and services, such as featuring Chinese artists on Apple Music, offering Chinese language courses on iTunes U, and celebrating Chinese festivals on App Store.
It is evident that China has no reason or incentive to kick Apple out of its market and supply chain. On the contrary, China welcomes Apple’s presence and contribution in China, as it benefits both countries and the world at large. China hopes that Apple will continue to uphold the spirit of openness and cooperation, respect China’s laws and regulations, protect users’ privacy and security, and play a positive role in enhancing bilateral relations and global governance
During my two decades in sales, I observed many interactions between people with obviously large gaps in IQ scores. They were often very emotionally loaded, and the gaps may sometimes have far exceeded 3 SDs.
I could observe three things consistently happening there.
For those on the high end of the IQ continuum, the opposite party appeared as irritatingly slow-moving. It’s like they only understood every tenth of the words that were said, at best. The same thing had to be repeated over and over again just to be sure that even a fraction of it would stick.
Those on the lower end typically saw the opposite part as arrogant or neurotic jerks who couldn’t talk about one thing at a time and constantly jumped from one unrelated thing to another. Someone needed to keep them focused on the task and not waste everyone’s time on irrelevant asides.
After some to and fros in the discussion, a threshold happened where the innate human ability to find common ground and cooperate for a particular common task—we got to the top of the food chain as social animals, after all—broke apart, and these guys entered the zone of “anti-social” toward each other. Someone else was needed not simply to mediate but to use power to break up the clinch and show them to each his corner in the rink. The enmity, though, lingered, often forever.
Afterward, if forced into shared social settings, each of the two often pursued different coping strategies.
The underdog often veered toward violence. It was either physical—throwing objects, overturning tables, getting into fistfights when drunk, or grave verbal assaults in public. Insults typically were sexually tinged.
The “smart guy” most often tried to escape the company of the underdog, even to the point of not mentioning him when talking to others. When forced into a shared company (board meetings, sales sitdowns, training sessions), he often insulted his enemy in an indirect way. He made oblique jokes about him addressed to the rest of the crowd and fell back before the other guy had time to process and react.
Below, a painting from the sunset years of Soviet rule by painter Ilya Glazunov. He was covertly anti-Communist but managed to stay on the good foot with the censorship. The title is, “The Campfires of October.” In Soviet parlance, “October” was short for “The Great October Socialist Revolution” by Lenin and Co. in 1917.
You see a glamorized Lenin, his right hand at organizational matters inside the Party Yakov Sverdlovn, and the founder of the Communist secret police Cheká, Felix Dzerzhinsky. Behind them, a night of Communist rule envelops Russia for the next seven decades. In the darkness, you see the spire of Petropavlovsk Fortress like a syringe needle ready to inject the poison of progressivism into the mind of the nation.
A campfire casts an infernal light on Lenin’s face. During the first chaotic months of Communist rule, campfires in the streets were an everyday feature in our cities. They marked the checkpoints of the Red Guards on the lookout for counter-revolutionaries and bourgeois scum.
The trio sports the typical cold, calculating look of a “high-IQ” individual prepared for a fight, through the lens of their “low-IQ” opponents. It’s not entirely clear to me how both are distributed across the “progressive vs conservative” divide. But I see the pattern in ongoing propaganda, east and west.
“Law and order” has a strong appeal to the low IQ crowd. Pecking order doesn’t require you to be a rocket scientist. It’s all in your face. Entrenched frameworks and their well-armed guardians are easy on your processing power. You’ve got plenty of time and room to figure out what is what. And if things turn too complicated, you can always join the army and the police force and help make things plain and simple again. “Dirty Harry” works, folks!
“Equality and justice” is the grazing ground for the high-IQ bunch. Everyone has their own idea of what is true equality and high justice. Agreeing on common action needs tons of negotiations, painful compromises, quick decisions, and nimble footwork. That’s a high-IQ game.
What is certain is that the top guys in both camps are “high-IQ” individuals who use social dynamics for their own benefit. That’s how you get American billionaires leading the crusade against the “globalist elites.” On the other side, it’s the “conservative Communists” like Stalin and Mao who have no time for any wokeness and “culture wars”.
Oliver Anthony – I Want To Go Home (REACTION)!
The voice of the voiceless.
“I live in Washington state and watching our farmland get turned into amazon warehouses is heartbreaking. Another great reaction, God bless”
Briefly: after the regional manager called the store manager “stupid,” over the phone, the store manager quit. But not just him—his wife, who was the shift manager, and his cousins, who basically made up the rest of the staff for our little cinnamon roll shop.
It was Christmas, 1995, and I found myself all alone at dinnertime in a mall. Rolls needed proofing, baking, dough needing making, dishes washing, and don’t forget the sales!
I was seventeen, nearly eighteen years old and had been working there for a year. I loved the product, I knew my way around the shop, and even at rush hour in a booth that should take at least three people to man, I was holding my own for an hour until the regional manager showed up to help me finish the shift. I knocked it out of the park that day, and I was always a good employee, getting along great with the rest of the workers, including the regional manager’s wife, who had been my manager at some previous point.
I didn’t bring up the rather loud phone conversation for the rest of the night. It was just professional working the whole time, and when the evening was done, I washed dishes while he counted money and didn’t bother him then.
Finally, it was time for me to go. He thanked me perfunctorily and asked if I could work extra shifts the next day. He was going to call some other stores he managed and fill in with other worker until he found a new manager and employees. That made sense.
“Given how well I performed today,” I offered, “and since we need a new experienced shift manager, might I get a promotion?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want you to be a manager.”
One more employee quit that day. Who wants to work under that kind of person?
The upcoming senatorial meeting is unlikely to address any new issues. Longstanding problems like Cold War sanctions and the Taiwan red line have been extensively debated in previous meetings without finding resolutions. The same lack of progress is expected this time, including discussions on the Micron issue. These meetings, initiated by the US, appear to primarily aim at garnering attention from the American public in anticipation of the upcoming election, as they mark the first congressional visits in four years. Given the prevailing anti-China sentiment in the US, it seems improbable that this trip will result in significant outcomes. Mr. Xi, who is currently focused on addressing China’s domestic challenges, is unlikely to view this unproductive gathering favorably.
I was working as a Test Electrician for a small industrial place that did custom order emergency power generators. Think hospitals and grocery stores.
We were paid hourly and tracked our time on a hand written time sheet. X number of hours on PO YYY.
This chugged a long nicely. The Timesheets were hanging on the wall of the shop, the shop supervisor could see them at any time, errors were quickly seen and corrected and the work got done in a timely fashion. Guy running the shop was a retired E8 Marine who knew how to keep things organised.
He retired.
Company hired in a older gentleman who had an MBA and not a lot of sense.
He did not like keeping track of the hours worked every day so instead he implemented time cards and a punch clock. He also would walk the shop floor with a clipboard to keep track of who was working on what and when.
So, previous system all the data collection and collation is done in one place. New system the time worked and the place worked is being tracked in two very different processes.
We also have folks getting paid by the time card times, not the hours recorded on the Time Sheets.
This chugs along for a month and then we all get gathered together one morning and are told, explicitly, that over time is not paid if not authorised in writing and tardiness of more than 6 minutes at the start of shift or return from lunch will result in pay being docked an hour.
Could you be more stupid?
So instead of working that extra bit to get a job finished up before the end of the day, folks are cleaning up 30 minutes before quitting time so they can be ready to punch out at the hour. Instead of coming in 10 minutes late and taking a short lunch, they just show up an hour late. Instead of coming back from a lunch late, they don’t come back.
Unhappy workers, unhappy customers since the products are not getting out on time, unhappy accounting since the costs of various product lines are no longer the same as before because hours are not being counted accurately.
Doofus MBA was gone by the end of the second month and the E8 was back from retirement. He claimed he hated it but his wife said he was just moping around the house and jumped for joy when the owner called to beg him back to work.
China suspends European and American chip orders, US chip technology suffers heavy losses!
I told you all that this was going to happen. Duh!
Depends. In most places it’s not legal to invade a person’s privacy. So if the drone has a camera and it’s flying low over your property it would not be unreasonable to think it’s taking pictures, possibly seeing into windows or into a privacy fenced area where you reasonably have an expectation of privacy.
So I’d not attack the drone, but rather attempt to identify who owns it and have a photo of it flying in a manner than suggested it is being used to invade your privacy.
Flying low across a property line in an invasive manner would be a type of “tresspass” which is most countries is a 1st time warning second time arrested sort of thing.
Just flying over someone’s back yard isn’t a trespass. Lets say you have an outdoor shower under the cover of a back porch, inside the “property taxed living area of the home”. So the drone flies under the porch cover and takes video of your wife naked in the shower. Is that act a criminal trespass? Most likely.
Conversely, your wife is sunbathing naked in the back yard plainly visible from the perimeter of the property and anyone who looks over the top of the privacy fence. Oh, well, she really had no reasonable expectation of privacy. Now if you live on 20 acres in the country and have no privacy fence, she would be reasonably sure that in her own back yard a mile or more from any other persons lawful access she can sunbathe. And no its not reasonable to say what about a person selling magazines walking around to the rear of the home? That is a trespass I think, as there is no reasonable cause and claiming you heard a child crying out probably won’t get you out of it.
We were on Legian Beach two nights ago watching the sunset…
We were also having some drinks while we were waiting for the fire dance to start. The sun goes down and at precisely 7.00 pm, the fire dance kicks off… and it’s awesome!
A very talented team came out and began a wonderful performance of a combination of Balinese dance combined with your classic fire handling.
I’m just getting into the show when the music starts going weird… it sounds like shrieking in between the beats. It’s really off-putting… even the dancers hesitate for a second – I look around wondering if anyone is confused only to see a big bunch of people milling around in the middle of the seating area and that’s the source of the shrieking.
It turns out that a woman has come down front to take a photo of the fire dance and she obscured some guy’s view for a moment and he LOST. His. F#(k!ng. MIND! He was shrieking at her so hard that his voice broke repeatedly… it was embarrassing to watch.
I was irritated as hell. He was so loud and outraged that you just couldn’t focus on the dance. There was a palpable aura of chagrin from the audience. The distraction and disturbance must have been even more frustrating for the dancers (and the woman who made the photo faux-pas).
The group of people milling around were there to (apparently) try to calm him down and make sure he didn’t physically attack the woman. She could be heard apologising profusely to him but he wasn’t having it. This screaming went on for 2 minutes? In the end, people were telling him to shut the hell up or F3ck off! and he wound up storming off STILL screaming at the top of his lungs…
Who does that?
Who turns a moment of thoughtlessness by a stranger into a drama that interrupts the evening of 100’s of people AND proffessional dancers?! Couldn’t he just tap her on the shoulder if he was angry that she obscured his view for a moment? The performance he put on was incredible for all the wrong reasons. It was a childish screaming tantrum for what?
What did he even achieve with it?
He irritates the crowd, interrupts and nearly ruins a performance for everyone, humiliates someone for a minor error and then misses out on the rest of the performance when he storms off and everyone thinks he’s an angry violent loud man-child who never learned self-control. I *swear* some of the crowd applauded when he finally stormed off…
How bad is living in China ?
It is really bad :
Because I have some grey hair I am treated in the same embarrassing way every time I get on a city bus or on the subway …… younger people get up and offer me a seat.
Recently I had problems with a tooth. One morning I went to one of the dental hospitals. They did xrays and preformed a root canal in a 2 hours. It cost me 1/6th of the price of a root canal I had done 30 years ago in North America. Just terrible prices.
I am invited out to eat or to go to some celebration a few times a month. I never have to pay for the meal, while I am offered beer and cigarettes. I do not smoke so I decline the cigarettes but accept free beer.
Oh how terrible to invited out by the locals constantly. I have been to at least 25 weddings, more then dozen birthdays and half a dozen 100-day celebrations for babies.
There are 100+ channels on the TV, with a few in English as some western movies. The nightly news reports on all the major news around the world. I have internet access 24/7 and spent way too much time browsing the internet from Europe to North America. It is a terrible way to waste time.
I often visit my daughter who works 300km away in another Province. Being so far away, I am forced to take the train which takes 1hr 30 minutes to make the trip with 2 or 3 stops along the route. I could drive my car but that would make for a much longer trip.
The really bad thing in China is access to food.
We have 2 farmers markets within 2 city blocks. These are markets where the farmers come into the city around 6-7 am every morning to sell that days fresh crop of fruit vegetables and meat.
This in addition to 2 grocery stores and a Walmart in the area.
Then on my small city block, we have 14 restaurants, open 7 days a week.
There are even the evil food chains – KFC, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Burger King, Starbucks, plus all the Chinese ones etc
We have the French Carrefour and Auchan super stores and the Germany’s Metro cash & carry stores.
Worst of all, we have these applications on our smartphones (80% of folks own a smartphone). Where we can see menus of hundreds of restaurants in our area, order food and they deliver it to your door usually within 30 minutes.
If we need to go to the bank, we can not go 365 days of the year. There are about a dozen days a year when the banks are closed.
Schools are much more demanding on students compared to North America, with homework every night.
However they do get a month off in summer.
My daughters students spend some of their summer travelling. The US and Europe for some, others within China or to nearby places like South Korea or Thailand.
So far no one has noticed any difference due to the Trump Tariffs, but according to western media China is under some sort tremendous pressure. Or maybe there were talking about the tropical storm? In either case it was a lot of wind.
That is how bad it is living in China.
Please have pity on our oppression, as we say in my group of expats who live in China as well, some for over 20 years.
Of course we live a large city. The situation differs in rural areas as it does in most countries.
Because life isn’t fair. A spokesperson for the Alberta government said, that since they had banned grizzly hunting, the population has exploded. He said that going into the woods, isn’t like it was before, when Grizzlies had a fear of man. What we have always thought of, as being bear smart, might not be as safe as it once was.
We have grizzlies venturing back out onto the prairies and ripping open grain bins. Probably because there isn’t enough food to support all of the Grizzlies in the mountains.
The bear that killed the couple and their dog was emaciated, had bad teeth, and probably wouldn’t have survived the winter, if she didn’t get whatever food she could. She was desperate.
She was a small older bear, one that had never shown up on surveys, so probably wouldn’t have been included in any bear counts. She was likely forced out of her territory by a larger bear. This was a bear that had never caused any trouble until she was starving.
The couple did everything right. They had a satellite phone and checked in regularly, and used it to call for help. They each had a can of pepper spray, and used one. Their food was hung up, out of a bears reach.
They and their dog were in their tent, shortly after dark, when they were attacked, so they didn’t blunder into the bear.
There have been 7 people killed by Grizzlies within 100 km of me, in the last 16 years.
They ended grizzly hunting 17 years ago. In the 26 years before ending grizzly hunting, there were no fatalities, within 100 km of me, and only 3 in all of Alberta.
Many were mothers defending their cubs.
So as the spokesperson says, what we always considered best practices, might not be enough to keep you safe anymore.
The End Of US Dollar Hegemony | Jeffrey Sachs
“Yes, we have greatly abused the privilege of having the U$ Dollar being the main currency. And broken every Fiduciary rule with our unilateral sanction practices. We deserve whatever the blowback will be from having allowed our Leaders to carry on the way they have.”
Israeli Radar KNOCKED-OUT in the North. Americans Confirmed Killed, Wounded, Kidnapped/Captured in Israel. Nuclear Intentions
As of 10:51 AM EDT on Sunday, October 8, 2023, it is confirmed that three Israeli Radar stations in the north have been attacked and destroyed. Israel has no radar to monitor into Lebanon. It is also confirmed that Americans have been killed, wounded, and captured/kidnapped inside Israel.
Overnight, after what was “Day one” of the HAMAS-Israel fight, an actual TSUNAMI of propaganda came flooding out onto the Internet and into the mass-media. The shear volume of propaganda is extraordinary. It is making it very difficult to discern what is truth and what is fiction.
There is an INTENSE effort to promote and propagate Israeli victims – and that’s OK I guess; they are, in fact, victims of an actual conflict. But there is also an absolutely unparalleled effort to suppress and censor anything factual about the Palestinians. It is almost as if the public is being manipulated into seeing ALL Israelis as “victims” and ALL Palestinians as animalistic perpetrators.
Official sources are very reluctant to provide Intel today. It’s like a giant lid has been slammed shut on factual information; only “the narrative” is allowed out.
I have had to adjust the manner in which I obtain information.
Here is what I can __confirm__:
My former colleagues in the Intel Community, from my years working with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), confirm that over a week ago, uniformed, flag-wearing, ID-carrying regular UKRAINIAN Army Troops attacked Wagner PMC Troops . . . . in . . . . . . SUDAN. You know, Africa!
I also found out that Mossad has been sabotaging/burning/blowing-up Iranian Drone Factories to stymie Iran helping Russia.
I also found out that planeloads of Israeli military weaponry were sent to Baku, the capital city of Azerbaijan in the days and weeks before Azerbaijan launched another military attack upon Armenia last week, grabbing Nagrono-Karaback and forcing 100,000 Armenian Christians to flee for their lives.
What is taking place inside Israel right now, is payback. Payback from Russia for Israel helping Ukraine. Payback for the planeloads of weapons to Baku, Azerbaijan, and Payback for Israel blowing up Iranian drone factories.
It is also payback from Iran for all the air-strikes by Israel against Iranian forces in Syria for the past two years.
Lastly, it is also payback from Armenia for what Israel helped Azerbaijan facilitate in grabbing Nagorna Karaback.
The most interesting part? Iran used the $6 Billion released by the Biden administration two weeks ago, to fund today’s outbreak of hostilities!
I also found out this payback, is not going to stop.It __is__ in fact, “war.”
Moreover, I can now positively __confirm __:
This morning, the Israeli Security Cabinet invoked Article 40A of the “Law on Emergency Situations” — WAR.
So this morning, it is absolutely “official” Israel is at war. This is the first time that this Article has been invoked in Israel since the 1973 war.
Israel has decided to commit troops to a GROUND INVASION of the Gaza Strip. Door-to-Door. House-to-house.
This is going to be an absolute bloodbath.
I can also positively __ confirm__:
Israeli Ambassador to Moscow Alexander Ben Zvi told the Russian Government:
“Israel sees Tehran as one of the culprits of the Hamas attack.”
He then went on to tell Russia “This is how we quietly approached the threshold of the real use of Israeli nuclear weapons against Iran, and a demonstration of what the term “threat to the existence of the state” means . . . from the Russian “Fundamentals of State Policy in the Field of Nuclear Deterrence.”
I can now also positively __confirm__:
There are some 2.3 million people in the Gaza Strip. About half being men. If that half – or a good portion of it, were to come out into Israel bearing arms, the Israelis would be over run. Thus, the Ambassador to Moscow told the Russians that Israel is considering the use of smaller, “Tactical” nuclear bombs against Gaza, in case Israel is over-run. Same with the West Bank.
Finally, the Israeli Ambassador to Moscow told the Russian government that since Israel sees Iran as being primarily responsible for the ongoing onslaught, Tehran would be hit with much larger “Strategic nuclear bombs” as would . . . . Damascus, Syria, for being the Coordination point for HAMAS and Iran.
(Biblical: Damascus a ruinous heap?????)
Ergo, there is now actual and active discussion within the Israeli government of the potential use of nuclear weapons.
If Muslims begin to actually over-run Israel, where its existence is threatened, then Israel is already making known it will use the Samson Option and take a lot of people out.
HEZBOLLAH MASSING TROOPS
Hezbollah in Lebanon is already massing troops and moving rocket launchers. Hezbollah made clear yesterday that if Israel launches a ground war into the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah will attack from the north.
This morning, Israeli combat aircraft are in the skies over Lebanon all the way north to Kersewan, Lebanon.
There have been some mortars fired into Israel from Lebanon, and corresponding response with artillery fire from Israel, but these incidents do not even rise to the description of a skirmish.
RADAR KNOCKED OUT
The big news this morning is that THREE (3) Israeli radar stations in the north were successfully attacked from Lebanon and as of 10:51 AM EDT here in the United States eastern time zone, those three radar stations are OFFLINE.
For a brief time today, Israel had no effective radar coverage of its northern border. They have since moved portable, truck-mounted, military radar into new positions to restore coverage.
TALIBAN to JERUSALEM?
The Afghanistan Taliban reached a deal with Iran that is satisfactory, wherein Iran WILL allow Taliban armed forces to cross the country with the intent of entering Israel to grab Jerusalem. But the Taliban ran into several obstacles along the way.
Iraq did not respond to the Taliban request for permission to cross Iraqi territory.
Jordan flatly and explicitly BARRED the Taliban from entering their country.
So from a political perspective, the Arab states are now seen as acting as a shield for Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
IN AND AROUND GAZA
Hamas says that their fighters are still fighting in southern Israel, including in Ofakim, Sderot, Yad Mordechai, Kfar Azza, Be’eri, Yatid and Kissufim. Mind you, this is __Israeli__ territory.
“Israel will evacuate all residents living in towns near the Gaza border within 24 hours”
Israel has put itself in a bind with Gaza over the years so this isn’t so easy.
Gaza has been set up as a walled off open air prison, where the good inmates get to come out in daylight hours and do stuff like janitorial work for the chosen (their words – not mine) to eek out an existence. Then back through the gates by dark.
In theory, Israel can’t blow up a whole walled off city they created and kill every one because then everyone would scream genocide. But apparently everyone is cool with the status quo open penitentiary setup for some reason.
So the initial thinking is that Israel will just bomb here and there and level enough buildings to make everyone think they got payback and that will be that. It has always been that way. But no one is quite so sure this time. It may end up being an actual Genocide of Gaza.
The Israeli army issued orders to close all resorts near the border with Lebanon.
Most interesting this morning so far: : US weapons left behind in Afghanistan were used to attack Israel.
A high-ranking Israel Defense Forces (IDF) commander said US weapons left in Afghanistan by the Biden administration were found in the hands of Palestinian groups active in the Gaza Strip.
POLAND EVACUATING NATIONALS FROM ISRAEL
Poland has announced it intends to evacuate its nationals from Israel. Poland threatens: If any Polish aircraft is targeted or Polish nationals feel in danger after their aircraft enter the airspace.” Article 5 of the 31-nation NATO alliance will be activated and raids will be launched across all of Palestine.
EUROPE WARNED OF COMING RIOTS
Intel sources are now urgently reporting that Muslims will be on the rampage in Europe shortly; burning every major city in protest of the coming Israeli offensive into GAZA.
The authorities running Gaza know they cannot withstand a full Israeli military onslaught, so they have reached out to Muslims in Europe to have THEM cause trouble, making the Gaza problem, Europe’s problem too. The thinking is that Europe will be able to call-off a full blown Israeli wipeout of Gaza.
Intelligence sources say worst hit will be Paris, Brussels, London, and Marseille.
No Way Out! Rafah Border Crossing into Egypt Closed after Israeli Air Strike
The only way out of the Gaza Strip in Israel was the Border crossing at Rafah into Egypt. That crossing is now (temporarily?) closed after an Israeli air strike; thereby trapping 2 million Palestinians.
Israel has given HAMAS until *today* to surrender and release all the hostages, or the Gaza Strip will be flattened. Yet Israel targeted a particular house in the town very near the Rafah Border Crossing to kill the leader of the Nasser brigades. It was after that air strike that the Rafah crossing was closed by Egypt out of fear of more strikes.
The Israelis believe Rafah will be re-opened. But believing it, and seeing it actually happen are two different things. Without Rafah being open, the 2.3 Million Palestinians in Gaza are trapped and being hit with ongoing air strikes.
With the exits closed, the Palestinians trapped, and air strikes ongoing against those same people, some folks are saying this looks like a Genocide fixing to take place.
Passions are running almost out of control. The Palestinians see this conflict as a way to liberate Palestinian lands grabbed by the Israelis for years, and to then force the creation of a Palestinian state. Other groups agree with that view, and as such, we are seeing Hezbollah in Lebanon calling-up fighters to the Lebanon Border with Israel’s north. We are also seeing Arabs in Iraq and Syria moving fighters toward the Israel border (West Bank and Golan Heights) in the east of Israel. Gaza is still fighting in the south of Israel.
So with fighters attacking in the south, massing in the east and in the north, this situation does not bode well for Israel at all.
The Israelis see this situation as an existential threat to their nation and the wholesale slaughter of their innocent people. That view is well-based in reality; we’ve all seen the brutal, indiscriminate slaughter of Israeli civilians and it’s horrifying.
The two sides, Israel and Palestine, seem intractable.
If it comes down to a simple, brutal fight, millions in Gaza may be killed. This week! THAT would compel Arab nations in the region to come full blast at Israel and try to wipe it out of existence. The numbers favor the Arabs.
Which leads us to Israel’s “Samson Option” to go down fighting, and take as many with them as they can, using nuclear bombs.
If Israel did that, certain other nations of the world would recoil in horror and erase Israel from the globe. And when THAT starts, other nations will hit those attacking nations with nukes and we’ll see World War 3 happen and be over in about eight hours, with the entire northern hemisphere radioactive for decades.
What we are all seeing right now could very well be dispositive of all these issues between Israel and Palestinians; but dispositive with gigantic booms and millions dead to finally decide the issues.
With the US southern border being left open by Traitorous Democrat politicians, “Sleeper Cells” of terrorists have been crossing into the US at-will, for two years of the Biden phony-presidency. This is what happens when election fraud steals a US Presidency, as happened in November 2020, and a dementia-addled man is installed as a puppet, while unknown, unseen, Bureaucrats actually run things.
Vast numbers of military-age young men crossed illegally into our country and are now pre-positioned here in the US to attack us from within. The bleeding-heart Democrats and their useful idiot Republicans who want cheap labor, are personally to blame for this taking place.
As things escalate in the Middle East, enemies from around the world could use that as a “go-signal” to attack us here, inside the US.
My fellow Americans are the most heavily-armed civilian population on this planet. We may need our fellow Americans to step up and defend our own land, as all hell breaks loose in the Middle East.
Americans should clean their weapons, zero their sights, increase their ammunition supplies, and be mentally prepared to do what needs doing if, God forbid, the need arises to defend ourselves, our families, and our land from those who would harm us.
Gas-up your vehicles, have spare gas cans for your electric generator, and have emergency food, water, medicines and other supplies just in case. Don’t wait. Do it now. Once the troubles start, there will be panic buying here, the same way there was panic buying in Israel which wiped-clean the store shelves.
This situation halfway around the world may not SEEM to be our problem, but there are many around the world ready to MAKE IT our problem; and they CAN. Worse, our politicians, ever eager to mind OTHER PEOPLE’S BUSINESS, are already sending our troops, planes, ships, men, and military supplies into Israel. So we are already being set-up by our own politicians to be “in” the fight, which will make you and me targets in our own land.
We’re already seeing minor protest-skirmishes between Pro-Palestinian and Pro-Israeli people here in the US and over in Europe. These expressions of support are mostly peaceful – for now. But there have been isolated incidents of actual fighting and it is clear that the POTENTIAL exists here and in Europe for the sides to start actually fighting.
If Civil unrest erupts as folks take sides here in the US and in Europe, that will only add to the danger for all of us.
Be ready with guns, ammunition, food, water, medicine, fuel and be vigilant.
No rational person wants to see any of this taking place. I certainly don’t want to see all this trouble taking place. But it __is__ taking place and we had all be ready for how bad this could actually get. If it happens, it will happen very fast.
“On a chilly California afternoon, Deputies Anderson and Arbuckle, with the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department, pulled into a Denny’s restaurant for lunch. They noticed a young woman sitting all by herself in the parking lot, and she seemed distraught. And it looked like she had a really bright-colored polka dot suitcase that apparently carried everything she owned.
Deputy Anderson knew something was wrong, so he approached her and politely asked her some questions. The young woman was all by herself… stranded, with no transportation. So the officers invited her into the restaurant with them and asked her to join them for a meal, which they paid for out of their own pocket.
But something kept nagging at Deputy Anderson. He wondered how she was gonna get back home. After the meal, the deputies had her follow them out to their squad car, and they drove her to the nearest Greyhound bus station. Deputy Anderson then bought her a bus ticket so she could get back home.
The officers’ story about the young woman touched everyone in the department, and it was posted on their website. In the story, it said their “actions demonstrate adherence to the Mission, Vision, and Values of our Department, most notably a concern for the community and treating the woman with empathy and respect when she was in a bad situation.”
The U.S. stands to lose the most if trade dispute or decoupling happens by a very long shot. It is simple China’s market is way way way bigger than the U.S. Chinas growth today is bigger than the entire G7 put together. China’s middle class is at least 2 times that of the U.S. plus the fact that China is the worlds factory. It influences the intermediate products hence its commands in excess of 50% of global demand when added together.
Try to imagine yourself as a businessman, you pick a fight with a customer who buys 50% of everything you sell. That is the ridiculousness of the U.S. trade war and decoupling. No wonder during the trade war period from 2017–2021 China grew by 26.5% while the U.S. grew by less than 5% in 4 full years! And now you understand why inflation shot up and why the U.S. is literally begging China to open up post Covid-19. And why Biden is sending overtures to cut tariffs on both sides.
Trump says trade war is easy and not only he destroyed the U.S. economy he lost his reelection bid and doubles US homelessness while hurting the Middle Class badly through inflation.
China’s exports to the U.S. though it is big it is a small portion of China’s world wide trade. Hence it barely affects China. For 2023 forecast GDP, China will grow by a minimum of 4.5% and U.S. is projected to grow by a mere 0.5%.
The last thing the US ought to do is to pick a fight with China over trade. China is not only the most humongous market and for nation like US that needs trade and business, it is suicidal to do just that. But short term political gains is the U.S. priority over longer term sustainability.
The media assisted the politicians to good wink the American people who are ignorant and naive about this fact and that is why here in QUORA there still Americans that thinks the trade war and decoupling is good for the U.S.
I’m 61. My best friend, same age, was on a train station with his son – the platform was very busy, and someone backed into my friend, turned aggressively and pushed his face within a few inches of my friend, evidently looking for a confrontation.
My friend told me later that only one thought occurred to him: “Oh no, there could be trouble here, I must protect my son”.
In fact that son, who’s 6′2 and a very good amateur boxer, lifted the stranger off his feet, moved him calmly a yard away, put him down, looked him squarely in the eye, and just said, “No, mate.”
The stranger looked down, apologised, and shuffled off.
Later, on the train, my friend said a lady of perhaps 25 looked up (he was having to stand, a crowded train) – and said, “Would you like my seat?” My friend said he actually looked over his shoulder before realising that the offer was for him.
They don’t say yes to make someone happy if they really don’t want to.
Even when they fail in the initial stages, they believe in themselves and they only listen to themselves.
They do not pay attention to things without work, but when they listen then very carefully.
They know what needs to be done and what needs to be left out.
They gives priority to their health over any work.
They don’t do anything just to get attention.
They are not afraid to go wrong and take the steps that should be taken.
They know when to give up and how long to keep trying.
They don’t complain about having fewer resources.
They are not just involved, they are more productive in less time.
They do not prepare a list of much work, but in the work they pick, they give constant dedication.
They don’t just take risks, they take very calculative risks.
Brainwashing a Nation!
America spends 500 million tax dollars a year spreading negative news about China. They make up fake news, they pay foreign news channels to demonize china and their own people don’t know what is true and what is propaganda. Welcome to the world of the United States of Fake news on the world stage and you as a tax paying American are paying for it. How does it feel to pay for your own brainwashing?
China-Russia Arctic shipping route
HONG KONG—China’s goal of becoming a major player in the Arctic has long been frustrated by its neighbor Russia, which has closely protected its dominant rolein the region.
Now, along with the ice that encases the earth’s northern pole, Moscow’s resistance is beginning to thaw.
Faced with economic isolation over its invasion of Ukraine, Russia is turning to China for help developing the Arctic as Western energy companies are trying to pull outof Russian projects. The newfound cooperation is most evident in surging shipments of crude through the Northern Sea Route, which traverses the Arctic from northwestern Russia to the Bering Strait.
The volume, while still small compared with what is carried via southern routes, has shot up in recent weeks. Russia asserts the right to regulate transit on the route. It says the demand has driven it to permit larger tankers without so-called ice classification—stronger hulls and other reinforcements to sail the ice-filled waters—raising fears of spills in the remote region. The first of two larger tankers arrived at a Chinese port in recent days, each carrying more than one million barrels of oil.
Russia has joined with China in naval exercisesand maritime security arrangements in the far north, and looked to it for aid in technology such as satellite data to monitor ice conditions.
When it comes to the Arctic, China “doesn’t have to care so much about official Russian policy anymore,” said Marcus M. Keupp, an economics lecturer at the military academy of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich who studies the region.
For China, which declared itself a “near Arctic” nation in 2018 despite being more than 900 miles from the Arctic Circle, Russia’s new welcome provides a long-sought opportunity. Beijing has wanted to expand its role in the Arctic to increase access to shipping routes, natural resources, climate and other scientific research opportunities, and expand its military and strategic clout.
It has proposed a “Polar Silk Road” as a component of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s broader Belt and Road infrastructure initiative that would make use of the shorter distance to ship goods via the Arctic, avoiding chokepoints at the Suez Canal and Malacca Strait.
Russia hasn’t always welcomed China to the region. At one point, it opposed China’s application to become an observer on the Arctic Council, the body of eight Arctic nations that is the leading forum for addressing regional issues, and previously blocked Chinese ships from conducting Arctic research.
In 2020, even with ties between Beijing and Moscow at their warmest in decades, Russian authorities arrested an expert on the Arctic on suspicion of providing intelligence to China.
Putin signaled the shift during Xi’s visit to Moscow in March, describing “promising” cooperation with Chinese partners to develop the transit potential of the Northern Sea Route.
“Russia certainly has the manpower, and it certainly has regional knowledge, but it no longer has capital or technology,” said Keupp of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, who edited a 2015 book on the route. “It’s to China’s big advantage because it can now really exert influence and economic pressure on Russia and develop this route according to its own needs.”
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the country “always adheres to the basic principles of respect, cooperation, mutual benefit and sustainability in its participation in Arctic affairs.” The Russian Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.
As Western companies are trying to pull out of their projects in Russia, Moscow has sought help from Chinese companies to develop ports, mines and other infrastructure in the Russian Arctic. Russia changed its Arctic policy document in February. Russia’s policy, which previously focused on “strengthening good-neighbor relations with Arctic states,” now emphasizes access to all foreign states—a move that further opens the door to China. …
I reported an employee once who was subsequently fired. She filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against the company and me personally. What she didn’t know, and her attorney never asked, was if I had proof of what I’d reported for. And I did.
She was a clerk and had duties that were, for lack of a better term, timely. She had to get items off her desk before 10AM, 1PM and 2PM. Those items needed to go to another department, who would then pass them onto the warehouse. This wasn’t a difficult job and she’d been hired as an 8:30–4:30 employee with an hour for lunch.
One of the other employees in her department came to me (as office manager) and requested that I say something to her about taking half hour or longer breaks in the morning and afternoon, which were making her late in submitting her paperwork each day. Keep in mind, by paperwork, it wasn’t real paper, it was coding and analyzing from a computer program.
After that, I kept an eye out for two weeks. Every day at 10AM, she would disappear into the Lady’s Lounge (we had a wonderful ladies room there that had a sitting area with sofas, etc.) and would take a nap on the sofa. With no clock to wake her, she would sleep for anywhere between 20 minutes and 45 minutes. She would also repeat this at lunch, and at her afternoon break. I witnessed this numerous times and spoke to her about it three times before I decided this was too much of a burden on the other people in her department, who had to pick up her slack. I took it to the Secretary of the Corporation, who was also the head of our Human Resources department. He wrote her up, found out she was still doing it, and fired her, citing my verbal and written warnings, as well as his own. I have to add, I asked her about narcolepsy, asked her about her living arrangements, whether she was able to sleep at night…everything I could think of. This was about 20 years ago, but the laws on discrimination haven’t changed much in that time.
When I was deposed for her lawsuit, no one asked me if I had any proof, and I certainly wasn’t going to volunteer it. It was a civil case and she was asking for a LOT of money. I’m not a lawyer, but somewhere along the line, her attorney asked for something that prompted ours and mine into asking me if I would show my proof in court, in front of a judge. As I said, I have no idea what type of hearing this was, but here I was in court, with pictures of her sleeping on the sofa. My camera at the time was a 35mm Canon A1 and I had taken the pictures every day for 2 weeks. She never woke up, and my camera clearly had the date and time on every picture. I had 33 pictures I’d taken, and it deflated her legal team. I know the case against me was dismissed that day, and I believe the whole thing was dropped by the end of the week.
Many years ago I bought my first home in a small town called Oakley in California, back then I think they had a population of about 20,000 people not including the Lamas, and the Sheep, the Chickens, the Emus, that was another 100 inhabitants in the town of Oakley. Oakley was not yet a city and was unincorporated so a lot of things were allowed.
I had met my next door neighbors, an older lesbian couple, they were very friendly and helpful and offering any assistance that I may need, I thanked them for that because I was a city boy and unfamiliar with suburban lifestyles. We shared this old fence that was in fair condition but it was going to need attention soon. One day I was mowing the tall weeds down on my backyard lawn, it was in the middle of a hot summer day, temperatures in that town would get up to 100 or more and it definitely felt like a hundred this particular day.
As I was mowing I accidentally bumped one of the slats of our tattered wooden fence and the wood slat leaned over to one side exposing my next door neighbor in the nude laying in the sun. Oh my what a goddess she was, dark glistening skin, hoping that was sweat beading off her perky breast, it was a Kodak moment for sure, but she must’ve suddenly realized the lawn mower was no longer moving because she immediately sat up and looked at me for a quick second then realized its just the guy next door and laid back down as if it were nothing?
So I pushed the wooden slat back into place finished mowing the weeds in my lawn, then later drove a couple screws to hold the wooden slat temporarily in place, and life went on, we would wave at each other from a distance and never mentioned anything about it.
Texas-Style Beef Sausage Rolls with Jalapeño and Cheddar
texas style beef sausage rolls
Yield: 21 rolls
Ingredients
2 pounds ground beef
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion, finely diced
1/3 cup bread crumbs
4 jalapeño peppers, de-seeded and diced
6 ounces sharp or medium cheddar, finely diced
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 1/2 teaspoons coarsely ground black pepper
3 (10 inch) sheets puff pastry, thawed
1 egg, beaten
Instructions
Heat oven to 375 degrees F.
Place olive oil in a small pan over medium heat. Add onions and brown for 10 to 15 minutes, stirring frequently. Allow the onions to cool.
In a large bowl, combine beef, cooled onions, bread crumbs, jalapeños, cheese, salt and pepper. Mix gently but thoroughly as to not overwork the meat.
Lay one square of pastry on a board or work surface. Use a third of the beef mixture to form a log down the center. Fold the pastry over the beef mixture on one side, then brush along the edge with egg mixture to create a “glue”. Continue to fold the roll over so it’s fully encased in pastry, and the edges line up on the egg glue line, then press the pastry lightly to ensure a good seal. Repeat steps with each pastry square.
Flip each beef roll so it’s seam side down, then cut into 6 to 8 pieces. Place the pieces onto a sheet pan and bake for 30 to 35 minutes or until the pastry is golden brown. You may need to rotate the tray during baking to ensure even browning.
The Problems that China faces are not Economic Or Market Driven in nature. They are Political.
It’s like trying to hold a massive dam with a 7*3 door
It will crack and collapse as Market forces and Economic Forces crush the Political forces into oblivion. May take a year, five years or maximum ten years.
Why is Chinas Technological surge so fast?
I mean what took US 30 years has taken China just 9 Years.
Sure you may say US already gave them the blueprint but you can’t give a blueprint to a random person and ask them to build the Empire State Building right?
The Answer is DEMAND
China had massive manufacturing requirements and thus evolved Industrial Robots
China had a massive demand for distribution of workers from Semi Rural and Semi Urban areas to big manufacturing centres and thus evolved the rapidly growing High Speed Trains Network
China needs more Robots and AI to integrate the Country having reached a basic level of development and this evolves the Chinese AI revolution.
China wages rise and Low grade manufacture may be affected, thus evolve Chinas surge in Logistical Robotics
Every Technological development is demand based.
Like how US developed in the 1920–2000 period or UK in the 1750–1920 period
Demand based Technological growth is the only real technological growth that drives a Nation forward.
It’s why Shanghai thrives as a Port whereas Hambantota crashes.
It’s why 21% of the BRI projects are unable to stand , because they are Political Ego driven projects not demand based.
Any other Country having demand based technological growth?
None.
You either have Saturated Nations like Western Countries where Pocket Forces cause technological growth (Latest Car, Latest Iphone, Latest Nikes) which is much slower than Demand based technological growth.
Or
You have nations like India or Mexico or Bangladesh where Politics dictates a pesudo technological situation by hook or crook
It’s why GPay works so well but why Bullet train would be a fiasco and why our Airports are all heading to White Elephant Status while our Ports do much better.
It’s why we don’t develop Drone Technology or Robotics or AI at even 10% of Chinas speed. For us these are Gimmicks, there is no Demand.
Political Gimmicks!!!
What Problems does China face?
Stifling Core or Critical Technologies
Chinas growth in AI and Robotics is alarming the West
Yes US and Japan may be ahead of China bit Chinas rapid growth is worrisome in every way.
Huaweis Cloud Computing Architecture is as advanced as any US equivalent at 1/3 the cost.
So the West decide to stifle the Core Technologies that US or the West Develops that China uses.
Throttling the Free Market
It derails projects by a few years and causes problems
How does China handle this?
Economically!!!
Core Technology Companies need Chinese Markets badly. Not just the Profits or Revenue but also the Technological demand based advantage
Without it they will stagnate
And China will bridge the gap faster
So on one hand China invests in its own Core Technologies, brings in Overseas Chinese experts back home, creates more facilities for youngsters and has all technology firms pumping 30% profits into Research
On the other hand Intel, Qualcomm, Renesas and NVDIA actively bypass US Sanctions to keep doing business in China so that they can keep their edge for a longer time.
Boston Dynamics refused to sell Robots to China, and today Chinese Tech companies have replicated to near perfection, four of their best models at 1/2–1/4 the price.
Had they sold liberally, China may have taken 10 more years to do the same.
So how does Technological Growth actually get disrupted?
Internally.
Usually it’s Religion or Social Justice that destroys a rapidly growing Technological base.
This leads to Democratic Divide which leads to Stifling Tech development
So tomorrow if US can being a religious divide in China or pressure Paupers and Unworthy Rabble to demand equality in all areas – then China will be truly stifled
I’m not usually a fan of crime stories. Even when the criminal is caught, I end up feeling sad for the victims: Nobody is a winner in a murder case.
The shows are also super predictable. The husband is almost always the killer. He’s your standard self-serving sociopath with narcissism and vindictiveness running through his veins.
Money, or some new young sexual interest, becomes a convenient excuse to kill someone and ruin the lives of an entire extended family. I still don’t understand why people can’t just get a divorce.
Occasionally, I stumble across a crime story that’s plain delicious. It drips with karma and, in this case, an epic set of last words.
A long workday with an unfortunate end
Susan Kuhnhausen was a 51-year-old emergency room nurse in Portland, Oregon. Her job often entailed holding down out-of-control patients. She’d just ended a 13-hour shift and was getting a haircut at a local salon.
Around 6:37 PM, she arrived at her small house and disabled the security system at the entrance.
She walked into her house and dropped off her things in the kitchen. She’d recently thrown her husband of 17-years out of the house. He had a drinking problem and was abusive for years.
Still wearing her blue scrubs, she walked out front to get her mail.
Susan came back in and noticed something was off. Things had been moved. Curtains were now open and slightly fluttering as if they’d been touched. Things on her table weren’t where they’d been left beforehand. She lived alone. Nothing should have moved.
She walked through the house uneasily, looking down hallways, inching along quietly.
Susan walked past her bathroom. She turned into her bedroom and as soon as she walked in, she saw a bearded man holding a hammer. He charged her and swung his hammer, hitting her on the side of the temple. She fell with him jumping on her. She shook him off her back.
Susan was regularly trained in self-defense at her hospital. They taught her how to disarm and break the hold of unruly and mentally ill patients. She knew that if she stayed close to him he wouldn’t be able to swing his hammer properly.
They tumbled into her hallway wrestling. Susan was a larger woman and had the gift of natural strength. Susan locked both hands on his wrist that held the weapon and was able to shake it loose.
Then, they started wrestling and they fell to the ground and she got on top of him, locking her arms around his neck in a sleeper hold.
She held him tight. When she released him his throat had been crushed.
Not knowing if anyone else was in the house, Susan ran next door to see her neighbor Anne, asking her to call the police. Ann later said that Susan was remarkably stoic given the circumstances.
When Anne called the 911, they asked her what the neighbor’s injuries were and she said, “No, it’s for the burglar”
The transcripts from the 911:
Neighbor: She hit him in the head several times. That’s the hammer he had with him. She struck him, and she strangled him, and she thinks he’s dead.
Dispatcher: What did she use on him? She strangled him. What else did she do?
Neighbor: She put a chokehold on him.
Dispatcher: I’ve got help on the way. Stay on the line.
Neighbor: She has a hammer here.
Dispatcher: Don’t touch it. Don’t touch it. Just leave it there.
The would-be assassin was pronounced dead at the scene. He’d been sent by her husband. Their marriage was falling apart and he wanted her dead. He’d paid the assassin $50,000 to go to the house and kill her, giving him the security code to get inside.
She was later treated for injuries and made a full recovery:
Her husband was given a 10-year sentence but he died in prison a few years later. I don’t wish death on anyone but if you break into someone’s house with the intent of killing them, all bets are off.
And if I’m being completely honest, my favorite part of this story was the assassin’s final words, “Wow. You are strong.”
I was on a jury for a personal injury case. It was my first time at jury duty, and as an engineer, I was interested in the whole process, taking notes, watching the attorneys’ actions, and the judge’s reactions, and general control of the courtroom. I found the whole process fascinating.
When we got to the end of the testimony, they dismissed us into the jury room. It was Friday at 10:30am, and we’d been there since Monday. It only took us about 30 minutes to walk through the instructions, the testimony, and then a unanimous verdict. The foreman was about to knock on the door to tell the bailiff that we were ready when I called out, “Wait!” I explained that if we waited for 15 more minutes, the bailiff would be in with a menu, and they’d get us lunch (that day was a local sandwich shop that had excellent submarine sandwiches). We all agreed that would be worth it, so we waited 15 minutes, ordered lunch, ate, and then told the bailiff we were ready with a verdict.
We returned to the jury room after the verdict was read (to pick up our belongings), and then the bailiff came in to ask if anyone would like to meet with the judge and ask any questions about the process. I certainly did! No one else was even vaguely interested, so they all left the room. The bailiff brought in the judge, and when he saw me, he started laughing, “I knew you would be one of the people to stay and ask questions!” Evidently while I was watching the folks in the court, the judge was watching the jury! That was belly laugh #1.
Belly laugh #2 – the judge and bailiff had a bet that we would/would not be done with the verdict before lunch. IIRC, it was the judge who had lost, and had paid the bailiff $20. When they told me that, I told them we had decided on a verdict before lunch, but didn’t tell them until after we had our food – the judge gave a great guffaw, and told the bailiff to pay up!
REACTING TO OLIVER ANTHONY‼️- “I want to go home”
Amen honey! So good to see our young folks GET THIS AND DEEP!
Years ago, I did a very brief stint as a departmental admin at a large urban university.
At the HR orientation, we were given a lot of the classic rundown about the history of the school, various policies to know, to do X if Y ever happened, etc. And then they got to talking about the overall compensation packages that this school provided. Essentially, and apologies that this won’t be word perfect after >10 years but it should be fairly close, these were the broad strokes:
“The pay here isn’t very good, but we make it up to you with our very generous benefits”
Now, what were those benefits that were so generous, you ask? The two most memorable were:
Partial tuition remission for most graduate programs
Large amounts of paid time off
Now, on the face of it, those two are pretty good, right? Well, yes and no. However…
Tuition remissions, even FULL tuition remission, is only in any way useful if you’re actually taking advantage of it. If you’re not looking to take courses, even if “someday” you might want to, for every year you’re not actually doing it, I’m pretty sure you’d rather have that salary $$…no?
As to the PTO, as it turns out, this was a very normal amount of vacation time and then large amounts of sick time. Now, as with many such institutions, if you leave your position you can only get cashed out for your vacation time. So as with the tuition remission, this is a “very generous benefit” that’s only of any use if you actually need large amounts of paid sick time.
At that point in my life, I didn’t have any need of tuition remission, nor any need of large amounts of medical leave.
I instead had a need of money.
[Thankfully I got out after just a few months, because the above was just the tip of the iceberg for why that was the worst freaking job I’ve ever had]
“What is the lamest “benefit” you’ve been offered by an employer?”
Yes on average Chinese live 2 full years more than the American’s. Go figure!
And to think just a mere 73 years ago their average life expectancy is a mere 39 years ago!
Let me address the many in QUORA that slur China to no end! Tell us what us wrong with a civilisation that can do that! Oh yeah they also took out 1 billion from abject poverty during the same time. And yes the grew from an economy the size of one nation in Africa to. The largest real purchasing power economy on the planet!
Still think demonising China sounds clever? What about your own neocon funded ASPI concluded that China leads in 37 out of 44 most strategic technologies! Or what about having close to 800 million middle class consumers! What do you say? still parroting western narratives that China U.S. authoritarian, it is failing nation and its economy collapsed for the thousandth time since 1949!
At what point do a brain dead Caucasian Chinese hater and China hater quits? Do you prefer to be seen as a pathetic naïveté loser hanging to lies, half truths, fabrications that 95% of the world clearly sees as nonsensical hate wish? Or do you quit while your families still see you sane?
No, China’s goal has been to raise the standard of living and GDP of all of China’s 1.4B citizens and to be the leader in many industrial sectors through its Made in China 2025 development program. Since the Chinese government sets economic and development policy, it has encouraged Chinese industries to move up the value chain and let more labor-intensive industries relocate to other countries such as Bangladesh, Vietnam and Thailand.
Since the Communist Party of China has control of society and major state-owned enterprises, it is able to channel China’s human and economic resources much more effectively than any G-7 country can. This means that China has an advantage in how quickly it can change, and in the scale of the change.
China is an elephant which can tap-dance.
But this feature was not introduced to decimate the US or to help the Russians steamroll the US with nukes.
This system developed because Chinese society is the most competitive in the world, and for this reason, Chinese believe that China needs to work hard to be competitive in a rapidly changing international economic environment.
Americans and Chinese have completely different attitudes to change. China’s economy and society have changed more in the past 50 years than they have at any other time in China’s long history. This means that Chinese are comfortable with new technologies, with working hard to stay competitive, and constantly adapting.
Americans, for the most part, do not like change. Instead of learning, embracing change and continuously adapting, most Americans reject change. Many implicitly believe that the rest of the world should embrace the American way, so that Americans don’t have to change. The division in US politics is all about rejecting change instead of embracing it. Many Americans view the future with fear and trepidation.
This includes many US government policymakers. This is also the reason behind questions such as this one on Quora.
It is fear based on laziness and ignorance.
The simple truth is that we are architects of the future, but many in the west are too lazy to do the work.
The only place they are not lazy is in finger-pointing.
I worked for a few years in a Chinese restaurant while in my teens and twenties. All the guys from the restaurant lived and worked together.
We were out in an Asian restaurant in Chinatown one night and a very well dressed Chinese man comes to the table and approaches one of my friends speaking to him in Cantonese, of course. I’m the only non-Asian at the table.
The guy exchanges the usual pleasantries with my friend, then asks him why he’s eating with white people. They move on to another subject, but then he returns to dirty, barbarian white people line. He tells my friend he wants to pick up dinner but won’t pay for the “Lofahn”.
I can see my friend is pretty embarrassed as he knows I understand everything that was said. I was going to thank the guys for all his kind words and compliment him on his astute observations.
Unfortunately, this would have caused my friends at the table to lose face, so when he was leaving I wished him a good night in Cantonese leaving him to wonder if I knew…
Britain’s Plan To Disrupt Hong Kong Is Doomed To Fail, Experts Confirmed!
Oh, sure, it might still happen, but it is increasingly unlikely with each month. The risk and threat level has passed.
The owners of the American “leadership” realize that alternatives to a global conflict with Russia, China and their buddy nations is not going to happen, as the USA would be smashed by catastrophic blows.
We are now is the LONG-SLIDE towards reconstruction surgery of the world’s governance system. The rest of the world are puking out the Western ideals, and governance. This pooling mess of hot blood stained vomit which going to get obvious and very unsightly as time progresses.
Most of the MM readership will be spared for horrific consequences that many of the West will need to endure.
The “news” will present a real mess. But, do not fall for that.
Everything is starting to settle out. It will appear that the world is in one giant blender, but that is not the full story. There is a sorting going on. There will be winners and losers. But it will not be like many fear.
The world War 3, started in 2007 (with the breakdown of American society) and the global war that started in 2014, peaked in 2022. A bit early. Welcome to the reconstruction phase.
…
I would now like to compare what we experienced with what John Titor has to say…
American civil war and breakdown
Titor said 2004, and fought in 2011
I observe / claim it began around 2007
“There is a civil war in the United States that starts in 2005. That conflict flares up and down for 10 years.“
World War 3
Titor said nuclear strikes occurred in 2015
I claim that it began in 2014. No nuclear strikes but a biological assault on china in 2019. NATO hot war with Russia in 2022.
“In 2015, Russia launches a nuclear strike against the major cities in the United States (which is the “other side” of the civil war from my perspective), China and Europe. The United States counter attacks. The US cities are destroyed along with the AFE (American Federal Empire)…thus we (in the country) won. The European Union and China were also destroyed. Russia is now our largest trading partner and the Capitol of the US was moved to Omaha Nebraska.“
I went to Europe early this year. Paris, Rome and Barcelona. I asked my wife “Where do they hide the fat people?” Things I noticed:
I did not see anyplace that was “all you can eat”.
The food I bought in the street was fresh and delicious. The strawberries were the size of grapes but so delicious and were meant to be eaten right away meaning no steroids or preservatives. I had some Brie cheese and I could taste the cow.
Food portions were small but I never left a table hungry.
My Fitbit said I met my goals as far as number of steps taken: at least 10,000 per day. In Positano, Italy it said I climbed the equivalent of 60 floors. In the US, I barely make 3,000.
Refrigerators are small. You don’t buy two weeks worth of food full of preservatives so they still look good after two weeks. We bought everything we needed to eat each day.
You walk everywhere. Burn those calories.
Netanyahoo’s Strategic Dilemma
Israel is a colonial settler state in permanent conflict with the suppressed natives.
It thought it could survive in that state, or even extend its settlements, by deterring opposing forces with its superior military.
Hamas has breached that deterrence myth by inflicting, in one day, more casualties in Israel than it had experienced in any previous wars.
Natanyahoo is under pressure to restore the deterrence, to again provide the Zionists with a feeling of superiority.
He can not do that.
Any land attack in Gaza means urban warfare in an already destroyed city with large underground facilities. During the taking of Bakhmut the Wagener forces had in total some 40,000 casualties (dead and wounded). The other side had more than 70,000. What price would the IDF have to pay to ‘destroy Hamas’?
The other factor is of course Hizbullah and other resistance groups, which may well attack Israel from the north and various other directions. Hizbullah has loudly said it would do so should the IDF enter Gaza. It has some 100,000 missiles – more than enough to exhaust Israel’s air defenses. Its longest reach missiles can attack any major city within Israel. There have already been daily fire exchanges at the norther border.
The 2006 war in Lebanon has shown that Hizbullah is dug in and very able to defend itself. It has since gained more experience by fighting ISIS in Syria. Neither U.S. air force attacks nor a land force invasion can hinder Hizbullah from firing its missiles.
(Syria, as well as Iran, will not intervene in the war unless they are directly attacked.)
Netanyahoo must attack Gaza to restore deterrence. He can not attack Gaza because the urban warfare would cause large Israeli casualties. He can not attack Gaza because Hizbullah would then destroy the myth of the superior settler state even more than Hamas has done so far.
Israel, with the help of the U.S., has tried to push the population of Gaza into Egypt. From Egypt’s standpoint that would be a humanitarian solution, at least as long as others pay for it. But it would cause a serious strategic problem. Resistance by Hamas and others against Israel would continue indefinitely, but Egypt would be held responsible for it. It can not and will not take on that burden.
Netanyahoo’s next idea was to starve Gaza. But the world will not let him do that. At least not beyond a certain point. Even the UN Secretary General has visited the Rafah crossing. Other global organizations, like the WHO and ASEAN, have spoken up. Pictures of starving people will make it impossible for the west to support that ‘solution’.
Meanwhile Hamas fighters will continue to sit in their tunnels, ready to defend their land, and likely with enough provisions to hold out for months.
Israeli settlers, with the support of the IDF, are rampaging through the West Bank. They are killing more Palestinians and further enrage the global public against their deeds. This will escalate.
Israel’s decision making is paralyzed. It will for now continue to talk of a ground invasion but will not launch one. It will also continue to starve Gaza.
But something will soon break. At any minute there might be a new large atrocity in Gaza or a pogrom in the West Bank. Any miscalculation in the north could launch that front into a hot war. Hizbullah could start to ‘preemptively’ invade Israeli proper.
But Israel’s Jewish public is still demanding a war of revenge. It still needs the restoration of its deterrence and superiority.
But what if that turns out to be impossible to achieve?
Well. Then something else must change.
As Adam Shatz summarizes in the London Review of Books:
The inescapable truth is that Israel cannot extinguish Palestinian resistance by violence, any more than the Palestinians can win an Algerian-style liberation war: Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs are stuck with each other, unless Israel, the far stronger party, drives the Palestinians into exile for good. The only thing that can save the people of Israel and Palestine, and prevent another Nakba – a real possibility, while another Holocaust remains a traumatic hallucination – is a political solution that recognises both as equal citizens, and allows them to live in peace and freedom, whether in a single democratic state, two states, or a federation. So long as this solution is avoided, a continuing degradation, and an even greater catastrophe, are all but guaranteed.
The Steel Casings used in 60% of the Missiles on earth comes from China
It’s either Grade 7 Or Grade 8 Customized Light Steel Alloy Plate (LSAP)
It can be used for reinforcing I beams or making missile casings
Likewise the Electronics for basic primitive rockets almost entirely come from China
They can all be purchased retail across the market and can be used for do it yourself drones to basic rockets capable of 40–50 km range depending on the fuel thrust
I know because that’s the justification China gave when the West said Russia was being provided with Chinese weapons
China said – we give the steel, the basic raw materials and chips. How the Russians use them isn’t our business
They can be used to make Deep Freezers or can be used in basic rocketry
The Hamas likely buy their raw materials from China on the open market by playing secondary orders from Saudi or Turkey
Delivery comes through Jordan or Egypt
It’s just basic steel plate and basic electronics, so nobody cares what it’s being used for
Chemicals also flood through Egypt into Gaza from China.
Chemicals that can be used to make explosives but also ball point pen ink
So China never sells Weaponry to Hamas
The Hamas uses Chinese Raw Materials and makes their own primitive, crude but effective weaponry
Advanced guidance electronics come from Iran
Chinese won’t go that far to sell more advanced electronics to Hamas. These have END USER CERTIFICATES and if Jordan or Egypt sell such electronics to Hamas , they will get into a lot of trouble.
You may convince the world Hamas is making ball point pens and cheap electronic stuff
Can’t convince the world, Hamas is building EVs or High Altitude Drones right?
Plus plenty of Drones come from Iran who have a near independent supply chain and some of the finest reverse engineering on earth
Iran also supplies a lot of Missiles but that’s mostly to Hezbollah
Plus a third source is from Ukraine via the BLACK MARKET through the Balkans
A $ 55,000 box of 10,000 Rounds of 9 Ammunition sells for upto $ 400,000 on the black market without an end user certificate
Hence a Ukrainian Unit could remove 50 Boxes and sell them for $ 20 Million and pocket the entire sum
Who will audit or count the rounds every day?
$ 20 Million is CHUMP CHANGE for Saudi Billionaires or Emiratis or Qataris
That’s 500,000 Rounds of 9 mm Ammunition
That can sustain gunfire for 50 days at 10,000 rounds and day and kill at least 400–500 Israelis
A $ 1250 tagged M14 Rifle goes for upto $ 5000 In the black market , so a corrupt Ukrainian unit happily sells 1000 Rifles for $ 5 Million and claims the rifles were damaged
So
A. They buy raw materials from China and build their own rockets and other stuff like chemical explosives
B. They get Drones and Better Chips from Iran
C. They get other stuff from black markets and other war surplus from Europe
Real Texas Chili
This classic Texas chili (no beans, no onion, no tomatoes) was created by native Houstonian Carter Rochelle, a professional fund-raiser. Former New York Times food editor Craig Claiborne once pronounced this chili his favorite and published the recipe in two of his cookbooks.
2023 10 18 17 04
Yield: 6 to 8 servings
Serve with pinto beans and chopped onion on the side to mix in as desired. Serve with crackers, tortilla chips, warmed flour tortillas or corn bread.
Ingredients
3 pounds boneless beef stew meat (chuck or round)
6 ounces beef suet (hard white fat), cut into pieces (see note)
3 or 4 garlic cloves, crushed
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
4 to 6 tablespoons chili powder, or to taste
8 tablespoons Masa Harina (Mexican corn flour)
6 cups hot water
2 tablespoons vinegar
2 teaspoons instant beef bouillon or beef bouillon cubes
Red chiles, crushed or dried and chopped, to taste (optional)
Instructions
Remove gristle and most of fat from meat; cut into 1/2 inch or smaller cubes (some of the beef should be chipped or flaked).
Place suet in large skillet or heavy kettle and render it (cook until fat melts).
Skim residue off rendered suet; discard residue.
Add meat to hot fat and sauté until lightly browned.
Add garlic, salt, black pepper and chili powder. Mix well and let seasonings permeate meat a few minutes.
Sprinkle in Masa Harina and mix, stirring rapidly until smooth.
Add water, vinegar, bouillon and chilies. Reduce heat and simmer until meat is very tender; some of the meat should virtually dissolve into the chili.
If chili becomes too dry while cooking, add a little water from time to time.
Correct seasonings.
When done, skim fat from surface. (You can refrigerate overnight and scrape hardened fat off before reheating.)
Notes
Because of health concerns, many chili cooks substitute 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup vegetable oil or shortening for rendered beef suet, which is a highly saturated fat.
Originally Answered: If a startup has a great product why don’t people buy it still?
Startup mistake:
“I have a great product. Come and buy it!”
“I have the best business idea. You should invest in it!”
“My product is the best in the market. I deserve your money!”
—
I’ve made this mistake so many times, it’s painful!
It’s probably one of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make when starting their business.
The challenge is to make decisions RATIONALLY, not emotionally.
Entrepreneurship is complex because we act on our emotions, but we should make all decisions with data. Without the proper guidance and discipline, it’s very easy to make mistakes.
Now, there’s no negative judgment of failures, just lessons and growth. You’d be surprised, though, how history repeats itself over and over again down through the ages. The most successful companies and entrepreneurs have learned this the hard way.
Examples:
1957 — Ford Edsel
Ford invested $400 million into the car, but Americans wanted smaller, more economic vehicles. FAILED.
1975 — Sony Betamax
Sony kept Betamax proprietary, meaning that the market for VHS products quickly outpaced Betamax. FAILED.
1985 — New Coke
The “Pepsi Challenge” ads were responsible for Coca-Cola trying to create a product that would taste more like Pepsi. FAILED.
1993 — Apple Newton
Apple’s great idea was ahead of its time. The technology wasn’t there yet. FAILED.
2006 — Microsoft Zune
The Zune was targeted to take over Apple’s iPod. It didn’t. FAILED.
2006 — HD-DVD
HD-DVD was the hi-def replacement to DVD, but Sony led with Blu-ray built into their Playstation console. FAILED.
2009 — The Nook
Amazon’s Kindle is cheaper and syncs up easily with Amazon’s account. FAILED.
2014 — Amazon’s Fire Phone
Amazon’s Fire Phone released in 2014 looked competitive. Amazon discontinued the phone 13 months after its launch. FAILED.
2019 — Google+
“Google+ was one of the most ambitious bets in the company’s history,” Eric Schmidt wrote in his book, How Google Works. It was believed that it would be a Facebook killer. FAILED.
To answer your question, if a startup has a great product, why aren’t people still buying it?
People don’t buy products or services — they buy results, benefits and solutions.
PUSHING your products and services to the consumer is a recipe for failure.
Startups commonly fail because they waste their most scarce resource (cash) on advertising and promotions. The ‘in’ reality is that marketing goes in one ear and right out the other.
Solution?
Figure out your niche in the market; DON’T try to sell to everyone.
Understand their hurts and their frustrations. Why is it that they will buy your product? Example: people don’t buy eyeglasses, they buy vision, the benefit!
Learn to feel like them to a point to deeply understand them.
Communicate their problem in their language. Listen to them, don’t guess what they want — talk to them. What you think they need is very commonly notwhat they want.
He was irritated to come out to a secretary’s desk and find she wasn’t yet seated. She was in the lounge putting away her coat and then fixed herself a cup of coffee, and she sat down at 8:36 — instead of 8:30.
It happened to be a morning of extreme stress and he really needed all hands on deck that morning. Got it, but he was very short-sighted. The 6 minutes didn’t change the course of the day, but his Memo to Staff certainly did.
He circulated a memo to all staff which said something to the effect of:
“The day begins at 8:30. Not 8:36, or 8:40, or when you found a parking space, or when the coffee was ready. If you need more time, plan your day accordingly and make your cup of coffee, and find your spot, and hang up your coat, earlier than normal. 8:30 means in your seat, at your desk, ready for the day’s work to begin. Not coming through the door.”
Okay — we got it. Well, I was a paralegal at the time, and I put in SO many more hours than the 40 hours I was paid for. I arrived early, left late, frequently delayed lunch, often didn’t take breaks on busy days preparing for trial.
His memo so back-fired, that every single employee was grumbling, not just the secretary. As it happened, I was the most affected (in a positive way, actually) by this policy memo because I was the staff member who had the MOST lost-time from working beyond my schedule. I was never late, so he didn’t have a problem with me, but he also abused my time more than anyone else. There were months where I never took so much as a coffee break. Often ate lunch at my desk while working. Seldom left at closing time. Often came in on Saturdays or Sundays to help get ready for Mondays. I just always shrugged it away and took it as “part of the industry.” A trial litigation practice is stressful and schedules need to be fluid.
He didn’t appreciate that, so we responded as a group of 16 employees with total solidarity.
We were AT our desks at 8:30 a.m. We LEFT our desks promptly at 5:30. We took our breaks and our lunch hours exactly on time.
It was a disaster.
I was the first to respond. “Sorry, I can’t help right now. My lunch is 12 to 1, and I have to stand up at 12, and sit back down at 1, so this copy project would make my lunch “12 ish to 1 ish.” I’ll start on this at exactly 1:01 p.m., when I’m back at my desk.”
I also left at exactly 5:30 p.m. I stood up, put the cover on my typewriter, and cleared my desk. He said “Can you just—-” and some paperwork in his hands.
“No, I’m sorry. My day begins promptly at 8:30 and ends exactly at 5:30. I’ll help with that tomorrow.”
I left.
Everyone did the same. All week.
“No I’m sorry, I’m required to take a 10 minute break in this hour.”
“No, I’m sorry, my lunch begins in 15 minutes at 12:00, and that’s 30 minutes of dictation you want transcribed. I’ll begin exactly at 1:00 when I’m IN MY SEAT and AT MY DESK.”
He realized the petty nature of his Memo to Staff within 2 business days, and sent around an apology memo within a week of disastrous results.
He then sent us all out for an extended lunch of 2 hours — on the house. He didn’t come.
His memo said “Go complain about your boss over a 2 hour lunch — on me.”
Oliver Anthony – I’ve Got To Get Sober | REACTION!
I had a friend who I knew smoked Marijuana among other things. I chose not to partake of any of this so he would walk away do his thing then come back. No big deal… well it had a few months since we had been able to hang out and decided to meet up at a local festival. I was having gall bladder issues at that time. The day we were to meet I was in the middle of a very severe “attack” but chose to go anyway because I missed him so much. I told him this when I arrived. After about 2 or so hours he said he wanted to go “smoke” so I sat listening to a band while I waited. And waited… and waited. Over an hour waiting on him while I was very sick and in pain. I finally left. I later found out that he decided to go drop acid instead. He forgot I was there because he was so messed up. That was the last time I saw him. If drugs are more important than our friendship then I don’t need you in my life.
David Cross: Why America Sucks at Everything – US American Reacts
I LOVE YOUR TINY LITTLE VOICE, WHY DON’T YOU SAY IT LOUDER FOR MY FRIEND TO HEAR TOO?
Drill Instructor Sergeant Ferry was the most merciless individual ever known to man. He would punish you for something as simple as not sitting properly and play mind games with recruits just to kill time. Sergeant Ferry had little tolerance for any sort of discretion and was the most hated man out of all the Drill Instructors in our platoon since he was the designated disciplinarian or otherwise known as the Kill Hat.
During Recruit Training, there was one particular class where we were educated on the benefits of knowing a foreign language then told to sign up to take the Defense Language Proficiency Test, if we claimed to be bilingual. I signed up to take the DLPT for Vietnamese and was promptly removed for one entire morning along with a few other recruits from other platoons to take the exam. The Drill Instructor escorting us to the Receiving Building where testing was held, was none other than Drill Instructor Sergeant Ferry.
While we were waiting for the proctors to set up the computer lab, Sergeant Ferry had a few remarks for us.
“If you pass this test, you will earn the chance to get paid extra money every month, and probably go on missions requiring speakers of your language.” he growled.
“Be the one to fail and I will make sure your life is absolutely miserable when you return to your platoons.”
Luckily for me, I passed the DLPT and could not have been happier as I walked back to my platoon’s squad bay alone after a well deserved lunch.
Later on that evening in a rare moment of sanity, Sergeant Ferry was loudly lecturing the platoon on the importance of being a well-rounded Marine. At some point in his speech he said, “IF YOU KNOW A SECOND LANGUAGE LIKE VIETNAMESE, YOU CAN GET PAID FOR IT IF YOU PASS A QUALIFICATION TEST AND GET EXTRA MONEY IN YOUR PAYCHECK EVERY MONTH!!”
While he did not mention my name at all, I felt that was his way of saying “Good job Vu for passing the exam!” without stating the obvious.
After completing the Crucible a month later at Camp Pendleton, the contract Private First Class Marines in the platoon were asked on which Drill Instructor they would like to pin them in the promotion ceremony that was held before our Warrior’s Breakfast. I chose Sergeant Ferry to pin me as a PFC.
As he was pinning on the chevrons onto my collar, Sergeant Ferry said in a hoarse voice, “Getting promoted to Private First Class and getting paid extra for speaking Vietnamese? I’m damn proud of you Vu”.
He shook my hand with an iron grip and I felt humbled as he walked to the next Marine.
Is China’s WhitePaper a global rescue plan or a global threat?
It’s a great question, there is a new White Paper and China is “threatening” to lead the world into a different place – who benefits and how?
I’m a nurse. When I was a mere student (many years ago now), I was doing my stint in A&E (ER for my American friends). It was a Saturday night. I had requested it specifically, as I wanted to see some “exciting” cases. I was put onto triage with a qualified nurse, to see how the system worked.
The department I worked in was in the city center, so a lot of “walk in” patients. About 8pm, in walked 2 young lads in their late teens, early 20’s. One with a broken nose, the other with a possible fractured jaw. They had been “set upon by a group of guys in the city”. They were seated, awaiting X-ray. We also informed the special constable on duty attached to the department (auxiliary police) about a possible assault case.
About an hour or so later, an old guy in his late 70’s to early 80’s walked in. He had what we call a “boxers fracture”.. basically, a fracture of the hand that is normally sustained by punching something. What we found interesting, is that the old guy was not medically trained, but came to us saying “I’ve got a bloody brawlers fracture, haven’t I?”. How did he know? He said he had been “set upon” by two young lads who had tried to mug him.
Well, I finished my shift, went home and on Monday morning heard the rest of the story.
The old man and the two young men had seen each other in the X-ray dept. The old man had started shouting, saying “those are the ones that attacked me”. The police had been called, the two men questioned and arrested.
A week later, I came in for one of my last shifts in the department and, in the staff room, there was a newspaper cutting from the local press saying something along the lines of “Hurricane Harry wins his final bout”.
The old man, at about 84, had only just stopped training local boxers. He was an ex prizefighter, had been an army middleweight champion during the war and devoted his life to boxing. Set upon by two young lads, he decided to teach them a lesson in respecting your elders haha.
China’s First 28nm Lithography Tool to Be Delivered This Year
Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment (SMEE), China’s most successful lithography scanner manufacturer, reiterated plans this week to deliver its first scanner capable of producing chips on a 28nm-class fabrication process by the end of the year, reports TechWire Asia, citing newspaper Securities Daily, which in turn cites an unnamed source.
For SMEE, its SSA/800-10W scanner is a breakthrough since the most advanced scanner that the company has today is only capable of 90nm and thicker fabrication processes. A 28nm-capable lithography tool will over time enable Chinese chipmakers to rely on domestic lithography equipment for a range of mature technologies.
The move is part of China’s broader goal to achieve semiconductor self-sufficiency and reduce its dependence on foreign technology. But the question remains as to whether SMEE can produce this scanner in mass quantities, and when it can make such scanners available to substitute for machines from ASML, Canon, and Nikon.
The latest export regulations from the U.S. government prevent Chinese chipmakers from accessing tools and technologies essential for creating non-planar transistor logic chips under 14nm/16nm dimensions, 3D NAND chips with over 127 active layers, and DRAM ICs with a half-pitch smaller than 18nm. Restrictions from the Netherlands, Japan, and Taiwan that went into effect earlier this fall further isolated Chinese firms like SMIC and YMTC from advanced tools. These limitations impede their ability to produce chips using their newest manufacturing processes, notably SMIC’s 14nm/12nm and 2nd generation 7nm as well as YMTC’s 128-layer and 232-layer 3D NAND.
As a result, China needs advanced domestic lithography tools to ensure that its chipmakers can produce chips on even fairly advanced process technologies, such as 14nm. For now, it looks like Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment is on track to reveal its 28nm-capable SSA/800-10W scanner, which it will ship either to SMIC or a chip research intitute.
After it does this, it will still take some time for the chipmaker to integrate the new scanner into its production flow. However, it will only do this only if SMEE can produce a sufficient number of such tools.
There is a myth that is way popular. It’s not a myth, actually, it is a myth within a myth.
Myth-ception.
You must have heard this statement before: “NASA invested $1,000,000 to develop a pen that works in space, while Russia used a pencil.”
Why did I say this is a “Myth within a Myth” (Myth-ception)?
Here, I’ll explain:
Facts that show that the statement is a myth:
Before a proper Space-Pen was developed, astronauts from both the USA and Russia used pencil in space.
NASA never spent the $1,000,000 to develop a pen that works in zero-gravity of outer space by themselves.
Russia itself, along with the USA, uses a space-pen today.
The fact that busts the myth present within the myth:
A normal pen can work in space!
Who told you that a normal ballpoint pen won’t work in space?
Let me explain it to you properly.
In the initial days of space flight, scientists were unsure about whether or not normal pens would work in the hostile conditions of outer space. And the capsule in which astronauts were sent into space had very little space to send only the essential stuff. So, they couldn’t send some normal pens along with pencils just to try.
They couldn’t risk the situation by sending only pens instead of pencils. What if an astronaut inside the ISS (International Space Station) takes a pen but it doesn’t work? There is no stationery shop floating outside the station to buy another pen or a pencil. If the pen they took wouldn’t have worked, no instruments would be available to write.
Hence, all of the astronauts had to take pencils with them. No pen was given a chance.
In 1967, during the launch rehearsal test of the 1st Apollo mission, a cabin fire took place. This fire killed all of the three astronauts present in that crew.
After this incident, engineers tried eliminating all of the flammable items in any space mission. The pencil was one of them.
But what do you use if a pencil is eliminated?
Then NASA turned towards the man named Paul C. Fisher. This man had patented an “Anti-Gravity” ballpoint pen in 1966.
Fisher was the person, who invested his own $1,000,000 to make a space-pen, independent of any organization. NASA approached his company after the pen was launched.
Now, some people think that the pen itself costs a lot. But the thing is, the cost of a million dollars was spent to make the pen. NASA actually bought the pens for a cheaper price (around $6 per pen).
Now I will come to why we don’t use normal pens in space (even if we can).
What I think is, after reading all of this history, people just assumed that normal pens don’t work in space. But the situation is a bit different.
I did an analysis of the mechanism of all types of pens and came to an amazing conclusion.
For you to understand that, you will have to know how a space pen works. And for you to know how a space pen works, I will have to explain how a normal pen works.
Basically, pens are divided into 5 main categories:
Fountain pen
Rollerball pen
Felt tip pen
Ballpoint pen
Gel pen
Now, I will tell you the mechanism of each type of pen.
Fountain pens
To understand its mechanism, it can be divided into three parts:
The Nib
The Feed
The Reservoir
Structure of a regular Fountain pen
To know how things look in real, I broke my own ink pen:
I’ll explain the function of these three parts, starting with the reservoir.
The reservoir contains a cartridge which holds ink. This part is broad and the ink can move independently under the action of gravity. The job of this section is to hold ink and supply it to the feed.
A pipe starts from the reservoir and it sends ink to the feed.
This pipe has 4 thin channels — 3 for ink and 1 for air.
Now you would ask, “Why a channel for air?”
Well, let me make it clear with an example.
Take a plastic bottle and fill it with water. Make a tiny hole on the cap. Invert the bottle so that the cap is facing down.
Does water start flowing? NO.
That is because of the atmospheric pressure (air stops the flow from below). It is just like pressing the hole with a finger. Water won’t flow out of the hole (even if gravity is supporting you in this case).
You will have to squeeze the bottle to get water out of it.
The reason for the water not flowing out is the absence of air above. If water gets out of the hole, a vacuum will be created above (since the water level has to go down). We know that this is impossible. There must be some way, by which air will be filled in the upper section as the water level keeps moving down.
You can do this by making a hole above (on the base of bottle). Now, water will keep flowing from the hole made on the cap (without squeezing the bottle).
As water moves out from the hole, the water level keeps decreasing from above – this leads to the formation of vacuum – which, in turn, sucks air from the opposite hole.
A similar mechanism is used in the Fountain pen.
The only difference is that – the hole for air is made near the same point, where the three holes for ink flow are made (instead of making one on the opposite).
When you glide the nib on the paper, ink flows out from the three channels and air keeps getting from one channel. This air goes through the feed and reaches the reservoir. (This way, the air is filled in the space emptied by the loss of ink.)
Hence, constant flow is maintained.
Here is the structure of the feed:
Structure of the feed
The feed consists of three parts:
Wings
Fins
Post
I have mentioned the function of each in the image.
Here is the structure of the nib:
Structure of the Nib
I have mentioned the main components, with their functions, in the image.
Now, coming to the main point.
Why did I mention that there are 3 thin channels for ink in the feed?
That is because these channels introduce Capillary Action in the fountain pen. The movement of ink through these channels happen due to capillary action, and not gravity.
See, the two components that drive ink downwards, inside a fountain pen, are:
Gravity — inside the reservoir (Because it is broad, hence, no capillary action can take place).
Capillary action — inside the thin channels of the feed (Because they are way thinner).
When the ink exits the feed, it enters the slit of the nib. The slit is also very thin. Hence, the ink flows from the breather hole to the tip of the nib, by Capillary action, again.
My point here is to explain that if we use this pen in a zero-gravity spaceship, it is bound to work for some time (thanks to the capillary action). But… once the feed is emptied, the pen will stop to work. The ink in the reservoir (cartridge) will keep floating and won’t come down.
Also, there is another big disadvantage of taking a fountain pen to space.
You must remember the role of air in the functioning of an ink pen (as I have mentioned above). We know that a spaceship has an oxygen supply. But, if an astronaut takes a fountain pen outside the spaceship, the absence of the atmosphere will make the pen function-less.
Coming to the Rollerball pens:
This type is said to be invented in 1888.
The most common example of this kind of pen is Trimax.
To understand the internal structure of this pen, I had to break my own pen.
This answer required a high budget. LOL.
The upper section of my Trimax (a rollerball pen). The Feed and The Nib
You can see that this pen has a lot of similarity with the fountain pen.
To show you how all of the parts of this pen look, in detail, I used my simple microscope to zoom at each part of the Feed and Nib:
A detailed structure of a Rollerball pen. The visible parts were zoomed and pictured using my simple microscope.
You can see that the Fins part of the feed is similar to a fountain pen.
The main difference is created by the Post and the Nib.
Instead of having a pipe with four channels, the post of this pen is a porous substance, which transfers ink by suction.
This porous material was inserted in these pens, during their invention period, for easy writing on rough surfaces.
The Nib is the same as the ballpoint pen. I will explain the structure of the ballpoint Nib in the section of how ballpoint pens work.
I removed the ballpoint nib of this pen and this is what I was inside:
Inside the Nib of a rollerball pen. (Imaged under my simple microscope). It is the same extended porous material (that caries ink). Just a metal nib is added over it.
We don’t need a separate channel for air since the refill of the pen is open from above.
Talking about this pen to be used in space:
We can say that the flow of ink can happen in the absence of gravity, through a suction-based cloth type material. But the main issue is the Water-based ink used in this type of pens.
Water-based ink has a very low cohesive force. That is, the molecules in that ink aren’t attracted to each other at a large scale. So, we can’t assure a constant flow of ink. The pen may stop writing at a point.
Coming to the Felt-tip pen:
Common examples are Regular sketch-pens.
The mechanism is way similar to that of rollerball pens. The flow of water-based ink is maintained through suction, using a similar porous material.
The only major difference that I could notice was — they don’t have a ballpoint nib.
I showed you how the nib of a rollerball pen looks when you remove the metal nib. That is exactly how a nib of Felt-tip pen looks. The nib is nothing but the same continued section of porous material.
Why can’t we use these pens in space: Same reason as with the Rollerball pen → the damn water-based non-viscous ink.
Coming to the main contestant — Ballpoint pens.
These pens have a simple structure. There won’t be a need to discuss the mechanism of a refill.
The only complicated part is — the ballpoint metal nib.
The mechanism of the Ballpoint metal Nib. I have labelled all of the parts, with their functions.
In the image, I have also explained the working of the ballpoint pen.
I won’t be discussing the gel pens because they have the same mechanism as that of ballpoint pens. The only difference is in the ink. Gel pens use Water-based ink.
Coming to the main issue:
Why can’t we use a ballpoint pen in space?
Who said that we can’t? We can!
In 2003, an astronaut named Pedro Duque took a normal ballpoint pen with him, to confirm the fact. He found that the ballpoint pen worked pretty fine. He wrote 4–6 paragraphs in his diary and the pen didn’t stop!
According to my analysis, this happened because of the Oil-based ink present in the refill of a ballpoint pen. This ink is highly viscous and sticks itself pretty well. Cohesive forces (among the molecules of this ink) is very high.
So, for the pen to work, we need a small driving force that could maintain the flow of ink. The Capillary action inside the thin nib is enough for it.
See, the refill of a ballpoint pen is thick and it can’t build a capillary action. On earth, this part relies on gravity.
But… when you take this pen to outer space (zero-gravity), the small section near the nib will suck the ink under capillary action. This will drive entire ink because of the “stickiness” of that ink. It will have a continuous flow.
Now you would ask, “Then why don’t we use normal ballpoint pens in space?”
The thing is, zero-gravity is not the only issue. There are other problems like extreme temperatures (cold and hot), UV radiation, lack of atmosphere outside the spaceship.
The issue is the same: If astronauts take normal ballpoint pens with them and they stop working somehow, there is no stationary shop floating outside the spaceship. We can’t risk. Hence, the space-pen was bound to be made.
The Space-Pen:
Paul C. Fisher spent his $1,000,000 to make a pen that overcomes all of the limitations of other pens.
Every pen has some drawbacks, which pose a risk to be dependent upon. I have tried to mention all of these drawbacks from my analysis.
This pen uses refills which contain pressurized nitrogen gas inside them. The pressure forces the ink out of the nib even in the absence of Gravity and Atmosphere.
The ink used in this pen is extremely viscous (like jelly). So, continuous flow is maintained even in zero-gravity.
Also, the materials used while manufacturing is chosen such that the pen can write even in extremely hot and cold temperatures. The shocking part is that this pen can also be used to write underwater.
So, here we are. At the end of the Myth-ception.
I hope that I was able to clear all of the myths, along with the myths present within the myths.
I’ll keep it simple. The US earns 1 trillion a year and spends 2 trillion right, they make up the shortfall by printing a trillion every year – they issue T bills. In the normal course of events printing the equivlent of your yearly GDP would create massive inflation and your economy would collapse.
However. The USD is used for most of the trade on the planet so all of that money gets to share the inflationary pressure – all countries suffer the inflation and so (given that all countries are ‘inflating’) there is no inflation. All of the currencies are inflating at the same rate.
When other countries (BRICS countries and more) move away from the USD that not only takes USD out of circulation (incresing inflationary pressure on what is left) but makes those (BRICS) countries more immune to the inflationary presssure.
So the problem that the US has with it is that it’ll totally fuck the US. Which is as it should be.
My ex-fiance’s mom and I were incredibly close. We used to spend all our time together when she visited, even when her son was at work.
Then, the heart-wrenching day came when I had to break the news about his infidelity. She was nearly as devastated as I was. We had planned our wedding for six months down the road, discussing every tiny detail with excitement. She often expressed how proud she was that I would officially become her daughter-in-law.
However, her son didn’t share her sentiments.
When we split, I never got to say goodbye in person because they lived far away. Within a week, I packed up and moved back to Spain to heal with my family. We exchanged messages, and she confessed that part of her was relieved we hadn’t met to say goodbye because she didn’t know how she would handle it.
Fast forward a year, we still keep in touch on WhatsApp (her son and I definitely do not!). I’m solo traveling in Australia, and she checks on me. She remembered my birthday and even shared what would have been my wedding day with me. She continues to be my mother-in-law in spirit.
This past Christmas, she sent me a message that brought tears to my eyes. In their family, everyone had a special bauble on her Christmas tree. She told me to add one because she considered me family. I bought a simple, beautiful one.
Christmas 2018, I thought about that bauble and how life changes. Two days later, she messaged me, asking about my trip to Bali for Christmas and New Years. She sent a photo of her beautifully decorated tree, saying, “Your bauble is still on my tree, and it will be every year xx.”
I was truly fortunate to have her as my mother-in-law.
Oliver Anthony is Single-Handedly Destroying the Recording Industry
Oliver Antony chose an unconventional path to fame and fortune. In the process, he showed other artists how to break the backs of the recording industry. All you need is strong vocals, a good message, and a Youtube channel to rake in millions of dollars without any censorship of your message.
My last name is not exactly common. Especially in northeast Ohio where I grew up. In the Cleveland area, if you know someone with the last name of Breaux, they are most definitely closely related to me.
So, there I was working for Geek Squad. I arrived at a client’s house to perform some kind of repair on an older guy’s computer. I introduced myself and we made a little small talk on the way back to his office. He pointed me to the office chair and told me a little about the problem. When I booted up the computer, it needed a password so I asked him to type it in.
“I’ll just tell it to you. You look trustworthy. You might want to write it down, though.”
I grabbed my notepad and a pen and nodded to him.
“B”
“R”
“E”
“A”
“U”
“X”
I just stared at him, confused and a little freaked out. Why was this guy’s password my last name?
I must have just looked confused because he chuckled and said “It’s my middle name. Strange, I know, but I was named after a close family friend growing up in Detroit.”
My jaw almost hit the ground. My dad and grandfather were born in Detroit, my Great Grandfather had moved there in the early 1920s. I was pretty sure he was the only Breaux that moved up from Louisiana at that time.
After I collected myself, I showed him my ID badge and his eyes lit up and he got a huge smile on his face. It turns out, it was my great grandfather that he was named after. He remembers my grandfather as a child and used to play with him when their dads would visit each other. After my he and my grandfather joined the military to fight in WWII, they lost contact and never spoke again.
I may have spent much more than my allotted time at that client’s house, but I got to hear stories of my grandfather as a child growing up in Detroit. I wouldn’t have traded those stories for any number of extra clients that day.
My pops was an active duty SEAL for the first 30 years of my life. Many (most?) of his closest friends are former SEALs. Many of my friends and acquaintances were also raised by frogmen.
Note: I’m going to speak in broad strokes here, but I’ll do so with care.
*Understood Incorrectly*
Strictness Speaking generally, yes, they are tough dads. But probably less strict than most Marine fathers or the expectation many of you have. Perhaps family life is a welcome break from a day job that involves being hard.
You learn respect early. Talking back isn’t tolerated. But it isn’t extreme. Most SEAL communities are teamwork oriented, there are levels of compassion and understanding that underlie their tough outer core.
Put simply, they teach their children a lot of lessons that don’t involve kicking the shit out of kids on the playground.
Lineage Most team guys don’t pressure their kids to become SEALs.
In fact, I can’t name a single son who followed in his father’s footsteps.
Why? Well, for one, it is an extreme career path. You need to be near-born with a desire, a calling, a primal urge to pursue it. Anything less isn’t enough.
I’ll further speculate, many fathers may feel the same trepidation that a pro athlete feels when they see their son also pursuing a pro-sports career.
They know that their kid may be setting themselves up for failure. With SEALs as with a pro sports career: most are not cut out out for the task in front of them.
Also, serving screws a lot of guys up. Physically and mentally, SEALs see a lot of bad things and have a lot of bad things happen to them.
Quick tip: when you find out someone’s dad is a SEAL, don’t let your first question be, “Why didn’t you join like him?” The question is beat to death.
*Understood Correctly*
Quiet Warriors They don’t talk about what they do. Never heard anything. And believe me, I’ve asked.
Philosophy Someone who joins the SEALs has an underlying belief that evil exists in this world. And that becoming a SEAL will give them the best opportunity to help rid the world of darkness, help protect the weak from those who would do them harm.
Tangent to that, being allowed to operate with (arguably) the most elite group on Earth, is a privilege. You’re given access to high-level equipment, training, and above all, the most talented peers available. Service is, again, seen as privilege.
Consequently, humility is a strong value among team members. I’ve seen that humility frequently passed down to their children.
Values Driven They tend to pass along a strong sense of values and orientation towards right and wrong (again good vs evil). Most are conservative. Many are also religious (Christian).
Physical Fitness Most SEAL families are indeed athletic. Staying physically fit was always held in high regard, a sign of work ethic and self-discipline.
Overall, it is a great experience. I’ve only lived one life (that I know of) and given the choice, I think I’d repeat.
The Chinese government treated its people way better that the U.S. treated its own people.
Let’s put things in perspective not be foolish to repeat US narratives on CCP, China and the Chinese people.
Freedom. The U.S. has 9 times more per million in jail than China! For a nation calling itself the land of the free, this is simply shameful. US has a law that disallow its people to drink a beer on the streets but allowed lethal military weapons and today the U.S. has more mass random shooting incidents in a week than China has in a decade! Freedom to shoot and kill but not free to drink a beer on the go! China allows you to drink alcohol and beer as long as you don’t disturb the peace but one is not allowed even a 4” blade in your pocket.
Living Standard. The U.S. has stopped growing in real living standards since 1960. Today it is fast deteriorating. Your inflation is 5 times higher than your income growth since 2020! The poor is getting poorer and up to a million live in tents on the streets. And 50 million has joined the poor from the middle class. China grew real standard of living 30 times in 40 years from 1980–2020 alone! China’s inflation is a shade below 2% and its growth is way past 6%! China’s middle class is today close to 700 million or more than twice the entire U.S. population!
Disparity of income. The Rich in the US is filthy rich and the poor is dirt poor. The U.S. has many companies which is too big to fail! Not China, even the richest man will be hold accountable and even the biggest company need to be held responsible. The U.S. 1% owns almost 90% of the wealth and the 99% share the 10%. The rich influence the government and dare I say owns the government! Not in China. People comes first.
Safety. In China one can roam the streets at 3 am in the morning alone! In U.S. chances of you being robbed or rape is very high. Even shot to death is likely. Cops in the U.S. can necked you to death and shoot you all due to the colour of your skin. If the cops don’t get you the racist or the mass random shooter can kill you anytime! If you lose your mobile phone. Chinese cops get it back to you within hours!
So grow up the U.S. government don’t care about you. They take care of big pharmaceutical companies and military industrial complex and National Rifles Association and weapons manufacturers! The U.S. government are put in place by these companies. They owned the government.
Travel and tourism. Chinas has more high speed railway than the entire world put together. US failed to complete 100 kilometres line from LA to San Francisco after 20 years. During this time China put up 120K miles of high speed railway! It is cheaper and more convenient to travel for everyone in China.
Free Medicine. China offers universal health coverage for everyone rich or poor. No one dies because the don’t have health insurance. The Rich pays more and the poor lays little or none. In the U.S. 35% of Americans. Cannot get treatment because they could not afford health insurance.
Free Education. In China if you kids qualify for college. Chinese government provide it free. In the U.S. your kids get into debts just for attending college!
Chinese government is so much better than the U.S. government in China. Admittedly one cannot attack their own capital like Trumps supporters did in Washington in China. But we don’t mind.
The Best Near-Death Experience I’ve Ever Heard
“The best NDE I’ve ever heard.” Rosemary Thornton had a near-death experience (NDE) while undergoing cancer treatment. She instantly found herself on the other side in a white room where she conversed with God and Angels before going to Heaven. Rosemary’s near-death experience (NDE) showed her what happens after death, what angels look like, and that there is life after death. Her near-death experience (NDE) provides more evidence/proof of an afterlife.
It is unconstitutional for the U.S. government not to recognize its debt and pay interest on it. After the Civil War, the Supremacy Clause and the 14th Amendment established an obligation for the federal government to recognize and pay its debts, even those incurred during times of insurrection or rebellion, such as the Civil War. This constitutional principle serves as a foundational element of the nation’s financial stability and credibility. Therefore, the US government must follow its own laws to pay the bonds owned by China.
The United States has not defaulted on the principal or interest payments of its government bonds. The U.S. government has a long-standing reputation for honoring its debt obligations, both to domestic and foreign bondholders. This commitment to debt repayment is a key factor in maintaining the country’s financial stability and credibility in the global financial markets.
To default on the interest payments for bonds held by China, the United States would need to amend the constitution, a process that has not occurred since 1992, and identify which bond is held by China, a task that is impossible to carry out. In addition, these actions carry severe repercussions for the United States, including the potential for substantial economic and financial upheaval, harm to its global standing, and interruptions in government services. China could respond by liquidating its entire bond holdings, causing a crash in the bond market. Given these considerations, it would be less painful for the U.S. to meet its obligations by relying on future inflation and higher interest rates while printing more money.
A new mom boards a city bus, holding her baby in her arms. She deposits her fare, and greets the bus driver.
The bus driver asks her how old her baby is. She turns the baby around so he can see it and says proudly, “Just a week old, sir”.
The bus driver takes a look at the baby and exclaims “Wow, that’s literally the ugliest baby I’ve ever seen!”
Crushed and angry, the woman walks down the aisle of the bus and finds a seat next to a man.
The man notices she’s fuming, and asks her “Ma’am, you seem upset. What’s the matter?”
“The bus driver just insulted me saying really mean things. He was not a very nice person at all.”
The man quickly replies, “Wow, I’m so sorry to hear that! Tell you what, you should go right back up there and give the bus driving jerk a piece of your mind and demand an apology. And while you do that, I’ll hold your monkey for you.”
First Time You Realized America Really Messed You Up – Part 1 – US American Reaction
The old man was walking with his wife at the local shopping mall.
He analyzed the latest Amazon’s Pop-Up Shop and searched for music products and couldn’t find any.
He continued to walk around and has a déjà-vu, “WOW! There’s a huge opportunity here!”
“What do you see, my love?” The old lady asked with eyes of admiration.
“Imagine how many people walk here everyday… everyone loves music, and there’s NO music store in all the shopping mall! I’m going to pushour son Luigi to open a music store here!”
Oh dear, you’re old but still a visionary genius! I’m sure Luigi will love the idea!”
They excitedly hurry home.
“Son! Sit down right now and listen to me! You won’t believe the amazing opportunity I just found. Your future is guaranteed if you follow my wise advice.”
“What are you talking about, Dad? Tell me about it,” Luigi asked, taking a seat.
“I WANT you to open a music store at our local mall!” Old Mario said with authority.
“But Dad… that doesn’t sound like a good business anymore,” Luigi refuted fearfully.
“Don’t you be disrespectful to your father’s wisdom, Luigi! He’s offering you an opportunity of a lifetime!” Mom interrupted.
“But people don’t buy music at a shopping mall any more, Mom. It doesn’t make sense!”
“You listen to and obey the wisdom of your father. All those grey hairs are there for a reason! Your dad has already got a line of credit for you.”
Luigi had a bad feeling about this, but with no other choice he had to trust his parents.
He goes to the bank and takes a 100,000 dollar loan under his name and opens the music shop.
Four years of hard work and no results. Luigi is devastated. The market has changed. People don’t buy music CDs or cassette tapes anymore.
Moral of the story?
Luigi invested 4 years of his life into this venture, lost everything and now has to start all over again, but now with a financial burden of $100,000 that he must repay over time.
Mom and Dad feel deeply disappointed about Luigi’s incompetence.
Devastated and confused about his inability to make a living, Luigi must continue living with his parents while he reinvents himself to find a decent job.
How will Luigi get out of this financial mess?
Now, to answer your question, which famous career advice will be abandoned 10 years from now?
“Go to college and pay with a student loan!”
The story above is obviously a sarcastic story of what’s happening to a whole generation of young adults.
Careers are changing, and parents are still forcing youngsters to study outdated degrees.
Jobs are changing, and parents don’t understand it.
Once graduated, many find themselves jobless and parents blame their child for incompetence.
Young adults need to start all over again to find a real path into the future, but now with a financial load that won’t go away.
At nearly $1.5 trillion, the student debt problem is out of control and will soon become a problem of historic proportions.
Elites ‘are in the grip of a pseudo-ideology of control’: Former CIA analyst
Former CIA analyst and Author Martin Gurri says the world is incrementally moving towards authoritarianism as elites embrace a fragmented “pseudo ideology of control”. Mr Gurri described protests as being “hollow ideologically”. “In the end, it’s the rule of experts, the rule of science, the rule of justice, as defined by the people in charge,” Mr Gurri told Sky News host James Morrow. “You need something to be that something; you can’t be something with nothing. “You’re not going to beat a pseudo ideology of control, until you work out an ideology of freedom.”
Many years ago I drove into NYC to visit a friend for the weekend. Sunday evening I started up my car to drive home and smoke came out of the front end, which is never a good thing. I called AAA and some thingamabob was busted (I don’t remember which part) and needed fixing in order to drive the car. Being a Sunday, not much was open, but I found a car repair place that could do the work, so I had my car towed there. They said yes they could fix the car, but mysteriously all the credit card machines were broken, so I’d have to pay cash. They wouldn’t even take a check. Of course ATMs had a limit to the amount of cash you could take out per day, and the daily amount was less than what was needed, so they said I had to stay in NYC until I had enough cash before they would do the repair. I felt like they were holding my car for ransom, but there was nothing I could do. Fortunately I could stay at my friend’s place, but this meant I had to take Monday off from work. There was something about this place which didn’t seem right, but I don’t know a lot about cars and I didn’t know what else I could do.
By Monday afternoon I had amassed enough cash for the expensive repair, which didn’t take long, and got on the road to drive home. I wasn’t too far from home when the new part stopped working and smoke came out of the car again. Once again AAA towed me, this time to my mechanic. He took one look at the part and told me they had installed an old broken down part instead of the new one I had paid for. He had to pull it out and now install the actual part I had paid for. I was furious. Fortunately he knew what agencies to report this to in the State of NY and said he’d prepare whatever statement was needed to support that I was ripped off.
The next day I started calling and filing reports and claims against this shoddy repair facility in NYC. So the agency that handles such things went there to get their records and while there noticed so many things that were in violation of standards that they ended up revoking their license and shutting them down! Also turns out they had had their eye on this place and my reports were the evidence they needed to put them out of business for good.
For good measure, they also got a certified check from the place not only returning all funds that I had paid, but also including all the costs I paid to my mechanic to actually do the correct repair as punitive damages.
So for ripping off an out-of-state woman, they ended up paying for my repair and getting their business shut down. Sometimes crime doesn’t pay. Revenge is sweet.
How much longer can a group of Nations keep threatening the world and sanctioning them unilaterally?
Of course everyone will take precautions
Russia started from 2014 itself. They bore the worst brunt of the sanctions from 2014 and it cost them almost $ 1 Trillion of GDP growth
That was a much tougher sanction package because Russia was completely unprepared
By Contrast in 2022, Russia was already slowly and surely capable of withstanding fundamental sanctions, had many alternate payment systems and had a very strong trade pact with China
image 167
They had 8 years to ensure their Dollar Assets and Euro Assets were buried cleverly and untraceable. They had 8 years to ensure that every dollar of western assets in Russia was monitored strongly
The present Sanctions package was a Joke without China. If China had stood apart, Russia would be in big trouble because it had no alternate currency buttress or payment system or all those wonderful industrial supplies and components
Luckily China realized that they were next in line and decided this was the time to stand strong with Russia
image 168
Once that happened, the Sanctions became near worthless to Russia but devastating to EU, UK and USA
Simple Example :- Russia refused to export Fertilisers to UK and US and shipped their entire stock to India and China. US immediately Comandeered all of the Canadian surplus and had no issues but UK suffered a 43% shortage and it’s translated in the shelves of supermarkets
image 170
Plus Obama, Merkel, Cameron were intelligent leaders who knew restraint
image 166
Biden, Blinken, Ursula, Scholz and Sunak don’t know their face from their arse.
image 165
Putin and Xi can cook them for breakfast and run rings and rings around them
This is probably the least known fact of World War 2, that you never have heard of, which is a shame because it’s quite interesting.
During WW2 millions of Poles became refugees after Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939. The Soviet Union deported almost a million Poles and sent to freezing Siberia, where many died.
As a result, hundreds of thousands of Poles decided to flee, and they did this by crossing the Caspian Sea from Russia to no other country than Iran!
Over 116,000 Poles sailed across the Caspian Sea. The majority docked in the port city of Pahlevi, where they were fed and quarantined because many were carrying lethal diseases such as malaria and typhus.
When Polish refugees were loaded on to trucks to relocate from Pahlevi to Tehran, some Iranians threw objects at them. The frightened refugees thought they were being stoned — but they soon noticed that the objects were not rocks, but rather cookies, candies, and food.
They were warmly welcomed by both the Iranian people and government. Hundreds of buildings were built to house them, and Polish schools, businesses, and cultural organizations were established.
These refugees now had clean beds and plenty of food, after they had spent years in freezing and disease-ridden conditions.
Despite Iran being a country under occupation by the British and Soviets, and even though starvation and poverty were widespread, the refugees were warmly welcomed and witnessed the famous Persian hospitality and kindness first-hand.
The Polish refugees were nourished more by the smiles and generosity of the Iranian people than by the food dished out by British and Russian soldiers
– Polish scholar, Ryszard Antolak
After the war, many Poles decided to stay in Iran and build a life for themselves here in Iran.
Tehran also has a Polish cemetery (called Dulab) which houses the graves of more than 2,000 Poles.
I had worked with Frank for many years. we did application support for an IMS based system and Frank knew that system inside and out. when the word came that there was going to be downsizing, Frank was the least likely one to be displaced. He got along with everyone and did the job better than anyone. The manager that had to decide the person to leave picked Frank because he challenged her on some topics and he was not very subtle. So on Friday Frank was let go and got a severance package. then it was announced that they would fill the open slot via a contractor. Frank knew the head of the consulting firm and called him up. the consulting firm hired Frank Friday afternoon and on Monday Frank was back doing his old job, getting paid 30% more, was hourly instead of salaried and worked from home instead of coming to the office. That manager lasted a few more years, but eventually she was let go as well. Frank was legend and everyone loved telling that story of how he was able to turn getting let go into a huge positive.
Taqueria Guacamole
2023 10 18 17 06
Ingredients
2 ripe avocados
1 lemon, juiced
1 plum tomato, seeded and chopped
1 small white onion, finely chopped
1 medium fresh jalapeno, seeded and finely chopped
Coarse salt
Instructions
Halve avocados lengthwise around pit. Remove pit with a large spoon, then scoop out flesh into a bowl.
Squeeze the lemon juice into bowl.
Add tomato, onion, and jalapeno.
Mash guacamole with a fork to desired consistency.
Militarily? I would say on par, I know yanks will always say they are, but I don’t think so, a few years ago? Yes, definitely, but theses days,? Not any more, if they went to war? Neither could win, they will both be destroyed, actually in my view, the whole planet would be. Because it would definitely evolve into WW3, and the nukes will start flying.
industrially? Definitely China there is no doubt about that, simply because of numbers, and work ethics, they can build rings around the USA,
in technology? Also close on par, the USA might have a slight edge, but again it comes down to numbers, China just has so many more graduates.
so over all? I guess China gets the gold medal,
that’s the main reason why the USA is so toxic against China to try and keep them down, instead of improving themselves? They prefer to squash any competition, but this time it’s not working, their boot isn’t heavy enough, and the meddlesome bug is to tough.
AMERICAN COUPLE React To Americans Living Abroad: First Time U Realized America Really Messed You Up
In my early days of work whilst on a summer internship. I didn’t actually see anything… I learned about/lived it. A guy in my office was having personality difficulties with our boss. Basically, the guy was older, smarter, more approachable and more helpful to his co-workers and the boss resented it. The writing was clearly on the wall that the boss had it out for him so when the guy was fired it was hardly a surprise to anyone, particularly not a surprise to the guy that was fired. He packed up and left quietly.
Fast forward a week… the office was starting to smell pretty rank. Everyone was checking their desks for a ‘forgotten lunch’ and orders came down from the top that the fridge and break room needed to be cleared out and cleaned or you’d lose whatever it was that you had stored there. Being the summer intern that somehow became my responsibility. Nothing overly offensive was found that could be the cause.
Fast forward two weeks… the office was uninhabitable. Everybody was sent home. I think they were about ready to bring in corpse search dogs to see if they could locate the offensive smell.
At the end of the third week (since the firing… the week after we were told to leave the office) were were notified that we would be returning to the office the following Monday (I’m not sure if it was paid or unpaid… I was an unpaid intern so I just had to do the work I was given from the local university library. Other actual employees did maintenance work from home during this time, but I don’t think a lot of work got done.)
Long story short, the cause of the smell trickled down to everyone — somebody pushed one of the false ceiling panels up and deposited a bag of fresh prawns into the ceiling cavity to sit during that hot summer. Nobody claimed credit for it and no names were given, but the fired employee’s ex-clerk received a card from the fired employee telling the clerk that he’d moved on to another job and would be happy to serve as a reference should the need arise (I think the fired employee was trying to bring his clerk with him). The kicker was the card was one of those nostalgic 1950s cards with a giant photo of a shrimp cocktail on the front of it.
Think about this simple maths. The U.S. is indebted up to 34 trillion dollars now! Within 5 years chances it’s that it’s debt level will exceed 50 trillion dollars! That is almost a certainty.
5% of 50 trillion dollars is 2.5 trillion dollars just to service you loan! That means the entire U.S. government budget by that time goes to paying interest alone!
No more money left for welfare services, infrastructure spending, healthcare services and every war it get into it will need to print and create money without basis. Americans must bear this in mind before you vote in your next president. And before you think the U.S. and fight another perpetual war!
China SHOCKED US! New LW-30 Laser Defense Tech Introduced
As China continues to invest heavily in research and development, its laser defense systems have become increasingly sophisticated, capable of detecting and intercepting a wide array of targets, including drones, missiles, and even low-orbit satellites. Today’s episode will cover China’s laser defense technology.
I travel full-time via my FJ Cruiser and my RV. A year or two ago, I met a guy who turned out to be a federal agent. No, I was not being investigated, at least not for business/national security reasons.
Before finalizing our first date, he casually mentioned that he had run the front plate on my FJ Cruiser, which absolutely horrified me. This isn’t some random guy using Google. This is a federal agent!
It was also the way he said it. As if it was the most normal thing in the world to invade someone’s (especially a woman traveling solo!) privacy in that way.
After he told me he ran my plates, I just stopped responding. I mean, next thing I know, he could be checking my IP address or something and figuring out where I was camping alone that night.
It was creepy.
So a week goes by and he blasts me for ghosting him. I respond, “Are you seriously asking me why? Dude, you RAN MY PLATES!”
Instead of apologizing or acknowledging that that was kinda creepy, he proceeded to tell me that I was “asking for it” by sharing a picture of my rig. He told me the fact that I had a custom plate intrigued him, so it was 100% my fault for dangling the carrot (a custom plate) in front of his face.
I blocked him after that. As far as I know, I’m not currently being stalked by any federal agents. But who really knows? The feds are pretty crafty.
Swiss Bliss
old fashioned swiss steak 3056883 Final 5ba96bcc46e0fb002534cbd6
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
1 tablespoon butter
1 (2 pound) chuck roast, cut 1 inch thick
1 envelope onion soup mix
1 (4 ounce) can mushrooms, drained
1/2 medium green bell pepper, sliced
1 (20 ounce) can tomatoes, drained and chopped, reserving juice
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon A-1 steak sauce
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon parsley flakes
Instructions
Coat center of large sheet of heavy foil with butter and place into a 13 x 9 inch dish.
Place meat across foil, overlapping each piece slightly.
Sprinkle with soup mix, mushrooms, green pepper slices and tomatoes.
Sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper.
Mix tomato juice, steak sauce and cornstarch.
Add enough water to make 2 cups liquid.
Pour over meat mixture and sprinkle with parsley flakes.
Cover with foil and bake at 375 degrees F for 2 hours.
I had a black client who had been arrested in his house and white cops slammed his head into a dresser drawer just for fun, as witnessed by several officers in the house. As the dresser was pushed against a casement window on the front of the house, slamming his head into the dresser “blew” the window into the front yard with a shotgun-like explosion, witnessed by all the neighbors watching the police action from across the street. The black jailer saw the bruise on the client’s forehead when taking the mugshot.
On the motion to dismiss for unreasonable police violence, all the cops lied and denied slamming the client’s head against the dresser. The judge and prosecutor acted as if the cops were not lying and the window blew itself into the yard.
It was late afternoon and the only civilians in the courtroom was a fifth-grade civics class of 20 kids aged 10–11 years and their teacher. The judge had a reputation as a racist and a hard-ass.
I turned during argument on the (hopeless) motion to the kids and asked the courtroom rhetorically: “Why in the world would police officers take the witness stand, swear on the Bible to tell the truth, and then lie?” Then I said, “Well, it makes winning their case a lot easier, and no one in authority stops them, and the officers know this.”
So I was accusing the judge of “letting” the officers lie to win the motion. That is, the judge OFTEN knows officers are lying and so does the prosecutor, but they don’t stop it. The officers know this, so they lie. Not all and not always, but in cases like this, they all lied together.
The judge got really pissed and started haranguing me, so I stoked his anger higher. The prosecutor could see how bad all this was starting to look to the appellate judges in any appeal and hung his head in defeat. My client walked out of the courtroom with a very sweet deal from the prosecutor to cut his losses.
TikTok on the cost of living | RANT ON INFLATION | EVERYONE IS BROKE AND TIRED
Hi guys, just to clarify I do not own any of these videos I just thought it would be interesting to see how people are dealing with the cost of living, sending prayers and well wishes to you.
When I was a kid, hot dogs were lame flavorless picnic fodder that got a squirt of mustard and ketchup and onions if you were daring, nothing more.
One summer a diner opened near me that specialized in char broiled burgers and Chicago dogs. I’d never heard of a Chicago dog before, so naturally I had to try one. Man, what a life changing experience.
It was a snappy Sabrett dog topped with mustard, sweet neon green pickle relish, diced onions, spicy sport peppers, tomato slices and a wedge of dill pickle. Every bite was overflowing with crunchy, spicy, sweet, sour, salty and savory goodness. In my 15 years of life it was literally one of the best things I had ever eaten. I still love them today.
More than just a poem, the Chicago dog contains a lesson: ketchup doesn’t belong on a hot dog.
It was brought to my attention that a true Chicago dog is made from Vienna Beef brand hot dogs and always includes celery salt. I’m down with both of those, so that’s what a true Chicago dog should be made with.
There are many American assets in China, estimated to be worth 2.2 trillion.
The US companies that own these assets are not going to be happy with the US government if China were to freeze these assets.
Do you think that the US companies owners and employees will vote for Biden next year if China freezes their assets in response to the US freezing Chinese assets?
The old trick is repeated! Biden attempts to arrest Huawei executives with criminal charges!
The US foreign policy from 1948 to 1991 was centred around INTERNATIONAL LAW
Diplomats, Army, Businessmen, Politicians worked as per INTERNATIONAL LAW and relied on their entire foreign policy from a derived paper from 1955 called ‘Peace during the Cold War’, penned right after the Korean War
It taught a formula for maintaining peace and coexistence of different nations with different ideologies
The core objectives of this ideology was :-
Strive for Peace always
No War Or conflict with Nuclear Nations
Preserving Human Spirits & Freedom
Ensuring Capitalism and Free Trade flow between allies
Economic Cooperation
Preserve and not endanger the Security of the United States and it’s allies
Diplomats like McNamara, Kissinger, Baker etc were steeped in this doctrine and founded this doctrine
Kennedy, Nixon, Bush Sr and Reagan followed this core ideology
It was a healthy doctrine
Barring a 7 year aberration with the Vietnam War (1968–1975).
Thus James Baker easily promised not to expand eastwards
He wanted a peaceful handshake with the Russians
Post 1991, a new paper was published which reflected a NEW IDEOLOGY infecting the Americans
A POST COLD WAR ORDER
That was it’s early name
INTERNATIONAL LAW quickly changed into what we know today as the INTERNATIONAL RULES BASED ORDER
The core of objectives of this ideology were :-
The US has to lead the world into a permanent peace after the Cold War
The US must stop the rise of any nation that could lead the world into another cold war
The US must bring peace to Europe, the Middle East and Asia even at the cost of strategies that could heavily curtail freedom of thought and independence in those nations
The US must always maintain a lead in arms and troops and military power for the betterment of the whole world
Russia for its own people’s sake needed to be broken down further and controlled by the Rules based order to prevent it slipping back into anarchy and chaos
The Middle East and Europe had to be controlled by the USA for their own security and security of energy in the world
This slowly became the leading ideology in USA with all diplomats born in 1966 or later (who are 57 years old or younger today) being steeped in this ideology and thought
This was also called
WDC as coined by Madeleine Albright – WEAKEN, DEMOCRATIZE, CONTROL
Many Politicians, then in their 40s and early 50s endorsed this philosophy openly including Mitch McConnell, Joe Biden, Hilary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Al Gore etc
The US Ideology back then never considered Africa or China as serious
This was the birth of the NEOCON ideology
Bush Sr, Rice, Albright, Kagan, Nuland, Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Ned Price, John Kirby, John Kerry, Mitt Romney, Joe Biden have all been steeped with this Neocon Ideology or International Rules Based Order Ideology
A Core part of this ideology is to bring peace to Europe by controlling Europe & to break down and weaken Russia
To do this NATO had to keep expanding
A Dramatic turnaround from the Old Ideology of INTERNATIONAL LAW
Today this is the leading ideology but since this ideology doesn’t mention China or Africa or India or how to handle a tougher Putin, the Americans are clueless on how to continue
Unless a new ideology for peaceful coexistence again develops , endorsed by 40–45 year old politicians and diplomats born on or after 1998 or Political Science Students born on or after 2006
The US will slowly sink due to this Neocon policy
Note most of the political ideologues of these thoughts are 65–70 years old at the very least
The Ideology changed, thus NATO kept expanding
That’s the Ideology that drives the US today
Others who are steeped in this Ideology include :- Boris Johnson, Keir Starmer, Kishida and our favorite JUSTIN TRUDEAU
In 2009 I was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a grade 4 brain cancer, after surgery the oncologist came back with the sad news that the statistics look quite ugly, he gave me treatments for 9 months, and 6 months to one year to live.
I was engaged preparing to marry in few months. We broke up, I didn’t see why I would leave a widow behind and break her heart.
I had no desire to pursue anything further in life…
It was a time of complete shutdown.
I wanted to quit my job, however my managers managed to convince me to stay with a relaxed schedule…
They started to teach me statistics again.
An average of 1 year, means some people die in 3 years, while others die in 6 months, and that I should have the positivity to assume I’m on the long term survival side.
By continuing to go to work, I kept myself busy, not thinking too much about my cancer.. I travelled , did some of the stuff I always wanted to do, visited places I always wanted to go.
I started to revisit my friends, hang out with those I really liked, got rid of those who made me feel sad, or felt pity. There are those who just don’t know what to tell you, then it gets awkward…
It is not something you want to talk about with everyone. You want to feel good, and not be down all the time.
I started to be more of a minimalist.. I had no desire in all the nice stuff I had always dreamt of, as My life seemed to come to a stop
However over time.. I started to realize that I’m happier .. I had special concerns for my parents, I started spending more time with my parents. With my family They are the joy of my life.. Too sad I never realized that earlier
8 years later I’m still around, although the cancer hit back several times, and my left side is now paralyzed, I’m still active going to work, participating in charities, trying to keep myself busy and active.
I was 32 when I was diagnosed, now hitting the 40’s I feel more mature, I’m guessing age is an important factor in how we take such news.
After all life goes on, and it is how you take the news that makes all the difference..
Keep busy, don’t let your mind wander too much.. No one knows when you are going to die..
There’s a shock at the beginning, try to pass it, embrace the news and you will feel the tranquility after a while..
My key messages would be:
no one knows when you are going to die, all doctors have are statistics.
Happiness is in the small and little things.. Time with family, reading a good book, listening to nice music, enjoying a movie.. Spending time on the beach, watching a sunset, nature, forest , a bird…
Through charity work I started to appreciate what I have, there are sooo many underprivileged people who would dream of what we take as granted, running water, electricity, food,medicine, family.
Each night I count at least 10 things I’m grateful for in my life.
I also started to keep a journal of the things that make me really happy and doing more of that.
Lavrov: “If the West want war, they can have it. If you insist, let’s decide it on the battlefield.”
God bless Russia and Mr Putin and mr lavrov… The Russians have the balls to tell the truth.. unlike the English and the yanks.
Originally Answered: What exactly is a midlife crisis? And how common are they ?
I can only speak from my experience, but here’s a personal account of my own midlife crisis. I was about 34 and I had a strong and relentless urge to pursue an unrealized goal that had been bothering me for quite a while, in fact, over 10 years.
Long ago, I had wanted to pursue nursing school, and due to circumstances such as an abusive ex-husband who prevented me from studies, I was not able to do so. When I finally escaped that decade-long relationship, it took a while for me to get back on my feet as I had to start from scratch to build my finances, portfolio, and confidence up. Time passes, I remarry and have a child and although things are great with my career and family, the thought of nursing kept nagging me at the back of my mind. I got increasingly upset at myself that I had let so many years pass and wondered when would be the time for me to do what I originally wanted to do.
So in my mid-thirties I made the decision to apply to nursing school, quickly took all the prerequisites and I got in a few months later, even though it was extremely competitive. I had to scale back on my other jobs and my schedule became MUCH more complicated. My social life definitely dwindled to nothing! Most people would ask, why are you going back to school? Don’t you like being a photographer and music teacher? Yes, yes I completely love my jobs. But I also want to be a nurse, and I will forever think “what if” if I do not pursue this.
Nursing school is demanding, and there is so much material to know that is compressed in such a short time frame. A typical day would be: wake up at 530am for hospital shift from 7am–3pm, study/edit until family arrives home, feed/play/bathe toddler and put toddler to bed, study/edit until midnight. Rinse and repeat. There were times I felt overwhelmed and perhaps I bit off more than I could chew. The amount of textbooks and notes I have from my studies, stacked on top of each other towers over me! However, I feel the most alive when I am caring for patients, and when they thank me heartily for the care I’ve given to them, my heart swells and that is the best feeling in the world. Therefore, my midlife crisis was a catalyst for me to take a leap and reach for my goal of becoming a nurse.
I can tell the experience of a friend. who married a woman who was multi-millionaire since birth. Saying that they were rich is an understatement. They only flew first or business class, he got a new Porsche or Mercedes every single year and they always lived in the best areas in Manhattan,
I remember when he and his wife moved to New York they hired an interior designer from Milan to do the decoration. They spent around a million dollars only with the renovation and furniture for the apartment.
They had it all, and not even in my dreams I would imagine that one day they would lose it all.
However, like many other stories, they didn’t lose it overnight, but little by little.
I never imagined they would lose all their money because apart of being filthy rich, they were really lucky.
My friend’s wife grew up being a millionaire. Annual trips to Aspen with her family, then summer in Europe and everything we imagine rich people do. I was lucky to enjoy some of these perks when I was invited to one of their vacation homes.
They had a lot of money but they didn’t work. After all, they never needed to do it. She received a monthly allowance from her family that I believe was around 700K to 1M per year so they would probably not bother to work 9 to 6 to make $100K more.
They lived this life for around 10 years. Then, they had some disagreement with their family and they stopped receiving the allowance. They lived by their savings for around 3 years. During those years they lived a very good life, but not so lavish as before. After 3 years, when they were about to start selling everything so they could have some money, her uncle died. He didn’t have any kids so she received a good sum of money that was sufficient for around 3 more years.
When their bank accounts were about to run dry again her mother passed away and she inherited, along with her brothers, around 4M each.
For most people, it would be sufficient for a lifetime, but they made very bad investments along with some poor decisions and I don’t know how, but they ended up losing everything in around 3 more years.
After losing all their money they started living with the money of a trust her parents left to her, Something around 5K per month. But they are on their 50s, they never worked and have no professional skills and they have to pay rent (as they don’t have a home), pay all their bills and above all, health insurance with that amount.
I saw them around 6 months ago and they were miserable. My friend developed a neurological disease due to the stress he endured in the last years. His wife was making all decisions as he wasn’t able to do it anymore. Unfortunately, he is so sick that he couldn’t work even if he wanted to.
I was really sad it happened to them because they were really nice people, It’s easy to judge them for never bothered to have a job or be wiser with their money, however, she was born in a different universe for most of us. What we see as a lavish lifestyle she sees as a regular day since birth.
I asked them if they needed anything and obviously what they need is their old lifestyle back. They moved to a modest apartment in a different state.
She told me that the biggest issue is that they don’t know how to live like that. She can’t imagine what’s like to do their own grocery shopping, and worst than that, go to Walmart with a shopping list. She said that if she spent a little more on things she like she might not have money for the supermarket next week.
I would not dare to say that this experience was humbling to them because they were always nice people, the difference is that they were nice people with lots of money. The only positive thing I believe this experience brought to them is that they are no longer superficial. They used to see everything like poverty, sorrow, and problems from a different perspective, and I used to see them through a mask that looked like they were using all the time
Now, for the first time, I was able to see who they really are. What are their emotions, their fears, their desires, and their regrets… For the first time in their lives they desire things, they no longer pull their credit card and immediately satisfy their desires and in that sense, they look like real people for me.
Every time I visited them over the years I always invited them for lunch, breakfast or coffee and even though I’m not wealthy I always offered to pay, and 6 months ago, when I saw them for the last time, I invited them to have a coffee at Starbucks and that was the first time in more than 15 years that they said thank you after I offered to pay for our breakfast.
It felt different. They don’t need to thank me for anything because during their life, just by inviting me to stay with them, they offered me much more than anything I’ve ever offered to them, but for the first time in their lives, they are learning to value every small good thing that life gives to them.
Thank you all for the upvotes and feedbacks to this story. In fact, I had two stories about the theme but Quora doesn’t allow to publish two answers for the same question, so, for those who are interested I’ll post the second story here.
In 2007 I was hired by a medium size tech company. The company had around 150 employees and they were growing fast. When I was hired they told me they would be moving to better offices in two months and they really did it. The new office was really impressive. Huge, very modern to the point it made the cover of a magazine.
My boss and her husband were the owners of the company. They were simply amazing. She was sweet, very polite and it was a pleasure to work for them. They were also very rich. In fact, she was so down to earth that it took me two months to realize that she was one of the owners of the company. It happened one day that we had a meeting with a client and she told me if I was OK to be squeezed on the back seat of her car, as another person was coming with us. I Imagined that she had one of those very small cars, but she showed up on a brand new convertible Porsche .
Little by little, we became acquainted. They invited me to have dinner one night and I was impressed by how rich they really were, They lived on a mansion, the land was so big that they had a tennis court, swimming pool and a stable with 5 horses on their land. He also was a motor enthusiast and had 9 cars. They owned a farm and a beach house in another city, even though we lived in one of the most beautiful beach cities in the world.
They made money fast because I was hired in 2007 and the company was founded in 2002 and it looked like they had a good lifestyle for some years.
They were amazing people, very humble, very calm and you would never say they had so much money just by talking to them.
I left the company by the end of 2007 because I received an offer to work in another place. I talked to them before accepting the offer, I explained my reasons and they were really supportive and told me that if I changed my mind the doors would be open.
By the end of 2008, a former colleague contacted me asking for a reference as he was leaving the company. I asked why he was leaving the company and the told me that the company had gone into receivership. Basically, they were impacted by the GFC.
They were so rich that I imagined that although the company had bankrupted they probably had a lot of savings.
I never heard from them again until 2017.
I had a health issue and I needed to see a specialist. When I got to the doctor, I was talking to the receptionist when I saw a sign with her name over her desk. (Let’s say Jennifer Parker – I’ll omit her real name). So I said to her. Hey Jennifer, what a coincidence, I had a boss with exactly the same name.
Then she told me that she was not Jennifer, that Jennifer was the other receptionist, that she worked Monday and Tuesday and Jenniffer Wednesday to Friday. I saw the doctor and two weeks later I came back for my return and when I arrived who I see working as a receptionist there? My former boss.
When she saw me she recognized me and told me that the other receptionist told what happened and when she saw my name she connected the dots.
She told me what happened to the company, basically was a problem with the contracts they made and as they weren’t able to get a new loan from the bank they could no longer keep the company and pay their debts. With that, they lost everything, not only the company but literally everything.
Their kids moved from private to public schools, they had all their cars, properties and assets confiscated and ended moving to a small apartment near the city. Her husband was able to get a new job (at nearly 60 years of age) and she had to go back to work to complement their income.
It was a huge surprise for me because you always expect that these things will happen to bad people, but never to nice people like them. They were honest, decent, hardworking, family oriented, and everybody in the office liked them.
Coincidentally I bumped into them again 3 months later in the mall. What surprised me the most is that they were able to go from a very rich to a very modest lifestyle without changing who they were. We sit together to have lunch in the food court and they were living like that was the life they always had. They were exactly the same people I met 10 years before, they were happy, making jokes with their kids (that were teenagers by then) and even when she told me what happened she didn’t do it with sadness.
I don’t know how they managed everything so well. Going through an experience like that could be very damaging, but it looks like they had a way to cope with everything.
It taught me a lesson that money can’t be trusted, life can be full of unexpected events with many things out of our control.
Starlink, a satellite constellation operated by aerospace company SpaceX, lost 212 satellites in the period spanning July 18th and September 18th, data compiled by satellitemap.space shows.
Data shows the number of burned-up satellites steadily increasing over the past three years, but a significant spike can be observed starting the month of July.
It’s unclear whether these satellites were scheduled to de-orbit or whether the burn-ups were a result of a failure. Cybernewshas reached out to SpaceX for comment but has not received a response.
Some experts questioned the accuracy of numbers posted on the tracker website, saying they appeared to be unusually high. According to satellitemap.space, its data is based on public tracking information published on space-track and elsewhere.
Starlink satellites are designed to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere at the end of their life cycle, which is approximately five years.
SpaceX started launching Starlink satellites in 2019. Over 5,000 have been sent into Earth’s lower orbit since then. Of those, about 4,500 are believed to be active.
Satellites can also be vulnerable to electromagnetic storms, with strong solar flares recorded this summer as the sun enters a period of heightened activity.
Destructive solar events have affected Starlink before. In February last year, SpaceX said it lost 40 new satellites shortly after launch because of an electromagnetic storm. When accounting for the rocket launch, it potentially cost the company about $100 million in damages.
Steak with Gorgonzola Thyme Crust
img 5811
Yield: 2 servings
Ingredients
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
2 (6 ounce) beef tenderloin or small rib eye steaks, cut 3/4 inch thick
1 large or 2 small cloves garlic, minced
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme or 1/2 teaspoon dried
1/2 cup (2 ounces) crumbled Wisconsin Gorgonzola cheese
Instructions
Heat broiler.
Spoon Worcestershire sauce over both sides of steaks; let stand for 5 minutes.
Sprinkle garlic and pepper over steaks. Place steaks on rack of broiler pan.
Broil 3 to 4 inches from heat source for 3 to 4 minutes per side for medium rare steak.
Remove pan from broiler. Sprinkle thyme, then cheese over steaks.
Return to oven and broil for 2 minutes or until cheese is golden brown.
China is Sending Armored Vehicles To Mali Africa ! U.S PANIC
Nations like Mali have been overlooked in international forums, but as China’s prominence rises, Mali has found a key ally. This video explores China’s involvement in Mali’s development and security, delving into the intricate dynamics of China’s relationship with Africa and its potential implications for the global stage.
Back in 1983, I needed an upscale cocktail dress for a cosmetic industry function. I found a delightful $1200 silk dress marked down 50% to $600. It has a tiny rip by the zipper that I could repair but it was still way over my budget. (I was a very junior marketing person at the time, so not earning great.)
I asked the sales clerk if they do better on the price due to the rip and she agreed to take another 50% off bringing it to $300. She retickets it over the original ticket and the 1st sale ticket. Still more than I could truly afford but I decided to buy it anyway.
I go to the cashier to pay and she asked me if it came off the 50% sale rack. When I said it was, she says it is 50% off and rings $150 into the register, instead of the $300, even though it had multiple sales tickets on it. Lucky me, I’m thinking.
But before I can pay, she notices the small rip and says she will deduct an extra $50 which now brings it to $100. I happily paid and left the store ASAP, just in case. Lol
And I received many compliments for my dress at the event.
Walking into a McDonald’s one morning a young couple pretty dirty living rough approached me. The young man probably mid twenties asked if I could buy his girlfriend a egg McMuffin because they only had a handful of change not enough for the sandwich. So I asked them to come to the counter with me and asked them what on the board they would eat. The young man’s eyes went wide. Told me they had not eaten in three days. I said you can have whatever you like. The both asked for the big breakfast and a juice and a milk. I told them maybe they should order the sandwich she wanted as well. they were extremely happy they thanked me. They went and sat outside ate their meals cleaned up and moved on. Maybe they don’t even remember the event in their lives. But I was satisfied that I and spent my money wisely and am still left with a good memory of a McDonald’s breakfast when I was heading to get a seniors coffee.
PLOT: Desperate to gain the affection of a beautiful co-worker, Elliot (Brendan Fraser) strikes a deal with the Devil (Elizabeth Hurley) — a drop dead gorgeous woman with a wicked sense of humor. In exchange for Elliot’s soul, she will grant him 7 wishes. But with each wish, he gets more than he asked for.
In the middle 1970’s I visited my fathers’ second cousin in Youngstown, Ohio. He had two daughters my age. And we stayed with them. Those girls were tall, blonde and nice. I’ll bet that they became amazing when they filled out and became grown women. I’ll tell you what.
They lived in a nice suburb, and it was decked out in mod 1970’s style. Silver and velvet wall paper, lots and lots of shag carpeting. A nice avocado green kitchen with wood trim, and they even had a downstairs cellar pool table. I was stunned. They were so groovy!
Times change. I know. Today, I want to dedicate some photos to the 1970’s era. Those of you that know… KNOW.
A little boy was beating on a little girl at a private school where I was working as a regular substitute teacher. None of the regular teachers were doing anything, so I went over and separated them. I was called into the office and told that touching children at their school was forbidden. I explained the situation, and they said it didn’t matter why, we were not to do it. Their ATTORNEYS had made it clear to them that no adult was to touch a child for any reason in their school building or on their property. Period. I went home and searched news services for anything that might have caused attorneys to insist that little boys be allowed to beat on little girls while teachers looked on. Yeh, there was quite a scandal, I couldn’t believe I’d never heard about it. I went into the office the next day first thing, and explained to the principal why standing by and letting that small child be physically terrorized was just as bad as what the attorneys were trying to prevent. He wouldn’t hear it. I walked out and never went back.
Peppered Beef Puffs
Beef Curry Puffs 16 768×512 1
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
Steak
2 pounds minced steak
3 eggs
1/2 cup packaged dry breadcrumbs
6 shallots
Salt, pepper
(2 ounces butter
1 pound packet puff pastry
1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon water
Mushroom Sauce
3 ounces butter
8 ounces button mushrooms
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 cup dry red wine
1 1/2 cups water
2 beef stock cubes
1/2 teaspoon basil
3 tablespoons tomato paste
Salt, pepper
Instructions
Steak
Put meat, eggs, breadcrumbs, finely chopped shallots, salt and pepper into bowl; mix well.
Divide meat into 6 equal portions. Shape into small loaves, pressing in lightly.
Heat butter in frying pan, cook loaves on all sides until golden brown, remove from pan, cool.
Cut pastry into 6 equal portions, roll out each portion to 9 x 5 inches rectangle.
Put cold meatloaf into center of each pastry strip, brush edges of pastry with egg yolk mixture.
Bake in hot oven for 10 minutes or until golden, reduce heat to moderate, cook further 15 minutes.
Serve sauce separately.
Mushroom Sauce
Heat butter in pan.
Add finely sliced mushrooms, sauté until mushrooms are tender.
Add flour, stir until combined; cook for 1 minute.
Remove pan from heat, add wine, water and crumbled stock cubes.
Return pan to heat, stir until sauce boils and thickens; season with salt and pepper.
The culture of the Han people is the biggest culture in China.
Han Chinese constitute approximately 92% of the population of China and 95% of Taiwan; 76% of Singapore, 23% of Malaysia, and about 17% of the global population – making them the world’s largest ethnic group, numbering over 1.3 billion people.
image 8
Malaysian Chinese children wearing Hanfu, to celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival in Kuala Lumpur; Sept. 24, 2023
Mandarin is the primary language of the Han people, and hence the official language of China, and with such a vast majority of the population identifying themselves as Han, you can find their influence at nearly every corner of China.
image 45
The written history of the Han people dates back to 1,000 B.C., which is one of the longest unbroken written histories in the world aside from Jewish people. The ancestral homelands of the Han, where they live in the highest concentration, are along the middle and lower parts of the Yellow River Basin, the Yangtze River basin, and the Pearl River.
With an agricultural and urban culture, it is not until recent years that you would find the Han people in mountainous or desert regions. Despite being such a large group, the Han people still share a common culture of celebrating traditional cuisine, clothing, and customs, which have been passed down from its ancient history.
All other ethnic groups – 56 officially recognized – in China outside of the Han’s are considered to be minority groups, and the largest minority in China is the Zhuang people, whose population today is around 18 million. They are mostly located in Southern China, the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
image 44
Young girls from the Zhuang ethnic group
image 7image 43
Han Chinese commemorating the 2,574th anniversary at the birthplace of Confucius in Qufu, eastern Shandong Province, China.
Chinese people tend to honour tradition, but they also embrace many parts of Western popular culture. Thanks in part to the enduring influence of Confucianism, Chinese customs include a strong sense of family, a deep respect for hierarchy, a reverence for education and an appreciation for harmony over conflict.
You used to be able to work 40 hours and rent a HOUSE.
When I first started going to college a huge 4 bedroom house that allowed pets was 1250 a month. Now its 1400 for a decent 1 bedroom apartment. A really shitty two bedroom is available for 1400 but no pets.
Just 8 years ago when I first turned 18 and moved out — you paid first and last or first and deposit to move in.
Now you have to pay first, last, full month as deposit, plus extra for the pets. If I had 5000 to move somewhere I’d be buying a house.
Two people working 45 hours plus weekend side gigs dont even make enough to clear the 1600 monthly rent necessary for our barely adequate housing for myself and our daughter. I have a Masters in administration. I didnt pick something shitty, I chose to ignore passions and get a useful degree. Every year that goes by — the decent jobs now only schedule you 31 hours, because at 32 they’re required to pay benefits. Now, if you’ve been there 5 years but you’re sick for a week, they still fire you. Because now companies dont care. They don’t know your name. They have 15 people lined up for your job.
Rent should be 30% of your income. Now? Its 85%. We pay for our food with our side gig money. We need a car for work but we share one. We have never had credit cards, because we could never even fathom spending money we dont have? So our credit, while not horrible, isnt good. We dont have enough credit nor enough savings to even consider buying a house, which are all absolutely overwhelmingly expensive even out an hour out of town. I got up to working 80+ hours a week before finally I couldn’t anymore and it was costing me raising my daughter. We never took vacations, only my daughter and dogs have insurance because it was too expensive for us adults. We cooked our own meals, we used our left overs, I meal planned for a month at a time. We had very few special occasions for treats, and I sought out all free and cheap kids fun stuff. Crafts and socializing. But then rent got higher. And higher. And I couldn’t work any more. My partner already worked an 8-6 5 days a week. I worked two jobs, 31 hours at my degreed office job. Another 45 at any restaurant that needed help.
There is NO reason two people working for above minimum wage 40+ hours a week shouldn’t be capable of buying a home. Renting shouldn’t cost all of our money. We should be allowed to have pets.
Like what the fuck.
It didnt become “suddenly acceptable “ it became UNFORTUNATELY NECESSARY.
Bedazzled Elliot has a TINY problem
Scene from the movie Bedazzled where a huge basketball star discovers he has a small penis.
Back in the late ’60s, my father, a self-employed plumber, was working in a house in a Brooklyn neighborhood that wasn’t a very good one.
My dad had no problems working in the poorer neighborhoods. He was especially compassionate about larger families in smaller homes with one bathroom.
One day, while working in a house, he found he needed some tools from his car. Some guy came up from behind him and held a knife to his neck.
“Gimme the money,” he told dad.
He rummaged through dad’s pockets.
“That’s not the money,” dad said calmly, “those are parts for my plumbing clients. My money is in my other pocket.”
As dad went to get his money, the lady of the house came running out.
“Please, mister, don’t hurt the plumber! He has to fix our toilet!” she pleaded.
“You a plumber?” The mugger asked.
”Yes,” my father answered.
“My toilet’s been broken in my apartment for weeks,” the mugger added. “The landlord won’t fix it. My kids all gotta use the neighbor’s.”
My dad said quietly, “Let me finish here and I’ll come to your house and see if I can fix yours.”
The mugger removed the knife and stepped back.
“You’d do that—for me?”
“For you and your family,” my dad said.
Dad wrote down the address and promised he’d be there soon. The mugger walked away.
The lady of the house wanted to call the police. Dad said no, not to worry. He fixed their single toilet, and, sure enough, drove to the mugger’s apartment. Dad saw a bunch of children and no working toilet. Dad fixed the problem.
The mugger shook dad’s hand and started to cry. He hugged dad and apologized over and over for trying to rob him. My dad hugged him back.
He told the mugger, “Son, if you want to really help your family, don’t keep robbing people. If you go to jail, who will help them? Try to get a job. I know it’s hard.”
My dad came home that night and told us this story over dinner. My brother and I thought our dad was losing his mind. I started to cry thinking my father was in danger.
“He could have hurt you, Daddy!”
My dad pulled me to his side. “No baby, that man wasn’t looking to hurt people. He just wanted money for his family.”
“How can you tell?” I asked.
“When he put the knife to my neck, the blade wasn’t sharp. It didn’t leave a cut. He couldn’t have cut butter with it. He was looking for help.”
My father was just like that. He was the sort who would pick up hitch hikers and swear he was going their way—even if it was really out of his way. I saw him stop a few times in the pouring rain to help people—someone changing a tire or needed a jump start for their battery. One man wanted to give dad money for helping, and dad, always with a smile, would say no.
BEIJING: The infrastructure bill touted by the Biden administration is not as wonderful as the Democrat Party claims it to be.
The US$1 trillion bill will lead the US federal government into deeper sovereign debt while creating new infrastructure projects that will take decades to complete if approved.
The government boondoggle will not free up funding immediately for the construction of new highways, bridges and railroad lines, since that requires contractors winning approvals from local, state and federal governments while they must obtain
hundreds of inspectors’ permits and support from local community activists.
Building a bridge in the United States is not a simple process even if Washington provides ample funding for it.
I had witnessed the complexities of government-back infrastructure when I lived in Dallas from 2007 to 2010 and I was assigned to cover the Dallas County Commissioners’ Court public hearing every Tuesday morning for the Dallas Blog.
You would often hear amazing ideas to construct major projects in Dallas County but then they got political. Even extending the highway a few extra miles required much public debates, while the landowners directly impacted sought big payouts from government agencies.
But that was just the beginning. Contractors made bids to compete for the project and if they lost out they hired protestors to attend the Dallas County Commissioners’ Court to give speeches claiming the new project would become an environmental hazard or harm local communities.
If Dallas County Commissioners voted in favor of the highway extension, they required an environmental impact report that took years to complete.
Most construction projects from the moment they are approved to the time contractors start building took seven to nine years.
I recall one time after two decades of waiting for approvals; contractors for a toll road extension in North Dallas were blocked from construction when an elected official at the Dallas County Commissioners’ Court announced he would block it since the leading construction firm failed to meet racial hiring quotas on the management side.
But upon closer review, I learned from County officials that the elected official allegedly was upset the contractor never gave him a donation for his re-election campaign.
I mention this tale to explain why the US will continue to struggle in playing catch up with China in regards to infrastructure. Beijing is way ahead and Washington will not be able to start construction on new projects for another few years at the earliest.
You can review the Politico article with the link HERE.
As reported by Politico:
“But a review of proposed spending in Beijing’s latest annual budget and five-year plan indicate that the U.S. faces an enormous challenge merely in keeping up. Here’s a number that is illustrative of the gap:
China poured more cement from 2011-2013 than the U.S. did in the entire 20th century.
Numbers from the National Bureau of Statistics show that China spent about $8 trillion on infrastructure investment in 2020.
The U.S. spent $146 billion in federal money over the same period.
A comparison of 2018 infrastructure spending as a percentage of GDP by 48 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries ranked China first at 5.57 percent compared to 0.52 percent for the U.S.”
In recent years, China has constructed some of the world’s finest infrastructure projects. They had built very long sea bridges, road tunnels and highways reaching to many parts of the country.
The building in China will keep going and the US will fall further and further behind.
It is impossible for Biden to have made such a statement
Impossible!!!
That’s because the US officially follows the ONE CHINA POLICY
This means China can never invade Taiwan because they are the same country
It’s like India invading Punjab tomorrow
So all US can do is to provide weapons to Taiwan and claim to help them defend themselves citing human rights and aggression
It will be like a Civil War & extension of the 1931–1949 Chinese Civil War
US in fact not fight against China at all
They will give an excuse of Chinese aggression and get ASEAN to turn against Taiwan and get the entire South China Sea nations to join a Military Alliance with the United States by SACRIFICING TAIWAN
That is the game plan of the US termed Operation Majullah coined by Pompeo in 2018
To provoke China into an invasion of Taiwan by 2023 (Assuming Trump won the election in 2020, so now 2025–2027)
To convince a terrified Philippines & Vietnam into joining US in a Military alliance and allowing NATO to expand to South East Asia
Persuading ASEAN to join NATO and finish the encircled shield against China and recommence a trade war with full cooperation of the ASEAN to hopefully break the CPC and it’s hold on China
Of course Trumps defeat has set back Operation Majullah badly because this operation assumed Russia would be close to the US under Trump (Assuming he won 2020)
Yet now Russia is firmly with China so that opens up a long trade route
Plus the world had COVID so US is economically much weaker
Plus the Ukraine war has draines the West of it’s influence and strengthened China and Russia and the BRICS
So it’s a different world now and Operation Majullah would be redundant now
“THIS IS IT! Most people have No idea what is Happening in Maui, Oprah & the Rock
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.
In the early 80’s I was Operations Officer (in charge of all non-lending, non-trust functions) of the headquarters branch of a large, state-wide bank. 80 odd branch employees on the first three floors, senior management of the region and holding company on floors 7–11.
This bank had grown and evolved from a family owned institution, and a solid chunk of the shares were still held by family members, and a number of the Directors and senior managers were related. A former President and Chairman had recently died, and his son, a Senior Vice President in charge of Commercial Lending, was his estate’s Personal Representative, but had not yet filed and received Letters of Administration. In addition, the owner keys could not be located, so it would need to be drilled.
Under our state’s laws, a safe deposit box can be opened, an inventory of contents made, and certain time-sensitive items can be removed, such as a will or life insurance policy. As a large office with a disproportionate ratio of older customers, this was something we saw with some frequency. It required the bank’s Safe Deposit Custodian (a non-officer employee), an officer, and a locksmith. Unlike normal box access, the bank representatives had to be present, go to a private room in the Safe Deposit area with the estate representative, make the inventory and insure only authorized items were removed, and then re-secure the box contents pending further legal proceedings.
Not this time. Me, the Custodian, the Senior Vice President son, the Corporate General Counsel, and a stenographer from the holding company cluster around the locksmith, who had the door open in about 30 seconds. We took the rather large size box upstairs to a Corporate conference room and opened it.
It contained this somewhat crusty old gentleman’s most precious and important documents – 40 years or so of birthday cards, Christmas cards, letters and notes to and from his wife, children and grandchildren, school papers and projects, refrigerator drawings, and family pictures. Not a single will, stock certificate, or business paper.
China can destroy any fleet anywhere in the world. Not only an American one. Not only near and around China, but anywhere.
The idea that China has the ability, technology, capability and wherewithal to destroy a complete fleet of military grade vessels is well known, well established and incorporated in contemporaneous Pentagon planning scenarios.
…
Just because China CAN, does not mean that it WILL.
After all, the United States can eliminate hunger, and homelessness overnight simply by funneling a fraction of the USA budget dedicated to Ukraine towards the needs of American citizens. But, of course that’s NEVER going to happen.
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Questions like these used to raise my ire; get me infuriated by the ignorance of those questioning the obvious, and a general fury at that the troll and ‘bot attacks that invariably follow. But now, given the utter hopelessness of the Untied States on the global stage, I just shrug my shoulders and feel pity.
It’s like this question:
Can the United States drop a nuclear weapon on Beijing?
Well. Yes it can.
But it won’t.
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Or this question:
Can the United States assassinate Alexander Putin?
Well, it can.
But it won’t.
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Or this question:
Can I force my spouse to eat dog shit?
Well, you can.
But you won’t.
…
In all the cases above, a hypothetical fantasy is generated. But the scenario will never occur where the test of validity were to be realized.
Why?
Because other factors come into play.
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So, let’s go back to the question at hand.
Can China wipe out any American fleet that sails near China?
Well, it is obvious. Of course it can.
Will it do so.
No. Other factors come into play.
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I know that there are ‘bots, teenagers, drunken misfits, and trolls that want to argue this point, but China is not stupid. It will maximize the damage through retaliatory measures it deems suitable, given the situation and scenarios that manifested.
My PERSONAL opinion is that if China sinks one fleet, it will sink them all.
The reason is simple; economies of scale.
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And that’s not all, folks.
Not by a long shot.
Sorry to say.
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So, let’s just keep our personal fantasies, and delusions to ourselves. Just because you own a shotgun, doesn’t mean that you intend to go Postal, perform a “suicide by cop” or have a Columbine mass shooting with it. Seriously. Those are just fantasies. Nothing more.
China is currently working with the United States on a wide range of issues, and as the provocations by the neocon arm of the American government subsides, so with the over all prosperity of the (remaining) American middle class increase.
Here’s “School-Smart” vs “Street-Smart” in a LEGO analogy:
School is like getting a very complex LEGO set:
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The goal: “We expect you to put this Lego together,. We will show you how to do it! Follow the instructions and you will succeed!”
So, we go from first grade through to sixth grade.
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In each grade, we get a set of instructions to follow:
For example, this is first grade:
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Attention!
If we fail to meet the required standards, we WON’T be able to move forward. If we DO meet the standards, we will be allowed to move to the next level — each level stacks upon the other, growing in complexity.
If we complete elementary, we move on to middle school, and then to high school:
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Once we successfully finish high school, we move on to college. We continue “stacking” up ALL the sets of instructions, meeting the standards.
If we don’t do it EXACTLY as expected, we will fail!
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Finally, the day comes …
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We celebrate …
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CONGRATULATIONS! We all get a “certificate” that proves we are capable of following very complex instructions.
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Then, we face the real world …
The real world is also like Lego, but with NO INSTRUCTIONS!
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We feel confused and overwhelmed. “What should I do?” we ask ourselves.
We urgently need someone to tell us what to do (boss). After all, we were all trained to FOLLOW instructions, indoctrinated, not really educated.
What’s the difference?
Indoctrination teaches us WHAT to think, not HOW to think!
So, to answer your question, why are so many smart and diligent people successful in school but fail in real life?
Being “school-smart” is radically different than being “street-smart.”
Do you want to be “street-smart?”
Consider this: We are now in an age where computers, algorithms and robots, are unbeatable at FOLLOWING instructions. If our value to the world is being good at following instructions, we then do NOT stand a chance at succeeding in today’s new economic environment.
Who will win?
“Street-Smart” in the new economy means we have extraordinary creative skills, meaning that we can innovate and think “outside the box.”
Creativity CANNOT be automated!
Computers, robots and algorithms CANNOT compete with us in creativity. Well, at least not yet …
Schools MUST stop “standardizing” us. We are all different and that’s where success comes from, from our unique abilities and strengths that make us stand out in this competitive world.
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We now live in a very different world. Our educational system was built and perfected to serve the Industrial Age. The Industrial Age was all about competing with efficiencies. Following instructions with excellence increased productivity. Today that work belongs to machines, not to us.
Today the world belongs to CREATORS!
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There are NO instructions ahead of us! The way we solved things yesterday is now outdated. Change is only accelerating.
The sooner we understand this, the better chance we all have at succeeding in this world of exponential change.
THE REAL REASONS WE LEFT THE UNITED STATES (and why we can’t move back)
We left the United States for several reasons, but only one prevents us from ever moving back. Are we upset about it? NO! Our only regret is not leaving SOONER!
Absolutely not the best to live in, I would say it’s the worst developed country to live in.
Life for most people is about work, just running a hamster wheel hoping not to slip or you will be climbing out a hole. I remember life being a rat race just staying afloat and never catching a break. I imagine wealthy people don’t experience this but when 80% of the country are living paycheck to paycheck, obviously that’s not a good sign.
Food prices are triple sometimes four times more expensive than what I have paid in Western Europe for the same goods. Yet our minimum wage is significantly lower, so when 1 hours minimum wage barely covers a couple items of groceries, imagine how those families are feeling the sting for housing, water, utilities. Many 1 bedroom apartments cost more than an entire 1 month minimum wage.
You will prioritize work over family, because there is little choice in the matter.
So little choice because a social safety net is not available to help you, I’ve exhausted this option to death on hard times and it just wasn’t there. All I got was a lot of wasted time and disappointment.
Healthcare, higher education, child care is exhorbitant, they will drain your disposable income, along with the high costs of basic things that Americans believe they are getting a great deal for, for example in UK you get higher speed internet for a fraction of the price an American pays, I have cable with lots of channels, WiFi, and landline for £40 a month, my mom has the same with less channels for over $169 a month (that was 2014 prices).
The worst part of living in the US is the limited choices for people at the bottom, social mobility is low. There is this illusion you can make your life anything you want, this is available to the well connected and rich but it’s sold off as something all Americans can achieve through hard work and it’s not obtainable.
Another issue is just existing in the US is a price. If I don’t want to be homeless and totally ostracized by society, I have to pay a price…just the act of existing means I must pay for health care at the very least. If you happen to fall on difficult times, the fines, fees, interest, just pile up and it consumes you. I compare it to someone piling rocks on your chest and sternum to your lungs collapse. The thought of trying to maintain a bare minimum life style while problems are karate chopping you from all angles is exhausting.
In the 2.5 years I lived in the UK, at my very worst I have never felt this level of despair and hopelessness. If I allow myself to slightly remember my past in the US, the whole thought conjures up loads of anxiety, and resentment.
The USA is NOT Letting Citizens Renounce
What you didn’t mention and should have mentioned is that the US is one of only 4 countries in the world who taxes their citizens no matter where they live or where they make their income. So the obvious reason the US is rejecting renunciation of US citizenship is to keep wealthy international businessman from escaping this always/everywhere tax system.
My father and I were just chatting and he offhandedly said he wasn’t an educated man. I said “Not formally but you’ve had a great practical education.” He said “What do you mean?” Dad had left school after the 8th grade but had worked for a company that provided the equipment to move water, pumps and pipelines and such for many years. I asked “If you have a pipe 18” in diameter under a pressure of 15 pounds per square inch, how many gallons of water a minute are you moving?” He looked at me a moment, stared off into space for another moment and then gave me a number. I smiled and said “See? I’d have to dig out my textbooks and calculator to get an answer and you just did that in your head! Serious practical education!” I think he was pleased at my expression of respect.
G7 is in denial. According to them BRICS is a “gang that can’t shoot straight” due to the fact that “all members have their own individual interests”.
They even fail to realize what this sort of criticism says about their “rules based order” where everybody is supposed to jump or run on command, regardless of own interests, and they have a nerve to call it freedom and democracy.
Giant lights flame: and check out Taiwan team’s arrival
When my wife was diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer, I found out the worth of money.
It allowed me to buy time with my wife. She was given an 18 month prognosis by her Gynocological Oncologist. (Don’t be ashamed if you didn’t know that was a medical specialty, I didn’t either in April of 2016 when we met Dr. Steven Andrews. Now, his name goes to any woman who might need it.) She and I resolved to fight her cancer for two reasons:
To have as much quality time as possible.
For whatever her fight could teach her team for the NEXT woman.
We knew there were limits to what insurance would pay. I accepted them, she wasn’t so sanguine. There were a couple of times she begged me not to go on because of what we were spending. I firmly said NO.
In the end, due to the medical miracles Dr. Andrews and his team pulled out of their collective asses on a regular basis, Andrea’s 18 months became over 4 years. I held her hand when she took her last breath, kissed her cooling forehead, and called the home Hospice nurse to pronounce her death officially.
The cost? 85% of our retirement savings. I will be living most of the rest of my life on Social Security. The worth? As the MasterCard commercials say: PRICELESS. She and I made memories together in many different ways, many of them during the time we weren’t supposed to get. Yes, hers are gone, but mine remain, and that is worth everything to me. I knowingly spent the money to keep her beside me as long as she was willing to fight.
And Dr. Andrews may be a step closer to saving another lady later. I know he’ll give many more extra time with their loved ones.
I bought time, and it was worth incalculablely more than the money I spent.
I’m sure you are aware, but I don’t live in Malaysia. I’ve only had the privilege of visiting thus far. While in Kuala Lumpur, which I assume qualifies as a large city, I was very taken with the architecture. In my opinion, it was like a mosaic of old and new. Colonial and modern. Malay, Chinese, and Indian. Some bright and colorful like the Chinese temples, others somber and stately like the buildings from colonial days, others bright and shiny like the Merdeka building and the Petronas towers.
I can’t deny that some streets could do with some cleaning and anti-littering campaigns. But I also don’t expect perfection from a developing country and I certainly shouldn’t complain when I am a guest in the country and treated with such kindness from hotel staff and Grab drivers, to dear friends I cherish. Without fail I was made to feel welcome. Who am I to judge?
If you are bothered by messy streets then I have a few suggestions. First, you could organize meetings to mobilize people in the area to have a community beautification day where any able bodies who are willing could pick up trash, sweep the streets, and make minor repairs to building fronts. Secondly, you could print and pass out pamphlets highlighting the importance of a clean community environment for the sake of disease prevention. Third, petition the government for funds to revitalize and gentrify the area and to pay more people for trash collection. In my state the cities employ people for the purpose of landscaping and garbage disposal. I’m not sure how that works in Malaysia though.
If none of that helps then move. Seriously. If you are unhappy and uncomfortable there’s no reason to stay. And the people around you likely don’t appreciate the complaints without action.
Well, that means the virtual party cost about $66,667 per attendee.
Does this inspire you with confidence about how skilfully the EU will manage its budget around the Global Gateway? Do you even feel sure that the EU will actually build any infrastructure in the real world – as opposed to imaginary party venues in the Metaverse?
At the moment, it is meaningless to speak of the EU Global Gateway competing with China’s BRI. They are just not doing the same sorts of things. China is building mega-sized ports, bridges, highways and railways. The EU is holding online parties for six pax.
I didn’t actually witness it, but, saw the aftermath. My youngest daughter was a bit reserved and quiet. She had a lot of friends, though and they nicknamed her “Chipper”.
One day I got a call from the Dean of Girls at her junior high school asking if I could come in. When I got there the first thing I saw was two hall lockers (the tall upright ones) with the doors caved in.
The Dean told me that some of the boys had been getting grabby.
“Chipper” was talking with some friends in the hall when a passing boy grabbed her breast. She never said a word, she grabbed him by the throat and proceeded to try to throw him through a locker twice.
The Dean said, when she got there, the boy was crumpled on the floor with my daughter standing over him daring him to get up.
I said: “I’m proud of her. But, I’m willing to pay for the damages.”
The Dean smiled and told me the boy’s parents were on the way and they were going to pay for the damages.
When I picked my daughter up to ride home. I said: “You made a bit of a mess”. She said: “He had it coming.”
I said: “You’re right. How about we stop for ice cream?”
As a Christian man, back in my Asian church, I never struggled with lust for women because I’m not really attracted to Asian women but at my new church with a lot of different ethnicities, I’m really struggling with lust for women. What should I do?
Become a Muslim and marry four of them and have children with each of them.
When China had no navy or air force, the U.S. Army and Marine Corps would dare to cross Yalu River in North Korea. After China has an air force, the United States only dares to sit across the 17 degrees north latitude. After China’s naval and air rocket forces are formed, we don’t have any more problems dealing with the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. The Marine Corps is currently developing a hypersonic missile to increase its presence in Japan and South Korea. The question is, aren’t fixedly deployed missile bases vulnerable to missile bombings? When the island and the mainland China fire missiles at each other, which one suffers more? As a result, the Air Force basically has no chance in the Western Pacific. Warships can still run away, but aircraft are really useless. Guam was immediately taken care of by first wave of Dongfeng 26.
local wars require detailed analysis. If it is a protracted all-out war, the United States will be exhausted. No matter how profitable the financial industry is, a real fight still depends on how many tons of steel are produced.The Chinese and American militaries are the only militaries in the world that have completed information transformation and have begun to move towards intelligent and unmanned armies. The problem with the U.S. military is that it wants to integrate the entire U.S. military into a digital command system. As a result, various practical factors and historical problems have made it bloated and complicated. The Chinese military is relatively late due to its military reform, confidentiality system and informatization changes. The outside world has always been blind to the internal situation of the military and has only a partial understanding. Although more and more new equipment and new technologies are being exposed, the People’s Liberation Army itself is becoming more and more mysterious.
Taking the 1998 flood fight and the 1998 earthquake fight as examples, we can intuitively understand the PLA’s combat readiness and mobilization status and shortcomings. With the improvement of the country’s comprehensive strength, the military no longer needs to be on the front line all the time. After all, the COVID-19 epidemic is just a glimpse, and it is more of a big test for politics and society. China is the only industrialized country in the world with all industrial categories, and it continues to invest in upgrading industrial capabilities. The marginal costs brought about by large-scale production are reduced, and a large number of engineering talents continue to promote technological progress and efficiency innovation while solving one problem after another. We can regard the COVID-19 epidemic as a global biological and chemical war waged by USA. China has not only demonstrated unparalleled industrial advantages and political mobilization advantages, but also exposed some problems. As the “lighthouse of the world”, the United States wanted to show off, but its butt was exposed. The war has extended from a battle of blood and fire to a comprehensive contest of technology, political system, population quality, industrial system, culture and public opinion. The boundaries between the military and civilians are gradually blurring. War is no longer the exclusive preserve of military personnel. Everyone is colliding in the whirlpool of the emergency times. We firmly believe that in the end, it is people who determine the victory of a war .
(1) Army confrontation in local wars
Assuming that armies of US and China engage in one on one decisive battle. When we read the report of US patriot performance is really rubbish. On our hand we have these weapon.
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PHL-191, a long-range guided rocket, can be equipped with 370mm guided rockets and 760mm tactical missiles.
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The Huolong 280A tactical missile has a double-cone warhead, commonly known as a water-floating bomb. The existing air defense system cannot effectively intercept it. You think rockets are fired at each other, but they are actually derailed missiles bullying the “patriots”
Strategic Bureau Chief created top ten ranking of weapon each country, US weapon rank first in all category except rocket launcher, no matter how the US try to deceive US, we know truth.
In other words, if it is an army duel alone, it will be on a battlefield of 100-500 kilometers. The U.S. Army can only be bombed unilaterally.
(2) Air Force comparison
In terms of overall combat strength, air power has always been the core of the US offensive. Even as the navy most favored by Congress, the core of offense is still aircraft carrier-based aircraft.After equipping the complete J-20 and J-16 series with WS15, the Chinese Air Force is the only one capable of fighting against the U.S. Air Force. At this stage, the Chinese Air Force is only transforming from homeland defense to peripheral offense. Relying on military bases deployed around the world, the U.S. Air Force can achieve global strikes. The United States dismantled the F22 production line and concentrated on producing the F35. Today, after the J-20 was put into service in batches, it is a stupid move. But there were no problems at the time. The original design intention of the F22 was to hunt the Su-27 on the battlefield in Eastern Europe. However, as an air superiority fighter, the F22 does not have ground bombing capabilities. The mission of the U.S. Air Force is to seize air superiority and then blow up all obstacles in front of it. The Army is responsible for cleaning up the battlefield. Just like the Gulf War. This is will need an in depth analysis after this article, i will write about air battle between J-20 and F-35. I will also write a comprehensive J-20 reception anything related to J-20 after this article.
(3) Navy comparison
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To be honest before 055 destroyed entered service, the chinese navy has no chance of winning a navy combat.
The 055 changed everything, or to be more precise, it was the YJ-21 hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missile carried by the 055.
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With a range of thousands of kilometers, the 055 destroyer is no longer the escort of the aircraft carrier, but the firepower center of the fleet. Instead, carrier-based aircraft only need to focus on driving away enemy fighters and cruise missiles. The 112-unit vertical launch system of the 055 itself was originally designed for air defense and anti-submarine warfare. When the electromagnetic catapult aircraft carrier and the J-35 enter service and become combat effective, the PLA naval fleet will form a dual-core attack queue. At that time, nuclear power was no longer enough. conventional ballistic missile The United States has been researching stealth anti-ship missiles over the years, but the cost of developing them is too high, and the U.S. Navy has never been equipped with them. Ten years ago, there were no surface ships that could threaten the Navy. As a result, they have been making do with subsonic anti-ship missile. To put it bluntly, except for strategic nuclear submarines that launch nuclear warheads. Submarines have always been a hobby of second-rate navies. Only in a silent ambush in a fixed water area is there a chance of winning. Once targeted by a destroyer or anti-submarine aircraft, it can only be passively beaten. Therefore, the role of German submarines in World War II was not to confront the British and American navies head-on, but to intercept merchant ships.
Now the Fujian ship is about to undergo sea trials. If the Ford aircraft carrier has not solved the reliability problem of the electromagnetic ejection and arresting device after the Fujian ship is put into service and has achieved combat effectiveness, it will be really a reverse event, we will have the upperhand.
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Academician Ma Weiming. Academician Ma recently issued a document that our country needs to build a new type of warship, a nuclear-powered all-purpose ship that integrates electromagnetic guns, laser weapons, microwave weapons, all-electric propulsion systems, and comprehensive management systems, and is also equipped with two electromagnetic ejection tracks to launch unmanned ships. Man-machine. Of course, this kind of warship is indispensable for its electronic warfare system.
(4) Mainland coastline versus islands and aircraft carrier battle groups
Put aside the Grand Theater Chess. The most likely local war between China and the United States is in the Western Pacific, that is, around taiwan island. In the ten years from 2010 to 2020, the equipment of China’s navy and air force has made a complete leap forward. And many people who don’t care about current affairs still have their mindset of the last century.
With the Rocket Force’s hypersonic missiles, the Air Force’s fifth-generation electronic warfare aircraft and long-range supersonic anti-ship missiles, the Navy’s aircraft carriers and 055 large-scale drive and the sea-based hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missile Eagle 21, and combat support long-range early warning radar space-based reconnaissance With the launch of satellites, the area within 1,000 kilometers of China’s coastline has become an absolute military restricted area. 1,000 to 4,000 kilometers is China’s advantageous area for firepower projection. The decisive factor is the range of the ballistic missile.
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Dongfeng 17 not only glides in the atmosphere to avoid all existing anti-missile systems, but more importantly, it is low cost.
Dongfeng 17 uses the propeller of Dongfeng 16 to glide through the atmosphere to reach a range close to that of Dongfeng 21 , so the manufacturing cost is low. In recent years, China has made breakthroughs in the integrated molding technology of solid rocket motor fuel, which no longer requires manual carving and decoration of gunpowder pillars. Production costs have been significantly reduced, and the result is that ballistic missiles have become the price of cabbage, and Dongfeng 17 has begun to serve in large quantities. Unfortunately, Dongfeng 31 and Dongfeng 41 are too big, so they can only rely on manual modification of the gunpowder pillars.If the production cost of intercontinental ballistic missiles is reduced much in the future and waverider warheads and scramjet engines can be used, the picture will be so beautiful.When the Dongfeng missiles of the Rocket Force and the YJ-21 of the Navy and Air Force can effectively destroy the aircraft carrier fleet, the only one problem left is positioning.The simplest way to locate an aircraft carrier is to send a ship to follow it. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union’s strategy to deal with the U.S. aircraft carrier fleet was to use destroyer tracking and anti-ship missile saturation attacks.
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Of course, during wartime, the aircraft carrier fleet spreads out and starts attacking hundreds of kilometers away, so tracking is only a last resort.Therefore, there are shore-based long-range early warning radars , space-based reconnaissance satellite patrols, underwater submarine patrols with unmanned underwater vehicles, large-scale early warning aircraft in the air, stealth unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, and even electromagnetic signal reconnaissance. Ballistic missiles themselves can also serve as reconnaissance vehicles. In short, use all means to locate the enemy’s coordinates. Similarly, the farther away from the coastline, the fewer means of reconnaissance, and the more difficult it is for the aircraft carrier to accurately locate it. It’s just that the aircraft carrier loses its threat to land when it is far away from the coastline. And China’s aircraft carrier fleet has broken away from the barriers of the land air force and rocket force, and the danger has also greatly increased.Aircraft carriers at sea can still operate, but air force bases, naval ports and missile launch sites on land can only be named one by one as long as they are within the missile range.
(5) Hypersonic ballistic missiles
In the 1990s, China is fully engaged in research on ballistic missiles under tremendous pressure of the superiority of US airforce and US navy. At last, the double-cone Dongfeng 21D with air rudder was built, making it a reality for ballistic missiles to maneuver against surface ships at the end. Then the Dongfeng 26 was further developed to cover Guam. Then the epoch-making Eagle Strike 21 was developed, which allowed surface ships and aircraft to carry ballistic anti-ship missiles, completely changing the rules of war.
There are currently three technical paths for hypersonic ballistic missiles. Biconical warheads, waverider warheads and scramjets. The double-cone warhead can significantly increase the range and terminal maneuverability of the missile when it re-enters the atmosphere. In the 1980s, the United States used biconical warheads in Pershing medium-range ballistic missiles, but they were not water-floating warheads. They were retired after the United States and the Soviet Union signed a treaty limiting intermediate-range ballistic missiles. North Korea and the Houthis have also tested biconical warheads.
Although it is not a hypersonic ballistic missile, it can achieve terminal limited orbit changes, which greatly increases the difficulty of interception by anti-missile systems. Currently, only China and Russia have biconical hypersonic ballistic missiles in active service. Russia currently only has one “Dagger”. On the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield, russia conducted targeted clearing and attacks on the “Patriot” air defense system.
It is obvious that Russia does not have much equipment and can only use it sparingly. The hypersonic ballistic missile that the United States is closest to successfully testing is also a biconical warhead. Yes, the United States has no active hypersonic ballistic missiles. That’s why he is so passive. Asfor the waverider warhead in active service, only China’s Dongfeng 17 is publicly available. According to public information, Dongfeng 17 does not fly out of the atmosphere after launch, but begins to glide laterally at the edge of the atmosphere, with a maximum speed of Mach 10 and an attack speed of Mach 5 at the end. The special thing about Dongfeng 17 is that it avoids the detection and attack range of the current mid-course anti-missile system, and its ultra-high mobility makes the terminal anti-missile system completely unable to intercept.
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What is inconsistent with Qian Xuesen’s trajectory is that the Dongfeng 17 does not fly out of the atmosphere. It also has a vector nozzle that can maneuver laterally. Even if a missile launch is detected during the boost phase, the impact point cannot be predicted and it is even more difficult to track when maneuvering without thrust. As for rocket scramjet engines, China, the United States and Russia are all in the research stage. Traditional rocket engines come with their own fuel and oxidizer. The ramjet engine introduces compressed air into the rocket engine combustion chamber to save fuel. The problem is that the engine first requires rocket combustion to accelerate to supersonic speed and then start the sub-burn or super-burn engine. The best performance range of sub-fuel engines is around Mach 3, and the best performance range of scram engines is around Mach 5. Therefore, the best combination is the engine composite design rocket plus sub-burning and super-burning, three forms. Or accelerate the aircraft to supersonic speed and release the sub-fuel and super-fuel engine. July last year, China’s Northwestern Polytechnical University completed a multi-modal test of a ramjet engine.
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Now you know why USA sanction NPU and hack NPU website.
(6) industrial competition under total war.
If we reach the stage of total war, the logic of war will shift industrial potential into industrial military. United states has completely failed on this.
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The U.S. Congress has been requiring the U.S. Navy to speed up the manufacture of new surface ships and purchase at least three of the latest model “Arleigh Burke” class destroyers every year. However, the U.S. Navy still submitted the purchase of two ships in the budget list for fiscal year 2024. Planning Check.
McCord, the U.S. military’s top budget official, said that’s because U.S. shipyards are barely able to build two destroyers a year, let alone three. In 2022, the United States will actually have only one Burke-class destroyer in service. China has 3 055 destroyers and 4 052D destroyers in service. The reason behind it is actually very simple.
In 2022, the total tonnage of U.S. shipbuilding will be 600,000 tons, including approximately 100,000 tons of new warship tonnage. 2022, China’s total shipbuilding tonnage will be 40 million tons, accounting for 55% of the world’s total tonnage. In 2022, nine large warships with a capacity of 150,000 tons will be commissioned. The world’s total crude steel output in 2022 will be 1.8785 billion tons, of which China’s output will be 1.013 billion tons, accounting for nearly 54%. The United States is the fourth largest steel producer in the world, with a crude steel output of slightly more than 80 million tons, and the EU alone is less than 220 million tons. In 2022, India’s crude steel output will be 125.1 million tons. in 2022, China’s power generation capacity will be 8,534.25 billion kilowatt hours (excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan), a year-on-year increase of 9.7%; the United States’ power generation capacity will be 4,115.54 billion kilowatt hours, a year-on-year decrease of 1.4%.China’s railway mileage will be 155,000 kilometers in 2022, including 42,000 kilometers of high-speed rail. In 1916, the operating mileage of railways in the United States reached its peak, reaching 410,000 kilometers. Now, there are only more than 220,000 kilometers of railway mileage left in the United States. In 2021, the total railway freight volume in China was 4,773.72 million tons, and the total railway freight volume in the United States was 12.026 million tons. It is clear that the total mileage of American railways is longer, but the freight capacity is hundreds of times different. On the one hand, there is a gap in demand for industrial raw materials such as coal, iron ore. On the one hand, American railways are in disrepair, and their transportation efficiency cannot be improved. There were 868 rail freight derailments in the United States in 2021.
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The weakening of basic industrial strength has hindered the progress of military industry. In the field of hypersonic ballistic missiles, which the United States is eager to catch up with, test launches of biconical missiles often fail. It is normal for weapons tests to fail. What is abnormal is the reason for the failure, such as launcher failure or rocket engine starting failure. Just like the Ford aircraft carrier, the electromagnetic ejection failure is understandable, after all, it is a new technology. It makes no sense that the weapon lifts frequently malfunction. After the Russo-Ukrainian War, it is not surprising that the United States turned to South Korea to produce 155mm artillery shells. In a total war, the first wave consumes active weapons, equipment and personnel. The rest depends on the reproduction capacity of weapons and the ability to mobilize personnel. Today, only the aviation industry can retain the face of American industry. The reason why we skipped the air force earlier is that in the Western Pacific, the air force must rely on the flight runways of air force bases on islands. As soon as the war started, the Rocket Force focused on taking care of them. they have room to take off. The only place that can allow the U.S. Air Force to exert its full strength is the United States itself.
F35 Production Line
Although the Boeing 737 max has brought shame to the United States, Boeing factories have repeatedly reported that workers’ quality has deteriorated due to marijuana use. Before the epidemic, Boeing produced more than 800 passenger planes per year. Lockheed Martin’s F35 production is also above 150 aircraft per year.
For comparison, China delivered its first passenger aircraft C919 last year, and plans to have a production capacity of 150 aircraft in five years. The J-20 production capacity is estimated to be 30-50 aircraft. Where are the limitations? Training of production line and industrial workers. Taken together, in local wars, China has an absolute advantage in East Asia. China’s ocean-going offensive capabilities are improving, but the United States still has the advantage on blue ocean war. It is only a matter of time before China’s industrial strength is finally transformed into military strength in a full-scale war.
Therefore, the United States has been fanning the flames around China and constantly provoking, but it does not want to enter the war by itself. It is best to replicate the situation in Ukraine, with South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Australia resisting harm from the front, and the United States standing behind and selling arms. Once China puts on a desperate posture, the US military will retreat on its own. In a total war, China will win the final victory, but it will only be a miserable victory. The United States has been standing still for 20 years. Even if China’s military technology keeps up, there is still a huge gap in weapons inventory.
The United States wants China to enter the conflict in 2025, stimulate the return of financial capital to the United States, and take over the supply of U.S. debt. China wants to delay it until 2030, or at least until 2027, and is ready to defeat others without a fight.
China is actually the only country in the world today that is preparing for a world war.
The whole industrial category system manufacturing is not to brag, but to always be prepared to fight against the entire world in an isolated and helpless situation. It is no exaggeration to say that even in the event of a full-scale nuclear war, China can rely on strategic reserves to recover quickly. China’s history is too long and its imprint is too deep.
(7) Informatization
As the pioneer of the Internet revolution, the US military is undoubtedly the leader in military informatization. The Gulf War shocked the whole world. Traditional armies were powerless to fight back against armies empowered by information technology . What is informatization?
Basically, soldiers are networked together and commanded in a unified way. US the only army back then who have this ability because at that time china Without an information-based society, there would be no information-based military. Just like there is no industrialized society without an industrialized army. Because of the core position of the military, although advanced systems and advanced technological weapons will be the first to be used in the military, without a responsive social environment, the military will also be dragged down by social realities and become a castle in the air. For example, the Chinese army has established a modern army by learning from the German-Russian military system and through its own exploration.
However, the confrontation with the world’s largest industrial country on the Korean battlefield completely exposed China’s weakness in industrial strength and lack of professional military logistics support. On the ChangJin Lake battlefield, the volunteer soldiers who were short of ammunition, food, and clothing relied on their tactical proficiency and revolutionary will tempered by blood and fire to cut off the retreat of the US Cavalry Division at all costs.
After blowing up the Watergate Bridge three times, the U.S. military air-dropped steel beam components urgently customized in Japan to the battlefield. After engineers urgently installed them with engineering equipment, the main force of the U.S. military retreated smoothly.
Thirty years later, after arduous industrial construction, China has initially established a basic heavy industry system. In 1979, the People’s Liberation Army, which had been lacking training for a long time, faced the Vietnamese army. The quality and command of its individual soldiers were significantly different from those in the early days of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, and they were even inferior to the enemy. But the military-industrial system established showed great progress.
That is, the density of artillery fire exceeds that of the US military at that time. our army is not a volunteer army. In the subsequent two-mountain battle, the major military regions will conduct fire mainly with artillery firing. After the reform and opening up, China transformed from a planned economic system to a market economy, and the society transformed from an agricultural society to a modern industrial society. We thought we catch up.
So when the trend of informatization was revealed in front of the Chinese military, how anxious it was at that time. We experienced hundreds of years of suffering when we were left behind in the industrialization era. Will we continue to fall behind in the information age? Back to the basic concept, what is informatization? The definition given by data scientist Shannon: “Information is something used to eliminate random uncertainty.” Definition of information war: It is a full-scale war carried out under the premise of network digitization and the extensive use of information technology and information weapons and equipment. The specific battlefield performance is-destroy upon discovery.
For example, in a war simulation game, our teammates and enemy units can directly communicate with each other and cooperate with each other in real time on the small map without any barriers. It is extremely difficult to achieve on the actual battlefield. Indian air defense systems shot down their own rescue helicopters, and Iranian air defenses shot down civilian airliners. Identification of friend or foe is still a big problem today. Fortunately, China has caught up with the information age. Although we now criticize Lenovo, NetEase, Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, etc., at that historical stage, these companies were undoubtedly the promoters of China’s information society. Huawei, BOE, Changxin, SMIC, BYD, DJI, MiHoYo, etc. The only possible Information war happened is when a war between USA and China broke out. Because only China and the United States have complete information industries in the world today. The United States uses Internet social tools to cause destruction around the world, while China builds walls and engages in Internet social governance. Other countries have no choice but to surrender the Internet and let the situation go unchecked. During the war disconnecting the Internet means completely losing the possibility of victory. China has benefited from an unprecedented wave of industrialization in the new century, and computers and mobile phones have begun to spread on a large scale. After 2010, society began to enter the mobile Internet era again. People realize that the so-called informatization is the “Internet of Everything”, the ultimate integration of the Internet and the Internet of Things. The popularization of sensors, mobile terminals and communication technologies has generated massive amounts of data, and big data applications have been born in order to process these data. Big data processing has promoted the progress of artificial intelligence (AI algorithm). In the past, the United States bullied small countries, but it actually did not reflect the power of informatization. The Russia-Ukraine war is also known as the “poor man’s version of information war.” First, the Ukrainian army used the US “Starlink satellite” to access NATO’s reconnaissance system. After the reconnaissance satellite long-range early warning aircraft discovered the Russian target, it sent the message to the frontline commander of the Ukrainian army team. The Ukrainian army team decided on its own to ambush the target. There is also the fact that the Russian military uses mobile phones to access the Ukrainian telecommunications network for communication, which is simply a living target. In the early days of the war, a large part of the casualty rate among Russian officers was related to miscomunication. The reason is not complicated. There is no digital communication equipment between Russian military tanks – this is not a problem due to lack of money but because without any concept of information technology. However, Russia is still good at learning war in war. Immediately carry out targeted electromagnetic interference. “Starlink” communications and electronic reconnaissance are greatly reduced. On the one hand, it reflects Russia’s profound accumulation of electronic technology, and on the other hand, it also illustrates Russia’s lack of war awareness – what has it been doing so long ago. A person who is fond of fighting but not good at preparation will only gain his progress after suffering losses.
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“Murmansk-BN” integrated electronic warfare system. As the main combat equipment of the Russian army’s electronic warfare, this system can perform strong electromagnetic suppression on targets within 20 frequencies within 5,000 kilometers.
Russia and Ukraine use a large number of drones for battlefield reconnaissance and calibration, plus a large number of artillery pieces left by the Soviet Union. The cannon has the same barrel, but its power has been increased by several levels. Because of the massive smuggling of a certain civilian four-copter drone from a large Eastern country, Russia densely arranged a large number of frontline observation points in front. How dense is it? The drones on both sides can collide with each other. The battlefield that was originally filled with the fog of war became transparent. On the one hand, the whole world was watching the war live broadcast. On the one hand, any tank concentration and assault on either side will inevitably lead to a salvo of artillery fire from the by opposite side.
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Last year, the Russian T72 crossed the river and was set on fire by artillery.
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This year, the Leopard 2 tanks and Bradley armored vehicles assisted by NATO were attacked by the Ukrainian army without air defense. They were greeted by Russian mines, artillery, Lancet cruise missiles, and armed helicopters in turn.
The mine-protected vehicles assisted by NATO can only protect against roadside bombs, and can only be penetrated by the Russian army’s large number of mines.
Now the Russian army has even played tricks, using cheap shuttles to attach mines, grenades, and RPG warheads to carry out suicide attacks in VR.
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The thousands of FPV quad-rotor drones purchased by the Russian army cost about 1,000 per unit, and it is cheaper to procure parts and assemble them from Shenzhen Huaqiangbei.
Comparing it to the Russian military’s own Lancet cruise missile, which costs US$100,000, it seems like it costs nothing.
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The tanks and bayonets that military fans imagine, and the T80 vs. Leopard 2, cannot be realized on a battlefield where they are immediately destroyed upon discovery. The reason why Russia and Ukraine are called the poor people’s information war. For a big country, this kind of random flying of four-axis drones should not occur on the battlefield. Whether it’s electromagnetic suppression, laser irradiation, or anti-aircraft artillery. For China, even if its drones collide, it can still drown the opponent with its terrifying production capacity.
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The Land Shield 3000 close-in defense gun is a modification of the 1130 close-in defense gun on a warship to an armored vehicle, with 11 Gatling tubes and 12,000 rounds per minute. Can intercept missiles up to Mach 4.
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Although the US military does not pay attention to the army’s air defense system, you cannot say that it does not exist.
Ground-based electronic warfare systems are as dazzling to the Air Force’s electronic warfare aircraft as search lights in the night sky, waiting for them with an anti-radiation missile. Russia and Ukraine have been fighting fiercely for a year, and the air force has completely become a cheerleader. The Russian air force has the advantage but did not destroy the Ukrainian army’s air base and air defense system in the first time. It probably has no money. It has never gained control of the air, and the Russian Ka-52 only launched the “Vortex” anti-tank missile at the ultimate range of 10 kilometers when fighting the Leopard 2. The Russian military’s annual military expenditure of 80 billion US dollars is probably a lot of propaganda. There is also a question mark on where the US$50 billion in US aid to Ukraine was spent. Is it really written off? No way? Why are their firepower are so low?
One thing that can be mentioned is that the United States is the pioneer of the information-based military. A large number of digital combat systems and joint combat systems have been developed. Basically, each military service has one set, and the theater joint command has another set. Later, in order to solve the problem of too many vertical layers, insufficient horizontal interconnection, and poor ability to identify friend or foe, the US Global Command and Control System (GCCS) was developed.
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Found the problem? Although it looks very cool, the US military has always wanted to develop a system, which is a center to command thousands of troops. Under the system with American characteristics, the sea, air, and ground forces compete for military spending. Unified command is inherently troublesome. On the battlefield in Iraq, there were situations where the presidential envoy, theater headquarters and military commanders were competing for command. Who would listen at this time? The final result may be that everyone listens to no one, and everyone goes their own way. Anyone who has been exposed to the project code knows that no matter how simple a system is at the beginning, it will be iterated over time, functions will be improved and hardware will be updated. In the end, it will pile up into a “hill of shit”. Imagine that when you sit in the position of the President of the United States and issue instructions to the nuclear base, you may need to broadcast signals. To issue orders to the Seventh Fleet Anti-Submarine Group – the Japanese Navy, a fax machine is required, and to issue orders to the Air Force’s F22 and F35 requires separate arrangements. Because the data links of different production years are incompatible, what about upgrading the F22? It couldn’t be done, because after the suspension of production, Lockheed Martin directly dismantled the production line to save costs. Where is the contradiction? The original design of the American command system is for an order to go directly to the soldiers. The soldiers do not need to think, they can just obey the orders. But an army is made up of individuals. Soldiers, officers, military services, theater commanders, the Department of Defense, and the White House all have their own agendas. A $1,000 coffee pot, tens of thousands of dollars of warship toilets, $6 million of Italian goats, and trillions of dollars of bad debts are expectable.
(8) Intelligent and unmanned – the battlefield heading into the future
While information warfare is still being hotly debated, military changes in the new era of intelligence and unmanned warfare have arrived.
The predator swarm drones in the “Wandering Earth 2” are smarter and more maneuverable than in reality.
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Question: In the movie, when the J-20 and Su-57 take off at the same time, why do the drones chase the Su-57?
The two-seat version of the J-20 has begun to be developed, and together with the unmanned wingman, it constitutes the development direction of the new era.
UAV reconnaissance, guiding fire strikes; blasting minefields, EOD robots quickly clear minefields; commandos launch attacks, UAVs cooperate with fixed-point blasting; in addition, robot dogs go out to conduct reconnaissance, and no one Vehicles accompany the support… A combined brigade of the Army’s 80th Group Army conducted an all-element combined battalion real-force confrontation exercise. Multiple types of unmanned equipment were unveiled, and human-vehicle collaborative training was carried out.
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Combined with the recent Ukrainian battlefield, the Ukrainian counterattack was tortured by landmines before it reached the Russian defense line. But for Zelensky, mobilizing troops may not be worth as much as unmanned vehicles. However, new smart landmines will be more widely used in the future, including automatic reconnaissance and friend-or-foe identification, automatic leaping overhead attacks, and one landmine can control hundreds of square meters of battlefield. Anti-smart landmines have become a new topic.
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At the 2022 Zhuhai Air Show, the VT5U foreign trade light tank on display carries an unmanned reconnaissance aircraft and console for unmanned driving, greatly improving battlefield awareness and reducing casualties.
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At the Abu Dhabi International Defense Exhibition, “China Military Industry” exhibited the “Sky Shield” anti-drone system. On the basis of the original laser killing method, it adds killing methods such as high-power electromagnetic suppression and combination of projectiles and artillery, making it closer to actual combat.
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U.S. Marine Corps – Logistics robot dog, material handling robot dog, robot mule, robot cow. It can carry more than 180 kilograms of weapons or other equipment for about 32 kilometers. Like a well-trained military dog, its structural design is highly flexible and can accompany soldiers in harsh terrains, including woods, rocky beaches, etc.
We found that the United States was the first to apply drones on the battlefield. A superstar on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq.
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RQ-4 Global Hawk, which was put into service in 2000, is active in military hotspots around the world. The cost is US$4000-120 million. It was shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in 2019 and will retire in 2022. Off-topic: Japan spent 61.3 billion yen to purchase three Global Hawks in 2014, with maintenance costs of 263.7 billion in the next 20 years. As a result, production delivery will only begin in 2020.
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The MQ-1 Predator, an integrated surveillance and combat drone, is both famous and infamous. It first flew in 1994 and has participated in all U.S. foreign wars starting from Kosovo. Counter-terrorism and indiscriminate killing of civilians have become its labels.
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MQ-9 “Reaper” drone
What is strange is that among the drones that have been active around the world in recent years, there is a lack of U.S.-made drones. Chinese Wing Loong and Rainbow series drones active in the Middle East and Africa. In the Naka conflict , the Turkish TB-2 equipped by Azerbaijan stole the show. The Iranian “Witness-136” suicide drone purchased by the Russian army that bombed Kiev, Ukraine, also made a splash. As the world’s largest arms trafficker, the United States’ absence is really inappropriate. So, whose fault is this? Answer: The enemy is on Capitol Hill. The U.S. Congress has enacted legislation to ban the export of large drones. When the AVIC Wing Loong drones and China Aerospace’s Rainbow drones were dumped in the Middle East, they were not receptive. In order to satisfy the contradiction between the growing needs of gold customers for foreign military intervention and our country’s love of peace, we simply exported the production lines to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Let me tell you a little story. The tall drones were originally flown by retired pilots. Without it, because the airflow in near-earth space is complex and requires manual control by experienced pilots. Nowadays, highly automated civil aviation aircraft require the full participation of two captains during takeoff and landing, just for the sake of safety. The problem is that airplanes in third world countries are all bought on a case-by-case basis, and the pilots are all spoiled. Where do so many retired pilots come from? The customer is the king. Change it. Added autopilot function, one-click takeoff and landing, automatic cruise, simplified operation process, one handle joystick can solve the drone flight control. Just one standard – to satisfy customers with all fool-proof operations. Later the customer made another request. The flight was too short. And firepower was not enough. Changed is made, increased body size and fuel capacity, and added attachment points.
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Rainbow 6 UAV
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Wing Long 2 UAV
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The Nigerian military used Wing Loong 2 drones to conduct air strikes against terrorists. Drones allow some small countries to do an offensive air force.
Later, the customer made another request. Turkey’s TB-2 is too annoying. It’s not satisfying to bump into each other without shooting. It needs to be shot down. To meet the requirements, air-to-air missiles are installed to specifically counter UAVs. Through constant upgrading and improvement, Pterosaur and Rainbow formed a huge family pedigree. Wing Loong UAVs have begun to be sold back to the domestic civilian market. In 2021, communications were interrupted in some areas of Henan due to floods. Wing Loong drones took off from the Guizhou base and arrived in the disaster area to provide 5 hours of mobile communication services, and sent back radar in real time to scan the damage in the disaster area. While waiting for U.S. arms dealers to obtain export licenses, the world has changed. Wing Loong 2 sells for $5 million. Because Turkey’s TB-2 has weak industrial strength and its technology is not as good as that of Chinese companies, and the price is more expensive. India purchased 31 MQ-93s for US$113 million each. Even the domestically purchased MQ-9 is priced at as high as $30 million. If combined with the industrial production capacity mentioned earlier, it is actually not surprising. The cost is too high and the price is too expensive. As a result, there are less and less equipment, and the purchase price cannot go down. Regarding the performance of modern warfare, I recommend the annual update video produced by the owner of Bili bili station up. It should be noted that the tactical arrangements in the video are demonstrations by military fans based on public data and are not real military tactical details. For example, the J-16D’s decoy deception, and the two-seat J-20’s A-shooting and B-guided missiles with unmanned wingmen. In order to arrange for all of our country’s equipment in active service and under development to leave the country, we deliberately strengthened the enemy’s military quality and armament capabilities, and also thoughtfully supported the opponent’s space-based reconnaissance intelligence of Uncle Sam. For example, in order to intercept low-altitude penetrating cruise missiles, the J-8 was allowed to take up its duties as an interceptor aircraft.
(9) Industrialization The United States, which attracts talents from all over the world, still has a strong innovation capability. However, under the influence of decades of deindustrialization in the financial industry, the United States has lost its production capacity. Industrialization is not just about factory workers and engineers, but also a whole social system that revolves around industry. Including unified market, education and training, financial services, government policies, etc. When the relationship is good, American companies design and sell and capture most of the profits, while Chinese companies are responsible for production and make hard money. But after the United States regarded China as an opponent, the world gradually turned into two parallel production systems. However, if there is no technological generation gap in military equipment, only players that can expand production at low cost will have the last laugh. In a sense, quantity is quality. Defeating more with less and relying on technology to make a comeback can certainly win a lot of glory and leave a name in history. But the real masters rely on operations to accumulate strength, and then rely on size to get through. So what’s important? Scale, scale, scale. Han Xin ordered troops, the more the better. Hiding new technologies will only lead to others taking advantage of them. What is industrialization? Machine production machines and standardized assembly line production and improvement processes. When encountering problems, propose solutions, improve and then provide feedback, and continue to optimize. Achieve technological leaps and improve productivity through continuous iterative improvements. What advantages do industrialization, the entire industry chain, and system engineering capabilities bring? Give a few examples. An example, the balancing car was invented by an American company. But it has always been a toy for the rich. The unit price is 8,000 US dollars, and the annual sales volume has been stable at 30,000. After being acquired by a Chinese company, the price of the new generation product dropped to 14,500 yuan. Later, it cooperated with Xiaomi to develop and sell products priced at 1,999. Nowadays, Taobao sells a variety of balancing scooters ranging from 300 to 3,000.
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Relying on its low-cost advantage, China’s bulletproof vests occupy 70% of the world’s market share. Because body armor is for civilian use in China, you can buy it casually on Taobao. American and Russian soldiers often privately purchase Chinese-made bulletproof inserts to put into their body armor. You’ll know how good something is after you’ve been shot a few times on the battlefield.
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On the Syrian battlefield, heavy mortar shells modified with gas tanks imported from China have an impressive range, their accuracy also impressive. there is no problem in destroying a three-story building with one shot.
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Rockets produced by the Palestinian Hamas organization.
Laiyang Steel Pipe Factory: Although this is a seamless steel pipe, what I export is indeed a water pipe.
After China converted the Varyag into the Liaoning ship, a lot of media asserted that the Chinese aircraft carrier would not be able to form combat effectiveness in a short time. Because only the United States and Russia can build the crown jewel of industry , the arresting cable , aircraft carriers that cannot take off and land carrier-based aircraft are just large flat plates. Then the Liaoning ship realized the take-off and landing of carrier-based aircraft after two months of service. Many years later, people discovered that the arresting cables for China’s aircraft carriers were supplied by Hebei Ju li Rigging Group, a private enterprise. Four months after the military tender, Ju li took out samples and passed the acceptance test.
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After the military opened the tender, Ju Li raised his hand cautiously: That. The parameters seem to be similar to a product I exported to the United States.
More famous is DJI’s quadcopter drone. Before DJI, there were some aerial photography drones in the United States. The cheap ones cost more than 300,000 yuan, and the expensive ones cost several million. Only the film industry dares to use this thing. The French company Parrot launched the consumer-grade AR.Drone quadcopter toy in 2010. It has 720P aerial photography function and is compact, lightweight and highly entertaining.
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In early 2012, DJI launched the Phantom all-in-one computer. It has certain wind resistance, positioning and carrying capabilities. DJI has always emphasized that its products are flying cameras. The price is several thousand yuan.
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in 2015, the American star startup 3D Robotics launched the solo drone to challenge DJI’s status. The solo drone comes with autopilot capabilities and sells for $1,700. However, problems such as unstable flight caused by the GPS system connection affected sales. 100,000 units were produced and only 22,000 units were sold. A few months later DJI launched the Phantom 3, with the professional version priced at US$1,300, and a few months later the price was reduced to US$1,000.
In 2016, 3D Robotics exited hardware production.
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Solo drone
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Phantom 3 DJI
Although DJI has always emphasized that it is a private company. But in the Middle East, pterosaurs and rainbows are used by governments to eliminate terrorists at targeted locations. Terrorists have also learned to use DJI Phantoms strapped with grenades to “air-strike” government troops. On the Ukrainian battlefield, DJI drones have become “Internet celebrities”. Russia and Ukraine both use it.
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Picture above translated as follow
Russian Embassy in China
General Baruyevsky, former Chief of the General Staff of Russia: Ordinary commercial quad-rotor drones made in China are incompatible with traditional drones. The application of artillery and rocket launchers brought about a real revolution in technology, which actually completely solved the old problems in artillery reconnaissance, target designation.
√ When the drone continues to hover over the target area for adjustment, the artillery can use conventional ammunition, with accuracy and efficiency comparable to precision-guided munitions, while the number of ammunition and artillery required to kill is greatly reduced.
√ The Mavic quadcopter drone manufactured by the Chinese company DJI has in principle become a true symbol of modern warfare.
Russia Embassy : 5 stars review from the costumer.
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DJI tweet translation :
All DJI products are designed for civilian purposes, serving people’s production and life, and are committed to benefiting society and making life better. DJI’s products are not suitable and do not meet the needs of military applications. We do not have applications technology in the military field.
DJI: I’m not, I don’t have it, don’t talk nonsense
When the Ukrainian counterattack was overwhelmed by landmines, frontline soldiers discovered new uses for DJI drones.
A few hours after sunset, due to the difference in heat dissipation between metal and soil, there will be an obvious color difference under the camera of the drone carrying an infrared sensor, which can identify large-charge mines on the ground.
I don’t know, will Russia and Ukraine be drooling over when they see this model?
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DJI T50 agricultural drone, 50kg load capacity | coaxial twin rotors | front and rear phased array radars | two sets of binocular vision | high-definition FPV | integrated aerial survey, flight and defense.
DJI, you still said you don’t know military technology?
Well, drones, phased array radars. Something feels wrong. Why are civilian drones equipped with phased array radars? Because it’s cheap.
(10) Sky Eye – Active Phased Array Radar
The Ministry of Commerce and Customs has recently implemented export controls on gallium and germanium rare metals and compounds. Exports after August 1 need to be declared. Gallium and germanium are both core raw materials for semiconductors. Among them, gallium production accounts for more than 90% of the world’s total production.
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Is it because China has abundant reserves or has mastered core technology? neither. Because gallium is a rare metal, there is no abundant mine. It can only be obtained from the companion products of bauxite. The average gallium content in bauxite is 50 parts per million. So the production of gallium requires an entire alumina production line.
The largest downstream demand for alumina is electrolytic aluminum. It is well known that electrolytic aluminum is a large consumer of electricity. Cheap electricity is needed. In 2022, China will produce 40 million tons of aluminum, accounting for 60% of the world’s total production. It is this 40 million tons aluminum industry that produces 400 tons of gallium.
Gallium has an important compound, gallium nitride What we come into contact with most every day is gallium nitride fast charging. It has properties such as wide direct band gap, strong atomic bonds, high thermal conductivity, good chemical stability (almost not corroded by any acid) and strong radiation resistance. The GaN material series has low heat generation rate and high breakdown electric field, and is an important material for the development of high-temperature and high-power electronic devices and high-frequency microwave devices.
Therefore, gallium nitride also has a very wide range of application scenarios in the field of military equipment. The most typical phased array radar. Radar is the clairvoyance and ear of the modern military. In an information-based battlefield where discovery means destruction, the performance of radar directly determines whether the enemy fires first or a sitting duck. We know that radar is a device for transmitting and receiving electromagnetic waves. Early radar can detect the direction, distance and height of obstacles and other information by emitting electromagnetic waves and receiving echoes reflected by obstacles. However, the positioning effect for high-speed moving objects is very poor. Later , pulse Doppler radar was created based on the Doppler effect (the received frequency of waves becomes higher when the wave source moves toward the observer , and the received frequency becomes lower when the wave source moves away from the observer), which can accurately locate moving objects. Later, based on the interference of waves, phased array radar was invented. Phased array radar is a combination of Doppler radars.
The most intuitive way to experience the power of phased arrays is in the science fiction movie “The Wandering Earth 2”, in which nuclear warheads are arranged through phased arrays to concentrate the energy of the nuclear bomb explosion wave at one point.
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The difference between passive phased array radar and active phased array radar is that passive phased array radar has only one central receiver/transmitter. In active phased array radar, each radiation component has an independent transmitter and receiver. One is a cyclops and the other is an insect with compound eyes. Because of the huge gap in performance, passive phased array radar is just a transition before the development of active phased array radar. Because of the independent transceiver characteristics of phased array radar subunits, the beam direction can be quickly changed through phase difference, and the mechanical scanning of traditional radar has been changed to electronic scanning. You can also group any unit independently to perform multi-beam scanning. It has strong anti-jamming and multi-target reconnaissance capabilities. Phased array radar also has disadvantages, that is, high power and high heat generation.
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The phased array radar is a big house from the beginning, and a considerable part of the equipment is used for heat dissipation. Can only be used as missile and aircraft early warning
After the phased array radar is installed on the destroyer, it will become the famous “Aegis” air defense destroyer. In 2007, when China’s KJ-2000 was put into service, it was said to be a generation ahead of the American early warning aircraft because it installed a huge phased array radar on the aircraft. The powerful attack capabilities of the American F22 “Raptor” fighter jet are also related to the pioneering use of active phased array radar. It turns out that the huge radar can be installed in the radome of a fighter jet because of the use of gallium arsenide. Gallium nitride is an important raw material for the next generation of active phased array radar.
At the 2018 Zhuhai Air Show, Chinese military industrial enterprises launched an air-cooled active phased array radar for fighter jets. Later, it was directly installed on the “Fierce Dragon” Block III fighter jet jointly developed by China and Pakistan. As we know earlier, active phased array radars have high power and heat, so fighter jets are usually equipped with a liquid cooling system in their radome. Some simply use onboard fuel to dissipate heat for electronic components. Therefore, generally heavy fighter aircraft have space to install source phased array radars. But the Xiaolong is a light fighter and a cheap version. Is there something wrong? Remember the properties of gallium nitride mentioned earlier? High thermal conductivity. As long as the power supply and cooling requirements for the replacement of gallium nitride radar can be met, the detection range of active phased array radars on several types of fighter jets has the opportunity to be doubled.
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Above picture is phased array radar multi target tracking high speed military radar is sold online casually in china the price 1 million yuan.
So it’s not surprising that DJI drones are equipped with phased array radars.
Hence the monster below.
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20 tons AEGIS Unmanned warship. Each ship is equipped with 8 vertical launch missiles and 2 torpedoes.
The Iranian Navy has considered launching suicide attacks on U.S. warships using missile speedboats. If dozens of these small boats, which cost tens of millions of dollars, surrounded warships worth billions of dollars, or were equipped with towed sonar and spread out to hunt submarines in the vast sea area, the picture would be too beautiful.
It means China needed to create 7.585 million new jobs in 2019.
Remember that China is changing rapidly. The people who are retiring from low-end manufacturing or agriculture aren’t doing the same jobs as the 20 year olds in hi-tech and STEM fields.
Competition is fierce.
Ranch Round Steak
2077caab3c77906b7b00eea380916c17
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients
1 (3 pound) round steak
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons dry mustard
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1/4 cup shortening
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
Instructions
Cut steak into serving size pieces; trim away excess fat and pound to tenderize.
Combine flour, dry mustard, salt and pepper; use to coat meat. Reserve remaining flour mixture.
In skillet, brown meat, half at a time, on both sides in hot shortening. Push meat to one side; stir in reserved flour mixture.
Combine water and Worcestershire sauce; stir into skillet mixture. Cook and stir until thickened and bubbly, reduce heat. Cover and simmer for about 1 hour or until meat is tender.
Remove meat to platter.
Skim excess fat from gravy. Drizzle gravy over meat and serve.
What Elon Musk just did in Ukraine could change EVERYTHING
Could Elon Musk end the war in Ukraine with this one move? Democrats are calling for an investigation into how Starlink is used in the warzone. Redacted Correspondent Dan Cohen dives deep into the details.
Prior to my “retirement” I had opened a number of bank accounts in China. I did this, at that time unknowing of my future, as a “good thing” to do, “just in case”.
Talk about foresight! Eh?
I had two bank accounts.
I opened up an account at BOC in Shanghai and placed $40,000 in it. I deposited a cashier’s check in it, and used a “passbook savings account”. I was told that it would take three months to clear, and that I had to keep the receipt in the book to “lock” the exchange rate of 9.5 RMB to USD. This brought me (the potential of) 380,000 RMB. Ah. Enough to buy property in China.
The other account was in Shenzhen and much smaller; being only $5000.
Well…
BOOM! I am “retired” and stuck in Arkansas.
My father needed to hire an attorney to get me out of the mess, and tried to extract the money from BOC. Good luck! No one could take it out except myself.
He needed my thumb print.
When he held the BOC passbook, he discarded the receipt. He thought it was a “worthless scrap of paper”.
…
So, even though I couldn’t hire an attorney, and my bank was frozen, no one else could seize the money.
Good going China!
So I still have money in China; a life in China…and hope in China.
Meanwhile, everything else was gone; stolen and discarded.
All of this while my properties, and belongings were systematically looted, stolen and acquired by all the “friends” and “family” surrounding me.
Jackals.
Seriously.
Now, eventually I get out of the USA. I am in China, and I use the $5000 to start a new! Fantastic, and I related this story to youse guys earlier.
But of the $40,000 in Shanghai?
Well, my well meaning father, discarded that little receipt in the passbook as unimportant. And when I opened up my bank account, I discovered that it only had 220,000 RMB in it. Not the 380,000 RMB I was expecting.
Why?
That little “junk” slip of paper was my proof of a 9.5 conversion rate. Not the 5.5 conversion rate at the time of retrieval.
I lost one FUCK of a lot of money in the process.
…
The point in this little story is that …
…”if you are handling other people’s affairs, keep everything. Do not discard even the most trivial item. You probably are understating its importance.”
Have you ever wondered why we don’t have too many commercial operating systems outside of Windows and MacOS?
I don’t include Linux which is by no means a commercial operating system despite its many advantages
Have you wondered why China and India are unable to make a PC Operating system despite so many skilled students and so much of a software base
Its because a commercial OS needs to be compatible with your processor
The Processor is INTEL Or AMD and they need to ensure your OS is compatible with their processor
This was a huge argument in an ANTITRUST case against Microsoft that the plaintiffs lost
Without that compatibility , you can never control an ecosystem or have an OS that controls the entire ecosystem
You can have secondary systems that can never replace MS Windows or MacOS
Tomorrow if India develops an OS on par with Windows, India will be throttled by Intel and AMD
They will cite security concerns, backdoor etc and simply prevent the Indian OS from freely competing
Thus India needs to develop a processor as well
This processor better be on par with the Intel or AMD or people simply won’t buy the processor and thus by association, the Indian made operating system
Say India develops a cutting edge web browser
The same has to be integrated & compatible with your search engine for maximum efficiency
Google and Bing both have maximum integrated compatibility with Chrome and IE, so your browser will not be able to host these search engines efficiently
That’s goodbye to a good technology right there
Thus you need a search engine of similar standard and a web browser of efficiency plus an Operating System plus your Hardware
THE WEST CONTROLS IT ALL
Rather US controls most of it
Let’s say India develops an App that can beat Facebook
Or an app that can beat Twitter
Android and iOS can simply refuse to give a bundling agreement for that App citing security reasons or other reasons
Tik Tok got a bundling deal with IoS and Android in 2014 for 25 years until 2039 along with WeChat and Alipay and other apps
Telegram got a similar deal until 2033 (15 year deal)
It’s why both Android and iOS cannot remove these apps from their playstores
Today both Android and iOS no longer do bundling deals for long term periods, but only for 12 month periods and renew them (Since 1/1/2020)
So Indian Twitter and Indian Facebook could be throttled simply by refusing to bundle them or integrate them into the Android or iOS ecosystem
If indeed these apps became a threat to the US equivalents, India would become a major security threat in 20 minutes
The Whole world accepted this dominance of the West and their complete control over the Information and Communications Ecosystems
Including many Chinese companies
Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo all happily kowtowed to the Western dominance and slogged hard to make 8% and hand over 92% to the west
Thousands of excellent apps and games are unable to leave China because they can’t get bundling deals with Android and iOS outside the mainland
Then ONE MAN CAME ALONG who said THISISRIDICULOUS
He dared to envision his own ecosystem
The Chip – the Kirin designed entirely by Mainland China
The OS – The Harmony
The 5G Modem – To deliver highest speeds
The Networks – To ensure the lowest latents
Once the Huawei ecosystem was in place, a flood of competition would be unleashed
Chinese Apps would roar into the global market where they had been throttled before
Baidu would finally compete with Google on a one on one platform and combat MSM propaganda in neutral nations
Chinese Digital Payment systems would soar across and surge through the Global South
They throttled Huawei
They simply cut off the source of chips
Huawei had the design but they couldn’t get the chips made because the world’s only makers TSMC and Samsung wouldnt due to sanctions
The excuse was Huawei had business with the Govt of China. So did Oppo but Oppo was a meek obedient boy
Then Huawei tried to get the chips made in SMIC
They retaliated by cutting off access to EUV machines
Yet Huawei managed to mass produce 5 nm Chips with the 7 nm process using very innovative stacking using DUVs
Now Huawei has the Chip and the OS
The US and the West couldn’t succeed in throttling Huawei
Now the next step is probably to stop DUVs
It’s why SMIC is stockpiling and also accelarating it’s own lithography progress
So it’s not the phones
It was never the phones
Tomorrow if Huawei dropped their Chip idea, signed a 20 year deal with Qualcomm and dropped their OS idea and modem idea – US would lift the sanctions in 10 seconds
It’s the ECOSYSTEM that Huawei brings with it that will finally break the US (Western) dominance and bring in a new player and country after virtually 30 years of control
If Huawei triumphs, the world as we know it changes
India could take inspiration and proceed on our own path to develop our own Ecosystem
In the industries of yesterday, there will eventually come a time when China isn’t affected by American sanctions. That will happen within the next 10-20 years, as Chinese manufacturing go from the current 30+ percent to over 50 percent of global output, and the Chinese patent portfolio matures.
Now, turn the coin on its head and ask yourself a simple question.
What happens in a world where the Chinese option is the cutting edge?
Tesla entered into partnership with panasonic just a decade or so ago to build its first gigafactory. Panasonic, a Japanese company, had the best and most mature battery tech then. Similarly, yuasa, another Japanese company, was chosen by Boeing for the 787.
Today, the best batteries using novel chemistries and materials are Chinese, promising unbeatable energy densities at great prices. Many ev makers have entered into partnership with a variety of Chinese battery makers, and that includes Tesla. China will become the go-to for batteries in the coming decade, driven by economy of scale.
Shocking change in just 10 years no?
In nuclear fission, China has leadership in gen 3 reactors, with the indigenous hualong in mass production and a steady stream of projects in the works. More importantly, China has the world’s first and only gen 4 gas cooled demonstrator online and plugged into the grid, promising even greater safety and reliability.
Expect commercial availability within the decade.
Same story in photovoltaics. China is already the biggest maker of solar panels and related modules, with leading edge options. My friend in the industry says it’s practically impossible to make a project viable without Chinese panels, not without massive subsidies or tariff walls. That’s how good the Chinese are.
The best hsr system is Chinese, despite China being 50 years late to the game. Better than the Germans and Japanese? Yes, because the installed length is already greater than the rest of the world combined, and serve a broader range of conditions and latitudes. The ride comfort and stability is second to none. Try it yourself if you don’t believe the claim.
Make a guess how many containers Chinese ports handled last year.
300m.
That’s 3, followed by 8 (eight) zeros.
America just about crumbled with a modest 5–10 percent increase above the 50m they usually deal with, as a direct result of covid induced changes in lifestyle.
Rates for China-US TEU went up more than 10x, an order of magnitude, at its peak. Ships were returned SANS empty containers, just to beat the logjam in American ports.
Imagine first world American ports and infrastructure being unable to handle domestic demand, while China happily fulfilled GLOBAL demand with a future-proof, scalable automated port system.
The Chinese are already leaders in digital payment, facial recognition, aspects of ai and big data, quantum computing, and many other technologies of the future. Some of the most exciting breakthroughs of tomorrow will happen in china, and revolutionize the world.
Is the world prepared for that, especially served by a media that’s reluctant to report China in the slightest factual, and positive light?
The first world may very well be caught unawares.
Huawei 6G is coming, 100Gb per second transfer speed
Good news that more and more Chinese researchers are leaving the States for China. It will help China.
Back in 1996, I worked as a Field Technician for Lanier Business Systems in Houston, Texas. Specifically, I handled recording devices and systems, though on occasion I also handled copiers, printers, and fax machines. My territory was into the 610 loop and all overlapping zip codes. This included all the hospitals in the Houston Medical Center. Those that are technical people will figure out what is going on with this before I finish the explanation.
So, for one of the hospitals, they had one of our dictation systems and one day, I get a call from the hospital administrator complaining that they haven’t had backups running on their system for six months. So, I head to the hospital, walk into the admin office, and begin working on the system. I go through the settings, and confirm it is setup to backup changes to the 3.5 in floppy drive. I checked the logs and confirmed the backups ran with no errors, or where there were errors is was able to resolve them and move on.
I checked the disk, and it was blank. Completely blank, In fact, the disk wasn’t even formatted. Assuming that was the problem, I formatted the disk with Lanier’s proprietary encryption protocols, and confirmed I could copy data to the drive. I left the disk in the drive, and explained to the admin what I thought the problem was, and that I had fixed it.
The next morning, she registered the same problem so I head back to the hospital, with a new disk drive. I pull the old drive install a new one, then proceed to run a few tests on the old drive with my testing equipment. Everything checks out, no problems on the drive, but I leave the new drive in just in case. Again, I explain to her what did, and felt fairly certain the problem was resolved.
Next morning, I get another call. Same problem. At this point, I am scratching my head. I know the system is working, I was able to confirm the doctors are making recordings, i confirmed the backup are configured properly, so I talk to the admin and explain that I will come by this evening and confirm that the backups are running tonight.
That evening, I head to the hospital and sit down at the monitor. She pulls the disk off the side of the system hands it so me and I insert it into the drive. ten minutes later the backup runs, I watch it, and after about fifteen minutes it completes with no errors. I sit down go through the logs, check the data on the disk. I confirm the backups are there, verify the data integrity. I even make certain that I can restore the data to the system. Everything looks great, I think the problem is solved. I hand the backup disk back to the administrator, and we talk for a few minutes. As, I am leaving, she puts the disk in a clip and slaps it onto the side of the system.
I stop, and I stare at her for a moment, She looks at me, and asks what I’m waiting for. I look from her to the disk stuck to the side of the computer, back to her.
I had spent three days troubleshooting this problem. I had confirmed that the equipment was completely in working order, and I knew for a fact that backups were running properly. I literally just confirmed that the backup was run, and the data was right there on the disk.
Her actions had just made all those efforts pointless. She just erased everything off the disk and wasted all of my effort. Heck, she has been wasting her own efforts for six months and was getting frustrated because of what she just did.
That clip is a magnetic refrigerator magnet. That magnet wiped the data from the magnetic disc in the floppy disk. She was the cause of all these problems, and has been doing it for six months. I had walked over, removed the disk and put it back in the drive. She looks at me confused. I pull up the floppy disk and it needs to be formatted. She asks me where the data went. I looked at her and handed her the refrigerator magnet.
“Is it on here?”
“No.”
“Then where it is?”
“Gone, you erased the disk.”
She stares at me, dumbstruck, “What…what…what to you mean, I erased it. she mumbles curiously.
I then explain to her that floppy disks are magnetic and are very sensitive to magnetic fields. That refrigerator magnet was strong enough when attached to metal object to erase the disk. She felt horrible.
However, I spent the next several hours, backing up changes for six months of data onto a box of 3.5 inch floppy drives.
I then explained proper disk storage, and told her to keep magnets away from the backups.
After I was done, she was extremely appreciative, and apologetic.
Additionally, I got 3 hours of overtime pay, and because the problem wasn’t caused by our equipment, which meant it wasn’t covered under contract. I made the company a nice profit. The base charges for such failures was $300 per hour, which easily covered my overtime pay.
HE DID IT AGAIN! (OLIVER ANTHONY – I WANT TO GO HOME REACTION)
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.
Puyi has been seen in history as a villain of sorts. He was the last vestige of the Qing dynasty, a living testament to imperialism. He was called effeminate by many and impotent by some. He was selfish, shallow, and childish in his early years. He was also rumored to be cruel to others for his pleasure.
However, we must view him with nuance and remember the time period he was born into. He was groomed from birth to be ineffective by the women in his family who wanted to hold onto their power to rule through him as their proxy. He was born into a family where opulence and excess was considered normal and expected even. But it was also a time where the peasants were deeply unhappy with an ineffectual government and orchestrated a revolution that toppled his world as he knew it.
He united with the Japanese which made him a traitor in the eyes of the Chinese; but Japan had promised him the opportunity to return to a throne and that was the only life he knew. His early wives would tell you he was self centered and downright nasty when he wanted to be.
While he was not a good man in many ways, he was not irredeemable either. Mao allowed him to be the gardener of the Beijing Botanical Gardens. Puyi sought, with his last years, to redeem himself and to become a better man. He once said that the Puyi of his youth was the enemy to the Puyi of his latter years. He often wept when shown examples of his past damage to China. He was overwhelmed when shown the horrors of Unit 731 and cried that those atrocities had been done in his name. His transformation so complete that he became a man of humility. He was reported to have accidentally knocked an elderly woman over with his bicycle and visited her in the hospital every day until she was released.
In the end he found love with his last wife, Li Shuxian, being “all he had in the world,” and she reported in an interview that his love for her was such that when she was sick he would sit by her bedside all night, seeing to her every need.” He had come to be a man who took pleasure in simple things and in his love for his wife. He had indeed become the model citizen and died at the age of 61 of kidney cancer. His widow had his ashes placed with nine other emperors that had come before him. In death he had been returned to his family.
China shocks Europe by canceling ASML’s $580 billion lithography order!
I am the Tujia nationality, and I belong to the eighth largest ethnic minority in China. We have 8 million people.
1. Add points in the most important exam in China-the college entrance examination;（It used to be 20 points, but now it has been reduced to 5 points due to the improvement of educational facilities and standards.）
2. To study for master’s and doctorate with a score lower than Han people, the tuition fee is exempt.
3. Before the “one-child policy” was abolished, ethnic minorities (the ethnic minorities who joined the Communist Party of China are only allowed to have one child) can have 2 or more children, and the Han can only have one;
4. Use and develop the spoken and written languages of ethnic minorities. Most ethnic minorities only have languages without a writing system. The GOV has developed a writing system for us;
Orange-Chipotle Skirt Steaks
orange chipotle skirt steaks
Marinate: 6 hr to overnight | Yield: 4 to 6 servings
Ingredients
Marinade
Juice of 1 medium orange
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons adobo sauce (from chipotle peppers)
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
Steaks
1 1/2 pounds beef skirt steak, cut into 4 to 6 inch pieces
Tomatillo Salsa
2 medium oranges, divided
2 cups chopped tomatillos (4 to 5 small to medium)
1/2 cup chopped red onion
2 to 3 teaspoons minced chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1/8 teaspoon salt
Instructions
Marinade
Combine ingredients in a small bowl.
Steaks
Place beef steaks in food-safe plastic bag; turn steaks to coat. Close bag securely and marinate in refrigerator 6 hours or as long as overnight, turning occasionally.
Tomatillo Salsa
Grate 1/2 teaspoon peel from 1 orange. Cut this orange and half of remaining orange into segments. Chop segments into 1/2 inch pieces.
Combine orange peel and segments, tomatillos, onion, chipotle peppers, cumin and salt in medium bowl; cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.
Cut remaining 1/2 orange into wedges; reserve for garnish.
Remove steaks from marinade; discard marinade.
Place steaks on grid over medium, ash-covered coals. Grill, uncovered, 10 to 13 minutes (over medium heat on preheated gas grill, covered, 8 to 12 minutes) for medium rare (145 degrees F) to medium (160 degrees F) doneness, turning occasionally.
Carve steaks diagonally across the grain into thin slices; season with salt, as desired.
Serve with tomatillo salsa. Garnish with reserved orange wedges.
Oliver Anthony ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Intense Listening Sesh/Reaction – POWERFUL!
I will try to make this brief. My husband and I are a “multicultural” pair; he was brought up in Scotland and I was brought up in Cleveland, Ohio. Some of the time during our marriage we have lived in Ohio, some of the time in Glasgow.
Somewhere in the mid ’90s we decided to move again from Ohio back to Glasgow. I had three little children at that time — three girls, 7, 3, and 1. We had practically all our worldly possessions with us in 13 metal trunks and the usual baby paraphernalia. We flew from Florida to Glasgow, after flying from Ohio to Florida. The leg from Florida to Glasgow was a direct flight but lasted 10 hours. Needless to say we were very tired, stiff and sleep deprived.
We saddled the family onto an airport bus to take us “home” after such an exhausting trip. After loading our 13 trunks into the hold of this huge bus our bus driver let everyone else off at the usual stop. Before letting our family deboard, he asked us, “Hey, where do you folks live?” We told him the exact location where our small house was located. He laughed and said, “Stay on the bus, I’ll take you to your door. No taxi I know of will fit all this stuff.”
So that’s what this hero did. He pulled his massive 88-seater bus right into our cul-de-sac, right up to our door, and also helped unload the 13 trunks and our very tired family.
It was an act of kindness I have never forgotten. Oh and I forgot to mention, it was 4am.
I was working as the assistant accountant at a company and had to leave early one day as I was sick. My boss insisted on a doctor certificate to cover that half day so I managed to see my gp the next morning who gave me a certificate for 3 days off plus the half day. I objected but the doc said if you’re feeling better in a few days just go back to work.
So 2 days later I’m feeling better and return to work. My boss was annoyed because instead of a few hours I’m now out 2 days so she says I need to go back to same dr to get a clearance to return to work.
By this time it’s midmorning of the last day of the certificate. I’m fine. It’s the last week of month and we’re super busy and she wants me to drive 40 minutes each way to the dr to get a certificate and the chances of an appointment with the same dr is unlikely. And it’s going to cost me $80 for appointment.
I had lots of sick leave accrued and it’s also November.
I explained that we’d lose 1/2 to 3/4 of the day and I’d be out of pocket but nope she wanted me to go back to the dr.
Previously no one had ever enforced a dr certificate if anyone came back early (unless it was workers comp). She told me that this was my “punishment” for leaving early when I was sick a few days before!
When she said that, I made a decision. I said I wasn’t prepared to spend the money for the dr to reassess me for 1/2 day work. She said in that case you can’t work today.
No problems I said. I’ll go do my Christmas shopping and I grabbed my handbag and sauntered out.
I’m told her face just dropped and she bitched to the GM after I’d left and he laughed and told her she was the one who forced the issue.
”What Do You Have To Offer A Man?”
I think this is THE fundamental question both men AND women should be asking… if you have a long list of demands, you better have a long list of qualities to offer.
Employees will pay for personal calls on the company’s cell phone.
This happened about 2003. The developer team took turns being “on-call” and carrying the company phone. Most of us had cell phones but we did not use them as much as we do now. My plan was expensive even though it was the minimum number of minutes, I think 60, per month. In any case, I rarely went over the number of minutes per month. The company phone, on the other hand, had an unlimited plan so there would be no overage charges. The business use of the phone required a lot of minutes.
When it was my turn to carry the phone, I did not carry my personal cell phone at the same time. If I needed to make a call, I would just use the company phone. Most of us did the same thing. Cell phones were bulky and it did not cost the company anything extra. Also, we only made a few short calls on the work phone.
Well our boss, the CTO, called a meeting and showed a new form for us to record our personal calls when we carried the company phone. He told us that it did not matter that the company’s unlimited plan made the calls free. It was the company’s phone and the company’s money. However, he appreciated that it was inconvenient to carry two phones so he was implementing a new policy that the person using the on-call phone for a personal call would log the call and reimburse the company the going rate. It was something like 20 cents per minute which was the normal per minute cost at the time. We were to use the form to pay the company for personal calls on the work phone.
Most of us thought it was a little petty because the company’s plan was unlimited and a few short calls did not cost the company anything. However, we acknowledged it was a reasonable policy and we would just have to pay a little for convenience or carry two phones. Not really a big deal. Then I thought of something.
I asked the boss, “Can we use the same form for the company to reimburse us for work calls on our personal phones?” He asked if we used our personal cells for work. “Of course, whoever is on-call often calls his colleagues for advice about a problem or how a system was configured. If we are not home, we take the call on our cell. As a matter of fact, twice this year I went over my monthly minutes and had to pay overage charges.” He replied that I would not pay extra if I was more careful to not go over my minutes. “Well, as you explained, it does not matter if I pay extra or not. It’s about keeping personal calls and work calls separate. So, can we use the same form or should we use a different form?” Without answering the question, he ended the meeting shortly thereafter.
He never said anything more about the form, and the policy never went into effect.
I admit that I did not like the guy because he viewed us as commodities instead of employees. The feeling was mutual and he fired me the next year. Oh well, I got a better job after that.
China Tests New Laser Weapon That Destroys Planes In Seconds!
The Debt crisis in China isn’t a shock to the global economy
Evergrande crisis happened in 2021 and it’s 2 years old and yet Evergrande hasn’t fallen
The Debt crisis is two years old, maybe three years old now
So even if the big names begin failing, the systemic shocks to Chinas Economy Or the Global Economy will be much milder than a sudden unexpected shock
The difference between US and China, is that in US, the Institutions which are privately owned and have very little regulations, lie and cheat and bury the information deep and keeps allowing more and more trouble to accumulate
Lehman Brothers crisis in 2008 is an example as is the 1929 depression or the recent Silicon Valley Bank failures
They pretend nothing is wrong, they pretend everything is hunky dory, they even manipulate the system like they did in 2008 with Moodys and S&P
Then THERE IS ALWAYS A SUDDEN COLLAPSE AND A MASSIVE SYSTEMIC SHOCK
Like in 2008 when there was a downward swing in investment indices by a whopping 60% across 2 years
People lost homes, savings everything and plunged into poverty
China is entirely different
China has lots of regulations and State has a huge control which means no pretension, no burying of information
The Chinese in fact start openly publishing info from Day 1 about such problems
Evergrande problems were published 30 days before their first default while the real estate debt crisis problems were openly revealed yuan for yuan almost 3 months before Evergrande (which is how the West knew about it in the first place)
As a result the system gets a DULL SHOCK rather than a SUDDEN SHOCK AND COLLAPSE
This Dull Shock is absorbed slowly into the economy of China and by the investors, then smaller shocks happen and they too get absorbed
Thus Indices will fall maybe 6–8% in China , maybe 10% over 5–6 years and then stabilize and recover
The Impact will probably be 10% of the 2008 Crisis at the most
Lehman collapsed in 14 days, Lehman Bros when it collapses will do so after almost 825 days to 900 days
Lot of time to absorb the shock
Experts gauge China will absorb it’s debt crisis at a cost of around 1.2% a year in it’s economic growth for around 5 years and 0.7% a year for the next five
That’s around 13.5 Trillion Yuan
Worst case, that’s more than double of the estimated value of impact of the debt crisis (6 Trillion Yuan)
Chinas past growth and surging development will keep China protected from the debt crisis and get China off safely and with a nice soft landing
image 5
Another 5 years if Xi had buried this and kept up illusions and kept seeing debt rollovers and price rise rapidly
China would have had 6–6.5% growth for the next 5 years or so but then the impact would have been maybe 30–35 Trillion after a decade or so
An example of the astute leadership of China which cares about long term prospects
Unlike a problem with democracies which bury all the problems hoping the next party will deal with them
Ask you CEOs why they think they are entitled to earn 100 times more that Chinese CEOs? Ask your employees and your unions what the push their salary to 5 times that of China? Ask your employees why they expects 10 times their benefits compared to Chinese counterparts? Ask why they are willing to work 25% less hours compared to the Chinese workers? Ask why are your education system turning out lawyers and bull shit artiste instead of stem engineers?
Ask your government why your infrastructure is dilapidated and why are there no trainings and retraining of workers sufficient to meet today’s manufacturing needs? Those question get you real answers and make the U.S. face realities?
China did not put a gun on the heads on 330 million Americans to buy Chinese products! The 330 million Americans chosed value for money like everyone on earth. The U.S. government and the U.S. people made wrong choices. They choose wars and war mongering rather than helping their manufacturers and factories. The citizens chose those leaders! If the U.S. citizens were to turn around and kicked out any politicians that prioritise wars over work kick them out of office they can make the difference.
There are so many Americans here in QUORA who champion wars and worship power but ask why China makes everything? You need to choose wisely. You go around telling everyone you have a freedom to chose and are so proud of that freedom but you blow it every 4 years for 250 years long.
You chose leaders that don’t care about you and in fact destroy you!
At my wife’s father’s wake, we told her uncle he wasn’t welcome.
We had texted him and asked him not to show up early , as he wasn’t welcome but said that we would be leaving early so he could come later, but he came early anyway with his two sons and his screaming Harpy of a wife.
We had rented the hall and paid for the food and bar.
I stopped them at the door, expecting trouble. I asked him to leave and come back in a few hours when we would be gone.
They tried to push past me and called my wife a c##t
I reacted without thinking.
I shattered his and his two sons noses with three strikes in about two seconds.
They know I am a Wing Chun Gung Fu stylist who is also a 6′ 200 lb pro renovation contractor.
They called the police.
The police called them white trash and suggested they didn’t want to go in front of a judge considering their conduct.
They backed down and left.
One of the cops was Irish , he said he would buy me a whiskey right in front of the jack ass’s if he wasn’t on duty while they were holding their noses.
P. S. I don’t advocate violence, but I have no regrets at this time.
Love some, trust few, and do no great harm.
Baby Wasn’t Able To Tell Parents About Cruel Sitter — But His Dog Could
This is Vesna Vulović.
She holds the Guinness World Record for the highest fall without a parachute and surviving. She is reported to have fallen 6.3 miles (33,330 ft; 10,160 m) from the sky when a briefcase bomb exploded onboard JAT Flight 367 and crashed into what was then Czechoslovakia in 1972.
So, how exactly did she survive the fall? When the bomb exploded during mid-flight, almost all the passengers were sucked out of the airplane into subfreezing temperatures and fell to their deaths. Vulović was trapped inside the fuselage and pinned down by a food cart. She landed in a heavily wooded area with snow, which helped cushion her fall. Interestingly enough, Vulović’s low blood pressure allowed her to pass out quickly when the cabin depressurized and prevented her heart from bursting on impact. When applying to become a flight attendant, Vulović had concealed her low blood pressure from the medical examiners by drinking several cups of coffee.
Vulović was the only survivor, and upon impact, had broken both her legs, parts of her vertebrae, and several ribs. She also fractured her skull and pelvis. After spending several days in a coma, Vulović awoke and asked for a cigarette. She had no recollection of the explosion or the crash. Her recuperation took a total of 16 months.
BREAKING! China and U.S. headed for all out war, and Putin knows it
“Any hotel expense over $XX must be approved by your Supervisor unless previously authorized (Daytona during Bike Week, going into hurricane devastated areas, or other known high cost areas, etc.)”.
Sure, I’m on the road for 3–6 weeks at a time and only after working the planned for 8–10 hours a day (yes 50+work hours a week were the norm) would I be on the road to the next job which was often 100 or more miles away. Needless to say, there were many, Many nights where I arrived at a hotel at around midnight.
Guess who went home at 5 PM back in the office? Yep, our supervisor. So, someone found his home phone number and we all began calling it when we arrived somewhere that wasn’t within the price range they expected.
So they changed the rule to say “Don’t call your Supervisor, but you are responsible for finding a hotel within per diem limits”.
Sure, but since it’s something you told me to do then I’m still at work. Do you Really think its worthwhile to pay me an extra hour’s pay just to save $10 for a night? Do you Really want me to add the two hours travel time to my pay-sheet because the only hotel in the price range was that far away?
I just remembered another prime example backfiring: the company had a policy that if we screwed up a job then it was our responsibility to go back and fix it on our own time. (If we didn’t want to then we’d mysteriously find our services weren’t in such high demand for the next week or three). So, one fine Saturday morning after I’d finished installing the computer system for a well-known coffee chain, I got a phone call that said I had to travel 400 miles to Memphis and fix a problem with a printer that didn’t work. Obviously it not working must have been my fault. It didn’t help much to say that part of my checkout procedure was to get a number from a document the help desk printed to their new POS system’s laser printer.
So, yeah, I’ll go back to Memphis on my own dime, BUT if it’s not my fault then I get paid. Traveled 6.5 hours to Memphis and walked into the coffee shop to hear the manager complain that his printer wasn’t working. I asked him what the help desk had him do. Turns out he didn’t call his help desk but just his contact at the company I worked for. I walked into the office, took a quick look and flipped the “ON” switch to the printer. Then I handed him the work order and told him he was going to be charged for 8 hours of travel to Memphis (400 miles at 50 MPH) 4 hours of overtime (our minimum charge and it was Saturday) and 8 hours of travel back to my house.
“B-But it didn’t work, you installed it wrong!” Nope, here’s the printout and the confirmation number from your help desk printed to that computer saying everything worked. Your help desk would have asked you what lights were on the printer, IF you had called them first.
A terrible day, so I spent the afternoon on Beale St. before heading home to pack up for the next Monday’s job in Charlotte or somewhere, who knows?
Tucker Carlson ‘ You’ve No Idea What is Coming, start Preparing Now
When my daughter was 15 (2000) I asked her what kind of car she wanted. Her answer stunned me: an old VW Beetle. We decided rather than looking for a good one to buy we would buy a beat up old junker and restore it together. I acquired the catalogs from suppliers and was shocked at how cheap the parts were and could not find a single thing that was not available new. We stripped that old junker down, did the body work and painted it. Bought all new chrome and stainless steel trim, all new upholstery, head liner, carpet and replaced every piece of rubber on the car.
When it came time to rebuild the engine I took a list of the parts I thought I would need to a local shop that specialized in VWs. He looked at the list and ask if I was planning on rebuilding the engine. When I said “yes” he responded that I was not going to do it, I was going to pay them to do it. I ask why? He said because this list of part is going to cost you 800 dollars and we will rebuild it for 875 dollars. Thinking it was a scam, I asked what if the crank is bad? His response was we are not going to use anything but the block, everything else is new including the heads . We picked up the engine and, as he said, it was 875 dollars.
When she turned 16 I gave her driving lessons in her VW. She drove it through high school and well after college. she didn’t stop using it until she had her first child.
Rather than let it sit we gave it to a friend who, 20 years after our rebuild, is still using it.
Total cost of the junk car, parts, and materials, including the engine rebuild: $3,300. Never had a part that we couldn’t get within a couple of days (side note; for several years she claimed she could not drive an automatic [or any other car] because she only knew how to drive a VW.)
Digging Dollar’s Grave! ASEAN Nations To Use Yuan As Their New Single Currency!
https://youtu.be/lvsZlBlfvW8
Anti-China Rhetoric Is Off the Charts in Western Media
The mass hysteria reflects the biases inherent in the world’s most powerful media outlets.
By Chandran Nair
February 21, 2023
A key feature of mainstream Western media today is the relentless China-bashing. It is off the charts and tiring, often involving regurgitated trivia or fabricated stories with no evidence to support callous statements about the country, demonstrating a deep lack of understanding. But such stories continue to be churned out with no end in sight.
Countering this in international media by offering more balanced views for a global audience is near impossible as censorship is rife. There almost seems to be a global compact to control the narrative, a propaganda war powered by today’s digital technology.
Just try looking for a positive story on China any day of the week in any of the leading global media outlets. Apart from reports in January about the Lunar New Year, there will hardly be any, and these too are likely to have a negative spin. It would appear there is a confidential memo circulating within Western media groups that guides reporters and editors to ensure there cannot be any positive news arising from a country with 1.3 billion people.
Typically, the negative stories adhere to three core ideas, which inform the unspoken guidelines within these press rooms when it comes to reporting on China.
First is the belief that China is a threat to the world and that this belief must be relentlessly reinforced at every available opportunity. How and why China is a threat is never explored; such is the deep-rooted and almost religious nature of the belief. Sound arguments do not matter. The basic tenets of good journalism are ignored when it comes to a China story. There is no need to explain or give evidence of why China is a global threat.
Left ignored is the plentiful evidence that shows China is not a global threat – even if one can point to mistakes and overreach in certain areas. China has not invaded any country in decades, or imposed sanctions that have devasted the lives of millions in poor countries, unlike the West, led by the United States.
Second is that China must be linked to every possible global event that affects the West. This provides an opportunity for the West to bash China while simultaneously burnishing its own credentials as the supposed arbiters of what is right and wrong in international relations. From the pandemic to the Russia-Ukraine war to carbon emissions; from rising sea levels to the scramble for rare earths; from the building of infrastructure in Africa to the production of vaccines – there must be an angle to demonize the country and instill fear in Western nations (and beyond).
Indeed, media outlets are reverting to the “yellow peril” of the late 1800s. There is no subtle and nuanced approach to instilling fear like this. It is full-on and very often blatantly racist – but it is now acceptable for one to be racist about the Chinese in Western media, despite the fact that Black-White relations are very carefully described.
The third part of this phenomenon, which is surprisingly not challenged by liberal readers of mainstream media, is the sentiment that everything must be done – even illegal and unfair methods – to arrest the rise of China. Never mind the rights of hundreds of millions of Chinese to have a better life after a century of poverty and deprivation.
Headline after headline that capture this sentiment have normalized the view that there is a need to curb the rise of China, and that this is a legitimate geopolitical objective. There is no explanation about why or if it is even morally acceptable. It has become a feature of Western commentary on China to say that its rise is a concern and a threat. With this assumption unassailably in place, the West has the right to galvanize – and even bully – its allies and ask the absurd question, “what should be done about China’s rise?” – as if China does not have the right to carve its own place in the new world.
There is even a school of thought in the United States that it was America that magnanimously allowed China its first baby steps into the globalized economy, and that in hindsight the U.S. was too nice to China. This view betrays everything that is imperial about the West and why it is unable to come to terms with the legitimate rights of other nations to grow and become powers in their own right. The assumption is that the rise of others is a gift from the West, and accordingly they must never challenge its supremacy. The deeply entrenched view in the West from centuries of domination is that it will decide which nations will be permitted to be participants in the global economy according to its self-serving “rules-based order.”
Indeed, Western media seem wholly tied to the hegemonic competition view of geopolitics, constantly referencing the “Thucydides Trap” and being stuck in the Western canon as if there are no other ways of looking at geopolitics and world order. This view assumes conflict is inevitable and helps to demonize China while justifying the hegemonic position of the West – and the United States in particular – as a globally stabilizing force.
Needless to say, this is an extremely belligerent position to take, and not something media should be egging on. Whatever happened to promoting multilateralism? And why are people who speak to multilateralism side-lined as idealists or China apologists? This flies in the face of fair reporting.
So, how to fix this?
First, people in China and the non-Western world must realize that when it comes to the workings of the mainstream media we are in a new era – a propaganda war the likes of which the world has never seen before, powered by today’s digital technology. The media war is real, and tech-driven, and it is not a fight for eyeballs to deliver fair, honest, and educational news. It is almost everything else but that, especially when it comes to China or enemies of the West.
On one side is sheer propaganda aimed at the preservation of Western power. Participants include the most well-known brands in the Western media world, which are household names across the world.
The idea that Western media is run by fair-minded people who are independent, driven only by a desire to talk truth to power, is a mirage. It is a myth, and it is a bitter pill that needs to be swallowed. The idea that the Western journalist is a paragon of virtue also needs to be banished from the minds of consumers of media.
That is the first stage in enabling one to step out of the propaganda mist we are engulfed in on a daily basis, so that one can examine different viewpoints as news is consumed. This is not easy, given the current dominance of Western media outlets and their apparently collective mission.
The next step is to dismantle the dominance of Western media.
This too will be a long, hard fight. Mainstream Western media are the most powerful in the world and for close to a century, Western media have had a stranglehold on the dissemination of international news and viewpoints across the world. Many had their origins in colonialism, the preservation of empire and later the spread of Western ideas about how the world should be run. These outlets are a powerful economic force and dislodging them will require investments.
Across the world there is an opportunity to contribute to this effort, not necessarily by building large media companies but by investing in media companies that are committed to fair and objective analysis, so that local audiences in the first instance have choices and are not inundated by the propaganda of mainstream Western media. This too will not be an easy task and there are many hurdles to overcome, but this is not the space to dive into those details. Ultimately, it is all about readers becoming more aware of global issues by having more non-Western sources to rely on, so they are not victims of the current propaganda war. This is beginning to happen as more alternatives flourish.
It is an urgent need in the West too so that the mass hysteria generated by mainstream media is prevented from creating fear and pitting Western societies against the rest of the world. Today the target is China; tomorrow India and then maybe Africa.
Merkules – ”Rich Men North Of Richmond” Remix (Reaction)
Young Boy Looks Out The Window And Sees Sister Bring Dragged Into The Woods
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At some point or another in most of our lives, we will have an opportunity to be a hero. Some people will take that opportunity and run with it, and that includes Owen Burns.
Owen was coming home from school in the afternoon when he heard screaming. It was his sister, and at first, he didn’t feel that it was anything serious.
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Eventually, he did turn and look out the window and what he saw on the outside was enough to make his blood run cold. It was a frightening issue but one that he decided to put out of his mind and do the right thing.
Owen was getting ready to play Call of Duty on his PlayStation when his sister started screaming from the backyard. As any 13-year-old brother would do, he got irritated because he thought she was overreacting and just being annoying.
When he looked out the bedroom window, however, he saw that his sister was being dragged away by a stranger. His sister was only eight years old and they were headed for the woods behind the house.
Immediately, the teenage boy grabbed a slingshot and anything he could use as ammunition, including a rock and a marble. He took aim and got off a shot, hitting his sister’s abductor right between the eyes.
He got off a second shot, hitting the man in the chest, and at that point, the man was swearing and cursing.
This wasn’t something that was hidden from view, it happened in broad daylight at their home in Michigan. The mother, Maggie Burns, said that it is not common for kidnappings to occur in the neighborhood.
Fortunately, the abductor was scared away and the 8-year-old girl was unharmed. They were able to capture the would-be kidnapper, a 17-year-old. They didn’t release his identity but they did say he would face charges as an adult.
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According to John Grimshaw, a Lieut. with the police force, Owen saved his sister’s life, or from something seriously bad happening to her. They called his actions extraordinary.
He also said that the young man should be commended for what he did. He used a regular slingshot that was purchased for three dollars on sale. He did practice shooting on occasion at old orange juice cans, and that helped him to improve his aim.
Owen said that he only had one thing on his mind when he saw someone trying to kidnap his sister. He was afraid that the kidnapper would either kill her or use her as a sex slave.
He said that the abductor had come behind his sister and grabbed her just like you would see in the movies, putting his hand over her mouth and his arm around her waist. He was trying to get her into the woods.
That is when Owen grabbed his slingshot and started shooting at him. When the kidnapper finally let his grip on the little girl go, she ran into the house crying and said that she had almost been killed.
Owen was angry at that point and ran outside to curse at the kidnapper. He threw a baseball in his direction but it missed.
At that point, he tried to shoot him again with a slingshot but the rubber band broke.
They then called the mother who had been at a relative’s house to help as she was on her way from work. She ran home, called the police, and it all stems from hearing her kids on the phone. The only thing she heard was the word, kidnapper.
They found the 17-year-old kidnapper hiding at a gas station nearby. He was indicted in the County Court on charges of kidnapping and attempted criminal assault. They will also charge him with misdemeanor assault and battery.
The police said that: “He had obvious signs of an injury consistent with those that would have been sustained from the slingshot strikes to his head and chest.”
The mother was skeptical at first that Owen had hit the kidnapper in the face and chest from 200 feet away. When the police confirmed the injuries, they even said that the goose egg on his head continued to get bigger while they were speaking with him.
Heroes come in all shapes and sizes and I would say Owen and is as close to a superhero as you can get.
Office of Naval Intelligence Leak: China Building Naval Ships 232 Times faster than USA – “Lift to Invade North America”
The United States office of Naval Intelligence suffered a leak of an intel briefing slide, showing China now has naval ship building capacity 232 times greater than the USA. This capacity can be used to build enough ships to “lift” an army to invade North America – successfully.
This amazingly oversized capacity to build naval vessels has caused some analysts to raise the alarm that the United States cannot even hope to catch-up . . . for years.
Other analysts have a more dire view: China is building this enormous amount of “lift” to be able to field a 200 million man army to invade and conquer North America, which it needs for food production and for its gigantic and growing population.
The seeds for this dire analysis began under the Trudeau government in Canada, when it signed a Treaty with the China Communist Party (CCP) in Beijing to allow Chinese Troops into Canada – to “protect Chinese investments.” The Treaty made it explicitly clear that local governments in Canada would not be notified and could not do anything about the presence of such troops.
By using Canada as a beachhead, giving China a foothold on north American, China can now pre-position armor and troops along the US northern border until they reach such mass that an invasion of the US would be almost a fait accompli!
US Military in Recruiting Shambles
In the meantime, the armed forces of the United States are in a Recruiting shambles. EVERY branch of US Armed Forces have been missing their recruiting goals for the all-volunteer force, and have been missing those goals for years.
The troubles plaguing recruiting do not come from lack of available people but rather a whole host of issues with those people. For instance, a very large portion of American young people are “morbidly obese” to such a degree, that the physical strength and stamina simply cannot be restored to make them fit for military service.
Other potential recruits suffer from a host of disqualifying psychiatric issues: Men who think they’re actually women trapped in the wrong body . . . . women who think they’re men . . . . candidates with a history of suicidal ideation and/or actual suicide attempts and more.
Also plaguing the pool of potential recruits is the mental inability to think critically; to make judgements, and act on immediate information.
As if all of this wasn’t bad enough, a sizeable portion of the potential recruits are so physically weak and effeminate, they simply cannot be brought to military strength.
Drug use is also a major factor in disqualifying potential recruits. Psychiatric drugs for Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), addiction to Adderall, on top of others who are using illicit drugs like Cocaine, Heroin, or a
plethora of other, exotic “designer drugs,” has disqualified very many potential recruits because withdrawal from such drugs can lead to long-term violent outbursts and unstable mental states.
DEFENSE INDUSTRY IN SHAMBLES
Adding fuel to the fire is the Defense Industry itself. At present, the US Defense Industry is UNABLE to re-supply the most basic war-fighting products like Ammunition and artillery shells in sufficient quantities to re-stock what the US has already given away to Ukraine, never mind to fight an active war with a near-peer rival.
Instead of hiring new employees to increase defense production, many defense contractors are having to LAY OFF workers because they simply cannot get the parts necessary to assemble replacement weaponry like Javelin Missiles! American manufacturer’s “out-sourced” many jobs to overseas locations, and, in the case of China, that is now coming back to bit the US in its ass.
For instance, China recently imposed economic Sanctions on Lockheed Martin and other American Defense Contractors, for supplying weapons to Taiwan. This means that Chinese manufacturers can no longer sell certain electronics to those companies; electronics necessary to build and re-supply US military weapon systems!
Not only is this affecting the US ability to continue providing weaponry to Ukraine, it is also affecting our ability to make weapons to defend . . . OURSELVES. With the vast array and quantities of weaponry being “given” to Ukraine, it appears to some Defense Analysts that the US is being INTENTIONALLY DISARMED by its own federal government.
COMMERCIAL ENTITIES UNABLE TO SERVICE or CUTTING-OFF US MILITARY
Reverting back to the subject of ships for a moment, it became known this week that Danish shipping giant, MAERSK, is “backing away” from providing shipping services to the Department of Defense.
With most of US Ship-building gone from environmental regulations and Union Labor contract demands, the few shipbuilders the US still has, simply cannot meet the demand for new vessels or to timely repair existing vessels.
The US has to rely on foreign shipbuilders for Hulls and for shipping services.
MAERSK has not said why they are “backing away” from providing services to the Department of Defense, but they are, in fact, doing so.
Are these companies being pressured by China or other foreign governments to cripple the US? Are these companies being threatened with losing the ability to provide shipping services to foreign countries if they continue helping the US? The answer to those questions is not known, but it __may__ be a possibility.
Which brings up the issue of future US ship building and moving men and materiel.
With China having 232 times the US ship building capacity, and with commercial ventures in the US unable to re-supply or even timely service existing ships, and now commercial entitities “backing away” from providing services to the US, it is starting to look as though we are being set up to be invaded and conquered.
MILITARY-AGE MEN SOUTHERN BORDER INVASION
All of the above brings us to the US Southern Border. There has been an over Nine-hundred percent (900%+) increase in young, fit, military-age, Chinese men crossing illegally into the US via the southern border. This is confirmed by FOX NEWS.
Why the sudden surge of Chinese men? Some analysts think they are a fifth column; wolves in sheep’s clothing, entering our country at the behest of the China Communist Party to lay in wait for an order to attack the US from within.
And the US federal Government is making it EASIER for people to enter the country illegally! The Biden regime has ordered gates in former President Trump’s border wall . . . . to be welded open! YEs, you read that correctly, the gates are being welded open so even US citizens, concerned about illegals entering the country, can’t simply close and lock the gates.
STRATEGIC PETROLEUM RESERVE, DRAINED
The United States established the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) after the Arab Oil Embargo of the 1970’s. The SPR can hold a little over seven-hundred-million barrels of oil in giant caverns in Louisiana and Texas. Yet the Biden regime has ordered the SPR to sell-off much of that reserve to artificially reduce gasoline prices in the USA.
As of today, more than two-thirds of that 700 million barrel SPR, have been sold off and are gone. There are presently no plans (and no money) to refill it.
If the US is invaded, and we cannot import foreign oil because we’re a war zone where ships cannot safely come and go, we won’t have more than a month or two of fuel with which to fight and defend our own land.
TREACHERY?
This appears to be deliberate treachery on the part of the federal government, some of whom may simply have been bribed by China, or other countries, to sell-out our nation and prime us for invasion.
This week, Congress beings Impeachment Hearings into President Joe Biden, who allegedly received potentially millions in bribes from China and elsewhere. Congress has already revealed that Bank Wire Transfers to Hunter Biden, showing Joe Biden’s home address in Wilmington, Delaware as the recipient’s address, have been confirmed as having taken place. At least $250,000 of such wire transfers are said to have come from Beijing.
Also this week, Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) was Indicted and Arraigned in federal court, after being caught with some $458,000 cash stuffed into envelopes hidden in clothing in a closet, and in a safe, in his Englewood Cliffs home, along with 81.5 ounces of gold bullion in bars, allegedly for making military deals with and for, Egypt.
Menendez is charged with Bribery.
If Menendez took Bribes from Egypt to sell out US weapons, one has to wonder if he also took money from China to sell us out? Or if he also took money from other countries?
One also has to wonder if any OTHER Senators or Congressmen took such Bribes?
It appears the United States of America is suffering a level of treachery from within, that may actually cause our nation to cease to exist.
China Exposes New G20 Summit Hypocrisy and lies
You won’t believe what Biden just said after all the sanctions the US imposed on China. Biden gave a statement thinking that he is trying to create good relations with China after the G20 meeting with China’s Premier League Biden said we don’t want to contain China instead we want to make sure we have a relationship that is on the up and up squared away but don’t be misled by this statement before you know the actual truth According to Forbes, the US has imposed a list of sanctions on China, and its motive is simply to contain China, so when it comes to words, the US has a lot to say to impress you, but when it comes to actions, you won’t find anyone more brutal in the world than the US, so the question is why is there such a big difference between the US’s actions and its words, let’s find out in this video we will discuss the reality behind the US’s claims to not contain China We will also analyze the impact of Biden and Lee’s G20 summit on US-China relations. Watch the video until the conclusion to find out if the US is being honest this time or if this is just another tactic to attain ulterior aims.
https://youtu.be/w0MMrKvJZLQ
COVERT INTEL: CLOSEST PUTIN ADVISOR SAYS “NUKE U.K. OFF THE MAP” TO STOP UKRAINE WAR AND WW3
One of the closest and most trusted Advisors to Russian President Vladimir Putin has formally told his boss that a “massive” use of nuclear weapons is necessary to actually “prevent” World War 3 and save humanity. He urges the complete destruction of the United Kingdom as a warning to others to stop.
Mediterranean Steak and Pasta with Tomato-Olive Sauce
Whole-wheat pasta is served with beef Sirloin Tip Center Steaks and a tomato and olive sauce. This one will please the adults and the kids in your family.
mediterranean steak pasta
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
8 ounces uncooked whole grain fettuccine
4 beef Sirloin Tip Center Steaks, cut 3/4 inch thick (about 4 ounces each)
1 (26 ounce) jar pasta sauce with olives*
1 teaspoon dried oregano leaves, crushed
1/4 cup finely shredded Italian cheese blend or mozzarella cheese
2 teaspoons chopped fresh parsley leaves
Instructions
Cook fettuccine according to package directions; drain and keep warm.
Heat large nonstick skillet over medium heat until hot. Place beef steaks in skillet; cook for 11 to 13 minutes for medium rare (145 degrees F) doneness, turning occasionally. (Do not overcook.) Remove from skillet; keep warm.
Combine pasta sauce and oregano in same skillet; heat until hot. Return steaks to skillet; turn to coat with sauce.
Place steaks on fettuccine; spoon sauce over all.
Sprinkle steaks with cheese, allowing cheese to melt. Sprinkle with parsley.
Notes
* You may substitute 1 (26 ounce) jar pasta sauce with olives for 1 (26 ounce) pasta sauce plus 1/4 cup chopped olives.
I used to coach swimming in the early 2000’s. It probably won’t surprise you that my most challenging group was the middle school boys.
But where a few of them were difficult, others were in need of help. They were “different”. Consequently, they were bullied frequently at school. They would come in upset about how their day had gone.
I identified with them on so many levels as I’ve spent my entire life having people tell me, “You are one weird guy.”
I would reassure them that they were simply misunderstood and that they were in good company: some of the greatest people who ever lived were treated as weirdos.
Frederick Nietzsche, another mega genius, was in this camp at one point too. He was, by very definition, different than his peers. People tend to attack things they don’t understand.
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Throughout his life, he proposed many wild and brilliant ideas, faced his own share of critics, and endured his own moments of social isolation.
One line he wrote, that I encourage any who feel misunderstood to remember:
And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.
Humanity is filled with wild and shimmering variety. Those who see “different” and attack are afraid of their own authenticity.
Don’t shy away from living your own truth.
If you haven’t been told “You’re weird.” a few times along the way, you aren’t doing it right.
When I first arrived in China, I lived downtown in Lohu. And to get around, I rode the subway. Very convenient, and super cheap too.
I have many, many stories about those days.
At that time, My hair was short, but I had a long beard. I also wore a red baseball cap (backwards) and wore tan cargo shorts, and a black cargo vest over my black tee-shirt. I didn’t think too much about it.
My eyeglasses were tinted, giving me the appearance of wearing really dark sunglasses.
The baseball hat was to cover up my bald spot, and the beard was to over compensate. The cargo shorts were the norm, being 90F at 90% humidity daily. And the cargo vest is, well necessary, for tissues, phone, charger, wires, and all the rest.
I would ride the subway, and lean, casually on the side rails as the subway sped through the underground tunnels.
One day, I noticed another fellow on the train. He was of middle east appearance. Swarthy, perhaps from Afghanistan, Pakistan or maybe Syria. And he just keep looking at me. I tried not to look back, but he was just sitting there staring at me. His mouth open.
Open.
O-P-E-N
I would watch him in the glass reflection on the train. Yup. He was fixated on looking at me….
Historically, in 1990, the Chinese Air Force planned to import MiG-29s. But when they visited Moscow, a MiG-29 crashed during a demonstration.
This makes the Chinese hesitant to sign purchase agreements.
At this time, the Sukhoi Design Bureau quietly gave the SU-27 information to the Chinese (the SU-27 was still confidential at the time)
The Chinese compared the performance indicators of the SU-27 with the MiG-29. In a short period of time, a consensus was reached: buy back SU27 at any cost.
Facts have proved that the Chinese are wise. As a country with a vast territory, the range of MIG29 is too short and cannot meet the requirements. The SU-27 is more powerful and has a better design. An upgraded version of SU27 made by the Chinese: J16 fighter jet
The Chinese have developed and produced many upgraded models based on the SU-27, and their performance even surpasses the Russian version.
Until China’s fourth-generation fighter jets entered service, the improved SU-27 fighter jets had always been the absolute main force of the Chinese Air Force.
My MIL raised 5 boys, I married the eldest Son, we had 2 sons so I was the only girl for a couple of years..when he died in a car accident 8 years later. I made sure my boys spent time with her. I remarried but still visited her thru the years. Forty-six years later, She is now 90, on one visit, we were just talking, when she said, I always wanted a daughter, but had the boys instead, I had to wait till you came to have my daughter. I had called her Mom all these years, i was so touched to hear that. Bless her.
2 beef shoulder center steaks* (ranch), cut 1 inch thick (about 8 ounces each)
2 teaspoons ground cumin
3/4 cup prepared tomatillo salsa
1 small ripe, Fresh California Avocado, diced
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
Instructions
Press cumin evenly onto beef steaks.
Heat large nonstick skillet over medium heat until hot.
Place steaks in skillet; cook 13 to 16 minutes for medium rare (145 degrees F) to medium (160 degrees F) doneness, turning occasionally.
Meanwhile combine salsa, avocado and cilantro in small bowl.
Carve steaks into slices; season with salt, as desired.
Serve with salsa.
Notes
* Two beef top loin (strip) steaks, cut 1 inch thick, may be substituted for shoulder center steaks. Cook for 12 to 15 minutes, turning occasionally.
The Blinken Doctrine: A two front war with Russia and China
Blinken might be the worst American “diplomat” in American history. He’s drunk on American exceptionalism out of touch with the new realities of multipolarity.
Back in my late teens, many moons ago, I saw cops arrest my friend to cover their asses late at night. Earlier, they had pulled over a motorcycle rider & passenger for riding on a bike with no lights on a back, unlit , dangerous windy road. But even though they were riding a black bike and wearing black (so basically invisible) the cops let them go…no ticket
20 minutes later, I was standing by the side of the road waiting for my friend to back his car out of a tight space so I could get in. The bike rider came around a bend and plowed into my friend’s car. He & his passenger were killed instantly when they were thrown from the bike. The cops, when they showed up, arrested my friend after verbally abusing & berating him and threw him in back of the squad car. They then proceeded to pick up the money, laying on the road, that had fallen out of the rider’s pocket and we’re stuffing it into their own pockets. I brought that to the attention of the crowd that was assembling. Cops told me to mind my own business. Then they started yelling at my innocent friend some more who was beyond distraught.
I finally opened the squad car door & let him out which then got me arrested also. Get to the station and I make my phone call. 5 minutes later the Chief walks in and all hell brakes lose as the cops on duty try to get their stories straight and throw my friend & I under the bus. The Chief sees me & demands to speak to me directly. I tell him everything that happened, including the cops taking the victim’s money. Of course the arresting cops call me a liar.
One slight problem for them. The Chief was a family friend who had known me since I was a baby. His best friend was my grandfather who just happened to be a police Chief 3 towns over. Long story short, two of the cops lost their jobs over this.
AUSTRALIA AND AUSTRALIANS
The following has been written by the late Douglas Adams of “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” fame.
“Australia is a very confusing place, taking up a large amount of the bottom half of the planet. It is recognisable from orbit because of many unusual features, including what at first looks like an enormous bite taken out of its southern edge; a wall of sheer cliffs which plunge into the girting sea.
Geologists assure us that this is simply an accident of geomorphology, but they still call it the “Great Australian Bight”, proving that not only are they covering up a more frightening theory but they can’t spell either.
The first of the confusing things about Australia is the status of the place. Where other landmasses and sovereign lands are classified as continent, island or country, Australia is considered all three.
Typically, it is unique in this.
The second confusing thing about Australia is the animals. They can be divided into three categories: Poisonous, Odd, and Sheep. It is true that of the 10 most poisonous arachnids on the planet, Australia has 9 of them. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that of the 9 most poisonous arachnids, Australia has all of them.
Any visitors should be careful to check inside boots (before putting them on), under toilet seats (before sitting down) and generally everywhere else.
A stick is very useful for this task.
The last confusing thing about Australia is the inhabitants.
A short history: Sometime around 40,000 years ago some people arrived in boats from the north. They ate all the available food, and a lot of them died.
The ones who survived learned respect for the balance of nature, man’s proper place in the scheme of things, and spiders. They settled in and spent a lot of the intervening time making up strange stories. They also discovered a stick that kept coming back.
Then, around 200 years ago, Europeans arrived in boats from the north.
More accurately, European convicts were sent, with a few deranged people in charge. They tried to plant their crops in autumn (failing to take account of the reversal of the seasons), ate all their food, and a lot of them died.
About then the sheep arrived, and have been treasured ever since. It is interesting to note here that the Europeans always consider themselves vastly superior to any other race they encounter, since they can lie, cheat, steal and litigate (marks of a civilised culture they say), whereas all the Aboriginals can do is happily survive being left in the middle of a vast red-hot desert – equipped with a stick.
Eventually, the new lot of people stopped being Europeans on ‘extended holiday’ and became Australians. The changes are subtle, but deep, caused by the mind-stretching expanses of nothingness and eerie quiet, where a person can sit perfectly still and look deep inside themselves to the core of their essence, their reasons for being, and the necessity of checking inside their boots every morning for fatal surprises. They also picked up the most finely tuned sense of irony in the world, and the Aboriginal gift for making up stories. Be warned.
There is also the matter of the beaches. Australian beaches are simply the nicest and best in the world, although anyone actually venturing into the sea will have to contend with sharks, stinging jellyfish, stonefish (a fish which sits on the bottom of the sea, pretends to be a rock and has venomous barbs sticking out of its back that will kill just from the pain) and surfboarders. However, watching
a beach sunset is worth the risk.
As a result of all this hardship, dirt, thirst and wombats, you would expect Australians to be a sour lot. Instead, they are genial, jolly, cheerful and always willing to share a kind word with a stranger. Faced with insurmountable odds and impossible problems, they smile disarmingly and look for a stick. Major engineering feats have been performed with sheets of corrugated iron, string and mud.
Alone of all the races on earth, they seem to be free from the ‘Grass is greener on the other side of the fence’ syndrome, and roundly proclaim that Australia is, in fact, the other side of that fence. They call the land “Oz” or “Godzone” (a verbal contraction of “God’s Own Country”). The irritating thing about this is… they may be right.
TIPS TO SURVIVING AUSTRALIA
Don’t ever put your hand down a hole for any reason – WHATSOEVER.
The beer is stronger than you think, regardless of how strong you think it is.
Always carry a stick.
Air-conditioning is imperative.
Do not attempt to use Australian slang unless you are a trained linguist and extremely good in a fist fight.
Wear thick socks.
Take good maps. Stopping to ask directions only works when there are people nearby.
If you leave the urban areas, carry several litres of water with you at all times, or you will die. And don’t forget a stick.
Even in the most embellished stories told by Australians, there is always a core of truth that it is unwise to ignore.
HOW TO IDENTIFY AUSTRALIANS
They pronounce Melbourne as “Mel-bin”.
They think it makes perfect sense to decorate highways with large fibreglass bananas, prawns and sheep.
They think “Woolloomooloo” is a perfectly reasonable name for a place, that “Wagga Wagga” can be abbreviated to “Wagga”, but “Woy Woy” can’t be called “Woy”.
Their hamburgers will contain beetroot. Apparently it’s a must-have.
How else do you get a stain on your shirt?
They don’t think it’s summer until the steering wheel is too hot to handle.
They believe that all train timetables are works of fiction.
Yes I was pulled over by the police while driving in London. As I hadn’t done anything wrong I asked the one who wasn’t checking my details why I’d been stopped. He said his colleague happened to be interested in the make of car I was driving and noticed that the number plate didn’t seem to match the year it was manufactured.
He e quite correct as it had been kept at factory for their use and so had only been registered for use on the road a year later. I thought it amazing that he’d noticed that while driving in the London traffic.
Ms. Tan was this petite girl in her early 20s, she was athletic, tanned, had the most perfect brown-tinged hair right out of a shampoo ad, and most of all she had a certain “get-out-of-my-way” badass attitude matched with an inexplicably attractive resting-bitch face.
She was the latest in a string of Physical Education teachers assigned to my class of 12 year old boys thoroughly enjoying the first blasts of puberty.
We were all on the ground pretending to do sit-ups or something like that while she yelled at us like a drill instructor, except this drill instructor was in skin tight hot shorts and her fluorescent sports bra was shining through her translucent T-shirt. We were all really enjoying that.
She was so caught up in her yelling that she didn’t watch where she was walking and she tripped over me.
She was sprawled face first all over me.
She was pressed so close to me I could smell her hair.
The whole class erupted into a derisive but mostly envious “Ooooo~” and “WAAAH!”
Instead of shooting up and telling everyone to shut the hell up, Ms. Tan locked her sympathetic eyes with me, smiled a smile I’d never before seen, and said:
“So sorry, looks like I fell for you”
She laughed, and got up. She then told everyone to shut the hell up.
I was the class hero for the entire year.
Uncanny Valley Explained | Why Robots, Dolls and Mannequins are Creepy
Man in Peru Caught Out Drinking With an 800-year-old Mummy!
A pre-Hispanic mummy of between 600 and 800 years old, was found inside the backpack of a delivery man from a delivery company in the Peruvian region of Puno, near Bolivia. The 26-year-old Peruvian man who was caught with the mummy said, ‘Juanita’ was a kind of ‘spiritual girlfriend’ he kept it at home “and took it out to show his friends.”
Drunk in Charge of a Mummy
The police found three young men accompanied by a mummy that was inside a thermal delivery suitcase. The discovery occurred on Saturday, February 25, 2023, in the city of Puno, in southern Peru. The group of friends was surprised by the police authorities in a routine check while they were consuming alcoholic beverages at the Mantaro viewpoint of Puno.
The 26-year-old had with him a delivery box from the company ‘Pedidos Ya’. Inside, there were human remains in a fetal position still bearing soft tissues with characteristics corresponding to a mummy.
According to the BBC , the young man described the mummy as ‘a kind of spiritual girlfriend’ as he had been sharing his room with it for some time. The mummy was supposedly owned by his father, and was generally kept in a box next to the TV. It is unknown how the mummy came to be owned by his father.
The Ministry of Culture specified through a statement that the remains – classified as a national cultural asset – were identified as a mummified adult man presumably from the eastern area of Puno. Sources from that office informed EFE that the individual would have been over 45 years old and approximately 1.51 meters (5 foot) tall, according to preliminary investigations.
The authorities estimate that the human remains were 800 years old, and would likely come from the district of Patambuco. Apparently, they had been in the possession of the family for about 30 years, the authorities from the Peruvian Ministry of Culture informed various local media.
The delivery man stated that the mummy was kept at his parents’ house and that he took it out to be seen by his friends from the neighborhood, according to the newspaper El Comercio .
The police confiscated the mummy and turned it over to the Peruvian Ministry of Culture. The delivery man and his two friends, aged between 23 and 26, have been detained and are being investigated for possible crimes against the country’s cultural heritage.
Why You Need to Leave America – 5 Signs You Can’t Ignore Anymore (It’s Time to GO!)
I was working as a photo engraver for a major newspaper. It was a union job, so I was making a pretty good salary. I was a newlywed, having gotten married two months earlier. I was working the day shift, 8 AM to 4:30 PM. My wife and I were still learning how to live as a couple.
Just before quitting time on a Thursday afternoon, I was told that starting next Monday, I was being moved to the graveyard shift, 1:30 AM to 8 AM. This meant that I would no longer be able to sleep with my wife. We made the best of the situation, but I was pissed that someone had enough control over my life that they could make me do something I did not want to do.
I was working in a room by myself operating a huge graphic arts camera. People would bring work to me, but I primarily worked by myself. Each night I would come to work and try to figure out how I could get out of this mess. I realized I had to work for myself. I had a lot of time to think.
After months of soul searching, I decided to go to law school. This would allow me to get out of the newspaper and work for myself. My schedule was work: 1:30 AM to 8 AM, go home, have a meal with my wife and then go to bed. We never figured out what to call the meals as it was breakfast for one of us and dinner for the other. I would sleep until 5 PM when my wife woke me for another meal. I would go to school, take classes from 7 PM to 10 PM and would stay out at school until midnight studying, come home and start the cycle all over again.
It was rough, but worth it. Right in the middle of law school, my first child was born. I was now the sole income for the family, a law student, and a new father.
I just retired from practicing law for over 35 years.
China is exploring the use of a new extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light source in making its own lithography facility but technology experts said such an ambitious goal may take many years to achieve.
Over the past few days articles and videos have gone viral on the Internet in China claiming that Tsinghua University has made breakthroughs in steady-state microbunching (SSMB) technology, which can create an EUV light source with a power several times higher than that of ASML’s EUV lithography.
They say the future launch of a SSMB accelerator, nicknamed “Lithographic cannon”, will help China bypass the export controls of the United States and the Netherlands.
These came after Huawei Technologies on August 29 commenced the sale of its flagship smartphone Mate60 Pro, which used a 7 nanometer chip produced with Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) N+2 processing technology and ASML deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography.
The SSMB technology in lithography can help China break the technological blockage of ASML.
An article published by Acta Physica Sinica (a Chinese academic journal) has proposed to create SSMB-EUV lithography while Tsinghua’s research has already proved the feasibility of this idea.
News about China’s plan to build an SSMB facility in Xiongan New Area near Beijing, with this project, if it’s successful, China can bypass the US sanctions.
China should develop the SSMB technology because it can obtain neither the EUV lithography from ASML nor key parts needed such as lenses from German’s Zeiss and laser beam tools from the United States’ Cymer and German’s Trumpf.
Currently, ASML’s EUV lithography is using a light source originating from a laser-produced plasma (LPP) source that has a maximum power of 500 watts. A ring-shaped SSMB accelerator can create an EUV light source with a power of about 1 kilowatt (1000 watts). Its circumference may range from 100 to 150 meters.
Another EUV light source comes from superconducting radio-frequency free electron laser (SRF-FEL), which can achieve maximum power of between 1 and 10 kW. Such a facility can stretch out for as long as 200 meters. More technological breakthroughs are needed to achieve this.
In general, the power of a laser beam should reach 250W for making 7nm chips, 350W for 5nm and 500W for 3nm. It needs 1kW to make 2nm chips.
All these long-term developments have recently caught the attention of Chinese netizens, who wish to see China move on to making its own EUV lithography after the successful launch of Mate60 Pro.
Coming Back Home After 3 Years In Thailand, here are my thoughts
We learn English so that you don’t have to learn Chinese.
Some of us even give ourselves an English name so that you won’t have to struggle with our Chinese names.
My former colleague in Dublin, Ying Xue, introduces herself as “Snow”, so that no one will struggle with her name.
My former housemate in Dublin, Chu Jun, introduces herself as “Jennifer”, so that no one will struggle with her name.
My former classmate in the States, Shi Ting, introduces herself as “Kelly”, so that no one will struggle with her name.
See the pattern here?
In my opinion, that’s pretty accommodating.
Your facility with Mandarin – or lack thereof – matters not one whit to me.
We can just converse in English.
I admit, I’m not the Second coming of the Bard – to be honest, I don’t really get poetry, I can never tell great from doggerel – but I strongly believe that my command of the English language is at a much higher level than your grasp of Mandarin will ever reach, could ever reach, in this lifetime at least.
And that’s not hubris speaking. Just common sense.
So, rest easy.
You will never need to learn Mandarin.
Banish those fears from your mind.
Take a deep breath.
Wipe the sweat that has beaded your brow.
Steady your hands.
And enjoy what remains of your existence on this ball of rock.
Life is too short to wallow in fear and hate.
Crumb-Crusted Top Sirloin and Roasted Garlic Potatoes with Bourbon Sauce
crumb crusted top sirloin roasted potatoes with bourbon sauce
Yield: 6 to 8 servings
Ingredients
Roasted Garlic Potatoes
2 large russet potatoes, each cut lengthwise into 8 wedges (about 1 1/2 pounds)
1 teaspoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
Steak
1 beef top sirloin steak, boneless, cut 2 inches thick (about 2 to 2 1/2 pounds)
1 tablespoon prepared spicy brown mustard
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/2 cup soft whole wheat bread crumbs
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
Bourbon Sauce
1/2 cup beef broth
2 tablespoons bourbon
1/4 cup Half-and-Half
Pepper
Instructions
Heat oven to 425 degrees F.
Roasted Garlic Potatoes
Place potato wedges in 15 x 10-inch metal baking pan.
Combine oil, garlic, salt and pepper in small bowl. Drizzle over potatoes; toss to coat. Spread potatoes in single layer. Set aside.
Steak
Combine mustard, garlic and 1/4 teaspoon pepper in same small bowl; spread evenly onto beef Top Sirloin Steak.
Combine bread crumbs and parsley in another small bowl. Pat mixture evenly over mustard mixture.
Place steak on rack in shallow roasting pan. Insert ovenproof meat thermometer so tip is centered in thickest part of beef, not resting in fat. Do not add water or cover. Roast steak and potatoes in 425 dgrees F oven for 25 minutes; turn potatoes. Continue roasting 15 to 20 minutes to medium rare (145 degrees F) to medium (160 degrees F) doneness for steak and until potatoes are tender.
Remove steak when meat thermometer registers 135 degrees F for medium rare; 150 degrees F for medium.
Transfer steak to carving board; tent loosely with aluminum foil. Let stand 5 to 10 minutes. (Temperature will continue to rise about 10 degrees F to reach 145 degrees F for medium rare; 160 degrees F for medium.)
Meanwhile prepare Bourbon Sauce.
Bourbon Sauce
Add broth and bourbon to roasting pan; bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring until browned bits attached to pan are dissolved. Boil for 2 minutes.
Add Half-and-Half; bring to a boil. Season with pepper, as desired. Keep warm.
Carve steak into slices. Spoon sauce over beef. Serve with potatoes.
Confession of the Day
My dying wife asked me if I’d be okay if she had sex with her ex one last time
My wife has a terminal disease. She is projected to live at most 9 months. I am of course destroyed. We’ve been together for a decade. I don’t remember life without her and I don’t know what I’m going to do when she’s gone. I have been doing my best to make the last days of her life good and grant whatever wish I can.
The doctors said that she was likely to need a wheelchair in 4 or 5 months, then by month 8 she’ll be bedridden for the last few weeks. That’s if she doesn’t decline faster.
Recently she sat me down and told me that one of the last things she wanted to do was have sex with a previous partner of hers. I of course was shocked and when I asked why the fuck she wants that. So basically she thinks that her most physically compatible satisfying lover was him. She gave a whole monologue about how sex sometimes is just physical and how emotionally fulfilling sex is with me but it was bullshit to get to that point.
So now I’m left with this, deny my dying wife a wish for my own ego, or let her go fuck another man who she feels was better. Honestly I’m so pissed of and betrayed that she asked this of me. I feel like I’m put in a position where I have to say yes because she’s dying.
I know what I want to say, but I don’t know if that’s right. I’m so hurt that sex with an ex was apparently so good that she needs to do it once before she dies.
I just hate everything about this.
Victor Davis Hanson warns America’s witnessing a ‘systemic collapse’
It amazes me how many don’t see the country collapsing before their eyes.
My best answer to a rude customer didn’t require speaking.
I had a foreign “dignitary” attempt to dine at the Japanese restaurant I bartended at. He showed up in 1 rolls Royce and his 7 wives arrived in a second one.
He sat drinking at my bar, ogling (in a very creepy way) every female in the bar while his wives stood quietly lined up against the wall without any refreshment. He complained about everything, including the bar snacks we put out demanding that I go to some specialty store to get a specific olive mix for him to munch on while waiting for his table. I declined
At one point in time, I bent over slightly to wash a glass and he just reached down my blouse to grab my breast. Without missing a beat, I grabbed a soda gun and sprayed the hell out of him with coke soda. Just happened that there were a couple of off duty cops sitting there so he was escorted out while a few of his wives snickered.
First of all, “Huawei’s reentry” is possible only because they overcame all the U.S. sanctions and built a better chips on a 7nm platform two generation behind the leading edge 3mn chip that Apple has. . . and producing it without ASML’s EUV machine that people said they had to have. And Huawei’s can even do what Apple’s can’t – make satellite calls that is essentially 6G.
So what do you expect any lobbying will do for Apple? Just as Biden expected Russia to topple with the SWIFT ban, all of Washington never thought Huawei could come up with its own chip. . . . and this soon!
And most important of all, Apple doesn’t want really to get China upset because they’re the only ones in the world who could make Apple’s leading devices. They may pass on assembly of legacy devices to India or Vietnam to please Washington but no one is set up to even touch China on their high end production lines.
Apple is indeed caught between the rock and a hard place, especially with the mobil market being down. They just canceled order for about 20% of the 3nm chip for which they were suppose to be taking up 90% of TSMC’s manufacturing run. So, it’s not just Apple that will be hurting.
In the meantime, Huawei has increased their orders for more Mate 60 Pros. its uhheard of that a dated chip is outperforming and outselling the leaders and if even last for a short while, expect red ink to be outflowing.
Shopping at One of the Last Open Sears Stores – Newport Centre Mall Jersey City, NJ
Here’s a fun fact, once you become a grannie in China, you get to wear a grannie “uniform”. These grannies all wear outlandish crazy floral patterned tops. And it seems to be the unofficial “uniform” of the grannie sect inside of China.
2023 09 19 17 52
I don’t know quite how it works, but seriously… all the grannies wear these God-awful floral tops; the busier, and more abrasive the better.
Don’t you know.
…
Let me tell you all the sad tale of my mistakes in cooking hamburgers.
Grilled Hamburgers 2
You see, as a teenager, my father was trying to lose weight, and at that time he believed that all the fat in hamburgers must be removed for it to be “healthy”. And so, whenever he cooked hamburgers, he would squeeze all the delicious juices out of the burger. Whether on the grill or in the pan. And the result would be a dry burger.
I didn’t know any better. Being all of 12 or 13 at the time, and so I thought that this was the way that you cook hamburgers. You squeeze all the fat out.
Stupid silly me.
No wonder no one wanted me to cook the hamburgers at family get-togethers. I made dry and tasteless hamburgers.
I feel so bad about it, and I wince when I remember that particular memory.
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Today, I leave all the precious juices inside the burger. Let it cook just that way. Don’t ever…ever…EVER squeeze out the juices! The juices are what you want in a fine greasy delicious burger.
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Go get yourself a nice burger. Make sure that it is tasty and delicious and do not skimp on the sides. Have a great meal and a great day!
Being disabled and looking like I do there are two things I always get to overhear. Going through TSA my name comes up red flagged. Meaning check him completely.
A customs agent told me “it’s due to your Military career and past knowledge.”
What the hell does that mean? I’m in a wheelchair and have metal in my leg, shoulder, and back. I am a wand beep show. All hands pat downs in a wheelchair. You need two hips to stand, so I can’t stand. Any chance I am taking over the plane? Gunpowder tests on hands AND ARMS. OK so the Navy/CIA service made me an enemy of the state or something?
I think it is BS and it’s profiling but my wife said “no it’s not.”
Then you have people whispering when we get on first. “Bet they fake it to board first…”
I tore into a woman I heard say that. I yelled so loud the airport got quiet. Does it look like I’m faking it? I tried to get out of wheelchair and fell. Hurt. But I felt better with that. Maybe she’ll get it some day.
My wife wasn’t happy about my antics but I’m so tired of it. And she knows. On the plane though I overheard a mom telling their kid there is no difference between disabled people and us. Except a part of their body just doesn’t work like ours. She had me in tears. The best explanation of a disabled person I have ever heard explained. And plainly so a child could understand it. The kid kept asking me if I needed any help?
Thats mainly because The Ruble is not a very Publicly Traded Currency & Russia is a Net Exporter
Putin did three strategic things:-
Firstly , he rose the interest rates to 20% Short term. That helped when a huge amount of rubles entered into the Banking system, reducing the Supply and subsequently making the Ruble more valuable.
Secondly, he had a rule where all Companies in Russia had to ensure 80% of all Foreign Payments were mandatorily in Russian Rubles. As a result – Companies within Russia had to buy Rubles from Russian Central Bank and this helped the Ruble gain traction and demand.
Thirdly, he announced that he would only take paymets for Gas in Rubles. Now while G7 governments keep talking nonsense as Politicians do, the Businessmen – ie:- The Refineries, The Gas Distributors etc had to assume the worst case scenario and be prepared and so they collectively purchased roughly 160 Billion Rubles over 4 days (Around Euro 1.53 Billion). If they really have to pay for Gas in Rubles – they will need around 1.5 Trillion Rubles but still…this Ruble purchase also took the Ruble rate up.
In this way – the Ruble strengthened from 141 Rubles to a Dollar on 7th March 2022 to 93 Rubles to a Dollar on 28th March 2022.
Meanwhile – Why exactly did the Ruble crash in value???
Its not traded on any Exchange right? No Major Country carries Ruble reserves? Its not as if Rubles are sold in US or EU and they dumped the Rubles right?
I believe this was because the West dumped their entire stock of Rubles
Prior to 24th February – You had 900 Billion Rubles or around US$ 13 Billion with Foreign Countries in the form of Securities or actual Ruble Deposits.
My guess is – the West dumped this entire $ 13 Billion or 900 Billion of Rubles with the intention of causing a major crash in the Ruble and create an economic turmoil in Russia.
My guess was – Crash the value of the Ruble, Make Necessary Imports very expensive , mainly Drugs and Pharma and bring Putin to his knees.
Sadly someone spoilt the party:-
China has the largest Ruble Reserves outside of Russia ($ 55.1 Billion or around 1.5% of its foreign reserves). The West had hoped China would be panic driven to sell their Rubles as well which could have crashed the Ruble even further.
Luckily China didn’t fall for the trap and instead kept their Rubles and even rose the price band between the Yuan and Ruble by 10% instead of 5% to prevent panic sales of Rubles.
No Wonder the West is SO ANGRY WITH CHINA
Its why i always say – A NON CONVERTIBLE CURRENCY is the Greatest Asset for a NET EXPORTER
And another thing
900 Billion Ruble dumping – caused a 13 day turmoil for the Ruble
IMAGINE IF CHINA DUMPS $ 1.273 TRILLION OF US DOLLAR DEBT !!!!!!
I was flying home to Mom’s funeral. Had our 13 month old son with me. A young soldier took the aisle seat. We exchanged pleasantries and then I busied myself keeping N. occupied. Mealtime came and I noticed the young man talking to the flight attendant. Turns out he had told her to hold his meal and he offered to hold N. while I ate and then happily ate his own. When we landed he helped me with my carry-on luggage and wished me luck with the next leg of my trip. I’ve never forgotten that young soldier.
If someone is trying to make you decide in a hurry, they are probably giving you a bad deal. Walk away.
Sometimes pretending that you are naive gets you more information.
Pretending is helpful many times.
If you want to avoid office politics, say good things about coworkers behind their backs.
Physical contact makes you more likely to say yes to a request.
If you want to make someone feel uncomfortable, look at their forehead when you’re talking to them.
When a group of people laugh, they tend to look at the person they like the most.
Nervousness and excitement have the same body reaction, so if you’re nervous for a speech, instead convince yourself you’re excited. Its proven to give better speeches, too.
Ask for something that seems small, but is related, to what you really want. Then, once they’ve agreed to the small thing, just work up with slightly larger requests until you achieve your goals.
I can reverse that. My father recounted the story of a massive brick chimney on the OSU campus. They wanted it down, so put it out for bids. The bids came in the thousands of dollars (a lot of money in the ‘50s), except one. An old guy with a beat-up pickup came by and bid $50. He chiseled out a number of the bricks, replacing them with wood blocks. When he’d replaced enough of them, he threw gasoline on it, lit it, and retreated. When the thing came down, he hauled away all of the brick (what he really wanted).
One of the great media injustices took place in 1994 — and it began a pattern of malignment that escalates to this day.
The case was Liebeck v. McDonald’s. It’s one of the most widely recognized and highly misunderstood lawsuits in history. Most people know it as, “The greedy lady who spilled coffee on herself and wanted an easy payday.”
It’s also the precursor to social media harassment campaigns — including a list of targets I hesitate to even mention — because I know people buy into the nonsense.
Here’s what really happened.
The lead-up to the legal showdown
Stella Liebeck did indeed order coffee and spill it on herself. After pulling through the drive-through, she put the coffee between her legs, and the lid popped off. The coffee then spilled on her inner thighs and crotch region.
What people often miss is that the coffee didn’t burn her — it completely scorched her body.
McDonald’s was keeping the coffee far, far hotter than it needed to be, at temperatures that cause third-degree burns in an instant. Remember: Heat damage is also a proxy of exposure of duration — and there was little time to react (which was exacerbated by her old age).
Liebeck spent more than a week in the hospital battling life-threatening infections.
The media also conveniently ignore that there were more than 700 hot coffee complaints and lawsuits filed against McDonald’s in the lead-up to this case. More than $500,000 in payouts had been given to burn victims.
But when the casual consumer scanned headlines and saw, “Woman Wins Millions After Mistakenly Spilling Coffee On Herself”, it turned McDonald’s into a martyr for lazy, greedy consumers — and the customer into an avatar of laziness and opportunism.
It became so easy to conclude the woman was a fool for not knowing coffee was hot, and that she should have been more careful and taken responsibility for her mistakes.
She’s lucky there was no Twitter back then.
The court case was a hot mess too
During my MBA program, we studied this case in corporate law class. I remember being so surprised at the number of contradictions to public perception within it.
First, Liebeck never sued for millions.
She asked for $20,000 just to cover her medical expenses (the costs her insurance didn’t cover). For six months, McDonald’s refused and instead offered her $800. Eventually, she hired a lawyer. His eyes went wide as he saw the facts of the case. That’s when their claim went way up.
The jury was initially skeptical of Liebeck. They thought she was just another ambulance chaser.
And then they saw the actual images of the burns
Liebeck had permanent damage to her private areas. The images are hard to look at and I can’t even describe them without getting very graphic.
Doctors performed several skin grafts. Liebeck’s physician testified in front of the jury that her burns were one of the worst he’d ever seen, as bad as people who’d been on fire.
Conversely, McDonald’s defense lawyers were flamboyant and pompous. In one of the all-time great legal screw-ups, they responded to the fact that 700+ people had been burned by saying it was “little more than a rounding error”. Regardless of the company’s customer volume, it reflected a callous disregard for the harm they had — and were — causing.
After the jury saw McDonald’s track record of burns, the arrogance of their lawyers, and their refusal to accept any blame, the tide turned.
Even worse, Liebeck’s attorney cross-examined McDonald’s quality control manager and squeezed three painful confessions out of him:
That their coffee was not served at a temperature safe for consumption.
That consumers were not adequately warned of the burn risk.
He also buried his foot in his mouth by saying he had more important matters to attend to than the burn injuries. He said they didn’t constitute a change in policy.
Between these missteps and the facts of the case, the jury awarded Liebeck $640,000. However, the judge added punitive damages totaling $2.7 million, equal to two days of Mcdonald’s coffee sales.
Punitive damages are a judge’s way of saying, “You messed this up so bad that I’m going to add extra damages just to send a stronger message to everyone watching this.”
The aftermath
Sadly, Liebeck never got the millions.
She instead settled out of court for a half-million dollars. She spent the remaining 12 years of her life in poor health while her settlement only covered her medical care and a live-in nurse.
She was never some dumb, greedy, careless woman who didn’t know that coffee was hot. The public’s misconception was a major disservice to someone who genuinely suffered.
This should have been a PR nightmare for McDonald’s. Between the 700+ incidents and the pattern of lava-hot coffee, it was just a matter of time before this happened.
McDonald’s was big enough to take the hit and was blessed with a rare media hall pass. Conservative political talk shows needed an anti-business case study to spin for election season.
The public drew quick conclusions about this woman before even knowing the facts of the case. It highlights a continuing clouding of the truth — often about things that don’t even affect your personal life — yet damage someone else’s.
In recent years, I’ve seen rampant campaigns to target and harass people on social media — Twitter especially — by people who don’t actually know what happened in some person’s divorce. I see Medal of Honor winners being targeted because of bogus campaigns about what happened on a mission — by people who have probably never been in combat.
Taking sides is fun. It’s in our nature to enjoy combative feuds and pick a team. Just remember that we aren’t usually working with hard evidence or perfect information.
It’s so easy to let your own experiences inform your opinion more than the facts.
In short: stay empathetic. Know that even if someone made a mistake — you could easily have been them, looking out from their eyes, seeing all the people holding torches and shouting your name.
The first and only brand new car that I ever bought. About a month later I was driving down the highway doing about 60 mph and the engine shut down without warning. I managed to coast onto the shoulder and it would not start. I waited about 20 minutes and it fired right up! I took the car back to the dealership and they could not find any issues to get the problem to happen again. I picked the car up and while driving home the engine shut down again. S.O.A.B! So I had the car towed back to the dealership and they kept it for 2 days and still couldn’t find the problem. I went home and the next day it happened again. Shut down – wait 20 minutes – then start right up again. This went on for about a week and I was about to contact the dealer again to get this covered under the lemon law.
Then a friend suggested that I replace the magnetic pickup. This is a sensor in the distributor that detects the rotation of the distributor shaft. If is faulty it can trick the computer into thinking there’s an engine failure and shutoff the engine.
I bought the part, took off the distributor cap, pulled the magnetic pickup and there is was. Sticking on-end to the magnet was the tiniest sliver of metal no more than 1/16″ long! Probably left over from when the block was machined. I wiped the sliver off with my finger and put the original part back in and never had the problem again.
Intel, Nvidia, and Qualcomm DISAGREE With Biden’s Export Control
From a pro-USA source…
In a complex tug-of-war between national security and economic interests, the United States is facing a conundrum in its semiconductor strategy. Discover why the CEOs of major American chip giants, Intel, Nvidia, and Qualcomm, are urging the Biden administration to rethink its stringent export controls on computer chips to China. These restrictions were initially imposed to curb China’s military modernization efforts, but their unintended consequences are starting to surface.
Ukraine SitRep: Western Military Commentators Finally Accept The Obvious
The Kuebler-Ross model of grief describes the human coping mechanism to deal with extremely difficult situations. It has five phases:
denial – “No, not me, it cannot be true”
anger – “Why me?”
bargaining – attempting to postpone death with “good behaviour”
depression – when reacting to their illness, and preparing for their death
acceptance – “The final rest before the long journey”
With regard to the Ukrainian counter-offensive the last phase of the grief model has now been reached.
While not all politician are yet there, the military and intelligence specialists, who are part of the western propaganda squads, have made their conclusions. From their mouth the truth is dripping to the media. While the headlines below may not express it, the content of those pieces, especially in the first four, is finally admitting the obvious. It didn’t work and the counter-offensive is done:
Nothing of the above is new to Moon of Alabama readers. I may have helped to spare you the grief by not clinging to a the narrative but to the reality of the battlefield:
This outcome of the counteroffensive against the hardened Russian defense lines was predictable (May 11!):
In military books this is know as ‘echeloned defense’ with three lines of well prepared positions ten kilometer apart from each other. Each line consists of tank obstacles, mine belts, prepared anti-tank positions to monitor and counter potential breach attempts and well prepared artillery support from behind the next defense line.
To crack such a nut without air support and without significant artillery advantage is nearly impossible.
But the Ukrainians did even worse than I had thought. The delaying action by the Russian army stopped them before they even reached the first defense line.
What may come next was predicted here on June 5, the day the counter-offensive was launched:
I strongly suspect that the Russian military will let the Ukrainian attacks run their course to then launch its own larger scale attacks against weakened Ukrainian defenses.
But to this day and while taking heavy losses the Ukrainian army is still running head first into a wall of Russian fire and concrete barriers. It may well keep going for another few weeks until the rain seasons sets in. That will lessen the chance of a renewed Russian attack. I have no idea yet of what might come instead of one.
To cope with the situation and bad news the U.S. will now send in a new wonder-weapon, the ATAMCS missiles with a range of up to 300 kilometer (190 miles). They come in several variants but the U.S. army will only be willing to hand over its older ones and only a few. The missiles are GPS guided which is unlikely to work well as Russia has sufficient electronic warfare assets that will disturb those signals. Some of these missiles will just divert from their target. Some will be shot down by air defenses. Some will come through. The 230 kilogram warhead can create quite a mess if it hits a large headquarter.
But keep in mind that the Russian forces are now regularly using FAB 500 glide bombs that come with nearly 500 kilogram of explosives. The bigger FAB 1500 have been tested too and are ready to be deployed. The new ATAMCS missiles will thereby not change the balance of force.
Former ambassador MK Bhadrakumar is sensing some diplomatic noise that might point to upcoming talks.
Talks may well follow but I would not expect any agreement. The Russian side will hold up its demands and the U.S. will still be unwilling to fulfill them. Not even a ceasefire will result from them.
Posted by b on September 9, 2023 at 14:44 UTC | Permalink
The road not taken: Dilemma in filling application forms for universities in China
Dean of the School of Journalism and Information Communication at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) delivered a speech to the freshmen of the journalism major at the opening ceremony, in which he mentioned Zhang Xuefeng, a teacher who has recently become a hit on the Internet.
After this year’s college entrance examination, Zhang, like many other teachers in high schools and colleges, provided candidates with suggestions on live broadcasting. But what made him stand out is that his suggestions to each candidate are very customized, with a very sharp and extremely realistic tongue.
According to Zhang, one shouldn’t even think about finding a job at a big Internet company without a Diploma from Project 211 (a Chinese project of developing comprehensive universities and colleges, which, to some extent, symbolizes the quality of the universities and students).
“I’m going to beat my son’s arse off if he wants to study journalism (in China),” he also said.
As an online tutor who focuses on practical benefits, Zhang cares nothing less than helping students find satisfying jobs and living a stable life. His words, however, are very harsh in the ears of many who have already stepped into the university or even the society, because he talks down their past choices and future paths to nothing, and also reveals the cruel reality.
In the dean’s speech, he said in response to Zhang’s view, “Going to university is not only about finding jobs. If it is that way, in today’s highly informationized society, even without going to university people can still achieve this goal.”
Many people working on journalism refuted Zhang’s views before, thinking that he was too one-sided and shallow, and maliciously smeared the journalism major. At the same time, there are students of this major who agree with his views, and more are the parents of the candidates who regard his words as the Bible.
As we can see, the biggest conflict that lies in front of the young generation is the conflict between a sure future and dream chasing.
In East Asian countries, especially in China, voluntary application after the college entrance examination is regarded as an extremely important step in determining the direction of life, and everyone is afraid that their future will collapse if any mistake occurs.
Students face not only the choice between majors, but also the dilemma of huge income differences, overflow in the talent market, and, probably, the only child supporting the whole family under the influence of the abolished one-child policy.
From this point of view, Zhang is just starting from an ordinary student who has studied hard for many years, hoping to live a better life in line with his efforts. Scholars, nevertheless, talk the talk from the academic angle, which includes idealistic elements. In their eyes, Zhang is no more than a “cynic”. Life also has many turning points in store for you, all of which depend on both how hard you work and how lucky you are.
Though experienced, Zhang can never ensure a student’s whole future life with his words. The final decision is still in their own hands.
As far as I can see, the trial and error cost lies not only in whether you are in a well-established family, but also in how much you’d like to sacrifice the time, the pressure, and the fierce competition……every least expected incident may run over you and crush you down.
It’s still ruthless to talk about dreams without mentioning their cost. However, a person who is willing to go through mature deliberation and take advice prudently, always deserves good results.
Freezing Stray Cat Banged On The Door With His Paw, Begging For Help
One evening a woman from Quebec City heard someone scratching at her front door. It turned out to be a cat, probably quite elderly, and it should be noted that the weather outside was already very cold. The woman did not think long and let the traveling cat into her house.
Hi, John McEnany. Thanks for your interesting question!
I’m going to be tackling your question in three parts.
Part One:
Your question, as at September 10, 2023, at approximately 1308 hours (GMT +8), is:
“Do they sell cats on wet markets in China?”
English might not be your first language, so you might have gotten your prepositions mixed up.
“On” – we use this preposition when something (or someone) is touching the surface of something. For example: “Danny is dancing on the roof!” or “Milli has a tattoo of a spider on her right arm.”
“In” – we use this preposition when something (or someone) is located inside of a defined space. It could be a flat space, like in a yard, or a three-dimensional space, like in a building or plane. For example, “Brett is studying in the library.” or “Can you put the potato in my bag, please?”
The question should really read:
“Do they sell cats inwet markets in China?”
Part Two:
Now, to your question.
I’ve been to more than a few wet markets in China (and the rest of East and Southeast Asia), but as of today, there hasn’t been a wet market that sells cats.
If you’re looking to buy a cat in China, I would suggest going to a large pet store.
The larger pet stores tend to have cats for sale. The smaller pet stores may only sell pet food and accessories.
OR, you could go to a reputable cat breeder.
If you’re one of those who are into “pure breeds”, a cat breeder might be your best bet. But the prices can be astronomical.
For example, my cat-owning friend tells me that a Maine Coon can easily cost you 20,000 yuan (approximately $ 2700, USD).
However, as someone who used to be the owner of three dogs (no, not all three at the same time), I would suggest that instead of buying a cat, you might want to go down to a local animal rescue and shelter to adopt a cat instead.
Unfortunately, stray cats are still a common sight in many cities in China.
But there are many animal rescue and shelter groups trying to change that.
Last year, one of this groups opened “Cat Island” in Shanghai.
This “Cat Island” is actually an artificial island with an area of about 800 square meters, located in Laogang town, Shanghai. According to the group, they intend to accommodate 200 to 300 stray cats in the future.
The public can visit “Cat Island” to learn about how to control the stray cat and dog population as well as how to feed and take care of cats and dogs in general.
You can also apply to “Cat Island” to adopt one of their stray cats. From what I’ve gleaned on Chinese social media, many cats that were initially sent to the island have already been adopted.
If you live in Shanghai, you can try adopting from “Cat Island”. I’m sure they’d love to hear from you!
I’ve not come across a wet market selling cats yet.
Like I said above, if you’re looking for a cat, it’s best if you go down to a local animal rescue & shelter and see about adopting a stray cat.
I have come across stray cats that are loitering around wet markets, yes.
But, no, you won’t find wet markets selling them.
Wet markets tend to sell meat, seafood, produce, etc.
They’re like supermarkets or grocery stores, but prices tend to be cheaper and many people believe that wet market stuff is fresher than what you would find in a supermarket/grocery store.
Conclusion (a.k.a. TLDR)
So, just a quick recap:
If you want to buy a cat, you can do so at a large pet store or look for a breeder. However, I would suggest going down to your local animal rescue & shelter operation to adopt a stray cat instead – unfortunately, there are still a lot of stray cats in China and they all need warm homes and caring, loving fur-parents.
Wet markets might not be able to satisfy your need for a cat, but they do sell stuff like vegetables, fruits, meats, seafood, and other food products, so if you’re looking for produce and stuff that’s cheaper than those sold at supermarkets and groceries, wet markets might be the place where you can get some really good deals.
China SHOCKED Whole Industry: The New Twin-Tailed Scorpion Is Launched
Wow, china’s unmanned two-tailed “Scorpion” drone has been launched with a capability of carrying many missiles. This UAV is a remarkable technology as the 3-engines drone is completely autonomous that can fly non stop for 35 hours using precision navigation system. It’s high aspect ratio and two vertical stabilizers guarantee its long range capability and excellent stability.
Researchers at the Zhejiang University in China have devised a new method that allows for easier and cost-effective production of gallium oxide, an alternative to silicon for semiconductors. The discovery assumes importance amidst the ban on gallium export to China.
Silicon may be a significant component powering semiconductor-based applications. Still, the industry has evolved to use compounds such as gallium arsenide and indium phosphide in production processes over the years. Gallium oxide is the newest entrant in the arena.
What is gallium oxide?
Gallium oxide is a fourth-generation ultra-wide band gap semiconductor that can withstand a strong electric field and consumes little power. A band gap is the amount of energy needed to free electrons inside a semiconductor material, and an ultra-wide band gap allows the material to be used for high-voltage applications.
Among other ultra-wide band gap materials, such as gallium nitride and silicon carbide, gallium oxide has many advantages. However, its production is much more challenging.
Gallium oxide is the only material that can form single crystals at atmospheric pressure after solidification from a melt. This can drastically reduce fabrication costs, but the process needs large amounts of iridium to make a crucible for the melt.
A four-inch crucible requires about 11 pounds (five kg) of iridium; since the price of iridium is three times that of gold, this increases production costs. It also raises concerns about intellectual property in China since Japan and the US have used the method.
Chinese innovation amidst US ban
Last year, researchers at the State Key Laboratory of Silicon Materials at Zhejiang University made two-inch gallium oxide wafers. This year, they have improved their approach and made four-inch wafers.
Their improved approach involved a casting method that uses up to 80 percent less iridium. This will help reduce production costs and make the process shorter and more manageable for mass production.
The team has spun off a company that holds the patents for these improved methods and is currently working on using a temperature gradient to increase the size of the crystals produced.
Due to their low energy consumption, gallium oxide semiconductors are ideal for use in communications, aerospace, radar, and electrified transportation like cars and trains.
Last year, the US Commerce Department imposed an export ban on gallium oxide to China, citing concerns about national security since they can also be used for military purposes. The ban aimed to prevent China from gaining experience in next-generation semiconductors, where gallium oxide alone is expected to be a $1.5 billion opportunity by the end of the decade.
Not only has China overcome the aims of the ban but, in a tit-for-tat response, imposed a ban on the export of gallium and germanium from August 1 this year.
Inside Michael Imperioli’s History-Filled New York Home | Open Door | Architectural Digest
Competition is always a challenge, right? More than competition, Huawei is a Cinderella story. Remember, it was ranked #1 before Donald Trump torpedoed it.
Now, let’s use a little logic. If Huawei is able to manufacture enough chips to supply the global market, how long do you think it will take Huawei to rocket back to #1? It will have a reputation as the best smartphone on the planet, bar none. It will also have a reputation as the comeback kid.
Do you suppose some people might buy one just to spite Donald Trump or America? That’s precisely why I bought mine.
The Western media never stopped crowing about Huawei’s dependence on Google. In fact, more intelligent people might buy a Huawei phone to escape Google. That was part of my motivation. Unfortunately, my phone runs on Google’s Android program. No problem, I’m going to upgrade to a new Huawei, now that it’s running on Harmony OS.
The iPhone may remain #1 in the U.S., but I predict it will fall to 2nd place (or worse) just about everywhere else.
One thing helping the iPhone is the Apple ecosystem. If you own a Mac, as I do, an iPhone might seem a logical peripheral. Unfortunately, the U.S. tech sector is rotten to the core. I like Apple far more than Microsoft, but I still don’t completely trust it. It also seems like it has become just a little buggier in recent years.
My dream is to someday migrate to a Chinese system, leaving all that U.S. crapware behind once and for all. Unfortunately, I use Adobe software extensively, and I don’t know how long it will be before Adobe software will be compatible with Harmony OS or some other Chinese operating system. However, it wouldn’t surprise me if it happens in the next few years.
Oops, I almost forgot to mention 5G and 6G. China is clearly in the lead here. I don’t know how much that will affect the average person, but it’s certainly a good selling point.
After being wowed by Apple for two decades, I never thought I’d abandon ship, but the Chinese can outperform and undersell Apple at the same time. As a U.S. citizen who’s getting tired of being screwed by the tech sector and my own government, I appreciate bargains, don’t you?
The One and Only Authentic Southern Strawberry Shortcake
2bc25d0a77890f191bb96e28e3ebec5d
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
1 large egg, beaten
2/3 cup Half-and-Half
Butter for spreading
4 cups fresh, ripe strawberries, rinsed, hulled, sliced in half, and sugared, to taste
1 cup heavy cream, whipped to stiff peaks
Instructions
Heat the oven to 450 degrees F.
In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt and mix well. Add the butter and using a pastry cutter or two knives, cut the butter into the mixture until crumbly.
In a small bowl, combine the egg and Half-and-Half and mix until well blended. Then add the flour mixture and stir until the mixture is thoroughly moist. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead very briefly. With your hands, pat out the dough to about a 1/2 inch thickness, then, using a floured 3 inch biscuit cutter, cut out six biscuits.
Place the biscuits on an ungreased baking sheet and bake on the upper rack of the oven until slightly brown on top, about 10 minutes.
While they’re still hot, split open the biscuits, spread lightly with butter, and arrange close together on a plate. Spoon berries and cream onto the biscuits and serve while still warm.
HE EXPOSES THE SYSTEM! FIRST TIME REACTING TO ANTHONY OLIVER (Rapper Reacts Series)
For the scene depicting the atomic detonation during the famous Trinity test in the New Mexico desert in July 1945, Christopher Nolan and his creative team did not rely on CGI. Instead, they recreated a real explosion using gasoline, propane, magnesium, and aluminum powder to enhance the blinding light and initial flash of the explosion.
The explosion was filmed at 48 frames per second using 65mm IMAX cameras and Panavision Panaflex System 65 Studio cameras. Additional detailed shots were captured using 35mm cameras at 50 FPS. All elements were shot in a way that made them appear much larger than they were and then composited together in post-production to create ‘a colossal event made up of many small pieces.’ The final product was assembled by overlaying 100 shots and over 400 practical elements, all crafted by a team of more than 150 artists.
This is one of the reasons why I absolutely admire Nolan and his films
Africa SHOCKS the world: EXPOSING France Oppression in Africa!
You see, my wife and I went to a bar, and we “won” two bottled of “Red Label” whiskey, and we promptly started to drink them both. Ugh! (I do not advise that.) And anyways, eventually, I had to go vomit.
Too much hard alcohol will cause your body to react and demand that the toxins be thrown out.
And so, I tried to find the bathroom, got lost, and stumbled outside.
Then, I promptly threw up in the grass, and just sat there afterwards trying to get my bearings.
When a nice cute girl came out of the bar / club and came up to me, and grabbed my arm and led me back in. Was I lucky? She was cute. Wearing a baby-doll frilly dress and stockings.
10359931550e6c76244959bc57aff46b
For a moment, I thought that my wife sent her.
But no.
She led me though a door leading to the back unfinished cement of the rest of the building, and up some cement stairs. Then, she reached in my jacket looking for wallet, cell phone and whatever.
Found my cell phone, and then took it, and left.
After a few moments, I in a daze, stumbled out and found my wife who was frantically looking everywhere for me.
And it wasn’t until the next day that I realized that my phone was gone, and it was stolen.
I was “rolled”.
…
This is my little story, and a treasured, if embarrassing, memory. Learn from my mistakes.
When I was in college, I was a live-on-site apartment manager for an apartment complex with 80 units. When I was hired, not one person lived in the buildings. I was to fill the apartments with renters, as well as work on renovations to the apartments. I did all of this and managed to rent every apartment within a couple months, as well as do the renovations. I thought nothing of it — I was young and inexperienced and thought this was normal.
The owner, Ed, and I got along well and treated each other with respect, even though we were very different people. The owner’s ultimate goal was to sell the apartment complex. Within a couple more months, Ed sold the apartment complex to a new owner, who I shall call Arsehole.
After the property officially changed ownership, Arsehole came to visit the property, and me. When we met, I reached out my hand to shake his, but he refused my hand, saying, “I don’t shake hands with the help.”
I admit, I was shocked. Being young and inexperienced in such things, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind, “And I don’t work for assholes.” The look on his face was priceless.
I turned and walked away to go to my car and go rent a moving truck. He (and his assistant) followed me as I walked, yelling that I couldn’t do this as they depended on me to run everything. I ignored them, got in my car, drove away, rented a truck and was gone from that job within a few hours.
Later that week I called the former owner, Ed, and attempted an apology of sorts. Ed just laughed and agreed that the new owner was an asshole and that he didn’t blame me at all.
Southern Fried Quail
2023 09 16 11 11
Ingredients
10 to 12 quail
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/4 to 1/2 cup flour
Instructions
Dry and pick quail. Clean and wipe thoroughly.
Salt, pepper and dredge with flour.
Have ready a deep heavy frying pan with close-fitting lid half full of hot fat.
Put in quail. Cook for a few minutes over a high heat, then cover skillet and reduce heat. Cook slowly until tender, turning the quail when golden brown.
Serve on hot platter garnished with slices of lemon and sprigs of parsley.
[HD] Twin Peaks – Jimmy Scott sings “Sycamore Trees” in the red room
That moment you realize you have lost the battle and you are never going to escape the red room.
Thanks for the A2A. Oh boy, this is a bit relevant I suppose. I’ll talk to moving to these places, as opposed to being born and raised there.
First off, I must stress this as deeply as possible:
Most people do not make for good immigrants. Being an immigrant in itself is a skill set.
It doesn’t matter what the target country is like, when a person goes about expecting to be treated normally or equitably. There is no such thing in the experience of being an immigrant. The very act of migrating means that one becomes an outsider trying to make their way in, and that will always be a special process. The fantasy of being “finally accepted” somewhere that better fits one’s personality is a road fraught with hurdles — achievable, but you will come out the other end a very different person. It is for this reason that most people migrate out of necessity or urgency, not out of adventure or comfort.
As such, it should be obvious but it bears mentioning:
There is a world of difference between visiting a place and living in it.
I am going to presume that “living in a country” means more than being a visitor, but rather a full resident/citizen of a given place. To be more specific, it should refer to a person planning on retiring and dying in said place, and special attention will be placed to all of the personal needs that entails.
With that said, I’m going to take this as a stream of thought. Categorization of the two countries is what rankings do. I am more interested in giving a personal take on both countries, because I think people are more interested in gathering advice rather than holistic approaches. So please keep in mind, I will be switching between the two countries in an erratic fashion here.
First thing first, the USA is an immigrant country. This means that ideologically it establishes equal expectations for people who wish to become American, and to some degree the US holds itself accountable to this premise. This is often what immigrants are looking at when they try to imagine the American dream — here is a place in which one can work hard and succeed in life, regardless of origin or background.
Sadly, America has long since diverged from its ideological foundations. Some may argue that it never diverged because it never met those foundations in the first place (usually these arguments are along the lines of Black history or American Indian history). Regardless, the reality is that the US is primarily driven by race-based tribes, and there is a long litany of racial suppression policies that continue to this day.
This is the first hurdle that any prospective migrant to the US needs to realize — the dream is a dream, and it doesn’t just take effort to realize it (but really a lot of luck). For those who arrive with starry-eyed glasses, it can take decades for such individuals to accept the reality around them; some don’t even get to that point. To illustrate with examples, I like to cite this video because it perfectly highlights the dreamers versus the realists.
Dreamers come in all colors. White dreamers are more prone to saying that they “don’t see color” or that “they don’t have a culture.” In Black spaces, dreamers are often the ones that code switch and perform socially as if they’re white.
In all the stripes of America, dreamers are perhaps the ones most sold by Obama’s 2008 campaign. Back then there was a lot of commentary on how America had finally become a post-racial country.
[1]It’s a very comforting ideal and one that is quite noble. I must profess, I was part of that too.
For realists, they were (sadly) vindicated when the backlash against Obama culminated in the election of Trump in 2016. And that’s the difference — realists are just pessimists and see the US as what it is, not what people want it to be. Politically and socially, this is perhaps the strongest divide, the primordial reason why the culture wars exist.
Many immigrants look at the US and eventually go “I don’t get why everyone is obsessed with race.” They just haven’t gotten the memo yet, which usually comes in the form of a rude awakening when someone treats them unfairly because of race. Much of an immigrant’s challenge in life is in trying to “see past the slight” and think of that as just human nature, or to cast it in light of how “things are back home” to justify their move to the US. At some point they either contend with reality (especially when seeing the reality of other people) or they seal themselves in a bubble to make reality go away. The latter strategy often comes to blows when they have kids, who may not end up thinking the same as their parents.
A dour look, but it is not too bad. All countries have negative sides, and the reality is that most Americans see the mess that is American politics and instead do their best to not make it part of their lives. Easier said than done, but this is how most people swim, so it is easy to parlay on a day-to-day basis. Just be prepared to see race pop up pretty much constantly — the black guy pulled over by the cop, the weird clustering of Asian stores, the abundance of Latino gardeners…
This isn’t to say everything is sunshine and roses for China. Now, neither is China some dystopian 1984 render fed by the press. But, it must be said, moving to China is not an easy process, and the primary reason why is that China is not an immigrant nation. All policies have a priority for Chinese people first and foremost, meaning the interests of immigrants are secondary, often optional to bureaucrats. The way this manifests is that immigrants are an afterthought in China’s systems, and while there might exist pathways for foreigners on paper, in practice people might not realize they exist. America might play pretend, but it has a far more mature system of handling foreigners. China doesn’t pretend and doesn’t have those systems, and any prospective migrant is going to do a lot of legwork to achieve parity with any Chinese citizen.
For most immigrants into China, the most common reflex is to stick to the role of being an outsider. This means not commenting on the local politics, or otherwise not making spicy takes. There is an expectation for outsiders to abide by that saying — “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” This is mediated by the degree to which migrants are seen as Chinese, with increasing adherence to Chinese cultural values a good (but not always perfect) rubric to one’s “Chinese-ness.” With sufficient exposure, it should become obvious that there is some tolerance, though it should also become obvious that Chinese people themselves usually take limited positions on politics, and usually within the scope of their own professions. It is usually fine to talk about how one’s own field is shaping up. It is less fine to talk about how someone else should work, despite being in a field one has little experience in. The reason is simple: You can’t be expected to know, so why are you shooting off your mouth?
The inverse of this fortunately holds true though. Because outsiders are expected to not know, they are freely given a neutrality pass and accommodated for. Don’t know the standards of a banquet dinner? It’s okay, outsiders aren’t expected to know. Have no comment on the latest nationalist rage? It’s okay, outsiders aren’t involved. This neutrality/obliviousness pass is very powerful, though it doesn’t last forever (there is an expectation that people eventually figure out the rules). Regardless, I recommend everyone use it, especially in their first 5 years in China. This holds true for visitors as well, and in fact is probably more pronounced.
The very rude awakening of living in China is that after that “probationary period,” that expectation to figure out the rules and culture starts hitting in full force. This is why the question “how long have you been in China for” is kind of a trap question to be treated with great caution — answer truthfully, but give yourself as much space as you can. I for one usually answered “since 2017” whenever I sensed that the other person wanted to know how to treat me (or rather, how much they were on the hook for guiding me). In cases where I needed to show that I wasn’t going to be a bother, I answered “on and off since 1996.” Both are true and you can always explain that away later (most don’t care), but always give yourself space in accordance to the situation. This is generally seen as prudence and/or social awareness, and this is generally a good thing (because it means you are aware enough to not be a liability in a guanxi network).
As for what those expectations are actually headed towards, there is a bit of a social conversation in China on what space foreigners should exist in. The most commonly accepted, uncontroversial take is that any foreigner acting as a Chinese does, competing on equal footing with a Chinese person, doing jobs that other Chinese would take, in accordance with Chinese social norms, is most certainly a fine addition to China. This is because all foreigners bring something special (they are not locals, after all), and if such a foreigner otherwise removes all the friction of being a foreigner, then such an addition to a guanxi network is seen as a strict positive. There are very few people who would turn down such a foreigner, and this is also the pathway in which a foreigner has the best chance of being treated as any Chinese person., or Mark Rowswell. He is a big reason why Canada had one of the biggest cheers from the audience back in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
The rest of the debate splits into different camps. There is generally agreement that no one wants foreigners who otherwise hate China but stick around and exploit the “probationary period.” As for foreigners who can find gainful work as foreigners, most people are fine with that, but it will lead people to worry that changing government priorities might cause them to be out of a job. It is for this matter that not everyone is willing to engage such a foreigner as part of their guanxi network, though in most cases the allure of a foreigner’s own network or status is enough to bypass that risk.
For the most part, Chinese still take it as flattery that others would want to adopt Chinese cultural trappings, if not the actual culture itself.
The problem is, foreigners who do so stand out like a sore thumb. Anyone who wants to “blend in” is stuck in a conundrum, because on one hand that insists on adopting local behavior. On the other hand, doing that is contradictory to one’s own goals. Hence, China is currently incompatible with migrants who want the experience of being one of the masses.
…unless if you look Chinese. Then, everything changes:
There is no “probationary period” unless if people are notified ahead of time. They will assume you are Chinese first.
Because there is no “probationary period,” there is no leniency normally afforded to foreigners. This will feel unfair.
Likewise, because no one expects to treat you like a foreigner, it becomes possible to blend in. Stealth is the superpower of those who present Chinese, making it possible to see how Chinese people engage the system. This is the only way for a foreigner to have a truthful, firsthand picture of what it means to be Chinese.
And, because people don’t expect you to be a foreigner, if you suddenly start speaking with not-native Chinese, people will stop, stare at you, and try and “figure you out.” This will feel invasive.
Regardless, the attention that foreigners get in China is somewhat like being put under a microscope. It is deeply uncomfortable to a lot of people, and so this is a buyer beware situation — China is extra not for everyone. This problem doesn’t exist anywhere as much in the US, because once again, the USA is an immigrant country.
One of the other perks of the US as an immigrant country is that it makes it easy to be involved in politics. The first and foremost point of concern is probably going to relate to how one can become a citizen and gain the vote. Fortunately there is a clear process to do so (albeit fraught with delays, as it may take years or even decades to become one); likewise for any kids born in the US, they are automatically US citizens by means of jus solis. Lately there has been backlash against these policies, and this is best expressed by the current fight that affects largely the Latinos (see What is DACA and Who Are the DREAMers?), but overall this remains true for people looking to join the US and become US citizens.
While it is true that the vote in the US is actually not all that impactful, US political participation extends far beyond a simple vote. One can (and should) be involved in political campaigns, donate to causes and campaigns that are worth something on a personal level, and participate in political discussions in general. The US, by means of being a democratic republic, asserts much of its political foundation on the necessity of a rational, informed public, and other instruments of governance (particularly one’s guaranteed rights) are designed to protect citizens and promote the free spread of information. The ideological foundation of the US is quite solid.
By contrast, participation in politics in China is first and foremost a question of if someone has joined the Communist Party of China. To do so is by itself a competitive process for Chinese people and is where the Imperial examinationof old continues its legacy. For foreigners, this is nearly impossible to access as one has to first become a Chinese national to do so, and the process for doing that is specific to each candidate (there is no established, regular process). So while in the US there is a designated space for foreigners to participate, in China there effectively isn’t. In terms of ideological foundation, clearly it is superior to be an American as a foreigner.
…however, ideology is different from reality. For any human being on Earth, we must be cognizant of society. When we become employed, we must beware of office conduct and the opinions of our bosses. HR will always wield unfair powers over us. This holds true for China and for the US, and this is where it becomes untenable to access those guarantees in the US. How? In the US, most high skill workers enter the US on a H1B visa, which requires that the foreigner be recommended by an employer and gainfully employed there. If the foreigner stops being employed, they have about two months before they are deported. Due to the practicalities of being sponsored for H1B and the difficulties of this process, those two months basically don’t exist, and the H1B visa effectively makes the foreigner’s stay entirely dependent on the whims of the employer. And while an employer cannot fire an employee over any expressed political opinions, they can fire an employee on pretty much any cause (and they will find one). The end result is that almost all foreigners self-censor themselves. This self-censorship regime is further emphasized by US law, which bans expression of certain types of anti-government opinions.
[2]It is usually beyond the capacity of most migrants to realize that these laws exist, though they are reminded of what is banned when they first apply for citizenship.
Not all foreigners are censored though. Many who come to the US do so under political asylum, under strategic interests of the US, and they are usually free to speak loudly and proudly about their freedom to express political opinions. These opinions happen to always be extremely pro-US, which in turn sets the tone for all other foreigners who might not be so giddy about the state; those who abide by the state are welcome to all of the freedoms, while those who are not are to be monitored for suspected disloyalty.
This is pretty much the same situation as in China. The methods are different in China, and I’d argue they are more blatant and upfront about it, but regardless it is hard to express an anti-China opinion in China as a foreigner, much like it is hard to express an anti-US opinion in the US. The difference is that the US pretends it doesn’t do this, while China just doesn’t pretend. Kind of a potato, potahto situation. My only political recommendation to foreigners is to not shake the boat. As an outsider, foreigners are always on probation, and this holds true pretty much in all corners of this Earth. There are always unacceptable opinions to any society, and one way or another a society will find a way to “deal with you” if you happen to cross those lines.
In both cases I do not recommend a foreigner to participate politically. If you are one of the exceptions, you will know from all the social cues that you are excepted. Even then, don’t be stupid, don’t burn bridges, don’t make life hard for yourself.
I think we’ve gone over a lot of the dour parts. So what are the good parts? Here I am going to break it down into simple lists, pointing out the good parts unique to each side first.
For the US:
American food is fantastic. You may have heard the memes about American food being just hamburgers, hot dogs, and whatever frozen nonsense. That is true, yes, but only on a superficial level. Food in America goes far deeper; local cuisines are almost never talked about abroad but feature the same kind of depth one would expect in most cultures. And of course, America does have a diverse population from all across the world, and it is imminently possible to eat authentic food from all regions of the world if one is located in a major city. China can’t do this except in a couple places, and even then the foreign food is inauthentic and terrible more often than not.
American land is pristine. Now, both countries have a lot of wilderness to see, yes. But the US is obviously far less polluted now than China is today (different parts of the development-pollution Kuznets curve), and any foreigner should take full advantage of not only US parks, but the great expanse. Here I will wholeheartedly recommend Tēnn Khong Lîm’s Travel Stories. He has done a great job cataloguing the many sights to see in the US — albeit a point of criticism, he has a lot more work to do! As a personal recommendation, for those who are otherwise jaded by the usual scenes of nature, Alaska is a great place to change it up. Nothing quite like it.
American salaries are enormous. Yes, the job market sucks. Yes, there is underemployment. Yes, living costs suck. But, in the end the US is a developed nation with the world’s largest economy (probably), and the pay is definitely there for skilled foreigners. Life at the top 10% of America is truly easy and great. (I do not recommend migrating to the US if you will end up in the bottom 50% though.) All in all, let’s not forget the power of the USD either — currency conversions are usually very nice when one earns USD.
American internet is much more liberal. It’s not entirely uncensored (see culture wars, private moderation), but it hails from the Wild West days of the formative internet and that legacy persists to this day. This is especially true in comparison to Chinese internet, which obviously has the Great Firewall among other censorship effects. Now, there are some downsides to all this freedom (trolling in particular is bad), but the upsides are more numerous. Gamers especially should take note, as the GFW often shits on pings, whereas US internet is more of an uninterrupted experience.
American safety is better barring violence. What I mean here is that it is safe to drink the water, easy to trust food safety, easier to find top-tier healthcare, and easier to access more complete safety nets provided by the government. In China, these things are more of a work in progress.
And for China:
Chinese food is deep. It doesn’t have the international breadth of the US, but China is such a huge place that internally it is like the entire Schengen area in diversity. Many of the subcuisines of China are top-tier cuisines in their own right, sporting wildly different techniques from their neighbors. It is said that it takes more than a lifetime to eat all the dishes in China. For this, I recommend Blondie in China, who goes in such depth that she can actually educate Chinese people on Chinese cuisine. Intuitively, let me put it this way: when an entire country sports foodie culture, many things suddenly become possible, and many more niches suddenly become viable. That will always lead to more diversity.
Chinese landscapes are curated. This is kind of a complex subject, but the long and short of it is that Chinese park architecture is more of a blend of the constructed and the wild, rather than the European picturesque (which is a constructed frame to which the wild can be viewed/owned). So while you might go to the US to experience more untamed wilderness, China delivers unparalleled curated wilderness, where instead of feeling like you are “away from all of it,” you will feel that you are “one with nature.”
Chinese cost of living is very low. What this means is that while you won’t earn as much money, your wealth will go a much longer way. For people who are say, lower-middle class in the US, moving to China vaults them straight to upper-middle class status. It is night and day, and especially for underserved minorities this can feel particularly liberating. There are tons of videos of people living in the most expensive areas in China, but go outside of the Tier 1 and 2 cities and it becomes obvious just how cheaply one can thrive on in China.
Chinese amenities are just better. In particular they are better planned, and this really is more of a black mark on the US. Lately it’s become quite common to see urbanist videos on Youtube about how US infrastructure sucks. But I want to also point out that in China, with ubiquitous metro, rail, bus, and bike services, it is exceedingly easy to get around as a pedestrian. More importantly, cities are often laid out with Communist principles (sometimes Soviet, sometimes Chinese), and so neighborhoods will all have corner shops and the like. 15 minute cities are honestly the norm in China, which makes it easy to handle just about everything with an electric scooter, further driving down living costs… hopefully the point has been made.
And finally, China has less violence. This is particularly important for women, particularly for American women, who usually have to worry about going alone at night. In China, these are not concerns; it doesn’t mean crime doesn’t happen (particularly assaults on women), it just means that it is such a low occurrence that most people do not plan their lives around it. Chinese people might say that “China is more dangerous than the US,” but they mean all the other things I mentioned before. They just do not have a concept that a place can be so violent as the US (which in itself is overblown by Chinese who have visited the US, as well as Americans — especially white and Asian ones).
But in the end, I want to note that the two places are honestly quite similar:
Both are huge countries. Yes, 1.4 billion people is far larger than 330 million. But 330 million is also an amazingly high number. The real difference to me is that China feels more crowded than the US. Still, they are both huge and therefore people behave like they are in a huge country.
Both are powerful and influential. Moving to such a place is not going to be a case of “throwing your life away” in the rat race of competition. While China was certainly easily ignored some 30 years ago, at this point it has certainly become impossible to ignore. And of course, the US continues to be top dog.
Both are extroverted countries. I know a lot of people in the US think of China “as an Asian country” which causes them to reach to Japanese politeness as their mental model. This couldn’t be further from the truth. China is a place that rewards extroversion just like the US, and it punishes introversion as well (many in China will wonder if you are a 宅男/宅女 if you are a homebody, while in the US people will think you are antisocial).
Both are welcoming countries to outsiders. Yes, cities can be a bit lonely. But both places are warm and welcoming and quite outspoken about it, and while there may be some political hostilities towards outsiders, these are political backlashes, and they work against the common grain. Do not confuse that for the general hospitality of either nation. You will miss out on a lot otherwise.
Both countries have awful housing prices, but also huge houses. The awful housing prices are more of a global phenomenon — all big cities are being hit hard. But the huge houses are true for both places where there aren’t awful housing prices. This doesn’t quite make sense for China if approached with that Japanese lens, but again that’s a fallacy; in the Chinese countryside, the party has been providing much larger accommodation and so it is common to see rural people with new housing that has ceilings some 2.5+ meters high. (Honestly speaking, they are a bit too big.) In the US, most people underestimate how cheap it is to live in the “less desirable cities/states/areas.”
Both countries are deeply misunderstood. Hollywood paints a very strange picture of the US, but this is unfortunately the prime cultural export that seems to inform people abroad. Meanwhile China itself is painted usually in the colors of totalitarianism, and the people are almost exclusively talked about in terms of political repression, often not existing outside of it. In general, both places are talked about from geostrategic concerns first, and the daily lives of these people become buried underneath politically motivated statements.
The nice thing is that really, both countries have a lot to offer for anyone; they are both very large nations with all sorts of experiences one can lose themselves in. The question at the end of the day is, are you willing to give up a lot to have a new life? That should be the first question any prospective migrant should consider, because more often than not, people are not willing to give up so much of themselves. It is always tragic to see a migrant who has moved and now regrets moving.
“Get OUT now!” Syria tells U.S. to leave now and stop stealing its oil | Redacted w Clayton Morris
Syria would like to remind the world that the United States is illegally occupying its country and stealing its oil. The nation has appealed to the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Security Council President Ferit Hoxha for help. So what will the U.N. do? We ask journalist Syrian Kevork Almassian for his guess on what will happen and how this came about to begin with.
In a certain social class in Egypt, people deal with buffets as if they’ve been starved to death their whole lives. And surprisingly they aren’t really poor to begin with.
Anyhow, in my cousin’s wedding, they went really big with the party, inviting every single person we know in Kuwait, and keeping the invitations open so that anyone can bring whoever they want with them.
Let me just say that the moment we announced that the buffet is now open, people turned their heads and rushed to the buffet like there was no tomorrow:
Being my cousin’s direct family, we stayed with him, taking care of things. When we entered the hall to finally eat, the scene was truly shameful.
The floor was covered with food stains, the platters were almost empty, the tables were tilted. It was like a tornado had passed through the area.
And while I haven’t seen this in this particular wedding, I know for a fact that some Egyptian mothers take with them these big, black garbage bags to stuff them with food and take it home.
It’s like buffets are some sort of an eating contest!
That wedding was a good lesson for us. Keep weddings limited to people you actually know and ones who care about you. And perhaps… don’t go with a buffet?
That being said, that was the only wedding I’ve seen that was this disastrous; usually weddings around me are more organized and classy.
It will take time for the Vision Pro to gain followers because right now it is relying on developers to port their apps to Vision Pro.
Right now, Apple is in a weak marketing position because there are no new features for the iPhone 15 series except for the change to USB-C connectors. It looks like Apple is putting more marketing weight behind Apple Watch than the iPhone.
This has left Apple severely exposed in its single largest market, China. Huawei has introduced the Mate 60 Pro, which enables satellite voice communications, and has much higher network connection speeds than Apple, Samsung and Google, who all rely on Qualcomm for their 5G transceivers.
The current version of the Vision Pro is priced at $3500, which means that only early adapters will buy it. A cheaper version will likely not come out until 2024/25.
I expect a lot of buzz about Huawei products even though they will not be readily available in the US due to sanctions.
Tough times for Apple and Samsung.
China’s economy is collapsing, isn’t it? Here’s Chinas real economic situation
I always take the opposite to what the US and other Western countries said about the economy, technologies and Geopolitics concerning China. If China is doing so bad economically, it’s common sense that they let the enemy keep doing all the wrong things. When the US bark and scream about China, then the truths is that China is doing well economically.
Look into the sky. You will see seven objects in it that move relative to the other objects
The Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn. They’re all visible to the naked eye and have been known since ancient times in all civilizations.
So in English we have
SUN-day, MOON-day, and SATURN-day
And in French, they have MARS-day (mardi), MERCURY-day (mercredi), JUPITER-day (jeudi), and VENUS-day (vendredi). In English we actually name those after Gemanic gods – Tiw, Odin, Thor and Freya. In French, you also have lundi (MOON-day) an samedi (SATURN-day). “Dimanche”, the French for “Sunday” means “God’s day”, i.e. the sabbath.
The word “Month” is also based on “moon” because it’s roughly the time between full moons.
I grew up in a small town and joined the Army when I turned 18 on a 2-year enlistment. I had many personal reasons, but perhaps the one that might resonate the most with you was the Army College Fund. I thought going to college would help me succeed in life, and it might also be nice to see a bit of the world first. At the time, the Army recruiting slogan was “be all you can be” and that seemed to fit.
As a private (E-1) in basic training I was singled out and given more tests. Less than a year later, I finished jump school and was assigned to the 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg. Then those test scores came through and I received orders to West Point.
As a lieutenant (after ranger school) I was assigned to the 4th Mechanized Infantry Division at Fort Carson. The entire Army (regular, reserves, national guard) deployed to the Gulf for Desert Shield/Storm, except for our division. As a combat arms officer, with no combat experience, I figured my career was over. A JAG I knew recommended I apply for the Funded Legal Education Program (FLEP) and go to law school, so I did.
As a captain I tried my first court-martial while assigned at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Georgia supporting 1/75 rangers and part of the 160th SOAR, among other units. This became the foundation for much of my later career, both in the Army and after.
As a major in the JAG Corps, I went on over 30 deployments while assigned to SOCEUR (during the Bosnia and Kosovo campaigns) then later back at Fort Bragg, I deployed again after 9/11 in support of 5th Group. It’s ironic, but I collected more hostile fire and hazardous duty pay as a JAG than I ever did while in combat arms.
My last assignment was in Washington, DC, where I retired with 20 years of active duty. I then spent a few years as a trial lawyer and partner in a large law firm doing corporate work. The G.I. Bill allowed me to first get an MBA and then another degree at Georgetown. Altogether, four masters degrees and two doctorates (all paid for by the Army), healthcare and a lifetime pension. Not a bad result for a kid who started out just trying to learn something about the world and earn money for college.
The Sopranos – Tiny Tears – Tindersticks
I can never listen to Tiny Tears without thinking of the Sopranos.
There are actually two pieces of hardware that were ubiquitous in the 90s, but mostly gone now.
The key reason for the demise of these devices is the flash memory in combination with USB. Diskettes were a way to transport small volumes of information (1.4 MB for most of the 90s) around cheaply and unreliably. The information could be overwritten and 1.4 MB is actually plenty of data, as long as you aren’t including images or music. Forget about video, but they were fine for text, power point presentations and the like. All in all they filled a useful niche of portable, short term data storage. You didn’t want to keep anything important exclusively on diskettes, because they had a high failure rate.
CD was for larger amounts of data, a CD could contain 650 MB or hundreds of diskettes. It was also more reliable, you just couldn’t trust diskettes for more than a few months, but CDs last for 100 years (manufactured ones) or at least 20 years (home burned ones). The problem with CDs was the writing process was curbesome and they couldn’t be rewritten. If you wanted to put data on a CD more than once you lost about 20 MB for each session too. Rewritable CDs existed, but they failed rather often as well.
So you had two technologies to transport data around. One was suitable for small amounts of data, but cheap, ubiquitous and easy to write on. The other was suitable for large amounts of data, but curbesome. The two systems worked well in unision and there was nothing wrong with the setup as such. They weren’t replaced because they sucked, but because the alternative was so vastly better.
Enter the stick drive, which is faster than the diskette and just as easy to rewrite, but can easily hold as much or more data as the CD. In early 2000s they became cheap as well and diskettes and CDs no longer had a niche to fill. There is almost nothing you need a CD for and there is no use for a diskette either. Nowadays we usually move data around either on an USB stick or through the internet connection, ubiquitous fast internet came about slightly later than the stick drive and helped kill off other physical data carriers. External magnetic drives helped too of course, for reliable long-term storage.
On top of that the humble USB connection also enabled inexpensive external CD/DVD burners, so there’s no point in having an internal drive any more. They’re all burners now, because the technology is so cheap it doesn’t make sense to make slightly cheaper read only devices.
Losing weight was the best decision I made in life, it was a few years ago now and the only regret I have was not doing it sooner.
I was obese from a very young age up until I was 28 years old, which affected me in a lot of ways. I was subjected to daily bullying and felt terrible about myself most of the time. In general, I was and still am (to a degree) avoidant of people because of what I went through in my childhood leading into my twenties.
I never had close friends or dated women at all, I would not even approach because of the fear of rejection, which is what I was use to most of the time. The only thing that made me happy was food but at the same time it was making my life absolutely miserable because I was getting bigger and bigger trying to fill the void I constantly felt inside.
It got so bad that I was planning on ending things and thought about it a lot. One day I made a promise to myself, that I would give losing weight my best shot before I would go ahead with doing something drastic so that is what I did.
I went ahead and started small, building day by day and eventually after about 8 months of extremely hard work and dedication I lost 51kg!
I truly believe one of the best things you can do for yourself in the short and long term is to take care of your body and to live a fit and healthy lifestyle, it changed my life in so many ways but most importantly it gave me the confidence I never thought I had, to stand up for myself and to prove all the people that put me down wrong in the best of ways.
Holy SH*t,Something is Happening in Maui! Oprah & The Rock
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.
It looks like the very start of an American civil war.
Tsinghua University has experimented with a large-scale EUV-SSMB photolithography plant in the Xiong’An new district are emerging.
This is much larger than the EUV machines made by ASML, and can handle different light wavelengths simultaneously, unlike ASML products. It is also permanent, and will be able to handle much larger chip production than TSMC currently can.
Right now the minimum light wavelength it can handle is 7nm, but it will move on to lower wavelengths in the future. The aim is to bring chip prices down to commodity prices.
This has been made with Chinese IP and know-how; there are no plans to export the device.
I’ve never done it myself, but the coolest way to travel by sea is on cargo (usually container) ships. By Maritime Law, they are allowed to carry up to twelve passengers. If they have any more, they must provide a ship’s doctor.
It works. Container ships are fast. Some thirty years ago, the head of public relations at French Line CGT – she happened to be the Chairman’s daughter – insisted that all their new-build container ships should include the maximum number of passenger cabins.
The real reason? It was a very effective way to keep the crew on best behaviour – and sober.
Europe to USA by container ship is very popular among those-in-the-know and bookings are much sought-after. To other destinations such as West Africa they are easier to obtain. Voyages to the Far East can be long, even via Suez or Panama, but I have little doubt they are possible too.
London has a specialist travel agency which has been dealing in such unusual sea travel for at least 25 years. And there are no doubt equivalents in other major cities.
Nancy Pelosi Ambushed By Illegal Immigrants | Ends Event In Pure PANIC
During a public event, Nancy Pelosi found herself in a tense situation when she was unexpectedly confronted by a group of undocumented immigrants. The encounter quickly escalated, causing Pelosi to end the event abruptly due to the heightened emotions and concerns for her safety. The incident highlights the ongoing debate surrounding immigration policy.
In most states, students are required to spend more time in English classes than in classes for any other subject. Thus, there are more English teachers than any other kind of teacher, and there always will be. Job security is very good for experienced English teachers like me. I needn’t worry about ever being unemployed for very long.
I get paid to read and write. What better way to demonstrate to the students the importance of reading and writing than by demonstrating it yourself? Silent reading time for my students is also silent reading time for me.
The reading lessons are very repetitive. If I read a new novel with my students, it’s because I wanted to “mix it up a bit” for myself. But all of the short stories and novels I teach are new to my students, even if I’ve already taught them a dozen times. It makes teaching them that much easier. I am currently teaching three novels at the same time, with students reading novels that correspond with their reading levels. I’ve taught all three novels a minimum of ten times at this point. I don’t need to re-read them to teach them. I have all of the materials for them already. At this point in my career, it’s really easy for me to teach multiple novels at the same time.
The grammar and writing lessons are very repetitive. I teach seventh and eighth grades. I usually teach the same concepts to both grades on the same day. The worksheets and other materials are different, but the lessons are the same. And, unlike in a subject like math, if a student doesn’t understand a grammar concept, they may still understand the next one. Failure to grasp something simple (like division in math) won’t completely derail every lesson afterwards. Didn’t figure out how to use a comma in seventh grade? Not to worry. We’ll cover it again in eighth. And in ninth. And in tenth. And literally every year from grades 1–12.
I have a sweet, sweet classroom library now. I built it myself over the summer. It takes up one entire wall of my classroom, plus a little of another wall, and has just under 1,500 books in it so far. Once word got around that I was making a classroom library, a lot of parents donated books to it. I also have a Keurig and a record player and some really comfortable reading chairs in my classroom. It’s a space I enjoy being in, which is good, since I’m in it most of the day, 180 days per year. I suppose teachers who teach other subjects could also have classroom libraries, but it seems like a natural fit for English teachers in particular.
When I first considered teaching as a career, in my mid-20s, I wanted to pursue teaching science as a subject. But that would have required almost one full year of additional college courses, which I couldn’t do at that time. English teaching was the shortest pathway into the classroom for me, since I majored in Communication and minored in English during my undergrad. So it wasn’t my first choice, but, as with pretty much everything else in my life, it all worked out for the best. I’m happy with where I ended up.
Honduras’ GDP per capita is only US$2800, ranking 128th in the world.
Honduras lacks an industrial system and most industrial goods must be imported.
As a poor country, Honduras could not afford to buy expensive Western industrial goods, and Chinese goods were the only option.
China is the world’s factory, making everything in the world. The only thing China does not make – that is war!
Honduras does not have diplomatic relations with China because of the Taiwan factor, and they must go through a third country to buy Chinese goods, and are charged transit fees by the third country. But after establishing diplomatic relations with China, Honduras can trade directly with China, eliminating the transit fees earned by third countries. Why no?
In recent years, Panama, El Salvador, Dominica, Nicaragua and other countries have established or restored diplomatic relations with China, promoting the economic and social development of their countries and bringing tangible benefits to their people.
98% of the goods offered to the public in Honduran stores are Chinese goods re-exported from third countries, and only 2% are produced locally.
Most of Honduras’ groceries, cosmetics, clothing, plastic products, personal hygiene products, Christmas items and auto parts are Chinese goods re-exported from third countries.
“Send Them Back!” – AOC migrant press conference DISRUPTED outside NYC Roosevelt hotel
Disruption on all sides politically. The USA is a “powder keg”.
I was sued by my landlord for late rent. The payment arrived to him on the 3rd of the month instead of the 1st, and despite the money order being dated from the last day of the previous month, he asked for payment of a 100 dollar late payment. I refusd to pay and he took me to court.
I dressed in a dress shirt, black slacks, and a tie. I showed up 20 minutes early to court, registered with the bailiff, and waited for court to convene. My landlord didn’t show up until the last minute, and when he did he was dressed in shorts, sandals, and a Bahama Mama T-shirt.
Court was called to session and my case was called first. I approached the well and was asked if I was prepared to present my case. I informed the judge that I was the defendant, and that I would have to wait to proceed until the plaintiff presented his case.
My landlord, the plaintiff, dropped his papers on the way to the well. (I was not his only case that day.) When the judge noticed him, he guffawed and asked if my landlord was aware of court decorum standards.
Long story short, my landlord was disrespectful to the judge, and the judge was not inclined to be overly sympathetic to him. I won the case, including court costs, and was told that I had dressed respectfully for court and that it helped my case.
The landlord lost all his cases that day and had to make payment arrangements for late rent, and the judge split all court costs.
A young man was brought into office by my colleagues and they left him with me. Usually a traffic violator is fined on the spot and thats it. But if they resist or make a scene… then they are detained in this office until the cops from police station arrive to collect them.
I was told that “This fruit cart guy made the whole intersection jammed and refused to remove his cart away from fast lane and resisted”.
He just sat there silent, while I called the police station to send somebody to take him… and got back to watching a gaming live stream on my laptop.
But then I noticed him turning his head to the other side with his hand covering his eyes.
He was wiping his tears.
Something startled him, I assume. Maybe the behavior of cops or the thought of getting behind bars or maybe his cart that stood there in our compound. I don’t know.
I felt so much for him that moment.
What did you do exactly to land here and don’t lie? I asked.
I was crossing a busy intersection when a traffic cop shouted at me and told me to get off the lane towards footpath. I refused as I wished to cross the road and I yelled back. Nothing else happened, I am telling you the truth.
Okay… so you refused to obey and intentionally caused a traffic problem.
Yes, I guess.
….
Then why crying now?
I want to go home, I need to buy groceries and wheat as well for my mother, for she must be hungry and eagerly waiting for me. That’s why I crossed the road hurriedly and got caught into this mess. I sell watermelons and barely earn enough to feed both of us.
I checked his ID and asked a few more questions. This guy was anything but manipulative.
By now, I had decided to get into this matter, though that’s above my pay scale as I’m just a constable but what the hell. I can do wonders when I want to. 🙂
You want to go home? I smiled.
Yes, I was hesitant to ask you out of fear when you called the police for me. Please don’t do that. Please let me go home. I want to go home to my mother, she’s alone.
I stood up and went to the other room, few traffic officers were there including the one who brought him. I asked him nicely and requested to cut this kid some slack. He can be let go with a warning.
I told my senior that the fruit cart guy regrets his actions and is apologetic.
The senior looked at me.
He is a good man, I know. But he also knows that I’m a good guy too and I don’t ask for such favors with some ulterior motives. And that… even being just a constable, I can make traffic warden’s life quite miserable if I wish to.
So couple of minutes later…
I told that young man to get up, take his cart and leave. He couldn’t believe it. Those expressions of gratification were soothing and awesome. He thanked all of us and left but not before hearing my advice.
Remember this, you cannot disobey an order given by cops and you cannot resist. Just earn your living and go home. Stay out of trouble for you’d regret it in great deal. Your mother needs you, know that and act wisely from now on.
I stood there outside for some time… thinking of him.
Yes, a thought of his mother made me feel for him. But what primarily motivated me to help him get off the hook was…. that he shouldn’t be going to police station or spend a night there or even worse… Jail. He should not experience the company of bad guys there and learn the existence of a new and evil realm.
He shouldn’t hate himself, cops and the society in general.
He should remain what he is.
Positive, innocent and hardworking.
Warnings! Invasion of U.S. is about to get worse coming from Panama
This is the story that the US citizenry needs to see. The migration to the US is funded and orchestrated. Wonder by who?
China never say things that are not true. 100% of what they say is absolutely the truth. While the U.S. and the west remedy for Muslim extremism is carpet bombings Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and others killing millions of mostly innocent men, women and children China used a more humane approach saving lives and using a more successful and sustainable method.
Chinese too faced a spate of Muslim extremist violence post 9–11 years. China use re-education to help the highly influenced Muslims who have the tendency to is likely to resort to violence for what they think is a just cause. This approach works better and compared with the U.S. approach almost no deaths occurred. And it made China safer yet addresses the Muslim issue and problem.
The U.S. and the west instead of learning from this far better resolution felt compel to fabricate lies on China but China’s fairer and more effective solution is very well accepted and appreciate by the Muslim nations world wide.
In my opinion almost no body believes in the genocide narratives and it exposed the lying and obnoxious behaviour of the US instead of dirt sticking on China it sticks on the U.S. as an untrustworthy nation. China never deny re-education. The did it and it was effective. Were some Chinese Muslims unhappy? I am sure there are but 99% of them appreciated how China handle it compared to the sadistic murder by the U.S. and the west.
CAN’T BELIEVE IT: Gen Z Americans can’t answer these basic questions
It’s really hard to watch this kind of video without shaking your head in disbelief.
Visiting New York and decided to walk from the station to the hotel. Promptly got lost. Saw a police man standing by his car. So thought I’d ask. He looked shocked and even nervous when I approached to say hello. And was very abrupt. He then didn’t understand my question asking for directions. If he wasn’t in a uniform I would of honestly assumed he was mentally challenged.
Few years back was in London, again at a station with my 3 y/o daughter. 2 big police men all kitted up standing outside. My daughter saw the officers and got a little scared. I think partly as her 1st visit to London. One of the officers spotted her, smiled and walked over. Asked her a few questions about her visit and offered if she would like to try his helmet on.
Although the Met has at the moment a terrible reputation. Genuinely feel the British police are far more approachable and helpful.
You might very well think that. And certainly, if it was broadcasting on full power while right on top of the enemy, then yes, it will be giving out its own location. But there’s an interesting ability that modern radars, such as the AN/APG-81 (below) as fitted to the F-35, have which means that this will not usually be the case.
Until recently, radars were like single element searchlights sweeping out in the darkness, and were therefore clearly visible to the opposition, who were on the lookout for radars operating on specific wavelengths. The larger and more powerful the radar, the further away it could be detected, often well outside the range where it could detect an opposition aircraft. Frequency swapping helps, but the windows of opportunity it presents are often too short to have any meaningful effect.
AESA radars, on the other hand, are basically a group of multiple individual radar emitters collected together in one unit. One individual emitter on its own doesn’t have a great deal of power and therefore does not have a great range, but when used in conjunction with the other emitters surrounding it, the range and detecting power of the whole is every bit as good, if not better, than a powerful single element radar.
Now, here’s the clever bit. Each individual element on an AESA radar can be set to emit a different frequency from its neighbour (and to frequency shift at random times). This way, even when scanning on full power, the emission from an F-35 can appear almost indistinguishable from background radio noise, as no one frequency is being broadcast at any great strength. But the F-35 knows the frequency signature of its own radar, and can detect returns across this frequency range, while to an enemy scanner it will simply appear as noise. Of course, the closer the F-35 gets to the enemy, the greater the chances of its radar being detected, but that’s the same with any stealth adaptation. The hope would be that the F-35 would be able to engage the enemy (or otherwise complete its mission if it was simply intelligence-gathering) long before being detected.
The other thing about the AN/APG-81 (and to an extent other AESA radars) is that they are also excellent passive detectors, with the interesting ability to pick up returns from other radars. So (for example) a Boeing E-3 Sentry flying well away from the front lines will be using its radar to search a wide area. The opposition will clearly be able to see this, as will the F-35, but the F-35, flying much closer to the front, possibly even over enemy airspace, will also be able to pick up the radar returns of the E-3’s radar reflecting off opposition aircraft, and being much closer these returns will actually be stronger than the return that makes it back to the E-3. The upshot of this being that the F-35 might actually be able to see the returns of enemy aircraft in the E-3’s radar that are too far away for the E-3 itself to see.
Which means that in a hypothetical future war, as the enemy is setting up a long-range intercept of the E-3, an F-35 is setting up a much shorter range (though still many tens of kilometres away) interception of the enemy aircraft, all without emitting as much as a milliwatt from its own radar or receiving any other information from any source.
Of course, quite how powerful this ability is in the AN/APG-81 is confidential, and at this point we simply do not know how well (if at all) AESA radars fitted to Russian or Chinese aircraft can mimic it. But it is an ability that just a few short years ago would have been considered firmly in the realms of Science Fiction.
OMG First Time Hearing Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond | THE WOLF HUNTERZ REACTIONS
The positive reaction to this by so many is telling. The criticism Mr. Anthony gets from certain celebrities is also just as telling. He is doing something right.
A window to the murmurings of discontent inside of America. This is the moment in time that comes right before the beheadings.
Question : When will China have its own euv lithography machine?
Short answer: 2023 AD China already have own EUV machine (lab quality) and this is No red herring.
.
China Uni have conquered EUV light source few years back.
And current China EUV machine although large as a building, crude (compare to ASML), use enormous amount of electricity but the end result is it is here :
It is extremely likely soon within 3 to 5 yrs (2026 to 2028 AD) China will equalize world’s chip manufacturing with her in house China EUV, while using a big cruder EUV machine, yet China can still manufacture 3 to 5nm size, even smaller size
.
The refinement of the production machine will take more time and likely very few EUV machine of a building size will ever be build, since it is such awfully big size.
Before the newer EUV models, commercial one gradually will shrink in size eventually. Nonetheless China will be making Chips of equal nm abet at cost of much higher expense.
So likely initial phase, ~2027 the product will likelyonly be for internal consumption. Until mass production & efficiency is achieved.
I sincerely believe that this is an intelligent demonstration by China that jailing Huawei’s CFO was simply totally ineffective.
But this Chinese demonstration is a little naive, because it assumes that Raimondo understands the difference between a Chinese phone and an iPhone: I highly doubt it.
What’s more, I highly doubt that Raimondo knows that the Mate 60’s chips are mainly Chinese, but especially the SoC and modem.
Raimondo doesn’t understand this, and she doesn’t care: she has a single message to get across, and nothing else.
She’s come with the mindset that China is a technologically inferior country, and there’s no room in her mind for thinking differently.
She’s not arrogant, she’s just ignorant of Chinese culture and doesn’t want to learn it.
In my 46 years living in the U.S., I have experienced 4 severe real estate crashes, last one was 2007–2012, when prices dropped 50%-80%, 7 million Americans went into foreclosure and bankruptcies.
Nobody wanted to buy any property at 80% discount, yet everybody rush to overbid to buy properties when home prices go up crazy.
Be very careful when you ridicule other market’s real estate crash, because next is your own real estate, guaranteed.
Real estate rises and crashes are normal healthy economic cycles, it is God giving you another chance to make $ millions, if you are smart enough and have the financial resources.
LIVE: Report—Largest Poverty Increase On Record!
Lee, don’t know how you muster the mental energy and resilience to continuously report on so much moral depravity, mendacity and governmental malfeasance, but I applaud you for doing so. I’m an atheist but nevertheless I like to believe there is a special place in the afterlife for the few honest Western journalists such as yourself.
It’s real bad here in the USA now. Especially because of the western propaganda. First they were saying they purposely created the virus and then released it. Then they changed the story to. They created the virus but somehow it accidentally got loose.
There’s actually been a few reports. About these dangerous untrustworthy people in this country deciding to play vigilante. And apparently some minority groups. Have you been developed the paranoia that they’re coming after them next.
The people in this country deliberately expose their children to the virus and let them die. And the reason why was because both political parties wanted to see the other president go to jail. Whether that was Trump or Obama. That is the real reason why the virus spread so successfully here. Not the first time the people in this country treated their own children as expendable pawns for their own shady gine. And probably won’t be the last time.
I strongly don’t suggest coming to this country. Especially when they’re falsely accusing your people of trying to kill everybody with a virus now. And if you come here try to stay together as much as possible. Try not to be anywhere by yourself.
Easy– I had just picked my wife up from the hospital after a 3 vertebrae spinal fusion. I was driving very slowly and carefully (picture an old lady driving a T-model Ford filled with nitroglycerin). As I was easing across some train tracks in my small hometown, moving at about the speed of smell, a plumbing work truck came up behind me. He was in a hurry, and gave me multiple exotic versions of ‘the finger”. He honked his horn, leaned out the window, screaming obscenities and suggesting anatomical impossibilities because of my slow speed. As a previous professional driver, I understood his hurry, but had a much more important personal reason to maintain slow-n-steady.
As we cleared the tracks, he screeched around us, cut me off, and sped into the distance still “saluting”.
Rather than be angry, it suddenly occurred to me that I’d done very similar things as a professional driver. You get in a hurry, and the job becomes more important than attempting to understand the potential plight of the other driver. I swore that I would never be intolerant of other drivers again, when it was my turn to be in a hurry. To this day, I still practice understanding that everyone has reasons for the way they drive, and every driver is a human being. It’s simple enough to conceive, but can be difficult to practice. Curiously, this event started a torrent or cascade effect for me. I now drive much more courteously, and it’s so much calmer of an experience. I don’t yell or “talk” to the other drivers when I witness a mistake, or am caused an inconvenience. I try to remember my needs that day, and assume that everyone else has similar needs. I recommend it.
People Drove Past a Kitten Shivering from the Cold On the Side of the Road
She squinted through the windshield of her car, trying to discern what it was. As she got closer, her heart sank.
China is NOT banning Apple nor will it do so. In fact, all the leading companies are allowed to operate in China without the hinderance of the Chinese government – companies like Tesla, Samsung, Intel, Walmart, Costco, Starbucks, etc. In fact, the Chinese government deliberately encouraged the participation of those companies in the Chinese market place. The only requirement is that they follow Chinese laws.
AND there is a good reason why.
The Chinese government want those companies because they wanted foreign companies to force Chinese companies to innovate and be cost efficient to compete with those foreign companies. This will not only benefit Chinese consumers but will allow for the development of world class Chinese companies.
Otherwise China will be like India – a poor country with businesses that produce second rate products protected by tariffs despite the country’s tremendous potential.
That STRATEGY is paying off handsomely and China now have MANY leading edge companies.
On a side note, Apple’s share price is falling because Huawei’s phone is expected to take away much market share of Apple not only in China but also overseas. This will affect Apple’s profitability.
Southern Hamburger Pie
2023 09 16 11 13
Ingredients
1 medium onion, chopped
1 pound ground chuck
Salt and pepper to taste
1 small can corn or green beans, drained (optional)
1 (9-inch) frozen pie shell
5 slices Velveeta cheese, about 4 to 5 ounces
1 can flaky biscuits
Instructions
Begin thawing pie crust. Heat oven to 400 degrees F.
Cook ground beef and onion in a large skillet on medium heat, breaking up the beef with the back of a spoon, and cook until onions are soft.
Drain excess fat and season with salt and pepper to taste.
Add corn or green beans if using.
Put meat mixture into the pie shell and evenly distribute the cheese over the top.
Separate biscuits and layer in a circular pattern over the pie, covering it completely (you may not need all the biscuits).
Cut a few small “steam slits” in the top and bake for about 20 minutes until golden brown.
In the 2000s China took down semiconductors from its university courses, because the Chinese ministry of Education thought that such majors are useless and China can just buy chips from other countries since China had joined WTO.
Big mistake.
China has now reopened the major in Chinese universities and the graduates are being hired before they leave campus, because of Chinese companies’ sudden urge to innovate and build domestic chips due to US sanctions.
Other industries are also on a similar quest for tech independence because they fear the US would do to them what they did on chips against Huawei.
American products are just not reliable anymore.
So innovation is on fire across the board.
China is now ahead of the US in new patents filed and scientific paper quotations.
When I left my retirement in Arkansas and flew to China, the airlines lost my baggage. So when I arrived in China, all that I had was a backpack, some of my most important papers, my laptop computer, and what I was wearing.
At that time, and to this day, I wear very comfortable clothes on planes during air travel. And given TSA back in the State’s, my clothes were simple;
Black hospital scrubs, and black slippers with black socks.
null
So, here I am arrived in China, with literally only the clothes on my back.
And for the first month or so, I had to live and wear in them until I got settled in, reestablished, and start earning money again.
In hindsight, it’s kind of funny.
Everyone, including my wife, wanted me to toss those things and never wanted to see me in them ever again. As a result, she went on a spending spree and outfitted me right and proper.
…
I don’t know what the fuck I was doing when I planned this cluster-fuck of a life, but I’ve got to tell you all, it’s almost a parody. Seriously.
Did I have a sense of humor, or was my “crew” trying to make a point when they planned my pre-birth world-line template?
I wonder…
…how many meme’s have I personally experienced in this life? Hum….
Enterprise Under Attack from the Suliban Part II
Stra Trek Enterprise Season 2 Episode 16 Future Tense
Carolina Hot Dog Chili
hot dogging
Ingredients
1 1/4 pounds ground beef
1 large onion (about 1 cup chopped)
1 (6 ounce) can tomato paste
1/2 cup ketchup
1 tablespoon chili powder
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon cider or white vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper (optional)
Instructions
Place the beef, onion and 2 cups of water in a Dutch oven or soup pot over high heat. Bring to the water to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and stir to begin breaking up the meat.
Add the tomato paste, ketchup, chili powder, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, salt and pepper, if using. Stir well until the tomato paste and ketchup are dissolved and the meat is mostly broken up.
Continue to cook at a simmer, stirring about every 5 minutes, about 15 minutes. As the chili thickens, you may need to reduce the heat to medium-low or low so it doesn’t stick. Refrigerate, covered, up to 2 days, or freeze in small freezer bags for up to 6 months.
Thaw or reheat in a microwave, stirring often.
If you want a finer texture, you can cool the chili at least 20 minutes and process in a blender or food processor for 30 to 45 seconds.
Say tomorrow we are at $ 4.981 trillion, then it’s possible we may fudge to somehow make it appear that we have reached $ 5 Trillion
There is no conceivable way that any GDP number is off beyond say 2% at the most
The Point is Economic Development can be seen with your own eyes and not on paper
Take UP
I visited UP and traveled to quite a few places
I saw nothing to indicate bountiful prosperity
There was nothing to indicate the hum of a busy growing economy
Sure they had nice roads and a lot of nice commercial and techno parks but frankly it looked like more like
If you build it they will come
That’s what happens when you don’t develop your own populace with good secondary and tertiary education and instead rely on only investments under gun point or unrealistic concessions by the state
Now Take Bangalore or Hyderabad or Chennai
They are buzzing with activity and you can see that the economies are doing well
The Problem in India is that a few cities and few hubs are carrying the weight of the entire nation
There are 3 Key points in a booming economy
Unemployment is pretty low
Savings are pretty high (>= 36%)
Inflation is typically 50% of RORR
India has neither of the three
Unemployment is way above the target 5%
Gross Savings are 30.20%
RORR is 7% and Inflation is 5.05% which is way above the 3.50% target
That alone tells me there are pending issues that need looking into
I taught a shop class in an inner city high school…One day as the students were changing into work clothes I noticed some relatively new wounds on Jerome’s back…I politely and discreetly took him into my office and asked him what happened…He told me his step father had tied him to a metal bed spring and beat him with a coathanger…I knew where he lived so when school was out for the day I went to his apt and his stepdad was there…I proceeded to beat the living shit out of that evil man…And told him if he wasn’t gone before Jeromes bus got there I’d finish the job…AND call the cops…I drug his worthless carcass down to his pos car and he drove off…never to be seen again. Jerome stayed in my class for the full 3 years and graduated high school…Neither of us ever mentioned it…30 years later Jerome still calls me to visit ever so often…
The US Bankrupting Itself on Wars -w/ Ron Paul, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen
Oh HELL yeah! The dignified and stately Dr. Ron Paul is one of the very best Americans living. Thanks very much for this, you guys.
Laughable because you are ignorant and naive like a 5 years old kid. If you know the truth you will be the one of the 89% too.
While the U.S. real standard of living deteriorated back to the 1960’s Chinese real standard of living grew 30 times in 40 years! While 35% in the U.S. has no health insurance, every single Chinese gets free health care. While the U.S. kids get into debts for just getting into college Chinese are provided totally free college tuition.
Chinese average life expectancy overtook the U.S. in the last 2 years straight. While your infrastructure is crumbling China has the latest state of the art ports, airports, highways, high speed railways. While your trains travel at snail speed China’s high speed trains travel at 400 KM per hour.
Do you still laugh now? To be honest everyone in the world is laughing at you. You want to know about the 11% so that you can orchestrate a coup? Organised a protest and a demonstration? Do a colour revolution? And you think the Chinese are fools to give you the information? Just because you have a IQ of a snail doesn’t mean others are the same like you!
Tex-Mex Biscuits
Tex Mex Biscuits
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup enriched hominy grits or quick grits
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt (optional)
1/2 cup butter or margarine
4 ounces Monterey Jack cheese (with or without jalapeno peppers), shredded
1/2 cup dairy sour cream
1/4 cup milk
Instructions
Heat oven to 425 degrees F. Lightly grease a cookie sheet.
Combine dry ingredients; cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
Stir in cheese.
Combine sour cream and milk; add to dry ingredients, mixing just until moistened. Shape dough to form a ball; knead gently on lightly floured surface 10 to 12 times. Roll dough to 3/4 inch thickness. Cut with floured 2-inch biscuit cutter. Place 1 inch apart on prepared cookie sheet.
This is Kalinka Bamberski, who used to be a 14-year-old from France.
During the summer of 1982, she briefly stayed in Lindau, Germany, with her mother and her stepfather, Dr. Dieter Krombach.
On July 9th of that summer, Krombach killed Kalinka. The next day, Krombach told the authorities that he simply found Kalinka dead in the morning.
Autopsies could not determine the exact cause of her death, and Krombach got away with the murder. This led Kalinka’s biological father, Andre, to grow suspicious and to investigate further.
Despite the authorities’ failure to discern the exact cause of Kalinka’s death, there were multiple red flags in the original autopsy: Kalinka’s corpse had multiple injection marks, fresh blood stains and a “whitish substance” around the genitals, and indigested food near the throat suggesting that she died soon after a meal.
Andre, rightfully suspecting that his daugher was raped, called for an additional investigation. This time, the authorities discovered clear evidence that, right before her death, Kalinka was injected with a drug named “Kobalt-Ferrlecit,” a substance capable of causing immediate discomfort and nausea in a victim. Andre pressed a case against Krombach, but the German courts judged that there was insufficient evidence for an indictment. Despite multiple red flags, Krombach was not indicted.
In 1995, however, the French courts officially sentenced Krombach in absentia to 15 years in prison for manslaughter.
Furthermore, later in 1997, Krombach admitted in a German trial that he had drugged and raped another girl using Kobalt-Ferrlecit, the same substance found in Kalinka’s corpse. Numerous other girls came forth, saying that Krombach had also raped them using the same drug. For this, the German courts took away his medical license, but did not sentence him to prison.
Unfortunately, in 2001, Krombach’s French manslaughter conviction of 1995 was annulled by the European Court of Human Rights, the reason being that Krombach was not capable of defending his case in that French trial. Not only was the 1995 French verdict annulled, but all attempts to extradite him for retrial were rejected.
But for Andre, the case was not over. Andre was deeply frustrated at the international legal system’s failure to bring justice; he decided he was going to take justice into his own hands.
In 2009, Andre and three other men secretly kidnapped Krombach from Germany, beat him up, and left him tied up near a French police station, allowing the French authorities to detain him and honor their 1995 decision.
Despite Germany’s requests to bring him back, French officials and courts ignored these complaints and officially re-tried Krombach.
With other victims testifying that Krombach had injected them with the same drug to rape them, on October 22, 2011, Krombach was finally sentenced to 15 years in prison for manslaughter.
Kalinka’s father, Andre, was convicted and given a suspended sentence for abducting Krombach.
But in my opinion? Andre Bamberski was a heroic father who spent 30 years of his life to bring justice for his daughter’s death. Yes, he broke the law — but refusing to convict Krombach earlier and ignoring the mountatin of evidence against him was a clear failure in the international justice system.
For Andre’s determination and commitment, I applaud him.
Prof. Richard Wolff on American Labor: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
There is very little value enhancement due to market pricing or Brand pricing or Technology Pricing
Even a Boeing makes at the most a couple of million dollars commission to a Chinese Importer while earning nearly 100 Million Dollars to the US Economy
You see right?
No Nation on earth can export $ 564 Billion worth of goods to the USA
It’s estimated that at thrice the manufacturing potential today – India, Vietnam and Mexico combined can export $ 338 Billion worth of Goods by 2030
This that’s around $ 226 Billion of Exports but also around $ 700 Billion of final retail goods
That’s the amount that US players and entities will be deprived off if US entirely decouples from China EVEN IN 2030 with India, Vietnam and Mexico tripling their Industrial Output
Even then US Economy and it’s players will be deprived of $ 700 Billion Dollars which by 2030 could be around $ 1 Trillion with inflation
That’s a lot of jobs, lots of payments GONE
Meanwhile China?
China may lose around $ 564 Billion of Exports in decoupling
At 0.4% inflation
That’s $ 580 Billion vs $ 1 Trillion
So even in the worst case scenario of US entirely decoupling from China and India, Mexico and Vietnam tripling their Industrial output today – China would lose $ 580 Billion while US would lose a whopping $ 1 Trillion
At normal Industrial output for these three nations, US would lose $ 2.4 Trillion or nearly 4.5 times as much as China stands to lose as an economy
Same for EU
Same for ASEAN
Same for India
Its why Raimondo visits China
It’s why 27 Chinese entities were removed from a Blacklist recently
The Media has been spinning fiction and propaganda so far and China hasn’t cared
Now if China decides to take their revenge by drastically cutting off key exports of say $ 100 Billion, then US cannot source more than $ 30 Billion from other countries
China loses $ 100 Billion but US loses around $ 210 Billion of value to it’s economy
That’s 44% of the projected $ 470 Billion that the US Economy hopes to enhance itself this year at 1.8% growth
So Raimondo says
Please keep trading with us as usual. Ignore what we say in our media. Our contention with you is for the $ 10–15 Billion portion of our Trade, let’s keep the balance $ 685–690 Billion of Trade as normal
That’s why China doesn’t need to visit everybody and reassure anyone much
Everyone loses far far more by decoupling with China
So ultimately it creates a slow down globally where China albeit having very low growth still beats the rest of the world
Solving The Most Mysterious Children in History
THREE STORIES: The Most Mysterious Children in History In 12th century England, two children were found lost in a forest.
They spoke only gibberish, wore strange clothing and had bright green skin.
When the children finally learned to speak English, they described where they were from.
And that’s why, after almost 1,000 years, people still talk about The Green Children of Woolpit.
In 1828, a teenage boy was shuffling through a public square in Nuremburg. He seemed confused and disoriented.
He had trouble walking and speaking. When police finally approached him, he was holding an envelope containing two letters.
And those letters sparked the mystery of Kaspar Hauser.
In April 1922, in Brittany, France, 2-year-old Pauline Picard went missing. A massive search turned up nothing.
The family was losing hope. A month later, Pauline was found wandering around a village over 200 miles away.
Though her parents were overjoyed to have her back, they soon realized something wasn’t quite right with their daughter. These are three unsolved cases of the most mysterious children in history.
POMPEO said ‘Covert operations, ousting democratically elected governments, inciting revolts and supporting transnational companies are run of the mill operations for the CIA.’ WHO GAVE THEM THOSE RIGHTS?
We did, all us minions. America was once set up having a government described as ‘a government of the people, for the people, by the people’, but the people couldn’t be bothered and went home, leaving ‘those who shouldn’t be’ in charge. Industry filled the vacuum created by our conspicuous absence, which over time gave way to the American Industrial Military Complex which runs the country today.
Now industry owns the puppet show called ‘Democracy’, which in no way should be confused with actual democracy, and yet we continually pretend they are one and the same, and that our vote counts, even though voting either left or right basically changes nothing of significance. Results may vary but the rich are always always always the primary beneficiary, either way they lean.
We demand and receive empty platitudes, and are duly amused by military antics across the globe, ignoring the fact that such behavior merely mirrors us here at home, and that the same shit is pulled on our own, until folks like Snowden and Assange et al dare to shatter our deliberately cultivated ignorance. No matter, we have ways to deal with such moral assholes, as throwing them under the bus in various ways has become a time honored national pastime.
So, when you want to look at who’s at fault, go look in the mirror. When you wish to look deeper, check out your family albums. We are the bloody problem, and as we are paying the price, with record numbers driven from their homes in this rich nation, and yet, still we refuse to accept responsibility for our democracy, knowingly leaving it in the manipulative hands of industry, which is exactly how to kill actual democracy, regardless of the puppet show which operates by the same name.
Whether you love Trump or hate him, he reflects us, and had he actually run the country as we pretend to believe, he would have surely killed it, as would Biden. We need to wake the fuck up to the reality we have created, and make the necessary changes within ourselves which can then be reflected through our leadership, before it’s too late, if it’s not already.
But who among us want to actually be the change we want to see?
Many years ago, when I was living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I had a work commute on a typical Monday through Friday schedule.
One evening on my way home from work, I turned off a main street into the side streets that would lead me the rest of the way home. It was a very familiar drive and I knew each block well – which ones had a stop sign for me, which ones had stop signs for the cross traffic, and which ones had four-way stops. I was cruising the last few blocks toward home and had no more stop signs, so I was probably going about 35 mph when suddenly it was as if someone inside my head said, “Slow down!” It was so forceful and unexpected, I did just that. “Slower!” was the next command, and then again, “Slower!”
I was just about to chalk it all up to being a little kookie after a long day, when suddenly someone driving a vehicle on the cross street blew through their stop sign at an alarming rate of speed. I am 100% certain if I had not slowed down, I would have been T-boned by someone doing a good 60–70 mph. The close call freaked me out. I’m not a religious person, but it sure felt like I had a guardian angel that day.
Dead For 7 Minutes; Man Is Shown Past Lives During Incredible NDE
Yes. My dad’s best friend growing up has a son my age. We were really close as kids but they moved away and I didn’t talk to him for years. When we were teens, my dad’s friend came to visit. Something about his son literally made my skin crawl. I was left alone at home with him and my three young siblings while the parents went out for the night and I was nearly frantic trying to ensure he did not have a moment alone with my siblings. When our parents returned I told them something was wrong with the son, and to please not leave me alone with him again. My dad was upset and demanded to know why I would say that, did the son do something? He honestly hadn’t actually done or said anything that I could pin this feeling on. So I told them, I think my animal brain just knows a predator when I see one. My dad thought I was being dramatic but my mom believed me and made sure we weren’t alone with the son for the rest of their visit. About a year later it turned out the son got caught in the act of raping his niece. He told the police he was glad he was caught because he couldn’t stop himself. My dad has never doubted my intuition since.
Tony Confronts Tony Blundetto – The Sopranos HD
When Tony B looks up after Tony S said someone got a look at the guy. That’s the reaction of someone who did it. Split second panic and then cool as a breeze. Steve Buscemi nailed it.
I worked for a major retail company, in a team running the mainframe.
One task was keeping the (huge, size of a car trailer) printers running.
Some printouts were for the board, and these we were told to check for misprints and missing pages.
We’d just been told that we couldn’t have any pay rises since there wasn’t any money in the budget. Inflation was running high, so not getting a pay rise really meant a pay cut.
The company annual account report was printed and I was checking it before putting it in internal mail.
I noticed that the IT department budget was underspent by half a million!
No money for pay rises!
Showed printout to my manager. He ran off with it to the copier. Multiple copies of the page showing the surplus in the IT department were placed around the department.
We got pay rises.
Ralph Cifaretto Refuses Tony’s Drink – The Sopranos HD
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.
Alien Artifacts on Mars: What NASA doesn’t want you to know
Of course. The Chinese government really wants to know how many times you call your girlfriend every week, and which are your favourite games, and which pop stars you follow on Instagram, and most of all they are interested in the photos of your meals that you regularly post on Facebook.
These are vital secrets so critical for the national security of the USA, so the evil communist spies from China will be watching intently. Remember that well, and be careful! The everyday events of your online life have the devastating potential to alter the direction of global geopolitics and the history of the world, basically.
How Huawei Mate60 5G Overcome US Sanctions? | Time to invest in Chinese tech stocks
100 sanctions. Imprisonment of it’s CEO. Mandatory shutdown of partner factories in the West.
Why worry US. Remember most Yanks still think Chinese live in caves and eat bats! To these hubris Yanks China can only make T-shirts and toys. And U.S. can deprived them technologies and send them back to the Stone Age.
Well, what happened? While the U.S. is still in the midst of ordering and coercing Taiwan to build its chip plant to manufacture 7nm chips that it thinks China is unable to do. To the horrors of U.S. officials. It took a mere 3 years for China to. Make it and now inside the Huawei Mate 60!
Where are the neocons who convince Biden to spend a trillion in losses, in subsidies, in coercions, in tax breaks, in new shining plants, in luring specialist to the U.S. only to see that China get it done in no time and made products that are not only comparable but better, faster and cheaper!
Huawei, under tight US sanctions since 2019, started selling its latest Mate 60 Pro smartphone this week, raising speculation about its 5G capabilities. Some online reviews claim the device comes with the Kirin 9000s chip to support 5G and satellite calls.
The US and some European governments have labelled the Chinese giant a threat to national security, despite the company’s denial. Huawei had restricted access to US components and software, including from foreign chipmakers.
Early this year, Japan and the Netherlands joined the US effort to curb the export of advanced semiconductors. However, Huawei has been rumoured to be actively trying to overcome these sanctions to return to the 5G smartphone market, even resuming production on advanced chips with China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC).
Why does it matter?
Huawei’s development of its 5G chip may have implications for the tech industry, the global economy, and national security.
The smartphone launch coincides with US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s visit to Beijing, reiterating the Biden administration’s stance on export controls to China.
If the new Mate 60 Pro is confirmed to have a 5G chip, that would mark a significant achievement for the Chinese tech champion.
China’s ability to produce its own advanced chips would also announce a considerable advancement in technological capabilities and would mean a serious blow to current US measures aimed at slowing its progress.
It could inspire the country’s largest tech firms to get around US sanctions, fueling the ‘whole nation‘ endeavor to produce Chinese innovation to beat the US.
In the United States, I was a conservative Republican working at a wage earning job. Then, while driving for my employer, on a delivery, on the clock, at a red light I was stopped. A person who was not paying attention smashed into my stationary vehicle and totaled it, and sent me to the hospital.
The hospital bill was thousands upon thousands of dollars. My employer didn’t cover any of it. My automobile insurance replaced my new vehicle with an old one that barely ran. I ran up many thousands of dollars of medical debt that I couldn’t afford.
Note: I spent one hour at the hospital, getting one scan. I received zero actual treatment, before or after that scan. It still cost me more than I made in a year. And no, the insurance didn’t cover it. Insurance that would have covered it, would have taken up half of my wages in a given month.
Cut to a few years later. I am now happily married, living in Norway. Still an American citizen. My wife is Norwegian and the pay is much, much better here, because they have things called unions. I literally earn three times as much as I did in Florida, working the same type of job. Scratch that, I was in management in the USA. Here, it’s an entry level job, no promotion. I still make far more money than I did in the states.
But the point is, whenever I need to see a doctor now, I just go. Whenever I need an operation, I can afford it. Whenever I am sick, I take time off. Because over here, in Norway, they have single payer universal healthcare.
I’ve never seen a doctor more often than I have since moving to Norway. I’ve gotten medical conditions diagnosed that I never would have found the money for before. I’ve gotten sick leave from work when I have been ill. Seeing a doctor tends to cost less than I make in a day, and if I go over a certain amount in a year, I can pay nothing.
Instead of getting bills from a doctor for thousands of dollars, I end up paying around 30 bucks out of pocket each time.
The doctor earns plenty. They make slightly less money here, but are still among the highest paid people in society. The citizens are healthier, they live longer. They take their health more seriously. Norway spends more per patient than almost any other country in the world, and they cover every citizen, every resident, completely.
Norway still spends only about half as much as US citizens are forced to spend on their healthcare.
The reason is because healthcare is considered a right here, like getting a public school education. People don’t go without simply because they’re poor.
And as a result, lifespans and healthcare outcomes and healthcare expenses are all a better outcome or a cheaper deal here in Norway.
Bernie Sanders is one of the few politicians in my native United States who understands that progressive ideas like universal healthcare would greatly enhance the lives of my fellow citizens.
I care about my fellow citizens, and I’d like for my son to be able to live in the USA someday, as he is born to a US citizen and he can certainly go far there.
The problem is, if he decides to come to the USA; there won’t be a union fighting for him against corporate greed. There will be greatly reduced wages. And if he gets hurt, sick, or otherwise needs medical care, he will likely need to have far more money than he earns in order to get that care.
That’s ridiculous.
Of course, he could just get a college education (something that is free in Norway) and then he could afford the outrageous healthcare prices in the USA.
But if he wanted to get such an education in the USA, he could find himself a hundred thousand dollars in debt just for college alone, in a shitty economic downturn, without even the benefit of having a place to live. Throw on a mortgage payment on top of that, and he would be downright stupid to deliberately choose the USA over Norway.
The difference is that Norway governs for its citizens and certain things are prioritized here, like education and healthcare.
Whereas in the USA most of the money you spend in taxes goes towards prepping for world war 3 and giving subsidies to already profitable corporations, and then giving them loopholes where they don’t have to pay any corporate taxes at all. And then billionaires pay for senators to give them even more tax breaks personally, and then they use that money that should be funding your government services to bankroll candidates for the Republican ticket that will never, ever do anything to help a working class person.
I support Bernie Sanders because he’s spent decades representing working class people, without ever selling out. It’s a shame people keep rejecting him in favor of billionaires who bail themselves out on the taxpayer’s dime like Donald Trump.
Norway isn’t alone. Basically any other modern, western nation has a universal healthcare system of some kind, and doesn’t shit on the poor like the USA does under Republican rule. Needless to say, I don’t think much of my former political party. They haven’t done anything for any working person in at least 4 decades. I was a fool to support them at all when I was younger. I believed their lies, basically.
The Mate 60 is superior to the performance of the Iphone 13 and is on par with the performance of Iphone 14
Yet the Mate 60 is expected to be half a generation below the Iphone 15
The Price of the Mate 60 however is at least 3000 Yuan lesser than the Iphone 15 and given the mild differences in performance between the two, the market for the mate 60 is likely to zoom and surge and definitely affect the market for the Iphone 15
I believe Iphone will lose around 15% of it’s present market share in China to Huawei due to the Mate 60 and the Mate 60 Pro Plus to be released in 2024 April
As a child, I was an incorrigible thief. Absolutely nothing could stop me.
I stole books. We had no local library, no school library, and no money to buy books. And I WANTED TO READ! (That may have been why I developed the habit of re-reading books.) I also stole art supplies, but that wasn’t quite the same problem, because you didn’t need a new set of pastels every week. When I was caught, I was punished — usually beat, because that was punishment in Little Italy in the 1960s.
My brother also stole. He tended towards candy and comic books. He also got beat when he got caught.
When I turned 16 I got a job, and I never had to steal a book again. Within three months I had enough books (and money) to build my first bookshelf. My current bookshelf, which is about half the size of its maximum ever, is 13′ long and 7′ high. I built that one, too.
I don’t steal art supplies, either. I order them online.
My brother decided stealing was fun, and meant he didn’t have to work. He made a living illegally hooking up electric lines after the power was shut off; later, he added cable TV installations. And he didn’t need a full-time job, ever.
Same parents, same beatings, same reason — poverty. When I had a choice, I stopped stealing. When he had a choice, he became a better thief. Good parenting helps, but nothing will tell you why a child turned out the way they did.
Clear interference shown in docs leaked to Mintpress
Theoretically, any cell phone that makes calls through a terrestrial carrier could be monitored by the CIA. It doesn’t matter whether the phone is made in the United States, South Korea or China.
After all, their signals and data must eventually be aggregated into the operator’s computer room and lines.
However, Mate60 is so unique that it is the first mobile phone in the world that can send short messages and make calls directly through artificial satellites. Previous similar products required the help of ground operators for transit.
Some people may say: CIA will also monitor satellites! Of course.
But what if these satellites are not operated by Americans?
Yes, if two people hold Mate60 at the same time, they can rely on a series of artificial satellites in space for global communication that do not rely on the United States. Perfectly avoiding every link that the CIA may touch.
While many Chinese scientists and engineers have returned to China after working years in the US, there is a newer trend which just came to my attention: Young Chinese star physicists and engineers are refusing to go to US universities and companies for study and then work, and are choosing to do their post-graduate study and work in China.
Why?
They have seen how research and product patents are owned by US universities and companies, and are used against Chinese companies and interests if a tech war breaks out.
They do not want their inventions used against Chinese companies and interests, so they choose to stay in China.
Huang Qianqian 黄芊芊 is a leading student and researcher on electricity consumption in chips, who went to Beijing University for undergraduate work, and is now doing graduate work there. In spite of being offered full scholarships to US universities, she decided to stay in China to do her work. She already has several patents under her name.
The US wanted decoupling; it is getting decoupling.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for plans to immediately deport Blacks out of Israel and back to Africa.
Plans should be drawn up to remove all African migrants from Israel after groups of Eritreans were involved in a violent clash in Tel Aviv, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says.
He also wants the migrants involved in the demonstration to be deported immediately.
His remarks came a day after rival groups of Eritreans clashed in bloody protests that left dozens of people injured.
The groups, supporters and opponents of Eritrea’s government, faced off with construction lumber, pieces of metal and rocks, smashing shop windows and police cars.
Israeli police in riot gear shot tear gas, stun grenades and live rounds while officers on horseback tried to control the protesters.
The violence broke out near the Eritrean embassy when protesters were stopped from reaching the building ahead of a cultural event set to take place there.
The issue of migrants has long divided Israel and the latest violence has brought it back to the fore.
“We want harsh measures against the rioters, including the immediate deportation of those who took part,” Mr Netanyahu said.
He requested that ministers present him with plans “for the removal of all the other illegal infiltrators,” and noted in his remarks that the Supreme Court struck down some measures meant to coerce the migrants to leave.
Under international law, Israel cannot forcibly send people back to a country where their life or liberty may be at risk.
About 25,000 African migrants live in Israel, mainly from Sudan and Eritrea, who say they fled conflict or repression.
Israel recognizes very few as asylum seekers, seeing them overwhelmingly as economic migrants, and says it has no legal obligation to keep them.
Stray Cat Follows Every Stranger and Asking to Take her Home Until This Happened
Heartwarming.
Media Say … Gloom And Doom In China
The New York Times, and other western media, are running a ‘doom and gloom in Xi’s economy’ campaign.
Founded in 1956 by John D. Rockefeller 3rd, Asia Society is a nonpartisan, nonprofit institution with major centers and public buildings in New York, Hong Kong, and Houston, and additional locations in Los Angeles, Manila, Melbourne, Mumbai, New Delhi, Paris, San Francisco, Seattle, Seoul, Sydney, Tokyo, Washington, D.C., and Zurich.
In 2016, he was found guilty and imprisoned after being found guilty of perverting the course of justice by asking Leung, in letters and emails, to stop the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) from investigating him.
Why is he quoting the Vice-something professor of this or that Liu Shijin?
Former Vice-President (Vice-Minister), Development Research Center. Currently, Vice-Chairman, China Development Research Foundation.
Natixis is a French corporate and investment bank created in November 2006 from the merger of the asset management and investment banking operations of Natexis Banques Populaires (Banque Populaire group) and IXIS (Groupe Caisse d’Epargne).
Natixis provides financial data for the ‘Markets’ section on the news channel, Euronews. On October 26, 2010, Natixis Investment Managers (NIM) has acquired a majority stake in asset management start-up ‘Ossiam’.
Why use some other outlets interview with the retired Lou Jiwei without giving this (2019) context?:
Lou Jiwei, who has long been seen as a liberalizing force in China, an advocate of market reform and international openness. He served as finance minister, ran the country’s massive sovereign wealth fund, and has palled around with western economists since the 1980s. But recently he made a prediction that contained a startling phrase: At a forum in Beijing, according to reporting in the South China Morning Post, he said: “The next step in the frictions between China and the United States is a financial war (jinrong zhan). The U.S. has been hijacked by nationalism and populism, so will do everything in its power to use bullying measures [and] long-arm jurisdiction.”
In this financial war, he continued, the U.S. will exploit its dominance of the international financial system to hurt China—and China will fight back.
REALITY: Only four economies have ever grown by $1.5 trillion in a year, and 2023 will see the fifth. All five boom years are Chinese, of course. Its economy is booming and so are wages: 4.7% nominal rise last year, 4.2% after inflation. Bwahahah.
But it’s all gloom and doom in China. The NYT says so.
Posted by b on September 6, 2023 at 8:23 UTC | Permalink
Tex-Mex Baked Potatoes
OIP Potato
Ingredients
4 baking potatoes
1 pound lean ground beef
1 (12 ounce) jar mild or hot salsa
2 teaspoons chili powder
1/4 cup diced green bell pepper
1 tablespoon chopped stuffed green olives
1 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
1 cup thinly sliced iceberg lettuce
Sliced tomatoes
Instructions
Scrub potatoes; pierce skin with fork. Bake at 400 degrees F until tender, about 1 hour.
Fifteen minutes before potatoes are done, sauté meat in hot skillet until all pink disappears.
Add salsa and chili powder to meat. Cover. Cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes.
Add green pepper and olives to meat mixture. Heat through.
Cut baked potatoes open. Spoon hot meat mixture into potatoes. Top at once with cheese so that it melts slightly.
Serve with lettuce sprinkled on top and with sliced tomatoes alongside.
Apple In Tears: China Ban Iphone In Response to U.S Sanction
In today’s video, we dive deep into the recent ban imposed by China on the use of iPhones for its government officials and its potential impact on the U.S economy. From Apple’s position in the global market to the ripple effects on allied industries, join us as we uncover the implications of this significant move.
Some years ago I was living in rural Texas. My housemates decided to raise chickens. They thought it would be “fun.” As someone who had to raise chickens in the past, I did not agree with them, but compromised because chickens were probably the least expensive and bothersome livestock they could mess with. Eventually, they got bored of the chickens, so I processed the chickens for future consumption in the front yard where the light was good. My neighbors called the local police and claimed I was conducting Satanic Rituals. Once again, this was rural Texas (no HOAs, large tracts of land with the Piney Woods for our backyards). All of these neighbors claimed to be descended from farmers and country people. They should have damn well recognized what cleaning a bunch of chickens looked like versus “Satanic Rituals.”
About 15 years ago I was driving through a part of Miami, Florida in my work van, which contained lots of specialized tools. My company was based out of South Georgia, and we usually didn’t work this far South, but there I was, driving through unknown territory.
I was on a very long street with stop signs every block, and I dutifully stopped at each one before proceeding. Of a sudden, as I stopped at one of the stop signs, a police car pulled up on the left side of me, lights flashing. An officer jumped out of the passenger seat and stood at my window, asking me where I was headed. I told him that I was heading to the interstate so I could make my way back North to Georgia.
The officer asked what I had in the van, and I told him a bunch of tools. Wearing a pained expression, the officer told me that he and his partner had observed me stopping at every stop sign and then he said that it was several miles to the Interstate and that I was in a very rough part of town. In fact, the officer believed that my life would be in danger if I were to stop at every stop sign, as someone may jump on / in the van, shoot me, or whatever, and take the van.
The officer ordered me not to stop at any of the stop signs between where we were and the interstate. He said I could slow down and make sure it was safe to proceed, but under no circumstances was I to stop and that if anyone tried to stop me or signal me to stop, that I should ‘floor it’ and get the hell out of there.
The officer assured me that they were radioing my vehicle description / license plate # to other officers in the area to let them know what I would be doing.
I thanked the officer and proceeded toward the Interstate, running every stop sign on the way.
PASSPORT SIS Thought She Could Talk Down To Men In Africa Like In USA
“The arrogance of US women is astounding. I live in a poor country, but that does not mean that their education is bad. Very smart people here.”
Yes you are 100% correct. The U.S. is totally dependent on the Chinese in 3 main ways.
Without the Chinese products the U.S. will suffer a 50% inflation at the very least.
Without China producing stuffs productively and efficiently for them they cannot sell a thing in the world.
Without access to the humongous Chinese market most U.S. companies will go bankrupt and out of business within a year.
Just take Apple and Tesla as an example. Without the Chinese market it will suffer a good 30% less sales. Without China making their products they will be totally uncompetitive and lose the entire world market.
What can be done about this? You can do something to avoid dependence on China but you won’t. And you can’t. You wanted the cake and eat it too. You see US wants to be the world’s baddest nation and fight wars upon wars upon wars. It needs to outspent the top 20 nations put together! If you do that much shit you need to watch your back, your side and your front, your top and your bottom too!
There lies your problem. You need to spent all your money on wars you have no more money to produce anything. You thought that your CEO can earn 100 times China’s CEO, your workers must be paid 5 times more than Chinese workers and get 10 times the Chinese benefits and the customer will pay for your excesses! But the customer won’t! Not even American customers!
It is that simple. The U.S. cannot have the cake and eat it too! The U.S. needs to choose being competitive or being hegemonic! It cannot have both. American need to decide!
You want to compete with China, do the following. Close your 800 foreign military base, turn your dozen aircraft carriers into holiday cruise! Divert your trillion dollar military budget to building U.S. infrastructure, stop spending money talking shit and doing shit spend it on building relationship with your customers. Disband NATO, CIA and NED! Ban Industrial Actions and Trade Unions!
Can you do this? I doubt so. So the U.S. will rather be dependent on China!
The Sopranos || Feelin’ Good
I am really starting to like these Sopranos themed fan videos.
The growing US’ geopolitical competition with Russia and China marks the end of the post-Cold War world order, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, speaking at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies on Wednesday. “What we are experiencing now is more than a test of the post-Cold War order. It’s the end of it,” he noted. “Decades of relative geopolitical stability have given way to an intensifying competition with authoritarian powers, revisionist powers.” This statement appears to be a rallying cry for a “new cold war.”
Since the post-Cold War order is coming to an end, what kind of new world order does the US want? Various signs indicate that the US wants major power competition and camp confrontation in order to maintain its global hegemony, even at the expense of the interests of other countries, including allies, and partner nations. However, the reality is that major power competition goes against the trend of the times and cannot solve the US’ own problems and the challenges facing the world. It will only further divide the world, leading the world to slide toward a more dangerous cliff edge.
Regarding Blinken’s remarks, there are two main points to consider. Firstly, Blinken was creating a sense of crisis in the world. The underlying message to US allies and other countries is that there are challengers, particularly China and Russia, who want to change the existing order. Secondly, Blinken’s remarks also reflect a sense of anxiety in the US. The US is attempting to slow down China’s rise through strategic competition, while hoping to sustain its hegemony without jeopardizing its own interests. However, it seems that the US has no clear solution to this dilemma.
China is one of the beneficiaries of the existing system and does not seek to challenge or subvert this order. However, the US has viewed any legitimate demand made by China, even those that reflect the reasonable demands of the majority of developing countries, as a challenge and ill-intentioned sabotage….
As for China, the US is attempting to stifle its development by imposing unlimited technological restrictions, but it is unable to completely decouple from China economically. For the US and its main allies, China is either their largest single trading partner or one of the largest. Today, the US is a reckless strategic aggressor, attempting to unite its relatively weaker strength with its allies to wage a new cold war. It should be noted that the power of US allies has declined significantly, and the unity of the “West” is crippled due to the US transitioning from a “blood donor” to a “vampire”.
There’s no way the Outlaw US Empire and its vassals can contain China or the rest of the Global South. The degree of geoeconomic dependency noted in the final paragraph above is far too much for that Bloc to overcome. The attempts made so far beginning with Trump have illustrated the damage the Empire can inflict on itself in its ill-considered policy toward China and the world. The Outlaw US Empire’s illusion of “primacy” has faded into the mists of time and is irretrievable so matter what it tries.
When I was living with my father (for a spell) we would go to “garage sales” on Sundays. These events were listed in the newspaper, and was a great excuse to go out, take a drive around town and look at other people’s junk.
It was often fun to haggle over an old nick-nack or curiosity.
Some interesting things were often found, at dirt cheap prices. Many unique things and items. Nothing really valuable, though. But it was darn fun to do.
Today’s story involves one such adventure on a lazy Sunday.
We once went to an estate sale. Nice big old house. Lots of rooms with all sorts of stuff. The old man died, and his son was selling off everything.
Lots of clutter. Mountains of puzzles in their original boxes. Piles of old pots and pans. The usual run of odd ball things. Some new televisions and some very old radios and cameras.
I well remember the fancy antique dining table with boxes of office supplies. There were boxes of ink pens. Never used. All dried up and useless. Some electronic calculators from the early 1970s or so. A slide rule. A few magnifying glasses, and lots and lots of rusty paperclips and tacks.
Clutter and junk was everywhere. Apparently this older man lived alone for the bulk of his final days. No wife. Maybe she died or he had a divorce. I didn’t ask.
In the kitchen was a wall calendar dating to six years earlier. There was a dead plant in a small flowerpot on the window. And the sink faucet has rust stains near the drain.
There was an ungodly amount of glassware in a antique glass display case. Some were real crystal. Some looked like wedding presents of glass from the 1950’s, while others were short drinking glasses with Flintstone’s characters on them.
There were a number of ash trays at various locations in the house, and one large glass ashtray that stood alone on it’s own pedestal. The rooms had the aura of a grand-parent’s residence.
One of the bedrooms was nearly impassable with boxes and boxes of books. But most of the titles did not interest me at all.
The stairs had full boxes at every step, and junk of all sorts and sizes everywhere. I saw a half-completed model of a wooden boat, a guitar missing a string, a bunch of rusty old steel tools, and lots of baby jars filled with metal screws, washers and pennies.
An old Honda motorcycle sat in the clutter filled garage / basement. It must have dated from the late 1960s. Long forgotten. An old red-plaid shit draped over the tank and seat. It’s wheels were all flat, and the rubber useless.
The laundry room consisted of piles of dirty clothes and a few boxes of detergent and cleaning supplies with the box marked “$1”.
When I went to the bedroom of the old man, where he actually died, I saw his bed, and a nice cozy chair by the window. You can tell from the chair that his beloved cat slept on it. It was worn down into the shape of a cat and covered with cat fur. It must have been doing so for many years.
In the corner of the best room was a plastic litter box with some fossilized feces, and a cat mat with a dry water bowl, and a long stale half-eaten bowl of kitty krunchies.
So we asked about the cat, and the son told us that the cat was fine. He was old, though. 16 year old kitty. (Is it even possible?) And was put up for adoption at the local shelter.
Really?
REALLY!
Sad story. Chances of adoption were very small. Sigh.
If you are getting old, make SOLID arrangements for your loved ones, and do not trust promises from family. “I’ll take care of him…don’t worry.”
I have experienced the let-downs as an estate executor. Make the requests in writing AND set in place a guardian (paid) that will guarantee that the wishes are performed as you request. Put in place clear “guardrails” so that others will not cause discord and trouble.
Do not underestimate the greed, and sloth of relatives.
Yes I did. My husband was transferred many times before he retired. I was an accountant, so I would usually go to a temp agency and work a couple of jobs until one came along I liked.
I went for a short interview for temp to perm in the Milwaukee area. The manager interviewed me in the conference room and asked me if I would object to straightening up the conference room on Friday afternoons. I thought it was a bit odd since they had lower level positions, but it wasn’t far from my house so I said sure.
Friday comes along and people start leaving around 3:00 p.m. The girl who was training me comes by and says she is going to show me what I needed to clean on Friday’s. I was a bit puzzled, thinking I didn’t need to be shown how to pick up a conference room. She then takes me to a janitor closet, pulls out a vacuum, mops, bathroom cleaners, etc. She tells me I’m to clean all the bathrooms, empty the trash, vacuum all the offices, including mine and the conference room. I told her I thought there was a mistake and she said, no all the new woman employees did this job until a new one came along. Then she left. I tried to call the man who hired me, but he didn’t answer. I actually started to vacuum a couple of offices, but I was getting madder and madder.
I looked in the bathrooms and said to myself “oh hell no” . Apparently they were only cleaned on Fridays. Mind you I have on a suit, nylons and high heels. I tried calling the manager again and when there was no answer, I picked up my things and walked out. I went straight to the temporary agency. She was on the phone with him, because one of the employees called her and said I left all the cleaning material out and walked out the door. This was an agency for professional people. I told her my story. Had we had cell phones then I would have taken lots of pictures. She called him back with me sitting there and asked him if they had indeed asked me to spend the last two hours of the day cleaning bathrooms, etc. He said all the other WOMAN had done it, it was like an initiation thing. She asked him if men had to do this. He said no. She said so you expect my highly qualified client to do janitorial work in a suit? He said, well I don’t want that woman to come back, she just walked off leaving the office uncleaned and the supplies out, send me someone new. The agency lady told him, I didn’t plan on coming back and to please lose her number, she was not sending qualified accountants out there to clean his office.
This was in the early 90’s. In retrospect, I should have gone after them for discrimination, but just let it go. That was the one time I walked off a job!
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.
Paid vacations are compulsory because French trade unions are not stupid. They know that if they leave in up to the individual to choose whether to take vacations or not, the employers will use that to subtlely, or not so subtlely, force workers to work and not take vacations.
Paid vacations being compulsory is a line in the sand and a right that has been won. Talk of the “right” to be a workoholic sounds like insanity. The only people wanting such a “right” would be exploitative employers who would use the workoholic as leverage against everyone else.
Rights do not exist in a vacuum, they are created and exercised in real-world social context. İn the real world, which is not the world of liberal individualist fantasy, the defence of rights must almost always be a collective effort.
*TEARS* Oliver Anthony – I Want To Go Home| REACTION
Reaction video. If you tire of the American angst, then don’t watch it. But I will continue to put up visions of what it was like in France before the powdered wig wealthy got beheaded.
Once upon a time, my department was merged into another. My old manager was a great boss. The new one was a horrible boss. I knew he was sexually harassing the women in the company, but had no direct proof until I was working for him. I gathered evidence over a few months, then one day I emailed all of it to his boss, claiming my rights under their confidential reporting policy and stating my fear of retribution. His boss thanked me and told me that he’d get back with me. Nothing happened…yet.
About 3 weeks later, it was time for my quarterly review. We were IT pros who normally worked out of the office at client sites. My client reviews were like “walks on water, talks with God”. My first review with the new manager was the first I ever had in my life where I “did not meet expectations”. I knew he was lying and I had proof, but I didn’t do anything yet.
The next quarter, the client was still totally satisfied with me. I guess saving them roughly $10 million in the first 9 months of my contract was considered a good thing. But, my manager’s review was “Needs improvement to meet expectations” – one grade level down from “Did not meet expectations”. Another lie, and more proof.
The next quarter, I was put on a 90 day “Improvement plan” with termination at the end if I did not fully meet expectations, and I had still more proof because I had copies of every single client review that they had ever turned in. By that time I had another job lined up, so I printed off everything I had, not only on his sexual misconduct, but his falsified performance reports, and his boss’s failure to do anything about the sexual harassment report. I not only had proof of my boss’s gross misconduct and lies, but also his boss had violated the “confidential reporting policy” by telling my boss about my report of his wrongdoing.
I took all of it to HR, along with my resignation letter, effective immediately. The next day I started at my new job. Two weeks later, after much investigation and interviews of the women who had been harassed, my boss and his boss were terminated with cause. Neither got severance and neither was eligible for unemployment insurance.
Karma is a bitch.
Edit: I should have said how I document the sexual harassment. I kept a journal with me. People were used to seeing me pull it out at random times and write in it for a minute or two when I had an idea on how to automate something or improve a process.
Every time I overheard or saw harassment going on, out came my journal. Date, time, place, woman’s name, what she was doing at the time he approached her, what he did, and the conversation on both sides as accurately as I could. Later one of the women told me that it was the detail in the copied journal pages that sunk him because all of the women verified each instance was accurate, and my record was less than 25% of what had gone on.
So, ladies, if you are in this situation, start recording the events. Do it on paper. There’s a reason attorneys use paper. It’s harder to fake evidence when it’s written with different pens and the handwriting is subtly different at different times.
A story of discovery
In 1836, the directors of the Bank of England received an anonymous letter, in which the author claimed to have direct access to the gold in the bank.
The directors assumed this to be a joke and simply ignored it.
However, sometime later, they received another letter, in which the enigmatic author offered to meet them at an hour of their choosing inside the main gold vault.
According to the bank’s website, the directors were intrigued but considered it impossible for someone to break into the vault without their knowledge.
Nevertheless, they agreed to the meeting and gathered together one evening, inside the vault as agreed.
To their great surprise, at the appointed time, a noise was heard beneath the floorboards, and a man popped up underneath their feet.
He was a sewer worker who had been working on repairs close to the Bank of England site at Threadneedle Street.
During his routine inspection, he had discovered an old drain that led directly underneath the gold vault inside the bank itself.
After a quick stock take, they realized that the sewer worker had not taken anything from the vault, despite having multiple opportunities to do so.
As a reward for his honesty, the directors gifted him £800, a sum that equates to £80,000 in today’s money.
African Coup: Soldiers Seize Power in OPEC Member Gabon
I have another story that will stop you dead on your tracks.
Here it is.
Deep in the beautiful wooded distant enclave of a famous city in America, there are estates of rich people that boast priceless trees. One day, one of these rich barons of this serene nature paradise, got bored and toyed with the idea it would be nice to have a distant view of the beautiful city skyline. Problem was his neighbor’s priceless mature trees were in the way of where he wanted this view to be.
As the desire grew in his heart, he decided to act on it. He hired a wood cutting service and pointed them in the direction of the trees he wanted taken out.
On the 3rd day, (as is usually the case) his actions came to light because he had cleared quite a sizable chunk of the woods and the neighbor noticed the gap. The neighbor raced over there in his off-road truck and what he discovered nearly gave him a heart attack. About 15 of his precious priceless trees littered the ground.
Long story short, the city and the courts served the tree murderer with all kinds of injunctions and the city went to town fining him for every tree he had taken out. He had to pay daily fines as long as the trees were not replaced, fully rehabilitated and the old ones not removed.
Meanwhile, the victim baron’s lawyers were preparing for a civil suit and things were not looking so good for the “tk” who by now was in dire straights and visions of the city skyline were being replaced by a windowless basement in a friend’s farmhouse way back in the Midwest.
The last time I heard it looked like it was going to be a long 3 years with the city doing the tree replacement because they had to locate the right kind of trees, clear the ground, dig up stumps and finally plant the trees, truss them up and after two or three years decide whether the process was a success for all trees concerned. If not the fines would continue daily, eish!!!
Tree killer, I mean “tk”, had to mortgage his property and get into debt to meet the costs of his impulsive ill informed act of messing with someone else’s trees. Trees have more value than you can imagine. And I say that as a supporter of the Arbor Foundation. We love trees and we will come after you if you remove them without permit.
Stay away from trees, they will fall on your wallet.
Whitney Webb Part 1: How Government Steals From Us, Bombshell Epstein Book & Bitcoin For Sovereignty
In the US Navy at sea, you will never get accustomed to the General Quarters (GQ) alarm going off when you least expect it in the middle of the night, calling the entire crew to man their battle stations. You go from exhausted and dead asleep in your bunk after working a typical 14 hour day while underway, to immediately energized and moving at full speed. The loud, insistent clanging could wake a graveyard. You have to jump out of your rack, throw on a uniform (you can fasten buttons and laces later), and run through passageways and up/down ladders with minimal night time red lighting to get to your designated station. If the ship happens to be rolling and pitching in heavy seas, the difficulty level is magnified, as are the chances of getting bumps, cuts, bruises, or even (rarely) more serious injuries.
Once at your station, you must complete dressing, don any required protective gear, and get your equipment ready to respond to any possible attack (e.g., guns, torpedoes, missiles, radars, sonar, comm gear, electronic jammers, damage control equipment, engine rooms, auxiliary spaces, aft steering, magazine hoists, signal bridge, lookout posts, medical stations, galley, etc.). The ship is then buttoned up (hatches, scuttles, watertight doors, and ventilation are secured shut to prevent the spread of fires or flooding from areas that may suffer battle damage), and all stations report to the bridge when they are manned and ready. The whole evolution is timed, as seconds can count when responding to an incoming threat. If the CO is not pleased with how quickly his/her ship was made ready for action, you can expect more frequent GQ drills, which can happen at any hour of the day or night, and are almost always performed with no prior warning.
This man was an alcoholic, he was homeless, he lived on the streets, he had lost everything, he had been homeless for more than 7 years.
Laszlo Andraschek, made a decision that many would say was foolish, spending the last of the money he had to eat on a gas station lottery ticket.
He chose 6 numbers, the cashier reminded him that there were 7, so he randomly chose the last number.
Surprisingly, he ended up winning 2.5 million dollars, something that changed his life forever. The surprising thing about this is that Laszlo donated a good sum of money to a shelter that he and his wife were surviving for a long time.
They also invested part of their newly acquired fortune in two foundations that look after addicted people.
I think he was lucky not only to win the lottery, but also to be mature enough to be able to be generous after suffering for so long.
Oliver Anthony Does It AGAIN! His New Song ‘I Want To Go Home’ Is Climbing The Charts – Here’s Why
This is a Republican vs. Democrat video on this song. Sigh.
However, what she does bring up is the “hit piece” Oliver Anthony, and seriously… someone was PAID to write the piece. No one in their right mind would say (seriously) what the UK Independent wrote…
Reaction video. If you tire of the American angst, then don’t watch it. But I will continue to put up visions of what it was like in France before the powdered wig wealthy got beheaded.
No, they don’t. Most don’t realize there are three milestones with exotic car ownership that require maintenance; on condition, based on miles driven, and calendar based maintenance. They always forget about the last and think if they didn’t drive their car all that much, what could it possibly need?
This is how exotic brands deny warranty claims, especially when you want to extend the warranty and a service interval is missed. If you own an exotic, carefully check the maintenance requirements and follow it to the letter. On a Lamborghini, the engine comes out for a lot of things. Ask me how I know.
As for how to drive them properly, the answer is no. The overwhelming majority of accidents with exotics are new owners and borrowed cars. I can only guess but they make up about 90% of all exotic accidents. The “Let’s see what this baby can do!” mentality is what does it, especially when they don’t know the subtleties of the car. A Lamborghini gives you little warning when it decides it wants to kill you. It’s your job to keep it from happening. Think of it like a domesticated wild animal that you have to constantly watch.
Tucker Carlson: HOT WAR With Russia Is Coming, Gabon COUP OUSTS French Puppet President
This is pretty good. Long. But good.
I mean REALLY GOOD.
“It’s difficult for me and my family to see this happening, I am married to a Russian I have two Russian born step kids now grown up, with friends in Russia as well. The people in Russia are good people and most Americans just don’t understand they are ignorant of that country and it’s culture and history.”
https://youtu.be/uYG6RwvJ2LA
During the Vietnam war why did you join the US Navy instead of the Army
During my junior year at UC Irvine, I was a participant in the first drawing. My number turned out to be “16”.
I said to a buddy, “Well, I’ve got one more year on my student deferment. Hopefully I’ll get a better number in next year’slottery.”
The buddy gazed at me in pity and said: “You’re an idiot. 16 is the number you’ve got FOREVER.”
He was right, of course. And I started searching for alternatives to the Army.
…
For me, the choice was simple.
I figured out in 1968 that the Vietnam conflict was headed in a slow slog to nowhere. (It wasn’t particularly difficult to figure. The optimistic military press releases coming out of Saigon never matched the body counts or nightly battle footage shown on television. So I stopped believing the announcements about the light gleaming at the end of the ever-lengthening tunnel.)
I was a university student, hunkered down behind my student deferment like a jillion other privileged young males, but that deferment would soon be ending. And I knew I wasn’t a conscientious objector, and wasn’t going to lie about it. But I was also disinclined to wait to get drafted and spend twelve months in the Mekong Delta.
So one bright June day in 1970, I drove to a nearby Naval Reserve Center where a grizzled, gray-haired CPO with about twenty hash-marks on his sleeve signed me up for a six-year hitch (four years in the active reserves and two years on active duty.)
I spent my active duty doing paperwork on big gray ships and in a large, yellow building in San Diego. The reserve duty was done on a World War II destroyer based in Long Beach, California. I was never in or near Vietnam (orders to the Gulf of Tonkin got cancelled), so my original mission of steering clear of Southeast Asia was accomplished.
U.S Beg China As Chinese Economy Can Make or Break Global Economy!
The Navy has several reserve fleets, also known as ghost fleets, where mothballed ships are kept. Some of the largest and most well-known reserve fleets are:
The Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet in California, near San Francisco. This fleet holds dozens of ships, mostly from the Cold War era, such as cruisers, destroyers, frigates, and auxiliary vessels. Some of these ships are slated for disposal, while others are on donation hold for possible use as museum ships or artificial reefs.
The James River Reserve Fleet in Virginia, near Newport News. This fleet holds over 100 ships, mostly from World War II and the Korean War, such as battleships, aircraft carriers, landing ships, and cargo ships. Some of these ships are also on donation hold or awaiting disposal.
The Beaumont Reserve Fleet in Texas, near Port Arthur. This fleet holds over 50 ships, mostly amphibious assault and support vessels, such as landing craft, tank landing ships, dock landing ships, and transport dock ships. Some of these ships are still in active service or ready reserve status.
Other smaller reserve fleets are located in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; Bremerton, Washington; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Mobile, Alabama. The Navy also has a separate reserve fleet for nuclear-powered ships and related support vessels, which are stored at designated locations such as Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Washington and Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia.
Gabon Coup Latest: Billions In Raw Cash Found In Ali Bongo Son Apartment!
Quick recap. Niger has said no to a pro-West puppet government and had a coup. The puppet government was thrown out and the USA and France had a fit! So they organized a block of neighboring African states all run by their puppets to invade Niger.
It didn’t happen.
Instead Wagner troops from Russia, and other pro-African nations fortified and protected Niger from invasion.
So then Gabon started to be reinforced by French and American troops to better support an invasion. And then the Gabon military staged a coup and ousted their puppet “leader”.
I know of my great-uncle’s deathbed confession only second-hand, through my grandmother. There is some background here, so bear with me as I lay all the pieces into place.
My grandmother and her brother were born in pre-revolutionary Odessa and grew up in a poor and crime-ridden Jewish neighborhood immortalized later in the works of Isaac Babel. Like most boys coming of age in that time and place, my great-uncle began running with a gang around the age of ten. Although he had not been involved in anything major prior to the outbreak of World War II, like most of his friends, was growing up very tough, both physically and psychologically, as you would expect of children reared in a ghetto controlled by gangsters.
The Revolution had removed the legal restrictions that had been imposed on Jews under the old regime, and my great-uncle and his peers were able to leave the ghetto and their rough-and-tumble past behind them, received good educations and got respectable jobs. In the late 1940’s, he and my grandmother, along with a bunch of other young people they had known back in Odessa, moved to a the Moscow area, where they settled down into unremarkable middle-class Soviet lives.
The incident that was the subject of my great-uncle’s deathbed confession took place in the early 1970’s, when he was in his early sixties. He and a number of acquaintances he knew from his youth in Odessa were then living in a suburb of Moscow, which could be reached by an elektrichka, a rickety suburban commuter train.
Like a lot of Russian cities, Moscow and its surrounding areas were arranged in roughly concentric circles, with suburban districts separated by “green belts” — heavily wooded areas interspersed with bogs. These green belts were not parks; there were no hiking or biking trails, no camping areas. These were strips of true, impenetrable wilderness, a setup unimaginable in the capitalist West, where the pressures of the real estate market at the very least put nature on a leash, if not obliterate it altogether. If you were to ride a Moscow commuter train of an evening in that era, you’d see the lights and bustle of the city flash briefly by the window, and then the train would plunge into darkness, flying through a forbidding primordial forest. Then suddenly another town would appear, with a brightly lit platform, where the train would pause briefly — then it would start moving again and plunge into uninhabited wilderness once more. And so forth and so on, until it reached its terminus.
One evening, my great-uncle and two of his friends attended some sort of event in center Moscow and ended up taking a late commuter train back home — probably the last train of the evening, which departed the Leningrad Station close to midnight. This was never an advisable thing to do: late-night elektrichkas were empty and eerie, and bad things were known to happen to hapless tipsy passengers who rode one that late into the evening.
This was one of those times.
The three friends stepped into a virtually empty car and settled in — three pudgy, soft-spoken middle-aged men in bulky felt coats, flat caps and glasses. An engineer, a doctor and an accountant. One of them spoke with a heavy lisp. If you saw them then, these guys looked like your stereotypical, timid, limp-wristed, well-nourished middle-aged college dads, and you never would have guessed they had grown up as skull-cracking hooligans in one of the toughest urban areas in pre-War Soviet Union.
There was one other passenger in the car — a mean-looking drunk who began glowering at them and flicking a pen knife in his hand as soon as the train left the station. A couple of suburban stops in, he began to harangue my great-uncle and his two friends.
“Jews!” he hissed, “Fucking Jews! I know you’re Jews! Hitler didn’t finish the job! Stalin didn’t finish the job! You’re like cockroaches, impossible to kill! Your hooked noses! Greedy Jews! Filthy Jews! I’ll kill you and your Jew broads too! I’ll rape your children! Burn all the Jews!”
And so forth and so on.
As the train departed another station and entered one of the “green belts”, the three pudgy middle aged men exchanged knowing looks. Then the one with the lisp said loudly:
“Guyth? I am going into the vethtibule to thmoke a thigarette, okay?”
He then rose and walked over to the vestibule. The drunk with the pen knife followed him. As he opened the door to the vestibule, the other two men also rose and followed in. Once the three friends cornered the drunk in the tiny vestibule, they set upon him, disarmed him and kicked him to death, stomping on his head to disfigure him as much as possible. Then they opened the window and forced his body out of the train. It rolled down the embankment and disappeared in the nightly wilderness. The man’s ID was disposed of separately. One of the three friends, though not my great-uncle, kept the pen knife as a souvenir.
And then there was nothing. No cop ever came to question any of them. And because this was the Soviet Union, there was nothing on the news. None of the three ever mentioned the incident.
This my great-uncle told his sister as he lay dying in a hospital about fifteen years later. Having confessed, he looked away from her and began to mumble to himself. Those green belts are perfect places to dump bodies, you know (he said). Very convenient. Folks are doing it, it’s an open secret. No one ever goes there. You don’t even need to dig a hole, the animals will get to the corpse long before the “garbages” ever do. You can even roll a body into a bog. There are lots of bogs. Maybe that jackass we murdered also rolled into a bog, we gave him a good momentum. And once they sink into bogs, those bodies will stay there for thousands of years. Perhaps some day, future archeologists will dig them up. Lots of material for those turgid doctoral dissertations, hehehe! Were these bog men priests? War captives? Slaves? Chieftains? Why were they put in those bogs? Was it part of some religious ritual? Did ancient Muscovites practice a religion that called for human sacrifices? No professor, no, no. The ancients were just as cynical and practical are you modern people are.
Those men in those bogs aren’t ritual sacrifices, they’re just some assholes who had it coming. No man is there that did not deserve it. And the bogs are good places to dump the trash you never want to see again.
OLIVER ANTHONY- RICH MEN NORTH OF RICHMOND REACTION
You all getting tired of these reactions?
This is HISTORIC.
Big changes coming together, and there WILL be Government / Oligarchic backlash. Wait for it.
Reaction video. If you tire of the American angst, then don’t watch it. But I will continue to put up visions of what it was like in France before the powdered wig wealthy got beheaded.
An incredible story happened in the USA in the 2000s.
A man has been arrested in Los Angeles for murder. However, he swore that he was innocent (well known) and that he could not have committed this crime because he was attending a baseball game at the time.
Unfortunately, he had no proof of what he was saying. On the other hand, eyewitnesses claimed to have seen him at the scene of the crime. The case seemed heard and the suspect promised to life in prison.
However, from the depths of his cell, while awaiting trial, the defendant recalled that he had seen a camera crew filming something in the stadium on the day of the baseball game. He then asked his lawyer to try to find this team and try to see if there were any images in which we could see him.
It was a desperate attempt.
The lawyer did some research and quickly discovered that the crew from the series “Curb your enthusiasm” had actually filmed in the stadium that day. A request was made to the producer and star of the series, the comic Larry David (co-creator of Seinfeld) to be able to access the rushes filmed that day.
Larry David immediately agreed and made available to the lawyer the hours of video they had shot in the stadium.
And after a long and careful examination of these tapes… he found a plan on which the accused could be seen and recognized indisputably!
The latter was released on the spot, thus escaping life imprisonment…
AMERICA TERRIFIED of CHINA!
While the United States and it’s allies circle China with military bases to contain China, Russia is building military bases in Nicaragua and Niger is stopping an American LNG pipeline to Europe. North Korea is testing ICBM’s and Japan, South Korea and America are in talks to strengthen their security ties in the region. Could it be that the United States knows it is out manned, out gunned and losing it’s grasp on it’s world domination goals. Watch the video for the whole story.
My grandparents lived in a dugout in Oklahoma. That is where you dig a hole in the ground, and it becomes your home.
They attended church and taught Sunday School each week.
During their 61-year marriage, they produced a huge extended family.
My grandfather’s ancestors came from Buckinghamshire, England. My grandmother’s kin came from Cornwall. As America expanded westward, their families expanded westward.
My ancestors (on both sides) lived on the frontier. They were constantly trying to grow more food. The goal was not to get rich — the goal was to survive another winter.
In constant dollars, Americans are 3,000% richer today than in 1800.
In the 1930s, my grandparents paid for magazine subscriptions (Popular Mechanics, Scientific American, Saturday Evening Post) by giving the traveling salesman a chicken. He carried a burlap sack.
My grandmother sewed dresses from feed sacks and flour sacks. Potato sack dresses were less popular. That’s because the word “Potato” was printed on them.
The dress below would have been too cheeky for my straightlaced grandparents.
There was no stigma attached to sack dresses. No one had any money.
Farm income in Oklahoma declined -35% during the 1920s. There were two reasons:
End of World War I reduced agricultural demand
Argentina and Australia became major crop exporters
The Great Depression of the 1930s was just a continuation of those same hard conditions. When the stock market crashed in 1929, Okie farmers barely noticed.
For Christmas presents, my aunts and uncles received one piece of fruit and one piece of hard candy.
My mother rode a horse named Shorty. That horse took herto and from school beginning age 6.
When the creek was up, Shorty would plunge ahead whether she was ready or not. Shorty knew the route and wanted to reach his destination.
One day after school, she got on Shorty and they started for home. A boy who attended the same school threw a rock and hit the horse on his haunches.
Shorty took off like a rocket. As a first-grader, she barely hung on — clinging to his mane. The teacher saw the whole episode through the window.
Mr. Rock Thrower could still recall his spanking at the 50-year reunion.
There were only two “dating services” back then: church and the pie auction.
Girls looking for a husband would bake their best pie. On a designated Saturday night, everyone in the county would converge at the auction. It was a big social event for all ages.
Young men would bid on pies. Bidding was fast and furious for every pie. In effect, bidders were buying a first date. Sometimes a last date.
Shy men and women were especially fond of the auction. Each year, marriages and new families could be traced back to pie.
The U.S. government offered money to my grandparents to stop growing row crops. My grandfather rejected the idea outright. He told his neighbors:
“No one should accept free money from the government, and that includes a poor man like me.
Politicians can call it whatever they like. But it is Socialism. Socialism is wrong.”
My mother worked as a cook to pay her way through the University of Oklahoma. She studied mathematics. Mom received no money from home. My grandparents simply had no money to send.
When she graduated, she was hired by the OSS. They did intelligence work. She said their nickname was Oh So Social.
She worked in temporary buildings on the Washington mall. As soon as the war was over, she returned to Oklahoma.
It was exciting working with spies. But she wanted to be a wife and mother.
Audie Murphy wrote In his autobiography:
“We were poor cotton sharecroppers. My family always lived hand to mouth. When I joined the Army, I was amazed they let me eat as much as I wanted.”
All my uncles served in the military. So did I.
In the 1960s, my Uncle Ken completed his tour. When he left the Service, he was invited to New York City to interview. The job was flying helicopters between Manhattan and the Hamptons.
My grandfather told him: You do what you want, son. I truly want you to be happy.
But Yankees live differently than we do.
If you go to New York City, there is a good chance you will be back in 6 months.
My uncle lasted one night.
There are more people in one high-rise building than all of Cimarron County, Oklahoma. You can look from horizon to horizon and not see another human being.
That feeling of vastness — unlimited space — never leaves you.
On the other hand, city folks like the “energy” of a metropolis. To each his own.
My grandfather said:
Each person is uniquely created by God. Each person has a unique purpose.
Some coastal Americans would not visit the Great Plains if you paid them in gold.
Woody Allen directed The Front. In that movie, a character from New York says:
He moved to Kansas. Or maybe it was Oklahoma. Doesn’t matter.
Any normal person would go nuts in a place like that.
In the 1960s, I helped my grandfather milk at 5 AM and 5 PM. Cats lined up early.
One time, all my cousins and I were swimming in the creek.
My grandfather suddenly raced into the water. He pinned a water moccasin with a branch, then killed it with his bare hands. We were shocked. He was always such a gentle man.
Around my grandparents’ farm house and hay barn, there were chickens everywhere. This gave my grandmother “egg money” for incidentals.
On Saturday afternoons, we hauled water from town back to the farm. It cost 50 cents for 1,000 gallons.
On Saturday nights, my cousins and I would attend stock car races, a baseball game, or the rodeo. There was no television unless the wind was blowing due west from Oklahoma City.
In some Oklahoma counties, people drove an hour each way to reach a movie theater.
Funerals in Oklahoma can be very practical. The funeral director will find strapping young men and say:
You, you, and you … please give us a hand with the casket.
In winter, my grandfather and I would break ice in numerous locations. Cattle and hogs need water each day. With livestock, there are no days off.
Our reward was a huge farm breakfast including homemade biscuits and gravy.
After breakfast, we listened to a radio program called Tradio. People would call in to buy or sell various items. These ranged from knick-knacks to wheat combines. My grandfather never bought or sold anything. But he could recognize the voices of his neighbors on the radio.
I helped Grandpa change a tractor tire when I was 15 and he was 73. It was 102 degrees that day.
I spilled icy lemonade all over my work shirt. He kidded me and could not stop laughing.
My grandfather told us: Do not stick your nose in other people’s business.
That was wise advice. But in the early 1970s, western Oklahoma had party line telephones. There were 8 households on each line.
When someone made a call, 7 other people could potentially listen in. That was great fun for teenaged girls — but less fun for other people.
One time, I called my cousin: “I need to buy a load of 32% feed.”
He said: “Pick me up. I’ll give you a hand.”
An unknown voice chimed in: “Atwoods is having a clearance sale on 28% feed.” <click>
When my oldest uncle returned from the military, he used the GI Bill to attend Oklahoma State University. Then, he went to medical school at OU.
After graduation, he headed back to western Oklahoma. He was the only country doctor for miles around.
He used his “doctor money” to build a huge cattle operation. He often treated patients while wearing ranch clothes and dusty cowboy boots. No patient ever objected. After all, he was the only physician in town.
On the other hand, pharmaceutical salesmen stared in disbelief when they first met him. My uncle would say a few words of medical mumbo jumbo. That seemed to relax them.
My uncle built a dirt landing strip on his ranch with his tractor. He used his airplane to find lost cattle.
One day, we were watching him land his plane. He was so low he clipped the barbed wire fence. There was no damage to the plane except scraped paint. My cousin and I were sent to fix the fence.
I said: “Good thing he lands on his own property. If he landed his plane at the airport, the FAA might suspend his license.”
My cousin replied: “What license? He traded some cattle for that plane and just took off.”
In some parts of the USA, energy companies are vilified. That does not happen in Oklahoma and Texas.
Oklahomans follow the oil patch like Bostonians follow the Red Sox.
In 1977, a natural gas driller proposed drilling four wells on my grandparents’ property. Oklahoma (unlike Texas) has pooling of mineral rights. We already knew drilling was getting close.
Those four wells were planned for 11,500 feet. At that time, these were the deepest wells in the Anadarko Basin.
One of their daughters (my aunt) worked for Mosbacher Oil in Houston. She advised them to ask for a bigger override in exchange for no signing bonus.
Negotiations with the driller were always friendly. Discussions took place at the breakfast table over coffee.
My family understood that dry holes would mean zero money and torn up pastures. On the other hand, a gusher would mean lots of money.
As it turned out, all four wells became big producers.
My grandparents became wealthy within 6 months. But they never spent a dime on themselves.
Grandma said: I always wanted to travel, but never had the money. Now I have the money, but I am too tired to go.
My parents and grandparents lived through the Dust Bowl. Their mindset was:
Never whine. Never complain.
Put a smile on your face and get to work.
My grandparents married in 1920 and always felt blessed.
They thanked God each day.
This hits HOME | Oliver Anthony – I Want To Go Home – REACTION
Reaction video. If you tire of the American angst, then don’t watch it. But I will continue to put up visions of what it was like in France before the powdered wig wealthy got beheaded.
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China makes breakthrough in controllable nuclear fusion technology for new-generation ‘artificial sun’
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China made a breakthrough in controllable nuclear fusion technology on Saturday.
Huanliu-3 (HL-3), the country’s new-generation “artificial sun,” realized high-confinement mode operation with a plasma current of one million amperes for the first time, according to the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC).
The breakthrough puts the operational level of China’s magnetic confinement nuclear fusion device at the forefront of the world, marking an important milestone in the country’s development of nuclear fusion energy.
The Huanliu-3 (HL-3), independently developed by China, is a large-scale research facility for controllable nuclear fusion.
The high-confinement mode, or H-mode, is an advanced mode of operation in magnetic confinement fusion devices, which can improve the economical efficiency of a fusion reactor.
Thus, the H-mode has been chosen as the standard operation mode for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), which is under construction.
The ITER is a nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject funded and run by seven member parties: China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States.
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A computer-generated image of China’s self-developed Huanliu-3 (HL-3) nuclear fusion reactor, the country’s new-generation “artificial sun.” /CMG
The conditions for realizing nuclear fusion reactions are extremely harsh. In a vacuum environment, the plasma temperature must reach more than 100 million degrees Celsius. As long as the conditions are not met, the reactions will not occur. Therefore, the nuclear fusion reactor is safe and controllable.
As a cutting-edge technology, controllable nuclear fusion is considered one of the most important methods to ultimately address energy-related issues.
It serves as a significant part in China’s “three-step” technological roadmap of “thermal neutron reactor, fast reactor, controllable nuclear fusion reactor” for nuclear energy development.
According to China’s long-term development goals set for the nuclear energy industry, the application of nuclear fusion energy is hoped to be realized by the middle of this century.
This Is So Bad – San Francisco’s Largest Mall Will Be Replaced By a Stadium
What idiots are running SF today?
Big Serge On The Summer Campaign In Ukraine
Big Serge has a long read about the state of the war in Ukraine which I recommend to read. It is a nice recap of the whole war and the ballyhooed counter-offensive:
After concluding that the Ukrainian counter-offensive has evidently failed, he dares a look into the future:
So, whence goes the war from here? Well, the obvious question to ask is whether we believe Ukraine will ever have a more potent assault package than the one they started the summer with. The answer clearly seems to be no. It was like pulling teeth to scrape together these understrength brigades – the idea that, following on a defeat in the Battle of Zaporizhia, NATO will somehow put together a more powerful package seems like a stretch. More to the point, we have American officials saying fairly explicitly that this was the best mechanized package Ukraine was going to get.
It does not seem controversial to say that this was Ukraine’s best shot at some sort of genuine operational victory, which at this point seems to be slowly trickling away into modest but materially costly tactical advances. The ultimate implication of this is that Ukraine is unable to escape a war of industrial attrition, which is precisely the sort of war that it cannot win, due to all the asymmetries that we mentioned earlier.
In particular, however, Ukraine cannot win a positional-attritional war because of its own maximalist definition of “winning.” Since Kiev has insisted that it will not give up until it returns its 1991 borders, an inability to dislodge Russian forces poses a particularly nasty problem – Kiev will either need to admit defeat and acknowledge Russian control over the annexed areas, or it will continue to fight obstinately until it is a failed state with nothing left in the tank.
Trapped in a bat fight, with attempts to unlock the front with maneuver coming to naught, what Ukraine needs most is a much bigger bat. The alternative is a totalizing strategic disaster.
Pushed by the U.S. the Ukrainian leadership seems to have decided to go for the alternative.
Episode 66 — Singin’ the truth about America (Oliver Anthony)
In his phenomenal and poignant song about the working man in America and the slide of a once great country into semi-tyranny by the rich rats “North of Richmond,” Oliver Anthony hits a patriotic nerve among tens of millions of Americans, who are just f**king FED UP with the Swamp’s politicians and their Leftist voters, and the outright theft of our paychecks and freedoms!
Reaction video. If you tire of the American angst, then don’t watch it. But I will continue to put up visions of what it was like in France before the powdered wig wealthy got beheaded.
Huawei had scheduled a launch event in September, 12th, if my memory serves me correctly. People were expecting the Mate 60 Pro in two weeks, with the usual media blitz typical of a flagship launch. Curiously, Apple’s iPhone 15 launch is scheduled for the 13th, Beijing Time.
This prelaunch sale landed in vmall, Huawei’s webstore as an announcement celebrating the sale of the Mate series exceeding 100 million.
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No graphics, no specs, just short descriptions of the colors available, the satellite calling feature, the improved durability of the case and glass, the upgrade to the camera’s action, portrait and macro shot capability, the return of Ai-powered hands free gestures and mobile payment, as well as the Pangu large language AI model.
With that, several million sets of the 12/512 GB model sold out within the hour. At 7k per pop, that’s revenue in multiples of 7 billion RMB, in just 1 hour.
Reviews are aplenty, with customers receiving their purchases on the day or the next. There are drop tests, screen tests, satellite calling demos, smart mobile payment demos, gesture demos, pangu demos, camera tests, charging tests, teardowns… all within the first 24–48 hours.
All for a phone that hasn’t been officially launched, and caught everyone, even the influencers who review tech for a living, by surprise.
I won’t engage in conspiracy and say this was Huawei’s attempt at black humor, but beyond the impressive phone, the logistic efficiency demonstrated in getting the goods to consumers is shocking, and Huawei’s guerilla marketing success is testament to the groundswell of support and goodwill in the domestic market. Huawei (华为), after all, means “Created by the Chinese”, a symbol of pride for the Chinese nation.
Discounting Huawei’s motivation for jumping the gun, the Mate 60 Pro’s prelaunch injected tremendous chatter into the news cycle surrounding Gina’s visit. Its success is the perfect response to the Commerce department’s attempt at targeting a corporation for take down.
As for Gina, she is one confused girl. She says in Beijing she is ready to collaborate with China on AI, but turns around and insists matters of national security are non-negotiable.
“I love you, but I’m not in love with you.”
We are better off ignoring the rhetoric and focusing on her department’s policies.
Gina no longer has a bird’s eye view of Huawei’s activities, because it has been forced to create a sandboxed and independent supply chain free from American sanction through the abuse of IP privileges. Whoever inherits the hot seat will have to deal with the fog of war invited by America, for America.
GloFo had no choice but to abandon its $70 billion factory in China because of the US decision!
In this video, we dissect the dramatic withdrawal of a major U.S. chip powerhouse from the Chinese market, the stunning shutdown of a colossal $70 billion factory, and its subsequent acquisition by a Chinese tech giant.
🇺🇸 The U.S. chip bill, a game-changing move signed into law by President Biden, has ignited what experts now call the “chip war.” This showdown is reshaping the Sino-U.S. technological landscape, marking the second round of high-stakes rivalry between these global titans.
💥 The ripple effects of the Biden administration’s restrictions on American corporate investments in China have sent shockwaves through the industry. American chip companies are grappling with the potential loss of substantial financial support from the Chinese market. China, holding a commanding 65% share of nearly $600 billion in global semiconductor purchases, wields tremendous influence over the industry’s future.
After the liberation of Taiwan, there will be no more millions of mainland Chinese going to Taiwan.
Taiwan’s per capita income is not as good as that of Hong Kong, Macau, or even Shanghai and Shenzhen.
Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hongkong
There are few business opportunities and few employment opportunities. As Taiwan’s industries are dominated by OEMs with low wages, young Taiwanese are reluctant to take up these jobs. Most of these jobs are done by foreign labourers from Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia who come to Taiwan.
Young Taiwanese are travelling out of Taiwan in search of job opportunities, mostly to Japan, Australia and mainland China.
And, they’re both China’s islands, but Taiwan’s scenery isn’t even as good as Hainan’s, let alone the other islands in Southeast Asia. There are not even decent tropical beaches. The west coast of Taiwan is mudflats, and the east coast is gravel. Therefore, few tourists go to Taiwan for vacation.
Hainan Province, China
The scenery of Alishan and Sun Moon Lake is just average. In terms of scenic beauty, it is not as beautiful as Huangshan, Lijiang, Jiuzhaigou, Zhangjiajie and other world natural heritage sites.
Zhangjiajie, Hunan, the setting for the film “Avatar”.
This is Sun Moon Lake, Alishan. To be honest, the scenery is pretty average! Many of the reservoirs in mainland China are no less scenic than Sun Moon Lake in Alishan.
In mainland China, there are plateau lakes, alpine lakes, forest lakes, basin lakes, frigid ice lakes, steppe lakes, underground lakes in caves, desert oasis lakes, Gobi lakes, park lakes, reservoir lakes, Tianshan lakes, Kunlun lakes, Qinling lakes, Shangri-La lakes, southwestern lakes, southern lakes, northwestern lakes, and so on. Tibetan Plateau lakes are densely packed how to describe? Even the seven deserts have starry lakes …… mainly because Taiwan is too small.
The infrastructure is outdated, and there are metal houses next to the 101 building.
Many mainland Chinese who have travelled to Taiwan Province feel that they have been deceived by the advertisements of travel agents. When you hear people bragging about how beautiful Taiwan is, you will be deeply disappointed when you are actually on the ground.
Of course, it is not that Taiwan is not beautiful, but Taiwan is too small, too common, not as vast as the mainland, for mainland Chinese who have seen too many beautiful scenery, Taiwan lacks the scenery that “shocked” them.
Because Taiwan is not attractive as a place to live, few mainland Chinese will voluntarily move to Taiwan.
In December 1949, the KMT fled to Taiwan with millions of mainland soldiers, Officials and wealthy businessmen. Except for the KMT officials and wealthy businessmen who are greedy for life and fear of death, most of the soldiers came to Taiwan from their hometowns out of necessity. They are coerced, not self-selected.
But the CPC is not the KMT. the CPC is the victor of the Chinese civil war and does not need to lead the Chinese people to flee to Taiwan.
Chiang Kai-shek brought millions of soldiers to flee to Taiwan, photo credit: New Taiwan Peace Foundation
However, the PLA will undoubtedly station troops in Taiwan Province. Taiwan Province falls under the jurisdiction of the PLA’s Eastern Theatre, and potentially 100,000 PLA soldiers will be stationed in Taiwan.
PLA soldiers come from all over China and rotate regularly, just like the PLA garrison in Hong Kong.
The PLA Hong Kong Garrison has 6,000-12,000 PLA soldiers. Taiwan is larger in area and has a larger population than Hong Kong. Moreover, Taiwan is very strategically located. the PLA will definitely have more troops stationed in Taiwan than in Hong Kong.
Filipina Give Hot Comments About Western Women Demands in a Relationship.
Tired of the reaction videos? Then this is for you.
We have a tendency to get all caught up within our own “little worlds”. We don’t realize all the great stuff “out there”, and when we do, we discover just how much we have missed. And it’s horrible.
In the Arkansas ADC prison, there was a guy who was doing some “20 some”big time” years for telecommunication fraud. He was a “sparky”; an engineer with a great talent for telecommunications and the hardware, and software behind it. But he was locked up after some fifteen years when I met him.
We would go on, and on about how he had this great improvement on telephone land line modems, and how he could double the speed of the transmissions. Sheech!
Fifteen years had passed. We were using satellite, wifi, and cable. No one would even bother touching modems tied to land-lines. But he was locked up for so long that he was; his knowledge was, obsolete. And he did not realize it.
Being prison; the ADC, there was no way that he could subscribe to magazines, or periodicals to be caught up on the news. It was a purposeful isolation bubble. He was unaware.
I tried to tell him, but he wouldn’t listen. Brilliant, and stupid at the same time.
Don’t be like him.
Get out. Experience life. Enjoy some fine food, touch the bark of a tree and pet a cat.
I believe in you.
We start today on a happy note. Please watch this video…
Hungry Cat Went to a Store with a Leaf to Buy Fish, Then the Seller Did Something Unbelievable!
What a great story.
Joe knew a lot of the people that came to his fish store. Many of his customers were regulars who had been buying fish from his family for years. But when one customer started coming around more often he was surprised. A cat came into the shop and checked out what everyone was doing. Then he eventually came back and sat on the counter with a leaf in his mouth. It took a while but they figured out that he was trying to use the leaf to buy fish like he saw people using money. What the seller did next is unbelievable.
Once upon a time, there was an auto repair shop. They had about six bays and a good average turnaround rate. They were doing pretty well. One day when the new manager was walking around, however, he noticed something shocking.
There was a guy… reading a magazine! He wasn’t working on a car or helping customers. He was just sitting behind a counter, eating up profits with his hourly rate.
He knew full well who this guy was. This was the “parts guy”. When the mechanics needed a part—an oil filter, a water pump, brake pads, etc.—they’d go to the parts counter and request it. The parts guy would retrieve it from the shelves and give it to them. If the part didn’t work out, they’d give it back to him and ask for a different one. If they didn’t have the requisite part, he’d order it. He’d also order commonly used parts when they started getting low. He kept the parts shelves nice and tidy.
But here he was in the middle of the work day, just sitting there! How often was he just sitting there? The new manager determined to find out.
So, over the course of the next week, the manager tracked how much time the parts guy “worked” and how much time he just spent sitting around, chomping away at profits. He determined that 80% of the time, the parts guy did no work! He just sat there, reading a magazine or other material. Profitless!
So he fired the parts guy and told the mechanics that now they were in charge of getting their own parts. There was some moaning and groaning, but they complied. What else could they do?
Over the next month, the manager noticed a frightening trend. Their average turnaround time went up, way up! A repair that normally took a few hours now took a few days. A simple oil change went from less than an hour to half a day. Hell, even doing a simple tire plug could take half a day! And they were—gasp—losing customers!
He determined to find the root of the plummet in productivity.
To make a long story short, it was the missing parts guy. When the mechanics got their own parts, they’d grab them off the shelf and try them in their repair. If they didn’t work out or they grabbed too many, they’d just put them back any which way. They didn’t always put them back in the right place, or in the right box.
So that made it harder for them to even find the stuff they needed. Nothing was in order anymore. Plus, no one ever ordered anything, so they were always out of what they needed; they’d order it when they needed it, instead of beforehand. Then they had to wait for parts delivery to get them the stuff they needed, which could take half a day.
So, instead of eating away at profits, the guy who only “worked” 20% of his time allowed the rest of the staff to be more productive. His absence actually killed profits by a wide margin. He was hired back.
China has now de-risked from the possibility of the freezing of their USD assets, including:
a significant portion of their trade is now in currencies other than USD. Trade with MANY countries are now in Chinese RMB or local currencies including trade with Argentina, Iran and Russia. This will continue to increase in the future.
A significant portion of China foreign reserves is now in Gold or other foreign reserves. China has been decreasing its USD foreign reserves and this in itself is causing significant issues for the United States
China has now completed an alternative to SWIFT with its own CIPS and this will allow it to continue trade with other countries
for critical products – like corn, wheat, oil, etc – China has diversified its supply chains. Therefore, it’s economy will not be disrupted by whatever the Americans does
BIGGEST advantage is that China is an economic powerful house producing most things that the United States and the west needs. All it has to do is stop the exports of critical inputs, machineries and or finished products AND it will shut down the economy of those countries. Given this possibility, it is doubtful that the United States will freeze Chinese USD assets.
Star Trek Next Generation – Withdraw Understood !
My Goodness!
Not MM-MM.
This was me today.
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Exactly 12 hours ago, I had a moment I am still processing. This stretch of highway has been paved so badly that every Fireman, EMT, and police officer on the scene said, “This happens constantly in this spot.” A short summer downpour caused the road to become so slick, that turning a corner at 20–25 mph caused the vehicle to lose control. I tried to correct the turn and brake, which caused the back end of the vehicle to face 180 degrees in the opposite direction. Everything was in slow motion as I watched myself fall off the road. I can still see the disorienting view turn sideways as I felt the impact of hitting the ditch. The passenger glass blew out and I realized that my head was hanging upside down near leaves and dirt. I began to shake. I’m shaking now. I’m not a dedicated seat belt wearer, but today, without thinking, I had clicked on the seatbelt before I began my drive. I could feel the adrenaline surge as I realized the only reason I was alive and not thrown under the vehicle was because I had unconsciously made that decision.
A lady and three teenagers had walked over to peer in through the drivers side window. She asked me, as I saw that her hands were shaking from the sight, if I was ok. And to my shock, I was. I broke down crying as the first thing I said was, “This seatbelt saved my life.” She reached her hand through the drivers window and held my hand, rubbing it for security as she called for assistance. I must have hung there for 20–30 minutes before the firefighters cut me out of the tightly locked seatbelt. But I am so thankful for the lady who had selflessly held the hand of a crying stranger until they arrived.
I was able to climb out on my own. I was assessed by paramedics and allowed to tow the truck home. I don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring. We are a middle class family who is down one vehicle in an economy that has not been kind to us. But I can still hear the ladies voice as she said, “You can always get another vehicle, but you can’t get another life.” We will all expire at some time. There are no exceptions. I have been reminded of this today. But it’s not today.
Have you ever wondered what that bar on the backs of trucks is for? Called the Mansfield bar, it was made mandatory after a horrifying accident involving actress Jayne Mansfield.
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On June 29th 1967, Jayne, her driver, lawyer and three kids were driving from Mississippi to New Orleans. The road was dark and visibility was poor as the drove in the early hours of the morning, and was unable to see the large truck in front of them. The 1966 Buick crashed into the back of the truck, slicing off the top of the car.
The three adults including Jayne died on impact, but luckily the kids in the back survived. One of those kids is well known “Law and Order” actress “Mariska Hargitay.”
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As a result of the accident, the national highway traffic safety administration ordered all semis to have the bars installed.
Years ago in the early 90s I had a job in customer service for a telephone company. We had a girl start that was from somewhere down south and she had moved up into the Midwest because her husband got a job in the cattle industry. His job wasn’t normally a traveling job, but his first 2 years he had to do a lot of it to learn about the different livestock auctions, plants, etc. Just normal new hire stuff learning the industry.
She wanted to go home for a long holiday weekend, but her husband couldn’t go because of her work schedule, so she asked one of their mutual friends if he wanted to go with her. He also worked there with us. (Totally innocent, this isn’t a cheating story.) She was always funny, down to earth, well dressed but not anything expensive. Think Younkers clothes instead of KMart, but not high end designer stuff. She had a nice new car but it was a low end base model compact. Everyone loved her and her down home southern attitude.
Forward to next week, they had returned. The friend she took let us in on her secret.
Her family was LOADED. They got to the city they lived in, Nashville I think. Her parents compound was walled, had live security on duty including the gate guard you see in movies. Garage full of Italian sports cars. A Rolls Royce with a chauffeur. In the front hall there was a hand-written check framed and signed by Jimmy Hoffa for 1mil. Uncashed.
Turns out her grandfather had invented something to do with reefer units and was in the trucking industry. All the trucks with their family name I saw on the road were hers, but I didn’t know because she was married and had taken her husband’s last name.
She chose to live a normal life with her husband and struggle like any other young couple instead of living off of her family’s wealth. She was just a sweet normal girl.
China’s Next Generation Laser Weapons To Destroy US in 2.5 seconds Shocked The World
Back in the 70’s, there was a HUGE war in the food industry. It was fat vs. sugar, and in the end, sugar came out victorious. I mean, to fight fat, don’t eat fat, right? Makes sense!
NO.
The science wasn’t complete and the sugar manufacturers raised a lot of capital to get their message out… I mean, of course, “to buy politicians”.
ALL of the evils perpetrated on the American people for as long as there have been any is due to political money. You can make anything a social issue if you buy the right congresspeople.
So sugar was in and fat was out. Bacon was bad, but “diet candy” was good. This was all bullshit because no matter the form it’s in (glucose, high fructose corn syrup, molasses, honey, etc…), it’s all carbohydrates. If you have an excess of carbs and you’re not burning those empty calories, guess where that ends up?
Plain and simple, if you have too many calories and you’re not using them, they will turn to fat. Any developing nation out there will tell you that rice, potatoes, and bread is the easiest way to get calories. Sugar just packs these calories more densely, but we’re programmed for it to taste good, so we just suck it up.
Meanwhile, poor bacon, ham, and fried chicken are out here going, “NOO! We’re made with fat and protein! You can get calories from us, too!”
Even salad is having a tough time of it. Go grab any random, name brand dressing off the shelf. I’m willing to bet within the first 5 ingredients will be either sugar, or something that ends in “-ose” (which is also sugar). Fuck, even our bread is unable to be labelled as bread in other countries because of the sugar levels. Subway in Europe sells sandwiches on cake.
There’s something called “essential fats”. There is no such thing as “essential carbohydrates”.
Penn and Teller had a show a while back called “Bullshit” that debunked all sorts of things. One episode was about weight loss. They had a stagehand who had recently lost a ton of weight. They pulled him out from backstage and said, “Tell the audience how you lost all that weight.”
Dude looks straight into the camera and says, “I stopped eating so fucking much.”
“Not the first and not the last” China-Russia joint naval patrol near Alaska — Global Times
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China and Russia’s third joint naval patrol that allegedly reached international waters near Alaska last week has touched the nerves of US media, which hyped the voyage as “highly provocative,” ignoring the fact that the US constantly sends warships and warplanes to China’s doorsteps for close-in reconnaissance and military exercises under the so-called freedom of navigation.
11 Chinese and Russian vessels approached the Aleutian Islands and have since left without entering US territorial waters, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Sunday, citing US officials.
Four US destroyers and a P-8 maritime patrol aircraft shadowed the combined Chinese and Russian naval force, the report said.
While the WSJ report quoted a US Northern Command spokesperson who said the patrol remained in international waters and was not considered a threat, it also quoted US experts as saying the voyage “is a historical first” and “highly provocative.”
announced on July 26 that China and Russia would soon launch their third joint naval patrol, which would see both sides’ warships sail into West and North Pacific waters following the Northern/Interaction-2023 joint exercises in the Sea of Japan.
The operation is not targeted against any third party and is not related to any international or regional situation, the Chinese Defense Ministry said in a press release at the time.Two Type 052D guided missile destroyers, two Type 054A guided missile frigates and a Type 903 comprehensive replenishment ship of the Chinese Navy are included in the flotilla, while the Russian Navy is represented by vessels including large anti-submarine ships and corvettes, according to media reports.
The Northern/Interaction-2023 joint exercises and the subsequent joint naval patrol fully reflect the level of the strategic mutual trust between the two countries and further enhanced the traditional friendship between the Chinese and Russian militaries, said Senior Colonel Tan Kefei, a spokesperson at China’s Defense Ministry, at a regular press conference on July 27.
China is willing to continue to boost pragmatic communication and cooperation with all parties and contribute positive forces in safeguarding regional peace and stability as well as deal with all kinds of security threats, Tan said.
Despite that China and Russia announced the joint patrol, US media are attempting to hype the “China and Russia threat” theory, Zhuo Hua, an international affairs expert at the School of International Relations and Diplomacy of Beijing Foreign Studies University, told the Global Times on Monday.
The China-Russia joint patrol in international waters in the North and West Pacific marks a positive force that helps safeguard regional stability and security of strategic routes in the Asia-Pacific region at a time when the US is enhancing combat readiness, rallying allies and partners in the region to change defense policies and expand militaries, which escalated regional tensions, Zhuo said.
‘Not first, not last’
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This is not the “historical first” that a China-Russia joint naval patrol flotilla has reached waters off Alaska as US media has claimed, as a similar case took place during the second joint naval patrol between the two countries in September 2022.
At that time, only a lone US Coast Guard cutter was on the scene, compared to the USS John S. McCain, the USS Benfold, the USS John Finn and the USS Chung-Hoon destroyers and a P-8 maritime patrol aircraft deployed this time, the WSJ said.
The US media linked such an escalation in US reaction to the Ukraine crisis and the Taiwan question, but such speculation is purely groundless and is aimed at throwing mud at the normal military cooperation between China and Russia, analysts said, noting US’ hegemonic mindset and its double standard are the true reasons behind its anxiety.
The international waters in the North Pacific including the Bering Sea are important because from here ships can access the Arctic, Fu Qianshao, a Chinese military expert, told the Global Times on Monday.
With the global warming, the Arctic shipping routes could become key passages for civilian ships to carry out commercial activities, Fu said.
While the joint patrols by China and Russia aim to safeguard the security of key strategic routes, the US wants to control the passages out of its hegemonic mindset, experts said.
The US is nervous because the Bering Sea is close to Alaska, but the US should not forget that it frequently sends warships and warplanes to other countries’ doorsteps for so-called freedom of navigation operations, including to the South China Sea and the Taiwan Straits, sometimes alone and sometimes together with other countries’ forces, Fu said.
While the China-Russia joint flotilla did not enter US territorial waters, US warships have in many occasions trespassed into Chinese territorial waters in the South China Sea.
It is ironic that all US forces involved in shadowing the China-Russia joint flotilla have provoked China on Chinese doorsteps, observers said. The USS John S. McCain, the USS Benfold, the USS John Finn and the USS Chung-Hoon destroyers and a P-8 maritime patrol aircraft have all made transits in the Taiwan Straits in the past, while the USS John S. McCain, the USS Benfold and the USS Chung-Hoon have records of being expelled after trespassing into Chinese territorial waters in the South China Sea.
It exposes the US’ double standard that only allows its military presence near other countries and not accepts other countries’ military presence near it, observers said, urging the US to reflect on itself.
From a military perspective, the four US destroyers and a US patrol aircraft could only monitor the China-Russia joint flotilla of 11 warships, and were not capable of doing anything more than that, analysts said.
“In the future, the Chinese Navy could conduct more far sea patrols like this, either alone or together with other countries. The Americans should get use to it,” Fu said.
Before the China-Russia joint naval patrols, Chinese naval warships had already reached international waters near Alaska.
Once such case was in August 2021, in which a four-ship Chinese naval flotilla led by a Type 055 10,000 ton-class large destroyer was reportedly spotted by the US Coast Guard in the US Exclusive Economic Zone, off the coast of the Aleutian Islands in Alaska
.
In 2015, five PLA Navy ships transited expeditiously and continuously through the Aleutian Island chain in a manner consistent with international law, the US Naval Institute News reported at the time. It was an “innocent passage” within 12 nautical miles of the Aleutian Islands, the report said.
Chinese experts said this kind of far sea exercise serves as a countermeasure and a signal against the US hegemonic actions of frequently making provocations near China in the name of freedom of navigation.
the GIRLS REACT to *Alien (1979)* IT’S SO SCARY!! (First Time Watching) Horror Movies
On June 3rd 2022, 3-year-old Ryker Webb went missing from his home in Montana wearing just his onesie. The area was in the middle of the wilderness, inhabited by Mountain Lions, Bears and on the evening he went missing, there was a severe thunderstorm.
His distraught parents feared the worse until they got the call that he had been found. He was discovered two days later on the Sunday, and 2.5 miles from his house.
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A couple heard whimpering from their shed and found Ryker wrapped in a lawnmower-bag to keep warm in the nearly freezing temperatures. When they first found him they said he was hungry and tired, but for his circumstances he was a pretty up-beat mood.
When they questioned him he said that he went for a really long walk and got tired. It is believed he seen the shed and took shelter during the thunder storm and stayed there for 2 days worrying about ever seeing his parents again.
John Chau, 26-year-old American evangelical missionary.
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He was unalived* by an isolated tribe he was trying to convert to Christianity.
The islanders are notorious for being hostile for outsiders to even visit, let alone throw Bibles at, yet John clearly wasn’t one to apply self-preservation.
One of the very few photos taken of the natives of the tribe, 1970s.
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It is illegal under the Protection of Aboriginal Tribes regulations to visit without government permission – John did not obtain this. He seemingly had no respect for the law of the land.
Two local fishermen would take him partway to the island and no further. They let him approach the island on a canoe by himself.
For several days, he persistently made several attempts to communicate with the tribe from the safety of his canoe.
He documented in his journal that they laughed at him, they stared at him, and yelled words he didn’t understand.
On his second-last day a boy shot an arrow through his Bible. He didn’t take for the warning it obviously was.
On his final day, he told the fishermen to leave without him.
The next day they saw his body on the shore. Cautious attempts were made to retrieve his body but no one ever did.
John was an adventurer.
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He was known among his friends for being a thrill-seeker. Throughout his youth he indulged in camping, hiking, et.c.
My point being he went there for himself. Not just religion.
There’s a reason why the government needs to give permission for outsiders to visit. There’s a reason why even the surrounding locals won’t set foot on that island.
John ignored all the rules.
He went there for himself, to fulfill his thrill-seeking, adventurist desires.
I moved to the U.S. 5 weeks later, COVID happened.
All the dreams about off-roading trips, going to places, exploring America went out the window.
Social distancing; lockdown. People went crazy buying hand soaps; toilet papers. There was a time even flour and yeast also shortage
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One afternoon, I was at the grocery store, suddenly I felt something hit my back. I turned around. It was a woman threw a toilet paper bag at me. She yelled: “Go fucking back to your country! You Chinese fuckers! You brought that fucking virus here!”
I picked the toilet paper bag, put it back on the shelf, then I told her: “First of all, I am not Chinese. Second, in case you don’t know, airlines are shutting down, it’s quite difficult to travel right now. Third, you should apologize to me, because I think what you did is on tape” – I pointed at the camera. She ran away.
I’m not sure when I will be able to forget that memory.
NEOCONS ADMIT DEFEAT | BRIAN BERLETIC ON UKRAINE’S STALLED OFFENSIVE | BIDEN BLASTS CHINA
Yes. As a Captain and Company Commander in the Army Reserves I was running an errand in the rural south with one of my high-ranking NCOs, a Sergeant First Class. We needed to stop for lunch, so I pulled up to the sort of small country diner at which I like to dine from time-to-time in the countryside.
My Sgt was African-American. Let’s call him “SFC T.” We were wearing our camouflaged combat fatigues.
SFC T said, “I don’t think we should stop here, sir. This is the local KKK hangout.” I chuckled and said, “Sgt T, this is the 1990’s, not the 1960’s. What are you talking about?” And he replied, “Sir, look at the sign. See how it says ‘Karla’s Kountry Kitchen?’ See how they spell it ‘Karla’ with a ‘K,’ ‘Kountry’ with a ‘K,’ ‘Kitchen’ with a ‘K?’ And see how the ‘K’s are painted different colors than the other letters? It’s the local KKK hangout.” I laughed and dismissed his concerns, saying lightheartedly, “Sgt T, you are totally full of shit. Now get out of the car, we are going in for lunch.”
Understand, I was an officer who ALWAYS very strongly respected, listened to, and relied upon my NCOs. But this was not a military matter and, although I knew racism still existed, it simply was beyond my comprehension that overt, hostile, potentially violent KKK shit could still exist in the 1990’s. In our area? Right out in the open amongst everyone? With a sign above the door? It was as if someone was telling me the earth had two moons.
I opened the door to the cafe and took about three big steps inside, with SFC T right behind me. The place was packed. Immediately, all conversation ceased. Stone cold silence. Simultaneously, every single head in the entire restaurant turned to stare at us. And although no movie soundtrack of impending doom started playing in the background, my mood immediately shifted, from happy-go-lucky Captain anticipating a great country meal with one of my best NCOs, to fight or flight mode anticipating danger and potential violence.
I needed go no farther. I looked over my shoulder and said quietly, “Sgt T, let’s get the f__k out of here.” So we turned, walked straight back out out, and jumped in my car. I cranked it up and drive off at high speed.
Of course, I felt absolutely terrible. Terrible for not believing SFC T or listening to his concerns. Terrible for placing us, and particularly him, in a potentially dangerous situation. Terrible for being so incredibly naive as to have no idea that such bullshit still existed.
I apologized profusely to SFC T as we were driving away. Frankly, he seemed more amused than anything, watching my eyes open and the light bulb go on in my brain.
The more I thought about it, however, the more I found it a very valuable experience. Because I witnessed first hand how two intelligent people, coming from two different backgrounds and, particularly, races, can view exactly the same situation but see two totally different realities. Or, more precisely, one complacent fiction and one harsh reality. And I’ve never forgotten it.
So 30 years later, when I hear people dismiss BLM protests, or fail to see as victims black men who die at the hands of police in questionable circumstances, I think of SFC T and Karla’s Kountry Kitchen. And I marvel at how many people still need to open their eyes.
REACTING to *Aliens (1986)* THE GREATEST SEQUEL?? (First Time Watching) Sci-fi Movies
Originally Answered: What are some mind-blowing facts that sound like ‘BS’, but are actually true?
Liquor and wine are illegal in the U.S. unless they are radioactive. When tested, drinking alcohol is required to have at least 400 radioactive decays per minute for each 750 ml.
Explanation: The United States government has decided that alcohol for consumption must be made from “natural” materials, such as grains, grapes, or fruit. That rules out alcohol made from petroleum. Such alcohol is chemically identical to natural alcohol and just as safe – there’s no difference in taste — so why this rule? The reasons have to do with history (keeping alcohol more expensive, a goal of the anti-alcohol lobby) and minimizing competition (a goal of the liquor lobby).
How can you tell the difference between natural alcohol and alcohol made from petroleum? There’s no chemical difference. The United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, charged with enforcing the natural alcohol rule, has only one reliable test: check for radioactivity. Natural alcohol gets its carbon from plants; the plants got the carbon from atmospheric carbon dioxide. As explained on the previous pages, atmospheric carbon dioxide is radioactive because of the continued bombardment of cosmic rays – particles coming from space that collide with nitrogen molecules and turn it into C-14, radiocarbon. Only one atom in a trillion carbons in the atmosphere is radiocarbon, but that’s enough to be detectable. (One of the authors of this book, RM, invented the most sensitive way to detect C-14, called “Accelerator Mass Spectrometry.”)
Petroleum was also made from atmospheric carbon, but it was buried hundreds of millions of years ago, isolated from the radioactive atmosphere. Radiocarbon has a half-life of about 5700 years, and after a hundred million years, there is nary an atom of C-14 left.
True, bootleggers could get some C-14 and add it to illegal liquor. But that’s beyond the skill set of most of them.
Yeah, on May 30, 1989, although my mom was with me.
It was my birthday. Ever since I was a kid, I had wanted to see Cats on Broadway, so my mom decided to take me for my 16th birthday. She picked me up from my dad’s house, we made the hour-long drive into Manhattan… and saw the big “SOLD OUT” sign outside the Winter Garden Theater. I was bitterly disappointed — sold out on a weekday??
Mom said, well, let’s get lunch and go to the movies instead, and asked if there was anything in particular I wanted to see.
Actually, yes, I told her. Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
My mom was awesome. She didn’t even ask what it was about or anything. We went to the diner and got some burgers and milkshakes, then to a movie theater in Peekskill, New York.
We were the only ones there, but we didn’t care. I loved it, and Mom loved it, too. My mother had this fantastic, loud, goofy laugh, and it echoed through the empty theater. I’m not sure which of us enjoyed Bill and Ted’s historical anticsmore, and by the time the credits rolled, I wasn’t so bummed that Cats had been sold out.
That would be the last movie I’d ever see in the theater with my mom. She had 4th stage breast cancer, see, that had metastasized to the brain, and early the next year, they’d find her 3rd brain tumor. She died in November 1990, when she was 54 and I was 17.
Thinking about that day makes me miss my mom something fierce, and especially that big, goofy Kay Truex laugh, echoing in a theater that we didn’t have to share with anyone else. I’m glad we were the only ones there, and that we spent that day in a crummy movie theater alone, rather than on Broadway with a crowd of people.
It was just for us.
Me and my mom on her 54th birthday, March 1990. I’m not sure it’s the last photo ever taken of us together, but it’s the last one I still have. Was she a historical babe or what?
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Scott Ritter: China is Ready for WAR Over Taiwan as Blinken’s “Diplomacy” Fails
As to Gold, I am certain China has more than 2300 Tonnes as Reserves
Yet 7000 is ridiculous
Nobody can acquire so much Gold without a market shock
In 2015, a very reasonable analysis predicted that China’s actual reserves would amount to 98.8 Million Troy Ounces or 3073 Tonnes
This was based on buy patterns of Gold by China’s private players increasing 219% between 2009–2015 while China revealed it’s reserves to grow only by 62%
So many experts reliably predicted China’s Gold Reserves were actually close to 3073 Tonnes and not 1658 Tonnes as claimed by China
From 2015–2023 based on buying patterns China purchased directly through the Central Bank around 661 tonnes
Private players purchases remain confidential and Gold purchases in Yuan with Russia and UAE remain confidential
Assuming 25% of the buying by private players compared to 2009–2015 and 15% of the quantity of gold from Russia and UAE in Yuan than they did in Dollars
That’s around 398 Tonnes roughly
Thus China’s estimated real reserves could be = 3073 + 661+ 398 = 4132 Tonnes
So China may have around 4132 Tonnes of Gold in its reserves
Likewise China’s real reserves may be between $ 4–4.6 Trillion
That’s because this 28nm DUV Lithography machine is FULLY INDIGENOUS and has come to the commercial line in 3 Years and 10 months
There are 15,800 components in this machine and everyone if them is MADE IN CHINA
The Wafer layering is also Chinese
The Final Tested 28nm Chip had a 94.1% yield which is only 1.7% lower than the 95.8% that a 28nm chip made with Western equipment delivers
Even 7% was acceptable by the Chinese (88.8% Yield) so a 94.1% yield was OUTSTANDING
The Chip is estimated to be priced at 4840 Yuan for a stack compared to 5410 Yuan for a stack of 28nm chips that use Western Equipment and are made in China
That’s a 12.50% price cut
Experts estimate that the same 28nm chips being made in Taiwan or Korea using Western equipment would cost 7200 Yuan or almost 50% higher than China’s price
This Machine is now commercial which means by 2027 it will replace existing western DUV equipment completely and also have enhanced quality
This means China have gained full Independence in their 28 nm Chips from any Western Control and technology
Until now it was possible only for 90 nm Chips and above
Thats not why the US is mad though
This was something that was expected by the US the minute the same equipment passed protocol stage in 2018 May with a 59% Yield (Now 94.1%)
It entered Commercial phase in 2019 December
The US is mad because China can use these 28 nm Chips and stack them and get the equivalent of 14 nm and even 7 nm chips
China has made massive strides in stacking
It means China can now have fully Indigenous 14 nm Chips at 89% of the quality that the West delivers and Indigenous 7% Chips at 70.1% of the quality that the West delivers
Now these stacked chips cannot be used commercially as their price would be too high (A 28 nm Chip stacked as a 14 nm would cost 91400 Yuan a stack against a mere 11260 Yuan that it would cost for a Western Equipment made 14 nm Chip in China and 16220 Yuan for a stack made in Taiwan)
However they can be used in Defence applications and National Security related applications where China won’t mind the higher price in exchange for more flexibility
Better to have 71% Quality home chips at 11 times the price for Defence Equipment than have none at all and have a 100% disadvantage with the West
Thats why the US is hopping mad
A Senator named Tom Cotton said this was all Bidens fault and he was too slow and gave too much time for China to catch up
China still has a long way to go
China is around 3/4 the way there
It still needs the last 25% of the race against the toughest of circumstances
9 things Australians are not being told about US military deal
No, the astonishingly expensive tie-up between Australia and the US military deal is NOT about defense of the country, nor is it about bringing stability to Asia. The opposite is true, and Asians know it. The Australians stand to lose a great deal, not just in terms of money, but in the great relationships that they have built with the rest of Asia over many decades, and in the world’s understanding of the Australian character.
THE TRUTH! Oliver Anthony Reaction – Rich Men North of Richmond
People! We are at peat transition. I have no idea how long this plateau will last but we are most certainly at peak.
Consider Africa. Niger is kicking the colonial powers out, and they refuse, and so the rest of Africa bands together to throw the bums out. Three nations, under proxy control, plan to invade Niger. What happens? Grass roots military coups though the “puppet masters” out.
Consider Oliver Anthony and how his music resonates.
Consider what is going on in Ukraine right now. Not the narrative. But the actual happenings. Where the EU went to Putin and started to make demands, and he dismissed them. They are P-O-W-E-R-L-E-S-S.
Consider the strange “fire” in Hawaii and the conspiracy theories behind it. And the fact that the entire area is now under wraps and fully blocked off doesn’t help the speculation. WTF is going on?
Japan radiation from the power plant. The cheapest solution, my ass. This water can be purified. But it isn’t. Some one (read USA) wants a conflict and wants a lot of Asians to die.
Look at San Francisco. First the orgy of riots. Then the store closures. Then the tenants move out. Followed by a ghost town. Now the “town counsel” has plans to bulldoze all the historic buildings down town and put up a gigantic football stadium surrounded by parking lots.
The insanity is off the charts!
Meanwhile China plugs on and on. Huawei P90 is coming out. 7nm chips. All Chinese made and manufactured. Full 5G capability, and the West loses out…
Genocidal, Zionist Israhell has expunged all historic Arabic names in Palestine for a reason.
Algeria is removing French from all their street signs.
Russia and China are switching English signage to phonetic and Pinyin, respectively.
Words are powerful things.
Jeff
Police have revealed that devices like the one pictured above, designed to derail trains, have been found — and are being found — on railroad tracks all over the United States.
Police warn that they could lead to train derailments and the death of passengers. The devices have been found all over the country, from the West Coast to the East.
It now seems self-evident that America is literally under attack – from within.
More details as they become available.
UPDATE 7:53 AM EDT —
Additional information has come in regarding the device shown above. What is pictured is a standard railroad siding derailer. It is designed to derail a car with dangerous materials from going on the main line and becoming a run away (bomb).
While it is good to hear this is a known safety device, this explanation does NOT address why police are reporting finding these devices on mainline tracks all over the USA. This would seem to indicate people within the railroad industry, with ready access to such devices, have begun misusing them.
Sitting out side talking to a friend of mine and all of a sudden a loud bang made me jump. Turned to see a van had run straight into this little car. I was able to catch the plate number. I ran inside asked for a pen and paper quickly and jotted it down. Cashier looked so confused. The woman whose car it was was at the counter finishing checking out. She went outside and came back in saying someone hit her car. I was able to give her the plate number and bought her a coke. Waiting with her till her husband and then the cops showed up. Her whole frame was bent couldnt open the driver side door. The cops were able to ID the guy very quickly and this wasn’t his first accident in the year. Not his second either. The husband was so grateful for how I treated his wife during the incident he insisted on giving me twenty bucks. That twenty went to into getting my Mother a Christmas present. Caught up with them a few months later. She thanked me again and his insurance ended up paying for a new car for them. He (the driver) had to pay his insurance back.
I am an American who resides in the United States.
I defend China because of history. The United States, England, France, Japan and Europe colonized much of the planet between 1800 and 1960. China was a victim of this aggression.
China continues to be a victim of American aggression. Since 1949, the United States has provided weapons and military support to the losing side in the Chinese Civil War, i.e. Taiwan. This is a continuation of 200 years of colonialism.
The United States is aided and abetted in its WAR against China by the Western media. Like others posting here, I view the Western media as propaganda, created by persons in the United States who want to sell weapons at the expense of China, Russia and the Middle East.
I believe that it is important to stand up for the truth, and to put an end to America’s endless wars for profit. The United States should not be a nation of endless war.
The present leaders of the United States have tarnished the nation, and caused it to be condemned in the eyes of the world. This is a very dangerous situation, for the United States. America is dependent upon credit and imported goods from the rest of the world.
I recognize that unchecked power in China could be a problem, when the United States is weakened due to its debt. However, the United States brought that problem upon itself, by closing two-thirds of its industrial base. The balance of power will correct itself.
Hopefully, America’s leaders will wake up soon. Power is about to be taken from their hands.
The Origins Of The Neocons And Their Lunatic World View
Linda’s Easy Lasagna
This is my favorite lasagna recipe because you do not cook the lasagna noodles first. I have always disliked cooking the lasagna noodles, so this is a great solution for me. This turns out perfect every time.
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Yield: 12 servings
Ingredients
1 1/2 pounds ground beef or turkey or Italian sausage*
1 jar spaghetti sauce or homemade sauce
1 can tomato sauce
1 tomato sauce can water
2 pounds ricotta or cottage cheese, mixed with 4 eggs
12 ounces lasagna noodles, UNCOOKED
4 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
Grated Parmesan cheese
Garlic powder
Salt
Instructions
Brown meat. Drain.
Add sauces and water.
Spoon a small amount of sauce onto the bottom of a lasagna pan or a 13 x 9-inch baking dish.
Place a layer of UNCOOKED noodles (overlapping slightly), one-third of the cottage cheese mixture, a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese and one-third of the shredded cheese.
Pour about one-third of the sauce over the top.
Repeat twice more. Cover with more cheese.
Bake, covered and sealed with foil (DO NOT LET THE FOIL TOUCH THE CHEESE), at 350 degrees F for 1 hour.
Uncover and bake 15 minutes longer to brown the top.
Let stand for 15 minutes before cutting.
Notes
* Remove Italian sausage from casings and crumble as it cooks.
I usually make this with Italian sausage, but I have also used sliced cooked meatballs. It’s yummy whatever you decide to use! Of the two spaghetti sauce options, if you have time, go with the homemade sauce!
You can also bake for 1 hour without the cheese on top, then put the cheese on top and bake 15 minutes longer uncovered.
Friend, who works for a financial broker, calls me, says she needs a break from work. Could I come in and be a receptionist for a week so she can take a break? I would be on the payroll.
OK. So, I do the week.
Then she says that I’m doing great, can I stay the month? Hmmm, OK. The extra money is nice.
At the end of the month. she says, “I am off on vacation for the next three months. Have fun.”
I didn’t know this, but she does NOT tell the broker. It is only a two-person office, and the broker is a sweet guy who does not deserve to be dumped on like this.
She never comes back.
I worked there two years until he sold the company and retired.
China’s cancellation of Germany’s $100 billion car order sends Europe into a panic!
https://youtu.be/tfqgWibM71g
Dear America – You Are Delusional, and Failing at Everything You Undertake
Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Russia sanctions – “All of these harebrained schemes, hatched in Washington, have backfired grandly.”
“Those who have pushed for them are now reduced to just two face-saving maneuvers: blaming their political opponents; and blaming Russia. And these two maneuvers are set to backfire as well.”
Back in the days when I was still trying to do the corporate thing, I regularly found myself in a bit of a tight spot simply by failing to keep my mouth shut.
I seem to carry some sort of gene that makes me naturally irrepressible. I can keep my mouth shut for only so long before I have to blurt out what I really think, and in a corporate setting, where thinking isn’t really allowed, this causes no end of trouble. It didn’t matter that I often turned out to be right. It didn’t matter what I thought; it only mattered that I thought.
American involvement in the middle-eastern project is now limited to Putin’s sporadic courtesy calls to Trump, to keep him updated.
Of all the thoughts you aren’t allowed to think, perhaps the most offensive one is adequately expressed by a single short phrase: “That’s not gonna work.”
Suppose there is a meeting to unveil a great new initiative, with PowerPoint presentations complete with fancy graphics, org charts, timelines, proposed budgets, yadda-yadda, and everything is going great until this curmudgeonly Russian opens his mouth and says “That’s not gonna work.”
And when it is patiently explained to him (doing one’s best to hide one’s extreme irritation) that it absolutely has to work because Senior Management would like it to, that furthermore it is his job to make it work and that failure is not an option, he opens his mouth again and says “That’s not gonna work either.” And then it’s time to avoid acting flustered while ignoring him and to think up some face-saving excuse to adjourn the meeting early and regroup.
I lasted for as long as I did in that world because once in a while I would instead say “Sure, that’ll work, let’s do it.” And then, sure enough, it did work, the company had a banner year or two, with lots of bonuses and atta-boy (and atta-girl) certificates handed out to those not at all responsible for any of it. Flushed with victory, they, in turn, would think up more harebrained schemes for me to rain on, and the cycle would repeat.
It is probably one of the main saving graces of corporations that they do sometimes (mainly by mistake) allow some thought to leak through. The mistake in question is a staffing error in promoting those constitutionally incapable of keeping their mouths shut or shutting off their brains. Such errors create chinks in the monolithic phalanxes of corporate yes-men and yes-women.
Trump is too old to be a reformer or a revolutionary. He is of an age when men are generally mostly concerned about the quantity and consistency of their stool and how it interacts with their enlarged prostates.
The likelihood of such mistakes increases with the agony of defeat, which causes attrition among the ranks of qualified yes-sayers, creating holes that can only be plugged by promoting a few non-yes-sayers. However, this only seems to work in the smaller, hungrier corporations; the larger, better-fed ones seem to be able to avoid experiencing the agony of defeat for a very long time by moving the goal posts, outlawing any discussion of said defeat or other similar tactics. Eventually the entire organization goes over the cliff, but by then it is of no benefit to anyone to attempt to inform them of their folly.
It is much the same with governments, except here the situation is even worse. While the smaller, hungrier governments, and those blessed with a fresh institutional memory of extreme pain, do not have the luxury of lying to themselves, the larger political agglomerations—the USSR, the EU, the USA—have the ability to keep themselves completely immunized against the truth for historically significant periods of time.
The USSR clung to the fiction of great socialist progress even when it was clear to all that the cupboard was bare and there were rats gnawing through the rafters. The EU has been able to ignore the fact that its entire scheme is one of enriching Germany while impoverishing and depopulating eastern and southern Europe, neglecting the interests of the native populations throughout. And the amount of self-delusion that is still currently in effect in the USA makes it a rather large subject.
Regardless of how great the lies are and how forcefully they are defended, a moment always comes when the phalanx of truth-blocking yes-men and yes-women stops marching, turns and runs. This event results in a tremendous loss of face and confidence for all involved.
It is the crisis of confidence, more than anything else, that precipitates the going-off-a-cliff phenomenon that we could so readily observe in the collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s. I have a very strong hunch that similar cliff-diving exercises are coming up for the EU and the USA.
But for the time being I am just another disembodied voice on the internet, watching from the sidelines and periodically saying the unfashionable thing, which is: “This isn’t gonna work.” However, I’ve said this a number of times over the years, on the record and more or less forcefully, and I feel vindicated most of the time.
Internationally, for example:
• Carving the Ukraine away from Russia, having it join the EU and NATO and building a NATO naval base in Crimea “wasn’t gonna work.” The Ukraine is a part of Russia, the Ukrainians are Russian, and the Ukrainian ethnic identity is a Bolshevik concoction. Look for a reversion to norm in a decade or two.
• Destroying and partitioning Syria with the help of Wahhabi extremists and foreign mercenaries supported by the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel while Russia, Iran, Turkey and China stand idly by “wasn’t gonna work”; and so it hasn’t.
• Giving Afghanistan “freedom and democracy” and turning it into a stable pro-Western regime with the help of invading NATO troops “wasn’t gonna work,” and hasn’t. Western involvement in Afghanistan can go on, but the results it can achieve are limited to further enhancing the heroin trade.
• Destroying the Russian economy using sanctions “wasn’t gonna work,” and hasn’t. The sanctions have helped Russia regroup internally and achieve a great deal of self-sufficiency in energy production and other forms of technology, in food and in numerous other sectors.
All of these harebrained schemes, hatched in Washington, have backfired grandly. Those who have pushed for them are now reduced to just two face-saving maneuvers: blaming their political opponents; and blaming Russia. And these two maneuvers are set to backfire as well.
In the meantime, the world isn’t waiting for the US to shake itself out of its stupor.
The fulcrum of American influence in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia and the petrodollar. In turn, Saudi Arabia rests on three pillars: the Saudi monarchy, Wahhabi Islam and the petrodollar. As I write this, the next king, Mohammed bin Salman, is busy hacking away at all three: robbing, imprisoning and torturing his fellow-princes, working to replace the Wahhabi clerics with moderate ones and embracing the petro-yuan instead of the now very tired petrodollar.
Not that any of these three pillars were in good shape in any case: the defeat of ISIS in Syria was a defeat for the Saudi monarchy which supported it, for the Wahhabi clerics who inspired it and, consequently, for the petrodollar as well, because Saudi Arabia was until now its greatest defender.
The new guarantors of peace in the region are Russia, Iran and Turkey, with China watching carefully in the wings. American involvement in the middle-eastern project is now limited to Putin’s sporadic courtesy calls to Trump, to keep him updated.
And so here’s my latest prediction: Trump’s goal of “making America great” “isn’t gonna work” either.
The country is so far gone that just taking the first step—of allowing the truth of its condition to leak through the media filters—will undermine public confidence to such an extent that a subsequent cliff-dive will become unavoidable. It’s a nice slogan as slogans go, but Trump is too old to be a reformer or a revolutionary. He is of an age when men are generally mostly concerned about the quantity and consistency of their stool and how it interacts with their enlarged prostates.
Perhaps he will succeed in making America great… big piles of feces, but I wouldn’t expect much more than that.
France, ECOWAS Armoured Vehicles Land In Nigerian Port As They Move To Invade Niger
We’ve all said the wrong thing at times, leaving our kids feeling angry, hurt, or confused. Words can be eternally damaging, especially coming from parents who are supposed to be safe and supportive figures in their child’s lives. “Parents’ support and approval are essential for kids’ well-being,” says Jill Whitney, LMFT, who practices in Old Lyme, Connecticut and blogs about relationships. “The words you use can be constructive or destructive to kids’ developing sense of self. If they’re negative, they can negatively color our self-image for decades.” Find out the worst offenders and what to say instead.
“Hurry up!”
Your child may be slow as molasses getting dressed in the morning when you’re trying to head out the door to school and work. Pushing her to get a move on, though, will only make her more stressed. And while you may be making her feel guilty about running late, your screaming won’t motivate her to move any faster. Instead, look for calm ways to speed things up, like making getting out the door a game by racing to see who can get dressed first. “By making it into a ‘we event,’ you’ll teach your child the importance of collaboration,” says Paul Hokemeyer, PhD, a clinical and consulting psychotherapist and author of the forthcoming Fragile Power: Why Having Everything is Never Enough.
“Leave me alone”
Every parent needs a break at times. Yet, you shouldn’t be telling your kids that, otherwise, they’ll think that you’re brushing them off and that there’s no point in talking to you. “Kids like to be acknowledged and heard; in fact, it can help cut down on meltdowns and tantrums,” says Jennifer Trachtenberg, MD, a pediatrician, the creator of Pediatrician in Your Pocket, spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics, and assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. “Answer in a way that is age-appropriate and give them specific tasks to do while they wait for you,” she says. You may instead say, “I have to finish one thing. I need you to play with your cars for just a few minutes. We can play outside as soon as I’m done.” “Just make sure you then follow through with whatever you promised you would do together afterward,” says Dr. Trachtenberg. Some compliments can actually be hurtful to kids, too.
“Why can’t you be more like your brother or sister?”
It’s natural to compare your kids, but you shouldn’t let your kids hear you doing it. When you ask kids why they’re not more like their sibling, it promotes unhealthy competition and kids may not feel like they’re good enough. You’re implying that you wish your child was someone else when you compare him to his sibling. Besides, the comparisons aren’t likely to change the behavior, says Dr. Trachtenberg. You’ll only be pressuring a child to do something he doesn’t want to do or isn’t ready for, undermining his self-esteem. Instead, encourage and inspire your child about what he can do and praise him when he does something good, such as, “Thanks for telling me you had to use the potty” or “Wow, you zipped your coat up all by yourself.” “Each child is an individual with his own strengths and weaknesses,” says Dr. Trachtenberg. “Positive reinforcement is a powerful tool to help shape other wanted behaviors. Remember to encourage and praise the child for the actions they succeed at instead of harping on what they can’t do.” Besides, you’ll want to stop sibling rivalry before it starts.
“Practice makes perfect”
“There is no such thing as perfect; being perfect isn’t a good goal as it doesn’t exist,” says Betsy Brown Braun, child development and behavior specialist, author of two best-selling parenting books, and founder of Parenting Pathways. “You’re sending the message that she didn’t train hard enough if she made a mistake.” Instead, acknowledge how frustrating and hard practicing can be and give some examples of things she practiced and did improve. “I like to give the example of babies learning to walk. They try and try, fall down, and try and practice, over and over,” she says. “Then they become good walkers, just like you did.” Explain that doing something repeatedly teaches you how to do it, says Brown Braun. “Nobody can do something well unless she has done it a lot,” she says. “Some things take a lot of work; some take less.”
“Let me help”
It’s natural to want to give your child a hand as he is finishing a puzzle or building a tower; after all, you don’t want to see your child struggle. But if you jump in too soon, you can undermine his independence. “Allow your child to complete a project to build his self-esteem and core competence,” says Fran Walfish, PsyD (aka Dr. Fran), a child, couple, and family psychotherapist in private practice in Beverly Hills and author of The Self-Aware Parent: Resolving Conflict and Building a Better Bond with Your Child. “Each disappointment is a golden opportunity for your child to develop frustration and build coping skills to deal with life’s inevitable daily ups and downs.” Constantly helping prevents him from getting the satisfaction of learning to do it for himself and teaches him to always look to others for answers. Instead, wait for him to ask for help first. Then, ask him questions to help him solve the problem. “Should the big piece go here? Why? Try it yourself.” Is your child faking illness to stay home? Here are some of the most common reasons why kids hate school.
“I’m on a diet”
If you’re watching your weight, keep it to yourself; talking this way about physical appearance can lead to your child developing an unhealthy body image. If they see you’re struggling with how you look, they may feel that they need to look a certain way, too. “Obsessing about your weight or appearance isn’t delivering a good message,” says Elizabeth Berger, MD, a child psychiatrist and author of Raising Kids with Character. “Children need to feel that their parents are in control of their own lives.” Instead, say “I’m eating healthy because I like how it makes me feel.” Promoting positive body image like this is one of the tiny ways you can encourage your kids every day.
“Don’t cry”
When you tell a child she’s fine as she’s bawling over a scraped knee, you’re invalidating and discounting her feelings. Kids will think they have to brush off their emotions and that can lead to more explosive outbursts. Dr. Walfish suggests you say instead, “You got hurt and scared. It’s okay to say ‘Ouch! That hurts!’ Mommy sees you’re scared and hurt, and I’m right here with you.” Or give her a hug, acknowledging and verbalizing her feelings. “That was a scary fall.” That can help give her the words to express herself. “This is what I call empathic narration,” says Dr. Walfish. “This style of compassionate attunement to your child’s feelings will help her feel seen, acknowledged, validated, and accepted—flaws and all. The attuning narration also teaches your child to be a kind and empathic person to others.”
“I could do that when I was your age”
Kids all develop at different rates. So expecting your son to ride a two-wheeler by age seven as you did will only make him feel like he disappointed you. “Parents are under a lot of pressure to make sure that their children meet a long list of expectations, and some of this anxiety tends to be passed on to children,” says Dr. Berger. Still, you as a parent should appreciate your child’s efforts, regardless of what they are. “A calm attitude towards ‘success’ helps children get over their own sense of shame when they haven’t met their own—and social—expectations,” says Dr. Berger. Dr. Berger says you can say, “Wow, I can see you’re making a lot of progress; keep it up!” or “Don’t worry—you’ll get there.”
“Because I said so”
When you’re in a rush, it can be easy to fall back on this clichéd parenting phrase, but avoid this empty phrase in favor of one that’s more thought out. “As parents, one of our most challenging tasks is to convince our children to do something they don’t want to do,” says Janie Feldman, PsyD, a licensed psychologist in New Jersey. You can say something like, “I know you want to play outside today. But you have to finish your homework first. How about we play outside after?” Dr. Feldman says you can offer an incentive to promote interest in completing the task. “It would be a great help to the family if you raked the leaves. If you rake them for us, you’ll earn ___.” It’s not guaranteed they’ll help, but they may be more interested. “In our society, we do work for incentives such as our salaries, vacation time, and other benefits,” says Dr. Feldman. “Offering an incentive can not only motivate our children but also socialize them to recognize the value of their efforts.” Beyond your children, find out more things you really shouldn’t be saying to the people in your life.
“I do everything for you”
You may feel like you do everything for them—cooking, cleaning, and chauffeuring them. But you know this isn’t true. “Do what you do for your kids with an open, generous heart or don’t do it,” says Eileen Kennedy-Moore, PhD, a psychologist based in Princeton, New Jersey and author of Kid Confidence: Help Your Child Make Friends, Build Resilience, and Develop Real Self-Esteem. “Don’t expect that you’ll be repaid with effusive gratitude or even good behavior,” she says. She says you can help teach your child gratitude and good manners by mirroring them yourself with your spouse, family, friends, and others. Say something like “What a delicious dinner! Thank you so much, Daddy!” “Your kids will probably pipe in with their thanks,” she says. Or point out someone’s efforts made on their behalf, along the lines of, “Grandma went to three stores to find the yellow paint you need. Remember to thank her when you see her tonight.”
“It’s not that big of a deal”
It may not be a big deal to you that your daughter wasn’t invited to Mary’s party, but it’s a big deal to her. Telling her you disagree with her invalidates how she’s feeling, making her ashamed or embarrassed. “When our kids are upset, we want to reach for empathy,” says Kennedy-Moore. She says that a useful formula is: “You’re feeling ___ because __.” “It bothers you when___.” “It’s hard for you when ___.” “You wish___.” “Don’t interpret or judge, just describe the feelings you see,” she says. “We adults tend to want to skip the feelings and go straight to the solution. But when kids don’t feel heard, they tend to get louder. Wrapping kids’ feelings up in words makes them seem more understandable and more manageable.” When your child feels heard and understood, it will do wonders. Beware of these other things parents say that ruin kids’ trust, too.
“You’re a liar”
Even if your child did take money from your wallet, that tone will only make him feel like he’s being personally attacked. Find out why he lied instead of being accusatory; then start an open dialogue about why it’s not okay to lie. Edward Kulich, MD, is a pediatrician who provides house calls in the New York area with his practice KidsHousecalls. He says you can say something like “Hey bud, I just wanted to let you know that I’m always here for you if you need anything or if you have a problem. I noticed some money is missing from my wallet. I’m not mad but I think we need to talk about this.”
“Be careful”
These words can have the opposite effect, making your child more likely to fall as she’s attempting the monkey bars. You’re distracting her from what she’s doing, so she’s losing focus. Instead, quietly spot her in case she falls. Dr. Kulich says you can say something like “You got this.” He says if your child is more hesitant, you can say, “I saw you do this yesterday. I know you can do it.” These compliments your kids really need to hear also help to build self-esteem and foster a loving relationship between the two of you.
US Forces Combat in Niger is a Nightmare
Talk WITH People, Not AT Them
Talk WITH not AT Header 2
One of the insidious things about trying to judge our own social skills, is that if an interaction went well for us, then we assume the other person thought it went well too. While you’ve probably never consciously thought about it, if you had a good time talking to someone, you think they felt the same. But this just isn’t the case. It’s very possible for you to walk away from an interaction feeling grand, while the other person walks away feeling annoyed, bored, or burdened.
What usually happens in these lopsided engagements is that you talked a lot about yourself and your interests, an act which is enjoyable and makes humans happy. We like to talk about ourselves! But, the other person didn’t get to talk much about him or herself, and thus left the conversation without a corresponding level of elevation.
While dominating a conversation simply by talking a lot is almost guaranteed to be a charm-killer, the worst kind of one-sided interaction is when you talk at someone, rather than with them.
Talking At Vs. Talking With
Valerie White and (former AoM podcast guest) Ann Demarais, doctors of psychology and authors of First Impressions, define the “talking at” dynamic as “forcing others to react rather than interact.” It manifests itself when one party takes on the role of teller/entertainer, and the other is forced into the role of audience.
While being part of an audience can be enjoyable when that is what one is expecting and desiring (e.g., watching a movie), people do not expect to be an audience member during face-to-face social interactions. Feeling like a spectator in this context is dull and irritating, because the role is so passive. A conversation is a cooperative, almost artistic endeavor — much like symphonic music — in which each person gets satisfaction from engaging, contributing, creating. They don’t want to watch and clap.
Demarais and White describe 4 common forms that “talking at” takes, each of which can be flipped in a way that gets you “talking with” your social partner:
Lecturing
When you’re in lecturing mode, you’re imparting facts in a very one-sided way. You want to tell someone something, but you’re not expecting or eliciting a real response. They’re the passive audience for your knowledge dump. Lecturing feels great for the lecturer — you’re amped up on the status you get from feeling in the know, and sharing information you hold as uniquely yours. But your listener is likely to see you as boring and self-important.
How to share knowledge with your social partner. Talk about subjects in which you and your partner are mutually interested, and watch for signs that they’re engaged — “Uh-huhs,” nodding, saying things like “That’s interesting.” In the absence of such cues, stop your monologue. And even when they are manifested, pause intermittently to see if the other person wants to respond, or add something, or has a question. If they don’t interject anything, you should probably wrap it up and change the subject.
Additionally, how you introduce a subject matters, as Demarias and White explain:
“A hallmark of a lecture is the speaker’s implicit ownership of the information.
When you present something as your own, you may intend to appear smart but actually may appear bombastic and egotistical. On the other hand, when you mention where you learned your information—as in ‘I read an editorial in the paper that said…’—or the genesis of your idea—as in ‘I saw something on TV, and then thought…’—you show an open mind and a more modest assessment of your own intellectual value.”
When you say, “I heard/read X the other day,” people don’t feel like you’ve already fixed your opinion about it, but rather that you’re opening up a dialogue on the subject, making them more likely to offer their own thoughts and engage with you.
Storytelling
The great paradox of stories is that they can be both the most compelling and the most boring form of communication. A good story can entertain, engage, and build connection. But as Demarias and White observe, stories can easily go wrong when they’re “long, detailed, and about people your conversational partner doesn’t know.”
How to share stories with your social partner. Bad storytelling is an easy trap to fall into, because the characters and plots in our anecdotes seem so interesting and salient to us. We know our friends, and children, and boss — they loom large in our own lives, and we can vividly picture their facial expressions and have all the context to understand why their behavior is so adorable/comical/outrageous. It’s subconsciously difficult to realize that other people, who lack this context, won’t find these people and places equally compelling.
But they don’t. The difference can be likened to the way you’re interested in a story about your favorite NBA player, but have no interest in news about a professional Chinese athlete you’ve never heard of. Unless a story connects to universal aspects of the human experience (training for a race; dealing with an incompetent boss; getting in an accident) or intersects in some way with the other person’s life, it’s going to be Dullsville.
Even if a story does include those elements (touches on shared human experience; connects with the other person’s life), you should still keep it short and to the point. Dole out the story in small chunks, watching to see if the other person shows interest and asks things like, “What did you decide to do?” or “How did he respond to that?” before continuing the tale.
When a story of any kind goes on too long, you turn your social partner into an audience member who passively spectates instead of actively engages.
Sermonizing
Sermonizing occurs when you’re trying to persuade someone to your point of view. The subject matter is usually something around morality, religion, or politics, and while this kind of conversational mode can be okay in the company of long-time friends and family who enjoy spirited debate and verbal jousting, it’s a turn-off for new acquaintances who don’t know you well enough to put your opinions into context and to realize there’s more to you than a zeal for some particular issue. They’re likely to get defensive or disgusted or just plain annoyed.
How to have a weighty discussion with your social partner. You don’t have to rigidly follow the old adage about avoiding talk of politics, religion, and money, even with new people, as long as you follow a few guidelines we’ve offered here, the gist of which is to strive to have adiscussion rather than an argument. A wise writer put the distinction this way:
“in discussion you are searching for the truth, and in argument you want to prove that you are right. In discussion, therefore, you are anxious to know your neighbor’s views, and you listen to him. In argument, you don’t care anything about his opinions, you want him to hear yours.”
When you’re aiming a sermon at someone, Demarias and White note, “The implicit message is ‘you’re wrong and I’m right.’” When you’re having a discussion with them, in contrast, you seek to understand how they’ve arrived at their convictions, where your positions differ, and the common ground you share.
Telling Jokes
A great sense of humor is one of the most charming of qualities. But too much humor reaches a tipping point where it stops adding to the collective “music” of the conversation and becomes a one-sided performance, turning the speaker into an entertainer and the listener into an audience. Instead of getting to interact, the latter is forced to simply react to the constant stream of quips and witticisms — a role for which they soon grow bored.
How to share humor with your social partner. Jokes serve better as the seasoning of a conversation, rather than its main dish. Instead of interspersing everything you say with a quip, just pepper them in here and there between sustained stretches of neutral talking and showing sincere interest in the other person.
When it comes to being socially adept, Demarias and White note that “how you talk about topics matters more than what you actually talk about. You can make a fascinating ethical issue boring if you simply lecture someone about it. On the other hand, you can turn your model airplane hobby into a stimulating conversational topic if you talk about it in a fun and engaging manner.”
To avoid your conversations turning into one-sided monologues where you simply talk at people, toss out subjects of reciprocal interest and see what people bite on; like volleyball players, hit the ball back and forth over the net. Show that you’re curious, open-minded, and interested in other people’s experiences and perspectives. Interact rather than making the other person solely react to what you say and do; create a little theater/dialogue/symposium/comedy together, rather than having them watch you from the gallery.
Create something special with the people you meet.
China’s Dumping Dollars For Gold & They Won’t Stop!
China just ramped up their gold purchases, buying for a 9th straight month! As the world gets de-globalized, we are seeing an acceleration of de-dollarization towards alternative stores of value like gold. Even JP Morgan is calling for record gold prices in 18 months. Here’s what you must know about this historic monetary shift.
The More Options You Have, The Happier You Are
Over the years, I’ve experienced a direct correlation between the number of options I have in life and my happiness.
The more options I have for my career, the better work I can do. The more options I have for spending my free time, the less I cling to people and activities.
In short, if I can choose what to do with my time at any given moment, I’m happy. It doesn’t necessarily matter what I do. What matters is that I have a choice.
The importance of this concept is one of the most important lessons I’ve learned about happiness in the modern age.
I recently read Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart by Gordon Livingston, who was a seasoned psychiatrist. In that book, he talked about why it’s so important to have options:
“Mental health is a function of choice. The more choices we are able to exercise, the happier we are likely to be. Those who are most unwell or discouraged suffer from a sense that their choices have been limited, sometimes by external circumstances or illness, most often by the many ways we restrict ourselves.”
Fewer options restrict us. That gives us a sense of dread. We feel like there’s not much we can do in life. And that makes us unhappy. But you can turn that around by creating options for yourself.
The paradox of risk
The most important thing about career options is that there’s a paradoxical relationship between risk and reward we need to understand first. Before I came to terms with this, I never had many options.
Here’s the issue. As humans, we’re naturally risk-averse. We fear loss more than we desire a potential gain. That force usually keeps us where we are. That’s why most people remain in the same job or industry until they get fired or retire.
The paradox is that most people assume it’s risky to change. But in reality, the reverse is true. The more stagnant you are, the more you’re at risk of loss.
When I pursued a career as a full-time writer, I had to take risks. I left my well-paying corporate job in London, left the city, moved back in with my parents, and took a step back from our family business.
I went from earning about $80K a year to almost nothing. My blog and online courses generated about $5,000 of income in the first year. The risk is wasting your time and the loss of your salary when you make a move like that.
Livingston recognized the importance of getting comfortable with risk as well. He said the following about the relationship between options and risk:
“The primary variable in this regard is tolerance of risk. If we take counsel of our fears, particularly our fear of change, it is hard to choose a life that makes us happy. Is it anxiety or lack of imagination that restricts us?”
This is hard to accept. Unless you get comfortable with your fear of change, you will not have a happy life that consists of many options.
Remember that no matter how dire your circumstances are, you’re never out of options. You can always do something. This is the most important belief in human hope and progress. As long as we’re alive, we have a choice.
How I create career options
Let’s look at how you can create more career options. Since your work takes up the majority of your time, it’s important to get this straight. When you have options and happiness in your career, you automatically become a better person.
How many of your personal problems are related to work? How often do you allow the stress of work to change your mood? And how often does your mood create problems at home?
To say that your career is important is an understatement. Work is not just something you do on set hours. It’s the single biggest factor that determines what your life looks like on a macro level.
So how do you make sure you have a good career? Not by having a great job. This might sound weird to you if you’ve been raised thinking every person needs to have one job.
That’s an old model that no longer works. We don’t need jobs. We need skills that we can apply to multiple jobs and industries.
Here’s how I approach that. I always prioritize learning over short-term goals like money, bonuses, status, or any other benefits that I can get in my career.
The more universal skills I have, the more opportunities I have. For example, if you’re good at persuasion, you can work as a copywriter, account executive, stockbroker, recruiter, or work at a retail store.
If you know how to code, you can work at any company that develops software, in any industry.
Another thing I focus on is building good relationships with experienced people. I’m not a fan of networking with hundreds of people or forming “mastermind” groups with people who are not top-performers. On a social level, it’s wonderful, but professionally, you won’t learn much.
If you do want to network, at least connect with people who are more established in life and don’t have much to prove anymore. Professionals like that can point you in the right direction if you don’t know what to do. They can help you to see options you didn’t see before.
Be willing to pay the price or move on
I was once talking about this concept of career options with someone in their twenties. The person said they also wanted to be in a similar position as I am today.
And I said, “Look, I’ve given up a lot of things when I was your age to be where I am today. I sacrificed relationships and leisure. But I don’t see it as bad because I’ve always been happy to pay that price for happiness. And I still am.”
And the person said, “I don’t think I can do that.”
That’s the end of it. “Then you should accept your life the way it is and that you’re always at the disposal of other people,” I said. If some people are not willing to pay the price, they should just accept whatever is and not complain about being unhappy.
The truth is there are always options. We just can’t expect that they come for free. Everything in life has a price. If you’re willing to pay, you won’t get disappointed.
Every Nation has a certain threshold beyond which it’s rise can’t be contained
The Threshold is Economic and Political and Military based
I believe that China could have easily been contained or throttled in 2010 or even 2012
Luckily the 2008 Crisis helped China and gave it 6 years or so beyond which throttling it became tougher and tougher
Today?
Economically China is a giant not just because of the $ 19 Trillion GDP but because of an Industrial Output that exceeds US,UK and Europe combined
Militarily they can sustain a war for almost 4 years without cracks in their economy. They have enough food and energy independently for that.
Hence attacking China would result in worse weakening of the West especially by US
So all US can do is OPTICS or PR
Make it look like it’s containing China
Use their media to exaggerate every one of Chinas failures by 1000 and suppress all of Chinas achievements by either not publishing it or using the narrative “BUT AT WHAT COST”
Riling up neighbors of China
Essentially acting like a Pimp Bully instead of a Direct Head on Face to Face talk with China
And Why?
Why is the West so alarmed with China’s Rise?
Because they feel China will invade and conquer the US?
Nonsense
Because they feel China will become the numero uno hegemon
Nonsense. The US hegemony is too well entrenched to be removed in a year or two. It will take 30 years minimum. Well after the current leadership has been dead and buried
Because China would become wealthier?
Naah. Luxembourg and Singapore are wealthier than US and US doesn’t give a damn
It’s because China isn’t a democracy and it’s proof that a One Party Meritocracy System can do better than a Democracy if the vision and policies work to that effect
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That breaks the so called “Democracy is God model” that the West has been floating for nearly 100 years
That’s why the West is so terrified of China’s rise
The First and Only Photos From Titan, Saturn’s Largest Moon – What Did We See?
This is the best selling vehicle in the United States
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The Ford F Series. Currently, the F-150 is the production model.
Not the best selling “truck”. The best selling “vehicle”.
In Canuck speak, it uses anywhere from 11–15 liters of fuel per 100km travelled. By contrast, a Honda Civic uses about 7.1–8 liters of fuel to travel the same distance.
Vehicles like this are rarely used to haul cargo or for towing. They’re mostly used the same way other vehicles are used – commuting and errands. If cycling were safe in the United States, which it mostly isn’t, about 50% of trips taken by an F-150 could be done by bike.
It’s not even a good pickup truck. It has a pitiful amount of cargo room.
Vehicles like this make it difficult for people to travel by any other mode of transit that doesn’t use petroleum, like walking and biking. Heck, this behemoth even makes it impossible to get around in vehicles like the Civic which could do 99% of the trips this thing can because in a collision between this and a Civic the Civic owner is probably in for a bad experience.
It it safe? For the occupants, yes. For anyone not in it, no. You can’t see a 5 foot tall child standing directly in front of it for one thing.
America Tells Saudi Arabia To Keep Using Dollars – You Won’t Believe This!
The U.S. is pushing back against BRICS and China with a deal for Saudi Arabia. However, the terms will include the continued usage of the US dollar in oil sales. Will MBS take the bait and is this a win for America? Here’s what you must know!
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Linda’s Pepper Steak
I’ve been making this delicious pepper steak for about 50 years.
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Cook: 25 min | Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
1 pound round or flank steak
Kosher or sea salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, diced large
1 red or orange bell pepper, diced large
3 beef bouillon cubes, dissolved in 1 cup hot water
1 can diced tomatoes
1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 teaspoons soy sauce
1/4 cup water
Instructions
Cut the steak into thin slices (this is easier to do if the meat is semi-frozen).
Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
In a large skillet heat the oil.
Add the steak and onion and cook until meat is browned on all sides.
Add the bell peppers and bouillon water. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes.
Add the tomatoes and simmer for 5 minutes.
Mix the cornstarch, soy sauce and water and stir into meat mixture. Cook, stirring, until the mixture has thickened.
We talk about US presidents all the time — Obama did this, Trump did that, blah blah blah. But really it’s never the president doing those things, it’s the empire. The president is just the face of the operation, the name they put on the door that they change every few years to create the illusion that the US government is responsive to the will of the electorate.
Really if you look solely at the raw data of the US power structure around the world (where the weapons are going, where the resources are going, where the money is and isn’t going, where the diplomats are and aren’t going, etc), you can’t tell from year to year when the White House is changing hands. You can’t tell from that raw data what political party the current president belongs to or what platform he campaigned on, and you can’t tell when he’s replaced by someone from the other party with another platform. The raw data of the empire keeps moving in basically the same way without any meaningful interruption.
So it’s not really true to say “Obama did this” or “Trump did that”; really they’re just the face that happened to be on the operation when it was time to kill Gaddafi or begin the Pivot to Asia or sanction Venezuela or start arming Ukraine or whatever. They’re not leaders leading the US government in various directions based on what they think the best policies are, they’re empire managers who are responding to whatever the needs of the empire happen to be each day — using whatever justifications or partisan leverage they can muster in that moment.
And Americans don’t get to vote on any of that stuff. They don’t get to vote on what will have to be done to facilitate the needs of a globe-spanning empire, or if there should be a globe-spanning empire at all. The behavior of the empire is never on the ballot. The only things that are ever on the ballot are issues which stand no possibility of ever interfering in the operation of the empire, like whether the president will appoint Supreme Court justices who oppose abortion or support gun control. And the voting populace is continually kept at a 50/50 split on as many of those issues as possible to keep both sides tugging on the rope with all their might so they don’t look up and notice that the real large-scale behavior of their government is completely unaffected by the small back and forth gains and losses of the tug-o-war game.
Really the only reason to talk about US presidents in terms of “Obama did this” and “Trump did that” is to highlight this point. To highlight the fact that Obama continued and expanded all the most malignant policies of his predecessor, and that Trump continued and expanded all the most malignant policies of his. To disrupt all the dopey partisan narratives about things getting better under Biden or worse under Trump or that Obama was a progressive or Trump was a peacemaker.
By pointing out the horrible things that happened under each administration, regardless of party affiliation or platform, the illusion that Americans are controlling the behavior of their government using their votes can be worn away. You can in this sense use the illusion to fight the illusion — use people’s intense interest in presidents and electoral politics to draw them into the insight that it’s all a performance designed to keep the eyes of the masses away from the inner workings of the machine.
And then the possibility for real change opens up. The longer Americans are convinced that they can vote their way out of problems they never voted their way into in the first place, the longer they can be dissuaded from using the power of their numbers to force real material changes by real material means.
EPIC FAIL: Why Most US Weapons Systems Are Worse than Russia’s
Two reasons: complexity, and too much money
Lately we have seen some good analysis on the limits and vulnerabilities of the American military in light of events in the former Ukraine and especially Russia’s demonstrated competence in Syria.
So we have the “what” of the issue, but how about the “why”?
As a U.S. Army veteran and a longtime resident of the Beltway—including four-and-a-half years living on Crystal Drive in Arlington, Virginia, which has probably the densest concentration of “defense” contractors anywhere in America—I think I understand what is fundamentally wrong with the U.S. military-industrial complex (MIC.)
First and foremost, the MIC has long been incapable of producing durable, efficient, versatile weapons.
We don’t even have to look to the F-35 on this one.
My field experience with this piece of junk is that it runs into problems in the presence of even a small amount of sand. When enough sand gets in to the chamber and mixes with the lube oil on the bolt assembly, the grit thus formed results in up to every second round misloading.
God forbid you should brush an oiled open breach against the side of your foxhole—you are out of commission. In the absence of air or artillery support or sheer overwhelming numbers on your side, you are dead meat against anyone with a gun that functions in a sandy environment. And why? Because, as I was told in boot camp (whether it’s true or not), this thing is perfectly built to have zero fault tolerance.
Supposedly, just about every metal component in the M-16 is cast and/or machined to perfection rather than stamped. Contrast this with Russian or Chinese weapons that are said to be built like can openers to spray lead under any conditions. In other words, the M-16 is so sophisticated that it doesn’t work well.
It is now acknowledged that the M-16 with its 5.56mm rounds is insufficiently lethal beyond a couple of hundred meters, making it unsuited to long-distance firefights over open terrain (again those deserts, or perhaps shootouts between mountain ridges.)
The M-1 Abrams tank
Another great example – this can be a real dog. The engine is a gas turbine, like with an aircraft, except that it is being driven around in deserts and even sandstorms, making it extremely finicky and high-maintenance. (Would you fly your Boeing into a sandstorm?) Of course, the Abrams was designed to fight in Germany where sand is not an issue. But during the Iraq adventure, sand so tore up the turbine fans (or whatever) that over 1000 of these million-dollar “power packs” had to be removed and sent up for depot-level maintenance or refurbishment stateside.
Yes, that’s right—these things cannot even be fixed in the field. All you can do is pull them out with a crane and ship them back to the civilians at enormous expense. At the height of the Iraq adventure, around 2007, the maintenance backlog was so bad that even the national media got wind of it.
Of course, when you have the world’s reserve currency, you can afford all that and more—the entire world is paying for your wars.
But the waste and inefficiency are a fact.
The Basic Problem : Excessive Complexity
I think the problem here is that American war planners and logisticians prefer originality, complexity, and/or expense-for-the-hell-of-it over versatility and ease of use and maintenance. This is no surprise given America’s wealth and the longtime generous funding of its armed forces. After all, every military reflects its own society.
Unfortunately for Uncle Sam, what he gets is equipment that may work very well in one environment but not another.
But so much for American equipment per se. Let’s talk about Crystal Drive (a neighborhood in suburban Washington where many defense contractors have offices – edit.) —or more broadly, the MIC.
The Military Industrial Complex (MIC) is failing on a massive scale
It is clear now that the MIC cannot build anything for less than 200 percent of its original planned budget (and that’s being extremely conservative.) Nor can anything it cranks out nowadays meet performance or survivability expectations. Besides the never-ending supersonic train wreck known as the F-35, we have other boondoggle failures such as the Littoral Combat Ship, which by all accounts is less capable and more vulnerable than the 20 to 30 year-old vessels it was supposed to replace.
Or, going back a few years, we see the Army’s “Commanche” helicopter, an intended replacement for the Apache, which blew through $6.9 billion—in 1983-2004 dollars, probably over $10 billion today—before the entire program was scrapped. That’s right, over $10 billion for nothing—not one Commanche was ever delivered for permanent use to an Army operational unit!
Where did that money go, if they didn’t actually manufacture anything besides a few prototypes? Did they spend $10 billion on PowerPoint presentations?
My brain cannot even wrap around this. Can you imagine what Russia or China could do for $10 billion?
However, even that pales before the Army’s cancelled Future Combat Systems program, which burned through an estimated (no one knows exactly) $20 billion from 2003 to somewhere between 2012 and 2014 (depending on what termination milestone you go by), with almost nothing to show beyond a few prototypes, a lot of concept art, and a 29-pound toy robot made by iRobot of “Roomba” vacuum cleaner fame. In fact, I can’t think of one big new U.S. weapons system that has succeeded in the last 25 years, other than perhaps the Stryker armored car (though some have argued that point, and I just don’t know enough about it.)
As pointed out by many other observers, part of the blame lies with our political system, where MIC corporations buy politicians and then receive favors in the form of contracts, whether or not the contracts make any sense. However, I think this is not the only problem, nor even necessarily the biggest.
Fundamentally what I think we have is systemic over-complexity resulting in nothing getting done, or done well anyway.
US intelligence agencies have the same problem
This is akin to the deep systemic crisis in Uncle Sam’s intelligence agencies, where from 9/11 to the Arab Spring to Crimea to the ISIS conquest of Mosul to Russia in Syria, the word is always “we didn’t expect…” In this case, we have numerous agencies—some of them with overlapping functions—that are drowning in paperwork and garbage data (or too much data) and are almost totally useless.
As some readers will remember, it got so bad that in April 2014 the State Department released a photo collage aiming to prove that (among other things) a bearded Chechen battalion commander going by the name Hamza, who appeared in Russian TV footage of the 2008 Olympic War, was none other than the bearded, overweight Slaviansk militiaman going by the call-sign “Babai”—in other words, Russian special forces have invaded the Donbass. (The New York Times ran with this and was then oh-so-vaguely and gently reproached by its own ombudsman.)
Shouldn’t this awful joke have been prevented by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is supposed to promote info-sharing among agencies and centrally vet all claims and conclusions—especially those being trumpeted on the State Department’s website or at its briefings? Apparently not!
Bureaucratic bloat
On the other hand, what the U.S. lack-of-intelligence complex is very good at—besides hiring way too many buxom, flirty young things straight out of college and with no language skills or any experience at all (DIA and NGA, you know your ex-military managers like to beautify their offices)—is providing employment for tens of thousands of its own staff as well as tens of thousands of grotesquely-overpaid contractors, including those who build and run billion-dollar eavesdropping centers that have proven incapable of picking up anything useful, perhaps because when you try to listen to everything, you end up hearing nothing.
The lesson here is that the more offices and agencies, the more managers and political appointees who will seek to justify and expand their turf and budgets by shoveling out as much money on as many contracts as possible, as quickly as possible, in many cases even paying contractors to do little more than just sit around (sometimes at home) waiting for the next contract. (I have seen this many times in Washington.)
Then you get so big that people simply trip over each other and the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.
The US MIC worked great 50 years ago because less money and people were involved
So I think this is what’s going on not only in the intelligence apparatus, but in the MIC as a whole. We have hundreds of thousands of staff and contractors as well as military officers assigned to liaise with them, all kinds of project managers and “six-sigma black belts” and other buzzwords, juggling millions of PowerPoints across the river from Washington and throughout the country, and they can’t field a helicopter after spending $10 billion on it.
Really? How did this great country ever defeat the Japanese Empire?
Go to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington; you will see the most amazing things—e.g. generators designed to operate on the surface of the Moon, drawing electricity from the heat of plutonium decay—that were developed when there was no Crystal Drive, no Tysons Corner, etc.
Then go to the museum’s extension near Dulles airport and check out the SR-71 “Blackbird”, the fastest and highest-flying airplane ever built (this was about 50 years ago.)
How did they do it?
Although there were more men in uniform back then, the MIC itself (or should I say the Military-Industrial-Intelligence-Homeland-Insecurity-Complex (MIIHIC)) – had but a fraction of today’s civilian workforce. Luckily, most of those paper-pushing “systems integrators” and PowerPoint rangers did not exist. Blueprints were drafted with pencil and paper.
Today, Uncle Sam can’t even build a heavy rocket engine, not to mention a good helmet or ejection seat for his F-35.
No hope for change going forward
So it seems that as a technical civilization we are degenerating.
Sure, there are constant advancements in microelectronics (a.k.a. integrated circuits) and the programs they allow, but in terms of heavy engineering—of which the MIIHIC and other government initiatives like the space program were at the forefront since WWII—it seems that the U.S. is tapped out.
And you know what? Throwing more money at it is just going to make it worse.
The organizations with their budgets and their perfectly reasonable-sounding arguments for ever-greater budgets will grow, their workforces will grow, the contracting sector will grow, more shiny office buildings will go up, but the result will be an ever-increasingly-negative marginal return.
John McCain and all the other broken records in and out of the Pentagon will say we still don’t have enough funds to counter a pointless Russian invasion of parasitic, inconsequential Lithuania (currently headed by a longtime communist) or any other 1990s-era speculative wargame training scenario that somehow carried over into the public consciousness and morphed into the Greatest Threat to World Peace.
Of course, as long as the U.S. has the money to send gazillion-dollar armies and armadas against illiterate natives armed with sharp sticks and coconuts, this may not visibly threaten its hegemony. Almost any problem or mistake can be papered over with money, for a long time anyway.
But eventually, even if the money spigot does not constrict, we will get to the point where the military really can’t be used as anything more than a façade or a gunboat road-show, hoping no one calls the bluff, because the stuff just doesn’t work like it’s supposed to, or else is too vulnerable (witness the evacuation of the U.S. aircraft carrier from the Persian Gulf after Uncle Sam found out that Russia has cruise missiles with a range of at least 1500km, or the ridiculous sail-around of China’s little islands which had the sense to infringe only very slightly and briefly on that country’s imaginary territorial waters), or the natives can devise their own countermeasures.
In fact, I would say we are at that point already. Not to mention, the U.S. Army and the Department of Veterans Affairs are still so tapped-out after Iraq and Afghanistan that another major ground operation is unthinkable. (At this point, Washington is more likely to launch nukes at somebody than risk another ground war.)
So you can anticipate a lot of hand-wringing and a lot more money being thrown into the breach. That’s simply what the machine does; there is no chance to reform it, nor will the Hegemony dissipate willingly (although lately it’s done a good job of dissipating unwillingly.)
But all that money may as well be flushed down the can.
The threshold has been reached and it’s all downhill from here.
Pluto Really Is a Weird Place! These Are the Strangest Things Found on Its Icy Surface
Successful Kids and 10 Habits of the Parents Who Raise Them
We’re always checking out other people’s parenting skills in an effort to raise successful kids. Should we make their bedtime earlier? Should we insist on piano lessons? We rounded up the parenting moves that do seem to spur kids on to greatness.
Give children chores
When children are made to complete chores, they are shaping a work ethic from early on. Not only does this give them a chance to contribute to family life, but it also demonstrates that they play an integral role in the successful day-to-day functioning of their family. Chores for kids also teach them valuable skills that will be necessary when they head off to college and start their adult lives.
Set high expectations
Parents of successful kids set high expectations for their children as well as themselves. More often than not, it encourages children to rise to the occasion. If college is the expectation, students will work toward that goal more readily than if a parent doesn’t bother mentioning it. What’s more, parents help their children succeed by modeling high expectations of themselves and demonstrating how to work hard to meet goals. It’s important to make sure that your expectations of your kids are realistic, however—they shouldn’t be led to believe they have to qualify for the olympics, graduate as valedictorian, or even keep their rooms clean 24/7—as the pressure to meet overly lofty goals can cause anxiety and ultimately backfire.
Get yourself educated
Statistically speaking, parents who have completed high school or college are more likely to have children who do the same. Parents who have not achieved higher levels of education might consider pursuing these educational goals in order to provide a good example for their children. As a bonus, studies show that higher education lowers blood pressure.
Show them the good life
If you want your child to follow in your footsteps—getting a steady job, making a nice home, and having a family—it’s helpful to make it look appealing. That doesn’t mean never ever complaining or hiding the truth about real life from your children, but there’s something to be said for modeling a life that motivates your children to want to achieve success. If they see your hard work is paying off, and that it seems meaningful, they will be more inclined to invest in their own futures. Avoid these things that parents say that ruin their kids’ trust.
Make friends with numbers early
Teaching math at an earlier age is not only an indicator of later success in mathematics but also in reading. Preschool now places a stronger emphasis on math skills in order to prepare students for the rigorous math expectations of elementary school and beyond. Giving your child a leg up on these skills will set them up for later success. We did an algorithm to ensure that these math jokes will make you smile (just kidding).
Make time for bonding
Children who have a secure foundation with their parents are more successful than those who do not, regardless of socio-economic status. That doesn’t mean you have to take them to Disney World or to the movies every week, but you’d do well to read a book together at bedtime, share meals whenever possible, and generally make yourself available when they need you. By nurturing a strong bond with your children from birth, you’ll help them feel grounded and secure—and secure children are more likely to become successful adults.
Teach troubleshooting
Parents of successful children give their kids the tools they need to solve problems, whether it means asking them how they think a word is spelled before dictating the answer, or prompting them to suggest solutions when problems arise. These moves help children develop the habit of trying to solve problems themselves, which leads to feelings of competence and confidence—invaluable skills for navigating adult life. These quotes about parenting are sure to make you laugh.
Accept and recognize their feelings
Emotions are tough for a lot of people, especially kids. So it can be particularly helpful to teach kids how to recognize and verbalize their emotions. When children are young, attach names to their feelings, so they can speak about them intelligently. You might say, “I see that you’re feeling very frustrated,” or “I know it must be disappointing to have to miss your friend’s party.” Giving children the space to explore their emotions and helping them process those emotions will contribute to their becoming successful adults. Don’t miss the signs you’re raising an emotionally intelligent child.
Try to chill out a little
Stressed out parents make for stressed out children. Learn to manage your own stress levels in order to provide a stress-free home for your children. Stress is contagious—don’t pass it on.
The impoverished West African state of Niger is the latest flashpoint in the struggle by the imperialist powers for a redivision of the world. The issues involved in the NATO-Russia war in Ukraine—a fight for territory, strategic resources and regime-change—are erupting all over the globe, in China and Taiwan, and now in the Sahel region of Africa.
Though stalled for the moment, what would be a devastating war led by the most powerful country in the region, Nigeria, to oust the coup leaders in Niger and reinstate President Mohamed Bazoum is under active preparation. At a summit of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in the Nigerian capital Abuja Thursday, leaders agreed to activate a standby military force and threatened that “no option had been taken off the table.”’
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They agreed a new round of sanctions on Niger, which has been plunged into blackouts by electricity cut-offs and seen food prices rise 60 percent amid a blockade and the freezing of assets and trade.
A conflict would draw in the entire region. Senegal, Benin and the Ivory Coast have already pledged to send troops to aid Nigeria. Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea have declared for the military coup leaders in Niger.
Behind the proposed ECOWAS action stand the imperialist powers, who are intent on blocking Russia and China from further penetrating a continent whose strategic significance is growing rapidly. The long-term decline of France’s economic position in its former West African colonies—culminating in the last three years in a dramatic collapse of its military presence in Mali, Burkina Faso and now perhaps Niger—has thrown open the Sahel region to intense geopolitical competition.
Bazoum was considered an important Western ally. The US and the European powers have responded to the coup against him by cutting aid to Niger supposedly provided on “humanitarian” grounds—on which it relies for 40 percent of its annual government budget. They are determined to secure their interests whatever the cost.
Speaking Tuesday after “difficult” talks with the coup leaders, US Acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland—veteran of the US-backed 2014 coup in Ukraine—threatened, “We’ll be watching the situation, but we understand our legal responsibilities and I explained those very clearly to the guys who were responsible for this and that it is not our desire to go there, but they may push us to that point.”
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Caution over a proposed military intervention by ECOWAS has centred on concerns that such action has not been properly prepared and would spark mass opposition throughout the region. A misjudged war could explode the social powder keg in Nigeria, where the US and Britain are heavily invested politically and economically.
A great deal is at stake. The United States currently has 1,500 soldiers of its 6,500-strong declared African deployment stationed in Niger across two bases—one of which is the regional hub for drone missions. France has 1,100 troops in the country, Italy 300 and Germany around 100.
Niger is a major uranium producer, providing a quarter of Europe’s supply. It is due to start exporting oil and plays a central role in policing migration out of Africa to Europe. It has become a frontline state in a battle for economic and military pre-eminence in West Africa and across the whole continent.
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Africa is home to an estimated 30 percent of the world’s mineral wealth, including 90 percent of its chromium and platinum—crucial to the green energy transition. Another such mineral is cobalt, of which 70 percent of the world’s supply is produced in the Democratic Republic of Congo. By the end of the century, Africa could also account for a fifth of the world’s lithium supply.
The continent also produces 65 percent of the world’s diamonds and is home to 40 percent of its gold reserves, 12 percent of its oil and 8 percent of its natural gas, while Morocco alone is home to 75 percent of the world’s phosphate rock, crucial for fertiliser.
In terms of markets, Africa’s consumer expenditure is on track to grow from $1.4 trillion in 2015 to $2.5 trillion in 2030.
The US and Europe are concerned not to let Niger be another loss to the claims made by China and Russia on these riches and opportunities.
Russia’s Wagner group (headed by Yevgeny Prigozhin) is operating in Mali, to Niger’s immediate West, Libya, to its North East, the Central African Republic (CAR) and Sudan—providing armed forces for their governments in conflicts with local rebel groups. In the CAR and Sudan, Wagner also runs private gold and diamond mines.
Russian President Vladimir Putin inaugurated a Russia-Africa summit in 2019 promising to help push back against “an array of Western countries [that] are resorting to pressure, intimidation and blackmail of sovereign African governments.” The second, far less well attended, summit held under conditions of anti-Russian sanctions and the war in Ukraine, took place last month, where a special effort was made to court Burkina Faso’s “interim leader” Colonel Ibrahim Traoré.
Russia has sought to leverage its relatively meagre resources to gain allies and the occasional lucrative venture, but China is throwing enormous economic weight behind securing control of Africa’s resources markets. It has controlling stakes in large swathes of the continent’s mining industry—including the bulk of uranium mines in Niger, plus its oil industry—forming part of a total FDI (foreign direct investment) stock of $43.4 billion in 2020, a 100-fold increase in 17 years.
China is Africa’s largest bilateral lender, loaning $153 billion in the two decades to 2019, and its second largest trade partner after the European Union, bigger than any other single country.
Both Russia and China are also major arms suppliers to sub-Saharan Africa, accounting for 26 and 18 percent of sales respectively in the last five years, above third-place France at 8 percent, and the US at 5 percent.
In 2019, US Africa Command (AFRICOM) launched a five-year plan to “deter” what it called “Chinese and Russian malign action.” Former head of AFRICOM, Marine Corps Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, told Congress that year that both were after “access and influence to our detriment,” and that, within the decade, China could gain the capability to inhibit US military access and operations. The policy has remained unchanged since Trump’s Republicans were replaced by the Democrats under Biden.
Colin P. Clarke, former RAND analyst and current director of research at the global intelligence and security consultancy The Soufan Group, bluntly explained to Newsweek the implications of the Nigerien situation.
“This could take on the dimensions of a regional proxy war, with Western countries supporting ECOWAS and Russia supporting Niger—and Burkina Faso and Mali, if they joined in—with muscle from the Wagner Group.
“What’s happening in the Sahel is not a sideshow to great power competition, it is great power competition. The events unfolding are not doing so in a vacuum. The US, France, China, and Russia each have their own vested interests in Sahelian countries.”
Workers and the rural poor in Niger and West Africa are confronted with the catastrophe warned of by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) at its 1991 Berlin Conference of Workers against Imperialist War and Colonialism, held in response to the Gulf War.
The manifesto announcing that conference explained: “This ongoing and de facto partition of Iraq signals the start of a new division of the world by the imperialists. The colonies of yesterday are again to be subjugated. The conquests and annexations which, according to the opportunist apologists of imperialism, belonged to a bygone era are once again on the order of the day.”
Based on Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, the statement warned that the struggle “against imperialist oppression cannot be waged successfully as long as the working class remains under the political domination of any wing of the national bourgeoisie.” It is inseparable from a fight against national ruling classes which have overseen the continued gruelling exploitation of the African masses, kept in power by militaries trained and funded by the imperialists.
Niger must above all serve as a warning to the working class all over the world of the urgent need to oppose the predatory war aims of the imperialist powers. As the ICFI and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality insisted in calling for the building of a worldwide movement against the NATO-Russia war:
The war in Ukraine is not an episode that will soon be resolved and followed by a return to “normalcy.” It is the beginning of a violent eruption of a global crisis that can be resolved only in one of two ways. The capitalist solution leads to nuclear war, though the word “solution” can hardly be rationally applied to what would amount to planetary suicide. Thus, the only viable response, from the standpoint of securing the future of mankind, is the world socialist revolution.
USA will not allow it to happen. Why do you think all 3 Taiwan candidates needs to appear in US for an interview. They will be questioned on this issue and make their pledges this will not happen.
Scott Ritter will survive. But over 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers have not survived the carnage that is a direct result of YouTube’s censorship of omission and commission.
In his interviews, Le Tissier comes across as a nice, well-balanced guy, who exudes the abundance of confidence which he himself admits made him such a formidable spot kicker for Southampton FC, which he loyally served for an impressive 16 years, despite getting much better offers from Spurs and other big clubs.
Retiring from football, Le Tissier became a successful pundit before being blackballed over his views, which he continues to express in the most moderate of terms, on censorship and overall state repression. Even more to our point, Le Tissier said that, as a pundit, he described the action from the point of view of a spectator and not as a manager or, in his case, a lethal forward, and that he left the complex strategic analysis and accompanying diagrams to others. In other words, even as a pundit, Le Tissier was a team player, who could see the overall picture and the best role he could play there.
The point here is that, whether we are looking at football or at NATO’s Ukrainian war, we should try eliciting views from many informed quarters, those like Ritter, with a modicum of relevant experience, included.
Although NATO would agree with that, they insist that military pundits must only express the views of Team NATO and no one else, as all else is mis-information, Putin propaganda and so on. Because Ritter not only differs from NATO’s narrative but actually admits to sometimes working in consort with informed Russians, NATO must have him gagged, for what possible benefit could there be for NATO in giving a Russian, any Russian, a fair hearing? As someone who wouldn’t go out of my way to listen to Ritter’s punditry or, for that matter, that of Le Tissier, that is still fundamentally wrong and, in the case of Ritter, dangerous.
It is dangerous because listening to echo chambers on Ukraine or any other war zone is not only dangerous but potentially lethal as well. This can now be seen in the case of Ukraine where, following the collapse of the much-vaunted Ukrainian Army that Ritter, Douglas Macgregor and other informed pundits long ago consistently predicted, MI6 agent Zelensky, a term I borrow from Ritter’s prior excellent work, is now pretending to clean up Ukraine’s rampant corruption, which Ritter repeatedly previously drew attention to.
Not only has NATO lied to us about every aspect of their Ukrainian war, just like they have lied to us about every single other of the countless wars they have waged since their inception but they want to muffle and ban every authoritative voice that might present us with a contrary view.
This is not to say that all views are equally valid and legitimate. They are not. Le Tissier was a pundit because he was an excellent and articulate player and Ritter, as he constantly reminds us, was a senior officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, which I would put on a par with Hitler’s Wehrmacht, many of whose generals, such as Erich von Manstein, provided valuable post-War insights and more of whom, such as Franz Halder, who served as Chief of Staff of Nazi Germany’s High Command from 1938 to 1942, was subsequently showered with medals and awards of appreciation by President John F Kennedy for perpetuating the myth of the “righteous war the clean Wehrmacht” fought against the Red Army’s Soviet Homeland, whose civilians remain NATO’s primary military target to this very day.
NATO has, of course, countless other targets, many of whom are like Gonzalo Lira, where Ritter has singularly missed the mark. Lira is, or rather was, our man on the spot, just as Nazi Party member John Rabe was our much better informed man on the spot during Japan’s Rape of Nanking for which NATO relentlessly pilloried investigative journalist Iris Chang until she suicided.
Scott Ritter, like Matt Le Tissier before him, is strong and resourceful. He will survive. But over 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers have not survived the carnage that is a direct result of the censorship of omission and commission YouTube and other NATO mis-information portals have spewed out. Though each of those soldiers had a story to tell, many of them, who could not afford to bribe their way to safety, came from the poorest strata of society, from mountainside hovels without even a window, never mind any semblance of what we might regard as the barest comforts of life. Instead of letting them be, Zelensky’s thugs kidnapped them and threw them into the meat grinder where they died unlamented, except by those who loved them and depended on them for their subsistence.
When we take Ukraine’s dead, wounded, orphaned, widowed, trafficked and abandoned into account, Zelensky and his YouTube and other NATO censors must have destroyed the lives of well over 4 million Ukrainians and that is without even looking at the Russian side of the lines.
But, because Lira and even Ritter may be our current men on the spot, historians in future years will probably thank them, just as the more honest amongst them previously thanked Rabe, for giving posterity the first draft of why so many millions of lives had to be blighted so low life porno actor Zelensky could accumulate his portfolio of mansions to house his impressive stable of mistresses.
Ritter and Lira, like Rabe before them, might well be just very minor footnotes to all this carnage. But the main authors of this carnage, criminals like Victoria Nuland and John Bolton, are not. Their self-serving threats against the International Criminal Court notwithstanding, all NATO curs like them have very serious questions to answer, the sort of charges Frank, Frick, Jodl, Kallenbrunner, Keitel, Ribbentrop, Rosenberg and Streicher all swung for in Nuremberg.
These NATO curs have repeatedly said that rough justice is for others, for those like their former Iraqi ally Saddam Hussein whom they lynched in 2006, or Gadaffi, whom they sodomised and murdered in 2011. But then there is also Stepan Bandera, who met his Maker in 1959 to settle, in part, vendettas these NATO gangsters continue to this day. And, though Ritter, Lipp, Lira and Assange are immaterial to settling such scores, until they are settled, there can be no justice and no peace because justice demands that NATO’s war criminals pay with their lives for their crimes and, as even the blind can see, as long as Nuland, Bolton and the rest of NATO’s swamp creatures remain uncaged, there definitely can be no peace.
15 Months On Mars: Ingenuity Finds Eerie Spacecraft Wreckage
WTF? Cool.
Through the Western lens
Through the Western lens means 3 things:
Ideological bigotry — liberal democracy is superior; China’s political system is evil, autocratic, repressive.
Western projection — Western colonialism has dominated the world for the last 500 years; therefore, China will also try to dominate the world similarly, either militarily or economically.
Fear of losing hegemony — China threatens the global hegemony of USA, UK and EU. China must be stopped.
Viewing China through this lens yields:
Anti-China propaganda to smear China’s reputation, turn world opinion against China and hopefully cause the world to decouple from China.
Economic and tech sanctions against China, depriving China of 5G market, semiconductors, FDI.
Military intimidation — naval exercises in Taiwan Strait, adding more military bases, selling arms to Taiwan.
The Western lens is blind to 3 facts:
China has fought no wars in over 40 years, since 1979, making China the most peaceful world power to have ever existed.
Outside of USA, UK and EU, the rest of the world holds a favorable view of China. The University of Cambridge published a study in October 2022 called, “A World Divided: Russia, China and the West.” It surveyed 137 countries representing 97% of the world’s population to uncover the favorability of Russia and China to these countries. It found that 70% of the world, excluding the Western countries, had a favorable view of China. Only 23% of Western countries thought well of China.
Evil, autocratic, repressive China has the most trusted and satisfactory government in the world. According to the 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer, 89% of Chinese trust their government compared to 56% for France, 51% for Canada, 47% for Germany, 46% for Italy, 42% for USA, 37% for UK, 36% for Spain, and 33% for Japan.
A November 2019 Ipsos survey shows that 94 percent of Chinese believe their country is on the right track.
According to the Global Happiness 2023 survey from Ipsos, China is the happiest country in the world at 91% compared to 76% for USA, 74% for Canada and France, and 70% for UK.
According to Ash Center at Harvard Kennedy School in 2020, 95.5% of Chinese are satisfied with their government.
A 2019 UC San Diego study shows a high level of satisfaction among the Chinese across a range of aspects up to 95 percent.
According to Latana’s Democracy Perception Index 2023, China is the 6th most democratic nation on earth, well ahead of Germany, Spain, Canada, Italy, UK, USA, France, and Japan.
Use Google search to verify all of the above. Don’t take my word for it.
Western democracy is a failed model. US democracy has degenerated into a plutocracy. UK democracy is a mess. Indian democracy is a mess.
We have bozo leaders like Biden, Trump, Trudeau, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Scholz, Modi, Zelensky, etc.
Western democracy allowed millions of people to die needlessly from the pandemic.
Western democracy allowed UK and EU to f*ck up their economies thanks to Russian sanctions.
USA is in very sad shape because of a totally incompetent government…
$32 trillion national debt
crumbling infrastructure
homelessness
unaffordable health care
rampant gun violence
mass incarceration
fentanyl crisis
increasing poverty
The list is endless.
India can’t get a handle on ethnic strife and human rights issues. It has poor education and poor infrastructure. China’s economy is 5.2 times larger by nominal GDP and 2.5 times larger by purchasing power parity when, by rights, India’s economy should be roughly on par with China’s. Thank India’s democracy for this.
The West is a waking up…
The US obsession with China is 100% a “they hate us cuz they ain’t us” situation.
Forty years ago, the Chinese were living in rice fields. Now, they’re all super rich and living in cities that look like the Mars Base from Total Recall.
Last time I was there, I was so shocked by the affluence of the general population that I literally made this face:
2023 08 14 11 52
They had to give me tea to relax.
But seriously, I’m thinking of making a trip to China and making a documentary proving that it is a much better country.
A Chinese friend invited me. He’s not even really rich, and he was like “yeah – you can stay at my place. You can sleep on the couch. It’s not a problem – I have 200 couches.”
A Litany of Lies
by Arch Bungle Lifted from an off-topic comment.
Being a catalogue of the lies I have imbibed through by means of torturous exposure to Anglo-American Newspapers and the rumor mills of Continental Europe.
See the examples below:
The Russian MIC cannot manufacture semiconductors. All their semiconductors are obtained via the black market from western sources. Or Iran. Or China. Or North Korea (all of whom are themselves under sanctions!).
The Russian microchip industry doesn’t exist (But the Russians can build things with black market American chips that even the Japanese can’t build)
The Russian microchip industry has collapsed (How something that doesn’t exist “collapses” I am not sure, but there you are)
Putin is a Dictator. He micromanages every single aspect of Russian Society up to the frontline battles (The Surovikhin Line should actually be renamed the “Putin Line”. But russian military bloggers and even military staff are criticising him on a daily basis without apparent consequence, and outspoken media figures are allowed to hurl an endless stream of criticism against Putin and his conduct of the war).
Putin is Russia and “Russia is Putin” (And that one aging bureaucrat alone is enough to terrify the West )
Russia / Putin is Isolated from the global community (Because everyone knows the “International Community” consists of white folks plus some honorary members like the Japs and South Koreans (whose membership may soon be up anyway))
The Russian economy is insignificant and smaller than Italy/Texas/France/etc. (it’s only the biggest economy in Europe by PPP, and nobody cares about PPP)
The Soviet Union was an Empire and Russia is seeking to restore it’s imperialism
Putin is a “Thug” and a “Murderer” (Because he bombed all those Afghan weddings, blockaded the starving people of Yemen and stated publicly that 500 000 Iraqi children were a worthy sacrifice to Mammon)
Russian military operations are at a disadvantage at night due to inferior night vision (The AFU on the other hand has access to the best NATO night vision technology)
Russia is starving the world by withdrawing from the grain deal
The Oil Price Cap, defying all laws of economic gravity, has been surprisingly effective in strangling Russian oil revenues
Russia is running out of artillery/drones/tanks/men Russia is salvaging microchips from dishwashers
Putin is dying from Alzheimers/Parkinsons/Cancer
Russia is stealing millions of Ukrainian children and abducting them to Russian territory
Putin eats brains cooked by Prigozine
Prigozine was Putin’s Chef (literally)
Russian army is demoralised and bordering on mutiny
Putin’s inner circle is plotting a coup against him (It’s going as slow as the SMO because they also believe in the slow grinding approach)
[Counter-Narrative character assassination] Putin was responsible for the Moscow Apartment Bombings
Russian army is incompetent and poorly trained
Russian satellite coverage of the battlespace is poor, so poor large swathes of Ukraine are completely invisible to them
Russian army has poor targeting precision. So bad that even a large CEP and a salvo won’t help
Russia is deliberately targeting civilians
Ukraine is not targeting civilians (deliberately)
Putin is preparing to colonise Africa (The Africans will be given a choice of Russia, China, The EU or the US for their new colonial masters)
The Wagner group is involved somehow in the coup in Niger
Russia has been making extensive use of cluster munitions since the start of the SMO (Extensive evidence of this to be found in Bucha, Mariupol and Kherson)
Ukraine has an artillery advantage over Russia (July/June 2023)
NATO tactics are superior to Russian battlefield tactics (Specifically the training provided by the Brits, those eternal masters of battlefield tactics going back to the charge of the light brigade)
Putin has a poor grasp of strategy (As compared to Biden, Sunak, Boris Johnson, Olaf Scholtz, Jens Stotenberg, Milley, Von der Leyen and Borell who are strategic geniuses)
The Sanctions Are Working (Just like they worked against Iran, Cuba, North Korea, the Houthi, China, Vietnam …)
The HIMARS Missile system will be a “game changer” (It’s impossible to shoot down a hi mars round, and not a single Himars system has been destroyed)
American drones will be a “game changer” (especially the little spy ones)
The AFU has “semi-encircled” the Russian forces in Bakhmut/Artyomsk
Byraktar will be a game-changer (Because somehow the Turks managed to evolve from kebab makers to advanced drone manufacture. Who do they think they are, Iranians?)
F16s will turn the tide of the battle in Ukraines favour
X wonder weapon will “turn the tide against Russia” (I thought the tide was already in Ukraine’s favour from the start?)
X general/commander has been fired/sacked/discipled
X and Y generals have a personal rivalry that is affecting Russian battlefield performance
The Russian army is dependent on decrepit Soviet-era equipment (e.g old Soviet Hypersonic missiles)
There’s nothing special about Ukraine’s neo-nazi problem since neo-nazism is a worldwide problem.
There are no weapons bio-labs in Ukraine operated by the Pentagon
The weapons labs operated in Ukraine by the pentagon are not a threat to Russia
Russia Attacked Ukraine Unprovoked (The bombing of civilians in donbas was no reason to go in guns blazing. R2P is the divine right of Europeans only)
NATO made no commitment (written or otherwise) to not advance on Russia’s borders (Gorbacheff was drunk and hallucinating at the time)
The SMO has nothing to do with the NATO advancement in Eastern Europe
The SMO has nothing to do with the 8-year killings of ethnic russians in donbas
Cluster munitions are acceptable in Ukraine’s case since they’re in dire straits
The Russians invaded Ukraine in 2014 (“Little Green Men”)
Russian tanks are inferior to American tanks (Even Shermans.)Russian tanks are inferior to German tanks (Even WW2 tiger tanks)
Russian tanks are inferior to French tanks (Especially in reverse)
The Russian army is the second most powerful one in the world (Second most powerful in Ukraine, which means the AFU is the most powerful army in the world)
Putin is a Crypto-Jew (Because there are some photos of a Putin-looking dude wearing a weird cap)
Ukraine cannot be a NAZI state because it’s president is Jewish
[Counter-Narrative Character Assassination] Alexander Mercouris is a convicted criminal
[Counter-Narrative Character Assassination] Scott Ritter is a convicted paedophile
“X” pro-russian commentator has never been right (non of his predictions has come true)
“Y” pro-Russian commentator is a convicted x,y,z (character assassinations)
The sanctions will work if we only apply enough rounds of sanctions!
The Russian economy is in tatters!
Putin is losing the political support of his people: Protests breaking out all over Russia with a possible cooler revolution brewing
The Ukrainian Counteroffensive (June/July/August 2023) is/was/will be successful
Russia is firing S300 missiles into Poland (over Ukrainian airspace)
The Russo Ukraine war started in 2022
The Russian Army is using Human Wave attacks (wagner’s HR department must be the most efficient on planet earth – a revolution in HR affairs for sure)
The Russian Army is targeting civilians (And yet the Russians have poor targeting ability?)
The Russian army is using cluster munitions since the start of the war (with not a single mention in the media until the US decided to suggest using them?)
Putin wants to expand the Russian empire into Europe (including such useless basket cases like the Greeks, Italians, French and Spaniards and those malevolent psychopaths the Germans)
Ukrainian Grain is key to solving world hunger (But the EU frequently rejects the grain due to toxins?)
‘International Law’ says x , y , z about the SMO (the same international law that has no enforcer or single legislative body acknowledged internationally)
NATO is a defensive organisation (Except when it comes to brown people in non-european countries, or yugoslavs, who may be bombed with wild abandon)
NATO is limited to the “North Atlantic” (Libya is a north atlantic country of course, everybody knows THAT)
NATO has greater military power than Russia (An organisation made up mostly of countries who got their asses kicked by the Wehrmacht or paid Russia to do their fighting for them are now suddenly the most powerful military force on earth)
Putin is in league with the Russian Oligarchs and therefore targeting the Oligarchs harms Putin (which explains why they’re fleeing Russia for London)
Ukrainian attacks on civilian infrastructure are justified (but Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure are not. All Ukrainian attacks on civilians are unintentional, including the couple killed on Kerch bridge orphaning their daughter)
The Russian Tank Autoloader is inferior to the manually loaded western tank loader (Because a meat-bag on captagon can outperform automation in any era)
The Ukrainian offensive is stalling because NATO is drip-feeding weapons to the regime’ (But still Ukraine is winning!).
Current hostilities between the AFU and the RF are “stalemated” (Even in Kupyansk)
Current hostilities between the AFU and the RF are “stalled” (but Ukraine is making ‘incremental gains’, but Russia is not making ‘incremental gains’)
The Tochka missile attack on the Kramatorsk train station was perpetrated by Russians using an old Soviet missile from Ukrainian stocks.
The Russian people are collectively responsible for Putin’s war on Ukraine (So they need re-education and De-Russification)
The Ukrainian Industry is continuing as normal despite the war. It’s glorious industrial machine pumps out tanks, shells, missiles, semiconductors, fuel and grain at impressive levels, supplying The World and their own army with important commodities (Motorsich is running fine producing tanks for the AFU, jet engines for the Ukrainian Airforce, the neon/argon production facilities have not been captured by Russia, oil reserve facilities are untouched).
Life in Ukrainian cities is continuing as normal despite the war. All is well. Pool parties and street celebrations are commonplace. (Millions of Ukrainians have not fled for Europe, it was merely the tourist high season, hospitals are not filled with the casualties of war, funeral hearses in their thousands are not seen in the streets, WW2 cemeteries are not seeing a capacity problem …)
If the west only gets rid of Putin Russia will collapse and the West will be victorious. (This short, balding, 70-year old bureaucrat is the only one standing between Victoria Nuland and “World Domination”).
The use of nuclear weapons by Russia will end the war and the world will be at peace thereafter (or some variation thereof).
Ukraine should be grateful to the West for supplying the Ukrainian Army (But the West owes Ukraine nothing for fighting their wars for them?)
General Gerasimov was killed on the battlefield.
Putin is dead and what we’re seeing is one of his many body doubles (The body double is somehow as worthy of hatred as the original and as capable of running Russia as the OG Putin (anybody watched Foundation Series lately?))
Russia is the last bastion of the “white, straight, christian male” and is fighting this war in the name of White Christendom (not the chechen muslim, tengrist buryat, buddhist tuvan, shamanist Yakhut … no they’re all just immigrant labour shipped in for their “white” masters)
The Ukrainians should never have surrendered their USSR nuclear weapons (the ones they never had control of to begin with)
If you were against the invasion of Iraq by the USA you should be equally against the invasion of Ukraine by Russia (During which Vasiliy Nebenziya stood up in the UNSC waving a vodka bottle filled with Novichok as evidence the Ukraine was using chemical weapons against “it’s own people”)
The Ukrainian Counteroffensive (June/July/August 2023) is/was/will be successful
The USA is able to fund the Ukraine war on Russia indefinitely (because “infinite money printer capacity” = “infinite manufacturing capacity” and all this manufacturing capacity can be restored to the US in the space of a few months, just like 9 women can birth a single baby in 1 month if working in parallel)
The Ukrainians are winning because they’ve taken back 50% of the territory Russia took from them in a fraction of the time Russia took to take it (at the cost of more than 50% of the Ukrainian army, and just not the part Russia truly cares about. The other 50% of the land will cost another 50% of the AFU probably)
The Wagner Coup’ (Because a 10 minute speech by Putin is enough to stop a coup right in the tracks)
the Wagner Mutiny (Because somewhere there was a ship involved)
The Wagner Protest (Minus the protest placards)
The Wagner Insurrection (Because a couple of clowns barreling down the road with some stolen artillery can take on the entire Red Army)
The Wagner Invasion of Poland (Because “why not”?)
The Russian people would rise up and overthrow the Putin regime if they could only just receive CNN, BBC, MSNBC (Because they’re all nostalgic for a repeat of the 1990s)
The West has unparalleled media freedom (as long as you don’t watch RT, Sputnik, Iranian Opress-TV, Al-Manar because those are obvious propaganda, because we think so)
Putin intends to invade Moldova (skipping on right past Lvov because “Stretch goals: we can do better!”).
Putin is “weaponising” hunger by forcing the West to impose grain sanctions on Russia (“I made you hit me in the face to hurt your hand”).
The Wagner ‘insurrection’ left Putin weakened politically (So weak he had to deliver an entire 10 minute speech including pauses to shut the whole thing down completely).
US Patriot missiles in Kiev shot down Russia’s hypersonic Khinzal missiles without sustaining significant damage.
Ukrainian Air Defences are capable of shooting down Khinzal hypersonic missiles (but by their own admission cannot defend against Onyx, probably because Onyx beats Dagger in trading card games)
…
Posted by b on August 14, 2023 at 17:45 UTC | Permalink
To add a handful more on top of my mind…
108. Journalist Julian Assange raped women and it’s only normal this journalist is locked up in high security prison Belmarch rotting away with psychopaths and murderers 109. The West is not a party to the Ukraine conflict 110. Putin/FSB bombed Nord Streams, Kerch, Kashovka dam in a 5D chess move 111. Putin/FSB murdered Darya Dugina/Vladlen Tatarsky in a 6D chess move 112. Russia would never use nukes against the West so there’s absolutely no risk in ever escalating the war 113. Russia would only use nukes against Ukraine, never the Western war participant so never mind upping the ante 114. The Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 case was carried out by Russians and directing the flight route over the most active war zone of that time as well as lowering the flight altitude from the usual 10 km to 8 km is just imagination 115. To let the war finally end, more weapons payed for by Western tax payers are necessary… war is peace 116. RT, Sputnik News and so many more information streams need censoring to protect our freedom… ignorance is bliss 117. Europe is now totally free of Russian hydro carbons 118. …
During his tenure as president of (what remains of) the Ukraine, Zelensky has wrecked the Ukraine, but has achieved many great things… for Russia. Here are his main achievements in no particular order:
• By being elected with the promise of ending hostilities, then immediately proceeding to escalate the conflict in the east, he thoroughly compromised what was left of Ukrainian democracy. He further demolished the Ukraine’s civic realm by banning all public media except for one government channel, banning all opposition and all Russian news sources and, in effect, establishing a totalitarian dictatorship.
• By relentlessly shelling the civilians in the now Russian Donetsk and Lugansk regions, then, in the spring of 2022, threatening them with a genocidal assault, he provided Russia with an ironclad reason to start the Special Military Operation: to save civilian lives. By so doing, he helped to expand Russian territory by four very valuable provinces (Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson) and set the stage for the eventual addition of, among others, Nikolaev, Odessa, Kharkov, and Kiev regions.
• He squandered $150 billion in foreign aid (much of it by the simple expedient of stealing it), expended a huge amount of military equipment and ammunition with nothing to show for it, and killed off 350 thousand Ukrainian soldiers (many of them Nazi war criminals), with possibly twice as many wounded.
• He shrunk his country’s population by almost half, some of it moving to Russia, becoming Russian citizens and integrating productively into the Russian population while rest went to the European Union, becoming a major burden for the welfare budgets of EU countries.
• By ordering Ukrainian troops to shell schools, kindergartens, hospitals and apartment buildings in universally recognized Russian regions such as Belgorod and by launching drone attacks directly on the Kremlin, he declared his government to be a terrorist organization, foreclosing any possibility of forcing Russia to negotiate a peace that would not be entirely on its own terms.
• He demonstrated the superiority of Russian weapons and military technique over NATO’s, most recently with Russia’s destruction of one of the Patriot missile batteries provided by the US. Almost every bit of equipment the West has been able to provide to the Ukrainians has been shown to be inferior to its Russian counterpart.
• He gave the Russian army ample opportunities to perfect their techniques for defeating NATO forces, venturing into new areas of drone warfare and battlefield surveillance from geostationary satellites. This will no doubt be very useful both in opposing NATO and in boosting future weapons sales to non-Western nations that wish to be free from Western oppression and meddling.
• He sold some of the weapons he received from the US to Mexican drug cartels, leaving US officials with no other choice than closing their eyes and pretending that this did not happen. Perhaps they will also be forced to look the other way as these cartels make use of these weapons to take over more and more of US cities and towns.
• He played host to many high-ranking Western officials, whom, on their to visit to Kiev, he presented with lavish presents such as suitcases of foreign aid money he had laundered, which these officials then brought home in diplomatic baggage, thus collecting blackmail material on all of them.
• He set an example for other Russian Jews whose bad luck had caused them to end up in the Ukraine rather than in Russia by resettling his parents in a posh neighborhood in Israel. But he kept his wife by his side, where she did a good job demoralizing the Ukrainian population by squandering more money on a single European shopping spree than most Ukrainians see in several lifetimes, all paid for by the US taxpayer. She also worked hard to gaslight Western officials by making them accept at face value and repeat ridiculous tales, such as the one about Russian troops being issued viagra, for them to better rape Ukrainian women.
• Zelensky is sometimes incautious; for instance, he got caught appointing operatives from Russia’s Federal Security Service (former KGB) to sensitive posts within the Ukrainian defense establishment, although it is unclear whether what’s left of the Ukrainian judiciary will be capable of prosecuting him.
• One of his greatest achievements was in placing the US and NATO in a zugzwang. This is a chess term for a situation in which a player has a choice of several moves, all of which lead to defeat. The US and NATO can either continue supporting the Ukraine, or they can stop supporting the Ukraine; in either case, they will lose.
• Perhaps his greatest achievement of all was in helping Russia turn away from its hostile neighbors in the West and toward friendly countries in Asia, Middle East, Africa and Latin America, cutting its economic, financial and cultural ties to the West and freeing itself from Western influences. His unwavering support for Ukrainian Nazis, whose emblems, insignia and slogans are styled after Nazi Germany and whose heroes are Nazi collaborators, coupled with the lavish support they received from the West, whose leaders chose to turn a blind eye toward their fascist proclivities, cemented in view of the Russians the view of the West as their existential enemy: a fascist, racist entity determined to destroy Russia but too weak and cowardly to do the job themselves.
All of this begs a question: Whom does Vladimir Zelensky serve?
Only 15% of the world’s population dislikes China; they make up the G7. They dislike China because it is a threat to what they think is their monopoly on global influence.
They call themselves “the world” because western-owned media has global influence.
The other 85% of the world either likes China or doesn’t care.
Hi, SJ-Z . Thanks for your very interesting question!
I guess Italians would be super surprised at just how much the Chinese spoil their pets.
Recently, 网易天成 (NetEase Tian Cheng), a subsidiary of 网易 (NetEase, the Chinese internet technology company) that specializes in medium-to-high-end pet food, partnered with 必胜客（Pizza Hut) to come up with a “Chinese-made dog pizza” that is safe to be consumed by dogs (and cats!).
The dog pizza is the brown disk thingy in the picture below:
This is what the “Chinese-made dog pizza” looks like in promotional material:
In the close up below, you can see that on the top of the pizza box, written in Chinese:
宠物零食 冻干生骨肉珍享比萨
This translates to:
Pet Snack Freeze Dried Raw Bone Meat Premium Pizza
2023 08 15 20 15zzz
To be honest, to me, it doesn’t look at all appetizing.
But then again, it’s made for dogs and cats.
Maybe dogs and cats don’t take visual aesthetics into account when it comes to their choice of nosh:
2023 08 15 20 15x
This pizza is part of 网易天成 & PizzaHut‘s “人宠同吃” (Pets eat together with us) promotional marketing campaign.
Basically, you buy a package deal at Pizza Hut that includes:
– a set meal for the humans – the “Chinese-made dog pizza” – Pet items/plushies
2023 08 15 20 16bv
More marketing collateral from the campaign:
2023 08 15 20 16q2023 08 15 20 17111
So, SJ-Z , at the end of the day, I guess it’s whether the dogs (and the cats) are actually going to eat this “Chinese-made dog pizza”.
I mean… you know how fussy some dogs and cats can be with their food…
I checked out Chinese social media platforms, and it appears that there are dogs (and cats) out there who will consume a “Chinese-made dog pizza”.
I guess, while it may look unappetizing to me, it’s tasty enough for them:
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.
So there I was, sitting in traffic court to plead for a reduced fine and or a payment arrangement. The courtroom was packed, it would appear there were many traffic law criminals in the small town I was appearing in.
So I sit and wait my turn.
And wait…
and wait…
After most of the morning had passed, there were only 15–20 of us left. The judge however stopped calling cases. He was busily doing his after-court paperwork for a good ten minutes. Finally, he looks back out to the courtroom and asks “Why are you all still here?”
The response from more than one of us was we had tickets and were here for our day in court. The judge looked quite unhappy as he side-barred with his clerk. When the conversation was over he looked out at us and said “It would appear my office was not prepared for you all to come today. Since the city cannot see fit to be ready for your legally required court date I am dismissing every one of your cases. Please give your name to the clerk as you exit. Also please accept my apologies for the City’s inability to do its job.”
I am of course paraphrasing, it was long ago, but that is the gist of what happened. As we all filed out we were entertained by the Judge’s not-so-discrete chewing out of his staff.
The voting in the USA was rigged. No doubt about it.'
And not only at the last election, it has most likely gone on for two or three elections before that.
There is only one cure. Paper votes, hand counting and representatives for all interested parties as observers.
And it would be nice if you had a working judicial system as well.
I cannot see how this is not going to end in bloodshed.
It is just a matter of time, before people revolt.
In a way I'm surprised it has not already happened.
Posted by: g wiltek | Aug 15 2023 16:07 utc | 4
When I was in training for my MAJ role at NAS China Lake, I had my first experiences with world-line travel. It wasn’t until later that I start to notice that my journeys would “stick”. I would find myself on a new world-line with new things, and old things that never existed.
One of the things that I miss is the breakfasts with beans. In this present world-line it is with potatoes. Of course, to youse guys, it’s always been that way.
One of the things that seem to be forever changed for me is the soft-drink Razzmatazz. It never existed on this world line. But back in the day, prior to me joining the Navy, it was THE soda that you all would drink. And while there were coke and Pepsi drinks, I always loved my icy-cold Razzmatazz.
My favorite was a malted cherry soda that they made. It had a kind of cherry-butterscotch like feel to it. There was also a birch beer & vanilla, and a malted root beer. Sigh. But none of it exists on this world-line.
France fears that the interim military-led government is willing to explore a deal whereby they’ll agree to keep Russia/Wagner at bay and retain the US’ bases in their country in exchange for Washington ensuring that ECOWAS doesn’t invade like it threatened to do. In that event, the full fury of the Nigerien people would be directed against France, which could either go it alone in trying to forcibly reverse last month’s coup in vain or chalk up the strategic loss and withdraw.
Le Figaro cited an unnamed diplomatic source over the weekend who alleged that the US backstabbed France during Acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s trip to Niger. The piece is paywalled but was summarized here
. France reportedly fears that the US might tacitly recognize Niger’s interim military-led government in exchange for being allowed to retain its bases. Should that happen, then the US would proactively replace France’s security role in the Sahel before Russia/Wagner has a chance to.
This concern is predicated on rational calculations. From the US’ strategic perspective, the anti-French sentiment that’s sweeping the Sahel will inevitably result in ousting that country’s military from this part of Africa, which could lead to a security void that would likely be filled by Russia/Wagner. Even if France resorts to force for clinging to its last regional bastion in Niger, whether directly and/or via Nigerian-led
ECOWAS, then it’ll only exacerbate the hatred that locals feel for their former colonizer.
A swift victory is doomed to be pyrrhic since another round of anti-French unrest would follow sooner or later to complete the decolonization process that the prior one couldn’t, while the outbreak of a larger regional war risks Russia accelerating its envisaged replacement of France’s security role in the Sahel. Both outcomes are contrary to America’s long-term interests, though some policymakers might find their potential short-term benefits to be alluring.
It’s in this context that Nuland visited the Nigerien capital last week to “push for a negotiated solution” according to what she informed the press during a special briefing after her meetings there. Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin reacted to this development by boasting that “the US has recognized a government that it did not recognize yesterday just to avoid meeting the Wagner PMC in the country.” While some might have dismissed his remarks as trolling, they actually convey a stark truth.
Nuland’s trip was likely driven by her government’s desire to determine post-coup Niger’s intended relations with Russia/Wagner. She made contradictory statements about this during her briefing that were analyzed here , but the point is that this was probably the real reason behind her visit. If she assessed that no clear commitment had yet been made to solicit that group’s services, then it would be possible to make progress on the vague “negotiated solution” that she claimed to have in mind.
Judging by Le Figaro’s report, France fears that the interim military-led government is willing to explore a deal whereby they’ll agree to keep Russia/Wagner at bay and retain the US’ bases in their country in exchange for Washington ensuring that ECOWAS doesn’t invade like it threatened to do. In that event, the full fury of the Nigerien people would be directed against France, which could either go it alone in trying to forcibly reverse last month’s coup in vain or chalk up the strategic loss and withdraw.
The US already backstabbed France a few years back by stealing its nuclear submarine deal with Australia via the surprise unveiling of AUKUS so the precedent exists for it to backstab that country again in the Sahel by stealing its “sphere of influence” there through these means. In this particular case, American policymakers might have concluded that France’s military ouster from the region is inevitable so it’s better to proactively replace it with their own forces than risk Russia/Wagner filling the void.
To that end, it makes sense to opportunistically exploit the latest events in pursuit of a pragmatic deal with Niger’s interim military-led government despite being at France’s expense. There’s no guarantee that it’ll succeed, but it’s strategicallysound from the perspective of the US’ New Cold War interests in Africa. America could present itself as a peacemaker that averted the wider war that France wanted to spark all while stopping the spread of Russian military-strategic influence on the EU’s Sahelian doorstep.
The aforesaid reframing of Nuland’s trip in light of Le Figaro’s report compellingly explains France’s alleged fears of her country’s real intentions in wanting to diplomatically resolve the West African Crisis. The ulterior motive behind its latest “push for a negotiated solution” is to proactively replace France’s security role in the Sahel before Russia/Wagner has a chance to. In this way, the US could mitigate the strategic damage from the Nigerien Coup and arguably benefit from it to an extent.
the GIRLS REACT to *Terminator (1984)* THIS IS TERRIFYING!! (First Time Watching) Sci-fi Movies
Since the Second World War most Britons have unquestioningly accepted the premise that Britain should continue to rank as a first order world Power while, on the other, insisting that living standards should continue rising and social services be protected from taxes to finance foreign policy commitments. The question is not whether Britain can continue to think and behave as a Great Power, but whether it can afford to. – F. S. Northedge, 1970.
The good news is that there will be no war.
The rather sad news is that America can’t afford one.
1980s neoconservative policies – downsize government and privatize everything – have left the US a second-tier power, uncompetitive economically, industrially, scientifically and even militarily, as this STEM ranking suggests:
2023 08 16 20 04
Why we fail
There are at least seven reasons why the US failed in Ukraine. Says Correlli Barnett, “The power of a nation-state by no means consists only in its armed forces, but also in its economic and technological resources; in the dexterity, foresight and resolution with which its foreign policy is conducted; in the efficiency of its social and political organization. It consists most of all in the nation itself: the people; their skills, energy, ambition, discipline, initiative; their beliefs, myths and illusions. And it consists, further, in the way all these factors are related to one another. Moreover, national power has to be considered not only in itself, in its absolute extent, but relative to the state’s foreign or imperial obligations; it has to be considered relative to the power of other states”. Let’s break that down.
The Power of Other States
Armed forces. No serious military scholar imagines the US Army could challenge the Russian Army in Europe, nor the PLA in Asia – after being humiliated in Korea in 1951. Next year the PLAN will have 400 new warships armed with hypersonic missiles – which the US Navy’s 293 older boats neither possess nor can defend against.
Economic and technological resources. Russia’s economy is the world’s fourth largest, its military sector is 800% more productive than America’s, its military technology is a generation ahead, and its generalship is the world’s best. China’s productive economy is 300% bigger and leads the US in almost all sciences and technologies.
The dexterity, foresight and resolution with which its foreign policy is conducted. Ninety percent of the world’s people do business and sympathize with Russia or China, and their leaders are rock stars wherever they go. Ten percent of the world’s people support America, whose leader is pitied, even insulted to his face.
The efficiency of its social and political organization. 80% of Russians support their government’s policies and 96% of Chinese support theirs. Barely 34% of Americans trust their government or support its policies.
Skills, energy, ambition, discipline, initiative, beliefs, myths and illusions of the people. China’s and Russia’s recoveries reflect their people’s resilience, skills, energy, ambition, discipline, initiative and collective self-belief. The US has yet to recover from the GFC, struggles to staff a chip fab, and hasn’t given its workers a raise since 1974.
Foreign or imperial obligations. Ukraine, on the heels of the Afghanistan imbroglio, suggests that the US is incapable of sustaining its obligations towards its allies. Its withdrawal from the Iran nuclear pact suggests that it is incapable of making agreements.
National power relative to the power of other states. If America wants to match Russia or China militarily, Washington must double real defense spendingthrough 2034just to match the 2023 capabilities of either, not both, of them.
America is overextended abroad, overinflated at home and its State competence is deteriorating in almost every way – from governance to justice to military to infant mortality – while it ignores its decline.
Next Stop: Failed State?
A failed state’s institutions are feeble and flawed. Often, the executive barely functions while the legislature, judiciary, bureaucracy, and armed forces have lost their capacity and professional independence. A failed state suffers from crumbling infrastructure, faltering utility supplies, educational and health facilities, and deteriorating human-development indicators like infant mortality and literacy. Failed states create an environment of flourishing corruption and negative growth rates, where honest economic activity cannot flourish. Encyclopedia Britannica.
Even before Covid, there were more hungry children, drug addicts, suicides and executions, illiterate, incarcerated, poor, homeless people in America than in China. How long can post-Covid America, riven by factionalism and distrust, weakened by disease, and dying younger each year, compete with dozens of initiatives like this?
The only real barrier to China’s bid to capture Eurasia’s vast Middle Space was the US occupation of Afghanistan. The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline, TAPI, joining Central Asia’s gas fields to South Asia, was announced in 2018 but progress through the critical Afghan sector was slowed by the war. Since then, the scheme has been revived, opening the way for Chinese investment that could complete its capture of Central Asia. Alfred McCoy
Did you know this was exactly the same stuff published in the Soviet papers and East German papers and Czech papers and Polish papers in the 1970s?
That the US Economy was exaggerated and 60% smaller that it really was
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Man , this is bad
Back then in the 1960s to 1990s, Americans won by Competition, Ability and Achievement
Back then the Soviets claimed victories in paper by publishing lies, lies and more lies and used brute force and twisting of data to claim a superior system (US)was collapsing all the time
Today the opposite is happening
US and the West are Soviet Russia and East Germany today
They hate competition, They hate tolerance in any area other than Transgenders and Homosexuals, They are losing ability by the millisecond
They claim victories by publishing lie after lie, most of which are bizzare and illogical and use the same brute force to claim a superior system is collapsing.
Meanwhile China is becoming exactly what the US was in the 1960s – 1990s
Critically truthful, Exploring Solutions openly, Admitting Problems openly, Keeping Victories as subtle as possible, Fostering Competition in every sphere, Tolerant of every race and religion provided they identify as Chinese first, Focus on Ability and Merit only.
Russia too is following the same road now
The Democracies are collapsing due to their fatal flaws
The Meritocracies and carefully planned one party systems are flourishing
So this Chinas Economy is 60% smaller is basically History going around in Propaganda and Lies
A Testament to the theory that eventually all Democracies decline into a Mediocracy
You Won’t Believe What China Have Done | American CEO’s Protest !
A tiny microchip smaller than a fingernail is at the heart of a high-stakes technology war between superpowers.
Advanced semiconductors form the brains powering everything from AI to hypersonic missiles.
Now a global battle is unfolding between the US and China over who controls the future of these foundational chips.
With national dominance at stake, the US has imposed sweeping sanctions to blockade China from cutting-edge semiconductor designs and manufacturing.
But China is marshaling its vast resources to achieve self-reliance and circumvent restrictions.
The race is on to shape mastery over the electronics underpinning 21st century innovation.
Join us as we uncover the events, technologies, companies, and strategies fueling this multifront semiconductor conflict.
2023 08 16 10 05
The trajectory of global scientific progress and economic power hangs in the balance.
I’m from Indonesia, a country with the largest Muslim population in the world.
When the Uyghur topic arised a few years ago, it was also a trending topic here.
Many people started to curse China because of this issue.
But Indonesia is a neutral & non block country, which means we’re friends with many countries, including China, even North Korea.
Indonesia, as well as many other Muslim countries has been sending alot of Imams (priests), delegations, and even students to China, including Xinjiang regularly.
Guess what? None of Muslim countries condemn China on their acts, because later we realize that it’s only propaganda made by Western countries to weaken China & to create destabilization.
As for me myself, I’ve visited Xinjiang 2 times before the Covid pandemic, I know that there were terrorist attacks in Xinjiang, which the members were mostly from Uyghur ethnic.
The terror movement is called the East Turkestan (Islamic) Movement. It’s backed up by Al Qaeda & Taliban.
The United Nations on their website also listed the Movements as a terrorist Movement, also they list most of the attacks on their website too.
The US already know this issue, and they also bombed Uyghurs, who ran to Afghanistan after Chinese Central Government took control of Anti-Terror acts (because the local government failed to control them and the situation became worse)
Note: This is an American news media, not Chinese media.
So the US also bombed Uyghurs, but later accusing China for their treatments against the Uyghur, don’t you think that it’s hypocrisy?
Nowadays Taliban is close to China, and they promised not to help Uyghur militants anymore, they even sending back the militants who ran and hide in Afghanistan.
I can read a little bit of Mandarin, I use some Chinese social media and make friends with Uyghurs, so I know what happened and what’s happening from the Uyghur themselves.
They said that those terrorists use Turkestan name because they want support from Turkic countries nearby, while those terrorists also killed their own Uyghurs who don’t wanna support them, as well as Uzbek, Kazakh & other Turkic people, also Tajik Muslim, Hui Muslim & Han people in China
And they use “Islamic” name, obviously for supports from Islamic countries.
On the early morning of Wednesday, 30 July 2014, an Uyghur Imam, named Juma Tahir, the imam of China’s largest mosque, (Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar), was stabbed to death by three young male Uyghur terrorists because he was strongly against the terrorists.
Alot of Western Media covered this, but it seems that they forget it easily (or intentionally).
These videos are the example of Muslim Scholars visiting Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region recently, there are Indonesian Scholars too in that event
Beside of those videos, there are still alot of informal visits from Islamic Scholars & imams to China.
In fact, tour to Xinjiang is available in Indonesia and it’s always fully booked, as I work at the one of the biggest Tour & Travel agency in Indonesia.
Latest Xinjiang Muslim Festival in Indonesia, featuring tribes in Xinjiang especially the Uyghurs, and Indonesian ustadz (Islamic preacher), leaders, government, etc
From 19 July – 10 August 2023 to celebrate the Islamic New Year, this is the re-stream from 2 August:
As for now, there are some people who are still condemning China in Indonesia, but most of them are either from extremist groups (we call them kadrun), or just ignorant & uneducated people. Which later we found to have links (directly or indirectly) to the US’ Anti Chinese founding
U.S Boeing Near Suspension in China as Tensions Between US China Escalate!
2023 08 16 20 50
https://youtu.be/pZAhDLwkp9c
“Most Unsafe Site Ever” – Shocking Truths About TSMC Arizona Revealed!
The TSMC Arizona project is one of the biggest FDI deals in United States history with Taiwan investing over $40 billion. It’s all part of the $52 billion dollar CHIPS Act to bring Taiwan’s flagship company to the US, but there are a plethora of problems amounting the question the entire legitimacy of this project. In today’s video we examine the top 5 biggest problems TSMC is currently facing and if this project will be a success.
Beef Chili Cheese Fries
2023 08 16 10 25
Yield: 6 to 8 servings
Ingredients
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 cups chopped yellow onions
Salt and cayenne to taste
2 pounds ground beef
1 tablespoon chili powder
2 teaspoons ground cumin
Crushed red pepper to taste
2 teaspoons dried oregano leaves
2 tablespoons chopped garlic
3 cups peeled, seeded, and chopped fresh or canned tomatoes
2 tablespoons tomato paste
3 cups beefsteak or beef broth
2 tablespoons Masa Harina
Vegetable oil for deep frying
2 large Idaho potatoes, peeled and cut into shoestrings, rinsed in cool water and patted dry
1/2 pound grated Cheddar cheese
1/2 pound grated Monterey Jack cheese
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup sliced pickled jalapenos
Instructions
Heat the vegetable oil in a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add the onions, season with salt and cayenne, and cook, stirring, until they begin to wilt, about 2 minutes.
Add the beef, chili powder, cumin, crushed red pepper and oregano. Season with salt and cayenne, and cook until all the pink in the meat disappears, 5 to 6 minutes.
Add the garlic, tomatoes, tomato paste and 2 1/2 cups beef stock; bring to boil, and reduce the heat to medium-low. Simmer, uncovered, until the meat is tender, about 1 hour, stirring occasionally. Skim off any fat that rises to the surface.
Combine the Masa Harina with the remaining 1/2 cup stock and mix to blend. Slowly add to the pot, stirring to blend. The mixture will thicken. Cook for 30 minutes, then season again with salt and cayenne. It should be thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.
In a heavy, deep pot or an electric fryer, heat 4 inches of vegetable oil to 360 degrees F. Fry the shoestring potatoes in batches until golden brown, 3 to 4 minutes per batch. Drain on paper towels, then season with salt and cayenne.
Heat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Cover the bottom of a large, glass rectangular baking pan with the shoestring potatoes.
Combine the Cheddar and jack cheeses. Sprinkle the cheese over the fries.
Bake just until the cheese melts, 3 to 4 minutes.
Remove the pan from the oven and spoon the chili over the top of the fries.
Garnish with the sour cream and jalapenos.
Serve immediately.
“U.S. bullying ends now!” – Putin issues stunning military plan
Yeah. Give nuclear weapons to Iran, Mexico, and a host of other nations that are sick and tired of the USA.
Ukraine’s Grifter Wars Through Gonzalo Lira’s Eyes
Former Glasgow MP George Galloway said it best about Gonzalo Lira, whose re-arrest by Zelensky’s Gestapo was announced by American transsexual grifter Sarah Ashton Cirillo, who is now a staff sergeant in Zelensky’s Wehrmacht even though, as we previously pointed out, Sgt Sarah has not yet completed basic military training.
In wishing Lira well, no matter what Lira’s motives were for staying in Zelensky’s Fourth Reich, Galloway spoke for most of us, who don’t take our marching orders from a transgender American who left his wife and children back in Yankee land to play act at being a girly spokesperson for the homophobic Ukrainian Wehrmacht.
In acknowledging Lira’s chequered history, Galloway said that was not a massive problem for him or for his listeners, who were more interested in Lira’s bird’s eye view on the conflict, rather than on tips on how to pick up hot Ukrainian chicks or, indeed, chicks with dicks like Sgt Sarah. Galloway, with his excellent command of the English language, also doubted that Lira “inflicted strategic damage on Zelensky’s regime”, thereby implicitly agreeing with my earlier analysis that Lira should have got a kick up the transom and be booted across the Hungarian border.
Leaving aside that Sergeant Sarah was a Federal informant, an agent provocateur, a gambler, a sexual deviant, a complete sociopath, and a terminal narcissist who pals around with terrorists, I, amongst others, have seen this D grade Hollywood plot play out a hundred times before.
Ukraine has an unhealthy sprinkling of such grifters on both sides of the lines. Former USMC officer Scott Ritter, who previously defended Lira, now believes Lira is a liar and SBU asset as does Eva Bartlett for the same reasons she objected to the family of Syrian President Assad bringing competition for her begging bowl to Damascus.
Brian Berletic, who posts informative videos under the New Atlas name, believes Lira is more fool than knave and, like Galloway, he admits he found Lira’s input helpful in his own analysis. To counter Berletic, there are a stream of twitter threads like these “exposing Lira” and all ‘kinds of “Putin shills,” some of whom, like Bartlett, Galloway was reduced to calling “flat earth fucks” because of their grifting, much of which, such as lying they were in Syria when they were not and stealing over $1 million of Iranian aid for Syria I have witnessed firsthand.
To get a feel for some of the whack jobs MI6 and the CIA support in Kiev, consider this MintPress article which reports on Cormac Smith, MI6’s hired Irish field hand who tells us that ““Russians are fucking animals” and that the Russkies have committed genocide by admitting that they forcibly transferred “700,000 Ukrainian children” to Russkie land, a figure Smith obviously plucked from Sgt Sarah’s more than ample ass.
MintPress goes on to discuss some of the usual suspects, such as MI6 asset Michael Weiss, the Henry Jackson Society, The Interpreter, the Atlantic Council, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Bellingcat, the 77th Brigade, MI6 contractors Torchlight, and NATO fixer Chris Donnelly, all of whom are grifting in Ukraine.
To me, all of those grifters are just noise. I go back to first principles, to the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and South Tyrone where the British fought a successful 40-year intelligence campaign against the Provisional IRA. As part of their war effort, MI5 bankrolled supposed former PIRA member Vincent McKenna’s Families Against Intimidation and Terror (FAIT),who gave the IRA a series of very black eyes until grifter McKenna was jailed for raping his own daughter.
When I asked two members of the IRA’s Army Council, their governing body, why did MI5 hire such a boomerang, they replied that MI5 were so hell bent on beating the IRA that they turned a blind eye to everything, child rape included. Using that and similar examples as my compass, it is, to me, beyond doubt that MI6 and the CIA have exotic and unhinged operatives working behind the lines in Syria, Ukraine and everywhere else; however, I doubt Lira is one of them. Rather, I believe he is one of those well-meaning fools I have come across who have paid either with their lives or by serving very long prison sentences for their folly in the killing fields of Ireland and Syria.
The problem is that it can be hard to differentiate the wheat from the chaff, the fool from the knave. Jamal Daoud, a Jordanian living in Australia, complains here about an alleged former Hindu extremist terrorist, planning to bump him off. But they, in turn, reported Daoud to Syrian Military Intelligence for bringing Jonathan Spyer, an Israeli spy, into Syria. Because of all that, I bought Spyer’s book, which is published by Routledge, which more or less specialises in academic vanity publishing. Chapter 14, Undercover in Damascus, the relevant chapter of the book, is as forgettable as bland bread and served no benefit to Israel or its allies.
And then we have the Sydney based Anglican priest, who is on an Israeli naughty list because of his long-standing friendship with nuclear missile whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu Barrett tried to manipulate for one of her $40,000 scams and whose face another “street artist” scammer plastered on murals all over Sydney when the priest was already in very hot water with his archbishop for bringing the church into disrepute with his activism. The end result of their “humanitarian intervention” was that the priest became homeless.
That is not to say Israel does not want their legions of little helpers in Syria. It does and I have blocked some of them and observed some others of them up close. But they, like Lira and his critics, are not the main game and they are hardly even a sideshow. As Syria’s best secret service agents joined the colours, it was often the dross that stayed behind to mop up the bribes, often in cahoots with the grifters.
When I told two former senior members of the IRA, whose brothers were murdered by the SAS that Assad had, despite Bartlett’s keening, invited Major General John Holmes, the former commanding officer of the SAS to Damascus, one of them thought it a good idea as, to him, bridges have to be built and the other thought it a bad idea as, to him, the only good SAS officer is a dead SAS officer.
Schooled by such experiences, my own prognosis is quite simple and to the point. The main vectors in the Ukrainian shemozzle are the Armed Forces of Russia and their military allies on the one hand, and NATO and their lemmings on the other. All else is tinsel.
Allied and perhaps even integral to the Russian Armed Forces are a number of spokespeople, the best known of whom are Russian President Putin, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and Russian Foreign Affairs spokesperson Zakharova, all of whom tend to tell it as it is, not as Tinseltown’ transexuals would like it to be. Opposed to those spokespeople are Hollywood circus clowns like Zelensky and Sgt Sarah, as well as a bunch of supporting clowns in Washington, London, Paris and Brussels.
The Syrian situation is slightly different as Syrian civil society and, indeed, Syrian military intelligence, have left far too many holes for domestic and foreign grifters to exploit. I have met many of these grifters and, not to put too fine a point on it but far better people were found in the back roads of Fermanagh and South Tyrone with bin bags over their heads and bullets through their brains.
Lira, as my previous article described him, is simply a middle-aged Chilean Ukraine will try to trade at a premium, just like they have done with previous civilians they kidnapped. Though Lira is only an irrelevant sideshow, I wish him and his family the best.
That said, this Ukrainian war will end with a resounding Russian victory that is already resonating across Africa and throughout Asia, from Syria in its West to China in its East. Cold comfort for Lira if he gets an OBE (one behind the ear) but, whether he lives or dies, his torture at the hands of Zelensky and transexual nut job Sergeant Sarah is one more score that has to be settled, one more vendetta that must, if necessary, be avenged in blood by the Russian Armed Forces.
ATLANTA — Former president Donald Trump and 18 others were criminally charged in Georgia in connection with efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state, according to an indictment made public late Monday night.
Trump was charged with 13 counts, including violating the state’s racketeering act, soliciting a public officer to violate their oath, conspiring to impersonate a public officer, conspiring to commit forgery in the first degree and conspiring to file false documents.
With so much alleged conspiring should we call all these indictments a conspiracy theory?
This indictment is again too wide and borders on, like the others against Trump, criminalizing the retelling of rumors and free speech.
Just consider this part:
COUNT 29 of 41
And the Grand Jurors aforesaid, in the name and behalf of the citizens of Georgia, do charge and accuse DONALD JOHN TRUMP with the offense of FALSE STATEMENTS AND WRITINGS, O.C.G.A. § 16-10-20, for the said accused, in the County of Fulton and State of Georgia, on or about the 2nd day of January 2021, knowingly, willfully, and unlawfully made at least one of the following false statements and representations to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Georgia Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs, and Georgia Secretary of State General Counsel Ryan Germany:
That anywhere from 250,000 to 300,000 ballots were dropped mysteriously into the rolls in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia;
That thousands of people attempted to vote in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia and were told they could not because a ballot had already been cast in their name;
That 4,502 people voted in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia who were not on the voter registration list;
That 904 people voted in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia who were registered at an address that was a post ofiice box;
That Ruby Freeman was a professional vote scammer and a known political operative;
That Ruby Freeman, her daughter, and others were responsible for fraudulently awarding at least 18,000 ballots to Joseph R. Biden at State Farm Arena in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia;
That close to 5,000 dead people voted in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia;
That 139% of people voted in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Detroit;
That 200,000 more votes were recorded than the number of people who voted in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Pennsylvania;
That thousands of dead people voted in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Michigan;
That Ruby Freeman stuffed the ballot boxes;
That hundreds of thousands of ballots had been “dumped” into Fulton County and another county adjacent to Fulton County in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia;
That he won the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia by 400,000 votes;
said statements being within the jurisdiction of the Office of the Georgia Secretary of State and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, departments and agencies of state government, contrary to the laws of said State, the good order, peace and dignity thereof;
The indictment takes an expansive view of the behaviors it alleges were acts “in furtherance of the conspiracy” — including, as an example, at least a dozen instances of Trump’s tweets alleging fraud and other claims. Such details from the indictment quickly drew criticism as potential violations of the defendants’ free speech protections.
Trials over these indictments, if any, will likely start only next year and will take quite a long time. Any judgment in them will be appealed.
Yet most Americans made up their minds about Mr. Trump long before prosecutors like Fani T. Willis or Jack Smith weighed in, polls have shown. He is, depending on the perspective, a serial lawbreaker finally being brought to justice or a victim of persecution by partisans intent on keeping him out of office. The Georgia indictment, powerful as it is in its language, has been priced into the market, as the Wall Street types would put it.
“The accumulated indictments are kind of a white noise for voters,” said Sarah Longwell, a Republican political consultant who has organized opposition to Mr. Trump and conducts weekly focus groups with voters. “They can’t tell the difference between Georgia and Jack Smith because it all blurs together in one long news cycle of Trump’s-in-trouble.”
I believe, like Trump, that the indictment will help him. First in the primary and then in the general election:
Speaking to supporters in Alabama a couple of days after his last arraignment, [Trump] claimed he was looking forward to the next one. “We need one more indictment to close out this election,” he boasted.
That is bravado — the sort of bring-it-on bluster that electrifies a Trump rally.
Contrast that with the case and against the Bidens which will be laid out by a special prosecutor to the same public. As I wrote when the last bits about the Bidens-Burisma saga came to light:
On the one side we have a case which shows the deep corruption of ‘the big guy’ and his family who are supported by the deep state they control.
On the other side we have the underdog who thought he was doing the right thing but is now indicted by the deep state for, at that time, saying so.
The media will shine the light on both cases. Each time they will mention Trump it will, independent of what they write about him, be positive for him by making the case of the lone guy who gets unfairly prosecuted by the deep state.
Each time the Biden case will be mentioned it will remind the public of Biden’s corrupt dealings.
Proceed through that for sixteen month and the outcome is assured.
Now add to that the possible quirks of the Democratic primary. RFK junior has entered that race:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has raised eyebrows as the first right-sympathetic populist to run as a Democrat since William Jennings Bryan. Launching with twenty paid staff and functioning now with seventy, Kennedy’s campaign has latched on to several issues important to mainstream Republicans—Covid tyranny, censorship, government surveillance—as well as to the dissident right: public health threats posed by chemicals in food and water, ending forever wars. The difference is the right frames these issues as matters of social cohesion and public order, while Kennedy uses the language of democracy and freedom.
In the currant fashion RJK Jr. is not really a Democrat:
When discussing the issues that animate him most—the environment, censorship, state and corporate collusion—he brightens. His hopeless intellectual humility and his hesitation to emphasize the most divisive ideological commitments of his own party while regularly taking up the language of his partisan opponents are setting up a general election that could divide populist voters almost entirely on the basis of aesthetics.
During the primaries the Democratic Party mafia will do their best to eliminate him even when he is unlikely to be a real danger to Joe Biden’s candidacy.
Should Trump then consider to run for president with RFK Jr. as his future vice-president he could form a quasi bi-partisan populist ticket that might well attract a larger majority.
Posted by b on August 15, 2023 at 15:47 UTC | Permalink
Taiwan is in BIG TROUBLE as China Vows Retaliation for DPP Visit to US
China has rebuked the U.S. for its latest escalations on Taiwan, from a growing economic war to the DPP’s latest visit to the United States. Here’s what we know thus far about the potential consequences.
The Perpetual Wars You Aren’t Supposed to Notice
By William J. ASTORE
In his message to the troops prior to the July 4th weekend, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin offered high praise indeed. “We have the greatest fighting force in human history,” he tweeted, connecting that claim to the U.S. having patriots of all colors, creeds, and backgrounds “who bravely volunteer to defend our country and our values.”
As a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel from a working-class background who volunteered to serve more than four decades ago, who am I to argue with Austin? Shouldn’t I just bask in the glow of his praise for today’s troops, reflecting on my own honorable service near the end of what now must be thought of as the First Cold War?
Yet I confess to having doubts. I’ve heard it all before. The hype. The hyperbole. I still remember how, soon after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush boasted that this country had “the greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known.” I also remember how, in a pep talk given to U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2010, President Barack Obama declared them “the finest fighting force that the world has ever known.” And yet, 15 years ago at TomDispatch, I was already wondering when Americans had first become so proud of, and insistent upon, declaring our military the world’s absolute best, a force beyond compare, and what that meant for a republic that once had viewed large standing armies and constant warfare as anathemas to freedom.
In retrospect, the answer is all too straightforward: we need something to boast about, don’t we? In the once-upon-a-time “exceptional nation,” what else is there to praise to the skies or consider our pride and joy these days except our heroes? After all, this country can no longer boast of having anything like the world’s best educational outcomes, or healthcare system, or the most advanced and safest infrastructure, or the best democratic politics, so we better damn well be able to boast about having “the greatest fighting force” ever.
Leaving that boast aside, Americans could certainly brag about one thing this country has beyond compare: the most expensive military around and possibly ever. No country even comes close to our commitment of funds to wars, weapons (including nuclear ones at the Department of Energy), and global dominance. Indeed, the Pentagon’s budget for “defense” in 2023 exceeds that of the next 10 countries (mostly allies!) combined.
And from all of this, it seems to me, two questions arise: Are we truly getting what we pay so dearly for — the bestest, finest, most exceptional military ever? And even if we are, should a self-proclaimed democracy really want such a thing?
The answer to both those questions is, of course, no. After all, America hasn’t won a war in a convincing fashion since 1945. If this country keeps losing wars routinely and often enough catastrophically, as it has in places like Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, how can we honestly say that we possess the world’s greatest fighting force? And if we nevertheless persist in such a boast, doesn’t that echo the rhetoric of militaristic empires of the past? (Remember when we used to think that only unhinged dictators like Adolf Hitler boasted of having peerless warriors in a megalomaniacal pursuit of global domination?)
Actually, I do believe the United States has the most exceptional military, just not in the way its boosters and cheerleaders like Austin, Bush, and Obama claimed. How is the U.S. military truly “exceptional”? Let me count the ways.
The Pentagon as a Budgetary Black Hole
In so many ways, the U.S. military is indeed exceptional. Let’s begin with its budget. At this very moment, Congress is debating a colossal “defense” budget of $886 billion for FY2024 (and all the debate is about issues that have little to do with the military). That defense spending bill, you may recall, was “only” $740 billion when President Joe Biden took office three years ago. In 2021, Biden withdrew U.S. forces from the disastrous war in Afghanistan, theoretically saving the taxpayer nearly $50 billion a year. Yet, in place of any sort of peace dividend, American taxpayers simply got an even higher bill as the Pentagon budget continued to soar.
Recall that, in his four years in office, Donald Trump increased military spending by 20%. Biden is now poised to achieve a similar 20% increase in just three years in office. And that increase largely doesn’t even include the cost of supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia — so far, somewhere between $120 billion and $200 billion and still rising.
Colossal budgets for weapons and war enjoy broad bipartisan support in Washington. It’s almost as if there were a military-industrial-congressional complex at work here! Where, in fact, did I ever hear a president warning us about that? Oh, perhaps I’m thinking of a certain farewell address by Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1961.
In all seriousness, there’s now a huge pentagonal-shaped black hole on the Potomac that’s devouring more than half of the federal discretionary budget annually. Even when Congress and the Pentagon allegedly try to enforce fiscal discipline, if not austerity elsewhere, the crushing gravitational pull of that hole just continues to suck in more money. Bet on that continuing as the Pentagon issues ever more warnings about a new cold war with China and Russia.
Given its money-sucking nature, perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that the Pentagon is remarkably exceptional when it comes to failing fiscal audits — five of them in a row (the fifth failure being a “teachable moment,” according to its chief financial officer) — as its budget only continued to soar. Whether you’re talking about lost wars or failed audits, the Pentagon is eternally rewarded for its failures. Try running a “Mom and Pop” store on that basis and see how long you last.
Speaking of all those failed wars, perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that they haven’t come cheaply. According to the Costs of War Project at Brown University, roughly 937,000 people have died since 9/11/2001 thanks to direct violence in this country’s “Global War on Terror” in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere. (And the deaths of another 3.6 to 3.7 million people may be indirectly attributable to those same post-9/11 conflicts.) The financial cost to the American taxpayer has been roughly $8 trillion and rising even as the U.S. military continues its counterterror preparations and activities in 85 countries.
No other nation in the world sees its military as (to borrow from a short-lived Navy slogan) “a global force for good.” No other nation divides the whole world into military commands like AFRICOM for Africa and CENTCOM for the Middle East and parts of Central and South Asia, headed up by four-star generals and admirals. No other nation has a network of 750 foreign bases scattered across the globe. No other nation strives for full-spectrum dominance through “all-domain operations,” meaning not only the control of traditional “domains” of combat — the land, sea, and air — but also of space and cyberspace. While other countries are focused mainly on national defense (or regional aggressions of one sort or another), the U.S. military strives for total global and spatial dominance. Truly exceptional!
Strangely, in this never-ending, unbounded pursuit of dominance, results simply don’t matter. The Afghan War? Bungled, botched, and lost. The Iraq War? Built on lies and lost. Libya? We came, we saw, Libya’s leader (and so many innocents) died. Yet no one at the Pentagon was punished for any of those failures. In fact, to this day, it remains an accountability-free zone, exempt from meaningful oversight. If you’re a “modern major general,” why not pursue wars when you know you’ll never be punished for losing them?
Indeed, the few “exceptions” within the military-industrial-congressional complex who stood up for accountability, people of principle like Daniel Hale, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden, were imprisoned or exiled. In fact, the U.S. government has even conspired to imprison a foreign publisher and transparency activist, Julian Assange, who published the truth about the American war on terror, by using a World War I-era espionage clause that only applies to American citizens.
And the record is even grimmer than that. In our post-9/11 years at war, as President Barack Obama admitted, “We tortured some folks” — and the only person punished for that was another whistleblower, John Kiriakou, who did his best to bring those war crimes to our attention.
And speaking of war crimes, isn’t it “exceptional” that the U.S. military plans to spend upwards of $2 trillion in the coming decades on a new generation of genocidal nuclear weapons? Those include new stealth bombers and new intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) for the Air Force, as well as new nuclear-missile-firing submarines for the Navy. Worse yet, the U.S. continues to reserve the right to use nuclear weapons first, presumably in the name of protecting life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And of course, despite the countries — nine! — that now possess nukes, the U.S. remains the only one to have used them in wartime, in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Finally, it turns out that the military is even immune from Supreme Court decisions! When SCOTUS recently overturned affirmative action for college admission, it carved out an exception for the military academies. Schools like West Point and Annapolis can still consider the race of their applicants, presumably to promote unit cohesion through proportional representation of minorities within the officer ranks, but our society at large apparently does not require racial equity for its cohesion.
A Most Exceptional Military Makes Its Wars and Their Ugliness Disappear
Here’s one of my favorite lines from the movie The Usual Suspects: “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist.” The greatest trick the U.S. military ever pulled was essentially convincing us that its wars never existed. As Norman Solomon notes in his revealing book, War Made Invisible, the military-industrial-congressional complex has excelled at camouflaging the atrocious realities of war, rendering them almost entirely invisible to the American people. Call it the new American isolationism, only this time we’re isolated from the harrowing and horrific costs of war itself.
America is a nation perpetually at war, yet most of us live our lives with little or no perception of this. There is no longer a military draft. There are no war bond drives. You aren’t asked to make direct and personal sacrifices. You aren’t even asked to pay attention, let alone pay (except for those nearly trillion-dollar-a-year budgets and interest payments on a ballooning national debt, of course). You certainly aren’t asked for your permission for this country to fight its wars, as the Constitution demands. As President George W. Bush suggested after the 9/11 attacks, go visit Disneyworld! Enjoy life! Let America’s “best and brightest” handle the brutality, the degradation, and the ugliness of war, bright minds like former Vice President Dick (“So?”) Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Donald (“I don’t do quagmires”) Rumsfeld.
Did you hear something about the U.S. military being in Syria? In Somalia? Did you hear about the U.S. military supporting the Saudis in a brutal war of repression in Yemen? Did you notice how this country’s military interventions around the world kill, wound, and displace so many people of color, so much so that observers speak of the systemic racism of America’s wars? Is it truly progress that a more diverse military in terms of “color, creed, and background,” to use Secretary of Defense Austin’s words, has killed and is killing so many non-white peoples around the globe?
Praising the all-female-crewed flyover at the last Super Bowl or painting rainbow flags of inclusivity (or even blue and yellow flags for Ukraine) on cluster munitions won’t soften the blows or quiet the screams. As one reader of my blog Bracing Views so aptly put it: “The diversity the war parties [Democrats and Republicans] will not tolerate is diversity of thought.”
Of course, the U.S. military isn’t solely to blame here. Senior officers will claim their duty is not to make policy at all but to salute smartly as the president and Congress order them about. The reality, however, is different. The military is, in fact, at the core of America’s shadow government with enormous influence over policymaking. It’s not merely an instrument of power; it is power — and exceptionally powerful at that. And that form of power simply isn’t conducive to liberty and freedom, whether inside America’s borders or beyond them.
Wait! What am I saying? Stop thinking about all that! America is, after all, the exceptional nation and its military, a band of freedom fighters. In Iraq, where war and sanctions killed untold numbers of Iraqi children in the 1990s, the sacrifice was “worth it,” as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once reassured Americans on 60 Minutes.
Even when government actions kill children, lots of children, it’s for the greater good. If this troubles you, go to Disney and take your kids with you. You don’t like Disney? Then, hark back to that old marching song of World War I and “pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag, and smile, smile, smile.” Remember, America’s troops are freedom-delivering heroes and your job is to smile and support them without question.
Have I made my point? I hope so. And yes, the U.S. military is indeed exceptional and being so, being #1 (or claiming you are anyway) means never having to say you’re sorry, no matter how many innocents you kill or maim, how many lives you disrupt and destroy, how many lies you tell.
I must admit, though, that, despite the endless celebration of our military’s exceptionalism and “greatness,” a fragment of scripture from my Catholic upbringing haunts me still: Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.
Why I’m Raising My Children in CHINA – NOT The UK.
2023 08 16 10 09
What I Wish My Dad Taught Me When I Was Little, According To 11 Me
It’s impossible to teach everything. But it’s helpful to know what untaught lessons might be felt the most.
A father’s influence on their sons is profound. As young men, we look first to our fathers to help lay the foundation for our own future growth and development. In an ideal world, they show us what to do, and what not to do. They help us distinguish between right and wrong. They encourage our strengths and nurture our struggles to prepare us for the future.
But, as well all know, fathers aren’t perfect. Sometimes opportunities to teach life lessons, impart simple skills, or prepare for hard-to-swallow truths get lost in the chaos of life. It happens. And it’s easy to look back with longing and regret at those moments. No, the point here is to not dwell on mistakes. Rather, it is to learn about what you might want to prioritize. We asked a dozen men what they wish their dads taught them when they were still kids. Whether learning how to problem solve, develop confidence, or rock and roll, they all had something to say. Here’s what they told us.
1. How To Be Present
“I grew up in a relatively low-income family with my mother on disability and my father always working hard to put food on the table and clothes on our backs. At one time my family had to file for bankruptcy because of debt. But my father still managed a way to get us what we needed.
My dad was a hard worker and taught me the meaning of hard work and perseverance.
But the one thing I wish I had learned sooner from my father was the importance of experiencing life, moments, and relationships over working for the dollar. Make your living doing what you do, but be present and don’t live life stuck in the past or even the future. Learn from past mistakes, but be in the present and cherish experiences and family because time is the one thing you can’t get back.” – Adrian, 31, Missouri
2. How To Know My Worth
“My father never taught me to be confident in myself. Instead, he forced me, as a little boy, to be timid, weak, and feel inferior to others, especially my peers. He was abusive and manipulative, and as a result, I would doubt whether any actions or decisions I took were the right ones.
Later on, colleagues would insult, hurt, and bully me, and I didn’t have the strength to defend myself.
I did learn lessons from my upbringing, though. The one that stands out in my mind all the time is that I must cherish and value my own children. I should never mistreat them or allow anybody to make them feel inferior. I’m traumatized by what my father did, and I wish he would’ve taught me differently. But what I have learned are essential lessons that I will never forget for the rest of my life.” – Phillip, 37, Colorado
3. How To Play Guitar
“My father was a musician, and I thought that was the coolest thing ever. I begged him to teach me how to play the guitar like him, but I wasn’t very good, and he wasn’t very patient. He got frustrated easily and nudged me toward other interests.
As a father myself, I certainly understand frustration. But I also know how wonderful it feels when your kids finally learn how to do something new.
I did eventually learn to play guitar. I’m still not good, but I’m better than I was when I was younger. My dad passed away before I had any skills worthy of sharing, and I always wonder what it would’ve been like if he were my teacher and we actually got to rock out together at least once.” – Jim, 45, New York
I begged him to teach me how to play the guitar like him, but I wasn’t very good, and he wasn’t very patient. He got frustrated easily and nudged me toward other interests.
4. How To Fix Things
“My dad was one of those guys who was very mechanically inclined. He had a blue collar trade for a career, worked on cars in his spare time, and fixed anything and everything that needed fixing around the house.
I’m not wired the way he was, unfortunately. Fixing broken things and working on cars is not a skill of mine. If I could go back in time to being a kid again, I would have asked my dad to take time to bring me in on some of his repair jobs.
To give me a shot at turning the wrench, so to speak. Not only would it have given me much needed knowledge, but it also would have given me much needed confidence when working with my hands, which happens a lot as a dad.” – Scott, 36, North Carolina
5. How To Set Goals
“When I was younger, I wish my dad had taught me about setting realistic goals. It’s a really important skill that could have helped me grow and become better. It would have made me more disciplined, determined, and adaptable from a young age.
Breaking big goals into smaller tasks can make a big difference in how kids deal with challenges.
If I knew this earlier, I would have been more motivated and faced difficulties with more confidence. Also, understanding the importance of setting timelines would have made me feel more urgent to get things done and not procrastinate. If my dad had taught me to celebrate even the small achievements, I would’ve felt better about myself and been more encouraged.” – Erik, 40, Texas
6. How To Care
“I wish my dad had taught me how to develop emotional intelligence. My dad wasn’t very present during my childhood. He was a traveling jeweler and usually out for two to three weeks, then back home for one or two.
He didn’t show me how to play sports, read, or any of the ‘normal’ stuff.
But the biggest thing he never showed me was how to care for the people I love.
I didn’t need him to be constantly checking up on me, but to be involved in how I felt, what I thought, or even what actually interested me outside of buying me whatever game I wanted. I now know this was something that he just didn’t know how to do, which is why I’ve made it a priority.
My kids will know that I’m interested in what they like, how they think, and the people they are going to become. And my wife will know I support her in whatever she does. Ultimately, their happiness and emotional health are priorities for me as a husband and father.” – Joshua, 33, Arizona
7. How To Connect With People
“Being a dad to two cool boys, 9 and 11, often makes me think a lot about what my own dad taught me growing up. One big thing I wish he’d shown me is how to connect with people.
I’m an introvert and striking up a conversation with someone new feels like trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube blindfolded.
It’s tough, and I see the same thing in one of my boys. I realized a few years back that I had a small group of friends and didn’t stay in touch as much as I should. This hit me hard and got me thinking about the importance of connecting and building relationships.
I’m learning to get better at this, and I’m taking my boys on the journey with me. I want them to understand that making friends and keeping them close is just as important as acing a test or scoring a goal. It’s something I’m still figuring out, but hey, that’s part of being a dad, right? We learn, and we teach.” – John, 31, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
My dad was very much a ‘Let me do it’ kind of guy. He wanted to fix the problem, whether it was a broken appliance or hurt feelings, rather than explore it.
8. How To Let Certain Things Roll Off Me
“I wish my father had known about and been able to teach me about the mind, and not letting what others say and do get to me so much. Sometimes the things other people say and do make us change how we do something or what we think about something, which has interfered with my life quite a bit.
Had I have been taught how to manage those types of thoughts, I’m sure some of life’s worst moments wouldn’t have weighed upon me so heavily, for so long, and I would have been able to move on from them sooner.” – Michael, 40, Michigan
9. How To Problem Solve
“Getting older has made me learn to appreciate the ability to understand how and why things work. I’ve taught myself a lot by taking things apart and putting them back together, and I realize now that I’ve been conditioning my problem-solving abilities.
My dad was very much a ‘Let me do it’ kind of guy.
He wanted to fix the problem, whether it was a broken appliance or hurt feelings, rather than explore it. Or help us learn about it. I appreciate what he was trying to do, but I think it hindered my ability to think for myself and really figure things out while I was growing up.” – Trevor, 40, Pennsylvania
10. How To Nurture My Inner Child
“I wish my father had taught me that most adults, even parents, still feel like kids themselves deep down inside. That the feeling of not being ready for adulthood never really goes away, and most grown-ups are still trying to learn how to do stuff the right way.
Since becoming a dad myself, I’ve realized that the feelings I have, like not always knowing the right answers, or trying my best but still making mistakes with my kids, must have been there for my dad, too.
I’ve realized that they must have occasionally felt like a child with adult responsibilities sometimes, just like I do. I also think that lesson would have helped me be a bit more calm and understanding with other people throughout my life.
When I stop and think of other adults as basically kids on the inside, with the same insecurities and fears that I have, it’s a lot easier for me to have patience and compassion for them.” – Phil, 45, Ohio
11. How To Manage Money
“I wish my dad had taught me about stocks and investing when I was young. He rarely talked about money or his work as a director at a large financial institution. His passing in December 2001 left a void in my life and financial knowledge.
As I grew older, my interest in finance intensified, and I felt unprepared to manage money.
I took it upon myself to learn about investing through self-education and seeking advice from others. Now, as a father, I understand the importance of sharing knowledge with my boy. I aim to be open and communicative about finances, empowering him to make informed decisions.
Though my journey to financial knowledge was self-driven, I hope to create an environment for my son where he feels supported and encouraged to learn about finance and investing, just as I wish I had been in my youth.” – Patrick, 45, Korea
How China Space Program Is BIGGER, BETTER & ADVANCED Than NASA
Armed with aggressive timelines, strategic investments, and an insatiable appetite for innovation, China’s space endeavors have propelled it into the forefront of the race to space. The nations remarkable successes, like landing rovers on the hidden part of the moon and building a growing space station, have caught the world’s attention and clearly show that China wants to be a leader in space exploration, challenging the long reign of the US. In today’s episode, we will cover how China space program is better than NASA in several aspects.
Black Wall Street in Tulsa Oklahoma, was one of the richest black community in all of America. Then in 1921, a group of white supremacists attacked the community with the help from the National Guard.
Known today as the Black Wall Street massacre, where 35 square blocks were decimated. The community was home to 10,000 African American residents. It was a thriving community, with brick and wood frame houses, and a bustling place of commerce, with shops, night clubs and theatres. It was a vibrant place, and full of promise which is why it became known as Americas Black Wallstreet.
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Thousands of homes and businesses were destroyed wiping out years of generational wealth. Hundreds had been killed and buried in mass graves as a heavily armed gang of looters and arsonists destroyed everything in there wake. One of the factors in the destruction of the community was resentment over the financial prosperity of the black community.
In Charlotte, North Carolina, a Lawyer bought a really expensive box of Cigars and then insured them against fire. Within a month he had smoked all 24 of these rather fine Cigars, without even paying his first premium payment on the insurance policy.
The Lawyer then filed a claim against the insurance company. In the claim the Lawyer claimed the Cigars were lost in a series of small fires.
2023 08 16 21 4gg7
The insurance company out-right refused to pay, stating the obvious reasons for not paying out the insurance claim, and that the man has consumed the Cigars in the normal way. The Lawyer filed a lawsuit against the insurance company and won.
The Judge agreed with the insurance company that the claim was frivolous, but the judge stated that the lawyer had a policy from the insurance company, which it had warranted that the Cigars were insurable and guaranteed that they would insure them against fire, without defining what was considered to acceptable fire.
Instead of having to go through a lengthy legal battle and costly appeals process they accepted the Judges ruling and paid the lawyer 15,000 dollars for the smoked Cigars.
The Russo – Sino combination would produce an Economic Giant with :-
Combined Real GDP of almost $ 25 Trillion
Combined Food Per Capita of 575 Kg per Year (400 Kg per year being minimum desirable)
Combined Gold Reserves of 5000 Tonnes officially and around 6500 Tonnes unofficially
Around 4 Million Soldiers including Reservists
Capable of outproducing NATO at 17:1 in Ammo, 9:1 in Missiles, 6:1 in Ships and 6:1 in Choppers and Tanks
Oil and Gas Reserves
However this isn’t just adding numbers
China isn’t ready to split the world into camps
China wants a multipolar world and wants both the East and West
No matter what the West does, China is not burning bridges with the West because China still gets a lot of stuff from the West
My guess is China will wait and if Taiwan becomes a major issue then China may finally formally cut off the West and form a major alliance with Russia
Russia is ready even today
It’s tired and sick of the West
Putin and Shoigu are moderates but Medvedev, Lavrov, Surovikin, Prighozin are all extremists and tough hawks who want the West beaten and crushed
So it all depends on Taiwan
That would be the red line for China
If US supports Taiwanese Independence, China will formally get into a United Nuclear Alliance (If anyone nukes China, Russia nukes him back and vice versa) and a United Military Alliance (Anyone attacks Russia or it’s friends and China supplies everything including soldiers )
US politician Robert Kennedy Jr. has confirmed the existence of American biological laboratories in Ukraine which are used to produce banned biological weapons.
Tuesday, 15 August 2023 2:40 PM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 15 August 2023 9:37 PM ]
US politician Robert Kennedy Jr. (File photo by AFP)US politician Robert Kennedy Jr. has confirmed the existence of American biological laboratories in Ukraine which are used to produce banned biological weapons.
"We have bio-labs in Ukraine because we are developing bioweapons," the Democratic Party presidential candidate told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson in a video interview posted on the X social network (formerly known as Twitter) on Tuesday.
"Those bioweapons are using all kinds of new synthetic biology and CRISPR (an acronym for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats in DNA) technology and genetic engineering techniques that were not available to a previous generation," the US politician, also known by his initials RFK Jr., said in the interview.
"When the Patriot Act reopened the biolabs arms race in 2001, the Pentagon began putting a lot of money into bioweapons," Kennedy Jr. added. "But they were nervous at that time because if you violate the Geneva Convention, it’s a hanging offense," he explained. "So they were nervous about actually going full force into bioweapons development.
So they transferred the authority for biosecurity to one agency in the HHS [the US Department of Health and Human Services]," the politician added. "But now, when you do bioweapons development, every bioweapon, it needs vaccine so you develop them side by side because in 100 percent of the cases when you deploy a bioweapon, there’s blowback.
Your side also gets sick," he concluded. The Russian Defense Ministry revealed the existence of US military biolabs in Ukraine working on producing bioweapons as early as February 2022.
In mid-April, a Russian parliamentary commission presented its final report on the investigations into the activities of the US-run bio-labs in Ukraine.
The report concluded that the Pentagon’s military biological program had grown large in scale, being implemented under the guise of anti-terrorist projects and activities that were permitted by the Biological Weapons Convention.
The parliamentary commission also pointed out that the activities of all the US-controlled laboratories involved Pentagon experts.
However, the results of their work were confidential and government agencies in the host countries only had access to secondary research results. Russian Ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, revealed that the secret US labs in Ukraine were producing biological warfare.
As a result of the illegal activities that were being carried out at US bio-labs in Ukraine, Russia last year asked the United Nations Security Council to establish a commission to investigate the reports that Washington and Kiev were in violation of the Convention prohibiting the use of biological weapons.
In the meantime, Moscow believes that the US bio-labs in Ukraine are only a fraction of a global network of 300 similar facilities. However, the US government has now denied the existence of such military bio-labs.
Instead, the US government has admitted to what it calls US-funded biological research facilities.
Earlier this year, Russia said it had obtained documents in Lisichansk, in the self-proclaimed Lugansk People's Republic (LPR), that revealed the US military-funded labs in Ukraine had been creating biological weapons components and testing them on the population of the country.
"Russian troops have secured over 20,000 documents, reference and analytical materials, and interviewed eyewitnesses and participants in American military-biological programs" since the start of the war in February last year, said the commander of Russia's Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Defense Forces, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov.
The general said that the documents "confirm... the focus of the Pentagon on creating biological weapons components and testing them on the population of Ukraine and other states along [Russia's] borders."
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.
India Just BURIED The Dollar, Saudi Arabia Is Next
Yes. It is happening.
A truth
funny memes 4
Diver Dan – Riddle of the Hermit Crab – Episode 20
About 30 years ago, I lived in an apartment complex where the owner paid the heat, hot water and cooking gas. The owner was one of the cheapest people I knew and she refused to fix anything or hire a decent Super. Btw, she had paid off the complex 15 years prior so she was making good $$$ off the complex
The boiler breaks and she has an old, used one, that she found in the newspapers, installed during the summer. By state law she was required to provide heat by November 15th. By the 23rd, it is brutal cold and we still didn’t have heat. I called her up to find out what is going on. Her response was that she was out of $$$ and for me to buy some electric heaters. Btw, that meant my expenses would up, since tenants paid for their electricity.
I go to town hall, met with the appropriate officials, let them know what is going and file a complaint. I also let them know that there was a large elderly group of tenants in the complex.
The official calls her, tells her that she is in violation and that she needs to get the heat on ASAP. She tells him off and refuses saying that she knows people. (She didn’t) He tells her that he will fine her $1000/day for each unit or $48,000 a day starting with that day. She tells him that he can’t do that and called him some choice names. What she didn’t realize that the town’s lawyer heard the entire phone call.
The next day she was delivered a notarized invoice for $48,000 along with a legal document stating that this daily fine will continue until the heat goes on. Now she is in a panic since she now owes the town $48,000.
But the best part of the revenge is that this happened on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Do now she had to scramble to find someone who could get the system working which she eventually did. But he charged her double claiming that it was interfering with him going away for the holiday.
One last thing, the town official told her if she tried to harass me for reporting her, the town would go after her and would pay my legal bills if I had to sue her
Couldn’t Be Easier Brisket
2023 08 16 10 23
Prep: 5 min | Bake: 2 to 3 hr | Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
3-4 pounds boneless beef brisket
1 bottle chili sauce
1 can Coca-Cola
1 envelope dry onion soup mix
Instructions
Heat oven to 300 degrees F.
Combine chili sauce, Coca-Cola and soup mix.
Place brisket in a foil-lined baking pan*. Pour sauce mixture over brisket and cover with another sheet of foil sealing edges.
Bake at 300 degrees F for 3 to 3 1/2 hours until tender.
Carve brisket against the grain and serve the pan juices as a sauce.
Notes
* or use a cooking bag for really easy clean-up.
Now CHINA Missile Force Can Destroy US Asia Pacific Command in Just 7 minutes
This audacious assertion unveils a stark reminder that in the realm of modern warfare, the boundaries of possibility are continually pushed, leaving the world to grapple with the implications of China’s missile might and its potential to reshape the geopolitical landscape in a matter of minutes. Today’s episode will cover China’s missile force power.
Today’s treat. Full movie with James Stewart. Please enjoy!
Out of the blue, the grizzled farmhand, John O'Hanlan, receives an unexpected letter from an unknown solicitor in the far-off town of Cheyenne, Wyoming, informing him that he is the proud owner of the Cheyenne Social Club, now that his estranged brother, D.J., has passed away. Intrigued and eager to trade in the dusty landscapes of 1867 Texas for an easy life as a businessman, without delay, John sets out on a long trip with his best friend, Harley Sullivan, to create a better future for himself. But somehow, John's newest and only acquisition has both a good and a bad reputation. Either way, the establishment's inexperienced manager now holds the fates of its loyal staff in his hands: a beautiful sextet of dedicated, and above all, famous female employees. However, is John cut out to run this type of business?
Morgan Weistling is an American painter who paints the everyday life and characters of the Wild West. An accomplished painter, Weistling is skilled in both paint and printmaking, creating truly inspiring paintings of beauty and danger. Weistling’s paintings have won multiple awards and been purchased for permanent display by major museums.
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